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  <row Id="11" PostId="1" Score="9" Text="This should probably be expanded to include questions that cover any tool that has a substantial programming aspect: Excel, SAS, Incanter, ect, ect." CreationDate="2010-07-19T21:53:57.137" UserId="13" />
  <row Id="13" PostId="1" Score="9" Text="I vote for 3, too!!!" CreationDate="2010-07-19T22:51:43.840" UserId="90" />
  <row Id="406" PostId="1" Score="0" Text="Does the answer to this question (even though it is older) supersede http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/252/should-we-allow-more-computing-questions?" CreationDate="2010-08-10T00:32:23.483" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="460" PostId="1" Score="0" Text="No we should follow the thinking in http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/252/should-we-allow-more-computing-questions The FAQs have been updated to reflect this change." CreationDate="2010-08-11T13:15:27.267" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="6140" PostId="1" Score="1" Text="Personal opinion: This is entirely questions and answers from 2010, except for some comments from 2013. Although there remains room to differ (amicably) on this point, this thread is arguably historic given present policy codified in the Help Center." CreationDate="2014-10-08T17:57:13.027" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6172" PostId="1" Score="1" Text="@Nick To my understanding in-practice-application of policy reflects the broad consensus position on this question rather than the other one. I prefer the other one (on which consensus is stronger within the question), but this is the one the active mods seem mostly to follow." CreationDate="2014-10-12T00:35:18.533" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="105" PostId="6" Score="0" Text="A suggestion: I think each answer should be phrased as a potential faq that is proposed to be included along with a potential answer. Please also make the answers CW so that all of us can improve the question and the corresponding answer. The votes will then determine what the community consensus is reg the faq content." CreationDate="2010-07-22T01:46:07.537" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="270" PostId="6" Score="0" Text="Could you please make this CW so that we can start the process of re-writing the questions as proper FAQ entries? Thanks" CreationDate="2010-07-29T15:13:27.277" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="314" PostId="6" Score="0" Text="This needs to be CW. Amos could do this but he seems to be absent. However, each answer can be separately made CW by the original answerer. I have done that for my answer. Can others please do it for theirs? Then we can start editing these. (Those with &gt;1K rep can edit the answers anyway.)" CreationDate="2010-08-03T01:14:58.593" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="349" PostId="6" Score="0" Text="I've now converted this to CW. Please edit the various answers so we can construct the FAQ together." CreationDate="2010-08-05T00:47:58.640" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="1" PostId="9" Score="1" Text="We should definitely ask them about it.  To my knowledge jsMath is the most feature-rich client-side solution and uses TeX-style notation which is a good lingua franca for expressing mathematical statements." CreationDate="2010-07-19T20:11:00.200" UserId="13" />
  <row Id="2" PostId="9" Score="0" Text="I don't know if he used it or not but John L. Taylor http://stats.stackexchange.com/users/39/john-l-taylor was able to include a formula in one of his answers http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2/what-is-normality/59#59 , so there is currently some type of support.  Assuming it is the same as mathoverflow, should we add that as a FAQ?" CreationDate="2010-07-19T20:24:48.857" UserId="24" />
  <row Id="3" PostId="9" Score="1" Text="@A Lion: He just did what I did, when I found the equations I wanted on Wikipedia for this question: http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/54/why-do-us-and-uk-schools-teach-different-methods-of-calculating-the-standard-devi and linked to them." CreationDate="2010-07-19T20:39:08.853" UserId="55" />
  <row Id="10" PostId="9" Score="2" Text="Yeah, it's an image.  Reminds me, I think there's a pile of &quot;turn-TeX-into-hosted-image&quot; sites out there, I'll dig some up." CreationDate="2010-07-19T21:08:25.163" UserId="13" />
  <row Id="17" PostId="9" Score="0" Text="Yes it is. Look at http://mathoverflow.net . They use jsMath and it works excellent" CreationDate="2010-07-20T08:52:20.327" UserId="213" />
  <row Id="42" PostId="12" Score="2" Text="I don't yet have the reputation to post an answer, so I'll just comment here that this is one of the major issues MathOverflow has dealt with.  The consensus (such as it is) which has emerged is more or less 3.  But there have been some cases in which it's not clear what is homework and what is an honest question from an expert in a different (sub)field.  For precisely the reason you point out, that may be a bigger issue here than on MathOverflow." CreationDate="2010-07-20T17:18:56.590" UserId="89" />
  <row Id="175" PostId="16" Score="0" Text="Where is the war? Aren't there two, quite similar, and highly upvoted answers?" CreationDate="2010-07-25T15:28:21.580" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="177" PostId="16" Score="0" Text="About cross-validation, on the main site." CreationDate="2010-07-25T17:24:06.470" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="5" PostId="17" Score="3" Text="Any professor who is asked a homework question explicitly in office hours would tell the student to do a little work and rephrase the question, which is essentially what I mean." CreationDate="2010-07-19T20:48:41.983" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="6" PostId="17" Score="4" Text="Then we need to differentiate between homework questions that someone has put effort into asking and homework questions that have had no effort expended on them." CreationDate="2010-07-19T20:49:45.257" UserId="13" />
  <row Id="922" PostId="19" Score="2" Text="Excellent response, but I have more than a few words to say about that last suggestion concerning &quot;contempt, sadism and downvotes,&quot; so I have posted them as a separate answer." CreationDate="2010-10-12T13:09:37.190" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20397" PostId="19" Score="1" Text="For questions like &quot;Help! Due in 30 minutes!&quot;, I think just waiting would be enough :)" CreationDate="2021-01-01T19:37:13.567" UserId="204068" />
  <row Id="200" PostId="21" Score="3" Text="Just to emphasize one of my overarching views on the name: the site should be about &quot;data analysis&quot;, and that should include all aspects of statistics (yes, including both bayesian and frequentist), visualization, machine learning/data mining, &quot;data science&quot;, etc.  The title should include all these camps." CreationDate="2010-07-26T14:29:19.630" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="9" PostId="22" Score="2" Text="Same here- this is the first I have heard of Metaoptimize.  I think it's an awesome idea and I feel for the people that have put time into it- but marketing is one of the most powerful forces known to man. It is unfortunate that it usually takes money to get good marketing and that in many cases money won't touch open source with a ten-hundred-foot pole." CreationDate="2010-07-19T21:02:03.043" UserId="13" />
  <row Id="64" PostId="23" Score="2" Text="Note: &quot;Parked for free&quot; does not mean free." CreationDate="2010-07-21T03:47:57.840" UserId="246" />
  <row Id="72" PostId="23" Score="3" Text="The main problem with this (if it is a problem) is that it has statistics in the title, which could deter the machine learning community.  It also doesn't get across the idea of other forms of data analysis (e.g. visualization)." CreationDate="2010-07-21T13:08:19.993" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="25" PostId="26" Score="2" Text="I don't love this because ideally our questions/answers will be fat tails (in terms of their degree of excellence)." CreationDate="2010-07-20T13:12:45.317" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="38" PostId="26" Score="1" Text="When I saw this, the smart@ss in me really wanted to submit www.abnormallydistributed.com but the serious side of me slapped the smart@ss side into submission.  With that said and off of my chest, I agree with Shane." CreationDate="2010-07-20T15:43:58.590" UserId="24" />
  <row Id="59" PostId="30" Score="0" Text="I think the long term answer is what Colin suggested, i.e., to incorporate the jsMath library in the same fashion as mathoverflow.  But since the site admins haven't indicated if that will happen or when it might happen, I'm going to accept your answer as correct, because it should work with the current system.  If I'm breaking any protocols by doing it this way, just let me know." CreationDate="2010-07-20T18:41:11.347" UserId="24" />
  <row Id="374" PostId="33" Score="0" Text="This is now part of the scope statement covered in another answer." CreationDate="2010-08-06T07:53:41.440" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="427" PostId="34" Score="0" Text="Doesn't this implicitly exclude those who are not interested in significance tests per se?" CreationDate="2010-08-10T16:09:53.030" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="14" PostId="37" Score="0" Text="There are, currently, 2 of each.  That was why I brought it up - if we &quot;move&quot; two, so there are 4 of the same, this will probably never happen again." CreationDate="2010-07-19T23:28:41.343" UserId="41" />
  <row Id="20" PostId="38" Score="0" Text="I disagree about the question you mentioned; it is purely about optimization of an algorithm, so it would get tags: algorithm, optimization, maybe smoothing or curve-smoothing. In general on SO there are questions about totally weird and specific algorithms and they get their answers." CreationDate="2010-07-20T11:24:21.753" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="33" PostId="38" Score="0" Text="Ou, I see there is a problem about the definition of an algorithm. If algorithm=method (like How to adopt MCMC to problem X?), I agree that it is OK. If algorithm&gt;&gt;implementation (like I have written MCMC in bash and it is working for HOURS, how to speed it up?) this is for SO." CreationDate="2010-07-20T14:57:27.953" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="92" PostId="38" Score="3" Text="mbq, but the question Colin mentioned is *not* purely about optimization.  That's just a metric to find a better algorithm.  In fact, if you see see the answers, they're talking about how approximate solutions can be achieved on a limited sample of data seen at any time within a probabilistic bound.  There are pointers to reservoir sampling, which is a neat application of probability.  I think this is highly interesting from a *statistical* viewpoint." CreationDate="2010-07-21T16:35:56.870" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="118" PostId="38" Score="2" Text="I just want to clarify something, since I both lurk on SO and participated in the median finding question. The kinds of algorithms questions entertained on SO are the ones where people are interested in specific programming answers. More conceptual (or theoretical) answers are not necessarily encouraged. WHereas here, more rigorous comp.stats questions/answers might be within scope - the only other home would be the theoryCS SE site (in commit stage) or MO." CreationDate="2010-07-22T20:22:45.270" UserId="139" />
  <row Id="428" PostId="47" Score="0" Text="Although I like the connotation of &quot;alternative&quot; - as if we are providing alternative approaches for question askers, I down voted because I think this implies a focus on null hypothesis significance testing," CreationDate="2010-08-10T16:12:29.423" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="391" PostId="48" Score="0" Text="Or perhaps RandomVariable, since the word &quot;Variate&quot; is not widely known?" CreationDate="2010-08-06T19:23:58.807" UserId="279" />
  <row Id="477" PostId="48" Score="0" Text="@Aniko, unfortunately RandomVariable.com is already owned by someone." CreationDate="2010-08-12T22:04:40.163" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="15" PostId="49" Score="0" Text="One such example of a question in question is here: http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/222/what-are-principal-component-scores" CreationDate="2010-07-20T05:49:47.413" UserId="191" />
  <row Id="66" PostId="51" Score="2" Text="Or maybe ModelOverfit.com to stick to two-word standard?" CreationDate="2010-07-21T10:03:25.260" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="470" PostId="51" Score="2" Text="read as Mode-Lover-Fit also :-P" CreationDate="2010-08-12T11:19:58.290" UserId="339" />
  <row Id="628" PostId="51" Score="0" Text="@gd047 Good point." CreationDate="2010-08-26T07:08:29.463" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="119" PostId="52" Score="2" Text="I like this because it covers the data mining as well as the more traditional statistical side of the site. It also doesn't emphasise one area (e.g., Bayesian methods or hypothesis testing)." CreationDate="2010-07-23T00:11:31.213" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="161" PostId="52" Score="0" Text="This domain name is &quot;backordered&quot;.  Not sure what that means." CreationDate="2010-07-23T20:32:45.627" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="179" PostId="52" Score="1" Text="That it is not FreedomDegrees." CreationDate="2010-07-26T05:26:56.013" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="18" PostId="53" Score="0" Text="Would be good, if singular. That one however, seems to exist already" CreationDate="2010-07-20T10:58:03.450" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="24" PostId="53" Score="0" Text="Right...hence the plural...alas!" CreationDate="2010-07-20T13:11:43.197" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="102" PostId="53" Score="0" Text="CrossValidated.com is free." CreationDate="2010-07-21T22:14:25.203" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="170" PostId="53" Score="2" Text="@mbq: I like your variation (made the change)." CreationDate="2010-07-24T10:20:29.347" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="201" PostId="53" Score="5" Text="I like this one the most at this point, because it not only covers a broadly applied technique, but also in some sense describes what we do on the site (i.e. have many different views on the same question to find the best solution)." CreationDate="2010-07-26T14:31:17.067" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="299" PostId="53" Score="2" Text="I note that this is now registered by &quot;Stack Overflow Internet Services, Inc.&quot;" CreationDate="2010-07-30T13:18:50.003" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="418" PostId="53" Score="0" Text="Does Stack Overflow registering it mean that they've decided that is the name we are going to go with or is this still an open issue?" CreationDate="2010-08-10T15:52:08.483" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="426" PostId="53" Score="0" Text="Still an open issue; they register names to protect them." CreationDate="2010-08-10T16:09:29.723" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="436" PostId="53" Score="6" Text="I downvoted this: it has no link to statistics for &quot;outsiders&quot;, and as a statistician I don't get the &quot;inside joke&quot; feeling either. Cross-validation is a minor technique that is not that great either." CreationDate="2010-08-10T19:09:21.297" UserId="279" />
  <row Id="464" PostId="53" Score="4" Text="@Aniko: w.r.t. your point about the &quot;inside joke&quot;, do you really think that everyone on stackoverflow.com knows what a stack overflow is?  I am quite sure that they don't given that Jeff Atwood previously admitted that he had no idea what it was.  I also don't entirely see how cross-validation is a minor technique; IMO, it's pretty fundamental, especially given the broad &quot;data analysis&quot; basis for the site." CreationDate="2010-08-11T23:41:26.047" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="472" PostId="53" Score="1" Text="How about giving it an Italian flavour: CrossValidate.it ?" CreationDate="2010-08-12T12:00:30.400" UserId="339" />
  <row Id="485" PostId="53" Score="0" Text="@Shane I don't mean that the name should be understandable to both insiders and outsiders, but to at least one of these groups. I would think _real programmers_ would know what stackoverflow means (even I do, despite being only an amateur programmer)" CreationDate="2010-08-13T17:59:46.880" UserId="279" />
  <row Id="493" PostId="53" Score="9" Text="@Aniko. Every data miner would know about cross-validation, and I think most statisticians would too, although perhaps not under that name. After all, it is closely related to the jack-knife, and to leverage in regression, and to studentized residuals. And it is widely used in nonparametric regression for bandwidth selection. I disagree that it is a minor technique." CreationDate="2010-08-14T03:27:30.547" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="529" PostId="53" Score="1" Text="So my 2 cents is that it isn't a name that jumps out to me as being related to statistics. I've heard of all of the other things Rob lists above, but never had I heard them referred to as cross-validation until I came here.  The litmis test for a name should be if you tell someone what the name is are they going to have a sense of what the site is about.  Things may be different for others, but in my area of study I doubt they'll instantly know what the site &quot;CrossValidated.com&quot; is for or about." CreationDate="2010-08-17T07:04:45.267" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="540" PostId="53" Score="1" Text="The wikipedia disambiguation page for &quot;cross validation&quot; (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-validation) lists three meanings. Only one has anything to do with statistics, and that is a fairly narrow part of statistics. We can find a more general name." CreationDate="2010-08-17T23:38:17.227" UserId="25" />
  <row Id="542" PostId="53" Score="0" Text="@Harvey Two other meanings are marginal; still the point is somewhere else -- it connects statistics, machine learning and data mining, which are all legitimate topics of this site." CreationDate="2010-08-18T06:33:38.190" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="543" PostId="53" Score="2" Text="@(all that think one should be familiar with name to find/use the site) -- no, new users will find it by its contents, not name. As Shane mentioned stack overflow is a very specific error and is not commonly known, and still it makes no problem for SO. Also I don't think that median Windows user will now what superuser means." CreationDate="2010-08-18T06:42:52.273" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="544" PostId="53" Score="0" Text="@Harvey: That seems like a reach...did you look at the other ones listed?  Wikipedia has many disambiguation pages for familiar terms.  The statistical meaning is overwhelmingly the most common.  Just look at any of the results returned from a google search." CreationDate="2010-08-18T12:55:51.657" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="545" PostId="53" Score="0" Text="One other reason to choose &quot;CrossValidated&quot; over &quot;StatsOverflow&quot; is that it is amenable to a good logo (e.g. involving some picture like this: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Hyi86mcXHNw/SKy-jwKHbDI/AAAAAAAAAOE/W4bViOnUoWA/s1600-h/Cross+Validation.png)." CreationDate="2010-08-18T12:56:42.013" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="546" PostId="53" Score="0" Text="@mbq: Imagine the case of someone who hears about the site and its content, then several weeks later decided they want to visit the site.  When they try to remember the name of the site, a name that is meaningful and related to the content (in a way they understand) will be easier to remember than something they don't instantly recognize. Sure, many of them will find the source that mentioned the site and get here anyway - but some won't.  Also the infrequent users are somewhat less likely to come back - and more likely to get lost in their google search." CreationDate="2010-08-18T14:28:29.303" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="547" PostId="53" Score="0" Text="Just a random note on this point in general: Cross-validation seems like a procedure you can use in statistics, but despite claims it is analogous to certain fit statistics (e.g. AIC/BIC, http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/577/is-there-any-reason-to-prefer-the-aic-or-bic-over-the-other), at least here, a demonstration of the way in which it is analogous is lacking (e.g. http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/608/how-can-one-empirically-demonstrate-in-r-which-cross-validation-methods-the-aic-a)." CreationDate="2010-08-18T14:37:24.960" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="549" PostId="53" Score="3" Text="drknexus - how is &quot;StatsOverflow.com&quot; any more memorable than &quot;Crossvalidated.com&quot;?  &quot;Overflow&quot; only has meaning for people who know about StackOverflow, who form a very small group - and a group that's likely to be able to find a statistics site in the StackOverflow family without needing to know what the name is.  Conversely, an advantage of CrossValidated is that it's clear about what kind of statistics are being talked about - it's clearly not sports/government/etc. statistics, it's analysis." CreationDate="2010-08-18T14:45:19.683" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="552" PostId="53" Score="0" Text="@drknexus I don't agree; people look for information, not tools. They will also probably mostly ask own question after founding here a similar question that still don't satisfy their need. About AIC/BIC -- read my comments on the topic, those equivalence theorems hold only in a narrow set of situations (mostly linear models)." CreationDate="2010-08-18T15:34:12.037" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="553" PostId="53" Score="1" Text="I would hope this site would welcome scientists who need help with data analysis. To facilitate this, we shouldn't use jargon in the site name. &#xA;&#xA;What would happen if asked a bunch of scientists to identify the field in which &quot;cross-validate&quot; is used, and offered five choices:&#xA; a)statistics,&#xA; b)psychotherapy, &#xA; c)anthropology, &#xA; d)accounting, or&#xA; e)comparative literature.&#xA;&#xA;I suspect you'd end up with about 20% guessing each." CreationDate="2010-08-18T16:47:34.360" UserId="25" />
  <row Id="555" PostId="53" Score="3" Text="@Harvey: (1) I think that you're wrong about that survey; this concept is primarily associated with statistics/machine learning.  Again: just try a google search: all the top research relate to the right thing. (2) IMO, having jargon is a good thing, as per the blog post in the original question.  (3) If you have a better idea, please propose it; I would be happy to see a better name myself (I like CV in part because of its meta interpretation).  I see StatsOverflow as problematic both because it's &quot;Stats&quot; (hence not including other areas) and Overflow (which has nothing to do with us)." CreationDate="2010-08-18T17:12:13.230" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="556" PostId="53" Score="0" Text="Note: we will be starting a new round of voting starting next Monday, only including the top choices.  That will be a good opportunity to lay out all the pros/cons of the different options." CreationDate="2010-08-18T17:13:15.273" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="29" PostId="54" Score="4" Text="I think we should try to avoid names that lean towards specific branches of statistics. For example, StatisticalSignificance and NullHypothesis have a frequentist slant to them. A bad choice of name may put many people off the site." CreationDate="2010-07-20T13:35:45.373" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="30" PostId="54" Score="2" Text="We should also try to balance the data analysts/machine learning types who don't have any direct input in statistical debates.  It's a tough balancing act to please everyone!" CreationDate="2010-07-20T13:51:14.353" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="79" PostId="54" Score="0" Text="OK! NullHypotheses it is then!" CreationDate="2010-07-21T14:58:59.510" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="423" PostId="56" Score="0" Text="I voted this down because I think it implies a focus on statistics and particularly statistical inference (as opposed to statistical prediction) while neglecting the other domains of interest for this site." CreationDate="2010-08-10T16:07:08.197" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="19" PostId="57" Score="0" Text="Again, maybe singular?" CreationDate="2010-07-20T10:58:27.973" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="27" PostId="57" Score="1" Text="Regretfully, that's unavailable..." CreationDate="2010-07-20T13:13:51.853" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="421" PostId="57" Score="0" Text="I voted this down because I think it implies a focus on parametric statistics while neglecting the other domains of interest for this site." CreationDate="2010-08-10T16:04:28.713" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="21" PostId="58" Score="0" Text="I like this but it would be better singular." CreationDate="2010-07-20T12:58:10.527" UserId="174" />
  <row Id="22" PostId="58" Score="0" Text="Unfortunately, the singular version is already taken unless we can do a &quot;.net&quot; instead of &quot;.com&quot;." CreationDate="2010-07-20T13:09:10.677" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="420" PostId="58" Score="0" Text="I voted this down because I think it implies a focus on null hypothesis testing logic which is primarily relevant to the &quot;statistics&quot; focus of the site while neglecting the other domains of interest furthermore, not all people engaged in statistical inference are particularly happy with null hypothesis testing approaches." CreationDate="2010-08-10T16:03:42.147" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="39" PostId="59" Score="0" Text="During the beta phase, when things like tags are more likely to be in flux, would it be possible to run the &quot;janitor&quot; task more frequently (e.g., every couple of hours instead of daily)?" CreationDate="2010-07-20T16:21:45.713" UserId="24" />
  <row Id="26" PostId="62" Score="4" Text="Familiar, but wouldn't it be better to have a name that's unique to our endeavour?  StackOverflow is a specific computer-science related concept." CreationDate="2010-07-20T13:13:32.400" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="56" PostId="62" Score="2" Text="@Shane That is indeed a good point. I just liked the familiarity the name generates with stackoverflow, the same way mathoverflow.net does." CreationDate="2010-07-20T18:21:33.353" UserId="81" />
  <row Id="126" PostId="62" Score="1" Text="@Tony That's why I think it should be something fitting into a S*[O*] scheme but still making sense." CreationDate="2010-07-23T14:31:08.407" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="185" PostId="62" Score="11" Text="It doesn't mean anything, unlike &quot;StackOverflow&quot;. It will be harder to sell to people who aren't familiar with the SO site." CreationDate="2010-07-26T09:29:23.163" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="252" PostId="62" Score="8" Text="I like it. The &quot;overflow&quot; connotation has not hurt mathoverflow at all, and it is becoming a meme...i.e. people will understand what type of site it is immediately." CreationDate="2010-07-27T19:30:47.177" UserId="247" />
  <row Id="442" PostId="62" Score="5" Text="I just looked at some of the other SE sites, and I didn't see another one going for blahoverflow.com.  I agree with @Rob that this has a specific meaning for stackoverflow, and the SO team even chose different names for superuser and serverfault that were more relevant." CreationDate="2010-08-10T20:48:07.397" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="466" PostId="62" Score="1" Text="Although closely related, it attempts to borrow too much from it's successful progenitor. Although, arguably, many questions will be asked and answered that reflect the use of software for statistical analysis." CreationDate="2010-08-12T03:54:55.547" UserId="776" />
  <row Id="510" PostId="62" Score="1" Text="@Brandon Stack overflow is rather not the most hurting problem in statistical software..." CreationDate="2010-08-16T15:16:19.077" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="517" PostId="62" Score="4" Text="Regarding the blog post linked in the original question, note #2: &quot;Look for jargon that has meaning to the group of people you want to attract. Insider jargon is the duck call of insiders. Look at me! If I can say “contributory negligence,” I must be a real lawyer!&quot;  This speaks to the reason that I think this is a poor name selection." CreationDate="2010-08-16T17:31:04.403" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="527" PostId="62" Score="5" Text="There's a Machine Learning proposal on Area 51 even though ML questions are part of the mission statement here.  I think the &quot;Statistical Analysis&quot; name keeps some people away.  We should go for a name that has meaning for both ML and Statistics folks to encourage more cross fertilization between the two areas.  CrossValidated seems pretty good to me for that reason." CreationDate="2010-08-17T05:48:02.663" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="28" PostId="64" Score="1" Text="Yes, that's an example of a weak question. &#xA;&#xA;I would worry that if people come down too harshly on computer questions, the site will become, &quot;what's a UMVU estimator and how do you find it&quot;? I think a lot of stats questions are going to be tied to analysis and computer questions." CreationDate="2010-07-20T13:29:53.483" UserId="62" />
  <row Id="31" PostId="64" Score="1" Text="Absolutely...we (as the community) just need to educate these people on the right way to ask on-topic questions.  Programming questions are on-topic so long as they're related to the site subject area." CreationDate="2010-07-20T13:55:34.327" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="35" PostId="64" Score="0" Text="I generally agree, but still I believe that the intended use was mentioned in the particular R-Clojure question." CreationDate="2010-07-20T15:03:34.850" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="37" PostId="64" Score="1" Text="Absolutely...I'm making a general comment.  The particular example was fine (although I had recommended changing the title to be more explicit)." CreationDate="2010-07-20T15:21:49.237" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="61" PostId="66" Score="0" Text="I agree with you on &quot;Modeling&quot; - I just wanted to bring it up.  (I also agree that it's somewhat vague in a statistics sense... but I'm sure it'll end up getting used, so I'd rather there be one, consistently vague tag than two ;) )" CreationDate="2010-07-20T20:25:25.097" UserId="41" />
  <row Id="11426" PostId="67" Score="4" Text="By the way, +1 because the question is important and the answers are good, and not because I agree with the specific suggestion of the OP (I disagree)." CreationDate="2016-11-14T22:31:42.580" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="36" PostId="68" Score="0" Text="ok, Voted for closing the question to see whether the community agrees with me or not." CreationDate="2010-07-20T15:10:16.160" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="57" PostId="70" Score="2" Text="+1 I would like to emphasize the following two points from the above answer: 1. Search elsewhere (wiki, google) first. 2. Digest the material that you find and ask questions reg the topic that you still do not understand." CreationDate="2010-07-20T18:22:59.247" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="62" PostId="70" Score="0" Text="I agree, both with the above answer and Srikant.  To emphasize: when people know that you've put in some effort, they're much more likely to put in theirs." CreationDate="2010-07-20T20:35:02.267" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="3651" PostId="70" Score="1" Text="While I agree with the overall content of this answer I have to disagree strongly about the suggestion of &quot;simple wiki&quot;. If this was suggested to a question of mine I would probably get offended. While I might not be a native speaker I am pretty confident in my english, and most of problems with statistics articles on wikipedia are due to plain bad formulation rather than complexity of the english used.. Anyways that's my two cents." CreationDate="2012-11-05T17:41:46.890" UserId="3014" />
  <row Id="40" PostId="72" Score="0" Text="+1 I agree completely." CreationDate="2010-07-20T16:40:03.573" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="115" PostId="72" Score="1" Text="surely, introduction of `possibly-offtopic-tag` on meta is at least as bad!" CreationDate="2010-07-22T17:08:15.923" UserId="219" />
  <row Id="116" PostId="72" Score="0" Text="@SilentGhost Ehm, yeah, that's true... I will remove it" CreationDate="2010-07-22T17:40:45.713" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="226" PostId="72" Score="0" Text="@dfknexus Ehm, the on-topic tag is useful as it are the discussions about what things are on-topic on the main-site." CreationDate="2010-07-27T04:03:56.090" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="41" PostId="73" Score="1" Text="I don't agree with this generally: wikipedia is accurate because it has a large community of people who are vigilant about keeping it that way (several studies have found this).  Having a voting system won't make definitional questions any more correct." CreationDate="2010-07-20T17:11:16.850" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="54" PostId="73" Score="3" Text="I agree that the voting system has advantages. However, do note that we have to draw the line somewhere. To take an extreme view point I can dig up every Wikipedia article on statistics and ask questions regarding them on this site.&#xA;&#xA;A much better approach to such questions is to encourage the following process: 1. Poster does a search (in books, Wikipedia, Google etc) on some topic. 2. Digests the material and tries to resolve any issues on his/her own. 3. Is still stuck then he/she will post a question seeking clarification on this site." CreationDate="2010-07-20T18:17:24.297" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="55" PostId="73" Score="1" Text="4. When asking the question, the poster should be encouraged to show their steps/thoughts on the issue. Such a process would ensure that the Q&amp;A we have on Statistics Analysis are useful to not just the poster but perhaps to future generations as well as someone else may be stuck with the same issue." CreationDate="2010-07-20T18:18:57.150" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="113" PostId="73" Score="1" Text="I think this type of question should be allowed if the poster can show some disagreement between two or more sources. &quot;It says here that the foo function is [bar] but this other site says it is [baz]. Which is right?&quot; This may lead to a discussion of which method is suitable for different situations (eg large and small populations, known complete population versus small sample), rather than a black and white &quot;site X is wrong, Y is right&quot;" CreationDate="2010-07-22T16:04:13.827" UserId="270" />
  <row Id="251" PostId="73" Score="2" Text="@AdamV The way you phrased the question is perfectly fine as the poster has done some work before posting the question. But, what about questions that can be trivially answered by the wiki?" CreationDate="2010-07-27T18:38:32.607" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="44" PostId="76" Score="2" Text="While I wish you were right, if this site was just for experts and we were all experts, then there wouldn't be questions like this: http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/26/what-is-a-standard-deviation." CreationDate="2010-07-20T17:33:12.650" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="47" PostId="76" Score="1" Text="@Shane That's a good point. As I'm not graduated yet I should maybe not call myself an expert either. However I think this site is to help people answering their questions, not having a subjective discussion, only useful for non-expert readers." CreationDate="2010-07-20T17:37:13.063" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="43" PostId="77" Score="1" Text="Better, better. This doesn't invite for other &quot;Real world usage of X&quot;-questions. However, it is still quite subjective." CreationDate="2010-07-20T17:31:07.957" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="45" PostId="77" Score="2" Text="Subjectivity in and of itself isn't a problem so long as they're market CW.  Some of these questions can be very rewarding.  Although there's no doubt that this is a very poorly considered question." CreationDate="2010-07-20T17:35:09.620" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="46" PostId="78" Score="0" Text="IMO, the point of the tag is to group similar questions together and help with searching." CreationDate="2010-07-20T17:35:51.960" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="49" PostId="78" Score="0" Text="@Shane Searching on community wiki questions is already possible. I think tags should be used to group questions about similar topics, not to group them about different question formats/types." CreationDate="2010-07-20T17:41:32.417" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="50" PostId="78" Score="2" Text="Community wiki just means &quot;does not have a definitive answer&quot; in my view.  There could be many reasons besides these lists to mark something as community wiki.  So I don't see how that would help with searching..." CreationDate="2010-07-20T17:47:26.777" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="51" PostId="78" Score="0" Text="@Shane Can you give an example of 1) a question that is community wiki but not a sum-up list, and 2) a real search query you would like to perform (and why)" CreationDate="2010-07-20T17:52:41.397" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="73" PostId="78" Score="0" Text="Peter, my impression is that a CW was, at best, vaguely/broadly defined so the community could decide when something wasn't a &quot;question&quot; and nudge it in the CW direction or close it.  (And this is after going back to look at meta-SO.)  Hence so many discussions and accusations of CW police, etc.  Your question (1) seems to take the opposite tack and define it pretty *narrowly* (&quot;a sum-up list&quot;) and ask for a counter-example.  Not fair!  :-)" CreationDate="2010-07-21T13:26:36.407" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="48" PostId="79" Score="0" Text="I would suggest just collecting the links to the questions in the meta discussion. This allows for quick lookup, using as evidence and dealing with them afterwards. No need to clutter the tag-space with this." CreationDate="2010-07-20T17:39:10.487" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="52" PostId="79" Score="1" Text="@Peter I keep forgetting about the new support for linked posts, hasn't quite sunk into my brain yet.  After some consideration I think you are right on this point." CreationDate="2010-07-20T18:04:28.707" UserId="13" />
  <row Id="53" PostId="79" Score="0" Text="Nice that you agree. I think only that you are now quite hasty with removing all the tags. Maybe we should wait a few hours/ a day to hear everyones opinion..." CreationDate="2010-07-20T18:16:22.067" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="65" PostId="80" Score="0" Text="By non-real world I mean academic research." CreationDate="2010-07-21T08:41:24.637" UserId="200" />
  <row Id="67" PostId="80" Score="0" Text="Than I feel offended; except for some heavy theoreticians we all work hard to be applied." CreationDate="2010-07-21T10:05:46.443" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="76" PostId="80" Score="0" Text="That is a misunderstanding. I consider academic research to be harder than engineering. Only the first inventor is recognized.&#xA;I can read the research papers. But I don't know how statistics is used in companies." CreationDate="2010-07-21T14:08:07.510" UserId="200" />
  <row Id="63" PostId="84" Score="1" Text="Cool, didn't know about Wikiversity. Thanks!" CreationDate="2010-07-21T02:19:35.580" UserId="171" />
  <row Id="12170" PostId="84" Score="0" Text="+1 Wikipedia is a big one -- to fulfill the requirements relating to search and research, for many basic questions a read of the relevant wikipedia page before posting is a no-brainer. If a question can be answered by quoting the first few sentences of the relevant wikipedia page you have to wonder if any research was done at all." CreationDate="2017-02-02T06:56:30.247" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4207" PostId="85" Score="1" Text="Also, some CV users might want to migrate questions to SO based on elitist opinions of what questions require &quot;statistical expertise to understand or answer&quot;.  It seems important to be clear that *any* amount of statistical content is likely to render a question a better fit for CV than SO.  I would wager that almost all people who deal with statistics also understand enough programming to handle statistics problems, but only a small amount of programmers happen to have experience with statistics." CreationDate="2013-07-02T03:19:31.167" UserId="27142" />
  <row Id="4216" PostId="85" Score="0" Text="@A.M.: I wouldn't bet that people who deal with stats understand enough programming to handle statistics problems.  I've known some very savvy statistical thinkers who have never even so much as touched a punch card system let alone a modern programming environment.  The two topics and modes of thinking are somewhat compatible, but the knowledge of one does not produce the other except under special circumstances." CreationDate="2013-07-03T03:03:37.190" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="4217" PostId="85" Score="0" Text="As an aside, these old questions have been considered irrelevant for the ongoing community consensus by those who are of high reputation.  So there is more to be gained by raising these issues on contemporary and active meta questions." CreationDate="2013-07-03T03:04:33.053" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="4219" PostId="85" Score="1" Text="I suppose this is a case of &quot;meta is different&quot;, but it doesn't quite follow the StackExchange M.O. for old questions to be abandoned and the same issues brought up in new questions (in other words, duplicates).  ;)  ...so I am reluctant to raise a new one.  I will try to find the newest question(s) (but, by the way, the newer ones I have found tend not to have as many votes)." CreationDate="2013-07-03T03:15:25.380" UserId="27142" />
  <row Id="4222" PostId="85" Score="1" Text="I think it is more a case of the users who ended up with higher rep didn't like what came out of the old votes and to support their position claimed that this was the new standard and that somehow the old questions applied to the CV of the era in which they were asked.  I think they are wrong, but to prove my point I added the summary meta thread - http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1577/what-is-on-topic-on-cross-validated/1629 - and I'll just keep banging that drum to keep people honest and from moving the yardstick." CreationDate="2013-07-03T10:49:07.127" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="214" PostId="87" Score="0" Text="Perfect! Easy to remember. Not confining." CreationDate="2010-07-26T20:51:35.320" UserId="25" />
  <row Id="254" PostId="87" Score="2" Text="I just think that this is TotallyUncreative and TotallyBoring...  :)  Otherwise, it's awesome." CreationDate="2010-07-27T20:04:49.043" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="68" PostId="89" Score="0" Text="That makes sense." CreationDate="2010-07-21T11:11:48.207" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="69" PostId="90" Score="3" Text="You should hyperlink that so everyone knows how to get there." CreationDate="2010-07-21T13:02:28.260" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="97" PostId="90" Score="0" Text="The point of the website is to have questions answered without the need to spend hours searching for a solution. Any question (or 99% of them) can be answered with research. OK, some answers can be found in less than a minute, but even then, the answer might not be at a level the person can follow, or in other cases the topic might benefit from discussion. It would be good not to start turning down legitimate questions just because the answer can be found somewhere. I got a reply pointing me to a google scholar search with lots of academic papers that are very technical. That isn't the point." CreationDate="2010-07-21T20:37:42.593" UserId="90" />
  <row Id="98" PostId="90" Score="2" Text="@Vivi: A questioner should put a minimal amount of effort into asking a question.  I think that it's reasonable to do a little background work in order to formulate a good question." CreationDate="2010-07-21T20:48:08.107" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="70" PostId="91" Score="4" Text="Arrrrrrrrrrr..." CreationDate="2010-07-21T13:05:00.627" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="75" PostId="91" Score="1" Text="ThePirateBayes.com would be even better" CreationDate="2010-07-21T14:00:09.573" UserId="220" />
  <row Id="104" PostId="91" Score="0" Text="@Veb absolutely." CreationDate="2010-07-22T00:47:19.540" UserId="240" />
  <row Id="106" PostId="91" Score="0" Text="@Shane more like [Rrrrrrrr](http://www.r-project.org)" CreationDate="2010-07-22T02:39:53.210" UserId="13" />
  <row Id="397" PostId="91" Score="1" Text="Amusing, but not a reasonable candidate given that it connotes a narrow focus on bayesian statistics alone." CreationDate="2010-08-07T18:34:09.663" UserId="364" />
  <row Id="562" PostId="91" Score="0" Text="I am not for it - but it is funny :)" CreationDate="2010-08-19T02:13:13.583" UserId="253" />
  <row Id="100" PostId="96" Score="0" Text="I see some Christmas connotations, but it looks ok." CreationDate="2010-07-21T22:10:10.853" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="112" PostId="96" Score="0" Text="I think of James Joyce in connection with this word (The Dubliners), but yes, it does have other connotations as well." CreationDate="2010-07-22T12:41:35.890" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="77" PostId="99" Score="2" Text="See http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/5/what-typographic-support-is-available-to-support-display-of-statistical-formula" CreationDate="2010-07-21T14:40:37.027" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="91" PostId="100" Score="0" Text="We have started this discussion in http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/35/how-much-programming-here" CreationDate="2010-07-21T16:11:53.083" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="78" PostId="101" Score="0" Text="So what's the *general* rule then?  They're *all* off limit?  That seems a bit severe." CreationDate="2010-07-21T14:48:29.817" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="81" PostId="101" Score="1" Text="I think an algorithm that requires some knowledge of data structures, programming optimizations etc needs to go to SO. In contrast, an algorithm that requires the user to choose between different statistical options needs to stay here. For example, should you choose Metropolis-Hastings vs Slice Sampling when you can do both in a specific problem context. That's my 2 cents." CreationDate="2010-07-21T15:00:35.217" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="82" PostId="101" Score="2" Text="I also think that questions that seek to leverage the experience of the users of this site and ask for suggestions to improve the performance of an algorithm in a specific problem context stays here." CreationDate="2010-07-21T15:04:24.020" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="87" PostId="101" Score="2" Text="I think I get your general idea, but it's not airtight, and we don't expect it to be.  I think for the moment we ought to allow more than we disallow (speaking about this topic only) and defer decisions on what's acceptable or not once we've seen what flows in over some time.  Just a thought.  Thanks for responding." CreationDate="2010-07-21T15:22:41.873" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="88" PostId="101" Score="0" Text="There is also the option of re-opening questions later on if we feel that they were closed incorrectly." CreationDate="2010-07-21T15:38:16.483" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="89" PostId="101" Score="0" Text="We have a (statistically) significant philosophical difference.  :)  I'm convinced this is an analog of the inclusionist/deletionist debate on Wikipedia." CreationDate="2010-07-21T15:59:47.100" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="108" PostId="102" Score="2" Text="No dash please!!" CreationDate="2010-07-22T11:58:16.727" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="425" PostId="103" Score="0" Text="Don' we want something that also seems to include statistical programming and data visualization?" CreationDate="2010-08-10T16:09:03.187" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="96" PostId="104" Score="0" Text="See this question for an example of a basic probability question that can be bounced to http://math.stackexchange.com/: &#xA;&#xA;http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/326/calculating-the-probability-of-two-dice-getting-at-least-a-1-or-a-5" CreationDate="2010-07-21T18:59:03.633" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="83" PostId="105" Score="0" Text="That's what my answer was playing on.  :)" CreationDate="2010-07-21T15:08:08.630" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="84" PostId="105" Score="2" Text="Maybe not as the site name- but we could bring it out as a slogan or ad material once in a while." CreationDate="2010-07-21T15:18:58.437" UserId="13" />
  <row Id="85" PostId="105" Score="0" Text="Nice.  Your answer inspired mine, but I didn't realize that's what you had in mind!" CreationDate="2010-07-21T15:19:05.117" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="86" PostId="105" Score="0" Text="@Sharpie: Good idea!  On our site tee-shirts." CreationDate="2010-07-21T15:19:42.947" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="101" PostId="105" Score="0" Text="Nice, but too long." CreationDate="2010-07-21T22:13:10.180" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="160" PostId="105" Score="0" Text="-1?  Really?  Oh boy..." CreationDate="2010-07-23T20:30:38.033" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="90" PostId="107" Score="0" Text="Of what &quot;letter icon&quot; do you speak?" CreationDate="2010-07-21T16:11:24.720" UserId="24" />
  <row Id="94" PostId="107" Score="0" Text="The little envelope icon to the left of your username at the very top of the page." CreationDate="2010-07-21T17:12:21.903" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="95" PostId="107" Score="0" Text="I called it a letter because its closed; still I've changed the post to make it obvious." CreationDate="2010-07-21T17:21:41.887" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="120" PostId="108" Score="0" Text="What about all the people using browsers other than Firefox or Chrome (like IE or Safari)?  They will just see what looks like a bunch of line noise surrounded by dollar signs.  It is probably best to pre-compile the TeX to an image and post a link to that." CreationDate="2010-07-23T06:55:59.190" UserId="13" />
  <row Id="122" PostId="108" Score="0" Text="Yeah, that is true. So, perhaps we wait till tex functionality is built-in and in the meantime use images only." CreationDate="2010-07-23T13:14:16.687" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="129" PostId="108" Score="0" Text="BTW, some users on math.stachexchange.com are using tex. If you are on that site as well and use chrome/firefox the above script will work.&#xA;&#xA;On firefox: greasemonkey + the script linked above&#xA;On chrome: Just the script." CreationDate="2010-07-23T15:28:58.897" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="213" PostId="108" Score="0" Text="@Srikant: I believe that this script will work in IE using the GM4IE extension." CreationDate="2010-07-26T20:21:45.920" UserId="329" />
  <row Id="284" PostId="108" Score="0" Text="@Sharpie Safari is close to Chrome, I think it should work there." CreationDate="2010-07-29T22:19:04.297" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="298" PostId="108" Score="0" Text="The script is causing problems with R code that includes a dollar sign. e.g., the answer by PaulHurleyuk at http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/213/what-is-the-best-way-to-identify-outliers-in-multivariate-data" CreationDate="2010-07-30T12:54:16.660" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="300" PostId="108" Score="0" Text="@Rob I have taken the liberty of re-posting your comment on this meta thread: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/218/tex-processing-for-stats If not that is not ok please let me know and I will delete it." CreationDate="2010-07-30T14:24:56.193" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="99" PostId="109" Score="1" Text="True. That was my question, and there's no statistical analysis component to it. I associate &quot;data visualization&quot; more strongly with &quot;statistical analysis&quot; than I do with &quot;user interface&quot;, which to me is software/web GUI, navigation, etc. This seems to fall in both/neither topic." CreationDate="2010-07-21T20:51:34.713" UserId="259" />
  <row Id="162" PostId="110" Score="0" Text="No one complains, so we will be also a visualization Q&amp;A... Too bad for http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/11508/infographics-and-data-visualization ;-)" CreationDate="2010-07-23T22:36:54.480" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="103" PostId="111" Score="0" Text="I like this one.  Good play on words." CreationDate="2010-07-22T00:18:20.597" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="424" PostId="111" Score="0" Text="Are the importance of Markov models general enough to encompass everything we want the site to cover?" CreationDate="2010-08-10T16:08:23.547" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="180" PostId="112" Score="0" Text="Crazy, but I liked the rhythm." CreationDate="2010-07-26T05:29:14.760" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="109" PostId="113" Score="0" Text="+1 I like this one, although it might be a little too much of an inside joke?" CreationDate="2010-07-22T12:28:42.267" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="114" PostId="113" Score="1" Text="It's probably the least insidy of all the jokes here.  Mark Twain was pretty well known…" CreationDate="2010-07-22T16:48:10.197" UserId="220" />
  <row Id="159" PostId="113" Score="1" Text="@Vebjorn: That's a fair point." CreationDate="2010-07-23T20:30:12.807" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="253" PostId="113" Score="2" Text="I don't like it because this kind of misconception is exactly what we're trying to eradicate." CreationDate="2010-07-27T19:31:41.667" UserId="247" />
  <row Id="107" PostId="114" Score="1" Text="I guess this is a feature request that is usefull for a lot of stackexchange sites! Maybe a crosspost to meta.stackoverflow is justified?" CreationDate="2010-07-22T11:55:43.690" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="110" PostId="114" Score="0" Text="I am not sure but I think the devs monitor all the meta sites. So, if you tag a qn with feature-request it will get their attention." CreationDate="2010-07-22T12:30:19.953" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="111" PostId="114" Score="0" Text="Please correct the spelling in the question title?" CreationDate="2010-07-22T12:39:17.127" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="4459" PostId="114" Score="1" Text="[status-declined] clarification: A feature like this would be a big deal, and useful on many other sites. Consider elaborating and refining this feature request and posting it on [metase] if it's still of interest to you." CreationDate="2013-08-27T18:31:21.617" UserId="6123" />
  <row Id="5021" PostId="114" Score="0" Text="Interesting! I personally use inkscape and export PNGs. It isn't &quot;inline&quot;, but imho a subset of Balsamiq without controls could be a welcome embedable addition." CreationDate="2013-10-31T20:43:01.527" UserId="32124" />
  <row Id="131" PostId="119" Score="0" Text="Great job organizing these threads." CreationDate="2010-07-23T16:08:07.543" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="123" PostId="120" Score="0" Text="Don't you mean adding tag-rename requests as 'answers'? I edited your question to reflect this. Feel free to rollback if that is not what you meant." CreationDate="2010-07-23T13:15:17.277" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="176" PostId="120" Score="0" Text="I don't know how other meta's do it, but it seems that waiting for 4 upvotes takes a very long time. Should we just wait a day for negative comments and than go ahead with a rename? Or lower the number of votes?" CreationDate="2010-07-25T17:13:45.893" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="178" PostId="120" Score="1" Text="Perhaps, we should have something like: &quot;We will implement a re-tag request unless we get -4 negative votes within 5 days of posting.&quot; or some such." CreationDate="2010-07-25T20:31:20.813" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="207" PostId="120" Score="0" Text="The dynamics seem to work well so I kind of removed/relaxed any requirements... As long as people wait a while" CreationDate="2010-07-26T18:00:43.227" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="9746" PostId="120" Score="3" Text="Possible duplicate of [Current tag synonym candidates](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1200/current-tag-synonym-candidates)" CreationDate="2016-04-07T17:54:52.723" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="182" PostId="121" Score="0" Text="Any objections against changing this tag before the start of the public beta tonight?" CreationDate="2010-07-26T07:53:58.907" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="186" PostId="121" Score="0" Text="Just check that they really are textbooks and not some other genre of book. Otherwise, please go ahead." CreationDate="2010-07-26T09:30:53.803" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="187" PostId="121" Score="0" Text="@Rob what do you think how this question should be tagged? http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/363/what-is-the-single-most-influential-book-every-statistician-should-read" CreationDate="2010-07-26T09:50:48.733" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="190" PostId="121" Score="0" Text="@Peter. I'd leave that as &quot;books&quot;. Lady Tasting Tea is certainly not a textbook. Nor is Fooled by Randomness." CreationDate="2010-07-26T10:00:24.610" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="191" PostId="121" Score="0" Text="@Rob Shall we at least make them both plural or singular? I think I prefer plural in this case for both tags" CreationDate="2010-07-26T10:11:52.310" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="193" PostId="121" Score="0" Text="`textbook` should be a synonym for default tag `books`" CreationDate="2010-07-26T10:37:55.280" UserId="219" />
  <row Id="194" PostId="121" Score="0" Text="@SilentGhost So you suggest dropping textbook completely and using only books?" CreationDate="2010-07-26T11:01:07.183" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="195" PostId="121" Score="0" Text="@Peter I agree with them being plural" CreationDate="2010-07-26T11:14:12.483" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="196" PostId="121" Score="0" Text="I changed for now all `textbook` to plural. Anyone else an opinion on making everything `books`? I think it might make sense." CreationDate="2010-07-26T11:26:06.567" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="197" PostId="121" Score="0" Text="@Peter: tag synonyms. I suggest that `books` and `textbooks` will be made synonyms. With `books` being the default view." CreationDate="2010-07-26T12:16:24.367" UserId="219" />
  <row Id="202" PostId="121" Score="0" Text="Ok, I'm unfamiliar with that option, but it sounds good to me. I guess only mods can put that on?" CreationDate="2010-07-26T16:33:02.243" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="128" PostId="124" Score="0" Text="I like this answer :). If 6 is off-topic, is it then also off topic to ask help with getting weka to run k-means?" CreationDate="2010-07-23T15:07:16.433" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="132" PostId="124" Score="0" Text="Ok, I had an impression that it is more specific to the voice recognition area." CreationDate="2010-07-23T16:11:50.097" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="133" PostId="124" Score="0" Text="Yeah, the aligning of transcriptions is maybe not the thing to ask, but for example asking about the splitting of states and retraining them is maybe more appropriate." CreationDate="2010-07-23T16:18:59.280" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="125" PostId="125" Score="2" Text="Or the opposite.  There is also [random-variate].  And I'm not sure what to make of just [random]." CreationDate="2010-07-23T14:28:59.533" UserId="89" />
  <row Id="127" PostId="125" Score="2" Text="I think the one [random] tag existing should be [randomness]" CreationDate="2010-07-23T14:34:24.700" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="181" PostId="125" Score="0" Text="Any objections against changing this tag before the start of the public beta tonight? If we decide later on plural than we can retag them easily, but until then there is no inconsistency." CreationDate="2010-07-26T07:53:41.140" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="183" PostId="125" Score="1" Text="@Peter Go do it." CreationDate="2010-07-26T09:25:44.627" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="130" PostId="127" Score="1" Text="+1 I, needless to say, love this idea.  Although it might be premature to having these kinds of discussions until the site name is determined?  You could also incorporate one of the xkcd comics from here (http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/423/what-is-your-favorite-data-analysis-cartoon) to get a little attention." CreationDate="2010-07-23T16:07:35.063" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="164" PostId="127" Score="0" Text="Didn't care for it as a site name, but it is an AWESOME poster slogan." CreationDate="2010-07-23T22:44:34.033" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="135" PostId="130" Score="0" Text="I can agree on that; I just got used too much to VPN." CreationDate="2010-07-23T17:30:28.683" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="150" PostId="130" Score="1" Text="I would always suggest to use the DOI instead of the direct link to the publisher. Of course free versions are (imho) always preferable." CreationDate="2010-07-23T19:04:41.603" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="134" PostId="132" Score="2" Text="It's a lot of work... people pick things up, but (as in Metropolis method) rather those which make them work less." CreationDate="2010-07-23T17:28:31.060" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="148" PostId="133" Score="0" Text="I have no idea what I'm doing, so please feel free to edit away..." CreationDate="2010-07-23T18:57:39.683" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="151" PostId="133" Score="0" Text="My main concern is that we may end up voting for each other. I am not sure how comfortable I would be with being a moderator with such scant voting numbers. Do we have enough users from the main site visiting the meta? Just a thought." CreationDate="2010-07-23T19:06:18.573" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="152" PostId="133" Score="2" Text="This will be open until a week or so after the public beta.  So it's not like we're deciding today.  There should be plenty of votes by the end." CreationDate="2010-07-23T19:09:47.740" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="153" PostId="133" Score="0" Text="@Shane: That makes sense." CreationDate="2010-07-23T19:11:51.420" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="163" PostId="133" Score="0" Text="Hmm... my gut instinct was &quot;DIRK!&quot; but he's not even a user of the site.  Does anybody know if he plans to be?  Because frankly, regardless of his participation in the beta, his SO record shows him to be moderator material for sure (if he wants it)." CreationDate="2010-07-23T22:39:58.720" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="448" PostId="133" Score="1" Text="I've locked this thread as the appointment of temporary moderators has been finalized. There will be a new election process for the moderators in the longer-term." CreationDate="2010-08-11T04:18:40.470" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="142" PostId="134" Score="0" Text="+1 for Rob. Very knowledgeable (is a professor) and has fair and balanced answers. Proposing this site has shown he has interest for the community." CreationDate="2010-07-23T18:38:31.767" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="143" PostId="134" Score="0" Text="He's also in Australia and can cover that time zone." CreationDate="2010-07-23T18:40:45.333" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="174" PostId="134" Score="0" Text="+1 for Rob, As Peter Said... Professor, Editorin chief of a rank A journal, tones of publications... is moderation time consuming ?" CreationDate="2010-07-24T19:51:05.873" UserId="223" />
  <row Id="184" PostId="134" Score="0" Text="If I find it too time-consuming, I could step down after 6-12 months, but I'd really like to see the site well-established and functioning smoothly first." CreationDate="2010-07-26T09:25:54.877" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="149" PostId="135" Score="0" Text="Besides the good answers and the active involvement in the meta site, Shane also has impressive StackOverflow record. This shows that he is prepared and willing to spend a lot of time in helping users out." CreationDate="2010-07-23T19:03:01.873" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="212" PostId="135" Score="2" Text="Now officially the first who broke the 1k rep." CreationDate="2010-07-26T20:21:27.590" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="219" PostId="135" Score="0" Text="Just saw that when I was checking to see how many users could retag questions.  Unbelievable." CreationDate="2010-07-26T22:44:46.893" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="155" PostId="136" Score="0" Text="Peter has been really active in shaping the community on meta, has had very thoughtful ideas, and superb answers on the main site." CreationDate="2010-07-23T19:20:03.413" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="156" PostId="137" Score="0" Text="mbq has also been extremely helpful and active on both the main site and meta (answering more questions than anyone else so far)." CreationDate="2010-07-23T19:23:40.160" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="154" PostId="138" Score="0" Text="@Srikant Could you maybe put in your profile some info like your job / study place?" CreationDate="2010-07-23T19:15:26.403" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="157" PostId="138" Score="0" Text="@Peter I added some basic info." CreationDate="2010-07-23T19:43:14.073" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="158" PostId="138" Score="0" Text="Great, thanks! That gives some good information!" CreationDate="2010-07-23T19:48:27.463" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="242" PostId="139" Score="0" Text="I agree, the default should always be if a paper has a DOI, link to that." CreationDate="2010-07-27T14:50:26.917" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="172" PostId="140" Score="0" Text="Colin has actively contributed to the community, is a lecturer in the field, and lives in the UK (so he could cover that time zone)." CreationDate="2010-07-24T11:16:57.013" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="236" PostId="140" Score="0" Text="@Colin: That's good...thought that you might have disappeared!" CreationDate="2010-07-27T14:14:34.693" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="237" PostId="140" Score="1" Text="Let's just say that hotels lie about wireless access!" CreationDate="2010-07-27T14:19:18.503" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="239" PostId="140" Score="0" Text="@Colin: I'm about to take off for a week myself, and I'm pretty sure that wireless won't be an option..." CreationDate="2010-07-27T14:22:33.910" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="173" PostId="143" Score="0" Text="It may also be worth explicitly inviting those who don't necessarily have questions but can provide good answers.  I'm not sure how best to word that, though, so I'll leave it to someone else to add." CreationDate="2010-07-24T15:52:40.163" UserId="89" />
  <row Id="167" PostId="146" Score="0" Text="+1 I was in favor of multiple accepts, but you've convinced me." CreationDate="2010-07-24T08:38:33.160" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="168" PostId="146" Score="1" Text="I think it is a very bad idea to down-vote a good answer. Maybe if it is really a shameless copy, but any other answer that is good is useful. Off course when people have enough rep they can edit an answer, but if not and the comments are not just very trivial I think a reformulation to a clearer and better answer is very desirable." CreationDate="2010-07-24T08:44:31.587" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="169" PostId="146" Score="0" Text="Yes you're right, we should not vote down. It was just to insist on the point that rephrasing can be bad (even if it is good rephrasing)." CreationDate="2010-07-24T10:20:04.417" UserId="223" />
  <row Id="171" PostId="150" Score="0" Text="I've been impressed with Graham's answers on the main site, although he hasn't used meta at all yet.  He also lives in the UK." CreationDate="2010-07-24T11:16:10.400" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="188" PostId="156" Score="0" Text="I think that I maybe like the pca tag more. Any reason for preferring the long-but-not-complete version? Or should both exist, where pca are questions really the method and principal-components for other questions where the principal components play a role?" CreationDate="2010-07-26T09:54:10.807" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="189" PostId="156" Score="0" Text="I just thought &quot;principal-components&quot; was more descriptive, but I don't have a strong feeling on this. Go with pca if you prefer. I don't think we need both." CreationDate="2010-07-26T09:59:02.973" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="192" PostId="156" Score="0" Text="I'm not sure either. For example we also have the tag fa for factor analyses. That one I personally didn't catch the abbreviation immediately" CreationDate="2010-07-26T10:17:26.907" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="198" PostId="156" Score="0" Text="I vote for pca, because it is more familiar than the full name." CreationDate="2010-07-26T13:44:18.490" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="199" PostId="156" Score="0" Text="I vote for pca as well." CreationDate="2010-07-26T13:48:53.270" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="203" PostId="156" Score="0" Text="I assumed we have consensus." CreationDate="2010-07-26T16:53:37.927" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="548" PostId="160" Score="1" Text="I disagree.  Exact tests (for example) are essentially exercises in probability and do not rely on parameter estimates or statistics per se.  Basic issues of probability are fundamental to statistics in that statistics is (often) an attempt to mathematically estimate the probability of an event. Thus, issues of probability especially if _applied_ in a data analytic context should be welcome here." CreationDate="2010-08-18T14:41:51.690" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="206" PostId="162" Score="0" Text="And of 2. I would drop the tutorials tag or add also books. I favor dropping tutorials" CreationDate="2010-07-26T17:59:19.860" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="204" PostId="164" Score="3" Text="You have my strong support for beginner." CreationDate="2010-07-26T16:56:20.777" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="205" PostId="164" Score="0" Text="I also vote for beginner" CreationDate="2010-07-26T17:55:06.450" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="227" PostId="164" Score="0" Text="I forgot to mark this, but I did this one already before http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/172/i-just-want-to-take-this-on-early-can-we-please-please-not-use-the-beginner-t was posted" CreationDate="2010-07-27T04:55:09.750" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="209" PostId="166" Score="2" Text="See also http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/36/modeling-vs-modelling-tag . I am in favor of taking indeed the one with one l, as that one naturally occurred. Should be synonyms imho" CreationDate="2010-07-26T18:08:33.303" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="218" PostId="166" Score="0" Text="I agree, if there's a programmatic option to make them equivalent that would be best." CreationDate="2010-07-26T21:46:11.060" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="224" PostId="166" Score="0" Text="Also, I totally missed that previous question - thanks for pointing it out." CreationDate="2010-07-27T01:37:22.507" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="215" PostId="169" Score="1" Text="That would be a great feature to have, and I'm sure other sites would benefit.  As I understand it, the StackExchange team monitors the feature-request tag, so let's see what they think." CreationDate="2010-07-26T21:26:16.573" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="216" PostId="169" Score="0" Text="I think StackOverflow meta is more general to the whole SE universe, so it should be asked there. Nevertheless, I support; when more sites will go out of Area, this will became a very serious issue." CreationDate="2010-07-26T21:33:14.130" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="217" PostId="169" Score="0" Text="And, if it is a discussion, it should be community wiki." CreationDate="2010-07-26T21:33:52.460" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="8811" PostId="172" Score="4" Text="Possible duplicate of [The final death of meta-tags?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/264/the-final-death-of-meta-tags)" CreationDate="2015-12-06T16:55:35.090" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="220" PostId="173" Score="0" Text="I don't think so. No tag is appropriate for marking the level of presumed difficulty of a question. I think that the question title and body should clearly spell out the background of the asker (as appropriate - if they say they have no experience in topic X versus they have a lot of experience in topic X and don't mind getting into the gory details). The tags should exclusively describe the topics being asked about." CreationDate="2010-07-27T00:34:37.137" UserId="110" />
  <row Id="221" PostId="173" Score="0" Text="But, a tag like 'intro-statistics' does describe the topic. I agree that 'beginner' describes the user rather than the topic but that is not the case with 'intro-statistics' or perhaps 'Stats 101'. I am sure you would agree that the question I linked to is an example of a question at the Stats 101 level." CreationDate="2010-07-27T00:48:12.850" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="222" PostId="173" Score="0" Text="I would agree that it is, but the best tags for that question would be &quot;general-statistics population sample variables&quot;. &quot;general-statistics&quot; refers to a core concern that applies to multiple specific disciplines of stats (used instead of &quot;statistics&quot; because all questions here should be about statistics... - this tag just identifies the question as reaching across disciplines), and the other three tags are specific keywords mentioned in the question that people might be searching for." CreationDate="2010-07-27T01:06:19.053" UserId="110" />
  <row Id="223" PostId="173" Score="0" Text="I am not sure I see much of a difference between 'general-statistics' and 'intro-statistics' I agree with the other three tags you mentioned and I believe something similar is being used for the question I linked above." CreationDate="2010-07-27T01:11:01.743" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="229" PostId="173" Score="0" Text="Well, &quot;intro-statistics&quot; implies an introductory course. In my field of study, the first and only required statistics course is a calculus-based 300-level course taken in your second or third year. A lot of people get introduced to these topics for the first time in this course, but I certainly don't consider it an introductory course - it's extremely fast-paced and rigorous." CreationDate="2010-07-27T10:09:40.233" UserId="110" />
  <row Id="230" PostId="173" Score="3" Text="*Stats 101*??? Can it be even more cultural specific? In most non-American countries, the term Stats 101 makes a much sense as Stats 43." CreationDate="2010-07-27T10:22:55.057" UserId="254" />
  <row Id="231" PostId="173" Score="0" Text="Ah, yes. Perhaps, stats 101 is not a good idea." CreationDate="2010-07-27T10:55:49.937" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="255" PostId="173" Score="0" Text="I don't think you are going to get much better than &quot;general-stats&quot; or &quot;general-statistics&quot;. Perhaps &quot;general&quot; could be replaced with generic or a similar term. But relating material to courses or level of experience isn't going to work as it has no well-defined meaning." CreationDate="2010-07-27T23:01:17.310" UserId="110" />
  <row Id="281" PostId="175" Score="1" Text="Unless you can explicitly define &quot;beginner&quot; and exactly what is included in the &quot;beginner&quot; category and what is not, there is 0 meaning. And where there is no meaning, there is no value, in my opinion." CreationDate="2010-07-29T20:50:36.477" UserId="110" />
  <row Id="232" PostId="178" Score="0" Text="At the moment I do not see any reason either way. So, I think single l is fine." CreationDate="2010-07-27T10:58:29.620" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="233" PostId="180" Score="0" Text="Is this nomination base on his StackOverflow record?" CreationDate="2010-07-27T13:42:30.230" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="234" PostId="180" Score="0" Text="Yes, and his monstrous contributions to the R-project.  http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/  And his no-nonsense answers (e.g. http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/775/operations-research-v-s-statistical-analysis)." CreationDate="2010-07-27T13:45:45.183" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="235" PostId="180" Score="0" Text="@Shane Yes, he has done an impressive amount of nice stuff! Good to have you here Dirk! Still, putting e.g. for the only answer posted is a bit... funny ;) But yes, if Dirk wants to be really involved in this community he is a good moderator candidate" CreationDate="2010-07-27T14:14:31.620" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="238" PostId="180" Score="0" Text="I wouldn't shy away from putting forward other &quot;known people&quot; as candidates here, although clearly contribution on the site is an important criteria.  Any others?" CreationDate="2010-07-27T14:21:08.767" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="240" PostId="180" Score="0" Text="@Shane I noticed rcs..." CreationDate="2010-07-27T14:22:39.323" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="241" PostId="180" Score="0" Text="@Shane And hadley." CreationDate="2010-07-27T14:25:20.813" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="256" PostId="185" Score="0" Text="Should these sorts of questions continue within the main body of the question that prompted the answer, or should they be established as separate questions?" CreationDate="2010-07-28T00:38:18.723" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="243" PostId="187" Score="0" Text="The image is linked to mathurl.com. Will that link ever break in the distant future?" CreationDate="2010-07-27T16:19:10.730" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="244" PostId="187" Score="0" Text="@Srikant: It shouldn't, no.  Although that's a risk." CreationDate="2010-07-27T16:20:57.733" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="245" PostId="187" Score="0" Text="ok. I wonder when the devs will let us know their decision about the request to add latex support: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/57931/area51-se-2-0-site-specific-script-support-such-as-latex-in-beta-phase&#xA;&#xA;That would be ideal." CreationDate="2010-07-27T16:25:50.753" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="246" PostId="188" Score="0" Text="@JD: I agree with most of this, but I have to say: I'm glad that you're not &quot;king of the internets&quot;.  :)  I can only begin to imagine what kind of warped place it would be!" CreationDate="2010-07-27T16:33:09.173" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="4131" PostId="188" Score="0" Text="It may be worth coming back to add that three years down the track, what happens is that 'pure R' questions on stats.SE are nearly always moved to SO, while ones with statistical content are kept. At present there are almost 32000 R questions on SO (almost 90% with accepted answers and more than a dozen with over 100 upvotes), and there are more than 4000 questions tagged R on stats.SE. While there's likely always going to be ongoing debate about where to draw the line, it generally seems to work very well (as someone with the bronze r-tag badge on both sites I see it from both ends) ... (ctd)" CreationDate="2013-06-20T23:44:04.093" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4132" PostId="188" Score="0" Text="(ctd) ... the active users on stats.SE mark to close what they think should be moved to SO and the moderators are typically astonishingly fast at moving them. Even so, `r` is a very popular tag on stats.SE and any question usually has an answer within minutes, gets transferred to SO soon after where it attracts a bunch more good answers, often from people in the *R core group*. SO is not remotely being neutered, and is clearly being kept as the main resource for 'coding' questions. In short, through the efforts of a few dozen individuals, it works pretty much as you might hope." CreationDate="2013-06-20T23:46:04.727" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="247" PostId="191" Score="0" Text="You get 30 votes a day (see the FAQ)." CreationDate="2010-07-27T17:49:51.287" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="248" PostId="191" Score="0" Text="@Shane Thanks! I overlooked that. Have you ever hit the limit?" CreationDate="2010-07-27T17:53:18.753" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="249" PostId="191" Score="0" Text="Yes, I have.  I agree that it's irritating, although I suspect that there's good reason for it.  I listed to many of the SO podcasts, and I have no doubt that they have put good thought into that limit." CreationDate="2010-07-27T17:54:32.447" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="250" PostId="191" Score="0" Text="@Shane Yeah, probably they have. Although this limit is already two years old and maybe it should be reconsidered for SE sites?" CreationDate="2010-07-27T18:06:18.163" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="282" PostId="193" Score="0" Text="Yup, stupid error; thanks Jeff." CreationDate="2010-07-29T21:17:09.813" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1821" PostId="194" Score="0" Text="better ask on meta.stackoverflow.com." CreationDate="2011-08-18T09:59:45.427" UserId="5509" />
  <row Id="1543" PostId="196" Score="0" Text="see my answer -- we sure we still want this tag now?" CreationDate="2011-04-12T06:29:39.713" UserId="123" />
  <row Id="1544" PostId="196" Score="0" Text="@Jeff I agree, and I thought it was dead... I'll investigate." CreationDate="2011-04-12T06:46:39.067" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="257" PostId="197" Score="0" Text="I wonder why it didn't come up for my questions." CreationDate="2010-07-28T08:01:49.830" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="259" PostId="197" Score="0" Text="I see it when I click on my handle - down at the bottom; it only shows up after the question goes a several days without an accepted." CreationDate="2010-07-28T16:24:53.337" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="315" PostId="198" Score="1" Text="It is strange that the existing FAQ doesn't explain that clearly." CreationDate="2010-08-03T01:17:42.550" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="258" PostId="200" Score="2" Text="I don't think it goes along with the not-we-but-the-community philosophy. On the other hand this is for what user profiles are." CreationDate="2010-07-28T09:34:12.813" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="305" PostId="201" Score="0" Text="@Rob, thanks for extension. Looks pretty good." CreationDate="2010-08-02T15:20:26.573" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="478" PostId="201" Score="1" Text="It should possibly differentiate mathematics from research-level mathematics on MathOverflow. I'm not sure if you want to reach out of the Stack Exchange 2.0 community, though. I think I read somewhere where Jeff (or another developer) said that eventually, SE2.0 sites can move questions between each other." CreationDate="2010-08-12T23:44:12.327" UserId="110" />
  <row Id="396" PostId="204" Score="0" Text="I like the shortest variant, StatFaq.com, for the main domain to which the other variants should forward." CreationDate="2010-08-07T18:30:54.710" UserId="364" />
  <row Id="403" PostId="204" Score="0" Text="I prefer &quot;stats&quot; because it works as a shorthand for &quot;statistics&quot;; &quot;StatFAQ&quot; doesn't make as much sense to me. But if other people like it, I'd be fine with using it." CreationDate="2010-08-09T20:30:14.670" UserId="555" />
  <row Id="400" PostId="205" Score="0" Text="This seems to be a pretty under-rated option - but it is already reserved." CreationDate="2010-08-08T18:47:19.073" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="260" PostId="209" Score="1" Text="we can collect them here off course ;)" CreationDate="2010-07-29T11:55:02.200" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="261" PostId="209" Score="0" Text="I also think that min(1/3*#of user able to closevote, 5) would be enough votes for a question to close." CreationDate="2010-07-29T11:56:59.140" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="262" PostId="209" Score="0" Text="+1 I was just going to ask the same question!" CreationDate="2010-07-29T12:47:30.877" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="266" PostId="210" Score="2" Text="This is a great idea." CreationDate="2010-07-29T14:31:25.190" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="275" PostId="211" Score="0" Text="On this site only 2k is needed... still this is a lot. Moderator election will be done in 2-3 weeks after the public beta." CreationDate="2010-07-29T16:09:04.830" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="277" PostId="211" Score="0" Text="That's correct...I have those tools on stackoverflow and they give you many different list to help with this." CreationDate="2010-07-29T17:12:39.327" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="263" PostId="212" Score="0" Text="If we do that, we should deleted answers when a particular question is closed. Otherwise, the numbers of answers will explode." CreationDate="2010-07-29T13:20:34.937" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="264" PostId="212" Score="0" Text="I am not sure if deleting answers is good as it hinders transparency. In any case, this is a temporary fix and we can close the meta thread once we have moderators." CreationDate="2010-07-29T13:27:15.280" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="265" PostId="212" Score="0" Text="I opened a thread: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/213/list-of-candidate-questions-to-be-closed" CreationDate="2010-07-29T13:29:56.257" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="278" PostId="212" Score="0" Text="You can sort answers by date, so the old ones will locate at the end of the list and won't be disturbing. There are oldest | newest | votes tabs next to the N Answers header." CreationDate="2010-07-29T19:18:08.930" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="271" PostId="213" Score="1" Text="+1 For a great idea!" CreationDate="2010-07-29T15:58:51.267" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="294" PostId="213" Score="3" Text="To try and maintain a bit of structure, I think that questions currently being discussed should have a single up vote and questions that are now closed show be down voted to zero. Do people agree?" CreationDate="2010-07-30T10:27:39.593" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="295" PostId="213" Score="0" Text="@csgillespie Great idea!" CreationDate="2010-07-30T10:37:57.603" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="296" PostId="213" Score="0" Text="Note that when you want to change your vote, you sometimes have a lock because the question isn't edited. Edit the question (add Now Closed e.g.) and you can change your vote to a downvote. I think answer that have &quot;now closed&quot; can even go below zero votes to have new answers also float up immediately." CreationDate="2010-07-30T10:40:34.823" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="297" PostId="213" Score="0" Text="@Peter: I agree. Set closed questions to -1." CreationDate="2010-07-30T10:48:23.723" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="330" PostId="213" Score="0" Text="We should perhaps follow the following protocol:&#xA;&#xA;Keep closed questions at -1.&#xA;Keep questions we decide to keep open at 0.&#xA;Currently debated questions at 1.&#xA;&#xA;If people agree with this and see a question whose votes do not align with the above please vote up/down to adjust as needed." CreationDate="2010-08-04T10:00:47.197" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="332" PostId="213" Score="0" Text="@Srikant: The problem with keeping open questions at 0, is that new proposed questions could easily get lost - since you can't up vote your own question." CreationDate="2010-08-04T10:05:31.123" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="335" PostId="213" Score="0" Text="Yeah that is an issue. Perhaps, then set 'keep open questions' to -1 and closed at '-2'. That way, the open questions will remain separated from the closed ones." CreationDate="2010-08-04T10:17:34.510" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="341" PostId="213" Score="0" Text="@Srikant: I'm not convinced that having 1, 0, -1, -2 classes is just adding a bit too much structure where it's not needed. However, I'm happy to go with what others think." CreationDate="2010-08-04T14:55:31.213" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="342" PostId="213" Score="0" Text="@csgillespie I am fine with what we have. Just thought that adding a bit more structure may help. Consider my suggestion withdrawn- not a big deal." CreationDate="2010-08-04T15:09:24.947" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="283" PostId="217" Score="0" Text="Although the question is not asking a specific statistical question, the answers are very useful. So overall I don't mind it." CreationDate="2010-07-29T21:23:31.237" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="288" PostId="217" Score="0" Text="I think that is a legitimate question. I have people asking me that frequently." CreationDate="2010-07-29T23:46:16.657" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="290" PostId="217" Score="0" Text="Also, I am not sure where else someone can ask this question. In addition, the question's focus was very clear. So, I would be inclined not to close." CreationDate="2010-07-29T23:57:31.547" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="291" PostId="217" Score="0" Text="Check on Google? Read randomly selected article from the paper she/he is submitting to? Even the answers suggest that if it is not off-topic then subjective." CreationDate="2010-07-30T00:34:38.243" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="292" PostId="217" Score="0" Text="ok, perhaps it should be CW?" CreationDate="2010-07-30T01:22:57.420" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="301" PostId="217" Score="0" Text="Right, I think there is a consensus that it should be left." CreationDate="2010-07-31T12:59:53.893" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="307" PostId="217" Score="0" Text="Agreed. Move to -1 votes. BTW can we force a question to be a CW?" CreationDate="2010-08-02T21:41:38.317" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="309" PostId="217" Score="0" Text="@csgillespie Easy to say; I can't vote on my own and no one is eager to do it. And no, only moderators and 2k+ users can do that." CreationDate="2010-08-02T23:37:29.070" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="311" PostId="217" Score="0" Text="Downvoted to start moving this to -1. We have to wait for a moderator or for someone to reach 2k to make this CW." CreationDate="2010-08-03T00:37:34.397" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="285" PostId="218" Score="0" Text="discussion of this already here at http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/5/what-typographic-support-is-available-to-support-display-of-statistical-formula" CreationDate="2010-07-29T22:54:40.203" UserId="123" />
  <row Id="331" PostId="218" Score="0" Text="Preview does not seem to be working in Chrome (5.0.375.125) on Windows 7." CreationDate="2010-08-04T10:04:23.747" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="344" PostId="218" Score="0" Text="Never mind- it is working now." CreationDate="2010-08-04T18:08:03.267" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="303" PostId="219" Score="1" Text="A workaround for the lack of preview is to use http://mathoverflow.net and pretend as if you are asking a question. They have live preview and once you are satisfied with what you have copy and paste it here. (Not an ideal solution but at least it helps till we have live preview.)" CreationDate="2010-08-01T22:58:11.197" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="293" PostId="220" Score="2" Text="This is already in the FAQ. I'm assuming that we start with the existing FAQ and add to it." CreationDate="2010-07-30T04:14:56.043" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="324" PostId="220" Score="2" Text="The FAQ seems to have been updated since I wrote this, and it does now explain voting up and down answers. But it doesn't explain what it means to vote up or down questions. The tool tip says that voting up means the question is &quot;useful and clear&quot;, but some elaboration would be useful. Browsing over the site, it doesn't seem that people are voting on questions frequently or consistently." CreationDate="2010-08-03T15:39:30.190" UserId="25" />
  <row Id="302" PostId="224" Score="0" Text="+1, thats really cumbersome." CreationDate="2010-07-31T18:32:11.033" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="316" PostId="224" Score="0" Text="@Geoff. Thanks for fixing it! Looking much better now." CreationDate="2010-08-03T02:38:35.103" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="304" PostId="227" Score="0" Text="Ha, and it works here, but not in my original question, how strange!" CreationDate="2010-08-01T23:14:43.137" UserId="282" />
  <row Id="317" PostId="227" Score="0" Text="@Geoff. The latex is a mess on that page, but ok on some other pages. Why?" CreationDate="2010-08-03T02:47:07.483" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="318" PostId="227" Score="1" Text="OK. Now seems to be fixed. There's obviously a lot of work going on behind the scenes. It would be nice if this was reported on meta rather than leaving us in the dark." CreationDate="2010-08-03T04:19:10.087" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="313" PostId="231" Score="0" Text="Voted to close." CreationDate="2010-08-03T00:41:22.827" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="312" PostId="232" Score="0" Text="Actually, this question is a bit better than the some of the others posted by the OP." CreationDate="2010-08-03T00:40:38.353" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="320" PostId="232" Score="0" Text="@Srikant One can guess that it is normalization to (0,1), I admit, but still it can be about outlier detection as well. All this closing is to  punish dubious behavior." CreationDate="2010-08-03T07:35:44.630" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="322" PostId="232" Score="0" Text="I agree but we should also give the OP some time. Perhaps, he/she will edit the question especially as this question is a bit better. If there is no change in the question status in another 24 hours we should close it." CreationDate="2010-08-03T09:00:36.017" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="321" PostId="234" Score="0" Text="I think this is a policy we may want to revisit from time to time. If the R community 'migrates' to our site over time because of various reasons (e.g., time constraints force them to choose only one site to be on etc) then we may have to allow questions of this type here. Voted to close for now." CreationDate="2010-08-03T08:56:51.500" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="323" PostId="234" Score="0" Text="Following http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1/how-to-answer-r-questions we have to vote to close (unless we change our policy). As Srikant said we should probably revisit this issue from time to time." CreationDate="2010-08-03T10:32:26.623" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="327" PostId="236" Score="0" Text="I would be inclined to keep this question open. The question is fairly specific and lack of an answer should not be a reason to close. Perhaps, someone may come along in the future who can answer the question. The lack of a response from the OP is a bit of a concern but not enough for me to close the question. My 2 cents." CreationDate="2010-08-04T01:07:48.813" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="329" PostId="236" Score="0" Text="I vote to close. Questions that aren't clear, should be closed to keep the site tidy." CreationDate="2010-08-04T08:57:25.757" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="336" PostId="236" Score="0" Text="I vote for keeping it open.  I really don't see a problem there - the question is asked as well as many questions here are, and the lack of answers is likely because it's a highly specific, fairly technical question." CreationDate="2010-08-04T13:04:32.713" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="338" PostId="236" Score="0" Text="I vote to close. Robin made a good point that the question in current form does not contain all information necessary to answer it." CreationDate="2010-08-04T14:10:14.190" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="339" PostId="236" Score="0" Text="Well - actually it only lacked an answer because I was waiting for the OP to clarify; I had worked out an answer and was waiting to make sure that the question asker and I were on the same page.  If the question asker doesn't care enough to respond to requests for clarification, and we aren't going to close the question, I'll go ahead and give my stab at answering it." CreationDate="2010-08-04T14:36:37.757" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="346" PostId="236" Score="0" Text="I have changed my mind as I see that the OP has logged in after Robin's comment and has not provided clarification one way or another. Voting to close. Now that we have moderators, presumably, the question can be re-opened if the OP clarifies at a later point in time." CreationDate="2010-08-04T23:22:10.290" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="328" PostId="237" Score="2" Text="&quot;Visit meta&quot; has now disappeared. Presumably the &quot;Visit parent&quot; will go soon too. There are new links to meta and parent on the top right instead." CreationDate="2010-08-04T08:36:52.413" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="350" PostId="241" Score="0" Text="Is there a reason behind the UI change?  The previous position was far more prominent befitting its likely frequency of use whereas the new position is much less conspicuous." CreationDate="2010-08-05T08:16:37.493" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="430" PostId="244" Score="0" Text="Will the election process use some kind of different software, or will it simply be a thread on here?" CreationDate="2010-08-10T17:25:47.147" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="437" PostId="244" Score="0" Text="It will be different software, either by integrating a voting function directly into the site or an external link. It won't just be another Q&amp;A thread. Voting for moderators is a bit too involved for the Q&amp;A engine to handle impartially and fairly." CreationDate="2010-08-10T19:25:19.017" UserId="246" />
  <row Id="439" PostId="244" Score="0" Text="In light of the above, we should perhaps close/lock the moderator election thread and stop advertising that thread on the main site. Of course, congrats to Shane as well." CreationDate="2010-08-10T19:57:29.530" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="443" PostId="244" Score="0" Text="@Srikant: Removed that from the system message.  Let's see if others want to lock it before I act on that." CreationDate="2010-08-10T21:03:04.490" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="447" PostId="244" Score="0" Text="@Shane. There seems little point leaving the moderator election thread open. I think we should lock it." CreationDate="2010-08-11T04:17:05.760" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="453" PostId="244" Score="0" Text="@Rob There is no explicit indication that the thread is locked although I did see that you locked it. Is that normal behavior? For example, for closed questions the indicator [closed] appears next to the question." CreationDate="2010-08-11T10:53:58.333" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="454" PostId="244" Score="0" Text="Despite the 'locked' status I find that I can still upvote. Is this expected behavior or a bug?" CreationDate="2010-08-11T11:20:38.337" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="456" PostId="244" Score="0" Text="@Srikant. Locking is meant to &quot;prevent regular users from taking actions on this post&quot;. I've no idea whether that is all actions or whether you are a regular user (given your high rep). I'll ask in the chat room." CreationDate="2010-08-11T11:32:04.620" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="458" PostId="244" Score="0" Text="@Rob @Srikant: I changed the subject line to make it more obvious." CreationDate="2010-08-11T12:59:01.440" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="1801" PostId="244" Score="0" Text="@RobertCartaino Can you please accept my answer? Users are complaining that it is constantly bumping to the top." CreationDate="2011-08-06T12:55:37.790" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="345" PostId="246" Score="0" Text="Congrats to you and to Rob and csgillespie!" CreationDate="2010-08-04T23:14:29.273" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="526" PostId="247" Score="1" Text="If I see this problem, then open the same page in firefox, followed by a refresh in chrome, the problem disappears. Is anyone from the SE team reading this? Can someone please fix it?" CreationDate="2010-08-17T01:41:01.250" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="1002" PostId="247" Score="0" Text="@Jeff For me, all pc's with Ubuntu (9.10 and 10.10) and Chrome 7.0.517.41 always messes up the formula's. So I suggest trying a ubuntu live cd and install google-chrome for reproduction" CreationDate="2010-10-26T05:08:04.010" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="1204" PostId="247" Score="0" Text="I was having the same problem with Chrome 7.0.517.41 on Ubuntu. I've just restarted the browser to pick up an update to 7.0.517.44, and the problem seems to have gone." CreationDate="2010-11-10T18:23:39.913" UserId="439" />
  <row Id="351" PostId="250" Score="0" Text="I agree........" CreationDate="2010-08-05T10:28:54.797" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="352" PostId="252" Score="1" Text="+1 from my side. With one caveat- see my answer." CreationDate="2010-08-05T12:01:18.977" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="359" PostId="252" Score="2" Text="+1; I support the proposal - a one stop shop for statistical analysis and programing needs would be preferable to having to constantly debate whether things belong here or on SO." CreationDate="2010-08-05T15:39:27.117" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="376" PostId="252" Score="0" Text="Should we advertise this question/change to a wider audience, i.e. the parent site. It seems like a big change." CreationDate="2010-08-06T08:04:43.540" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="398" PostId="252" Score="1" Text="+1 from me. Absolutely (my answer here to a prior closely-related question http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/35/how-much-programming-here/267#267)" CreationDate="2010-08-08T06:28:02.080" UserId="438" />
  <row Id="361" PostId="253" Score="0" Text="I think there is a better buzzword: &quot;data driven computing&quot;." CreationDate="2010-08-06T00:36:36.897" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="373" PostId="253" Score="1" Text="I've now updated the FAQ (http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/6) based on the discussion here." CreationDate="2010-08-06T07:52:30.147" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="473" PostId="253" Score="2" Text="I am in favor.  I also think that (sadly) programmers usually have little to contribute to R specific questions (if someone can give me some example to show the otherwise, please let me know)..." CreationDate="2010-08-12T16:55:43.170" UserId="253" />
  <row Id="4342" PostId="253" Score="0" Text="Would asking a question on SE and SO be frowned upon, encouraged or what?" CreationDate="2013-08-05T19:19:55.983" UserId="27433" />
  <row Id="353" PostId="254" Score="0" Text="Do we want to allow career related questions for stats? If yes, then the above is perhaps on topic." CreationDate="2010-08-05T12:05:39.563" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="355" PostId="254" Score="1" Text="Edge case, so allow." CreationDate="2010-08-05T12:11:48.663" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="356" PostId="254" Score="1" Text="Still I've converted it to CW since it doesn't have a definite answer." CreationDate="2010-08-05T14:50:21.883" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="354" PostId="255" Score="0" Text="Completely agree. Bug posting on a stack exchange site is rather pointless!" CreationDate="2010-08-05T12:10:37.607" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="358" PostId="255" Score="3" Text="Some communities are sort of hostile to bug reports; Under the proposed increase in site scope, do you think it would be inappropriate to use this site to validate the presence of a bug as opposed to say a programing error?" CreationDate="2010-08-05T15:38:15.150" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="360" PostId="257" Score="0" Text="Agree.........." CreationDate="2010-08-06T00:26:11.160" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="362" PostId="257" Score="1" Text="Fair enough. However, I do have a suggestion. Could the moderators (i.e., you, mbq and cgillespie) only cast the final vote to close questions? Your votes will close a question immediately. It seems to me that the community will not have a say in what to do if a moderator votes to close as one of the first four voters." CreationDate="2010-08-06T00:37:02.730" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="365" PostId="257" Score="0" Text="@Srikant. Since becoming a moderator I've stopped voting on closing  questions (apart from this one) for exactly the reasons you state. I don't want to appear heavy-handed. So in principle I agree. With this specific question, mbq and Shane had already indicated they thought it should be closed, and I didn't think there was any doubt about it, so I acted faster than I would have in other circumstances. But I accept your point." CreationDate="2010-08-06T00:46:29.667" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="370" PostId="257" Score="2" Text="I've almost asked a similar question myself, but I suspected it would meet this fate.  *Is* there an appropriate place to ask questions like this (and that would elicit the same quality of responses as this site)?" CreationDate="2010-08-06T01:32:46.597" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="371" PostId="257" Score="0" Text="Maybe http://groups.google.com/group/sci.stat.consult/ would be an appropriate place. I'll add a comment on the original question." CreationDate="2010-08-06T02:27:21.920" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="375" PostId="257" Score="0" Text="@srikant: I've also stopped voting to close questions, except for the final vote. However, I did accidentally cast a vote twice - once before I was moderator and another to close the question." CreationDate="2010-08-06T08:01:56.790" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="377" PostId="257" Score="1" Text="@csgillespie Thanks&#xA;&#xA;@all Perhaps, our faq should have a list of sites we can redirect posters for off-topic questions." CreationDate="2010-08-06T11:59:10.487" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="380" PostId="257" Score="1" Text="I've already started a list of alternative sites in the FAQ. Please add any others you think are appropriate." CreationDate="2010-08-06T13:59:46.053" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="366" PostId="258" Score="0" Text="I've made a small edit to the name question to bring it back to the top of the list." CreationDate="2010-08-06T00:47:24.783" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="368" PostId="258" Score="0" Text="By the way as moderators do you have access to any tools that will tell us how many users are 'consistently' using the site? Define consistency as visit at least every other day perhaps?" CreationDate="2010-08-06T00:57:50.940" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="372" PostId="258" Score="0" Text="I don't think so, but I'm still figuring out what tools we actually have." CreationDate="2010-08-06T02:34:10.440" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="378" PostId="258" Score="0" Text="I would be inclined to advertise this question first: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/252/should-we-allow-more-computing-questions It is a big change to the site that all users should be informed of." CreationDate="2010-08-06T13:02:14.840" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="379" PostId="258" Score="0" Text="@csgillespie Don't bother to extend the proposition in my post." CreationDate="2010-08-06T13:19:22.170" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="381" PostId="258" Score="0" Text="@mbq: Sorry I don't understand what you mean." CreationDate="2010-08-06T14:27:44.593" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="382" PostId="258" Score="0" Text="@csgillespie I meant that you could just change my post and add this thread the the project of new system message." CreationDate="2010-08-06T16:00:02.863" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="392" PostId="258" Score="0" Text="+1 I support this idea.  Getting more attention for those threads would be a good idea." CreationDate="2010-08-06T19:44:31.403" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="363" PostId="260" Score="0" Text="We are temporary moderators, and we will be replaced by people selected by this voting." CreationDate="2010-08-06T00:43:19.080" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="364" PostId="260" Score="0" Text="I know that but I was under the impression that a new election thread will be started a few weeks later. I felt that the existing election thread was only for the temporary positions." CreationDate="2010-08-06T00:45:21.747" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="369" PostId="260" Score="0" Text="I see no problem in continuing this one, still I will ask about it ." CreationDate="2010-08-06T01:02:40.387" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="383" PostId="261" Score="2" Text="We, brave mods, will defeat such heresy with close and migrate ;-)" CreationDate="2010-08-06T16:04:32.610" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="384" PostId="261" Score="0" Text="thanks mbq, I feel safe with jedi like you (but aren't you the mod from the dark side :) ? )" CreationDate="2010-08-06T16:26:01.743" UserId="223" />
  <row Id="385" PostId="261" Score="0" Text="@mbq: Sorry I confused with your comment. Your answer suggests that you are in favour of computing questions, but your comment suggests otherwise." CreationDate="2010-08-06T16:38:34.117" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="387" PostId="261" Score="1" Text="@Robin: I agree there is a small risk of swamping the site with R questions, *but* I think we will only get a small number of R questions on this site." CreationDate="2010-08-06T16:46:44.950" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="388" PostId="261" Score="2" Text="@csgillespie I just state that it is better to allow general data computing questions and bounce this small fraction of them which will be pure programming (called &quot;heresy&quot; in my original comment) to SO than ban everything computer-related and have one question per day." CreationDate="2010-08-06T18:04:30.070" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="390" PostId="261" Score="0" Text="@robin I'm certainly from the dark side." CreationDate="2010-08-06T18:47:18.223" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="405" PostId="261" Score="1" Text="Do we want to rely solely on mods for this or should there be a separate sort of voting widget on the side to allow the community to decide where the threshold for bumping something to StackOverflow should be?  As it stands those who are, presumably, against this proposal haven't found their way over to meta and just are dumping comments/answers redirecting question askers.  Perhaps if they had a widget they could click their input would be accounted for and they'd stop cluttering up the comments and answers." CreationDate="2010-08-10T00:25:52.827" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="386" PostId="262" Score="0" Text="Sorry, I don't understand your question." CreationDate="2010-08-06T16:39:59.107" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="389" PostId="262" Score="2" Text="Nice idea; still you should go to meta.stackoverflow.com with it. On the other hand those tag-badges have similar function, but they are very hard to earn." CreationDate="2010-08-06T18:11:36.720" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="393" PostId="262" Score="0" Text="@csgillespie: I have tryed to improve presentation. Is it better now ?" CreationDate="2010-08-06T19:50:13.403" UserId="223" />
  <row Id="394" PostId="262" Score="0" Text="Yes, the penny has dropped. I like the idea." CreationDate="2010-08-06T20:31:15.493" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="450" PostId="262" Score="0" Text="I have been to meta.stackoverflow and the question already exists.... http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/56065/add-tags-to-the-user-profile" CreationDate="2010-08-11T09:00:35.150" UserId="223" />
  <row Id="401" PostId="264" Score="1" Text="I also did removed &quot;introductory&quot; and &quot;layman&quot; tags. These meta tags are now synonyms for &quot;beginner&quot;, so we just need to delete the &quot;beginner&quot; tag every now and again." CreationDate="2010-08-09T10:41:13.693" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="395" PostId="265" Score="0" Text="I agree; it was mainly useful as a title supplement rather than a search query." CreationDate="2010-08-07T13:18:57.640" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="858" PostId="269" Score="2" Text="Thanks for starting this thread! Please keep ideas coming!" CreationDate="2010-10-01T10:32:57.417" UserId="12" />
  <row Id="949" PostId="269" Score="0" Text="@Jin Any updates on the design?" CreationDate="2010-10-14T19:49:43.640" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="1022" PostId="269" Score="0" Text="@Shane, it should be soon. btw not sure the policy has changed about the 90 day launch mark. See http://bit.ly/d4Nept  But it will happen soon. Thank you for your patience." CreationDate="2010-10-28T00:34:08.203" UserId="12" />
  <row Id="404" PostId="271" Score="0" Text="I noticed the same problem on Ubuntu using firefox earlier today as well. I'm not sure whether that browser has javascript enabled, but I thought it probably did." CreationDate="2010-08-10T00:17:25.060" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="438" PostId="271" Score="0" Text="Javascript is enabled. When I load a page I get &quot;failed to load: ..../something.js&quot;" CreationDate="2010-08-10T19:51:01.887" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="410" PostId="272" Score="0" Text="I'm almost certain I have javascript enabled. I'll check tonight." CreationDate="2010-08-10T08:56:22.807" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="955" PostId="272" Score="0" Text="Curious... I have no problem on my iPhone (v4)." CreationDate="2010-10-16T20:00:46.307" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="407" PostId="273" Score="0" Text="Your title seems a bit misleading. The issue is 'commenting'/'redirecting'/perhaps 'downvoting' but it is definitely not 'moderation' as I do not think the moderators are involved. Is my assessment correct?" CreationDate="2010-08-10T00:56:14.393" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="408" PostId="273" Score="0" Text="correct - I will edit" CreationDate="2010-08-10T01:20:55.237" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="411" PostId="273" Score="0" Text="Many thanks for highlighting this information to new users" CreationDate="2010-08-10T09:32:07.913" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="422" PostId="275" Score="0" Text="I voted this down because I think it implies a focus on statistics while neglecting the other domains of interest for this site." CreationDate="2010-08-10T16:05:19.430" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="451" PostId="276" Score="2" Text="why not ? ok for me too" CreationDate="2010-08-11T09:02:06.067" UserId="223" />
  <row Id="455" PostId="276" Score="1" Text="Yes to the ruby qn also. That is a bit more borderline but I think we should open it to be consistent." CreationDate="2010-08-11T11:26:02.057" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="457" PostId="276" Score="0" Text="I don't think that &quot;data processing&quot; is sufficiently within our scope to reopen the ruby gems question. It could mean statistical analysis, but it could also mean almost anything else to do with handling data." CreationDate="2010-08-11T12:42:30.740" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="469" PostId="276" Score="0" Text="I would open the ruby question - borderline, but OK." CreationDate="2010-08-12T09:33:16.047" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="413" PostId="279" Score="0" Text="+1; I agree - Answer below proposes deadline" CreationDate="2010-08-10T15:33:58.917" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="419" PostId="279" Score="0" Text="Incidentally, a valid answer would be &quot;no deadline&quot;, in which, please use the same format and give a brief explanation for why." CreationDate="2010-08-10T15:59:06.890" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="431" PostId="279" Score="0" Text="Another potential answer would be something like &quot;the first name that reaches 20 votes&quot; (i.e. this doesn't have to be time-based)." CreationDate="2010-08-10T17:26:51.903" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="429" PostId="284" Score="1" Text="According to Area51, &quot;the site's progress will be evaluated in 69 days.&quot; http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/33/statistical-analysis So it's ultimately a question of how much time we have to have set aside for the logo/design and any other question before the end of beta." CreationDate="2010-08-10T17:19:06.940" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="432" PostId="284" Score="0" Text="So....what's X?" CreationDate="2010-08-10T18:44:53.453" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="433" PostId="284" Score="0" Text="Perhaps, one of the moderators can find out for us from Stackoverflow? Or perhaps, we can tag this 'feature request' (which is a bit dubious) to get their attention? I prefer the first approach." CreationDate="2010-08-10T18:49:41.353" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="434" PostId="284" Score="0" Text="This approach suggests that we should make a list of all issues that need to be addressed before re-evaluation and set all of those deadlines more or less at the same time." CreationDate="2010-08-10T18:52:54.653" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="435" PostId="284" Score="0" Text="Perhaps, a bit staggered to give ourselves some time between deadlines." CreationDate="2010-08-10T18:58:44.517" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="441" PostId="284" Score="0" Text="As I read your heading, X represents the number of weeks before the end of public beta: the public beta ends in 68 days, so what is X in your opinion?" CreationDate="2010-08-10T20:22:12.950" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="444" PostId="284" Score="0" Text="X is whatever amount of time Stackoverflow needs to design a logo etc. I have no idea how much time they would require. A week? 3 days? You should ask Robert Cartaino. Note: If we need to accommodate a polling period to pick the 'best' one then we need to add X + Required polling time." CreationDate="2010-08-10T21:30:50.270" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="445" PostId="284" Score="0" Text="The logo is designed by us, not by stackoverflow. This is really  community driven." CreationDate="2010-08-10T22:11:35.563" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="446" PostId="284" Score="0" Text="@Shane I know that it is supposed to be community driven but I am not really sure we have the expertise to come up with a logo as we are not graphics experts. I could be wrong of course but that is my impression. That is the reason why I said that perhaps we can delegate the actual design to Stackoverflow and then vote on the ones we want as a community from several designs." CreationDate="2010-08-10T22:55:11.570" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="459" PostId="284" Score="0" Text="I see.  If you read #5 from http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/07/the-7-essential-meta-questions-of-every-beta/, you will see that it mentions the logo can be designed by the community or by the stackoverflow designers.  This is covered in this thread: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/269/what-should-our-logo-and-site-design-look-like.  I had previously seen on webapps that they were in the process of making their own: http://meta.webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/245/site-logo-style-proposals.  But I guess it's an open question." CreationDate="2010-08-11T13:02:14.223" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="461" PostId="284" Score="0" Text="How about opening a thread to poll the see if someone is willing to come up with a logo as and when we finalize the site name? Or, perhaps, I am over analyzing the whole thing!" CreationDate="2010-08-11T13:20:51.777" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="462" PostId="284" Score="0" Text="@Srikant: IMO, Rob's question should be enough for the discussion.  http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/269/what-should-our-logo-and-site-design-look-like  I am going to submit a design proposal myself, but you should also feel free to post an answer there proposing that SO contribute a design.  :)" CreationDate="2010-08-11T14:20:02.383" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="463" PostId="284" Score="0" Text="Sure. Of course, if I like yours or some other proposed design I will vote for it instead of asking SO." CreationDate="2010-08-11T14:32:09.220" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="465" PostId="285" Score="1" Text="It fits within &quot;statistical computing&quot; I think. I'll wait a day in case there are objections." CreationDate="2010-08-12T00:40:39.643" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="468" PostId="285" Score="0" Text="I vote open...." CreationDate="2010-08-12T09:32:46.297" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="479" PostId="285" Score="0" Text="Now re-opened.." CreationDate="2010-08-13T00:32:08.360" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="471" PostId="288" Score="6" Text="Not bad -- a place for giving people confidence by answering their questions, as well as the obvious statistical meaning." CreationDate="2010-08-12T11:31:18.910" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="584" PostId="288" Score="3" Text="Dig it.  It's not banal like StatsOverflow and should have meaning for the broad community of data analysts (statistics, machine learning, scientists, etc).  Come on folks, vote it up!" CreationDate="2010-08-19T17:37:47.167" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="596" PostId="288" Score="0" Text="... with a redirect from CredibleRegion.com for the Bayesians" CreationDate="2010-08-20T14:50:21.813" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="622" PostId="288" Score="0" Text="I wasn't fast enough to submit some more: SampleSurveys - RepeatedMeasures - BackwardElimination - SignificanceLevel - OpinionPoll - NestedModels - MixedEffects - PurposiveSampling - AcceptanceSampling - InformativePriors - ConfoundingFactors - EfficientEstimates - DummyVariables - Contingency ..Tales :-)" CreationDate="2010-08-24T13:55:09.183" UserId="339" />
  <row Id="643" PostId="290" Score="0" Text="BTW, is this question you just asked a community wiki ?" CreationDate="2010-08-31T13:17:33.807" UserId="253" />
  <row Id="644" PostId="290" Score="0" Text="Which question is that?" CreationDate="2010-08-31T13:27:11.410" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="2160" PostId="290" Score="0" Text="@TalGalili: no, because there's ultimately only one answer (although parts of it may appear in different answers), ie. how we, as a community, are going to define the guidelines that define the use of the &quot;community wiki&quot; feature." CreationDate="2012-03-20T03:14:36.163" UserId="9007" />
  <row Id="474" PostId="291" Score="2" Text="Really well-said." CreationDate="2010-08-12T20:40:36.457" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="475" PostId="291" Score="1" Text="I agree...the only issue that I see is that someone who asks &quot;what is the best X&quot; is also looking for a singular answer.  But that's ususally &quot;argumentative&quot;." CreationDate="2010-08-12T20:42:21.273" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="476" PostId="291" Score="1" Text="True. But then &quot;What is the best X?&quot; questions aren't helpful to anyone, I don't think. They should be questions phrased along the lines of &quot;What X are available for Y?&quot; and then expand on their specific needs in the body. There often is no &quot;best&quot; X for all situations." CreationDate="2010-08-12T22:03:21.990" UserId="110" />
  <row Id="2161" PostId="291" Score="1" Text="I disagree with your reasoning. The asker is irrelevant. SE's aim is to provide a good knowledge database for everyone. Your question is a prime example (because many people are likely to have the same question): If the answers were for you, and you only, then the question may as well be deleted as soon as you found an appropriate answer. But the answers aren't for you, they're for you and everyone after you. If a question really is only applicable to the asker, then it should probably be closed as too localised. (note: not saying you're wrong about your question being CW, just your reasoning)" CreationDate="2012-03-22T08:29:22.103" UserId="9007" />
  <row Id="2162" PostId="291" Score="2" Text="Also worth noting that the set of answers to your question, when taken in the context of my previous comment **is** a *collection of resources* - some mnemonics will work for some people, and others for other people. There's never going to be a definitive answer there." CreationDate="2012-03-22T08:32:49.027" UserId="9007" />
  <row Id="2195" PostId="291" Score="1" Text="I somewhat feel that it is less likely to people to contribute once it hits community wiki since neither the asker nor the respondents will get out any reputation of that. On the other hand, I felt happy in a sense to know that one of my questions made up to a community wiki and get considerable amount of up votes, even thou I did not benefit from the last of them." CreationDate="2012-04-04T19:02:31.393" UserId="9887" />
  <row Id="480" PostId="294" Score="0" Text="Couldn't moderators step in to lock/close a question at this point?" CreationDate="2010-08-13T07:14:57.637" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="17403" PostId="296" Score="0" Text="This is a very old question (the 296th question on meta when CV was, I believe, still beta) that got bumped because of some tag-edits. Does anybody know the current status and whether anything happened as a result of this post? I see that the current mailing list is still active, but it is full of programming and helpdesk related questions like 'how to get two plots in one plot', 'how do I change the color', etc. (and this would nowadays be considered very off-topic). Should this question maybe get closed (if we ever do this on meta)?" CreationDate="2019-04-04T11:34:32.937" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17413" PostId="296" Score="0" Text="@MartijnWeterings, it's perfectly fine for [stats.SE] to have evolved, &amp;/or for people to have changed their minds &amp; want to update this thread, but that doesn't make this off topic." CreationDate="2019-04-05T11:32:40.987" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17414" PostId="296" Score="0" Text="@gung I wasn't sure about closing, but I pressed the button to close it because people might notice it better than just the comment. I have no problems with discussing ggplot. But the problem with this question is, I believe, that it is confusing. The information in the question, about the status of the mailing list, might not be correct anymore. In addition, people that hit on this question might not see at first sight that this is a very old question and they may start answering it with a much different perspective and not really answering the question that was the OP's original intent." CreationDate="2019-04-05T11:41:36.020" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17415" PostId="296" Score="1" Text="@MartijnWeterings I wrote a short answer referring to the current status. If it gets sufficiently upvoted and/or accepted, then I think the problem with this thread will be solved?" CreationDate="2019-04-05T12:51:10.347" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17442" PostId="296" Score="0" Text="Hi @Mike! Do you want to consider accepting my answer to mark this thread as &quot;resolved&quot; or do you want to leave it unaccepted because you disagree or think it should be extended etc.? Let me know. Cheers." CreationDate="2019-04-09T10:51:13.043" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="482" PostId="297" Score="0" Text="Is there any reason you are using google's service to provide links to the qn? Ideally, you should simply link to the question directly using the editor provided." CreationDate="2010-08-13T17:51:05.977" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="483" PostId="297" Score="0" Text="Ah, I use it simply because the urls here are rather long and I know some dislike long urls that break up text. Has url shortening already been meta-decided as bad? If so let me know and I'll expand all the links." CreationDate="2010-08-13T17:54:22.553" UserId="364" />
  <row Id="484" PostId="297" Score="1" Text="See my edit to see how you need not use long urls." CreationDate="2010-08-13T17:58:16.477" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="486" PostId="297" Score="0" Text="Ah, you know I hadn't seen the link function in the editor. I'm too used to plain-text! Fixed in my other post now too." CreationDate="2010-08-13T18:08:35.100" UserId="364" />
  <row Id="490" PostId="299" Score="0" Text="+1 That's a good summary." CreationDate="2010-08-13T19:32:41.953" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="487" PostId="300" Score="1" Text="Ah, I hadn't thought about the prospect of the R-help mailing list moving here. I don't think it's likely for the R-project folks to do it themselves, but I wouldn't put it beyond users to unofficially move. Indeed, there's already a lot of R questions on stackoverflow, so I anticipate that if there were a more stats-sounding site that was serving this same purpose, you'd get a lot of those users too, which would change the content here quite substantially. Hm, maybe &quot;statistical computing and visualization&quot; needs it's own stack proposal?" CreationDate="2010-08-13T18:23:29.733" UserId="364" />
  <row Id="17419" PostId="300" Score="1" Text="-1 because this answer is obsolete: our current (2019) guidelines regarding what is on-topic explicitly do not allow such questions." CreationDate="2019-04-05T12:53:33.107" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17418" PostId="302" Score="1" Text="-1 because this does not conform to our current (2019) guidelines on what is on-topic." CreationDate="2019-04-05T12:52:36.693" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="491" PostId="307" Score="0" Text="You might start by looking at other book questions, and then phrase you question such that it is sufficiently different.  What is it about engineers that would make particular book recommendations relevant?" CreationDate="2010-08-13T20:37:46.180" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="492" PostId="307" Score="0" Text="I'm not a statistician, but I have a book titled &quot;Probably and Statistics for Engineers and Scientists&quot; on my shelf and I took a course called &quot;Engineering Statistics&quot;, which leads me to believe that engineers tend to use a particular subset of statistics. I also have a book called &quot;Probability and Statistics for Computer Scientists&quot; that covers topics I've seen a lot in software - Monte Carlo methods, Markov chains, Bayesian estimation, regression analysis, queuing systems. But I don't have enough of a background to determine how to make my question most beneficial to me and the community." CreationDate="2010-08-13T22:06:02.797" UserId="110" />
  <row Id="497" PostId="310" Score="0" Text="&quot;Part of our role is to guide people toward asking good questions. &quot; this is the key !" CreationDate="2010-08-16T09:44:49.923" UserId="223" />
  <row Id="1911" PostId="311" Score="0" Text="As someone with minimal formal training, I'd like to add that I find it extremely helpful when someone is kind enough to tell me why my question is vague/doesn't make sense.  Sometimes, that explanation alone is enough to help me understand why I was confused in the first place.  For beginners, many questions that we would know how to word &quot;correctly&quot; we can just look up on Wikipedia or a textbook.  and it's precisely the questions for which we don't know the correct terminology--or only have a nebulous grasp of the concept-- that lead to a SE post, because  it's hard to . . ." CreationDate="2011-10-12T04:34:21.033" UserId="5471" />
  <row Id="1912" PostId="311" Score="0" Text=". . . find information on your own when you don't know the right terms." CreationDate="2011-10-12T04:34:40.190" UserId="5471" />
  <row Id="495" PostId="314" Score="2" Text="fully agree with that !  note that it could be fun to take an eye on the ratio (number of upvotes)/(number of points) of the different users :)" CreationDate="2010-08-16T09:27:06.760" UserId="223" />
  <row Id="496" PostId="314" Score="0" Text="I suppose I have to upvote this question then ;)" CreationDate="2010-08-16T09:35:12.007" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="498" PostId="315" Score="2" Text="It is pretty hard to track, isn't it? Or maybe it is an idea for new functionality, like &quot;Recent edits of posts you downvoted&quot;" CreationDate="2010-08-16T11:34:52.040" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="499" PostId="315" Score="1" Text="@mbq: I agree, I wouldn't recommend it as site guidelines. I usually do it on very badly worded questions, i.e. once or twice a week." CreationDate="2010-08-16T11:56:46.537" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="500" PostId="315" Score="0" Text="Still, you've got notice on comments of your comments, and this is something quite similar." CreationDate="2010-08-16T12:38:52.990" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="501" PostId="315" Score="0" Text="you already have statistics about things happening &quot;once or twice a week&quot; ?  Anyway, I totally agree with your answer which by the way increases my voteup statistics ;)." CreationDate="2010-08-16T13:01:25.097" UserId="223" />
  <row Id="502" PostId="316" Score="2" Text="I completely agree.  I feel as though there isn't enough voting taking place on the site, especially on &quot;edge&quot; questions.  A similar issue happens on stackoverflow, that questions of broad general interest (often the least useful) will get lots of votes, but specific &quot;hard&quot; questions will hardly get recognized, even though they require more effort/expertise to answer." CreationDate="2010-08-16T13:53:24.813" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="504" PostId="316" Score="1" Text="@Shane I think the 'hard' questions will get upvotes if there are enough users who find those questions interesting. I think, a question not getting enough upvotes is simply a reflection of the the current composition of the community and its interests." CreationDate="2010-08-16T14:48:45.307" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="508" PostId="316" Score="1" Text="@Srikant OK, but it is supposed to be a place for mutual help, not a reputation marathon (what am I writing?)." CreationDate="2010-08-16T15:08:24.243" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="511" PostId="316" Score="1" Text="@mbq yes of course the site is supposed to such that we offer help to each other. The reputation is basically a mechanism by which we suggest which answers are good and which ones are bad. An individual's rep is an indication of the extent to which that user provides nice answers (nice as perceived by the community) and asks clear questions. If the base level voting is high then good behaviors are reinforced even further than they would be if the base level voting is low." CreationDate="2010-08-16T15:17:44.710" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="518" PostId="316" Score="1" Text="@Shane, good point.  Wish there was a good solution.  @mbq, I believe in the geek ethic of sharing information, but I'm happy if social/cognitive hacking can coax others into contributing more." CreationDate="2010-08-16T18:01:49.023" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="519" PostId="316" Score="1" Text="@Srikant, @ars My problem is just that upvoting is not only &quot;well done&quot;, but also &quot;people, read this!&quot;." CreationDate="2010-08-16T18:42:16.523" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="523" PostId="316" Score="1" Text="@mbq: right on, that's a good point." CreationDate="2010-08-16T19:30:05.583" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="503" PostId="317" Score="0" Text="Colin: How did you pull the data?" CreationDate="2010-08-16T14:30:43.837" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="505" PostId="317" Score="1" Text="I constructed a very dirty (and embarrassing) R function using their api" CreationDate="2010-08-16T14:53:43.907" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="506" PostId="317" Score="0" Text="Are you sure it is correct? I can't find myself." CreationDate="2010-08-16T14:59:40.787" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="512" PostId="317" Score="0" Text="@mbq: Yes, but when I said &quot;total&quot;, I actually meant &quot;rep&quot; - sorry. I've relabeled the axis and uploaded a clearer image. BTW, you're the third green dot along." CreationDate="2010-08-16T15:20:03.883" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="513" PostId="317" Score="0" Text="Right." CreationDate="2010-08-16T15:44:27.020" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="507" PostId="318" Score="0" Text="I think that in case there are competitive answers one should rather upvote best than put another answer. Also voting on all non-bad answers will demolish the ranking, and that's since downvoting hurts and one can vote only once." CreationDate="2010-08-16T15:05:50.490" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="509" PostId="318" Score="2" Text="@mbq I am not sure that will necessarily happen because of heterogeneity of what different people will think is a nice answer. What the above effectively does is to push the base level of votes high rather than destroy the ranking as eventually the 'better' answers will float up. The general idea is to vote more often but that does not mean vote indiscriminately. Each person needs to make their choice of what a nice answer is. In any case, upvoting a question to which you answer should be fine." CreationDate="2010-08-16T15:10:44.083" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="514" PostId="318" Score="2" Text="Hmm, good advice.  I upvote a fair number of answers but it rarely occurs to me to upvote a question unless it sparks something.  Questions have a higher threshold to cross in the subconscious for no particularly good reason.  OK, point taken, time to change .. more upvoting questions. :)" CreationDate="2010-08-16T17:07:17.267" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="520" PostId="318" Score="1" Text="@Srikant I'm not sure neither; democracy also has its assumptions. @ars Upvoting answered question is on one hand in your interest, because you gather an audience of your answer, still I don't do this when question doesn't deserve it." CreationDate="2010-08-16T18:49:21.953" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="521" PostId="318" Score="1" Text="@mbq of course you should not indiscriminately vote up questions but if you are answering a particular question at the very least it suggests that it is clear and of interest to you. In such a situation, upvoting seems a natural thing to do." CreationDate="2010-08-16T19:14:05.007" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="522" PostId="318" Score="0" Text="@Srikant For a majority of questions yes, but not always; a good exception are too-specialized questions." CreationDate="2010-08-16T19:20:28.553" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="516" PostId="319" Score="0" Text="But since we added statistical computing to our scope should that also be in there?" CreationDate="2010-08-16T17:28:31.790" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="17373" PostId="320" Score="2" Text="&quot; I want it to look like this, how do I do that&quot; this sounds to me more like a programming task and belongs to StackOverflow." CreationDate="2019-04-01T14:00:51.137" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17417" PostId="320" Score="1" Text="-1 because this does not conform to our current (2019) guidelines on what is on-topic." CreationDate="2019-04-05T12:52:32.350" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="530" PostId="322" Score="0" Text="Your question looks like a chat discussion, seems you have spend too much time chatting  :) I think you should rephrase it with something like&#xA;&quot;Definition of aims and rules for the use of the chat room&quot;" CreationDate="2010-08-17T08:13:14.103" UserId="223" />
  <row Id="532" PostId="322" Score="0" Text="@robin It was meant as an ad, so I admit that this is not a real question." CreationDate="2010-08-17T08:49:18.027" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="524" PostId="323" Score="0" Text="Office hrs is a cool idea." CreationDate="2010-08-16T22:45:45.610" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="531" PostId="325" Score="0" Text="I agree. Too many SE sites are bad, because than the effective probability that the question will collide with someone that knows the answer decreases." CreationDate="2010-08-17T08:45:34.760" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="533" PostId="325" Score="1" Text="The scope of this site includes &quot;data mining&quot; and &quot;machine learning&quot;. See the faq." CreationDate="2010-08-17T09:10:18.273" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="534" PostId="325" Score="0" Text="@Rob: The FAQ does not specify &quot;machine learning&quot;; should we add it?" CreationDate="2010-08-17T12:44:54.140" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="535" PostId="325" Score="0" Text="It's in the proposed FAQ at http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/6/what-should-our-faq-contain&#xA;Do you know when/how we can add the material there to http://stats.stackexchange.com/faq?" CreationDate="2010-08-17T13:27:26.903" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="539" PostId="325" Score="2" Text="classical statistics, machine learning, and data mining should all be on the same site" CreationDate="2010-08-17T19:06:51.403" UserId="74" />
  <row Id="591" PostId="327" Score="0" Text="I've undeleted it because I liked it; I think we would be able to fetch this domain." CreationDate="2010-08-19T18:34:40.767" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="536" PostId="328" Score="0" Text="good initiative !" CreationDate="2010-08-17T15:20:38.577" UserId="223" />
  <row Id="537" PostId="329" Score="0" Text="+1 Sounds like a plan." CreationDate="2010-08-17T16:05:14.273" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="538" PostId="329" Score="0" Text="+1 I agree....." CreationDate="2010-08-17T16:21:21.950" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="541" PostId="329" Score="0" Text="Me too........." CreationDate="2010-08-17T23:54:04.717" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="554" PostId="329" Score="0" Text="I love the second round of voting idea. Why do we need to restrict it to &quot;within 2 votes&quot;, though? Perhaps the top 2-3 choices?" CreationDate="2010-08-18T16:59:25.623" UserId="279" />
  <row Id="557" PostId="329" Score="0" Text="@Aniko To fetch all proposals that have chances; I think that it is a fair algorithm." CreationDate="2010-08-18T18:15:56.423" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="558" PostId="329" Score="0" Text="I'll allow myself to mention that there is an idea to connect the second round with logo selection -- this issue can be discussed on chat http://chat.meta.stackoverflow.com/rooms/170/stats ." CreationDate="2010-08-18T18:19:07.290" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="604" PostId="329" Score="0" Text="+1  good idea..." CreationDate="2010-08-21T18:38:53.260" UserId="253" />
  <row Id="550" PostId="332" Score="0" Text="That is sometimes true, but more often the OP simply didn't put in enough effort (in my experience)." CreationDate="2010-08-18T15:24:34.777" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="551" PostId="332" Score="1" Text="The other point is that an answering a vague qn reinforces the perception to future posters that to get an answer they need not take the effort to ask a precise question. The goal is to get high quality content which means good questions (that are clear and focussed) and high quality answers." CreationDate="2010-08-18T15:31:38.383" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="559" PostId="333" Score="0" Text="I agree with Srikant" CreationDate="2010-08-18T20:28:53.753" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="561" PostId="333" Score="0" Text="Sounds like a good idea. Do you want to add something to the draft FAQ at http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/6/what-should-our-faq-contain" CreationDate="2010-08-19T00:57:10.560" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="563" PostId="333" Score="0" Text="@Rob and @Srikant: I think adding that to FAQ is important" CreationDate="2010-08-19T07:20:14.433" UserId="223" />
  <row Id="567" PostId="333" Score="0" Text="Sure. I will add to the faq." CreationDate="2010-08-19T13:20:07.703" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="568" PostId="333" Score="0" Text="The entry to the faq here: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/6/what-should-our-faq-contain/339#339" CreationDate="2010-08-19T13:31:37.130" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="11601" PostId="333" Score="1" Text="I think it should be required, not just recommended.  If a user can take 30 minutes to try and write a great question, then someone who would down-vote can take 30 seconds to write a decent comment.  It should take at least as much effort to write a downvote as it does to make a tweet." CreationDate="2016-12-16T16:26:29.183" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="11844" PostId="333" Score="2" Text="@EngrStudent Difficult to comment on your last point, because I don't use Twitter, but the issue is more usually people who spend 30 seconds writing a lousy question. I think they may deserve more than 0.5 second of my time, but not much more. If you can say that you always comment if and when you downvote, then I admire that but don't promise to emulate it." CreationDate="2017-01-11T13:39:34.280" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11845" PostId="333" Score="1" Text="@NickCox - I always spend at least 60 seconds on their content before a down-vote.  I have spent hours on questions that were downvoted immediately after posting, and I could not get a reason why.  The mind doesn't work efficiently on the 0.5 second timescale." CreationDate="2017-01-11T13:45:01.330" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="11846" PostId="333" Score="3" Text="I was being a little flippant in downscaling with a 1/60 factor. But I am serious too: the trade-off on explaining versus not isn't easy in my view. I give so much time to this site but I won't give more because someone thinks I should explain every downvote. I naturally don't approve in abstraction your questions being downvoted without explanation; my concern is the other end of the spectrum." CreationDate="2017-01-11T13:57:47.690" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="560" PostId="334" Score="0" Text="I agree with what you said. I guess order of priority is:&#xA;&#xA;1. Leave comment without downvoting.&#xA;2. If downvoting leave a comment to explain downvote." CreationDate="2010-08-18T22:55:49.647" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="601" PostId="334" Score="0" Text="I agree. I hope it can be implemented in the site's design." CreationDate="2010-08-21T18:23:42.057" UserId="253" />
  <row Id="576" PostId="336" Score="0" Text="I agree. I have already voted to close." CreationDate="2010-08-19T14:19:22.787" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="566" PostId="337" Score="1" Text="why not using a chat-room for that ? I feel a much more focused question would greatly increase the quality of the answers and the possibility of interesting discoveries." CreationDate="2010-08-19T13:19:24.413" UserId="223" />
  <row Id="577" PostId="337" Score="0" Text="I disagree with using the software as a blog/forum. It is far easier to ask questions that are appropriate for a blog/forum and I am afraid that good quality questions will drown if we encourage questions such as the one Robin linked to." CreationDate="2010-08-19T14:20:58.633" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="581" PostId="337" Score="0" Text="All right, it really looks like _this_ question is not going to be useful at all..." CreationDate="2010-08-19T15:07:35.260" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="583" PostId="337" Score="0" Text="I've made an appropriate change to my answer." CreationDate="2010-08-19T15:09:43.337" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="564" PostId="338" Score="0" Text="Do you mean that a question is good if it gets answers from the community?" CreationDate="2010-08-19T13:09:32.093" UserId="223" />
  <row Id="565" PostId="338" Score="0" Text="I believe so.  It means that the community saw the question as worthwhile answering.  Or do you think I am missing something?" CreationDate="2010-08-19T13:11:30.500" UserId="253" />
  <row Id="569" PostId="338" Score="0" Text="humm... maybe I'm not of that community... more seriously, I think the site, &quot;the community&quot;, is not that stable  and we need further discussion like this one to know what we want. I really think it is too early to  rely on the primary instincive actions of the mass ;)" CreationDate="2010-08-19T13:43:06.947" UserId="223" />
  <row Id="575" PostId="338" Score="0" Text="@Tal By the very nature of subjective questions they will get more answers than any other question. I am not at all sure we should use this criteria as a means to decide what questions to allow." CreationDate="2010-08-19T14:15:55.963" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="585" PostId="338" Score="0" Text="I like Tal's suggestion.  It seems like a nice compromise -- the question did gather some clueful answers of use to the wider community, but it can be closed later to prevent degeneration due to its subjectiveness." CreationDate="2010-08-19T17:54:00.147" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="586" PostId="338" Score="0" Text="@Srikant: I'm totally confused why the CW aspect doesn't settle this; check out the jokes and quotations thread.  Why is that OK?  (BTW, it may be time to close those threads ...)" CreationDate="2010-08-19T17:56:28.800" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="587" PostId="338" Score="0" Text="@ars The CW aspect does take care of the rep issue but I would much rather prefer the site to be dedicated to asking and answering precise statistics/ml/data mining questions. See my answer for why I feel that way. There are lots of other places where you could ask discussion questions: blogs, forums etc. The jokes and quotations thread were in the initial days and perhaps once in a while such threads are fine. But, if we want to attract and retain the real experts (e.g., the likes of [Andrew Gelman](http://stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/) then we have to keep the serious stuff on top." CreationDate="2010-08-19T18:09:07.557" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="589" PostId="338" Score="0" Text="@Srikant: OK, I understand where you're coming from.  I think I'd still favor a compromise along Tal's suggestion.  Or at least a more flexible/tunable parameter: if the incidence of such questions spikes, clamp down harder; but if it's low, then let them stand for some small window of time (&lt;= 1 day)." CreationDate="2010-08-19T18:25:54.093" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="590" PostId="338" Score="0" Text="@are Sure. we can take them on a case-by-case basis. Everyone needs a break from the serious stuff. :-)" CreationDate="2010-08-19T18:31:46.793" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="592" PostId="338" Score="0" Text="By the way, my comment about 'real experts' does not mean that we do not have real experts in our community right now. I am sure there are several. I just used Andrew Gelman's name to make a point. No offense intended to anyone." CreationDate="2010-08-19T19:33:11.267" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="600" PostId="338" Score="0" Text="I want to add another consideration: People are easy to get offended when their post is being closed.  If it is a duplicate, that makes sense.  IF the question is off topic, that makes sense.&#xA;&#xA;If the question is to the topic, but subjective - I am not sure it serves our website in stopping it from staying on top.&#xA;&#xA;The other reason for the criteria that I proposed is that it is easier to close questions then to answer them.  If a question get answered (let's say) by high reputation contributers, that means to me that it might have value.  Even if personally I will miss it." CreationDate="2010-08-21T18:20:47.617" UserId="253" />
  <row Id="570" PostId="340" Score="1" Text="I do not agree with &quot;good answers to a bad question &gt; no question&quot; because it accepts that the author of the question did not try to make it better I would say  &quot;good answers to a bad question &lt; good answers to a good question&quot;... it depends on the ambition we have for the quality of the site..." CreationDate="2010-08-19T13:52:04.820" UserId="223" />
  <row Id="574" PostId="340" Score="1" Text="I agree with Shane's answer. If it wasn't for my moderator &quot;super vote&quot;, I would have closed this question." CreationDate="2010-08-19T13:58:44.740" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="578" PostId="340" Score="0" Text="I also down-voted the question and won't reverse unless it's improved.  I do believe that there is a potentially valid question here, just not as it is currently presented." CreationDate="2010-08-19T14:23:34.570" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="582" PostId="340" Score="0" Text="Now I am convinced that it should be close; so virtually we have 4 closing votes." CreationDate="2010-08-19T15:08:33.637" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="572" PostId="341" Score="0" Text="We're currently talking to the StackExchange team and they have marketing resources to allocate!" CreationDate="2010-08-19T13:56:09.800" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="588" PostId="341" Score="0" Text="@shane Could the money be used to do market research for the site name? Given the contentious nature of the site name thread and the ill-defined community we have it may make sense to actually commission a small market research study in our target audience to choose a site name. Just a thought." CreationDate="2010-08-19T18:15:30.277" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="603" PostId="341" Score="0" Text="I think a market research on such a website name is very difficult to create - how do you think of organizing it (Assuming you have some dollars) ??" CreationDate="2010-08-21T18:38:28.673" UserId="253" />
  <row Id="615" PostId="341" Score="1" Text="There are several ways to do this depending on what we want to accomplish. 1. Identify our target audience (e.g., statistics, data mining, ml professionals which would include academics, grad students and industry) 2. survey a sample of them about several aspects of site names such as (a) what comes to their mind when they hear a site name, (b) would they use such a site (c) would they use a site that has 'x' word and so on...&#xA;The dollar amount will depend on the scope and scale of the study we want to conduct." CreationDate="2010-08-23T14:19:33.347" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="631" PostId="341" Score="0" Text="@Srikant: Are there organizations that can help with this, or would be try to run it through some of the statistics departments for people using the site?" CreationDate="2010-08-26T20:17:35.943" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="632" PostId="341" Score="0" Text="@Shane Sure there are. They typically offer various forms of market research services such as obtaining a mailing list, designing a survey, analysis etc. As far as we are concerned the main issue we would have is getting a mailing list of potential users. I believe we have the 'internal' expertise as regards as other aspects are concerned such as survey design, analysis etc. Perhaps, there is where associations can potentially help?" CreationDate="2010-08-27T00:52:15.857" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="633" PostId="341" Score="0" Text="@srikant: happy to support the effort if you want to take lead because I know nothing about this. Let me know what you want to do." CreationDate="2010-08-27T02:15:20.937" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="635" PostId="341" Score="0" Text="@shane This may require more bandwidth (in terms of time) than I have at the moment but I will think about the best way to proceed and post a meta thread soon." CreationDate="2010-08-30T16:25:39.687" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="571" PostId="342" Score="1" Text="Part of the reason for my recent barrage of conference questions.  :)" CreationDate="2010-08-19T13:55:45.620" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="573" PostId="342" Score="0" Text="Your questions are the inspiration for my answer. :-)" CreationDate="2010-08-19T13:57:03.403" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="605" PostId="344" Score="0" Text="Saw his post.  Nice work!  Now we just need to get him to actually use the site.  :)" CreationDate="2010-08-21T21:35:04.797" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="606" PostId="344" Score="0" Text="Yeah, that would be nice. But, even if the post generates a few of his readers to start using the site that would be great. I will monitor the post for any comments that need to be addressed." CreationDate="2010-08-21T23:46:06.507" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="607" PostId="344" Score="0" Text="Hey, nicely done!" CreationDate="2010-08-22T01:47:04.180" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="579" PostId="346" Score="0" Text="That is true, but the software is primarily driven by the community.  Good question asking is a skill for which everyone is not in possession.  We have many tools at our disposal: we can vote to close, we can comment and make suggestions such that the question would be improved (assuming that it's within scope), we can down-vote, etc." CreationDate="2010-08-19T14:25:08.500" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="580" PostId="346" Score="0" Text="@Shane - yes the process should be community driven but I am resistant to the idea of using the software for blog/forum type of questions. Of course, if the community (i.e., the majority) feel otherwise please downvote my answer. I will not take offense." CreationDate="2010-08-19T14:35:35.667" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="602" PostId="347" Score="0" Text="You could get in touch with Szilard who also initiated http://www.r-bloggers.com/RUG/" CreationDate="2010-08-21T18:27:24.343" UserId="253" />
  <row Id="594" PostId="351" Score="0" Text="I like this because a &quot;model&quot; is such a general term (used in all areas), and optimization is a very general goal.  Plus it has a meta-interpretation about our role on the site." CreationDate="2010-08-20T13:57:49.500" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="651" PostId="354" Score="0" Text="Would you be open to organizing one of these through your blog and twitter connections?" CreationDate="2010-08-31T16:53:39.723" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="677" PostId="354" Score="0" Text="Count me in, ready to mob!" CreationDate="2010-09-02T13:44:27.230" UserId="1124" />
  <row Id="708" PostId="354" Score="0" Text="Hello Shane.  Sure.  I would be glad to support/publicize this.  I would appreciate help from the other people in both writing the posts and asking for other people to join in the fun.  (Do you wish to continue this via e-mail?  tal.galili@gmail.com)" CreationDate="2010-09-04T06:37:48.923" UserId="253" />
  <row Id="608" PostId="359" Score="0" Text="I didn't downvote, but could you explain what you mean by &quot;blind poll&quot;?" CreationDate="2010-08-22T22:46:09.200" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="610" PostId="359" Score="0" Text="See for example http://unix.stackexchange.com/polls/2/should-unix-linux-and-ubuntu-merge. As far as I know you can not see the intermediate result." CreationDate="2010-08-23T06:58:08.583" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="614" PostId="359" Score="0" Text="I asked about this here: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/61966/blind-poll-questions" CreationDate="2010-08-23T14:03:34.160" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="609" PostId="360" Score="0" Text="+1: I like all of these ideas.  Top 5 for which domains are available sounds good.  I don't suppose there's any way for the system to prevent down votes?" CreationDate="2010-08-23T05:29:57.430" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="611" PostId="360" Score="0" Text="This would be very possible with my idea. Everybody can: 1)  choose only one proposal, 2) not downvote, 3) not comment, 4) not add other names" CreationDate="2010-08-23T07:00:29.950" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="613" PostId="360" Score="0" Text="@Peter: I see.  That would require different software.  I like the idea, but not sure that it's possible in the near future.  I'll ask on meta.so." CreationDate="2010-08-23T12:58:48.253" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="621" PostId="360" Score="1" Text="Top five sounds ok to me. I don't think we can prevent downvotes, but we can always just count upvotes. I like the idea of providing pros/cons for each proposal to help people in their voting." CreationDate="2010-08-24T06:41:27.920" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="612" PostId="361" Score="0" Text="I am not sure if we should have this under faq. Isn't the faq about how to use the site rather than a faq about statistics per se?" CreationDate="2010-08-23T10:51:11.940" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="617" PostId="361" Score="0" Text="@Srikant: Yeah, that occurred to me after.  I just did it on impulse because I think we're going to see this kind of question *frequently*.  Maybe just move to this to a CW question on the site?  Or I can just delete it." CreationDate="2010-08-23T14:53:05.777" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="618" PostId="361" Score="0" Text="I would prefer you do not delete it as you have taken the effort to collect the useful links here. I suggest that we keep it here and if we feel that the volume of qns on the main site about this topic go up then we can shift this as a CW qn to the main site. We can then close all such as qns as dupes of this one. This would also serve as a useful resource to close qns as exact duplicates of the others that have been asked already." CreationDate="2010-08-23T15:14:07.530" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="627" PostId="365" Score="0" Text="That didn't work. I can get equations to displayon the MathJax homepage, so was wondering if it was a SE setting I needed to change." CreationDate="2010-08-25T10:11:06.383" UserId="229" />
  <row Id="623" PostId="367" Score="0" Text="I think that this is a reasonable suggestion.  Let's see if others agree before I delete it." CreationDate="2010-08-24T20:26:54.133" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="624" PostId="367" Score="0" Text="Makes sense...." CreationDate="2010-08-24T21:32:03.953" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="626" PostId="367" Score="0" Text="I agree. dataset would be a good replacement for some of them." CreationDate="2010-08-25T00:15:53.617" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="625" PostId="368" Score="0" Text="My apologizes, didn't see this post... Unless relying on doi (which aren't always provided in the posts I read so far) or publisher/repository entries, it is not clear to me how one would happen to manage external links (e.g. PDFs on personal homepage, handouts, etc.) but such guidelines sound good to me." CreationDate="2010-08-24T22:46:09.713" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="630" PostId="370" Score="0" Text="One million upvotes." CreationDate="2010-08-26T14:56:40.047" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="640" PostId="372" Score="0" Text="uhh, you're looking for answers of the form 'tag foo' for some foo?" CreationDate="2010-08-30T23:11:16.000" UserId="795" />
  <row Id="641" PostId="372" Score="1" Text="Rather a complete wiki text candidate, like &quot;foo is something like bar, but also something completely different; nevertheless it is widely used...&quot;" CreationDate="2010-08-31T07:25:06.987" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="667" PostId="372" Score="0" Text="OK, I don't get it, then. why don't we just start writing the tag wikis? if anyone can edit them, then won't they converge to what the  community wants? what am I missing--why have this intermediate step?" CreationDate="2010-09-01T18:04:05.737" UserId="795" />
  <row Id="676" PostId="372" Score="1" Text="They can only be edited by users with 2000+ reputation, or by the top 10 answerers for the tag.  At this point, we've only got three users who meet the first criteria, and there hasn't been enough time for the people who are really interested in a tag to rise to the top of its answerers (for some of the more rare tags).  This way, the mods don't have to write everything but we still have the tag wikis filled in from early on." CreationDate="2010-09-02T13:41:55.340" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="696" PostId="372" Score="2" Text="gotcha. so the point here is to make a mild end-run around the restrictions on who may edit tag wiki. Can we just lower the bar on editing tag wikis, at least temporarily? 2K+ reputation seems rather high given how young the site is." CreationDate="2010-09-02T19:20:38.470" UserId="795" />
  <row Id="698" PostId="372" Score="0" Text="@shabbychef This way is easier; limits are already reduced to what is needed on SO, so SE team will say it is ok. Also this site is somewhat different about the ease of judging is something is true." CreationDate="2010-09-03T06:32:04.307" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="806" PostId="374" Score="0" Text="statsoverflow.net is still avail. it'll be nice to maintain the *-overflow brand." CreationDate="2010-09-19T17:36:44.687" UserId="603" />
  <row Id="637" PostId="376" Score="0" Text="Would this basically be checking off those site names of which we approve, or would it mean casting a single vote for one's favorite?  I would strongly prefer the former - blind polls work pretty well with preferential or multiple voting, but single votes without some kind of info about others' votes is basically guaranteed to result in some people casting their votes for options that never had a chance, which probably won't make them too happy." CreationDate="2010-08-30T18:29:33.950" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="638" PostId="376" Score="0" Text="@Matt: I had envisioned allowing people to choose their top 3 favorites (out of the top 5).  Would have to work this out with StackExchange.  This basically means you can only vote positively and without lots of comments..." CreationDate="2010-08-30T18:41:17.667" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="639" PostId="376" Score="0" Text="Sounds good to me.  I just wanted to avoid the situation where someone casts their vote, only to find out that their choice wasn't even close - while their most-hated name edged out an okay name by one vote (exaggerated scenario, but you get the idea)." CreationDate="2010-08-30T22:55:46.733" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="642" PostId="376" Score="0" Text="+1 from me....." CreationDate="2010-08-31T13:06:45.290" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="634" PostId="377" Score="1" Text="The original question is already very cluttered. I think we should have another round without the domains names which are not available so that people can vote again. We should not assume how people will change their votes as a new set can give different results." CreationDate="2010-08-30T16:23:52.663" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="636" PostId="377" Score="0" Text="That's a reasonable idea; maybe we should remove the names that are either (a) unavailable and/or (b) in negative votes, but add everything else into this new question?" CreationDate="2010-08-30T16:26:47.770" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="645" PostId="383" Score="0" Text="+1 I think that this is very interesting discussion.  One point: the &quot;Area51&quot; process serves to do some of this, as does our daily interactions on the site and on meta.  The community itself is also the targeted audience.  That said, we do have the problem of a small number of very active users probably dominating the site direction, which is why I could see value in this." CreationDate="2010-08-31T13:32:04.177" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="655" PostId="387" Score="0" Text="it doesnt work for me? It just stays as $...$. Is there actual tag I could use to force it to compile latex?" CreationDate="2010-09-01T07:07:28.327" UserId="862" />
  <row Id="671" PostId="387" Score="0" Text="Stop typing and wait. The preview panel will show the rendered symbols when you pause." CreationDate="2010-09-02T05:28:15.123" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="646" PostId="389" Score="0" Text="A &quot;flashmob&quot; is a great idea.  I have noticed the same rate decrease.  At some point, we will his a &quot;natural&quot; level, and I don't think it should necessarily be more than 10-20 questions a day, but during the beta we should make an effort to push the limit." CreationDate="2010-08-31T15:50:44.673" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="652" PostId="389" Score="0" Text="I agree, the flow of questions is a bit slow. Perhaps we should all start to submit some questions (even when we know the answer). I would also suggest trying to avoid &quot;wiki&quot; type questions." CreationDate="2010-08-31T20:35:30.820" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="654" PostId="389" Score="0" Text="I would rather that we focus our energy and time on getting new users to the site. A steady stream of new users is what we need. If we continue to post questions/answers then the site will look like a community of 10 users who talk to each other. I think we have enough seed questions as of today." CreationDate="2010-08-31T23:51:59.913" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="656" PostId="389" Score="0" Text="@Srikant: I actually think that these things go hand-in-hand.  Having more good questions will be one of the best marketing tools that we can have.  And a flashmob does more than bring questions: it brings people and excitement.  I had never used stackoverflow before the R flashmob, and now I'm the second biggest contributor under the R tag." CreationDate="2010-09-01T13:45:08.477" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="665" PostId="389" Score="0" Text="AS to the 'list of bloggers', J.D. Long is a good candidate, I think. http://www.cerebralmastication.com/" CreationDate="2010-09-01T17:45:40.320" UserId="795" />
  <row Id="666" PostId="389" Score="0" Text="@srikant we should be able to measure the 'rate of question flow'. with statistics!" CreationDate="2010-09-01T17:54:23.823" UserId="795" />
  <row Id="669" PostId="389" Score="0" Text="@shabbychef yes there is opportunity for us to analyze our own performance! But, I think we do not have access the raw data. We would need the raw data for not only our site but comparable sites such as math.stackexchange.com, mathoverflow, cstheory etc." CreationDate="2010-09-01T18:28:09.287" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="670" PostId="389" Score="1" Text="That's currently possible with the `overflowr` package (see related question).  http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3533334/how-to-scrape-table-like-data-from-stackexchange-homepage-in-r/3533396#3533396  And I reiterate my point from here: please feel free to contribute to this package!  http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/328/r-stackexchange-package" CreationDate="2010-09-01T18:54:13.697" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="679" PostId="389" Score="0" Text="@shane I do not know enough about R to contribute which may also explain why I am having issues compiling the package on my windows platform!" CreationDate="2010-09-02T13:58:15.067" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="686" PostId="389" Score="0" Text="Got it; sorry!  I'll post instructions over the weekend.  BTW. I think that it's time for you to learn R!  :)" CreationDate="2010-09-02T14:40:18.113" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="714" PostId="389" Score="0" Text="@shane Please drop in a comment as and when you get a chance to post some instructions. Learning R is on my agenda and I may use this package as an excuse to move that agenda forward!" CreationDate="2010-09-06T23:35:51.657" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="647" PostId="390" Score="0" Text="You mean, to read the answer/question and automatically tag it based on the code?  I don't think that's planned; it would be fairly difficult to implement.  But having people provide multiple different language solutions is a nice idea." CreationDate="2010-08-31T15:53:16.463" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="648" PostId="390" Score="0" Text="Yes; this is proposed for syntax highlighting in some blogging system, via Pygments, Coderay or things like that." CreationDate="2010-08-31T15:58:43.630" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="649" PostId="390" Score="0" Text="Wow.  That would be pretty neat.  Feel free to make a feature request either here or on meta.stackoverflow.com." CreationDate="2010-08-31T16:03:02.843" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="650" PostId="390" Score="0" Text="Actually, we have to add manually a language type to the code chunk in markdown, e.g. {% highlight python %}; so this would rely on users goodwill. However, it could provide both syntax highlighting and tagging. I'll ask for the feature and see how users react to it." CreationDate="2010-08-31T16:21:06.383" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="664" PostId="390" Score="0" Text="then a moderator could edit questions to add the highlighting, assuming the rate of new questions is not so high." CreationDate="2010-09-01T17:41:42.340" UserId="795" />
  <row Id="653" PostId="391" Score="0" Text="I think that's a great idea.  I would love to see more real problem solving on the site." CreationDate="2010-08-31T21:09:21.377" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="663" PostId="391" Score="0" Text="the secretive nature of my work prevents me from sharing any real data, although I could come up with synthetic data possibly..." CreationDate="2010-09-01T17:40:08.147" UserId="795" />
  <row Id="668" PostId="391" Score="0" Text="I've got a similar problem, chef - which is why we've got to prod everybody else into doing it :p" CreationDate="2010-09-01T18:15:49.157" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="697" PostId="392" Score="1" Text="Added in the Stata modules. Also I have found the MlwiN online tutorials very helpful, which can be found here http://www.cmm.bristol.ac.uk/learning-training/index.shtml . Also should the free Goldstein book be included in the suggested reading materials? Although it is not as beginner friendly as Gelman's or Bryk and Raudenbush, google scholar does say it is cited by over 4,000 papers. Here is one link to it but their may be more appropriate ones, http://www.cmm.bristol.ac.uk/team/HG_Personal/multbook1995.pdf" CreationDate="2010-09-03T03:13:20.717" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="657" PostId="393" Score="1" Text="I was happy to have been chosen as the overlapping example :-) But R is struggling to overcome matlab on stack and needs more questions :-P" CreationDate="2010-09-01T15:16:17.050" UserId="339" />
  <row Id="658" PostId="393" Score="1" Text="I (for one) wouldn't mind if more of the stackoverflow questions came over here.  Especially if they aren't purely programming questions." CreationDate="2010-09-01T15:31:34.767" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="659" PostId="394" Score="0" Text="I would re-formulate the question as: &quot;Why are seasoned statisticians not using the site? What would motivate them to start participating?&quot;" CreationDate="2010-09-01T16:34:18.807" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="662" PostId="396" Score="1" Text="It's probably hard for people to see whether a user is 'participating and contributing back,' other than the '#% accept rate,' which is kind of weak. Given that this is a statistics stack, perhaps we can come up with a *better* summary statistic(s) which describe how the user is contributing." CreationDate="2010-09-01T17:36:28.933" UserId="795" />
  <row Id="10759" PostId="396" Score="0" Text="It takes a while for the user to vote, or for that matter, to do anything on the site. One needs 15 points to vote at all, and that knowledge is layered slowly. Best approach is not to lament the fish not caught, there are many more fish in the ocean than in the fishing pail." CreationDate="2016-09-14T05:18:22.013" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="675" PostId="397" Score="0" Text="err, are we talking about the meta site or the stats?" CreationDate="2010-09-02T13:41:16.643" UserId="1124" />
  <row Id="678" PostId="397" Score="0" Text="On the main site." CreationDate="2010-09-02T13:49:57.913" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="707" PostId="397" Score="2" Text="Given that creating tags requires only 150 rep at present (1500 for SO -- will the same thresholds transfer once we're out of beta?) it's not entirely clear how much this issue needs independent discussion. Consistent tagging is helpful, but tags aren't worth much unless attached to pertinent questions. (Eg, I have an emotional sense that `[biostatistics]` would be a good tag, but can't think of a question that merits its creation.)" CreationDate="2010-09-03T21:22:38.430" UserId="174" />
  <row Id="9743" PostId="397" Score="3" Text="-1 because of what @walkytalky said. I think this whole Meta thread is not needed (at least not in 2016)." CreationDate="2016-04-07T17:35:39.633" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9747" PostId="397" Score="1" Text="It's not really &quot;too broad&quot; (as somebody voted to close it for), but I joined the closing vote anyway, just because this thread is better off closed." CreationDate="2016-04-07T20:37:13.970" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9749" PostId="397" Score="1" Text="@amoeba I actually think &quot;too broad&quot; is correct. In simple cases users can usually create their own tag, the meta discussion is necessary only for lower rep users and complex cases where discussion of pros and cons (and possibly entire alternative systems of tags - say, a topic that might be subdivided into 2 or 3 tags but it isn't obvious where to draw the lines) and &quot;one suggestion per answer&quot; is unsuitable for such discussion. In that sense this thread is too broad and new suggestions are best made as separate threads." CreationDate="2016-04-08T06:10:19.653" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="660" PostId="398" Score="0" Text="I think this is useful, but one question will be whether it passes the &quot;meta-tag&quot; argument..." CreationDate="2010-09-01T17:18:22.077" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="695" PostId="398" Score="0" Text="On tex.SE there is an explicit one-time-only &quot;meta-tag&quot; exemption for `[big-list]`. (For now, at least -- that site is in flux too.)" CreationDate="2010-09-02T17:33:39.860" UserId="174" />
  <row Id="700" PostId="398" Score="0" Text="I like the idea of having a single meta-tag [big-list]." CreationDate="2010-09-03T08:13:45.663" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="9744" PostId="398" Score="1" Text="-1. [Big-list] has been eliminated in 2015: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1846." CreationDate="2016-04-07T17:36:31.967" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="661" PostId="399" Score="0" Text="Regarding redundant tags, please not them on the &quot;tag rename suggestions&quot; question and a moderator will merge them.  Or use a tag synonym." CreationDate="2010-09-01T17:24:51.487" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="672" PostId="399" Score="0" Text="A number of the examples you gave are already synonyms. For example, {book, books} and {modeling, modelling}. Click on the modelling tag to see." CreationDate="2010-09-02T08:13:24.283" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="694" PostId="399" Score="0" Text="@csgillespie: Thanks.  I did not expect synonyms to appear in the lists, but rather to be automatically mapped to the preferred tag." CreationDate="2010-09-02T16:41:17.603" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="699" PostId="399" Score="0" Text="I agree - I didn't expect synonyms to appear. Initially I thought I created the synonym incorrectly." CreationDate="2010-09-03T08:13:14.033" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="673" PostId="401" Score="0" Text="+1 from me....." CreationDate="2010-09-02T13:18:50.527" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="674" PostId="401" Score="0" Text="I tend to think this type of question should be allowed. So I support re-opening." CreationDate="2010-09-02T13:31:35.897" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="682" PostId="401" Score="1" Text="I agree w.r.t. to the SAS question, but not for this question: http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2282/counting-how-many-times-a-package-has-been-loaded-in-r-closed.  I am fine with questions about *how to use tools* in general, but I don't think that we should have major discussions about the tools themselves." CreationDate="2010-09-02T14:35:20.970" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="683" PostId="401" Score="0" Text="BTW. That's three votes from moderators, so I will reopen the question.  The community can vote to close in a normal fashion on this question going forward." CreationDate="2010-09-02T14:35:56.713" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="684" PostId="401" Score="2" Text="One final comment: I think that this is a very bad question.  It doesn't give any background or provide any reason for people to consider it outside of this small problem.  I much prefer having questions that will be of more general interest." CreationDate="2010-09-02T14:38:40.190" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="680" PostId="402" Score="1" Text="@Matt I am sure many experts would agree that data visualizations are as important as statistical analysis. See today's post on [line plots](http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2010/09/r_needs_a_good.html) by Andrew Gelman as an example. By the way, while I myself share your opinion that they are boring, do also note that what may be boring to one person may be exciting to another. In addition, generating good plots is hard and requires several years of practice and hence needs expert answers." CreationDate="2010-09-02T14:27:00.607" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="688" PostId="402" Score="2" Text="I agree, and I fully support the inclusion of data visualization at this site.  I don't agree, however, that every question relating to the technical production of plots is appropriate for this site.  If the questions relate to the conceptual and aesthetic aspects of a plot, then I think that's fine; if it relates strictly to the programming required to produce said plot, I don't think that's appropriate.  If someone asked how to reproduce a plot in Processing, for example, I think it would be more clear that that would be better off at SO." CreationDate="2010-09-02T15:07:46.577" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="689" PostId="402" Score="1" Text="And with regards to things being boring: you're right, of course.  But the reason we have multiple Stack sites is so that people can maximize the amount of interesting stuff they see.  I'm trying to ensure that experts in statistical analysis, machine learning, and data visualization see interesting things when they come here - not data IO questions." CreationDate="2010-09-02T15:10:15.373" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="690" PostId="402" Score="3" Text="Let me put on my marketing hat for a second and address the issue from that perspective. The site's customers are experts and novices in data analysis (broadly speaking). Clearly we need both kinds for a site such as ours to thrive. So, what are the needs of our customers. They can vary a lot but I would classify them in the following broad categories: (a) Ask/answer theoretical aspects of data analysis and (b) Ask/answer practical questions of data analysis." CreationDate="2010-09-02T15:15:42.937" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="691" PostId="402" Score="5" Text="A practical statistician would perform the following tasks: 1. Exploratory data analysis, 2. Analyze the data using several models, 3. Evaluate model fit and 4. Generate plots to communicate the results of the analysis to a wider audience. We should be a 'one-stop-shop' for the practical statistician. From a marketing and convenience perspective, it does not make sense to tell folks that for A you go to staoverflow, for B you go to stats.stack etc. I will stop here and let others chime in with their thoughts." CreationDate="2010-09-02T15:17:18.030" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="692" PostId="402" Score="2" Text="I agree with you in theory, but let me list some technologies I work with as a practical statistician: R, SAS, Stata, Python, Git, Access, Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Visual Basic, UCInet, ArcGIS, ODBC, Windows XP, Ubuntu, Tinn-R, Notepad, FTPzilla, XML, CSV, TSV, JSON, Internet Explorer (6!)... I use all of those things routinely in analysis.  Should we answer questions about all of that stuff here?  No; I'm being over the top.  From (my) marketing and convenience perspective, it doesn't make sense to make people wade through all of that stuff to browse the things in which they're interested." CreationDate="2010-09-02T16:00:43.473" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="693" PostId="402" Score="1" Text="We're never going to have a definitive rule, and *in practice* I favor being pretty lenient with questions like the ones mentioned above.  But when we're setting policy, I think we need to keep it close to the stats.  I'm actually very happy with the way things are right now - I think we've hit the right balance naturally - so I'm wary of any policy changes that might disturb that.  I'm now going to follow your wise example and see what everyone else has to say." CreationDate="2010-09-02T16:06:40.250" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="1030" PostId="402" Score="1" Text="I disagree that there is any &quot;dilution&quot;; we have tags, we can filter out what we don't want to see. On the other hand, what we really need is some usefulness-mass that will attract googlers; this is something easier to build from technicalities. Finally we need &quot;easy&quot; questions that will enroll newcomers in the reputation marathon. Without those, we will have a private chat place rather than SOFU-class site." CreationDate="2010-10-28T09:00:03.363" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="687" PostId="404" Score="0" Text="Related question: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/252/should-we-allow-more-computing-questions" CreationDate="2010-09-02T14:51:51.177" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="713" PostId="404" Score="0" Text="@Shane: Don't know how I could miss that one. I vote to close this question then." CreationDate="2010-09-06T16:11:50.410" UserId="1124" />
  <row Id="712" PostId="405" Score="0" Text="I didn't paraphrase your argument, I would have mentioned it otherwise. But I agree, the line of thinking is about the same, and you definitely have a point there." CreationDate="2010-09-06T16:10:47.853" UserId="1124" />
  <row Id="701" PostId="406" Score="4" Text="Maybe we could work on putting together a pretty comprehensive list of such groups to add to the FAQ.  Then, whenever such software questions came up, we could just point askers to that list." CreationDate="2010-09-03T13:49:34.293" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="702" PostId="406" Score="2" Text="I was thinking about posting a community wiki question on the main forum where people list resources for each of these software packages. I'm not sure whether it should be posted in questions, on tag wiki's, or in a FAQ (or all three), but I agree the site should have such a list to direct people towards for different packages." CreationDate="2010-09-03T15:10:17.230" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="709" PostId="406" Score="2" Text="This is an interesting debate and I find it more of a debate about commercial vs open source software. There are ton of R-specific questions on this site already. I can't claim to have done an exhaustive search but I cannot find any R-specific questions that have any comments regarding &quot;this should be on another forum&quot;. And there are certainly plenty of R forums. That there is a double standard is understandable, but let's call a spade a spade. Most people on this site don't mind the R and Python related questions because those are open source tools." CreationDate="2010-09-05T02:51:17.170" UserId="1080" />
  <row Id="715" PostId="406" Score="0" Text="@Josh, sorry for the late response. I understand where you are coming from, although in my opinion whether the software is SAS or R makes no difference to me. If the question was &quot;How do you import a csv file into R?&quot; I would have thought it was inappropriate as well (although probably over 100 people on the forum could answer the question in less than a minute!). I would think of the divide more so in terms of what people are trying to do with the software, as opposed to what the software is. R probably has no equivalent to the SAS products the original question asked about." CreationDate="2010-09-07T03:14:28.613" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="720" PostId="406" Score="0" Text="Sorry Andy, I was not trying to single you out, others have had similar views. There is a post today about an error running an ANOVA in R and which package to use to get a sphericity. A reasonable question, and no one has said anything about it not being appropriate, but to me it fails the criteria listed in this debate for what is a valid question. If the exact same question was about an error running ANOVA in SAS I think there would be numerous comments about &quot;post somewhere else&quot;. Hopefully SA keeps focus on analysis but it is impossible to detach software from the discussion." CreationDate="2010-09-07T16:04:38.393" UserId="1080" />
  <row Id="724" PostId="407" Score="0" Text="What would be an example of &quot;general&quot; vs &quot;specific&quot;?" CreationDate="2010-09-07T19:37:21.463" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="725" PostId="407" Score="1" Text="General: statistics, probability, modeling.  Specific: computational-statistics, conditional-probability, random-effects-model.  (All are actual examples.)  Somewhat contrary to what I wrote in the question, it seems possible for some tags to be too general to be of much use, such as &quot;statistics.&quot;" CreationDate="2010-09-07T22:57:04.263" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2562" PostId="407" Score="1" Text="It seems there are several threads roughly related to this (and this is one) but I can't find a point blank answer to the question - when should you (or not) create a tag? A few minutes ago on this thread: http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/27550/why-is-the-power-for-this-test-so-low, I created the `z-test` tag, because it seemed odd to me that it didn't exist. But, I didn't know if it was bad form to just create it out of nowhere since it's so similar to the `t-test` tag (which I could've used instead). Is there a link to a discussion on this or should I create a new question?" CreationDate="2012-06-08T14:23:57.727" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2563" PostId="407" Score="0" Text="@Macro The SE [FAQ on tags](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/18879/166924) may have what you are looking for.  I found the emphasis on using *broad* tags to be especially interesting." CreationDate="2012-06-08T14:28:28.140" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="703" PostId="408" Score="0" Text="Are there any questions that this could be applied to right now?" CreationDate="2010-09-03T19:57:09.663" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="704" PostId="408" Score="0" Text="+1 just for the lovely vocabulary :D I've never heard of the DACE acronym, and nor it seems has Wikipedia -- did you make it up? -- but I agree that the concept is a useful one." CreationDate="2010-09-03T20:06:37.170" UserId="174" />
  <row Id="705" PostId="408" Score="0" Text="@walkytalky wish I had, but I did not. see e.g. http://books.google.com/books?id=O1itua2QzFkC&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;dq=design+and+analysis+of+computer+experiments&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=Y_K2ptT6Ok&amp;sig=cRkElqH-A0-OKJZOZQFNPpb2mBU&amp;hl=en&amp;ei=0l-BTI2rDYL88Ab9iYWKAw&amp;sa=X&amp;oi=book_result&amp;ct=result&amp;resnum=4&amp;ved=0CC4Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false or look for e.g. Kriging in wikipedia." CreationDate="2010-09-03T20:52:34.933" UserId="795" />
  <row Id="706" PostId="408" Score="0" Text="@Shane: my own question on viewing a multivariate function might be applicable (at least that's how such visualization will be applied in my case...)" CreationDate="2010-09-03T20:53:50.003" UserId="795" />
  <row Id="9745" PostId="408" Score="1" Text="-1. Five and a half years later, there is still no such tag. Nobody felt it was really needed." CreationDate="2016-04-07T17:37:55.223" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="710" PostId="411" Score="0" Text="Great suggestion! @mbq has emailed the stack exchange team regarding this issue." CreationDate="2010-09-06T07:56:06.997" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="716" PostId="412" Score="0" Text="I am posting the site names along with descriptions before we launch the poll (probably later today).  **Please do not vote on these answers!**" CreationDate="2010-09-07T13:06:53.603" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="717" PostId="412" Score="0" Text="Perhaps, you should lock the answers." CreationDate="2010-09-07T13:26:32.903" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="718" PostId="412" Score="0" Text="I would rather not; I am happy for people to enhance these answers further as I just quickly threw them together.  **Please feel free to improve these descriptions!**" CreationDate="2010-09-07T13:39:52.090" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="719" PostId="412" Score="0" Text="That makes sense to me." CreationDate="2010-09-07T13:45:11.980" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="737" PostId="412" Score="0" Text="Just to clarify, when it says &quot;please vote in order of preference&quot; does it mean *descending* order? ie first first, second second and third third?" CreationDate="2010-09-09T08:05:28.387" UserId="174" />
  <row Id="741" PostId="412" Score="0" Text="@walkytalky: That's right.  Low scores are better (like in golf)." CreationDate="2010-09-09T14:34:16.320" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="763" PostId="412" Score="0" Text="As a giant nerd, I would just like to say how glad I am that we're doing actual preferential votes.  Thanks to whomever made that happen (Shane?)" CreationDate="2010-09-13T17:37:57.507" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="764" PostId="412" Score="0" Text="@Matt: It takes a village.  :)" CreationDate="2010-09-13T18:41:51.300" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="777" PostId="412" Score="0" Text="Are we voting for a domain name? If so it will be hard to be both original and catchy." CreationDate="2010-09-16T04:36:00.820" UserId="521" />
  <row Id="792" PostId="412" Score="0" Text="@Thylacoleo yes we are voting for the domain name. See this link: http://stats.stackexchange.com/polls/2/what-should-our-domain-name-be" CreationDate="2010-09-17T01:18:05.437" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="711" PostId="413" Score="1" Text="Thanks Jeff. It actually works pretty well on R code because of some similarities with C and use of the familiar # for comments. We could improve it if someone wrote an R extension as discussed at http://google-code-prettify.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/README.html" CreationDate="2010-09-06T09:52:24.890" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="17044" PostId="413" Score="0" Text="Has this feature been deprecated? R code chunks still seem to be &quot;flat&quot;?" CreationDate="2018-12-23T14:09:01.517" UserId="8013" />
  <row Id="749" PostId="414" Score="0" Text="Please do not vote on these answers!! There is a separate poll running. (read question)" CreationDate="2010-09-10T18:31:58.893" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="751" PostId="414" Score="0" Text="Downvoted to restore vote count to 0. Do not upvote or downvote." CreationDate="2010-09-10T18:55:49.037" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="793" PostId="414" Score="0" Text="Downvoted from 2 to 1 to help move the count back to 0 as it should be left, can someone please downvote once more to restore 0?" CreationDate="2010-09-17T13:58:25.020" UserId="364" />
  <row Id="22661" PostId="414" Score="0" Text="@Shane the link is 404" CreationDate="2024-01-09T04:05:13.390" UserId="59765" />
  <row Id="794" PostId="415" Score="0" Text="Downvoted to restore vote count to zero." CreationDate="2010-09-17T13:58:42.320" UserId="364" />
  <row Id="745" PostId="418" Score="0" Text="Please do not vote on these answers!!  There is a separate poll running." CreationDate="2010-09-09T17:01:26.820" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="746" PostId="418" Score="0" Text="Upvoted to restore vote count to 0. Please do not upvote this further." CreationDate="2010-09-09T18:52:32.667" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="721" PostId="419" Score="0" Text="+1 I've been thinking of the same thing.  Great idea!" CreationDate="2010-09-07T17:26:01.683" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="757" PostId="419" Score="0" Text="Like this idea.  But can we avoid the emphasis on *statistics* through the name &quot;polystats&quot;?" CreationDate="2010-09-12T16:39:29.823" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="758" PostId="419" Score="0" Text="@ars Sure, we can. What would you suggest? Polydata seems kind of weak, Polyanalysis seems kind of generic. Any ideas?" CreationDate="2010-09-13T00:18:46.497" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="760" PostId="419" Score="0" Text="Besides, it seems from the current CW question that suggestions are more in the direction of a data driven project.  polydata reflects that, rather than potentially misleading assumptions that we'll be proving statistics theorems with analogy to polymath." CreationDate="2010-09-13T00:58:38.133" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="761" PostId="419" Score="0" Text="@ars I do not like polydata because it is not informative about what we are doing. The focus of the projects is on analysis of a particular dataset rather than some specific dataset per se. I agree that we are not necessarily proving theorems but 'stats' is not necessarily synonymous with proving theorems. Shall we wait for others to chip in with some suggestions?" CreationDate="2010-09-13T02:00:08.697" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="762" PostId="419" Score="0" Text="Generic, uninformative?  Heresy.  It's *all* about the data, dude!  :)  Sure, let's wait, though it occurs to me it might be too late to change now.  Unfortunate that we have a statistics-centric tendency, but so it goes." CreationDate="2010-09-13T02:45:34.267" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="765" PostId="419" Score="0" Text="@Srikant: by the way, I think this is a great idea and thanks for taking the initiative, so hope I didn't come out sounding negative about that aspect.  Deleted an earlier comment because think it might have sounded inadvertently snippy!" CreationDate="2010-09-13T20:01:52.917" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="766" PostId="419" Score="0" Text="I should add that my broad goal is to get more machine learning types involved here and I worry site names and project names prevent that.  That was really behind my concern." CreationDate="2010-09-14T04:36:18.650" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="767" PostId="419" Score="0" Text="@ars I understand the issue and I am open to new ideas as long as they relate to what we are trying to do. Polyanalysis seems to be the one that is neutral in tone and is related to what we are doing." CreationDate="2010-09-14T11:29:20.497" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="776" PostId="419" Score="0" Text="@Srikant: on reflection, I think it's a nice and short name that works, or at least that there's no urgent need to &quot;fix&quot; it.  If this project gains notoriety, it should draw people to the site regardless.  And since our site name should change soon, it won't sound exclusive to people visiting from outside statistical disciplines. Thanks. :)" CreationDate="2010-09-15T22:21:48.770" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="722" PostId="420" Score="2" Text="I am inclined to start small so that we do not get discouraged too easily and in order to better understand what sort of ground rules we need to have. As an example, [Terrence Tao](http://terrytao.wordpress.com/) recently moderated a [mini-polymath project](http://polymathprojects.org/2010/07/08/minipolymath2-project-imo-2010-q5/) on a problem that was posed in the math olympiad. Small projects will enable us to achieve success relatively easily and we could then move on the big ones." CreationDate="2010-09-07T17:54:12.053" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="723" PostId="420" Score="0" Text="That's a fair point.  Well, I think that this requires two things beyond the existing site to work effectively: a group blog and a wiki (similar to Terrence Tao's approach).  I'm happy to set these up unless someone else has a burning desire to do so." CreationDate="2010-09-07T18:02:08.187" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="727" PostId="420" Score="0" Text="In response to your edit- I am inclined to wait for another day and ask a question on the main site seeking potential ideas for our first polystats project with some suggested guidelines for our first project. Asking on the meta may result in a sub-optimal choice as the voice of the community would be mis-represented. Note that not everyone visits the meta site." CreationDate="2010-09-08T03:00:53.970" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="728" PostId="420" Score="0" Text="Good ideas ... I remember that it is written somewhere that if the subject is already known in advance by participating people, the starting of the project is too chaotic and the principle of collaborative thinking cannot rise.... how to deal with that ?" CreationDate="2010-09-08T13:44:26.853" UserId="223" />
  <row Id="729" PostId="420" Score="0" Text="@robin I have no ideas on that issue. Perhaps, we can just wait and see how a polystats project will evolve. Of course, there is the possibility that it will not take off at all." CreationDate="2010-09-08T17:17:15.490" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="730" PostId="420" Score="0" Text="@Srikant: Would a discussion of a polystats project be &quot;on-topic&quot; on the main site?" CreationDate="2010-09-08T17:45:07.987" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="731" PostId="420" Score="0" Text="@shane I would not pose it as as a discussion. Rather, the way I would phrase it is: &quot;What should be our first polystats project?&quot; with a link provided to this meta thread. I would of course suggest some guidelines as to what which type of projects could qualify for our first project. The answers and the associated votes would determine our first project. A clear question in need of specific answers. I have been thinking of one issue though: I think polystats project related questions should not get rep but answers should get rep. Is this possible?" CreationDate="2010-09-08T18:30:05.383" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="732" PostId="420" Score="0" Text="@shane In fact on second thoughts, for the first question mentioned above the answers should also be CW so that answers can be downvoted/upvoted without rep issues. However, for other phases of the project (e.g., model spec, analysis etc) it would be ideal if the qn itself got no rep but the answers do get rep. This is required because asking the qn itself is trivial and is more of a moderator type of work but providing good answers may not be easy and hence needs to be rewarded by rep." CreationDate="2010-09-08T18:50:23.270" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="748" PostId="422" Score="3" Text="Thank you for the reminder about the tag limitation: I had forgotten that.  It certainly influences what one can do.  I don't see how using a combination of tags is user-unfriendly, though.  Considering that the alternative is to find a tag specific to one's question--and there might be many of them--it seems to me that the ability to give a list of terms that are vaguely related to one's question and home in on material that is somewhat related to all the terms is going to permit more successful searches that attempting to identify specific tags a priori." CreationDate="2010-09-10T02:26:09.347" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="828" PostId="422" Score="1" Text="+1 in that general tags are not helpful once a site matures.  delicious is a great example (and appropriate since it brought tagging to the web) -- it's a lot easier to find relevant bookmarks when you have a specific tags in mind.  I think the combination of tags can be helpful though -- at least on StackOverflow, I find myself looking through say &quot;python + regression&quot; or &quot;R + web-scraping&quot; more often than any of those terms by themselves." CreationDate="2010-09-23T15:05:05.110" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="733" PostId="423" Score="0" Text="+1 Thanks for starting the discussion." CreationDate="2010-09-08T21:33:14.480" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="734" PostId="424" Score="0" Text="+1 for the last sentence. You're right, innocent until proven otherwise." CreationDate="2010-09-08T22:33:41.813" UserId="1124" />
  <row Id="755" PostId="424" Score="0" Text="+1, chill a bit, mull it over, pull back the trigger fingers, then decide.  I too think this could have been an interesting question.  Sometimes it's OK to go ahead and give an answer even to an ill posed question -- often, this encourages questioners (especially new users) to refine their question." CreationDate="2010-09-12T06:19:56.260" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="735" PostId="425" Score="0" Text="What's the issue with using the code function? If someone does not know R they can just skip the code anyway and read the rest of the answer. That's what I do anyway as I do not know R." CreationDate="2010-09-08T23:24:01.183" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="736" PostId="425" Score="2" Text="Or you can provide a link to the code somewhere else (eg github, google code, personal website)." CreationDate="2010-09-09T03:09:13.290" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="738" PostId="425" Score="0" Text="@Srikant : In the question I linked to, you need to understand which distribution is made and which test is done to follow the answer. And I'd like to provide the code for reproducibility, as everybody can make mistakes. Otherwise I can make any plot I want and tell you it's something else (erroneously, let us assume nobody wants to cheat.)" CreationDate="2010-09-09T08:29:02.770" UserId="1124" />
  <row Id="739" PostId="425" Score="0" Text="@Shane : I could indeed, but I am not familiar with github / google code, and I'm not planning on a code database on a personal website. It would just be very nice to be able to add the code like you can add comments." CreationDate="2010-09-09T08:30:29.493" UserId="1124" />
  <row Id="740" PostId="425" Score="0" Text="@Joris I understand why you want to give the code. But, I am confused why you think giving the code as part of the text itself is not helpful. Perhaps, you can give the code at the end of your answer using the code function so that it does not obstruct the flow of your answer. I guess my basic question is: what additional benefit would an &quot;attachment functionality&quot; above and beyond the benefits of the code function?" CreationDate="2010-09-09T14:16:54.477" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="742" PostId="425" Score="0" Text="@Srikant : with a bit of plot making, there's quite a bit of code. This would push other answers further down, lowering the chance they get read. OK, good for me as my answer takes away attention from others, but not a nice thing. I still believe adding the code is a valuable thing, as long as it stays out of the way from the real answer." CreationDate="2010-09-09T14:40:06.923" UserId="1124" />
  <row Id="743" PostId="425" Score="0" Text="Does anyone know if the code function introduces scroll bars if the the code has too many lines? If it does then that may address the above concern to some extent." CreationDate="2010-09-09T15:04:37.737" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="744" PostId="425" Score="3" Text="To answer my own question- a bit of an experiment shows that the code function introduces vertical scroll bars after 33 lines of code. So, massively long code will not increase the length of the answer which mitigates some of the concern mentioned above." CreationDate="2010-09-09T15:16:00.940" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="756" PostId="426" Score="1" Text="Not crazy about this -- *rarely* do things get re-opened and for good reason.  People get offended, or feel stupid, move on, interest is lost.  If someone asks a question, and it seems like it's potentially worthy even if ill-posed, then lets keep the momentum going.  Give an answer, write a comment -- I think you'll find that engaging the questioners gets them to refine their questions more often than not.  Otherwise they give up.  Closing a question should really be a last resort." CreationDate="2010-09-12T06:23:32.367" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="754" PostId="429" Score="1" Text="+1, gist or any pastebin site is a great way to handle this." CreationDate="2010-09-12T06:16:11.237" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="750" PostId="430" Score="0" Text="Yes, I had initially posted there but given that this request is specific to polystats I thought it may be better to post it here with a feature--request tag. I deleted my post from meta.stackoverflow before posting it here." CreationDate="2010-09-10T18:34:17.623" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="752" PostId="430" Score="0" Text="@Srikant Bad idea; SE team is not visiting this meta too often." CreationDate="2010-09-10T22:32:14.097" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="753" PostId="430" Score="0" Text="Let us wait for a few days. I was under the impression that anything tagged bug / feature-request gets their attention automatically (i.e., they do not have to visit meta as such to get notification of such requests). Is that not true?" CreationDate="2010-09-11T00:57:38.813" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="769" PostId="431" Score="0" Text="Currently implementing this workaround." CreationDate="2010-09-14T18:11:10.753" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="768" PostId="433" Score="5" Text="I'd be wary of referring people to MathOverflow unless their needs are fairly high-end. [Math.SE](http://math.stackexchange.com) may be a more suitable alternative. I'd agree that a lot of probability questions fit here, though." CreationDate="2010-09-14T12:45:03.630" UserId="174" />
  <row Id="770" PostId="433" Score="1" Text="Oh yeah, good point!" CreationDate="2010-09-14T21:23:06.377" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="771" PostId="435" Score="0" Text="I am a bit confused by your answer. Don't you mean that you are against leaving polystats questions as CW?" CreationDate="2010-09-14T21:51:29.890" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="772" PostId="435" Score="0" Text="As I wrote, I just think they should be CW." CreationDate="2010-09-14T22:48:59.610" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="773" PostId="435" Score="0" Text="Ok. I see your point but I feel that badges are not a sufficient motivator as they are not as prominent as rep. What is the downside of having rep for answers?" CreationDate="2010-09-14T22:58:36.863" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="774" PostId="435" Score="0" Text="Downvoting hurts, so people are less willing to downvote bad ideas, answers in discussion-like threads are generating more reputation than in regular questions, what is a bit unfair, finally in CW people are free to edit other posts, so answers may evolve." CreationDate="2010-09-15T12:49:07.953" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="775" PostId="435" Score="1" Text="Yes downvoting hurts but you also need to encourage well thought out answers. I suppose that instead of downvoting a proposal that they do not like maybe people can upvote a proposal they do like. They also have the option of not voting but commenting on a answer to indicate which aspect they do not like. I suggest that we continue with the way it right now and change the system as needed for future iterations of these projects. Does that sound reasonable?" CreationDate="2010-09-15T18:32:03.433" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="780" PostId="436" Score="0" Text="Cool!  When I read the earlier version, I initially thought that probability was conspicuously absent." CreationDate="2010-09-16T15:06:22.700" UserId="386" />
  <row Id="778" PostId="437" Score="0" Text="As an extension to this should the moderators be able to choose to not have the question bounced back to the top for any edits they do?" CreationDate="2010-09-16T12:31:59.613" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="779" PostId="437" Score="0" Text="I was under the impression that mods can do 'silent edits' i.e., if a mod edits a tag the question will *not* bounce up. But, that seems to be incorrect." CreationDate="2010-09-16T14:05:18.603" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="781" PostId="438" Score="0" Text="@mbq not a big issue. Nevertheless, my question still remains. Isn't there a mod feature that lets you do invisible edits?" CreationDate="2010-09-16T17:13:42.843" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="782" PostId="438" Score="0" Text="Don't think you need to be sorry, this is a feature not a bug. :)  See my answer -- in particular, can mods change the default view for the front page?" CreationDate="2010-09-16T17:54:58.857" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="787" PostId="438" Score="0" Text="@ars, @Srikant I was joking with that sorry. Seriously speaking, there is no special mod edit mode; only SE team can run scripts that do such hidden modifications." CreationDate="2010-09-16T18:53:29.733" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="795" PostId="438" Score="0" Text="@mbq renames can be done silently" CreationDate="2010-09-18T04:41:05.410" UserId="123" />
  <row Id="796" PostId="438" Score="0" Text="@Jeff renames yes, removals (AFAIK) no. Also this was rather a campaign to clean out esoteric leftovers and badly tagged questions  from the beginning of the site when almost anyone could create a tag." CreationDate="2010-09-18T09:45:21.257" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="797" PostId="438" Score="0" Text="@Jeff To this end, we were planning to propose silent retags on chat cast." CreationDate="2010-09-18T09:47:27.123" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="783" PostId="439" Score="0" Text="Hmm.  Is it just me, or is the hot view from the tab on the front page slightly different than the hot view after you clicking on questions?  Is this a caching issue?" CreationDate="2010-09-16T18:12:31.653" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="784" PostId="439" Score="0" Text="@ars What you say makes sense for a single re-tag. But, we should also find a way to discourage massive re-tag. Massive re-tags should ideally by silent edits as they are fixing some issue that we have with tags (e.g., eliminate useless tags, change tags to something appropriate etc) As far as I understand the 'active' tab is the default tab for most of us and the effect of a massive re-tag is very perplexing at first." CreationDate="2010-09-16T18:15:51.970" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="785" PostId="439" Score="0" Text="Also if you change the tab, the site remembers it." CreationDate="2010-09-16T18:38:53.157" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="786" PostId="439" Score="0" Text="@Srikant: right, active is the default, so my suggestion was to make &quot;hot&quot; the default.  Keep in mind that detecting massive re-tags might be desirable if due to malicious activity, spamming, etc." CreationDate="2010-09-16T18:43:23.670" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="788" PostId="439" Score="0" Text="@ars Your point about 'detecting massive retags' makes sense. I am almost about to give up on the idea of silent edits with perhaps one exception: Perhaps, the silent edit should be a mod feature to be implemented after community consensus? What do you think about that?" CreationDate="2010-09-16T19:21:57.693" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="789" PostId="439" Score="0" Text="@Srikant: the issue with silent edits is that they're not subject to review.  This may not be desirable but this is subjective -- I tend to favor more open systems." CreationDate="2010-09-16T20:34:59.687" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="790" PostId="439" Score="0" Text="@ars Even I am in favor of open review and hence the requirement that mods can do silent edit only if community reaches consensus on meta on some particular re-tag. At least that is what I meant in my previous comment." CreationDate="2010-09-16T22:18:24.040" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="791" PostId="439" Score="0" Text="@Srikant: oh, I get what you're saying now.  Not sure it's *necessary* though -- sounds like layering a process where the results aren't objectionable as they stand.  Re-tagging is already subject to review as it happens in the open and easily corrected.  Switching tabs to New or Hot is pretty easy to overcome the sorting issue." CreationDate="2010-09-17T00:05:01.650" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="798" PostId="441" Score="0" Text="@mbq I am glad to see this thread." CreationDate="2010-09-19T16:47:34.130" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="801" PostId="441" Score="1" Text="@Srinkant I just hope it will gather some attention..." CreationDate="2010-09-19T16:52:10.433" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="805" PostId="441" Score="0" Text="@mbq I am sure it will gather more attention than the chat threads and in any case I feel that this is a step in the right direction. At least we are taking due diligence by seeking community opinion." CreationDate="2010-09-19T16:59:35.040" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="818" PostId="441" Score="0" Text="+1, great idea: thanks mbq and Srikant!" CreationDate="2010-09-23T05:21:51.840" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="866" PostId="441" Score="1" Text="I think that tags that are only attached to a single question are removed automatically after 6 months. Unfortunately, I can't find the meta.SO thread that mentioned this." CreationDate="2010-10-02T20:41:49.750" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="871" PostId="441" Score="1" Text="@csgillespie And what happens to questions that will be left untagged by this process? On the other hand we can ask on Teachers' Lounge." CreationDate="2010-10-03T17:21:27.360" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="817" PostId="443" Score="1" Text="Could these be coloured in a special way to differentiate them from the rest? (for instance, I see that the &quot;featured&quot; tag is red in this discussion)" CreationDate="2010-09-22T07:30:19.627" UserId="582" />
  <row Id="816" PostId="444" Score="0" Text="I guess that a bit of effort should be taken to fill in the &quot;tag info&quot; (by those who are allowed to of course) when using abbreviations. In that case if I see `pca` and I don't have a clue what it means I can go on the &quot;about this tag&quot; link and read it." CreationDate="2010-09-22T07:27:57.747" UserId="582" />
  <row Id="800" PostId="445" Score="2" Text="Generally, I would agree with this proposal but I would leave issues such as this to grow organically as suggestd by @ars in chat." CreationDate="2010-09-19T16:51:53.777" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="808" PostId="445" Score="1" Text="@Srikant Ok, but this rules are not about how to make a fixed structure, rather than how to control the growth of a flexible one. This also applies to term and app/proglang proposal." CreationDate="2010-09-19T21:06:48.893" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="802" PostId="446" Score="1" Text="Generally, I would agree with this proposal but I would leave issues such as this to grow organically as suggestd by @ars in chat." CreationDate="2010-09-19T16:52:15.883" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="804" PostId="446" Score="0" Text="@Srikant Ok, I probably missed that issue -- I'll add it as a next rule proposal." CreationDate="2010-09-19T16:54:07.193" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="799" PostId="447" Score="2" Text="Yes, provided the retag is a massive retag across the whole site and hence we need community consensus. Otherwise, no. A retag of an individual question need not have a corresponding meta thread unless it attracts controversy." CreationDate="2010-09-19T16:49:53.767" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="810" PostId="447" Score="0" Text="@Srikant So downvote it and post your proposition as an answer. This thread is intended to become a well established codex made of top-voted answers." CreationDate="2010-09-20T09:02:22.623" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="811" PostId="447" Score="0" Text="Done........" CreationDate="2010-09-20T10:40:22.060" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="803" PostId="448" Score="1" Text="I am not sure this is needed. There will be too many tags and too few high-rep users willing to take care of the tags. This adds extra burden on a few users. Perhaps, we can re-visit this if tag edit wars becomes an issue." CreationDate="2010-09-19T16:53:50.310" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="807" PostId="448" Score="0" Text="I think the number of (good) tags will rise slower than the number of users, so this should scale pretty nice." CreationDate="2010-09-19T20:57:02.657" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="822" PostId="448" Score="1" Text="-1, tags should be *informative*, they don't require shepherds." CreationDate="2010-09-23T13:37:55.587" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="826" PostId="448" Score="0" Text="@ars but people make errors." CreationDate="2010-09-23T14:59:44.637" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="5271" PostId="448" Score="0" Text="I don't think tag caretakers should feel dedicated to any particular tag...and all who understand these issues should take care in addressing them across all tags to the best of their ability." CreationDate="2014-01-27T02:07:10.263" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="809" PostId="450" Score="4" Text="Tagging answers is a very nice idea; frequently OP does not have an idea what is his problem called (this is something very different from SOFU), so he/she applies nonsense tags. On the other hand few minutes after we have a good answer like &quot;Google for X&quot;." CreationDate="2010-09-19T21:12:40.067" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="819" PostId="450" Score="3" Text="Excellent point(s) -- &quot;whuber's three laws of tagging&quot; or that's how *I* intend to refer to these hereafter. :)" CreationDate="2010-09-23T05:23:46.877" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="812" PostId="452" Score="0" Text="Could the downvoter explain why this is not a good idea so that perhaps the weakness of the proposal can me ameliorated?" CreationDate="2010-09-21T14:04:35.423" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="820" PostId="452" Score="0" Text="I didn't downvote this (in fact I upvoted it earlier) .. but maybe add a note to distinguish &quot;housecleaning&quot; massive retags from other kind of retags.  By housecleaning, I mean things like spelling fix, well accepted renaming, etc since it would be nice to not have to go to the community for small matters." CreationDate="2010-09-23T05:29:42.637" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="821" PostId="452" Score="0" Text="@ars makes sense. I will edit the proposal." CreationDate="2010-09-23T11:33:10.800" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="815" PostId="454" Score="0" Text="The time for suggestions has passed. We have now voted on the five top choices and the mods are still figuring out how to best interpret the votes. An announcement will be made shortly." CreationDate="2010-09-22T00:41:06.057" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="848" PostId="455" Score="1" Text="Great news. I love seeing this project moving forward." CreationDate="2010-09-28T22:12:38.583" UserId="253" />
  <row Id="823" PostId="456" Score="2" Text="-1.  Reminds me of the &quot;cold start&quot; problem.  Tags should be informative and &quot;narrowness&quot; is a secondary consideration at best.  See whuber's answer for better considerations.  Also, high rep simply not relevant." CreationDate="2010-09-23T14:30:15.040" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="824" PostId="456" Score="2" Text="I'm pondering the &quot;not relevant comment.&quot;  Tagging is an activity automatically limited to users with a minimum rep, to be sure.  But higher rep implies more experience with the site, more exposure to the constellation of tags, and likely reflects someone with a more refined sense of what is working and what is not.  I personally will be inclined to defer to someone with substantially higher reputation for these reasons." CreationDate="2010-09-23T14:42:51.753" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="825" PostId="456" Score="1" Text="@whuber:  Sorry, I could have been clearer.  I'm looking at the proposition in its entirety: &quot;automatically kill ... unless ...&quot;.  I suppose my primary objection would be to such a rule *automatically* kicking in.  (For example, how does a high rep user even begin to show &quot;support&quot; for a tag *before* it's killed (automatically)?)" CreationDate="2010-09-23T14:55:52.797" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="827" PostId="456" Score="0" Text="It can be done with wiki; I have updated proposal." CreationDate="2010-09-23T15:02:43.633" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="829" PostId="456" Score="1" Text="@mbq: But them we're creating bureaucracy and process for people to support a tag, and none for people who want to kill tags?  In other words, why have such a rule be automatic in the first place?" CreationDate="2010-09-23T15:10:43.230" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="835" PostId="458" Score="1" Text="This one is directly inspired by  http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1826/cross-validation-in-plain-english/1828#1828 and SE logo." CreationDate="2010-09-24T11:35:59.640" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="838" PostId="458" Score="0" Text="This is definitely my favorite.  Great job with these!  My primary thought: it might be better to have the logo itself be more square, and maybe more proportional to the text size?  More like the serverfault logo: http://serverfault.com/" CreationDate="2010-09-26T17:23:19.313" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="839" PostId="458" Score="0" Text="what would be an interpretation of this logo?" CreationDate="2010-09-26T21:20:42.820" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="840" PostId="458" Score="2" Text="See my first comment, it is 5-fold CV scheme (red test-set and  blue train-set interchanging). The overall shape is somehow similar to the SE logo, but this is rather a side effect." CreationDate="2010-09-26T21:23:19.853" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="841" PostId="458" Score="0" Text="@mbq I see the idea now. Isn't that *too close* to the concept of 'crossvalidation'? Perhaps, the logo should be a bit more neutral and lean the opposite direction (i.e., away from crossvalidation) to capture the diversity of our community." CreationDate="2010-09-26T22:12:06.530" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="843" PostId="458" Score="3" Text="@Srikant: I completely disagree.  The idea here is that the logo represents cross-validation, and that cross-validation is a description of what we do on the site.  So the logo should be as close to showing cross-validation *as possible*." CreationDate="2010-09-27T14:07:06.467" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="844" PostId="458" Score="0" Text="@Shane Let me re-state my perspective so that it is clear where I am coming from. The site's name is 'crossvalidated.com' which reminds one of cross validation. However, I rather not have the logo represent the concept of cross validation literally as in the above logo. Such a literal representation may perhaps 'tune off' certain members of the community we wish to attract and retain. Thus, the logo should reflect the concept but perhaps tangentially. Another interpretation of the site name is what we do: 'We cross validate answers.'." CreationDate="2010-09-27T15:48:37.007" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="845" PostId="458" Score="0" Text="We cross validate by letting our diverse community to provide multiple answers to the same question and via voting. Thus, a logo that reflects this cross-validation mechanism (e.g., wheel + check of the other logo proposed by mbq) would perhaps be more subtle than a logo like the above. In essence, I prefer the logo to be more 'playful' about the site name and not interpret it literally. In any case, as always let the votes decide! :-)" CreationDate="2010-09-27T15:51:16.117" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="846" PostId="458" Score="4" Text="I personally think that one key aspect of a logo is that it should work as a favicon.  This logo definitely does - you could reduce it to 5x5 pixels and it would still work." CreationDate="2010-09-28T18:10:03.163" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="847" PostId="458" Score="1" Text="@Matt Good point; I had this in mind. This wheel-one also scales well to 16x16 with some line thickness tuning." CreationDate="2010-09-28T21:38:58.320" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="904" PostId="458" Score="2" Text="What about making this more like a scatterplot where the coloured squares are randomly distributed on the blue background. It would then carry the idea of a common graphical method, randomness which is inherent in everything we do, as well as the CV idea." CreationDate="2010-10-08T01:17:41.587" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="906" PostId="458" Score="1" Text="I like @Rob's idea which for me neutralizes to an extent the emphasis on CV. It also merges two ideas: 'scatter plot' + 'cv' which reflects the diversity of our community." CreationDate="2010-10-08T19:49:23.053" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="976" PostId="458" Score="2" Text="Another aspect of statistics too often overlooked is Experimental Design. It's just struck me that that mpq's design bears a similarity to a Latin Square, and could be made to look more like one with the addition of some extra colors / patterns:&#xA;http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:cVwte6cduExCdM:http://www.tylerhyndman.com/images/MathProjects/LatinSquare/001.png&amp;t=1&#xA;(that's a bit *too* colorful but you get the idea)&#xA;Possibly if we (pseudo)randomly permute the rows and columns (as you should before applying a latin square) we could get something that looks a bit scatterplottish too?" CreationDate="2010-10-19T13:16:16.317" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="833" PostId="459" Score="0" Text="this is nice. did you make it in inkscape?" CreationDate="2010-09-23T22:03:22.180" UserId="795" />
  <row Id="834" PostId="459" Score="0" Text="@shabbychef Indeed this was CorelDRAW, but this doesn't matter." CreationDate="2010-09-24T11:34:13.247" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="836" PostId="461" Score="0" Text="Like the idea, but the &quot;Q&quot; in front just doesn't seem right... I mean, if I had not read Srikant's answer I would not have guessed it indicated &quot;question&quot; (because that's what it means, right?) :)" CreationDate="2010-09-25T11:50:50.903" UserId="582" />
  <row Id="837" PostId="461" Score="0" Text="I agree, the &quot;Q&quot; is confusing. Better to stick with the &quot;?&quot; originally suggested." CreationDate="2010-09-26T14:41:42.270" UserId="364" />
  <row Id="842" PostId="462" Score="7" Text="As they say, the average person has fewer than two legs." CreationDate="2010-09-27T12:50:35.903" UserId="603" />
  <row Id="1127" PostId="462" Score="0" Text="@Kwak And 2.3 kids!" CreationDate="2010-11-01T04:37:03.170" UserId="1384" />
  <row Id="849" PostId="463" Score="0" Text="Just as a note, on the data explorer you can only query 2000 items at a time, for an example http://odata.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/q/11896/ , so this is probably not a viable option. I can not download the torrent at the moment on my work network, but I believe this is the link, http://www.clearbits.net/get/1419-sept-2010.torrent" CreationDate="2010-09-30T14:28:34.667" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="850" PostId="463" Score="0" Text="I might do this over the weekend, if no one else gets to it first." CreationDate="2010-09-30T18:52:54.053" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="851" PostId="463" Score="0" Text="@andy Thanks for the info. I will see if I can make use of the torrent files. @shane Thanks. Assuming that you do find the time would you download all the data or some specific subset?" CreationDate="2010-10-01T00:44:14.683" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="852" PostId="463" Score="0" Text="I finished downloading the torrent a few minutes ago. I am getting rid of the meta files and zipping it back up. I have yet to decide how I will disseminate via url but if you give me an hour or two I should be able to post a link. It will probably be about 500 megabytes." CreationDate="2010-10-01T01:54:52.463" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="853" PostId="463" Score="0" Text="@Andy Great! Just out of curiosity what is the format of the file? Perhaps, the files can be hosted on the polystats wiki if that is fine with @shane." CreationDate="2010-10-01T02:06:38.527" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="854" PostId="463" Score="0" Text="They are in xml format (each site has its own xml file for the distinct tables), the original file downloaded from the torrent is compressed with 7z , It is 1 gigabyte. Still not sure exactly how I would either share that or the zip file I am compressing now." CreationDate="2010-10-01T02:12:25.187" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="855" PostId="463" Score="0" Text="I apparently overestimated my compression softwares abilities. It will be easier for me to just disseminate the 7z file I downloaded from the torrent that is 1 gig in size. I have a proprietary software that could decompress this file type (WinZip), but is the 7z compression ok for other people? I can put this file on my Dropbox folder and publish a link." CreationDate="2010-10-01T02:36:29.933" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="856" PostId="463" Score="0" Text="@Andy Please go ahead and post the link. If it does not work for some we can find out what to do later. Add the link as an answer to this question so that everyone can see it. Thanks for your help." CreationDate="2010-10-01T02:48:55.870" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="857" PostId="463" Score="0" Text="Here is the link for the 7z file of the entire data dump as of 9-10 http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3385251/Export-090110.7z , it is still uploading to Dropbox on my computer, so give it a few more hours before tring the link (about 4 am East Coast USA). It just gives a 404 error message if it is not uploaded yet." CreationDate="2010-10-01T04:57:26.583" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="859" PostId="463" Score="0" Text="@Andy Are there any bandwidth issues for you if lots of downloads are made from your dropbox?" CreationDate="2010-10-01T10:52:48.523" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="860" PostId="463" Score="0" Text="@Srikant I don't believe so. It is an online service, so it is not my personal server. I tested to make sure the link worked this morning but did not download the entire file. Let me know if the link does not work or the file is corrupted if anybody does download it (I'm blocked from the site and my own link while at work)." CreationDate="2010-10-01T12:41:04.827" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="905" PostId="464" Score="1" Text="I kinda want to retag your post with a &quot;tag-suggestion&quot; new tag..." CreationDate="2010-10-08T17:41:40.150" UserId="1499" />
  <row Id="861" PostId="465" Score="2" Text="I tend to think of &quot;large data&quot; as referring to a big sample, and &quot;high dimensional&quot; as a reference to a large number of variables, irrespective of sample size.  I could certainly be wrong, though." CreationDate="2010-10-01T14:55:16.117" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="862" PostId="465" Score="0" Text="@Matt You're right, esp. for the precision &quot;irrespective of sample size&quot; (it applies to omics data, neuroimaging data, etc.). Then, I think it raises an interesting issue about scoping, and we should try to address both kind of configuration (huge sample or n&lt;&lt;p case) -- for the moment, I have no better idea :)" CreationDate="2010-10-01T15:02:43.920" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="865" PostId="467" Score="0" Text="I personally assume that they'll be prefixes - if I were trying to tag a question of this nature, &quot;big-&quot; would be my first attempt." CreationDate="2010-10-01T21:07:15.910" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="867" PostId="467" Score="0" Text="I like the idea of suffixes, but it seems strange for some tags. For example, data-discrete, transformation-data, data-missing.." CreationDate="2010-10-02T20:43:07.587" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="870" PostId="467" Score="0" Text="I still haven't figured out how the synonyms work in practice.  Would it be effective to make the suffix form of a tag a synonym of its prefix form?  In particular, if we have a tag like discrete-data with a synonym data-discrete, then when a user types &quot;data&quot; in the tag search form, will it turn up &quot;discrete-data&quot;?" CreationDate="2010-10-03T13:16:38.640" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="873" PostId="467" Score="0" Text="Great idea! Use synonyms. To answer your question about how it works, play about with *books* and it's synonym *textbook* You can tag a question *textbook* and search for [textbook](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/books) and it will automatically get converted to *books*" CreationDate="2010-10-04T09:59:27.067" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="863" PostId="468" Score="0" Text="I like big data, which I think extends to this question:  e.g. see the wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_data" CreationDate="2010-10-01T20:09:05.847" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="864" PostId="468" Score="0" Text="@ars That was my first inclination, but I tend to think of it as having a specific meaning very large data; maybe propose it as a separate answer so people can vote on it?" CreationDate="2010-10-01T20:59:35.687" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="868" PostId="469" Score="1" Text="If you made a few of the points a different colour it would give the suggestion of cross-validation" CreationDate="2010-10-03T11:11:06.747" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="869" PostId="469" Score="2" Text="I can't see how this could be a favicon though." CreationDate="2010-10-03T11:11:46.840" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="872" PostId="469" Score="0" Text="@Rob These are both great points." CreationDate="2010-10-03T20:10:29.530" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="901" PostId="469" Score="0" Text="I agree with Rob; nice idea, but too complex." CreationDate="2010-10-07T08:58:10.087" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1007" PostId="469" Score="0" Text="I've started thinking a scatterplot with a fitted line is a good idea. As Shane said, it communicates the purpose of the site in a generally recognisable way. Clearly the above scatterplot is too complex though. One with around 20 points would probably be enough. Should be real data i think, preferably historic or iconic (in both senses!)." CreationDate="2010-10-26T19:48:32.577" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1013" PostId="469" Score="0" Text="@Shane What's a favicon?" CreationDate="2010-10-27T18:00:33.920" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1017" PostId="469" Score="0" Text="@onestop The tiny little logo that appears at the top of your browser when you're on a page (either in the address bar or on the tab)." CreationDate="2010-10-27T20:49:41.433" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="1027" PostId="469" Score="0" Text="@Shane - thanks, I never knew that's what that's called!" CreationDate="2010-10-28T08:18:02.547" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="874" PostId="473" Score="3" Text="I concur. But looking at those discussions -- Jeff Atwood's contributions in particular -- it seems like this is a fait accompli. Discouraging stuff -- it's hard to see how anything other than ill will and damage can possibly result." CreationDate="2010-10-04T13:37:48.917" UserId="174" />
  <row Id="875" PostId="473" Score="0" Text="yes, the push back has been primarily negative. The sudden about-face about domain names reminds me of the earlier fiasco with how they changed the process of setting up beta sites *after* a lot of people went to a lot of effort to setting up beta sites. All our votes, time and energy we devoted to the domain name question is down the drain?" CreationDate="2010-10-04T14:23:35.273" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="876" PostId="473" Score="0" Text="I think we still have a chance to win this; to me this looks like a impulsive decision provoked by the fact that getting NTI out of beta was not combined with views explosion. Yet we will need good arguments and strong community support." CreationDate="2010-10-04T15:32:04.160" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="877" PostId="473" Score="1" Text="This is crazy.  They have made so many changes to how they're managing this process.  Including the recent decision to stop several proposals from going past the commitment phase right when they had reached that point.  I'm all for SE making decisions, but this has all be handled in the worst possible fashion.  And I understand that other sites had a hard time picking a name: we did too!  But we put a process in place and made a decision..." CreationDate="2010-10-04T21:25:43.203" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="878" PostId="473" Score="2" Text="Oh man.  They really seem to have soemthing backwards here.  None of the independently named and successful sites went through a &quot;graduation&quot; process -- mathoverflow, stackoverflow, serverfault, superuser, biostar.  I don't see how they can claim that you need to be part of the SE network to get traffic and then win the right to name (or that's how I'm reading some of the comments in those links).  There's no reason to think that NTI or CrossValidated can't become successful simply because they don't bear the SE name." CreationDate="2010-10-05T02:50:00.757" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="880" PostId="475" Score="0" Text="Indeed, the link with &quot;statistical computing&quot; isn't obvious to me." CreationDate="2010-10-05T11:30:15.310" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="894" PostId="475" Score="0" Text="@chl Because it is not obvious; the real idea is what I or csgillespie wrote, this is rather sort of justification." CreationDate="2010-10-06T08:24:01.343" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="881" PostId="476" Score="2" Text="That second paragraph really hits the nail on the head for me." CreationDate="2010-10-05T11:59:08.320" UserId="174" />
  <row Id="885" PostId="476" Score="0" Text="Ok, so it seems I'm a little spaced out and misunderstood the purpose of this SE :)" CreationDate="2010-10-05T14:14:14.080" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="886" PostId="476" Score="0" Text="@chl: In theory it would be a good idea to bounce computing questions to SO, but in practice it just doesn't really work." CreationDate="2010-10-05T14:17:49.373" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="882" PostId="478" Score="0" Text="we can always vote with our feet and move as a block to another site. Not an ideal option (given the work we have put in developing this site) but something to keep at the back of our mind." CreationDate="2010-10-05T13:51:38.157" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="887" PostId="478" Score="0" Text="We could migrate it within a day..." CreationDate="2010-10-05T14:27:14.547" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="883" PostId="479" Score="2" Text="A unique domain name is really important. Just the other day I mentioned our site to a colleague of mine who has never heard about SO much less about stackexchange. It was a real pain to explain all the history of SO, SE etc by way of background to explain the current domain name. It would have been much simpler to say: &quot;Go to crossvalidated.com which is a cool Q&amp;A site&quot;. The whole stackexchange.com thing is a distraction when promoting the site. (What is this stackexchange.com? Oh, it is SO? Does that mean it is for programmers and not me? ...)" CreationDate="2010-10-05T14:07:24.327" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="884" PostId="479" Score="0" Text="The way that it's set up right now, we will probably have the domain name, but it will just get redirected.  I'm not sure what that will mean w.r.t. you telling people to go there.  I'm not happy about this either, I simply don't think that migration is a good option." CreationDate="2010-10-05T14:13:58.027" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="890" PostId="479" Score="0" Text="Is there any way to find out what metrics the SE team are using to gauge the &quot;success&quot; or viability of a site?  (Number of views, questions asked, etc.)  It would help in addressing their concerns directly and formulating a response." CreationDate="2010-10-05T19:56:07.913" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="891" PostId="479" Score="0" Text="@ars Everything that I have seen is very vague.  In principle, every site that graduates from beta should be considered (as I see it).  The domain name question is being set aside because &quot;it's hard&quot;, not because of the lack of popularity on the sites..." CreationDate="2010-10-05T20:17:01.043" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="892" PostId="479" Score="0" Text="I was thinking of Atwood's comments: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/66443/public-service-announcement-ongoing-offsite-discussion-about-area51-graduates/66599#66599 where he suggests site success may earn some privileges.  This seemed a little backward to me given that a similar fuss could have been raised over StackOverflow, MathOverflow, SuperUser, etc in their nascent stages.  Reading between the lines, I wondered if there was some metric that we could appeal to -- e.g. compare our stats at this stage with those of SO, MO, etc at similar stages in their lifetimes." CreationDate="2010-10-05T21:49:58.720" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="888" PostId="480" Score="1" Text="Look at our discussion with Jeff Atwood at the blog: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/domain-names-the-wrong-question/#comment-51029  -- it seems he hasn't found good answer to the scope problem." CreationDate="2010-10-05T14:30:05.997" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="889" PostId="481" Score="1" Text="No. The general rule is: If you like, upvote." CreationDate="2010-10-05T16:24:10.860" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="893" PostId="482" Score="0" Text="It is ok to post R questions here. It is also ok to post R questions on StackOverflow, that's why the confusion." CreationDate="2010-10-06T08:20:04.577" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="896" PostId="482" Score="2" Text="I'm in the minority and the debate is already closed, but I'm also easy to ignore, so... why not ask such questions on StackOverflow?  All of the very good R users here are also there, and there's already a wealth of technical questions about R answered there.  If this site should be a one-stop shop for R, why not SAS, SPSS, MLwiN, HLM, JMP, Stata, MATLAB, Octave, Clojure, Incanter, Scala, Hadoop, Pig, etc.?  I think that allowing purely technical questions opens the gate to tons of questions with only tangential relations to this site's core purpose." CreationDate="2010-10-06T16:15:09.147" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="897" PostId="482" Score="0" Text="Whether or not a flood will come through that gate is another issue, and one I can't predict.  But, as you say, this is what the StackExchange sites were created for... to have a place to ask every question.  Notably, it isn't ONE place to ask every question.  So, although my opinion is in disagreement with the policy here, I still encourage you to ask your technical questions on StackOverflow.  It's the right forum." CreationDate="2010-10-06T16:17:24.573" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="899" PostId="484" Score="2" Text="Hmm.  Two points, I guess.  First, don't discount the contribution of the community -- the knowledge base and activity here is a direct result of the many people involved other than the site owners.  Second, I don't think anyone is unappreciative the SE team's commitment and what they've made available, not to mention the ongoing work in figuring out where to take all of this.  This is simply the community putting in their bits to influence the direction.  I think the SE team encourages this -- or at least, that's my understanding." CreationDate="2010-10-07T05:33:25.427" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="902" PostId="484" Score="0" Text="Yes.  I understand and agree -- I upvoted @Shane's answer before I wrote mine.  I was just worried by other's perceived desire to migrate and felt the need to defend -- all be it with a bit asinine of an example -- the idea of requesting a simple redirecting front door." CreationDate="2010-10-07T11:34:50.033" UserId="1499" />
  <row Id="898" PostId="485" Score="0" Text="hehe.  Missed that.  OOps" CreationDate="2010-10-07T00:04:50.417" UserId="1499" />
  <row Id="900" PostId="485" Score="0" Text="plus some activity." CreationDate="2010-10-07T08:37:04.353" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="903" PostId="487" Score="1" Text="It might be a good idea for us to revisit the Area 51 site and use those questions to update the FAQ - this question strikes me as one that will come up a lot." CreationDate="2010-10-07T22:31:56.357" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="910" PostId="487" Score="0" Text="Is there another StackExchange site for these types of questions?" CreationDate="2010-10-09T15:19:56.750" UserId="1035" />
  <row Id="913" PostId="487" Score="1" Text="There's an economics StackExchange proposal, but it really doesn't seem to have that much steam.  Finding data like this is always a pain - you might try infochimps.org and data.gov for a start." CreationDate="2010-10-09T15:41:46.140" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="4049" PostId="487" Score="1" Text="http://www.quandl.com/ seems very nice for this." CreationDate="2013-04-19T19:22:48.533" UserId="7071" />
  <row Id="907" PostId="489" Score="2" Text="@Robert I really do not want to sound negative but I am concerned that after we put in effort into this question, obtain community consensus etc, SO Inc will turnaround say: &quot;Not cool enough! Sorry, we were asking the wrong question.&quot; (or some such). I am not really expecting you to do or say something in response to the above but just wanted to highlight my misgivings upfront." CreationDate="2010-10-09T02:13:52.653" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="908" PostId="489" Score="0" Text="@srikant Vadali: I have the same concern. I'm hoping it will only be the *occasional* site where creativity simply cannot be crowd sourced. But I wouldn't put some gawd-awful byline on every page... out of spite. That's why experts get paid so much to do this stuff. But we still want communities to at least *think* about and *work* on this stuff (design, logos, marketing, etc). That doesn't mean that results can be had **from the effort** alone. That's not from conceit or wanting control over these communities, just an unfortunate reality." CreationDate="2010-10-09T13:17:43.637" UserId="246" />
  <row Id="909" PostId="489" Score="0" Text="Also, I am open to suggestions about how to crowd-source creative endeavors when there is the possibility that community simply has no talent or expertise to do so." CreationDate="2010-10-09T13:25:07.517" UserId="246" />
  <row Id="911" PostId="489" Score="0" Text="@Robert I will think about a good elevator pitch.  I would just add that you previously agreed that we had made a good name selection: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/455/results-of-site-name-poll/462#462.  We went through a very structured process and came out with a good name." CreationDate="2010-10-09T15:35:14.803" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="912" PostId="489" Score="0" Text="If we are not going to immediately adopt this name, that there is some sentiment that we need to change the existing site name in order to merge the machine learning community because stats.SE is potentially an exclusionary name.  See my previous proposal here: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/379/change-the-beta-site-name" CreationDate="2010-10-09T15:35:59.333" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="916" PostId="489" Score="2" Text="I agree with Shane here; please reconsider giving us CrossValidated back. Not because it is nice and we already have a good logo ideas for it. Not because it is easier to promote in our specific community. Not even because of the work and time we've all invested in selecting it. Just because the name (and this name) is an already done, working solution for the all wide scope problems, including .SE name, community unification, design, new user on-off topic issues..." CreationDate="2010-10-10T00:59:37.893" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="917" PostId="489" Score="2" Text="@Robert Crowdsourcing decisions can be done in one of two ways: (a) Tell the community to take a decision via some structured process (e.g., voting, blind polls etc) and let the majority be the final word even if the final decision is something that SO does not like. or (b) *Ask* the community for *suggestions* but clearly state that the final decision is that of SO Inc. Setting expectations is really important: Are we taking decisions or are we offering suggestions? The answer to this question will determine how much effort the community will invest in finding answers." CreationDate="2010-10-10T03:18:40.193" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="918" PostId="489" Score="1" Text="Right now you want a high level of effort (so that quality of output is high) and so you seem to empower us with decision making abilities but you really seem to take our 'decisions' as suggestions with an ability to veto it. I am not sure you can have both ways (want us to put in a high level of effort to generate good suggestions yet veto our ideas if they do not meet your criteria)." CreationDate="2010-10-10T03:20:08.397" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="921" PostId="489" Score="2" Text="@Robert No-one seems in a huge hurry to answer this. That may just be because it's a dreadful question - which it really is, however Jeff and the other SO bods try to spin it - but I think it also reflects how recent events have soured the atmosphere and dampened enthusiasm around here. The comments above seem to bear out that impression. Hope you're having fun &quot;fighting our corner&quot; at Stack Towers." CreationDate="2010-10-10T17:37:43.503" UserId="174" />
  <row Id="1029" PostId="490" Score="0" Text="Not *everybody* : http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2009/10/better_than_a_b.html" CreationDate="2010-10-28T08:56:55.527" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1041" PostId="491" Score="0" Text="I think I would like to see this in action before I would say I like it as an accepted answer (although it does seem pretty cool on its face). I personally really don't like the way the math se site has accepted answers faded into the background and that answers and checkmarks are in the same green color." CreationDate="2010-10-28T16:28:06.270" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="914" PostId="493" Score="0" Text="I vote for the latest option (5th moderator) :)" CreationDate="2010-10-09T18:35:57.367" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="915" PostId="493" Score="0" Text="I agree. Very happy to have @hadronzoo join the moderation team." CreationDate="2010-10-09T22:41:26.123" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="919" PostId="493" Score="0" Text="And yes, all the questions are on topic." CreationDate="2010-10-10T08:34:44.420" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="920" PostId="493" Score="0" Text="Great answer (and I agree with everything you said)" CreationDate="2010-10-10T13:35:56.687" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="923" PostId="494" Score="1" Text="I really wish that SO shares these metrics more with the community directly so that we know what we have to do. See the answers for example as to how we may potentially address some of the above issues." CreationDate="2010-10-12T13:44:38.283" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="934" PostId="494" Score="0" Text="Thanks for pointing this out!  Totally agree with you on sharing these metrics -- it's really hard to have a discussion when the factors are fuzzy (&quot;bad&quot; domain name, etc)." CreationDate="2010-10-12T16:46:54.157" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="930" PostId="495" Score="0" Text="@mbq: Great idea.  I just went on and bump up a few of those users too..." CreationDate="2010-10-12T15:29:25.150" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="938" PostId="495" Score="0" Text="@Shane I see it works -- little such users are left." CreationDate="2010-10-12T17:04:28.597" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="939" PostId="495" Score="0" Text="@mbq This won't bring us up to the &quot;excellent&quot; threshold though.  We really need more active traffic..." CreationDate="2010-10-12T17:08:15.387" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="941" PostId="495" Score="0" Text="@Shane I agree; but the user action was quite successful; we have gathered 15 new 200+ users. Now it is time for catchy questions." CreationDate="2010-10-12T19:24:43.820" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="943" PostId="495" Score="0" Text="@Shane: whatever happened to the potential marketing budget you mentioned sometime back?  Perhaps it's time to seriously discuss ways to enhance our profile." CreationDate="2010-10-13T00:51:40.570" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="944" PostId="495" Score="0" Text="BTW, I remembered that because I was reminded today that INFORMS is coming up in Nov, though I'm not sure that's really the appropriate venue for advertising/sponsorship.  Still, food for thought if there's a budget to be had." CreationDate="2010-10-13T05:50:37.430" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="933" PostId="496" Score="0" Text="Thanks, this is really helpful to try and glean some insight into what factors might influence the SE team." CreationDate="2010-10-12T16:40:09.840" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="932" PostId="497" Score="2" Text="Agree with all these points.  I really like the consensus developed on StackOverflow: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10811/homework-on-stackoverflow -- perhaps we can use that as a template for our own FAQ?" CreationDate="2010-10-12T16:37:06.520" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="940" PostId="497" Score="0" Text="@ars: Good reference, thanks.  All we would have to do is modify explicit references to coding." CreationDate="2010-10-12T18:26:18.350" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1473" PostId="497" Score="0" Text="@ars I have implemented this idea by inserting a line into the faq and creating a wiki for the &quot;homework&quot; tag." CreationDate="2011-03-19T13:55:40.257" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="14683" PostId="497" Score="0" Text="I truly believe whether the question is a homework question is completely irrelevant.  What we should ask is: is this a good, interesting, well formulated question?  I've seen so many poorly written answers with the excuse that they are &quot;hints&quot;. If someone wants to just give hints, post as a comment, not as an answer. This policy seems to lower the quality of the site overall." CreationDate="2017-11-10T23:26:18.820" UserId="39630" />
  <row Id="14688" PostId="497" Score="2" Text="@Carlos On the contrary, what we currently understand to be a &quot;self-study&quot; question is one that is peremptory, artificial, generally devoid of interest, and intended only as a routine exercise in a textbook or examination.  By raising the bar for asking and answering such questions, this site is immeasurably improved: users will not have to wade through hundreds of similar but useless posts when searching for material." CreationDate="2017-11-11T17:47:01.473" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="14689" PostId="497" Score="0" Text="But see how you classified the question by its properties not whether it’s homework or not. I’m saying this because this homework “exceptionality” policy as if it’s something different seems to be unintentionally causing bad/noisy behaviors, such as comments asking whether it is a homework or poor answers." CreationDate="2017-11-11T18:06:40.850" UserId="39630" />
  <row Id="14690" PostId="497" Score="1" Text="@Carlos But that's precisely how we do classify the questions: we don't care whether they're homework; we care about the nature of the question.  That's one reason the tag name was changed to &quot;self-study&quot; from the original &quot;homework&quot;." CreationDate="2017-11-11T18:33:38.367" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="14691" PostId="497" Score="0" Text="But should we still keep the &quot;give hints not answer&quot; policy? Or a special policy for self-study at all?  It seems the guidelines are outdated, creating some noise: and the great answers for allegedly self-study questions do not follow the guidelines at all!" CreationDate="2017-11-11T18:36:25.277" UserId="39630" />
  <row Id="14692" PostId="497" Score="0" Text="Just chiming in here that maybe as the &quot;homework&quot; tag died, the self-study should die too, and we have a clear focus on content/clarity." CreationDate="2017-11-11T18:38:12.187" UserId="39630" />
  <row Id="14693" PostId="497" Score="2" Text="@Carlos Again, I beg to differ: based on having read almost every question ever posted on this site--but not on any specific study--I believe the great majority of answers to self-study questions do follow the quidelines and that many of the remainder are from newbies who don't yet know the guidelines.  I'm not opposed to your objective of focusing on content and clarity." CreationDate="2017-11-11T18:39:57.673" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="14694" PostId="497" Score="0" Text="Could you show an example? I am going over the self-study tag and that's not what I see." CreationDate="2017-11-11T18:41:05.313" UserId="39630" />
  <row Id="14695" PostId="497" Score="0" Text="@Carlos I'm sorry, it's not my burden to show examples.  If you think there's a problem then it's up to you to produce examples.  You could do that in a meta post if you like.  Cheers." CreationDate="2017-11-11T18:42:11.800" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="14696" PostId="497" Score="0" Text="For example, your answer here is great https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/99170/a-question-on-a-non-parametric-estimating-equation very different from a poor hint like in this other question https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/257620/39630" CreationDate="2017-11-11T18:43:26.497" UserId="39630" />
  <row Id="14697" PostId="497" Score="0" Text="I might bring this up in a meta post later, still pondering about it, that's why I commented  here to get your feedback. I will wait a bit to watch more user behavior and go over more examples before doing it though." CreationDate="2017-11-11T18:52:40.613" UserId="39630" />
  <row Id="937" PostId="499" Score="0" Text="I'll just add that you can also vote to close (for duplicates, off-topics, meta-questions, subjectives) and flag (for spam and when you think moderator should do something with it, like convert to community wiki)." CreationDate="2010-10-12T17:02:54.603" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="950" PostId="499" Score="3" Text="And even newbies can be expected to react to requests for clarification. So if such requests are ignored for a couple of days, I'll happily downvote or vote for closure." CreationDate="2010-10-14T21:09:19.413" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="924" PostId="500" Score="0" Text="Well, I think that the argument being made for SuperUser is that it has a much bigger user base.  I can't understand how AskUbuntu qualifies, however.  I guess because Canonical agreed to it, so it became less of a creative decision?" CreationDate="2010-10-12T15:04:25.070" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="925" PostId="500" Score="1" Text="SuperUser is an old story -- it is pre SE2.0 site. AskUbuntu is, &quot;an exception&quot;. Official story is here: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/67175/why-is-askubuntu-com-not-ubuntu-stackexchange-com . Yet I still hope that that we could also follow this way; at least no-one has said &quot;no&quot; yet." CreationDate="2010-10-12T15:04:26.003" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="926" PostId="500" Score="1" Text="SuperUser is one of the original trilogy sites created by the SO team, not a StackExchange site.  As for AskUbuntu, I suspect that that site's relationship with Canonical (described here: http://meta.askubuntu.com/questions/434/what-is-stackexchange-is-askubuntu-officially-related-to-ubuntu-or-canonical) has something to do with why they get to keep their name." CreationDate="2010-10-12T15:06:15.503" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="927" PostId="500" Score="0" Text="That is by far the most uncanny example of multiple simultaneous answering I've seen yet on a Stack site." CreationDate="2010-10-12T15:09:17.243" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="928" PostId="500" Score="0" Text="Hence the unique css design, fonts, etc.  This makes some sense now.  Still wish we had our own too." CreationDate="2010-10-12T15:10:57.820" UserId="1499" />
  <row Id="929" PostId="500" Score="0" Text="Me, too.  We may yet.  I have somehow managed to hang on to a scrap of hope, since we actually came up with a good name." CreationDate="2010-10-12T15:27:19.023" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="931" PostId="500" Score="0" Text="I'm not as optimistic given that NothingToInstall didn't hold.  I thought that was a reasonable name." CreationDate="2010-10-12T16:04:18.553" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="935" PostId="500" Score="0" Text="I'm losing optimism, but holding on to a little faith based on mbq's cajoling .. :)" CreationDate="2010-10-12T16:49:28.867" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="936" PostId="500" Score="0" Text="We are a different case a bit -- the main argument I force is that it is hard to find &lt;topic&gt;.stackexchange.com name that reflects our wide scope (data is some idea, but far from perfect), also this is &quot;science-site&quot; so our value is quality not quantity (sites with traffic larger than ServerFault.com are told to get its own name -- this is probably the most irrational part of this whole unification idea) and it needs some other kind of promotion than sites for people coming from SO (WebApps, UI, GameDev, ...) or for casual people from Google (Cooking, Bicycles, Gaming,...)." CreationDate="2010-10-12T16:59:02.620" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="942" PostId="502" Score="3" Text="... and comments on the reasons for upvoting are always welcome, too!" CreationDate="2010-10-12T21:47:26.090" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="13122" PostId="504" Score="4" Text="(-1) A down-vote affects the fate of the question much more than that of the user who asked it - they lose a small amount of rep. that they can recoup by editing the question to improve it, by deleting it if they can't or would rather not edit it, or by asking/answering other questions. I don't see the need for a grace period." CreationDate="2017-04-07T11:29:38.957" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="13123" PostId="504" Score="5" Text="@Scortchi As you know, a further fact is that many of the poorest questions come from people with reputation 1: although downvotes are all too visible, the user's reputation is never reduced below 1." CreationDate="2017-04-07T11:41:19.093" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="953" PostId="505" Score="0" Text="Can this cover sites like MathOverflow, Or-Exchange and BioStar?  Or are those independent entities?" CreationDate="2010-10-15T20:12:06.373" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="954" PostId="505" Score="1" Text="@ars. We won't be able to migrate questions from or to Q&amp;A sites that aren't part of the stackexchange network." CreationDate="2010-10-16T04:00:57.793" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="1217" PostId="505" Score="1" Text="Great; I think SO and math are our primary targets at this point." CreationDate="2010-11-17T14:28:01.637" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="945" PostId="508" Score="0" Text="You are right it is not closed. I updated my question to &quot;old/closed&quot;. The whole issue is that I do not want to draw attention by adding a duplicate question." CreationDate="2010-10-14T11:58:14.633" UserId="1077" />
  <row Id="948" PostId="508" Score="2" Text="Of course, adding a duplicate question is not appropriate. But, as I said in my answer, if appropriate someone will leave you feedback via the comments as the question would have been bumped up." CreationDate="2010-10-14T13:43:56.960" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="951" PostId="508" Score="0" Text="My issue is that the probability of drawing attention to new answers on old/closed questions is not the same as all the other answers. You might say it decreases with the age of the question. Maybe a new answer can go on top of the most popular  answer for a while, to offset its reduced probability." CreationDate="2010-10-15T09:34:42.040" UserId="1077" />
  <row Id="952" PostId="508" Score="0" Text="@Ηλίας When a new answer is proposed, not only is the associated question bumped up on the main page (&quot;active view&quot; for the top questions), but the author of the latest edit is also visible by everyone." CreationDate="2010-10-15T10:49:37.423" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="946" PostId="509" Score="1" Text="This isn't a bad idea, although I expect that most of the flow would be from GIS to Stats (unfortunately!)" CreationDate="2010-10-14T13:27:03.547" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="947" PostId="509" Score="0" Text="Agreed, the only example I think that would maybe come up here that people on the GIS community could help with would be how to handle big geo data questions." CreationDate="2010-10-14T13:41:26.217" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1313" PostId="509" Score="0" Text="A candidate for stats =&gt; GIS migration has just come up: &#xA;http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/6463/what-software-is-used-for-maps-of-the-us-or-other-arbitrary-areas" CreationDate="2011-01-23T10:42:17.647" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="2732" PostId="509" Score="1" Text="A visual review of the migration record shows one migration to and one migration from GIS during the lifetimes of both sites (almost two years now). I guess people are pretty good at figuring where to post their questions :-)." CreationDate="2012-06-28T18:50:20.253" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2733" PostId="509" Score="0" Text="Only two! I guess perhaps this was just wishful thinking on my part that the communities would overlap." CreationDate="2012-06-28T19:00:05.453" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="972" PostId="512" Score="1" Text="Look at a recent question in Chrome. Right now, http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/3727/approximating-prn-leq-x-leq-m-for-a-discrete-distribution is a mess on chrome on my PC." CreationDate="2010-10-19T00:34:17.470" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="1003" PostId="512" Score="1" Text="For me, all pc's with Ubuntu (9.10 and 10.10) and Chrome 7.0.517.41 always messes up the formula's. So I suggest trying a ubuntu live cd and install google-chrome for reproduction" CreationDate="2010-10-26T05:08:21.810" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="1202" PostId="512" Score="1" Text="I am seeing this problem with all formulae on the site. I am using Chrome 7.0.517.41 on Ubuntu 10.04." CreationDate="2010-11-10T13:34:28.040" UserId="439" />
  <row Id="956" PostId="516" Score="0" Text="From http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/726/famous-statistician-quotes" CreationDate="2010-10-16T21:19:37.847" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="960" PostId="518" Score="0" Text="Based on our proposed site name and http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/726/famous-statistician-quotes/730#730" CreationDate="2010-10-16T21:38:22.777" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="964" PostId="518" Score="0" Text="+1 I just love this one." CreationDate="2010-10-18T14:05:21.067" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="968" PostId="518" Score="0" Text="Totally dig it!" CreationDate="2010-10-18T20:53:21.407" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="1798" PostId="519" Score="0" Text="too promising perhaps?" CreationDate="2011-08-04T20:33:10.873" UserId="603" />
  <row Id="957" PostId="520" Score="0" Text="From http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/726/famous-statistician-quotes/1772#1772" CreationDate="2010-10-16T21:28:19.913" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="959" PostId="521" Score="0" Text="In reference to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_free_lunch_in_search_and_optimization" CreationDate="2010-10-16T21:33:49.477" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="970" PostId="521" Score="0" Text="E, it is not a theorem, it is an axiom ;-)" CreationDate="2010-10-18T22:32:58.130" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="971" PostId="521" Score="0" Text="Sorry...see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_free_lunch_theorem." CreationDate="2010-10-18T23:27:07.477" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="998" PostId="521" Score="0" Text="This is actually my favorite tagline; it implies something about data analysis, while also delivering a message about the fact that we are providing questions and answers for free." CreationDate="2010-10-22T14:45:30.350" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="958" PostId="522" Score="0" Text="http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/726/famous-statistician-quotes/2564#2564" CreationDate="2010-10-16T21:32:35.843" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="979" PostId="523" Score="2" Text="(+1) Somewhat dull, but factual, informative and likely to improve our PageRank." CreationDate="2010-10-20T07:39:06.173" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="982" PostId="523" Score="0" Text="This could improve the page rank if it was used in a particular way.  I don't see why we couldn't have a slightly more creative tagline, while SE would still embed this kind of description somewhere else (e.g. already in the FAQ, possible add to meta tags, etc.)." CreationDate="2010-10-20T13:15:59.630" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="962" PostId="526" Score="0" Text="The imbalance has grown more extreme with our site than with many others and it has changed recently, too.  That's what caught my attention.  Can we modify the FAQ?  Craft our answers to better encourage others?  Work harder on creating more questions?  For heaven's sake, we should be *hugely* more active and broad-based than something like the the Wordpress site!" CreationDate="2010-10-18T04:04:03.780" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="963" PostId="526" Score="0" Text="@whuber Wordpress is not a good example as it will have a significant user flow from SO. A better benchmark is math.SE but that also has done better than us perhaps because math is generally more internet savvy than stats (think how many math blogs exist vs stats blogs etc)." CreationDate="2010-10-18T04:08:54.733" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="965" PostId="526" Score="0" Text="I agree: we really need *more* people on this site, and this has come up in other threads on how to market ourselves, etc.  I'd really like to resurrect those threads and see if we can come up with some effort to draw more traffic here.  That's basically the StackOverflow model -- there's a ridiculous mix of how activity/reputation varies, but the large and diverse crowd make it a secondary issue at best." CreationDate="2010-10-18T20:20:57.023" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="967" PostId="526" Score="0" Text="BTW, a better comparison would be Meta-Optimize because that community probably mirrors us better than WP, Math, etc -- they're into data and algorithms.  It seems to me that their activity patterns don't tell a better story than ours: http://metaoptimize.com/qa/users/" CreationDate="2010-10-18T20:27:08.147" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="987" PostId="526" Score="0" Text="+1. Promotion, voting, and encouraging quality responses is the key to developing this forum as a quality site. Artificial intervening to upvote current answers, with current users might make the beta look better. However, it will change the **generating process**. What we really need is more people, asking good questions, and getting good answer to sustain the site." CreationDate="2010-10-21T03:43:42.817" UserId="485" />
  <row Id="966" PostId="527" Score="0" Text="+1.  I was going to mention this -- just checking some of the profiles of people who were very active during the early questions, it seems they come from academia (professors, phd students) and the summer surge just didn't carry over into fall.  We have a recruitment problem." CreationDate="2010-10-18T20:22:25.880" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="969" PostId="527" Score="0" Text="Anyone from the southern hemisphere have any ideas how to recruit more of you to help balance out supply and demand seasonality..?" CreationDate="2010-10-18T21:56:16.207" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="973" PostId="531" Score="0" Text="As we are apparently no longer allowed to have CrossValidated.com, I agree -- Data Analysis reflects the nature of the site better than Statistical Analysis." CreationDate="2010-10-19T03:20:09.240" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="974" PostId="531" Score="0" Text="@Rob We don't know it yet. Cooking showed some compromise is possible." CreationDate="2010-10-19T06:31:26.470" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="975" PostId="531" Score="0" Text="Beta ended, yes, but we won't start soon. We have no design and SE team seems to have other problems now." CreationDate="2010-10-19T06:33:12.583" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="977" PostId="532" Score="3" Text="This is a neat idea!  I prefer the idea of a scatter plot." CreationDate="2010-10-19T13:18:13.143" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="978" PostId="532" Score="0" Text="This may suffer from the same problems as my suggestion: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/269/what-should-our-logo-and-site-design-look-like/469#469" CreationDate="2010-10-20T01:31:55.900" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="983" PostId="532" Score="0" Text="Indeed I have upvoted it, but I agree with @Shane that there is a problem that logo should be static to be recognizable among its instances. Yet it is a good idea for an overall interface." CreationDate="2010-10-20T13:23:33.203" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="984" PostId="532" Score="4" Text="How about not randomly generated but based on some actual dynamic data? Obvious things might be to do with site usage, active questions, answers to date, etc..." CreationDate="2010-10-20T17:39:23.000" UserId="174" />
  <row Id="986" PostId="532" Score="2" Text="I really like walkytalky's idea -- since this would mean the logo is actually conveying meaningful data, as opposed to simple random numbers." CreationDate="2010-10-20T23:03:06.240" UserId="1117" />
  <row Id="995" PostId="532" Score="0" Text="Completely randomly generated is always dangerous: one fine day, it *will* resemble something NSFWish, like [Lisa Simpson giving head](http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/3454/) or [Putin taking it from Medvedev](http://www.artlebedev.ru/kovodstvo/idioteka/2010/04/22/) or whatever (these links are SFW, by the way). Even worse, some people might turn it into a game of sorts, constantly refreshing the page and trying really hard to get a point-and-laugh logo on purpose. This is the Internet, after all. A better idea would be to iterate through an array of pre-approved plots." CreationDate="2010-10-21T19:44:14.600" UserId="556" />
  <row Id="980" PostId="535" Score="0" Text="By the time I finished posting my comment it has already corrected itself." CreationDate="2010-10-20T11:53:57.530" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="981" PostId="535" Score="0" Text="In my case after today Chrome update I can see only white space instead of equations." CreationDate="2010-10-20T13:01:46.147" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="996" PostId="535" Score="0" Text="Having this problem, too.  Chrome 7.0.517.41 on Windows 7." CreationDate="2010-10-22T04:04:06.540" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="997" PostId="535" Score="0" Text="... and now it's randomly fixed after visiting Meta." CreationDate="2010-10-22T04:04:43.480" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="990" PostId="538" Score="0" Text="I'm worried it looks a bit like HomeImprovement.SE logo (tiles)." CreationDate="2010-10-21T07:40:08.943" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="991" PostId="538" Score="0" Text="I didn't think about checking for similarities with the other SE sites. Perhaps I should go back to the black leading, which looked more like Fisher's window too. It does look a bit like tiles, that's true. But where do I find the HomeImprovement logo? They are yet to launch too , and I can't spot any logos on their parallel thread http://meta.diy.stackexchange.com/q/171 ." CreationDate="2010-10-21T08:52:24.487" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="993" PostId="538" Score="0" Text="I meant for me it seems like a HI logo, not is a duplicate." CreationDate="2010-10-21T10:50:04.990" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1012" PostId="538" Score="1" Text="To be honest I've gone off this idea as a logo now, though i'll probably continue using it as my user icon." CreationDate="2010-10-27T17:59:37.370" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="985" PostId="540" Score="1" Text="Why am I not surprised by this development?" CreationDate="2010-10-20T22:24:51.447" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="988" PostId="540" Score="0" Text="Bummer, but thanks for the update.  BTW, which part of the NTI faq were you thinking of?  Not sure I see anything about thresholds or maybe I'm looking for the wrong thing." CreationDate="2010-10-21T05:29:42.193" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="989" PostId="540" Score="0" Text="@ars &quot;What is reputation?&quot;, second table. 250+ limits are much higher." CreationDate="2010-10-21T07:03:14.553" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="992" PostId="540" Score="1" Text="Heh, I should drop my job and become a clairvoyant: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/when-will-my-site-graduate/ . Wait, I do it already." CreationDate="2010-10-21T10:44:48.623" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1205" PostId="542" Score="0" Text="Try Chrome 7.0.517.44; the update has fixed the problem for me." CreationDate="2010-11-10T20:41:14.720" UserId="439" />
  <row Id="1206" PostId="542" Score="0" Text="Indeed, things got better after auto update; I forgot to write it here." CreationDate="2010-11-11T09:35:00.270" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1000" PostId="544" Score="6" Text="I'd disagree with 1 and 3 (can't argue with 2 or 4): (1) it's subjective and it's not about statistical analysis (3) although the number is certainly finite, i'm sure there are scores, if not hundreds, of cities in the world with multiple institutes of further and higher education that teach statistics" CreationDate="2010-10-25T07:01:41.650" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1001" PostId="544" Score="6" Text="(3) is the *opposite* of &quot;scaling&quot; well: it points out just how extremely localized the question is; it doesn't scale to broader geographical areas at all, but rather requires special location-dependent responses.  It therefore cannot be of general interest.  (2) may be true, but a reference to the FAQ clearly indicates (1) is false.  (4) merely reflects a failure to search.  May I recommend Googling 'statistics knowledge skills classroom &quot;New York City&quot; school professional education'?  (These words were obtained by parsing the original question.)" CreationDate="2010-10-25T15:00:39.713" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="999" PostId="545" Score="0" Text="Overall, I agree with you, but I think there's a need for a place to ask questions like this that isn't being met (since they pop up periodically, and I've held back a few myself).  It would be nice to have something like the Not Programming Related SE (http://programmers.stackexchange.com/), but I'm not sure we could muster the numbers to push something like that through." CreationDate="2010-10-25T04:09:21.747" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="1004" PostId="546" Score="0" Text="@Fred This question belongs to the meta or ask the mods directly." CreationDate="2010-10-26T08:18:06.210" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1006" PostId="550" Score="0" Text="I would upvote it if I could." CreationDate="2010-10-26T17:09:44.260" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1005" PostId="551" Score="0" Text="I would downvote it if I could." CreationDate="2010-10-26T17:09:08.350" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1008" PostId="552" Score="0" Text="Yes, there is a delay for some statistics but I suspect that there is no delay in the case of 'actionable' numbers or at least they should not be so that mods and others can take the correct action." CreationDate="2010-10-27T11:21:06.373" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="1011" PostId="556" Score="0" Text="Instead of downvoting my answer, how about suggesting your preferred alternative colour scheme?" CreationDate="2010-10-27T17:57:36.310" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1044" PostId="556" Score="0" Text="Hmm, no one has downvoted, at most removed upvote." CreationDate="2010-10-28T17:40:00.943" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1051" PostId="556" Score="0" Text="When I added that comment my answer had a total score of -1. Whoever downvoted it must have subsequently undone their vote. I'd still welcome competing suggestions for the colour scheme!" CreationDate="2010-10-28T21:44:31.680" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1009" PostId="557" Score="3" Text="Better bars than pies..." CreationDate="2010-10-27T13:35:17.363" UserId="174" />
  <row Id="1010" PostId="557" Score="0" Text="I certainly wouldn't argue with that." CreationDate="2010-10-27T17:56:14.440" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1037" PostId="557" Score="4" Text="+1 for an incredibly tacky bar chart." CreationDate="2010-10-28T12:27:05.120" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="1042" PostId="557" Score="1" Text="Aint it wonderful  - makes a *great* favicon too!-) http://i.imgur.com/mOqLI.gif Can't remember where i originally stole it from but just found a collection of irritating icons including this one at http://www.nectec.or.th/users/htk/gr01/anigifs/" CreationDate="2010-10-28T17:07:29.493" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1080" PostId="557" Score="0" Text="How about an equally atrocious pie-chart?  Animated in the style of pac-man!  Totally retro, totally rockin!" CreationDate="2010-10-30T02:43:30.683" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="1799" PostId="558" Score="0" Text="a lot of statistics involves no data at all." CreationDate="2011-08-04T20:33:38.580" UserId="603" />
  <row Id="1045" PostId="559" Score="0" Text="I appreciate the idea of trying to work toward a consensus on this policy, as it's one of our most substantial and contentious issues.  I feel like the Stack format might not be well-suited for developing and identifying consensus, however - we don't have any way to tell who is undecided and who just doesn't care.  Any thoughts?" CreationDate="2010-10-28T18:57:43.697" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="1046" PostId="559" Score="0" Text="@Matt I am inclined to wait some more time for others to chip in. I have some ideas as to how to approach consensus but I do not want to muddy the water too soon with any modifications to the existing question." CreationDate="2010-10-28T19:03:39.693" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="1049" PostId="559" Score="0" Text="That's perfectly sensible." CreationDate="2010-10-28T19:32:59.953" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="1063" PostId="559" Score="0" Text="See this follow-up question to arrive at some consensus reg R questions: [Vote on policy for R questions](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/584/28)" CreationDate="2010-10-29T15:57:18.313" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="1014" PostId="560" Score="0" Text="This was precipitated by a questioner creating an 'rcpp' tag, which I replaced by 'r' and 'c++' tags, and another one creating a 'e1071' tag, which i initially assumed was an error message from the internals of stackexchange." CreationDate="2010-10-27T18:17:55.333" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1015" PostId="560" Score="0" Text="There was also a 'ltm' tag added (then removed) and one query for adding a 'ggplot2' tag. Tagging software (Stata, SPSS, R, etc.) should be sufficient (IMO). I don't see any particular reason to tag R packages, even for 'ggplot2'; at best, people interested in the Grammar of Graphics have some other tags to refer to (data-visualization, etc.)" CreationDate="2010-10-27T19:16:46.693" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1016" PostId="560" Score="3" Text="Can you expand on the logic of this one?  If someone comes here looking for answers about Rcpp or ggplot2, wouldn't it be beneficial to have a tag for them to find previous such questions?" CreationDate="2010-10-27T19:35:40.197" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="1018" PostId="560" Score="3" Text="I've responded to @onestop's answer in a separate [answer](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/441/what-should-be-rules-for-making-and-using-tags/561#561)" CreationDate="2010-10-27T21:05:51.247" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="1019" PostId="561" Score="0" Text="+1 Agree; my new private judgement for tags is whether it is reasonable to give someone a this-tag-badge. e1071 for e1071 hackers? not a problem for me. Rcpp for Dirk? So obvious (-;" CreationDate="2010-10-27T22:15:47.457" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1020" PostId="562" Score="1" Text="So when considering each new tag, we would ask ourselves, &quot;Would it make sense for someone to have a [say, ggplot2] badge?&quot;  That's a pretty intriguing idea, and I had to go look at the list of tags to see how it would go.  What about tags like &quot;standard-error&quot; and &quot;books&quot;?" CreationDate="2010-10-27T22:36:38.643" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="1021" PostId="563" Score="1" Text="Well they do migrate questions to other websites. So, it is just a matter of obtaining consensus on meta.SO that R questions are off-topic as far as SO is concerned because they can be migrated to stats.SE now." CreationDate="2010-10-27T23:19:03.843" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="1062" PostId="563" Score="4" Text="Personally, I believe that questions regarding coupling of databases with R, how to call R from Python, implementation of exception handling in C scripts for R, ... do not belong on a site about statistics. There are a whole lot of questions about R that have absolutely nothing to do at all with statistics." CreationDate="2010-10-29T13:58:51.287" UserId="1124" />
  <row Id="1064" PostId="563" Score="0" Text="@Joris this not a discussion about how the site scopes but about what to do with R related questions posted here (and, parallelly, what to do with R related questions posted on SO)." CreationDate="2010-10-29T16:17:02.600" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1034" PostId="564" Score="1" Text="+10 : I can't see how we can ever solve a question on statsexchange dealing with linking R through RODBC with Excel, or how to interact R and Python. These questions do get asked. OK, Sometimes the question is &quot;how do i analyze X and how do I program it?&quot; but then the answer if most often : read more books until you understand what you're talking about." CreationDate="2010-10-28T11:15:33.903" UserId="1124" />
  <row Id="1060" PostId="564" Score="1" Text="I recently pointed out on the GIS forum that probably over half of the questions were tagged with something to do with ESRI products. I thought here would not be the same, but I looked and easily the most common tag is R (although we have alot more mix of tags than does the GIS site). http://stats.stackexchange.com/tags" CreationDate="2010-10-29T13:26:23.680" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1115" PostId="564" Score="4" Text="+1.  But it is interesting that even that Stata question (about formatting p-values) led to a potentially useful discussion about *why* one would want to measure p-values to more than three decimal places.  (http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/4027/919 )  In reviewing view counts it also seems to me that questions explicitly oriented towards one platform actively *discourage* readers who otherwise might benefit from them.  Maybe what we should be doing is encouraging questioners to emphasize their analytical needs and to try to formulate questions without reference to particular software." CreationDate="2010-10-30T22:35:24.067" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1133" PostId="564" Score="1" Text="whuber, I like that idea very much." CreationDate="2010-11-01T17:44:04.063" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="1141" PostId="564" Score="2" Text="Might I suggest the excellent 'rule of thumb' described above be applied to math as well as computing-related questions too?  Just as some questions are purely about programming, some questions are straightforward math or probability problems with no stated relevance to actually analyzing any data or understanding any particular model or method. The check would be to ask: Is the code or derivation requested in this question essential to (or necessary for communicating about) some aspect of a data analysis, model or method?  If the not, the question belongs someplace else." CreationDate="2010-11-02T19:42:03.353" UserId="1739" />
  <row Id="1023" PostId="565" Score="0" Text="Why will the site be launched as Statistical Analysis? Looking through other threads, Data Analysis seems to be favored by almost everyone (including a data.se url)." CreationDate="2010-10-28T05:54:24.113" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="1024" PostId="565" Score="0" Text="See for example: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/379/change-the-beta-site-name" CreationDate="2010-10-28T05:55:56.733" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="1025" PostId="565" Score="0" Text="@Peter, I wasn't aware of that. I'll ask Robert about this." CreationDate="2010-10-28T06:00:33.030" UserId="12" />
  <row Id="1028" PostId="565" Score="0" Text="@Jin, please have a proper look at the logo thread you linked above. Although *some* of the ideas there are specific to the 'CrossValidation' name, others aren't at all. In fact, some were proposed after it became clear that CrossValidation wasn't going to happen. @Moderators: I've no idea if maybe it's possible to migrate answers between questions to help distinguish the two??" CreationDate="2010-10-28T08:22:11.450" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1036" PostId="565" Score="0" Text="@Peter I have also mailed Robert to justify the name issue." CreationDate="2010-10-28T12:15:11.457" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1056" PostId="565" Score="2" Text="@Peter, @Jin Looks like Robert agreed we can have CrossValidated in a same way as SeasonedAdvice; so the previous thread applies." CreationDate="2010-10-29T07:18:18.013" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1084" PostId="565" Score="0" Text="(In case anyone wonders why both my above comment and one of my answers below seem to make little sense, that's because the question has since been radically changed.)" CreationDate="2010-10-30T12:42:43.620" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1144" PostId="565" Score="0" Text="@Jin Looks great!" CreationDate="2010-11-03T16:54:55.280" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="1163" PostId="565" Score="0" Text="The logo has a glaring flaw. The *trace* of a matrix, which I presume is what the logo is depicting, runs from the top left to the bottom right, not the bottom left to the top right, which has no interpretation. Please correct that. Thank you." CreationDate="2010-11-04T18:02:03.747" UserId="1760" />
  <row Id="1164" PostId="565" Score="0" Text="@gabgoh The logo is representing cross-validation, where every time a different part of the data set is left out for evaluation, not the trace of a matrix." CreationDate="2010-11-04T18:41:05.083" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="1026" PostId="566" Score="1" Text="My understanding of 'Data Science' would be much broader, encompassing computer science, information science, data management..." CreationDate="2010-10-28T08:15:54.937" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1039" PostId="566" Score="3" Text="I might be in the minority, but I don't like the term.  Beyond which I think that it has mostly been invented to cover &quot;big data&quot; problems, so it would actually limit the scope of the site." CreationDate="2010-10-28T13:51:41.177" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="1131" PostId="566" Score="1" Text="@Shane good point." CreationDate="2010-11-01T17:01:12.787" UserId="1307" />
  <row Id="1031" PostId="567" Score="0" Text="@onestop Thank you for the info. I'll read all the logo submissions from the other thread. I do like the chart logo above. One thing to consider is that we'll use the logo for site Favicon and Apple touch icon as well. So something overly detailed may not show up well. Maybe an abstract/symbolic version of a scatterplot?" CreationDate="2010-10-28T09:21:41.963" UserId="12" />
  <row Id="1032" PostId="567" Score="0" Text="An abstract/symbolic version of a scatterplot would be fine, but if we can find one that has real data behind it that would be even better! Maybe even 20 points is too many? How many would you suggest would work? Sorry I've no idea how big a touchy apple icon is." CreationDate="2010-10-28T09:40:18.623" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1038" PostId="567" Score="0" Text="@onestop favicon is 16x16 pixels. But I think maybe we can do a detailed version for the site logo, and for the favicon we can do a simplified version of it. We use 158x158 px for the Apple Touch icon." CreationDate="2010-10-28T12:32:03.580" UserId="12" />
  <row Id="1061" PostId="567" Score="0" Text="Just to demonstrate a favicon-able scatterplot is a possibility (this e.g. lacks a fitted line though): http://www.sacmeq.org/statplanet/images/icon_graph2.png" CreationDate="2010-10-29T13:33:35.620" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1076" PostId="567" Score="1" Text="FWIW, I really think that @mbq's idea will work better as a logo and favicon: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/269/what-should-our-logo-and-site-design-look-like/458#458.  Also, so far as doing a scatterplot, I really prefer the idea of having a non-linear model (i.e. not a straight line).  It communicates the complexity of our problems a little more." CreationDate="2010-10-29T17:20:02.733" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="1083" PostId="567" Score="0" Text="@Shane I agree that mbg's idea will work better as a logo and favicon IF we're using the name CrossValidation. When I posted the above answer I was still under the impression that had been ruled out, however, so I spent a while thinking about alternatives. Seems I wasted my time. I realised that StatExchange was ruled by an oligarchy, but considered that has some advantages over direct democracy when it comes to consistency and speed of decision-making. Seems I was wrong." CreationDate="2010-10-30T12:40:06.663" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1092" PostId="567" Score="0" Text="@onestop Sorry that there has been so much confusion over the decision.  Regardless, I do like the idea of scatterplot (having proposed a similar one), but it may be too complex as a logo, even with a small number of points.  We'll see what everyone else thinks..." CreationDate="2010-10-30T15:41:49.670" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="1035" PostId="569" Score="0" Text="TeX font can be sans." CreationDate="2010-10-28T12:00:50.990" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1043" PostId="569" Score="0" Text="Oh good, very glad to hear it! That's something Wikipedia has yet to manage." CreationDate="2010-10-28T17:14:47.717" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1071" PostId="569" Score="0" Text="thanks for your input. I'll definitely come up with a clean and minimalist design for the stats site." CreationDate="2010-10-29T16:56:48.097" UserId="12" />
  <row Id="1040" PostId="570" Score="0" Text="Looks great!  http://www.psychologie.uni-freiburg.de/Members/singmann" CreationDate="2010-10-28T13:53:48.260" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="5014" PostId="573" Score="1" Text="A clear counterexample to &quot;R questions should be asked on Stats Analysis&quot; would be http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14208016/find-best-matching-overlapping-polygons-in-r - as Joris says, it really has nothing at all to do with statistics! If anything, it might belong on the GIS site, but at heart it was a programming question. The &quot;main focus&quot; rule would have worked very sensibly." CreationDate="2013-10-31T02:58:36.560" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="1052" PostId="574" Score="0" Text="I like violet as a colour and use it for my computer desktop background, but just wouldn't associate it with statistics somehow. I associate violet and green with gardening, or tennis - wimbledon, specifically." CreationDate="2010-10-28T21:54:27.017" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1055" PostId="574" Score="0" Text="As I wrote; this is to diverge from the rest of the network. Go to stackoverflow.com, scroll to the bottom and look at the site links." CreationDate="2010-10-29T07:05:51.363" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1059" PostId="574" Score="0" Text="Maybe i have a narrow range of interests but I'd argue that it's only necessary to be quickly distinguisable from the sites on closely-related topics, i.e. stackoverflow, mathoverflow and math.stackexchange. Having said that and looking at them now, in fact the first two of those share much the *same* white-grey-blue-orange palette. I agree we do need something clearly distinct from that, which seems to argue against my previous suggestion!" CreationDate="2010-10-29T13:07:58.653" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1047" PostId="575" Score="0" Text="I would also favor the second one; I must admit I edit questions from time to time (title or tags), but I'm not looking at any additional badges :)" CreationDate="2010-10-28T19:17:30.810" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1048" PostId="575" Score="2" Text="Now, can I have my 'wise-guy' badge? :-)" CreationDate="2010-10-28T19:18:58.193" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="1050" PostId="575" Score="0" Text="I have added a set of 'guidelines'. Please upvote/downvote as appropriate." CreationDate="2010-10-28T19:49:50.557" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="7147" PostId="575" Score="2" Text="possible duplicate of [How to ask a &quot;good&quot; question on CrossValidated?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1479/how-to-ask-a-good-question-on-crossvalidated)" CreationDate="2015-08-14T16:44:33.857" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="1053" PostId="576" Score="1" Text="So-Called Title Case Reminiscent of Certain US Print Publications, Looks Anachronistic in New Media&#xA;&#xA;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_case#Headings_and_publication_titles" CreationDate="2010-10-28T23:14:27.090" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1087" PostId="576" Score="1" Text="Proper noun capitalization isn't an exception." CreationDate="2010-10-30T13:53:58.477" UserId="174" />
  <row Id="1088" PostId="576" Score="0" Text="@walkytalky I do not understand your comment." CreationDate="2010-10-30T13:55:19.983" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="1089" PostId="576" Score="1" Text="@Srikant Sorry, I wasn't trying to be cryptic or anything. Just noting that you have a list of &quot;exceptions&quot;, but the only one suggested so far isn't an exception at all, since sentence case already implies proper noun capitalization. &quot;Proper nouns should *not* be capitalized&quot; would be exceptional (and odd). I'm not sure we need any exceptions at all, though it's sensible to leave open the possibility." CreationDate="2010-10-30T14:06:51.787" UserId="174" />
  <row Id="1090" PostId="576" Score="0" Text="And just to clarify in case that sounds critical, I think you've done a great job on all of these :)" CreationDate="2010-10-30T14:09:17.480" UserId="174" />
  <row Id="1098" PostId="576" Score="0" Text="@walkytalky I was not annoyed with your comment. I simply did not understand it. Feel free to edit the text as appropriate. I was thinking that perhaps not everyone understands that sentence capitalization implies capitalize proper nouns." CreationDate="2010-10-30T18:14:37.907" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="1057" PostId="579" Score="0" Text="@Skrikant or a reproducible example (with simulated data)." CreationDate="2010-10-29T08:12:33.630" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1081" PostId="580" Score="0" Text="I don't think this needs to be specific to homework. Outline of what you've tried is helpful in real world cases too." CreationDate="2010-10-30T09:17:16.090" UserId="174" />
  <row Id="1086" PostId="580" Score="0" Text="@walkytalky Agreed." CreationDate="2010-10-30T13:51:19.107" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="1054" PostId="582" Score="0" Text="We should wait for the 1960th question before celebrating!" CreationDate="2010-10-29T00:19:55.033" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="1058" PostId="582" Score="0" Text="Hmm, maybe we should choose a random number between, say, 1000 and 2000 and conceal it until it is reached to reduce the risk of someone gaming the system  to acquire the fame and riches that will inevitably follow once the media pick up on this milestone..." CreationDate="2010-10-29T08:47:58.953" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="12930" PostId="583" Score="0" Text="That was 6 years ago. 100,000 is coming soon." CreationDate="2017-03-29T18:07:14.473" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="1065" PostId="584" Score="0" Text="I believe it is a topic for meta.SO; we don't have a power to decide about SO." CreationDate="2010-10-29T16:18:19.463" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1066" PostId="584" Score="1" Text="@mbq We can decide what is *acceptable to us*. Then we can go over to meta.SO and ask their opinion." CreationDate="2010-10-29T16:22:45.957" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="1067" PostId="584" Score="0" Text="@Srikant ok than." CreationDate="2010-10-29T16:24:54.513" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1101" PostId="584" Score="3" Text="If there are relatively few upvotes, or some people decide to go ahead and downvote, that would indicate lack of consensus.  In that eventuality, we should not rush ahead to encourage changes in policy that are manifestly controversial.  Thus, I would encourage readers to contemplate the options carefully and not hesitate to vote up *or down* as you see fit." CreationDate="2010-10-30T18:23:45.577" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1103" PostId="584" Score="1" Text="whuber - thanks for making this point.  This was my concern on the last thread: the StackExchange system just isn't made for developing consensus, because consensus requires knowing where everybody stands.  The voting so far has been rather anemic, but does that mean people are undecided or just don't care?" CreationDate="2010-10-30T18:36:38.030" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="1116" PostId="586" Score="3" Text="I think it would be more pertinent to consider what questions, if any, should be migrated from here to SO. Personally I think migration is a bit draconian and we should just *encourage* people one way or the other by means of helpful comments. That said, stuff in your second list does seem like it would get better answers on SO, while I'd like to think more analysis-related stuff would better served at SA/DA/CV/whatever." CreationDate="2010-10-30T23:22:15.370" UserId="174" />
  <row Id="1121" PostId="589" Score="0" Text="Thanks to ars recent question,http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/601/1036 , I found this question that addresses this same issue on Meta Stack Overflow http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/11474/150339" CreationDate="2010-10-31T02:55:09.950" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1137" PostId="589" Score="1" Text="The general rule for it is in SE sites about -- this is also a Wiki. So, the editing is crucial so the content can be easily accessible, understandable and formated well enough not to burn some more sensitive eyes. And about hurting -- there is a visible warning in FAQ." CreationDate="2010-11-01T22:07:11.707" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="9328" PostId="589" Score="0" Text="Voting to close in favour of a recent thread with several detailed and excellent answers." CreationDate="2016-02-14T18:36:10.770" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="1095" PostId="590" Score="1" Text="&quot;Immediately&quot; is rather demanding.  Glaring errors in titles are important to correct, because they affect everyone, but otherwise errors in the question itself usually can wait.  If I (personally) felt an obligation to search for and correct such errors, I wouldn't usually be able to participate in this site--time is too limited." CreationDate="2010-10-30T17:46:14.547" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1105" PostId="590" Score="1" Text="I changed instances of &quot;will&quot; to &quot;can&quot; in all of my answers. I don't mean to impose an obligation on anyone. I do think though that we should have community agreement on when, where, what, and how much to edit peoples responses." CreationDate="2010-10-30T19:07:19.470" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1112" PostId="590" Score="1" Text="That change helps a lot.  Editing should be optional, not mandatory.  (Some of your subsequent comments indicate you would agree with this philosophy.)" CreationDate="2010-10-30T20:41:09.150" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1069" PostId="591" Score="0" Text="Minor fixes should be done by users with editing abilities. Re-writing the question/major overhaul of question for grammar/clarity by the OP." CreationDate="2010-10-29T16:53:35.577" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="1073" PostId="591" Score="0" Text="I'll look for some examples, but I remember some questions having been edited more than I am suggesting without simply asking the OP to edit it themselves. While the editors are admirable, I think we should give the original poster an opportunity to edit themselves (as well as not expect the editors to spend time on correcting questions when they should be spending that time giving good answers!)" CreationDate="2010-10-29T17:04:54.203" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1093" PostId="591" Score="1" Text="Editing for grammar risks changing meaning.  However, in some cases the problems are clearly due to unfamiliarity with English.  For those, it may be too much to expect effective editing by the OP.  Editors should have the freedom to suggest and even make more significant changes in such cases." CreationDate="2010-10-30T17:42:16.207" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1109" PostId="591" Score="0" Text="I agree that sometimes it is due to unfamiliarity with English. Often it looks like someone asked a question via text message (lack of punctuation and capitalization). I think in all cases we should allow the OP to make changes themselves, although I don't want to be the spelling police either. Part of the reason I asked this question is because IMO there is more editing going on than is necessary, and I don't want to discourage new posters because their questions are heavily edited at the onset." CreationDate="2010-10-30T19:38:42.063" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1096" PostId="592" Score="0" Text="Why?  Sure, in some cases formatting will fix errors that make the question difficult to read (such as lines of code that get run together), but in other cases it may be presumptuous of the editor to suppose that their conception of the formatting and layout actually improves what the OP intended." CreationDate="2010-10-30T17:47:44.483" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1106" PostId="592" Score="0" Text="This is actually the only answer of mine I would outright agree with. I still have not figured out all of the formatting nuances for responses. I also think this is less presumptuous than editing for grammar or spelling." CreationDate="2010-10-30T19:27:10.733" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1107" PostId="592" Score="0" Text="@whuber, I actually just noticed all of the editing you did on one of my questions http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/3650/expected-distribution-of-random-draws/3873#3873 (I thought all you did was center the formula.) Thank you very much, I will have to start paying much more attention to my responses!" CreationDate="2010-10-30T19:31:48.217" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1111" PostId="592" Score="0" Text="There's no record that I edited the question, but I did edit the response.  The motivation was to center a prominent TeX formula but in the process I took the liberty to fix some spelling--both of which were documented in the 'reasons for editing' form.  Of course I wouldn't have paid such attention to an answer that didn't have such obvious merit :-)." CreationDate="2010-10-30T20:38:21.493" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1136" PostId="592" Score="0" Text="+1 This is especially important with LaTeX; not to mention R comments starting with Markdown's header mark." CreationDate="2010-11-01T22:02:32.413" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="8288" PostId="592" Score="0" Text="One thing that I've seen on other SE sites is adding appropriate line breaks to code blocks to prevent the horizontal scroll bar. This often adds a boost to readability of a code block.  Of course discretion should be used because some languages use white space ([like python](http://stackoverflow.com/q/13884499/5190842))" CreationDate="2015-09-18T21:48:44.940" UserId="89026" />
  <row Id="1094" PostId="593" Score="1" Text="Unique hyperlinks (such as links to cited documents) are fine, but adding generic links, such as to Wikipedia articles, can constitute an appreciable change in meaning and in some cases could be misleading or wrong.  I would discourage people from adding any links that do not have obvious and unique targets." CreationDate="2010-10-30T17:44:16.577" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1108" PostId="593" Score="0" Text="Do you think we should ask OP's to add links if we did not initially know what topic they were talking about or an unknown acronym?" CreationDate="2010-10-30T19:33:23.457" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1113" PostId="593" Score="1" Text="Requests for links are frequently made in such cases.  That can also be a gentle way of hinting that the OP will easily find the answer with a quick Internet search." CreationDate="2010-10-30T20:42:33.500" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1077" PostId="594" Score="0" Text="Andy, I will tweak that check mark soon and make it more readable on the math site. That normal distribution curve is a great idea for this site's accepted answer bg." CreationDate="2010-10-29T17:42:19.060" UserId="12" />
  <row Id="1078" PostId="595" Score="5" Text="I still prefer the *Sentence case*." CreationDate="2010-10-29T21:40:47.550" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1079" PostId="595" Score="0" Text="when I look at the list of questions, I like it better in title case; although when looking at an individual question, I have no preference." CreationDate="2010-10-30T02:24:15.183" UserId="795" />
  <row Id="1082" PostId="596" Score="3" Text="This is not fully on topic, but... I just hate it." CreationDate="2010-10-30T09:23:14.317" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1085" PostId="596" Score="0" Text="Me too :) (Everybody should browse some pages of the TeXbook :)" CreationDate="2010-10-30T13:31:00.087" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="4175" PostId="596" Score="0" Text="I agree with all of these, but spaces before commas in particular make my eyes bleed. There seems to have been a particular spate of people doing this sort of thing just lately, I am not sure where such a thing comes from." CreationDate="2013-07-01T00:51:48.917" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="1097" PostId="598" Score="2" Text="I am not sure that your way of framing is the status quo. The issue is that historically lot of R questions have been asked on SO (that is my impression) and perhaps they are better suited for our site. Also, see the other thread I opened on a poll as to what to do. I agree that R need not be singled out but the issue of SO vs SA is most prominent with R." CreationDate="2010-10-30T18:12:31.323" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="1099" PostId="598" Score="0" Text="@Srikant The question about *status quo* was not about what has been posted where but rather about what the current policy is.  Maybe that policy needs clarification rather than changing." CreationDate="2010-10-30T18:20:39.217" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1104" PostId="598" Score="2" Text="+1, We've already had discussions about statistical computing/programming questions.  I'm a little uncomfortable with singling out one language, however popular.  I'm also uncomfortable with an explicit migration policy that takes traffic away from SO -- SE's banner site for programming q&amp;a.  It seems this is a discussion that ought be initiated and decided by the vibrant R community on SO.  It's somewhat impolitic for us to take such a step.  My two cents." CreationDate="2010-10-30T18:53:25.343" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="1100" PostId="599" Score="0" Text="@whuber Perhaps, I am not being clear. The post is not about existing R/Matlab/.. questions. But, about what is a *desirable* policy for the future. 'Migration' refers to migrating questions from one site to another site as soon as they are posted. As far as I know this migration can be done by the mods. Hence, the need for some consensus on a policy. I agree with you that the focus need not be on R although R was the trigger for this discussion." CreationDate="2010-10-30T18:23:21.700" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="1102" PostId="599" Score="0" Text="@Srikant But both your proposals are prominently *and exclusively* about R-related questions!" CreationDate="2010-10-30T18:26:06.043" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1110" PostId="599" Score="1" Text="I think any policy we make on R questions can be easily adapted to other languages. R is currently more pertinent simply due to the amount of questions relating to it (it is the most frequent tag). Some languages won't have a SE site to migrate to, but I think answering this question in regards to the R software helps to clarify the scope of the site." CreationDate="2010-10-30T20:00:24.510" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1114" PostId="599" Score="4" Text="If the policy were on deciding which questions are acceptable here, that would be fine.  But it centers on what ought to be migrated from SO.  I think this is the exclusive concern of the SO community, and not within our purview.  Especially since one solution advocates what type of programming questions ought to be migrated -- interfering with the explicit purpose of the flagship SO site: programming.  We had previously decided to allow some latitude in accepting programming questions, because it's hard to set up a policy.  I don't see how it's become easier by targeting one language." CreationDate="2010-10-30T20:55:01.323" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="1117" PostId="599" Score="0" Text="@whuber @ars @Andy - @Andy's point is spot on. I really feel that the focus on 'R' is not meant to single out that specific language. The focus is an artifact of R's popularity on SO relative to other languages. Would it help if I edit the question to discuss migration of all data analysis questions to our site? Reg the issue of what ought to be migrated from SO- we need to first decide what we will accept. Then my plan was to open a similar question on meta.SO on the same issue to seek their opinion on what they think about the issue given our consensus." CreationDate="2010-10-30T23:27:23.310" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="1120" PostId="599" Score="2" Text="@Srikant: But we've *already* decided what's acceptable here.  See:  [ http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/252/should-we-allow-more-computing-questions ], [ http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/35/how-much-programming-here ], [ http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1/how-to-answer-r-questions ], [ http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/276/should-we-unclose-computing-questions ].  Confused about how this question adds anything new to that discussion.  This is one reason we need a community FAQ so we don't keep rehashing old ground." CreationDate="2010-10-31T02:30:03.927" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="1128" PostId="599" Score="0" Text="+1 I agree completely; thought that this was already decided." CreationDate="2010-11-01T13:29:32.323" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="1118" PostId="601" Score="0" Text="Ideally, we should integrate the agreed upon questions in the faq page. Will we not have the ability to control that page (perhaps the mods have some control)?" CreationDate="2010-10-30T23:44:24.423" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="1119" PostId="601" Score="0" Text="Well, compare the SO official and community FAQs to get a sense of the difference.  The official FAQ isn't overwhelming for new users and gives them a sense of how the sit works.  The unofficial FAQ deals with all the stuff we usually end up discussing on meta, but don't really mark as &quot;FAQ&quot; -- yet." CreationDate="2010-10-31T02:23:17.637" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="1129" PostId="601" Score="1" Text="+1 I agree with @ars; meta is the right place for this so that it isn't overwhelming and is easily extensible.  See the CS Theory example in my answer as well.  The moderators will then link to this in the &quot;official&quot; one (see the CS Theory &quot;official&quot; FAQ as well: http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/faq)." CreationDate="2010-11-01T13:33:14.863" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="1130" PostId="601" Score="0" Text="We actually started doing something like this before, but never really developed it properly: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/6/what-should-our-faq-contain" CreationDate="2010-11-01T14:13:20.693" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="1122" PostId="602" Score="2" Text="Sure, that works for all the questions they've covered and I don't recommend covering that ground.  But this doesn't give us a way to track questions exclusive to this community.  For example, statistical computing and programming, which has now shown up in some form or other in about 7 questions.  Would be nice if we could just mark one question &quot;FAQ&quot; and let it rest." CreationDate="2010-10-31T14:20:49.467" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="1123" PostId="602" Score="0" Text="Maybe we just need to stress &quot;please search before you post a new question&quot;?" CreationDate="2010-10-31T15:49:43.577" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1124" PostId="602" Score="2" Text="Because that always works?  :)  But, yeah, that might be sufficient.  Still, an FAQ tag seems to be a fairly cheap and effortless solution that's easy to reference." CreationDate="2010-10-31T17:06:32.003" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="1125" PostId="603" Score="2" Text="+1 This is excellent!" CreationDate="2010-10-31T18:29:57.660" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="1126" PostId="603" Score="0" Text="I agree. Great idea." CreationDate="2010-10-31T23:52:01.320" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="1142" PostId="603" Score="0" Text="Very nice idea, but IMHO it will be confusing for new persons. They will not understand that it can be used to vote." CreationDate="2010-11-03T14:05:06.970" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="1143" PostId="603" Score="0" Text="@Peter This is also my concern, but I'd give it a try; we could also just add arrows to this concept." CreationDate="2010-11-03T14:39:06.613" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1132" PostId="605" Score="0" Text="That's a bummer, although I understand why you would want to keep data for this purpose." CreationDate="2010-11-01T17:32:46.793" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="1134" PostId="605" Score="0" Text="Oh well, thanks for letting us know so promptly." CreationDate="2010-11-01T18:06:42.070" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1135" PostId="605" Score="0" Text="So I thought... not to mention it is on the other hand too broad." CreationDate="2010-11-01T21:47:20.490" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1138" PostId="606" Score="0" Text="The anal abbreviation has other interpretations. Probably best to avoid that." CreationDate="2010-11-02T11:09:40.883" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="1139" PostId="606" Score="0" Text="I agree with Rob; the hyphen isn't a great idea either (IMO).  Maybe just analysis.SE?  Or else leave it as stats.SE.  We have CrossValidated as the site name, so that's something." CreationDate="2010-11-02T13:04:01.823" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="1140" PostId="606" Score="0" Text="analysis.SE would be far too ambiguous. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis." CreationDate="2010-11-02T18:55:07.047" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1215" PostId="607" Score="0" Text="Just to mention; this is still an avid issue!" CreationDate="2010-11-15T23:49:46.083" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1216" PostId="607" Score="0" Text="I have used the 404/CAPTCHA images submitted. I still need one for the /error page." CreationDate="2010-11-16T15:23:53.497" UserId="12" />
  <row Id="1145" PostId="609" Score="4" Text="This would be better if it were `return 404;`" CreationDate="2010-11-03T20:18:50.307" UserId="1657" />
  <row Id="1147" PostId="609" Score="3" Text="...but you would need to change the comment from `// chosen by fair dice roll` to something like `// chosen from random URL`" CreationDate="2010-11-03T20:26:39.473" UserId="1657" />
  <row Id="1148" PostId="609" Score="0" Text="@Joshua Great ideas!" CreationDate="2010-11-03T20:29:48.643" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="1149" PostId="610" Score="0" Text="Also a great idea." CreationDate="2010-11-03T20:30:18.237" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="1150" PostId="611" Score="3" Text="@Matt yes that was my concern as well. The concept was first proposed in the logo thread. I just implemented it in my mock to see what people think. I've talked to MBQ further in http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/18/ten-fold about the usability of this. We decided to go with the standard arrow shapes(but in a slightly curvy form)." CreationDate="2010-11-03T20:36:15.473" UserId="12" />
  <row Id="1152" PostId="611" Score="0" Text="Sounds good to me.  Thanks, Jin!" CreationDate="2010-11-03T21:10:27.587" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="1146" PostId="612" Score="0" Text="Oops - I see nico was posting on the same thing while I was still writing." CreationDate="2010-11-03T20:25:46.330" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="1151" PostId="612" Score="0" Text="see my comment to Nico regarding the voting widget." CreationDate="2010-11-03T20:46:13.153" UserId="12" />
  <row Id="1153" PostId="613" Score="1" Text="I like it......" CreationDate="2010-11-04T04:35:54.693" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="1154" PostId="613" Score="0" Text="@mbq Indeed, something like this! Thanks!" CreationDate="2010-11-04T12:21:41.793" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="1156" PostId="613" Score="0" Text="Cool!  I was thinking of something like this.  Perfect for the captcha." CreationDate="2010-11-04T13:20:49.510" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="1157" PostId="613" Score="0" Text="@mbq The Captcha one is even better :) !!!!!" CreationDate="2010-11-04T14:38:56.993" UserId="190" />
  <row Id="16045" PostId="613" Score="0" Text="@mbq Ever since I came across the &quot;Robot?&quot; one in the wild, I've been wondering where it is from... by chance I found this post! Would you mind explaining how you generated it?" CreationDate="2018-06-30T20:23:27.980" UserId="67042" />
  <row Id="16252" PostId="613" Score="1" Text="@Jim This is just some bunch of pseudo-random numbers, based on my naive guess how such robot detector could work. The &quot;robot&quot; point was actually manually drawn in Inkscape, IIRC." CreationDate="2018-07-16T13:12:03.143" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1155" PostId="614" Score="1" Text="That looks too much like a server error to me. And it's specific to R." CreationDate="2010-11-04T13:14:50.090" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1214" PostId="614" Score="0" Text="@onestop Very good, it is supposed to be a server error page ;-)" CreationDate="2010-11-15T23:48:58.687" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1171" PostId="615" Score="0" Text="I have merged his accounts." CreationDate="2010-11-04T20:25:26.633" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1173" PostId="615" Score="0" Text="@mbq Thanks. I had to leave just before Srikant asked me to." CreationDate="2010-11-05T09:08:31.963" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="1174" PostId="615" Score="0" Text="@mbq Thanks. @ayush @whuber @chl @shane: FYI- I see that the OP of the original question has now upvoted questions/answers and is participating as appropriate. Can the comments reg voting/contributing be deleted to clean up that question? I have deleted mine and voted to re-open the question." CreationDate="2010-11-05T14:22:09.317" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="1175" PostId="615" Score="0" Text="@Skrikant Yes, the OP is now asking, commenting, and voting with his new merged account, which is very cool. You can delete my comments. Thanks to all of you for acting so promptly and help solving this issue." CreationDate="2010-11-05T14:52:37.947" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1158" PostId="616" Score="0" Text="It might be possible that a registered account with 1 rep cannot comment on a question that was posted by the unregistered account. This may explain the 'answer'. Can you merge the accounts so that we do not have two accounts for this user?" CreationDate="2010-11-04T14:51:59.413" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="1159" PostId="617" Score="0" Text="I also found the question itself to be rambling; it required more clarification and possibly should have been split into several questions." CreationDate="2010-11-04T15:38:50.920" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="1160" PostId="617" Score="0" Text="@Shane Yes, I agree (esp. the title includes &quot;eigen values&quot;...) and also suggested to rework it a little. But, then we exchanged a lot of comments that are not that appropriate on a Q&amp;A website (IMO)." CreationDate="2010-11-04T15:42:53.093" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1161" PostId="617" Score="0" Text="Deleting the original question with a request to repost to the OP and merging of the OP's two accounts also seems to be a good option." CreationDate="2010-11-04T16:59:26.883" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="1162" PostId="617" Score="0" Text="@Srikant I fully agree with that proposition." CreationDate="2010-11-04T17:35:41.993" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1165" PostId="617" Score="0" Text="He claims to have voted, but obviously not from the profile.  Maybe he doesn't really understand the site or he's got an old browser that doesn't handle javascript/ajax as nicely?" CreationDate="2010-11-04T19:22:51.697" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="1166" PostId="617" Score="0" Text="Hmm, just noticed he accepted an answer, so something must be working.  Not sure if he's being difficult or just doesn't understand voting." CreationDate="2010-11-04T19:23:52.850" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="1167" PostId="617" Score="0" Text="@ars My meta.SO search shows that unregistered voters can accept but not vote which may explain what you see. However, this may have changed recently." CreationDate="2010-11-04T19:30:18.787" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="1169" PostId="617" Score="0" Text="@Srikant: oh, you're right.  I guess the 56-rep and 1-rep accounts are confusing things.  Hopefully @ayush will visit this thread so we can help him sort it out.  Agree with your proposals, btw." CreationDate="2010-11-04T19:44:43.730" UserId="251" />
  <row Id="1168" PostId="618" Score="0" Text="Looks cool. Thanks." CreationDate="2010-11-04T19:36:25.580" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="1176" PostId="620" Score="0" Text="good catch, I'll tweak it." CreationDate="2010-11-05T14:53:15.263" UserId="12" />
  <row Id="1191" PostId="620" Score="0" Text="It looks better now." CreationDate="2010-11-09T04:23:54.500" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="1172" PostId="621" Score="0" Text="I was just going to say that! Sweet design anyway!" CreationDate="2010-11-05T06:45:50.947" UserId="582" />
  <row Id="1184" PostId="622" Score="0" Text="I agree the shape is a bit off on the homepage. are they OK to you on the /question page?" CreationDate="2010-11-08T08:09:26.960" UserId="12" />
  <row Id="1185" PostId="622" Score="0" Text="@Jin. They are probably close enough on the question page. The up-vote symbol is even better. If you could just scale up the up-vote shape that would be great." CreationDate="2010-11-08T09:27:58.437" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="1178" PostId="625" Score="0" Text="It does indeed make sense. Thanks for the explanation!" CreationDate="2010-11-05T16:26:55.777" UserId="582" />
  <row Id="1179" PostId="626" Score="2" Text="@carlsosdc I think this is an issue with getting used to the new design. Certain elements are different from the Beta &quot;Sketchy&quot; design. I say give it a few more days, since the design just went up yesterday." CreationDate="2010-11-05T18:07:29.890" UserId="12" />
  <row Id="1180" PostId="627" Score="0" Text="I didn't interpret the links that way. But maybe that's just me. :-)" CreationDate="2010-11-06T12:42:49.157" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="1181" PostId="627" Score="0" Text="Maybe i spend too long on Wikipedia!" CreationDate="2010-11-06T13:16:58.130" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1182" PostId="629" Score="0" Text="I'm looking into this. thanks." CreationDate="2010-11-07T03:05:46.697" UserId="12" />
  <row Id="1183" PostId="629" Score="0" Text="I have put in a fix, it will be in the next deployment" CreationDate="2010-11-08T08:08:20.657" UserId="12" />
  <row Id="1192" PostId="629" Score="0" Text="It looks like this one has now been fixed." CreationDate="2010-11-09T04:25:09.833" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="1186" PostId="631" Score="0" Text="Looking at the votes- I guess I am the only one with the issue! In any case, my take was that at the top my eyes tend to focus on the content between the left and the right boundaries and that is easier to do as the contrast between the background and content is clear. However, as my eyes go down the page, the lack of a clear demarcation confuses my eyes as I have to re-calibrate the area I am supposed to focus on without the visual aid of a left and right boundary." CreationDate="2010-11-08T17:21:48.157" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="1187" PostId="632" Score="0" Text="I agree; it was useful during meta but now it is a high time we should find better way of making announcements; for instance chat works very well for that." CreationDate="2010-11-08T18:23:44.993" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1188" PostId="632" Score="2" Text="@mbq I agree we should find a better way of making announcements; in particular I think we need a way to highlight current activity on meta on the parent site. I disagree that chat works very well for that. Chat is the *last* thing I look at, and surely it's intended for ongoing discussion, not announcements." CreationDate="2010-11-08T19:44:11.643" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1189" PostId="632" Score="1" Text="I think that using the right sidebar could help for this, but we'd need some way to collapse what's there - I pay no attention to the recent tags and badges, and I only rarely need to tweak my interesting/ignored tags.  That's a huge swath of screen that's going unused for me." CreationDate="2010-11-08T20:36:07.477" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="1190" PostId="633" Score="0" Text="I have the same problem." CreationDate="2010-11-09T02:06:58.360" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="1193" PostId="633" Score="0" Text="This issue has also been raised on meta.stackoverflow about the Apple.SE site." CreationDate="2010-11-09T04:42:35.673" UserId="246" />
  <row Id="1194" PostId="633" Score="0" Text="Ok, it looks like it is quite common among SE2.0" CreationDate="2010-11-09T07:30:17.413" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1195" PostId="636" Score="0" Text="I'll make the visited links a different shade. I missed this initially, thanks for pointing it out." CreationDate="2010-11-09T18:03:05.140" UserId="12" />
  <row Id="1207" PostId="636" Score="0" Text="@Jin: its fixed: thanks." CreationDate="2010-11-11T16:49:35.800" UserId="603" />
  <row Id="1196" PostId="637" Score="0" Text="The reason I might do otherwise is to find out which one is voted 'best' by public opinion" CreationDate="2010-11-09T19:25:25.113" UserId="1381" />
  <row Id="1197" PostId="637" Score="0" Text="The only exception is when you cast two opposite answers, so that they should be separated in light of voting. The only example I know is one of does-oil-prevent-pasta-from-sticking questions on SeasonedAdvice: http://seasonedadvice.com/questions/3994/does-oil-in-the-boiling-water-prevent-the-spaghetti-from-sticking-together-clos" CreationDate="2010-11-09T19:36:48.473" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1198" PostId="637" Score="0" Text="@David @mbq If you have to appeal to public opinion to decide the best answer then it suggests that there is no objective 'correct' answer as neither answer stands on its own merit. In such a case, I think the competing answers must be made CW." CreationDate="2010-11-09T19:43:08.077" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="1199" PostId="637" Score="0" Text="@Sirkant. a) what is 'CW' b) Each of my answers has clear pros and cons, and I have found one that suits my needs for the present, but my goal would be to receive feedback on the pros and cons of each. On the other hand, the reason I asked this question is that it felt 'awkward' to make so many separate posts. I'd prefer that someone expand on the different ideas that I have presented." CreationDate="2010-11-10T00:15:57.143" UserId="1381" />
  <row Id="1200" PostId="637" Score="0" Text="@David CW=community-wiki (no unique answer, no rep gained); the reason why I suggested to merge all your responses into a single one was that it was not clear whether (a) you're expecting an answer from others, and (b) we have to vote up every answer although some appear clearly linked -- commenting each of your answer, on the other hand, would not resemble a wiki anymore, but rather a chat session (IMO)." CreationDate="2010-11-10T07:32:28.047" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1203" PostId="637" Score="0" Text="Thanks @chi, I didn't realize the distinction, and it was the CW format that I was following. Thanks for pointing that out." CreationDate="2010-11-10T16:26:48.030" UserId="1381" />
  <row Id="1208" PostId="640" Score="0" Text="There's another similar problem on edit 2 of http://stats.stackexchange.com/posts/4471/revisions. I've rolled back to avoid the mess." CreationDate="2010-11-12T05:45:48.240" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="1209" PostId="640" Score="0" Text="@rob another bug, we see what it is. stand by" CreationDate="2010-11-12T07:44:16.860" UserId="123" />
  <row Id="1210" PostId="640" Score="0" Text="@rob ok, that is fixed as well. Was HTML escaping issue with the hoisted sections." CreationDate="2010-11-12T09:47:48.673" UserId="123" />
  <row Id="1211" PostId="640" Score="0" Text="Great. Thanks for doing it quickly." CreationDate="2010-11-12T09:58:05.497" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="1218" PostId="644" Score="1" Text="I think we should only request migration paths for questions require *frequent* migration to another site. I suspect that migrating questions to tex.SE will be a lot less than to some of the other targets such as math.SE." CreationDate="2010-11-19T18:01:50.263" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="1219" PostId="646" Score="0" Text="can you provide an excerpt in a `&lt;pre&gt;` block of specifically what you mean? I viewed the post but I'm unclear.." CreationDate="2010-11-19T18:38:52.310" UserId="123" />
  <row Id="1221" PostId="646" Score="0" Text="@Jeff I successfully reproduced the problem by editing this question." CreationDate="2010-11-19T19:58:53.830" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4317" PostId="646" Score="1" Text="... and it seems like the problem is now fixed." CreationDate="2013-07-27T23:20:30.160" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="1222" PostId="648" Score="3" Text="Agreed!  The whole point of the StackExchange sites is to collect a wide range of answers and then sort them using the community's collective expertise.  There's no better way to learn than to put your knowledge up for public review." CreationDate="2010-11-19T22:51:53.953" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="1223" PostId="648" Score="1" Text="Thank you for your encouraging words !" CreationDate="2010-11-21T10:59:09.533" UserId="264" />
  <row Id="1268" PostId="648" Score="1" Text="Fully agree,  I would say that taking the risk of a weak answer is valuable as long as strong answer come out from time to time.  Frenquency of strong answer do not need to be large for the community because of the voting scheme. However, for the representation people make out of you (appart from your &quot;rep&quot; I would say) the frequency of strong answers has to be significant enough to dominate weak answers, at least in people's mind (and strong has often more weight than weak)." CreationDate="2010-12-15T07:57:44.960" UserId="223" />
  <row Id="1224" PostId="649" Score="0" Text="Also thank you ! This is a price I am willing to pay." CreationDate="2010-11-21T11:01:43.367" UserId="264" />
  <row Id="1225" PostId="650" Score="0" Text="Thanks........." CreationDate="2010-11-22T09:14:33.893" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1226" PostId="653" Score="2" Text="Or use buttons with quote and zeros and ones." CreationDate="2010-11-22T09:25:06.603" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1231" PostId="654" Score="1" Text="Thanks for spotting this." CreationDate="2010-11-25T12:28:55.940" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1227" PostId="655" Score="0" Text="+1 Agreed about variants of usage.  A good example is &quot;modeling&quot; and &quot;modelling,&quot; which should be synonyms.  But how does one go about making fixes?  By posting questions in meta (like this one)?" CreationDate="2010-11-24T15:22:28.587" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1228" PostId="655" Score="0" Text="@whuber I am not sure about the process. Perhaps, one of the mods have an insight?" CreationDate="2010-11-24T15:31:08.560" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="1229" PostId="656" Score="0" Text="My privileges page says I can already create synonyms (which I have done as a workaround in this case).  It doesn't say anything about merging or deleting tags." CreationDate="2010-11-24T21:50:03.727" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1230" PostId="656" Score="0" Text="Sorry, I misread your question. Merging and deleting tags are available to mods only (see this [meta question](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/36841/allow-10ks-to-merge-tags))." CreationDate="2010-11-25T09:06:35.257" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="1232" PostId="656" Score="0" Text="Thank you for the reference to that discussion: it illuminates the issue.  I did not appreciate the irreversibility of the merging process.  The answer, it seems, is that requests for substantive changes to tags should be directed to moderators and I take it that this meta forum is the proper (and only?) mechanism to do so." CreationDate="2010-11-26T16:03:50.553" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1233" PostId="656" Score="1" Text="For any substantive changes to tags, just post it on meta." CreationDate="2010-11-27T13:19:22.287" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="1234" PostId="658" Score="1" Text="+1 I agree with this." CreationDate="2010-11-29T21:20:50.403" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="1235" PostId="658" Score="3" Text="I also agree but I just want to point that there may be some cases where editing the question would change drastically its original meaning so that responses that were already given (and were correct in the context of the original question) would lose their relevance. And I doubt plain readers would take time to track all of these changes." CreationDate="2010-11-29T23:39:14.717" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1241" PostId="658" Score="0" Text="Although I have accepted this answer, @chl makes such an excellent comment that I doubt our conversation about this topic is really closed: it's just suspended until the issue is eventually forced on us again." CreationDate="2010-12-01T22:31:19.980" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1242" PostId="658" Score="0" Text="@whube I agree. I suppose that any question that falls in this category will be awkward to deal with." CreationDate="2010-12-02T09:10:11.120" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="1236" PostId="659" Score="0" Text="Note: I &quot;unfroze&quot; the chat room myself, but I still don't think that this should be happening." CreationDate="2010-11-30T18:09:43.317" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="1237" PostId="662" Score="0" Text="Thanks Jeff.  I understand this rule for random rooms created for specific topics, but don't you think that you should keep rooms associated with specific sites unfrozen regardless of activity?  You never know when people may eventually start using it, and freezing it simply prevents that possibility." CreationDate="2010-12-01T00:00:45.127" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="1238" PostId="662" Score="1" Text="@shane that's a good point; maybe we should preserve (prevent from freezing) the last site-specific room that exists on stackexchange.com?" CreationDate="2010-12-01T00:28:29.507" UserId="123" />
  <row Id="1239" PostId="662" Score="7" Text="IMO, each site should have a chat room, and those rooms should never be frozen; if that means the last site-specific room on SE, then yes.  Otherwise, you can just automatically create a chat room when a new site is created, and that would be the permanent room.  These chat rooms are great, and provide a really nice way for communities to communicate outside the normal channels." CreationDate="2010-12-01T02:56:59.710" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="1240" PostId="662" Score="3" Text="I'd like to second Shane's suggestion for site-specific chat rooms. For rooms with a more academic-flavour there will inevitably be periods with low or no traffic due to the annual natural of grant applications and 'fieldwork' etc." CreationDate="2010-12-01T11:31:22.750" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="1243" PostId="664" Score="0" Text="Sounds fine to me" CreationDate="2010-12-07T23:40:50.543" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="1246" PostId="664" Score="0" Text="Works for me too.  We can merge them once this question has been accepted." CreationDate="2010-12-08T14:41:18.910" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="1247" PostId="664" Score="2" Text="Batch rename followed by synonym creation." CreationDate="2010-12-08T18:30:34.797" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="1248" PostId="664" Score="1" Text="This suggestion looks fine to me too (I also appreciated @Matt's comment)." CreationDate="2010-12-08T19:48:32.867" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1249" PostId="664" Score="0" Text="I set up the merge operation.  It should be finished at some point later (it must be a batch process)." CreationDate="2010-12-09T14:39:11.360" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="1250" PostId="664" Score="0" Text="I've added the synonyms [graphical-techniques,plot,plotting]-&gt;[data-visualization]" CreationDate="2010-12-09T23:04:25.500" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="1244" PostId="665" Score="5" Text="I think tag synonyms will still appear in autocomplete. So if we make graphical-techniques -&gt; data-visualization that should take care of the graph... autocomplete. Perhaps we also need plotting-methods as a synonym for data-visualization." CreationDate="2010-12-07T23:43:19.857" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="1245" PostId="665" Score="0" Text="Excellent - that's good to know." CreationDate="2010-12-08T00:46:21.150" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="1255" PostId="667" Score="0" Text="**NB**: Time &amp; date for first journal club now set. See http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/674/449 for details and to propose &amp; vote on article to discuss." CreationDate="2010-12-12T20:48:14.653" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1251" PostId="669" Score="0" Text="yes, but aren't there duplicates of data-visualization on the same questions now?" CreationDate="2010-12-09T23:04:36.823" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="1252" PostId="669" Score="0" Text="Oh, I see. I hadn't noticed. Looks like a bug." CreationDate="2010-12-09T23:51:41.700" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="1253" PostId="670" Score="0" Text="Thanks Jeff!  That right, but wouldn't it make sense that if the tag already exists on the question, that it shouldn't result in a duplicate?  Just a suggestion for the `merge` function..." CreationDate="2010-12-10T14:06:54.790" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="1254" PostId="673" Score="0" Text="Isn't that the better support of fonts was one of the features planned for this ff version?" CreationDate="2010-12-11T15:32:55.950" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1256" PostId="676" Score="0" Text="(+1) This one is particularly theoretical (IMO), and hard to read for people with few mathematical statistics background. But SS has very good papers, as Statistical Science does. I need to check myself." CreationDate="2010-12-12T21:17:26.180" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1257" PostId="676" Score="0" Text="Thanks for suggestion; topic looks nice, but the size is be quite discouraging." CreationDate="2010-12-12T21:20:44.027" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1258" PostId="676" Score="0" Text="@mbq Statistical Science is a longer-established review journal but isn't open access. Sorry hadn't read past the intro of that one, and doing so now, agree it does rapidly get too theoretical-mathematical. @mbq agree about the size too! Maybe I should withdraw this specific article as a suggestion. Journal still looks a promising source of open-access review articles though." CreationDate="2010-12-12T22:46:51.400" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1259" PostId="677" Score="0" Text="@onestop And nicely complemented by a paper in the JSS about TM, [Text Mining Infrastructure in R](http://www.jstatsoft.org/v25/i05/paper). I'm afraid I may not be available next Friday, but it's already a good start." CreationDate="2010-12-13T14:06:11.103" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1260" PostId="677" Score="0" Text="Ok, this seems a pretty nice idea. @chl The time and date may change." CreationDate="2010-12-13T18:25:11.147" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1263" PostId="677" Score="0" Text="Nice paper, but you should notice that while the paper is not very long, it introduces a lot of different problems that are not really specific and that can lead to several different huge discussions (for example: dimensionality reduction, distance between object, data visualisation, clustering, ...). I guess a paper for such a discussion should be more specific ?" CreationDate="2010-12-14T18:07:56.773" UserId="223" />
  <row Id="1264" PostId="677" Score="0" Text="@robin Good point, but I think it is good -- I don't know how many people will come, so more chances for discussion means less chance for deadly silence ;-)" CreationDate="2010-12-14T20:11:55.680" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1265" PostId="677" Score="0" Text="There is an other problem -- the author works for US Navy and seemingly his e-mail is confidential..." CreationDate="2010-12-14T20:23:51.650" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1266" PostId="677" Score="0" Text="@mbq - unless this is the same Jeff L. Solka?? http://binf.gmu.edu/~jsolka/" CreationDate="2010-12-14T20:30:51.130" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1267" PostId="677" Score="0" Text="@onestop Oh, thanks." CreationDate="2010-12-14T20:40:53.590" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1261" PostId="678" Score="0" Text="Looks fine to me, and exactly the same fonts as on StackOverflow. (I'm using Firefox 3.6.10 on Windows XP)." CreationDate="2010-12-14T13:06:31.767" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1262" PostId="678" Score="0" Text="This could be a linux thing? I'm viewing both sites in Chromium 8.0.560.0(0) and FireFox 3.5.15 under Fedora 12. I have later versions of those apps running on my laptop and at home with the same difference in font sizes between SO and CV." CreationDate="2010-12-14T13:13:22.710" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="1283" PostId="678" Score="0" Text="Seems no-one from the team is willing to check it :-(" CreationDate="2010-12-22T11:51:02.487" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1272" PostId="680" Score="0" Text="I understand the merits of this, but couldn't there be an exception for blatant spam?" CreationDate="2010-12-15T21:27:08.553" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1273" PostId="680" Score="0" Text="Well, I could have deleted the question altogether.  But I still don't see the harm in having it on the front page as an example.  I can see why you might want this, but FWIW, I think the current arrangement is best.  Once you're elected moderator in this coming election, you can take a hard line on these ones.  :)" CreationDate="2010-12-15T21:33:13.947" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="1274" PostId="680" Score="0" Text="I think I can safely elude being elected: don't people have to nominate themselves? ;-)  I'm perfectly happy with the current moderators." CreationDate="2010-12-15T22:15:08.013" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1275" PostId="681" Score="0" Text="It it was closed as blatant spam, it should have been deleted, too. Technically, the mod should have just flagged it as spam which would have had the same effect." CreationDate="2010-12-15T22:45:22.697" UserId="246" />
  <row Id="1276" PostId="681" Score="0" Text="Together, this reply and @Robert Cartaino's comment clarify the situation.  Thank you to both." CreationDate="2010-12-15T23:42:27.080" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1277" PostId="681" Score="0" Text="I just deleted the question (flagged as spam, as suggested).  I suppose it wasn't clear to me that it was *blatant* spam at the time, since it was somewhat relevant to the site topic.  But I can see how keeping it around would be bad in the long run." CreationDate="2010-12-16T01:40:38.563" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="1278" PostId="683" Score="0" Text="I don't really have any ideas, although if possible, I suggest chrome.  It's a better browser in my experience." CreationDate="2010-12-17T01:00:15.487" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="1316" PostId="683" Score="0" Text="Would if I could, stuck with IE7 at work unfortunately :(" CreationDate="2011-01-24T15:39:06.013" UserId="229" />
  <row Id="1280" PostId="686" Score="0" Text="Looks nice. Due to the date, 31st is of course out of question, but there is no constraint that it must be on Friday." CreationDate="2010-12-21T00:21:28.520" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1281" PostId="686" Score="0" Text="sounds good" CreationDate="2010-12-21T08:31:43.297" UserId="1307" />
  <row Id="1282" PostId="686" Score="6" Text="Yes, I rather the idea of pushing this into January..." CreationDate="2010-12-21T18:29:42.650" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="1284" PostId="687" Score="0" Text="+1 Thanks for the pointer. I had missed this. Looks very interesting." CreationDate="2010-12-22T14:56:26.693" UserId="1979" />
  <row Id="1285" PostId="687" Score="3" Text="To get started, I recommend skimming the paper (pay attention to Figure 14) and then jumping directly to the rejoinder to see where the controversy is.  Use the remarks in the rejoinder to go back to any of the discussion papers that look interesting." CreationDate="2010-12-23T17:35:31.497" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1286" PostId="687" Score="1" Text="+1, both topical and controversial; see also [Hockey stick controversy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_controversy)" CreationDate="2010-12-25T17:41:40.643" UserId="557" />
  <row Id="1287" PostId="689" Score="0" Text="Thanks Jin. Much appreciated!" CreationDate="2010-12-29T20:26:52.023" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="1288" PostId="689" Score="0" Text="I experienced the same &quot;disagreement&quot;... Now it looks pretty fine under Safari 5.0.3 (os x 10.6)!" CreationDate="2010-12-30T09:37:23.393" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1289" PostId="690" Score="2" Text="Sometimes, when I am composing a response in Parent, the preview simply stops working.  Once the message is posted it's rendered just fine and usually the preview works again when I re-edit it.  Yes, I do wait for the preview; yes, I wait longer when there is a lot of TeX in the document; yes, I click outside the textbox to make sure the preview is not waiting for me for some reason.  This phenomenon is intermittent.  (Firefox 3.6.13 on Win 7/64.)" CreationDate="2011-01-04T22:02:33.870" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1291" PostId="690" Score="1" Text="Here is a twisty solution that worked. I continued to have the problem of LaTex not displaying in preview, but started a new Firefox tab and new meta question. I fed equations from latex.codecogs.com to the meta question, and then finally cut-and-paste from meta to the real question. It formatted correctly after posting." CreationDate="2011-01-07T20:11:16.930" UserId="2591" />
  <row Id="1293" PostId="690" Score="0" Text="I'm getting this error on the bottom of the page: Failed to load http://stats.stackexchange.com/content/js/third-party/MathJax/jax/output/HTML-CSS/fonts/TeX/fontdata.js . All the formulas are shown as &quot;[Math processing error]&quot; in CV, but not in meta (FF 3.6.13 on Fedora)." CreationDate="2011-01-09T10:17:04.187" UserId="582" />
  <row Id="1294" PostId="690" Score="1" Text="Forget about my previous comment, found the answer here http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/673/firefox-3-6-13-messes-up-mathjax Clearing the cache solved the problem." CreationDate="2011-01-09T10:26:00.093" UserId="582" />
  <row Id="1290" PostId="692" Score="4" Text="The idea of reserving every third Friday looks good." CreationDate="2011-01-07T09:47:39.647" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1312" PostId="693" Score="1" Text="is it possible to detect R code, for example, do any other languages use the `&lt;-` assignment?" CreationDate="2011-01-23T02:39:41.290" UserId="1381" />
  <row Id="1295" PostId="694" Score="1" Text="Well highlighting of course is not essential, but is certainly helpful. Note that this is my first meta site post and I've added feature-request tag, because the meta site requests one of the 4 tags, bugs, feature-request, discussion, support for question to be posted. I have picked the first tag which was apropriate. My initial intention was to ask what is the site policy." CreationDate="2011-01-10T09:16:16.133" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1296" PostId="694" Score="0" Text="I can argue for the second case, because the it is entirely appropriate that the answerer gives the  Monte-Carlo code which partially or entirely answers  purely theoretical question. One can argue that this even should be encouraged. Both of my links provided support this." CreationDate="2011-01-10T09:19:39.047" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1297" PostId="694" Score="0" Text="@mpi the top tag on the site is [r] per http://stats.stackexchange.com/tags -- so we need the rest of the community to weigh in a little." CreationDate="2011-01-10T09:22:52.287" UserId="123" />
  <row Id="1729" PostId="694" Score="1" Text="Sir, having done only a bit of stat consulting, my suspicion is that [cv](http://stats.stackexchange.com) should use [tag:R] as a best guess for syntax highlighting because unless a user explicitly asks for SAS, or SPSS, or Minitab, etc. Most here will provide examples in R because it's free to download / use whereas the others require $$. And yes, though [we may use c++](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/3519), python, or others for heavy lifting most of those questions are relegated to [so]." CreationDate="2011-06-30T00:26:27.843" UserId="1499" />
  <row Id="1298" PostId="695" Score="2" Text="after looking at the questions with r tag, I tend to agree." CreationDate="2011-01-10T09:45:15.097" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1301" PostId="695" Score="0" Text="ok, as nobody else commented, this means that everybody agrees to @chl. So I am choosing this an answer, and personally myself will consider this answer as official policy" CreationDate="2011-01-11T08:37:57.160" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1299" PostId="696" Score="0" Text="Also as a note I entirely stole the opening line written by onestop for the Stata tagwiki." CreationDate="2011-01-10T16:51:34.267" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1300" PostId="696" Score="0" Text="Now set as [spss] tag wiki." CreationDate="2011-01-10T17:46:01.103" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1304" PostId="696" Score="0" Text="In fact, it was renamed PASW *before* the company was bought by IBM, and it's now reverted back to SPSS! See first para of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPSS." CreationDate="2011-01-17T23:40:48.873" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1305" PostId="696" Score="0" Text="@onestop , do you mind editing the tag wiki directly? I don't have enough reputation to do it myself. I was considering putting in a quip about them updating versions far too frequently!" CreationDate="2011-01-18T01:03:10.250" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1307" PostId="696" Score="0" Text="@Andy W: Will do. I didn't realise I could edit it either, but it appears I can. (I just can't create new tag wikis now we're out of beta as I haven't earned any tag badges)." CreationDate="2011-01-18T10:06:33.000" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1308" PostId="696" Score="0" Text="... or rather I'll *try* to, but at present I'm getting a site error message when I click 'about the spss tag'. I'll try again later." CreationDate="2011-01-18T10:09:16.443" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1309" PostId="696" Score="0" Text="It's working better today, so I've replaced the tag wiki text with your edited answer above." CreationDate="2011-01-19T11:54:48.133" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1302" PostId="697" Score="0" Text="Good suggestion, Jeff, but this error persists even with a reboot and a new Firefox session. Look at my Jan 7 comment and you'll see a viable workaround." CreationDate="2011-01-17T19:29:46.723" UserId="2591" />
  <row Id="1303" PostId="697" Score="0" Text="@rajah9 I suggest starting Firefox in &quot;safe mode&quot; or temporarily using another browser with a clean install. I suspect you have plugins that are interfering." CreationDate="2011-01-17T21:40:54.653" UserId="123" />
  <row Id="1310" PostId="697" Score="0" Text="Great suggestion, Jeff, I will try Firefox safe mode next time I see the behavior." CreationDate="2011-01-19T21:47:52.480" UserId="2591" />
  <row Id="1306" PostId="699" Score="0" Text="Excellent, many thanks Rob." CreationDate="2011-01-18T10:01:51.960" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1311" PostId="700" Score="0" Text="Thanks for moving the question to meta. I've just deleted your original question from the main site." CreationDate="2011-01-19T22:05:14.323" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="1314" PostId="702" Score="0" Text="Do you mean like: `cart-regression` and `cart-classification`? Also can you access the tag tools now that you have over 10K rep?" CreationDate="2011-01-24T15:23:29.197" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="1315" PostId="702" Score="1" Text="@csgillespie No, I was thinking of a general tag, say `cart`, that might be associated with `regression` and/or  `classification`. After all, CARTs are one supervised technique among others for classification. What is the tag tools (or where can it be found)?" CreationDate="2011-01-24T15:30:21.090" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1317" PostId="702" Score="0" Text="OK just checking. I thought the tag stuff appeared in the tools menu, but they actually appear in the &quot;mod&quot; menu. I'll wait another 24 hours and then merge if everyone agrees (or more likely, disagrees)." CreationDate="2011-01-24T18:53:11.040" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="1319" PostId="702" Score="0" Text="I've updated the tags" CreationDate="2011-01-27T10:43:30.523" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="1320" PostId="702" Score="0" Text="@csgillespie Thank you. (and Thanks to @onestop for suggesting that too)" CreationDate="2011-01-27T10:49:10.143" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1321" PostId="703" Score="0" Text="That second question seems to have disappeared; I'm getting the 'page not found' screen when I click the link. I'm sure it did exist as I remember commenting on it." CreationDate="2011-01-27T11:00:07.263" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1322" PostId="703" Score="0" Text="@onestop david (the owner) deleted it, it is visible to 10k rep users and moderators" CreationDate="2011-01-27T11:05:25.140" UserId="123" />
  <row Id="1323" PostId="703" Score="0" Text="@Jeff Atwood: As I commented on it and someone commented after, it's listed in my inbox when I click the StackExchange icon  at the very top left of my screen. I was surprised to get a 404 message when I clicked that. A specific &quot;post deleted&quot; message would help." CreationDate="2011-01-27T11:50:29.240" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1337" PostId="707" Score="0" Text="Confuse newbies?  That's what we have tag wiki's in order to avoid..." CreationDate="2011-01-31T20:07:35.630" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="1338" PostId="707" Score="0" Text="Maybe someone should write one for 'r' then. I'm not allowed to." CreationDate="2011-01-31T20:29:07.390" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1329" PostId="708" Score="0" Text="Maybe a stupid question, but why does this question now sit on the Meta?" CreationDate="2011-01-28T13:10:10.307" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1340" PostId="708" Score="0" Text="It is a request for making a image data base on the site." CreationDate="2011-02-03T18:23:54.453" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1324" PostId="709" Score="0" Text="@onestop I also agree with you both. But other softwares are also displayed in lower case (e.g., `spss` for SPSS, `stata` for Stata) -- it might be a mess to change them all." CreationDate="2011-01-27T18:08:57.227" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1325" PostId="709" Score="1" Text="I'm not proposing changing them all. spss and stata are less ambiguous, while 'r' could mean correlation coefficient." CreationDate="2011-01-27T20:12:34.540" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1326" PostId="709" Score="0" Text="I guess an alternative would be to rename the tag `r-project`, which would agree with the domain name r-project.org." CreationDate="2011-01-27T20:13:54.693" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1327" PostId="709" Score="0" Text="@onestop Yes, that's right (software vs. correlation). Still, I found `r-project` too much reminiscent of CRAN or R website. Sorry, I have no solution to propose. This is a **great question**..." CreationDate="2011-01-27T20:35:15.030" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1342" PostId="709" Score="1" Text="@onestop, @mbq, how about &quot;r-programming&quot;, &quot;programming: r&quot;, &quot;r-code&quot;, &quot;r-dev&quot; or &quot;r-language&quot;? (First and last are my favorites...I think.)" CreationDate="2011-02-06T16:03:44.753" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1332" PostId="711" Score="0" Text="Until I read your answer, I would've guessed that if R had any following on Stack Overflow, it was a very small one. Thanks for sharing that helpful knowledge!" CreationDate="2011-01-28T18:28:22.863" UserId="1583" />
  <row Id="1333" PostId="711" Score="0" Text="Speaking of Stack Overflow, I find your opinion—that my question would be most appropriate on SO—interesting. Considering my question is more about R as *software* than as a *programming language*, I'd think that it would belong more on Super User than Stack Overflow. So are you saying that, although it's not really on-topic at SO, its R community would ignore the off-topic-ness? Or are you saying that, of SO, CV, and SU, the question would be *most* on-topic at SO?" CreationDate="2011-01-28T18:32:16.260" UserId="1583" />
  <row Id="1334" PostId="711" Score="2" Text="It's a balancing act between topicfulness and quality of responses.  It may indeed be most &quot;on-topic&quot; on SU, but who there is going to know anything about R?  Conversely, I think you'd get equally good responses here or on SO (likely from the same people), but I think this question is far more on-topic there than here.  In absolute terms, I think it is also sufficiently on-topic for SO.  Speaking as someone who's been watching the R tag since its inception, nobody's going to bat an eye over your question." CreationDate="2011-01-28T18:46:52.260" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="1335" PostId="711" Score="0" Text="Okay, I've asked on Stack Overflow [(link)](http://stackoverflow.com/q/4832560/594302). Thanks!" CreationDate="2011-01-28T21:12:53.373" UserId="1583" />
  <row Id="1336" PostId="711" Score="1" Text="@Matt-parker I remember the many discussions we've had on CV about R questions ;) But I think that CV currently has the right balance of how it deals with R question. I agree that this question would be better in SO." CreationDate="2011-01-28T22:07:23.057" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="1341" PostId="715" Score="0" Text="Very good question! But I just want to point that the 2nd thread you linked to was poorly worded, IMO; and about the third one, the OP didn't answer the clarifications that were asked -- so what can we do?" CreationDate="2011-02-03T23:08:37.757" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1448" PostId="716" Score="0" Text="Could you add the UTC times of each session here? When I click the 'HERE' above to go to the registration page I can see there are three sessions A,B and C but I can't see any times." CreationDate="2011-03-09T10:08:51.657" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1449" PostId="716" Score="0" Text="@onestop I've edited this question to make it clear; unfortunately I can't edit the registration page, there is only this &quot;in xxx&quot; form." CreationDate="2011-03-09T10:43:55.263" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1450" PostId="716" Score="0" Text="Tnanks mbq. Can you tell us which session(s) Sir David has said he'll be participating in, or is that allocation deliberately concealed??" CreationDate="2011-03-09T12:05:07.817" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1451" PostId="716" Score="0" Text="@onestop I don't know yet." CreationDate="2011-03-09T12:59:49.573" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1350" PostId="717" Score="0" Text="what does that entail? I am pretty new to this, so maybe there is some link with detailed description how this works?" CreationDate="2011-02-08T07:11:54.913" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1351" PostId="717" Score="0" Text="@mpiktas Does my update help?" CreationDate="2011-02-08T09:13:23.577" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="1352" PostId="717" Score="0" Text="splendidly! :)" CreationDate="2011-02-08T09:18:19.737" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1364" PostId="718" Score="0" Text="This is not a perfect solution -- AFAICT this conference have not proceedings and is pretty wide. That's why I decided to extend the voting time by a week before, well, trying to accommodate this." CreationDate="2011-02-13T21:21:12.867" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1365" PostId="718" Score="0" Text="@mbq That's a fair point, indeed. I agree this is not the panacea, but still we can found some of the slides -- ok, that also means that we would have to provide a list of them and a rough TOC, not very convenient at all... I have some papers in mind that I will add within few days." CreationDate="2011-02-13T22:14:56.820" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1379" PostId="720" Score="0" Text="throw away your iPad and buy the next generation version! organize your i-life!" CreationDate="2011-02-16T19:18:42.877" UserId="795" />
  <row Id="1380" PostId="720" Score="0" Text="@shabbychef, are the new ones coming with a new browser with better font support? (I believe that may be part of the issue.) Mine has already mostly been co-opted from me anyway. Maybe you know of such things. Problem solved!" CreationDate="2011-02-16T19:29:05.800" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1381" PostId="720" Score="0" Text="the Apple motto is &quot;we don't cut corners: we add bevels!&quot;" CreationDate="2011-02-16T19:46:01.720" UserId="795" />
  <row Id="1382" PostId="720" Score="0" Text="@shabbychef, nothing wrong with bevels. I'll take them over shards. Still boggles my mind which is the bigger of the two these days. Though I own a Mac, the iPad came my way for free. But, I'd still like it to play nicer with stats.SE." CreationDate="2011-02-16T20:06:21.210" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1343" PostId="721" Score="0" Text="thanks! I've edited the question above to reflect some further experimentation." CreationDate="2011-02-07T13:23:16.157" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1344" PostId="723" Score="0" Text="@Geoff, I'll be honest. When I first saw this post, I literally thought it was a joke. I had to re-read it a couple times to see that your tongue *wasn't* planted firmly in cheek. While 29K files is borderline &quot;large&quot;, 114 MB is not. I can't imagine that the &quot;maintenance&quot; requirements on this could be large (it's just a font repository). At any rate, I found the following (recent) thread, but it's a little vague so I'm not sure if it might be relevant or not: [MathJax: iOS4.2 and web fonts](http://groups.google.com/group/mathjax-dev/browse_thread/thread/89d162e8d530673)" CreationDate="2011-02-08T02:33:42.130" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1345" PostId="723" Score="0" Text="@Cardinal - please read: http://www.mathjax.org/resources/faqs section:  The MathJax font folder is too big. Is there any way to compress it?" CreationDate="2011-02-08T02:58:48.740" UserId="2" />
  <row Id="1346" PostId="723" Score="0" Text="@Geoff, yeah, I know. I already read it. In case you couldn't tell, **my** tongue was ever-so-slightly planted in cheek. Is the link I posted in any way relevant? It looked like there might be a &quot;new&quot; (?) dev fork that handles iOS4.2 specifically. Yes? No?" CreationDate="2011-02-08T03:02:52.200" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1347" PostId="723" Score="0" Text="@Geoff, and though I use mostly Mac products, I'm not rabid enough to take offense to your &quot;small edge cases&quot; remark. :)" CreationDate="2011-02-08T03:05:23.650" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1348" PostId="723" Score="0" Text="@Cardinal we will be paying close attention to the developments of MathJax as it progresses through version 1.1:  http://www.mathjax.org/2011/01/14/news/mathjax-version-1-1-beta-ready-for-testing/ - as soon as we have our hands on an official 1.1 version we will install and revisit this." CreationDate="2011-02-08T03:10:36.693" UserId="2" />
  <row Id="1349" PostId="723" Score="0" Text="@Geoff, fair enough. I'm sure the support of such a large, fairly complex site keeps you busy. Thanks for taking the time to respond." CreationDate="2011-02-08T03:16:12.797" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1357" PostId="724" Score="0" Text="I agree with both of your tag merging suggestions." CreationDate="2011-02-09T21:52:06.253" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="1358" PostId="724" Score="1" Text="I agree too. But perhaps we should merge both of significance-test and statistical-significance into hypothesis-testing (which is larger than either)?" CreationDate="2011-02-09T23:32:57.727" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="1359" PostId="724" Score="0" Text="I think significance-test is also related to goodness of fit test (there is a tag for that) significance-test is a relatively important part of testing and most psychologist (and in medical study) use them as it is related to the question &quot;is there an effect&quot;. However, I am not at all in favour of having 1000 tags and I would follow rob's suggestion." CreationDate="2011-02-10T07:00:50.573" UserId="223" />
  <row Id="1368" PostId="724" Score="0" Text="What about Mathematic and Mathematical statisics ? I would suggest to merge everything into mathematical-statistic." CreationDate="2011-02-15T17:23:53.363" UserId="223" />
  <row Id="13000" PostId="724" Score="3" Text="Possible duplicate of [Current tag synonym candidates](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1200/current-tag-synonym-candidates)" CreationDate="2017-04-05T12:28:50.190" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="1354" PostId="725" Score="0" Text="Previously: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/12/how-should-we-deal-with-obvious-homework-questions" CreationDate="2011-02-09T16:22:12.193" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="1385" PostId="725" Score="0" Text="You have been making great contributions on the site.  Please consider nominating yourself for moderation!  http://stats.stackexchange.com/election" CreationDate="2011-02-17T17:28:09.637" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="1392" PostId="725" Score="0" Text="@Shane, thanks for suggestion. I thought about it and I think it is still too early for me to do that." CreationDate="2011-02-18T07:48:36.787" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1356" PostId="726" Score="0" Text="Yes, this is a typical example where the number of votes is high for a question that is rather general; there were worse situations, though. But this was a question that was asked during the beta and it seems this period generated a lot of highly voted Q&amp;A (including mine), even for basic computing stuff or general advices. I agree with your proposition, with the limitations raised by @csgillespie about systematic HW questions from the same user." CreationDate="2011-02-09T20:16:25.837" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1355" PostId="727" Score="1" Text="Maybe it is worth distinguishing between repetitive attempts with homework questions, like the example you cited, and some of the older ones we got that were positive and constructive (IMO), because of the ensuing comments they generated and/or visible contribution by the OP. I agree that CV should not become a &quot;repository&quot; of homework questions." CreationDate="2011-02-09T20:10:29.773" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1360" PostId="727" Score="2" Text="I think that if someone is stuck with homework and asks for help indicating what is the obstacle then such question is ok. Questions without indication that poster did some work are not ok. Questions which are homework, but are masqueraded as non-homework should be closed. Such questions bug me the most. On the other hand in this case the answer given is very good and actually helps in understanding of LAR, if proper context is given." CreationDate="2011-02-10T07:42:35.740" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1361" PostId="727" Score="0" Text="Hm, I had a thought that maybe homework questions should automatically be community wiki? Has this been discussed?" CreationDate="2011-02-10T07:45:29.607" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1362" PostId="728" Score="0" Text="Thanks mbq! I've just suggested 'significance-test' as a synonym for 'statistical-significance'." CreationDate="2011-02-13T10:49:20.610" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1363" PostId="728" Score="0" Text="@onestop Pushed through." CreationDate="2011-02-13T12:50:29.147" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1367" PostId="728" Score="1" Text="@mbq don't you see you have super power.. I cannot propose synoyms I don't have enough rep !" CreationDate="2011-02-15T17:23:01.257" UserId="223" />
  <row Id="1369" PostId="728" Score="0" Text="@robin Well, I stated that this is a general remark -- in some time, much more people will have the required reputation (2.5k)." CreationDate="2011-02-15T17:31:52.060" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1370" PostId="728" Score="0" Text="@mbq &quot;in some time, much more people will have the required reputation (2.5k).&quot; yes but I have also noticed that the required rep increases with time :)." CreationDate="2011-02-15T17:42:07.217" UserId="223" />
  <row Id="1371" PostId="728" Score="1" Text="@robin Not any more; last change was when we have left beta." CreationDate="2011-02-15T18:38:36.567" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1372" PostId="728" Score="0" Text="@mbq thanks I did not notice the correlation between these evolutions" CreationDate="2011-02-15T19:38:49.470" UserId="223" />
  <row Id="1366" PostId="730" Score="0" Text="Definitions together would I think be handier than defs scattered around. Does anyone know of a short ML glossary / phrase book online ?  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Machine_learning -&gt; 189 pages, including Lazy learning.)" CreationDate="2011-02-14T10:20:24.210" UserId="557" />
  <row Id="1373" PostId="732" Score="0" Text="Inviting author may be a problem." CreationDate="2011-02-15T20:46:02.697" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1374" PostId="732" Score="0" Text="@mbq: why is that?" CreationDate="2011-02-16T05:59:11.267" UserId="1496" />
  <row Id="1375" PostId="732" Score="0" Text="@bgbg , it appears he died in 2005, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Breiman" CreationDate="2011-02-16T06:17:38.313" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1376" PostId="732" Score="0" Text="How sad. I sent a mail to the Berkeley Statistics dept manager to update Prof. Breiman's homepage http://www.stat.berkeley.edu/~breiman/" CreationDate="2011-02-16T06:29:25.437" UserId="1496" />
  <row Id="1377" PostId="732" Score="8" Text="How about inviting one of the original discussants of the paper?? Sir David Cox, Bradley Efron, Bruce Hoadley or Emanuel Parzen? The first two might be particularly interesting as, to quote Breiman's rejoinder, &quot;Brad Efron has serious&#xA;reservations and D. R. Cox is in downright&#xA;disagreement.&quot; Could ask if their views have changed at all in the intervening ten years!" CreationDate="2011-02-16T11:55:36.637" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1378" PostId="732" Score="0" Text="@onestop Good idea." CreationDate="2011-02-16T18:46:27.133" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1446" PostId="732" Score="0" Text="@mbq, @onestop, any update on the participation of any of the discussants?" CreationDate="2011-03-09T01:13:34.030" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1447" PostId="732" Score="0" Text="@cardinal Only David Cox declared to come." CreationDate="2011-03-09T07:36:24.793" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1452" PostId="732" Score="0" Text="@mbq, that's great he is willing to participate." CreationDate="2011-03-09T13:13:32.800" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1453" PostId="732" Score="0" Text="That's amazing! I am going to have to try to come ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Cox_%28statistician%29" CreationDate="2011-03-09T15:09:47.817" UserId="2126" />
  <row Id="1454" PostId="732" Score="0" Text="@mbq, maybe we can embed a link in the *two cultures* portion of the text on the banner on the main page. (?)" CreationDate="2011-03-09T16:06:46.470" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1455" PostId="732" Score="0" Text="@cardinal Good idea, done." CreationDate="2011-03-09T17:33:54.897" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1456" PostId="732" Score="0" Text="@mbq, nice. I might transpose &quot;famous&quot; and &quot;Breiman's&quot; as well. Sorry to nitpick." CreationDate="2011-03-09T18:03:03.280" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1401" PostId="734" Score="0" Text="Yi Jiang's wonderful &quot;candidate statistics&quot; site is still up and running at http://se.awio.com/election.html .  Check it out before voting!" CreationDate="2011-02-22T22:47:25.820" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1383" PostId="736" Score="0" Text="should have checked there first... Thanks Jeff!" CreationDate="2011-02-17T10:38:41.147" UserId="3014" />
  <row Id="6668" PostId="736" Score="0" Text="If after substantially revising and improving an old question, it still hasn't been &quot;bumped&quot; up to the Unanswered Questions page, is there anything else I can do before trying a bounty?" CreationDate="2015-03-17T17:49:01.470" UserId="11511" />
  <row Id="9656" PostId="736" Score="3" Text="Yes, but it may irritate people if you edit your question multiple times per day, multiple times per week just to &quot;bump&quot; it. There was one question that I asked some time ago that was never answered -- I edited it, some time later it even had a bounty, but nothing helped. It sometimes happens that your question stays unanswered for a longer time and &quot;bumping&quot; it wouldn't help. So I would say that &quot;reasonable bumping&quot; is ok, but compulsive &quot;bumping&quot; is something not to be encouraged." CreationDate="2016-03-31T08:02:12.830" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="1384" PostId="737" Score="2" Text="You have been very active on the site and made great contributions.  Nominate yourself for moderation!  http://stats.stackexchange.com/election" CreationDate="2011-02-17T17:27:09.980" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="1386" PostId="737" Score="0" Text="@Shane : I'm flattered, but I'm not sure i'm temperamentally suited to the task. Perhaps I'm lacking in public spirit or altruism, but I'm also tempted to ask &quot;what's in it for me&quot;?" CreationDate="2011-02-17T18:49:34.557" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1387" PostId="737" Score="0" Text="It doesn't take very much effort, but it does give you some recognition for all your hard work (as it is)." CreationDate="2011-02-17T18:53:24.943" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="1388" PostId="737" Score="0" Text="Thanks again, but reputation is recognition enough! When I say I'm temperamentally unsuited: not only do I not *seek* power, I tend to actively *avoid* power. I just hate making decisions that affect other people. I have enough difficulty making decisions that affect only me." CreationDate="2011-02-17T19:19:07.697" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1390" PostId="737" Score="0" Text="For an interesting take on the utility of rep, see the comments by @Stan Rogers at http://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/8858/grids-vs-snoots/8861#8861 .  (I admit to having a similar philosophy: once you have achieved enough rep to do what you want on a site, why work for more?)" CreationDate="2011-02-17T23:23:46.050" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1391" PostId="738" Score="0" Text="Ah, I guess I misunderstood 'approve or reject' as it sounds (too much) like 'accept or reject' to me. I thought it meant approving a suggested change so it became the 'live' version, similiar to the 'Track Changes' feature in MS Word.&#xA;&#xA;Agree that some of the rep cut-offs need to account for site traffic. As do the cut-offs for tag badges - i'm now ranked 3rd for rep on CV.SE but i don't have any tag badges so i can't create any tag wikis, which seems pretty ludicrous to me. The tag wiki idea is next to useless at present on this site." CreationDate="2011-02-17T23:41:16.833" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1393" PostId="738" Score="0" Text="@whuber, note that there is a cap on daily reputation, so if you get hundreds of votes, your reputation does not go through the roof. In my personal opinion the limits are more or less fine, they just shift more work on moderators until there are more users with high reputation." CreationDate="2011-02-18T07:56:30.350" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1394" PostId="738" Score="0" Text="@mpiktas: Yes but at current rates, we won't have many users with over 20K rep for some time." CreationDate="2011-02-18T14:01:22.257" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="1395" PostId="738" Score="0" Text="@csgillespie, 5-6 next year is my prediction." CreationDate="2011-02-18T14:05:56.847" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1396" PostId="738" Score="0" Text="How many of them will be mods though?" CreationDate="2011-02-18T14:11:29.297" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="1397" PostId="738" Score="0" Text="@mpiktas Thanks for remembering the cap.  However, those hundreds of votes don't usually all come on the same day, so plenty of them do contribute to the rep.  Simply extrapolating the current rate of reputation growth on CV, we will have only two people with 20K+ rep at the end of our first year (in July) and it will take another year to increase that count.  That's a lifetime on the Web!" CreationDate="2011-02-18T16:47:04.233" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1398" PostId="740" Score="0" Text="It's me. Since two weeks or so, every user can suggest edits, even if they have not enough rep; I don't know if this also applies to tags. Anyway, users with 10k+ (or the mods) can approve or reject those suggested edits (btw, this gives +2 to the user). From what I've seen so far, it generally concerns spelling and/or general formatting issues. In this particular case, I won't propose myself to fill such a tag because I'm not a specialist of this field, but I trust you on that point. I would do the same with @onestop, of course." CreationDate="2011-02-19T08:16:14.617" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1463" PostId="741" Score="0" Text="Given no other objections I think this is a good idea. The question then becomes who wants to make the thread?" CreationDate="2011-03-17T14:36:53.140" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1464" PostId="741" Score="1" Text="@Andy I can. What's your idea about thread format (title + author + review with hyperlinks + summary + flag about whether it has been used or not?)" CreationDate="2011-03-17T15:00:50.457" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1465" PostId="741" Score="0" Text="I was thinking more along the lines of just copying the original propositions as they are into the thread. If it is community wiki other members can update with whatever information they want. A more formal format will make it easier to skim through a long list, but that seems like overkill at this point IMO." CreationDate="2011-03-17T15:17:28.237" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1466" PostId="741" Score="0" Text="@Andy Sounds good to me (I can still maintain the BibTeX archive). Would be good to know about @mbq's opinion on that." CreationDate="2011-03-17T15:59:23.907" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1399" PostId="742" Score="0" Text="I'm unable to replicate, mind posting a pic of the problem?" CreationDate="2011-02-21T02:16:38.297" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1400" PostId="742" Score="0" Text="The square root of the entire fraction in the first expression looks fine to me (FireFox 3.6.13 on Win 7/64).  Exactly how was the screen shot generated?  What browser, what OS, which Web page?" CreationDate="2011-02-21T14:10:06.210" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1402" PostId="744" Score="0" Text="Many thanks Andy! I would have realised it was a font issue if it'd displayed question marks or boxes with hex numbers in, as that page appears to indicate. Displaying a reasonable-looking formula with a different meaning is more worrying." CreationDate="2011-02-23T09:00:25.637" UserId="449" />
  <row Id="1403" PostId="744" Score="0" Text="@onestop - I can't say I understand why that is the case, and Google Chrome behaves differently than Firefox whether or not the fonts are installed." CreationDate="2011-02-23T13:34:49.353" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1404" PostId="746" Score="0" Text="@mpiktas, can you see this by clicking on the &quot;mail&quot; icon and then the &quot;today&quot; (or &quot;yesterday&quot;) tab? This should summarize your change in reputation for the day. Maybe it doesn't itemize down votes, though. (??)" CreationDate="2011-02-27T17:35:01.633" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1405" PostId="746" Score="0" Text="@cardinal, no I do not see it, otherwise I would not have asked. Maybe tommorow something will appear, because on Sundays this week button shows the reputation of last week plus Sunday. Sunday is the first day of the week in stackexchange. Although it might be related to time zone issues." CreationDate="2011-02-27T18:12:29.680" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1406" PostId="746" Score="0" Text="@mpiktas, are you sure that you clicked on the links I suggested? For example, I meant the &quot;mail&quot; link that is just to the left of your name at the top. When ***I*** look at your user page, I see a -2 for the M-estimator question, but that's it. (Who knows why you had a down vote there!)" CreationDate="2011-02-27T18:18:56.790" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1408" PostId="746" Score="0" Text="@mpiktas It's funny. It seems I experienced a similar drop down (about 140 rep) :-) On a related point, I gained +1 rep on tex.SE, so maybe there's sth going on with stackexchange..." CreationDate="2011-02-27T18:37:53.777" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1409" PostId="746" Score="0" Text="@chl, I had a thought that maybe upvotes from deleted own answers do not count anymore. I certainly deleted one with 3 votes, for which I received disciplined badge, maybe there was also some upvoted answer I do not remember." CreationDate="2011-02-27T19:14:01.417" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1410" PostId="746" Score="0" Text="@cardinal, yes I know the `mail` link, I use it to track the questions I am interested in. If I mark the question with the star, then if somebody posts new answer the mail icon turns to colour of blood, that is red :) Concerning M-estimator question, I guess the OP downvoted me, I'll admit the downvoted version of the question was not perfect." CreationDate="2011-02-27T19:55:54.763" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1411" PostId="746" Score="0" Text="@chl, I also received one unexplained reputation point in math.SE. Something is clearly afoot :)" CreationDate="2011-02-27T20:01:14.117" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1412" PostId="746" Score="0" Text="@mpiktas No, I think you keep rep that you gained even if you delete your response afterwards. Sorry to hear that you get a downvote without explanation -- I can understand them, especially when the response or question is poorly worded or is actually lacking follow-up (these are my rare downvotes), but for detailed response like yours I always feel embarrassed to see *anonymous* downvote; I guess that's community life!" CreationDate="2011-02-27T20:39:27.337" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1413" PostId="746" Score="0" Text="@chl, it turns out that reputation is lost if the answer or the question is deleted. It is only not reported immediately. It appears that &quot;true&quot; reputation count can be find in `/reputation` as Jeff indicated. This page even has a bug for resyncing reputation to its true value." CreationDate="2011-02-28T07:57:05.277" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1414" PostId="746" Score="0" Text="@mpiktas I thought a question could not be deleted if an answer has been provided, voted up, and accepted... anyway, I was suspecting this was likely to be explained by sth like deleted users. Good to know anyway. I'm not really following my rep, though (it was just coincidental that I noticed my drop down, because of Safari &quot;Top Sites&quot; feature which shows a cached version of the sites I visit the most often)." CreationDate="2011-02-28T09:08:20.557" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1415" PostId="746" Score="0" Text="@chl, yes there are restrictions on deleting your own questions, but there are no restrictions on deleting your own answers. I lost reputation on my own deleted answers. There is an ongoing discussion on meta.SO, apparently there are a lot of users affected." CreationDate="2011-02-28T09:47:08.733" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1416" PostId="746" Score="0" Text="@chl, the weekly reputation league looks interesting today. As if downvote epidemic occured :)" CreationDate="2011-02-28T10:11:41.770" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1417" PostId="749" Score="0" Text="@Jeff, I think you may have misread my post or maybe it wasn't clear enough. For example, I tried to edit ***only*** the title of a post the other day and couldn't due to the character limit. My attempted edit of the title **far** exceeded six characters. In order to get the edit to go through, I had to then fake out the character-change limit by adding six spaces to the *body*. Does that clarify my post?" CreationDate="2011-02-28T14:16:42.333" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1418" PostId="749" Score="0" Text="@cardinal ah, I see -- I'll clarify with sam, that might be a bug." CreationDate="2011-02-28T22:08:05.570" UserId="123" />
  <row Id="1419" PostId="749" Score="0" Text="@cardinal, I just submitted a char title edit, just fine." CreationDate="2011-02-28T23:09:37.950" UserId="1163" />
  <row Id="1420" PostId="749" Score="0" Text="see: http://stats.stackexchange.com/suggested-edits/43" CreationDate="2011-02-28T23:10:28.713" UserId="1163" />
  <row Id="1421" PostId="749" Score="0" Text="@waffles, @Jeff, aha! Thanks for the example. The problem happens when you have a title edit ***and*** a minimal body edit. So, if I make any change to the title ***and***, say, correct a one-letter typo in the body, then I get the error message. That seems like faulty logic! (That is, if I am able to change the title without the character limit being imposed, I should also be able to change *both* title and body together without the limit.) Should be a one-line code correction." CreationDate="2011-03-01T01:45:48.153" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1422" PostId="749" Score="0" Text="@cardinal no, it seems correct to me. If you touch the body, then make it substantive. 6 characters is a very mild limit." CreationDate="2011-03-01T04:14:44.543" UserId="123" />
  <row Id="1423" PostId="749" Score="1" Text="@Jeff, Ok. Your call. Seems strange to me. No restriction if $A$, but do restrict if $A \cap B$. Anyway, my work-around works, which makes the six-character limit effectively moot." CreationDate="2011-03-01T04:22:47.297" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="13828" PostId="749" Score="0" Text="There really ought to be an exception to the &quot;at least 6 characters&quot; rule, if the edit is in a TeX formula.  I'm trying to correct a plus sign in a formula that the user clearly intended to be a minus sign, but I can't because I don't have the rep on this site.  Surely the difference between `+` and `-` is a &quot;substantive&quot; change, right?" CreationDate="2017-07-19T19:23:07.133" UserId="45576" />
  <row Id="1424" PostId="750" Score="0" Text="I'll just say that I agree with Rob. Data collecting questions should be allowed, but this particular question was closed for other reasons. Maybe it should have been moved to the other site." CreationDate="2011-03-03T15:31:44.743" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1425" PostId="750" Score="0" Text="@mpiktas Thanks, but please bear with me while I repeat myself: this inquiry is *not* about that specific question.  It is about the community's interest in *data collection methods.*" CreationDate="2011-03-03T15:43:17.520" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1426" PostId="750" Score="0" Text="@whuber, sorry for misunderstanding. I am all for the data collection methods. It is integral, although less glorious part of statistics. If we look at the questions and answers in this site, I think we can safely say that the site is geared more towards practical real life solutions, hence not allowing questions about data collection methods would be strange." CreationDate="2011-03-03T16:43:24.123" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1427" PostId="750" Score="0" Text="@mpiktas Thank you.  I agree, but because I don't recollect seeing many such questions (indeed, none at all), I was wondering.  I had to create the data-collection tag for this question!" CreationDate="2011-03-03T16:46:23.013" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1428" PostId="750" Score="1" Text="@whuber I agree with your last comment. It seems we have seen several questions dealing with *data management* (with R or Excel, for example), but not *data collection*. It's an important aspect of statistical work, though." CreationDate="2011-03-04T09:49:17.333" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1429" PostId="750" Score="2" Text="@chl The more I think about this, the more important this question seems to be.  The universal complaint among professional statisticians is &quot;the client should have consulted with us *before* doing the experiment.&quot;  In other words, we need to *encourage* people to seek out this site *before* they have a problem in statistical analysis: we want them to find their way here with questions on experimental and observational design and questions about how to collect data.  Maybe we should consider updating the FAQ and perhaps seed the site with relevant questions?" CreationDate="2011-03-04T16:01:55.160" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1430" PostId="750" Score="2" Text="@whuber Yes, this reminds me of Fisher's famous quote, &quot;To call in the statistician after the experiment is done may be no more than asking him to perform a post-mortem examination: he may be able to say what the experiment died of&quot;. I think updating the FAQ would be a good idea, indeed. We already have a lot of people involved in experimental science (and also students with varying degrees), so that I'll expect more questions to come in the near future if we promote them." CreationDate="2011-03-04T16:15:23.063" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1431" PostId="750" Score="0" Text="@chl The FAQ is now updated." CreationDate="2011-03-04T17:01:47.643" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1472" PostId="751" Score="0" Text="Uhh Super User has nothing to do with pageviews or websites whatsoever ;-)" CreationDate="2011-03-19T10:59:54.817" UserId="420" />
  <row Id="1477" PostId="751" Score="0" Text="@Ivo. Fair enough. http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/ is the place to go. Answer now corrected." CreationDate="2011-03-20T05:54:27.593" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="1432" PostId="753" Score="0" Text="the user is also on SO and they found the tick there easier to handle. Perhaps the background on CV plus the shade used is more important than simply the colour, as SO also uses green." CreationDate="2011-03-04T17:46:14.230" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="1433" PostId="753" Score="4" Text="Actually, I think the key advantage of SO's checks is that they're hollow until checked.  CV's checks are solid in both states." CreationDate="2011-03-04T19:42:51.627" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="1434" PostId="753" Score="2" Text="@Gavin There exist different [color defects](http://www.InternetTG.org/newsletter/mar99/accessibility_color_challenged.html), although with different prevalence in the population, so I think we should not focus on the color *per se* as you suggest. I think that adopting SO design would be a good idea." CreationDate="2011-03-04T20:13:34.850" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1435" PostId="753" Score="0" Text="@Matt Parker - you hit the nail on the head there I think Matt. Having a clear difference to the not accepted and accepted states is a good suggestion." CreationDate="2011-03-04T20:23:30.193" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="1436" PostId="753" Score="0" Text="@chl - good point. I was remiss in suggesting using a new colour in my Q. I mean't some other means of indicating accepted rather than relying on shade or colour." CreationDate="2011-03-04T20:25:03.390" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="1437" PostId="753" Score="0" Text="@Gavin Yes, I understood it this way, sorry my response was unclear." CreationDate="2011-03-04T20:37:22.200" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1439" PostId="756" Score="1" Text="(+1) Good points. Some times I want to make changes that seem minor enough to *not* warrant additional up-votes. Maybe that's just me." CreationDate="2011-03-06T23:59:38.227" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1438" PostId="757" Score="1" Text="@whuber, (+1) that's a fair point. I guess I have noticed myself going back to previous posts, or having lingering thoughts on past posts. When I finally get around to making the changes/additions, some of them seem minor enough that it doesn't warrant &quot;bumping&quot;. I also wouldn't want to give the impression of trying to bring an old post back up out of the dust. Similarly, sometimes some users will make edits to 10 or 20 questions in one fell swoop. These all get bumped to the top, no matter how little the change. Providing the *option* to not bump in those circumstances seems reasonable. No?" CreationDate="2011-03-06T23:58:22.627" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1440" PostId="757" Score="0" Text="@Cardinal Yes, if you trust everyone all the time to do the right thing ;-).  There's no harm in getting bumped, anyway: if you don't like seeing a long list of minor recent changes, just set the page to view the newest questions rather than the active ones.  (That's my default setting, but once in a while I view active questions just to see what else has been going on.)  BTW, nice work on the coupon collector's problem!" CreationDate="2011-03-07T00:05:29.763" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1441" PostId="757" Score="0" Text="@whuber, yes, I go back and forth between newest and active. But, I think the default stats.SE view is &quot;active&quot;. Or, is this customizable by each user?" CreationDate="2011-03-07T00:07:12.773" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1442" PostId="757" Score="0" Text="@cardinal Just save a shortcut.  E.g., http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=newest" CreationDate="2011-03-07T00:11:19.197" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1443" PostId="757" Score="2" Text="@cardinal I personally try to fix title, tags or formatting issues as soon as I see them, so that questions flow is not altered (and Twitter feeds show the right titles :-) I'm not the only one since @mbq seems to be doing like this too. Now, I still think it is better to bump up a question because you want to fix something, even if this appears to be a minor edit. I like the last sentence in @whuber's response, and don't forget that users are encouraged to revise their Q&amp;A in order to keep this wiki live and informative." CreationDate="2011-03-07T00:18:04.693" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1444" PostId="757" Score="0" Text="@whuber, a bookmark: nice simple solution. Also, I managed to skip over reading your compliments on the coupon-collector problem. Thanks. It was fun to work on! I'd like to see a reference to a similar proof. It's hard to imagine it doesn't exist somewhere." CreationDate="2011-03-07T04:32:26.920" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1445" PostId="757" Score="0" Text="@chl, (+1) on comment. I want to be clear that I very much admire and appreciate all of the work that you and @mbq put into editing and cleaning up a lot of the posts. It is hard work and makes for much nicer reading. I hope I didn't leave the impression that I thought that was an unimportant service! I suppose in posting this question, I was trying to gauge some interest in added flexibility on the part of those like yourself who do so much to keep this place running and lively." CreationDate="2011-03-07T04:34:23.233" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1459" PostId="759" Score="3" Text="we are working on your &quot;guest pass&quot; request for Chat over the next 2 weeks, FYI" CreationDate="2011-03-16T08:17:34.637" UserId="123" />
  <row Id="1460" PostId="759" Score="0" Text="@Jeff Great, thanks." CreationDate="2011-03-16T09:50:36.263" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1462" PostId="761" Score="0" Text="I was thinking more focus on specific topics for the Two Cultures paper would have been helpful. I also think this is a good way to keep the topic open to the community in general without arbitrarily restricting discussion to particular topics." CreationDate="2011-03-17T14:32:51.990" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1457" PostId="762" Score="1" Text="Just so you know it is not only you, I just tried to retag and the same thing happened to me. It didn't even come up that I edited the tags." CreationDate="2011-03-16T03:47:06.183" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1458" PostId="763" Score="1" Text="@Jeff But then synonyms aren't working correctly!" CreationDate="2011-03-16T04:47:04.260" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1461" PostId="763" Score="0" Text="It was put in the wrong direction, that's all. Should be ok now, I have done the merge." CreationDate="2011-03-17T08:59:17.490" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1467" PostId="763" Score="0" Text="@mbq Thanks, but why does direction matter?  &quot;Synonym of&quot; is supposed to be a symmetric relation.  That seems still to be a bug..." CreationDate="2011-03-18T05:08:37.877" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1468" PostId="763" Score="1" Text="@whu there can be only one winner. One has to remap to the other." CreationDate="2011-03-18T05:46:47.510" UserId="123" />
  <row Id="1469" PostId="763" Score="0" Text="@whuber, Oops my bad. I introduced the changepoint tag, since I though that is the correct spelling of change-point. After I saw the mistake, I created a synonym, since I could not delete the tag. Or something to that effect, since this happened month or so ago, my memory is a bit vague on the details." CreationDate="2011-03-18T08:11:12.763" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1471" PostId="763" Score="2" Text="@Jeff There is no problem with the remapping: you are right, each equivalence class of synonyms needs a representative.  The problem is that *the lookup of questions with associated tags does not work.*  Thus the synonym feature is effectively broken." CreationDate="2011-03-18T13:59:18.070" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1470" PostId="765" Score="0" Text="Thanks.  Do you have any plans to change that?" CreationDate="2011-03-18T13:57:29.820" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1474" PostId="766" Score="1" Text="(+1) Although I was the one who challenged your reply (on the basis of the apparent consensus in this thread), I personally think your view is a good one: why not eventually provide a worked example?  Later, when the same question comes up (the one you answered will recur many times :-), we will only need to link to the example.  A potential compromise is to answer a *similar* question, perhaps by changing the input data." CreationDate="2011-03-19T19:51:56.873" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1475" PostId="766" Score="2" Text="Some HW questions have lead to interesting threads, where the OP was clearly interested in going beyond the question asked; most of the time, however, such questions are rarely followed by the (unregistered) OP which prevents from just giving clues and waiting for a feedback. I like the idea of having a bag of typical HW questions that we could refer to, though. For the moment, I'm still acting (I hope so) as recommended: ask for what has been done, provide some hints or illustrative pictures, and then see how it goes. (...)" CreationDate="2011-03-19T20:21:35.780" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1476" PostId="766" Score="3" Text="(...) Why answering to someone who doesn't reply at all? The same policy should apply to HW or general questions in this respect." CreationDate="2011-03-19T20:23:14.860" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1920" PostId="766" Score="4" Text="The stated goal for SE sites is to have most of their traffic come from search engines - which implies that for the most part, it's people looking for answers. I also support a policy of helpful hints, and after some period of time that renders a fully worked example &quot;useless&quot; showing up on an assignment, someone posting an answer. A homework question might still very well be a question worth answering. On another note entirely, I support self-labeling, not the community going &quot;This feels like homework&quot;. Being on the receiving end of that at SO almost killed my interest in the entire network." CreationDate="2011-10-17T20:21:52.133" UserId="5836" />
  <row Id="1485" PostId="767" Score="1" Text="Note that there is a general SE meta: http://meta.stackoverflow.com" CreationDate="2011-03-25T12:24:35.997" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1490" PostId="767" Score="0" Text="I'm on there too, but feared asking a question that might have known a very early answer that would not show up in searches." CreationDate="2011-03-28T06:28:34.517" UserId="3582" />
  <row Id="8608" PostId="767" Score="0" Text="There is already one for history:  http://history.stackexchange.com/" CreationDate="2015-11-04T19:52:02.100" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="8686" PostId="767" Score="0" Text="@kjetilbhalvorsen: Cliodynamics FTW!" CreationDate="2015-11-25T04:24:52.607" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="1478" PostId="768" Score="0" Text="Thanks, that proposal is exactly what I was looking for. It seems the discussion has never expanded on the topic, so perhaps there is no audience (yet)." CreationDate="2011-03-21T22:31:04.070" UserId="3582" />
  <row Id="1480" PostId="770" Score="0" Text="I tried IE9 again and today I see formulas with no problem! The red error bar is also gone. I didn't change anything in IE9. However, &quot;tracking protection&quot; is on and I'm subscribed to the easy list. I suspect that there was a false positive in the easy list and is fixed." CreationDate="2011-03-24T13:18:33.237" UserId="2020" />
  <row Id="1484" PostId="771" Score="5" Text="see also: http://stackapps.com/questions/2116/pro-forma-comments" CreationDate="2011-03-25T05:48:41.113" UserId="123" />
  <row Id="1486" PostId="771" Score="0" Text="@Jeff Great!  That's an excellent vehicle for implementing this functionality (pre-loaded with some useful comments, too).  Because it's a personal modification--not shared across users--the replies here can still serve as a repository of text and means to exchange helpful moderation comments." CreationDate="2011-03-25T13:15:42.587" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1489" PostId="771" Score="0" Text="Good idea. I always hate trying to think how I should &quot;sugar coat&quot; my comments." CreationDate="2011-03-25T16:31:31.617" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="1667" PostId="771" Score="0" Text="Re: @Jeff's suggestion above.  I installed that GreaseMonkey app and used it for a while: it's fun and works well.  However, it mysteriously vanished (FireFox 3.6.17, Win 7/64).  Therefore I don't want to rely on it." CreationDate="2011-05-04T20:40:41.767" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3130" PostId="771" Score="0" Text="See also http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/140841/macro-for-comments and http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/136609/repository-of-useful-pro-forma-comments" CreationDate="2012-08-04T11:49:11.657" UserId="3488" />
  <row Id="1481" PostId="775" Score="0" Text="Feel free to propose a better heading for that particular situation." CreationDate="2011-03-24T18:14:57.390" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1482" PostId="777" Score="0" Text="We need a link for LaTeX. I can only think of this one at the moment: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/5/what-typographic-support-is-available-to-support-display-of-statistical-formula." CreationDate="2011-03-24T18:27:30.547" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1491" PostId="780" Score="0" Text="thank you for the prompt response." CreationDate="2011-03-30T06:31:53.570" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1521" PostId="782" Score="0" Text="Thanks @andy - always something small that is missed!" CreationDate="2011-04-02T01:33:49.340" UserId="2392" />
  <row Id="1494" PostId="783" Score="0" Text="Relevant questions on the site for free data sources: [Datasets for running statistical analysis](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2252144/datasets-for-running-statistical-analysis-on), [Locating freely available data samples](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/7/locating-freely-available-data-samples)" CreationDate="2010-09-09T16:39:50.120" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="1495" PostId="783" Score="0" Text="Another suggestion: It may be useful to suggest different project ideas based on the same dataset. For example, building on Shane's [idea to use SE data](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2512/what-should-be-our-first-polystats-project/2514#2514), someone can suggest exploring a different aspect of Q&amp;A sites. The votes would then decide what project we will look at." CreationDate="2010-09-09T17:07:43.723" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="1496" PostId="783" Score="0" Text="This thread should probably just decide on a subject for [polystats-project-1].  We can then have many questions on the same project tagged with the same polystats tag.  So, for instance, this first project could be generally &quot;Describe the SE communities&quot;, and a specific question could be &quot;What makes a community succeed/fail?&quot; and another could be &quot;Which communities are more/less friendly?&quot;." CreationDate="2010-09-09T17:22:46.060" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="1497" PostId="783" Score="0" Text="Will that not fragment our effort across multiple questions? From the point of maximizing contributors to the project and to achieve some coherence on polystats projects, we may want to stick to a somewhat linear format as outlined in the qn: Decide questions --&gt; explore data --&gt; model setup etc. Can't we use this thread to decide which questions to look at by posting the broad questions as separate answers? I like the idea of having version tags [polystats-project-1] and will add one along those lines." CreationDate="2010-09-09T17:35:41.050" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="1498" PostId="783" Score="0" Text="Then I would advise that you add a step: choose subject/data --&gt; decide questions --&gt; explore data --&gt; model setup etc.  Trying to use this question to manage the subject matter and the questions would seem too hard to follow (IMO)." CreationDate="2010-09-09T17:41:47.503" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="1499" PostId="783" Score="0" Text="I see what you are saying but I am guessing that most folks would decide to participate if the questions we are trying to solve are 'interesting' at some level. The data itself must anyway exist somewhere for a polystats-project to be viable. Therefore, it seems to me that the choice of subject/data is secondary to the questions we want to answer. Let us wait for others to chime in with their thoughts before we change the current setup. I have no issues with changing how we do this as long as the community arrives at some consensus." CreationDate="2010-09-09T17:52:40.313" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="1500" PostId="783" Score="0" Text="@Srikant, I also asked a more focused question about data set http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/973/free-data-set-for-very-high-dimensional-classification" CreationDate="2010-09-13T10:17:39.483" UserId="223" />
  <row Id="1501" PostId="783" Score="0" Text="@robin Thanks for bringing that thread to my attention. I will post a meta thread which will serve as a repository of all these types of questions for future reference." CreationDate="2010-09-13T12:57:26.707" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="1502" PostId="784" Score="0" Text="How about broadening the question: What factors determine success of a SE community? Is it no of questions, no of answers per question, no of users, voting patterns etc." CreationDate="2010-09-09T16:41:09.617" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="1503" PostId="784" Score="0" Text="That's a nice way of phrasing it, although it might also be interesting to classify which communities are more &quot;friendly&quot;, &quot;scholarly&quot;, &quot;use your imagination here&quot;, etc." CreationDate="2010-09-09T16:56:43.817" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="1504" PostId="784" Score="0" Text="@Shane On thinking about your three questions I feel that question 1 and 2 are qualitative whereas question 3 while quantitative seems to be a descriptive question. Would you agree with my assessment? Could you also highlight a bit more explicitly the specific project questions that you think we should be addressing?" CreationDate="2010-09-09T22:08:49.260" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="1505" PostId="785" Score="1" Text="I was going to suggest the same question (this is the 'snowball effect' that Taleb talks about). However, the causality is difficult to tease out. One would have to look at how a user is voted up over the arc of their tenure on the site to control for the effect of 'merit'." CreationDate="2010-09-09T18:44:03.487" UserId="795" />
  <row Id="1506" PostId="785" Score="0" Text="Doesn't the difficulty make it more fun? :-)" CreationDate="2010-09-09T18:51:13.857" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="1507" PostId="785" Score="0" Text="I didn't want people to mistakenly believe the problem was trivial, that's all ;)" CreationDate="2010-09-10T04:54:50.440" UserId="795" />
  <row Id="1508" PostId="786" Score="1" Text="This is interesting, but probably too difficult to manage the &quot;distribution&quot; question.  Not to mention that it might go against the openness of what we're doing." CreationDate="2010-09-09T20:06:00.850" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="1509" PostId="786" Score="0" Text="Crowdsourcing at its finest. Those challenges you linked to seem to have pretty hefty prizes, I would be worried our hard work would be taken without recognition." CreationDate="2010-09-09T20:06:35.780" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1510" PostId="786" Score="0" Text="@Andy: On the contrary, I think recognition would go directly to this site, which anyone could review to see what happened.  Or maybe you're saying the same thing Shane is? @Shane: When you work on a prize problem, you don't have to keep it secret.  But maybe that's the point of your comment: what is to prevent a third party from coming in, lurking to follow a group effort, and then jumping the gun with a solution once one is imminent?  I don't have an answer to that.  But even so, knowing that a problem is of material interest to someone can get the juices flowing..." CreationDate="2010-09-09T20:10:59.420" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1511" PostId="786" Score="0" Text="@whuber: Actually I mean that we all selflessly volunteer our time here for the greater good.  Having a monetary reward, unless it was donated back to something, would feel weird to me.  I would rather do something that is free, open and good for all.  That said, I see no issue with people from this site getting together and doing this apart from the polystats project." CreationDate="2010-09-09T20:26:01.407" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="1512" PostId="786" Score="0" Text="@Shane: I'm entirely in agreement.  If anything done on this site ever resulted in a reward, it would have to go into the site itself or something closely related.  The fame is worth more than the fortune, right? ;-)" CreationDate="2010-09-09T21:20:15.277" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1513" PostId="786" Score="0" Text="@whuber Can you identify a specific project from that site which you can think is interesting and edit your answer to include that as your proposal? Right now, it is not clear what project we are voting on if we vote for your answer." CreationDate="2010-09-09T21:58:46.547" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="1514" PostId="786" Score="0" Text="@Srikant: That's a reasonable request, but it sort of misses the idea. These sites are dynamic: the problems on them are current and change regularly.  Thus, you wouldn't be voting on any specific project, but on a method to identify worthy projects (in the spirit of an ongoing PolyStat rather than a one-shot effort).  What I can add is that I have been monitoring Innocentive for the last year and have found some worthy projects--typically in the biomed/agriculture area--that are entirely statistical, kind of sophisticated versions of the better-known NetFlix challenges." CreationDate="2010-09-09T22:33:09.647" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1515" PostId="786" Score="0" Text="@whuber Fair enough. For what it is worth polystats-projects are supposed to be an ongoing effort and the first one is meant to test the waters (so to speak). Could you then identify a current promising candidate? I understand that the site is dynamic but we need some specific idea so that we can understand what we are voting for the first project." CreationDate="2010-09-09T22:40:27.500" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="1516" PostId="786" Score="0" Text="@Srikant: Here are some current ones due 12/1/10.  (1) &quot;Predictive Segmentation of Populations.&quot;  Help improve clinical trials by distinguishing subpopulations of people into potential responders (to a treatment) and non-responders.  (2) &quot;Statistical Analysis of Genomic Variants.&quot; &quot;...determine the optimal method of processing a large number of Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) data&quot; (see the Wikipedia article on SNPs).  There's a large synthetic dataset of 500,000 SNPs for 1000 patients available.  We missed one this summer to help Innocentive itself develop statistical graphics." CreationDate="2010-09-10T22:05:31.753" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1517" PostId="786" Score="0" Text="@whuber Great. I added project one in this answer and project two as a separate answer." CreationDate="2010-09-11T00:54:36.387" UserDisplayName="svadali" />
  <row Id="3606" PostId="790" Score="0" Text="I'm marking this `[status-bydesign]` as this appears to be an issue with the MathJax code and not our renderer." CreationDate="2012-10-26T19:05:40.127" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="1518" PostId="791" Score="0" Text="are you able to introduce new line before the second logarithm? I've posted the same code in a separate answer with the break. It does not render." CreationDate="2011-04-01T10:31:50.857" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1519" PostId="791" Score="0" Text="No, I'm not that proficient with TeX. Might be a question for http://tex.stackexchange.com" CreationDate="2011-04-01T10:54:19.527" UserId="3876" />
  <row Id="1520" PostId="791" Score="1" Text="they answer MathJax questions? As I said LaTeX renders the formula with the break just fine, the problem seems to me is with MathJax." CreationDate="2011-04-01T11:08:46.583" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1530" PostId="793" Score="6" Text="The (main) FAQ now links to this thread." CreationDate="2011-04-07T06:51:03.963" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3665" PostId="794" Score="5" Text="I'm surprised no one mentioned Stata's official command documentation, which can be found online. Normally a google search for the command will bring it up in the first few results. To narrow the search, you can add &quot;site:www.stata.com/help.cgi&quot; after searching for the name of the command, e.g. `regress site:www.stata.com/help.cgi`." CreationDate="2012-11-07T19:40:52.573" UserId="10926" />
  <row Id="4041" PostId="794" Score="2" Text="The pdf documentation that comes bundled with Stata is also quite excellent and well-written. Some of these manuals can even be found online. Lots of examples, formulas, and syntax. For some reason, many people seem to be unaware of their existence, even when they have used Stata for years. The link at the very top of Stata's documentation that you get when you type -help XXX- takes you there." CreationDate="2013-04-13T03:48:10.100" UserId="7071" />
  <row Id="5012" PostId="794" Score="8" Text="As from Stata 13, the entire manuals are on-line and accessible to all." CreationDate="2013-10-25T23:59:28.563" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9793" PostId="794" Score="0" Text="Typing -help XXX- into an internet search engine usually spits out the Stata help file as the first or second search result (at least for Google and Yahoo, anyway)" CreationDate="2016-04-13T05:08:15.257" UserId="40230" />
  <row Id="22563" PostId="795" Score="1" Text="I am tolerably comfortable in R, and publishing to CRAN, but would **love** guidance on producing test functions. There's some kind of OO style specifically for test functions that I cannot seem to find documentation for and I feel so dorky publishing packages that do tests without conforming to that." CreationDate="2023-11-10T19:00:44.417" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="1524" PostId="797" Score="0" Text="Good suggestion. Two partial answers that are in progress: http://stackapps.com/questions/1643/dice-stack-find-a-random-question and http://stackapps.com/questions/713/please-provide-a-mechanism-for-retrieving-random-questions" CreationDate="2011-04-04T18:13:47.363" UserId="1764" />
  <row Id="1523" PostId="803" Score="0" Text="Thanks, this is what I currently do. But then I've occasionally followed a tagged topic's &quot;Related&quot; link and found something fascinating and informative that I would have never thought to search for in the first place. Hence, the &quot;surprise me&quot; idea." CreationDate="2011-04-04T18:11:07.567" UserId="1764" />
  <row Id="1525" PostId="805" Score="0" Text="Thanks chl for the response - we'll chalk it up to site gremlins this time. The bigger issue is how the community is going to deal with the overlap b/t SO and CV with regard to data vis questions. I know there has been some conversation on the topic, e.g. [here](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/584/vote-on-policy-for-r-questions) and others. I suggested to move this question since it's content was very similar to the other question that was [moved](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5528709/adding-labels-inside) but I guess that came from meta, so more clear cut to move." CreationDate="2011-04-05T12:27:24.440" UserId="696" />
  <row Id="1526" PostId="805" Score="0" Text="@Chase About your last point, yes: the question was posted on Meta which is not very appropriate. As it was barely interesting on its own--because I guess similar questions were already posted on SO (and there's a somewhat related solution on Hadley's website)--I just closed it." CreationDate="2011-04-05T12:34:44.497" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1527" PostId="806" Score="0" Text="This previous question on meta has an answer relevant to your question. http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/693/syntax-highlighting-with-r-tag/695#695" CreationDate="2011-04-06T03:47:24.600" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1540" PostId="809" Score="1" Text="This doesn't seem like an SO-related feature request. This sounds like a [MathJax](http://www.mathjax.org) feature request." CreationDate="2011-04-12T00:51:24.943" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1541" PostId="809" Score="0" Text="What does SO abbreviate?" CreationDate="2011-04-12T00:53:40.760" UserId="3911" />
  <row Id="1542" PostId="809" Score="0" Text="Stack Overflow." CreationDate="2011-04-12T00:56:33.313" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="4460" PostId="809" Score="1" Text="cardinal is correct - this isn't something we can do anything about until MathJaX itself supports it." CreationDate="2013-08-27T18:33:37.673" UserId="6123" />
  <row Id="4526" PostId="809" Score="1" Text="That's generally correct, but keep in mind that it's not just about MathJax. Almost all MathJax features are modular, so even if we add it to MathJax, Stackexchange still has to decide to add it. In this case though it looks like it's just a macro, so that shouldn't be too hard. Feel free to file an issue for this feature request at https://github.com/mathjax/MathJax/issues?state=open" CreationDate="2013-09-03T17:31:36.607" UserId="29865" />
  <row Id="1538" PostId="812" Score="0" Text="There are featured tag (not helping at all) and system message (this blue bar that sometimes appear under the header -- visible, but the SE policy is that each its use is almost considered abuse) -- I was usually using both, but seemingly not enough ;-)" CreationDate="2011-04-11T20:49:10.873" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1539" PostId="812" Score="0" Text="/cc @mbq And unfortunately, the twitter [statsqa](http://twitter.com/#!/statsqa) account doesn't echo Meta threads... Maybe one solution would be to subscribe to [Mendeley RSS](http://www.mendeley.com/groups/999241/crossvalidated-journal-club/) feeds for CVJC: with updates of new articles, you will be notified of the upcoming JC? (This assumes that articles proposed for CVJC are mirrored on Mendeley as soon as they are notified here.)" CreationDate="2011-04-11T21:22:33.277" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1687" PostId="812" Score="0" Text="I just saw the headline at the top of CV, very exciting!" CreationDate="2011-05-22T07:12:03.143" UserId="776" />
  <row Id="1545" PostId="813" Score="1" Text="(+1) Really good!" CreationDate="2011-04-12T10:39:56.350" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1547" PostId="813" Score="0" Text="More to the point: your method also works in comments, not just in posts.  Comments with $\LaTeX$ aren't easy to find, so here's one people can experiment with :-)." CreationDate="2011-04-12T21:41:25.783" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1548" PostId="813" Score="0" Text="Thanks for the solution! Re: understand — The reason why I raised this was I was unaware that right clicking could help." CreationDate="2011-04-12T23:45:40.333" UserId="3911" />
  <row Id="1552" PostId="813" Score="0" Text="@Gabor It's documented somewhere, but it's hard to find!" CreationDate="2011-04-15T21:12:15.593" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1546" PostId="814" Score="0" Text="Where are the intrinsic tags listed or indicated?" CreationDate="2011-04-12T21:38:02.013" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1549" PostId="814" Score="0" Text="@whuber the blacklist is developer only, but intrinsic tags can safely be assumed to be &quot;apple&quot; on apple, &quot;wordpress&quot; on wordpress, &quot;android&quot; on android, &quot;math&quot; on math.. and so forth." CreationDate="2011-04-13T00:37:56.487" UserId="123" />
  <row Id="1550" PostId="814" Score="0" Text="Thanks.  And &quot;Cross_Validated&quot; on CV?  :-)" CreationDate="2011-04-13T01:29:02.960" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1551" PostId="814" Score="0" Text="RE edit: So be it.  I won't miss it." CreationDate="2011-04-13T01:30:33.147" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="8625" PostId="816" Score="0" Text="The link to 'various SAS blogs' via Chris Hemedinger's blog is also no longer usable.  Google reader no longer exists, so there's no way of getting to the list." CreationDate="2015-11-12T16:48:05.250" UserId="8523" />
  <row Id="1573" PostId="817" Score="0" Text="Stats conferences have relatively long lead times, Jeff.  For instance, opportunities for this summer's [Joint Statistical Meetings](https://www.amstat.org/meetings/jsm.cfm) are long past and the next one won't be until the middle of 2012.  Perhaps we should be including 2012 in our considerations now?" CreationDate="2011-04-21T18:59:24.383" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1574" PostId="817" Score="0" Text="@whu sure -- whatever makes sense" CreationDate="2011-04-21T20:24:56.850" UserId="123" />
  <row Id="1553" PostId="818" Score="0" Text="In fact the situation is a bit more complex -- crossvalidated.com is registered and works as a synonym to stats.stackexchange.com; on the other hand Statistical Analysis works as the name on SE-wide pages like stackexchange.com, data explorer, blog, etc..." CreationDate="2011-04-16T23:17:55.893" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1554" PostId="818" Score="0" Text="And I know what you meant; I just hope that your post may be an impulse to rethink and settle this stuff." CreationDate="2011-04-16T23:22:49.433" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1555" PostId="818" Score="0" Text="@mbq, by editing my question, I didn't mean to suggest a misunderstanding in your answer. It's just that your secondary point motivated me to clarify that my question is not about whether CV or SA is a good name." CreationDate="2011-04-17T14:51:19.347" UserId="1191" />
  <row Id="1556" PostId="821" Score="0" Text="Hmm.. Then it seems you should have received this badge long ago." CreationDate="2011-04-17T17:25:26.317" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1561" PostId="821" Score="0" Text="@whuber You're largely above me about that! :-)" CreationDate="2011-04-18T19:43:10.900" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1557" PostId="822" Score="0" Text="Did you also update the algorithm on this site?  It seems we have several people who likely have qualified." CreationDate="2011-04-17T17:26:31.697" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1558" PostId="822" Score="0" Text="@whu no known problems with it at this time. But it is a very hard badge to get; much larger sites only have ~20 users with the badge." CreationDate="2011-04-17T22:36:01.120" UserId="123" />
  <row Id="1559" PostId="822" Score="3" Text="That's what I thought.  However--for instance--the [&quot;Generalist progression&quot; query](http://data.stackexchange.com/stats/s/880/generalist-progression) says @chl has 15 or more points in 25 of the top 40 tags on this site.  There are other users with even greater progression toward this badge.  But nobody here has been awarded it.  Is there perhaps a problem with the query?" CreationDate="2011-04-17T22:46:25.540" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1575" PostId="825" Score="0" Text="What do you think about stats software user conferences? For example, [UseR](http://www.warwick.ac.uk/statsdept/user-2011/) has some sponsor-funded travel scholarships available for students. Perhaps we could fund someone who normally wouldn't be able to attend.  We could of course do the same for the other major user conferences (SAS, Stata?)" CreationDate="2011-04-21T21:06:59.157" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="1576" PostId="825" Score="0" Text="Not all of us fall under the academic model, either - for example, I have no problem getting funded to go to tuberculosis conferences, but couldn't attend JSM last year because it was outside of the US and that grant explicitly forbade travel outside the US.  :|  (Disclaimer: I'm not suggesting myself for this - I there are many people in the community who are far more qualified than I am)" CreationDate="2011-04-21T21:10:44.893" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="1577" PostId="825" Score="0" Text="@Matt Sure, this answer was intended as a form of explanation why this may not be a tempting perspective for hard academics. BTW, with 900 rep and 4 shurikens you seem qualified enough =)" CreationDate="2011-04-21T21:35:19.530" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1808" PostId="825" Score="2" Text="@Matt: the question of comparing the majordomo-based statalist and StackOverflow did come up in Stata circles (http://www.stata.com/statalist/archive/2011-07/msg00990.html). Giving a talk about CV or SO won't seem too far-fetched for a Stata conference/UG meeting (http://stata.com/meeting/), although generally the expectation is that you talk about something Stata related, and help enriching other Stata users' experiences (while CV is almost solely R-oriented)." CreationDate="2011-08-12T14:07:32.150" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="1815" PostId="825" Score="0" Text="@StasK Even though I'm a bit of an R zealot, I still find that disappointing - there are big groups of people who are missing out on the utility of SO and CV just because their particular language hasn't found a foothold yet (I'm continually depressed by the scarcity of SAS questions on SO).  When R first started going on SO, there was a concerted effort to blast the site with R questions over a 24-hour period, just to get the basics covered and get the site into Google results.  Perhaps a speaker at a Stata/SAS conference could orchestrate something similar..." CreationDate="2011-08-15T16:45:57.247" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="1562" PostId="827" Score="0" Text="(+1) Nice catch!" CreationDate="2011-04-19T15:10:41.450" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1564" PostId="827" Score="0" Text="+1 Finally, an answer.  Thanks." CreationDate="2011-04-19T18:27:36.837" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1565" PostId="827" Score="0" Text="BTW, our 40th badge appears in 35 questions, so we're about 1/6 of the way there.  Nobody is going to get a generalist badge during the next three or four years (aka the infinitely far future) unless site activity goes way, way up.  So, as far as any of us is concerned, this badge doesn't exist." CreationDate="2011-04-19T18:31:02.933" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1567" PostId="827" Score="1" Text="@whuber, in this particular case I would argue that the minimum question requirement should be adapted for each site according to traffic. Otherwise this badge does not make sense." CreationDate="2011-04-19T20:32:37.897" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1568" PostId="827" Score="1" Text="Agreed.  There are many legitimate ways to establish better quantitative criteria for this badge (and many others).  It raises interesting questions about the stability of the ranks in a dynamic, growing sample.  I'm sure good statistical thinking would be helpful not only here but in all the analytical aspects of the SE sites." CreationDate="2011-04-19T21:38:50.207" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4122" PostId="827" Score="0" Text="@whuber -- re: &quot;*Nobody is going to get a generalist badge during the next three or four years (aka the infinitely far future) unless site activity goes way, way up*&quot; - as it was, the first one was awarded just over 18 months later, and a dozen people had it by the end of 2012 (16 have it now) -- I suppose the site activity must indeed have gone way up." CreationDate="2013-06-19T05:13:54.567" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4123" PostId="827" Score="2" Text="@Glen_b It did.  Mods can see graphs of activity metrics over time, such as numbers of Q's &amp; A's, pageviews, etc. (but are asked not to disclose details).  By almost any measure, this site's usage has increased fivefold since April 2011, whereas at that time usage had actually plateaued for several months.  There's a lesson here somewhere about making time series forecasts :-)." CreationDate="2013-06-19T12:40:54.423" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1563" PostId="828" Score="0" Text="[Here's a test](http://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=[multiple-comparisons]+correlation) `http://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=[multiple-comparisons]+correlation`" CreationDate="2011-04-19T16:45:04.520" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1570" PostId="828" Score="0" Text="[Here's another test.](http://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bmultiple-comparisons%5D%20correlation) `http://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bmultiple-comparisons%5D%20correlation`" CreationDate="2011-04-19T21:53:59.207" UserId="123" />
  <row Id="1566" PostId="829" Score="0" Text="it's quite reasonable.  What's unreasonable is that *the very same URL* gives dramatically different results depending on whether it's used in a question/reply/Web browser or in a comment.  When you link through the test comment I provided, how many results appear for you?" CreationDate="2011-04-19T20:23:03.117" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1569" PostId="829" Score="0" Text="oh you need to encode it. See the above version -- brackets have to be escaped." CreationDate="2011-04-19T21:53:43.497" UserId="123" />
  <row Id="1571" PostId="829" Score="0" Text="Thanks Jeff.  That resolves it." CreationDate="2011-04-19T23:19:17.263" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1572" PostId="829" Score="0" Text="Out of curiosity, why is it necessary to escape a *square* bracket when the quotation symbols are *parentheses*?" CreationDate="2011-04-21T03:20:22.883" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1580" PostId="829" Score="0" Text="Seems like an obvious bug in the comment-processing code. Why wouldn't you also interpret brackets correctly for strings starting with **http://** and no white space in between. URL escaping is not likely to be well-known to users on specialized (non-SO) sites in the SE community." CreationDate="2011-04-22T18:57:32.993" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1578" PostId="830" Score="0" Text="@mpiktas Ah, it appears I already validated two of them before seeing this thread. Let's wait and see what other users think of your proposition. (We can modify the tag excerpt afterwards.)" CreationDate="2011-04-22T07:47:44.840" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1579" PostId="830" Score="0" Text="@chl, that was my intention in part, because there is no way for others to see how the proposed wiki looks when modified. Currently only 10 users can approve wiki, i.e. see the proposals." CreationDate="2011-04-22T08:07:35.427" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1588" PostId="830" Score="0" Text="What is to distinguish the regression tag with the more specific tags?" CreationDate="2011-04-25T13:05:48.607" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1592" PostId="830" Score="0" Text="@Andy W, good question." CreationDate="2011-04-26T08:30:25.963" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1658" PostId="830" Score="0" Text="@Andy W, can you clarify whether you mean that other regression tags are unnecessary, or something else?" CreationDate="2011-05-03T07:40:45.323" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1661" PostId="830" Score="0" Text="@mpiktas, I'll try to add clarification sometime today in an answer. I think they are necessary and useful, but I'm concerned about the scope of the &quot;regression&quot; tag versus the more specific tags." CreationDate="2011-05-03T12:38:37.393" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1581" PostId="831" Score="0" Text="yep, we have some other plans in place for dealing with this. Very bizarre." CreationDate="2011-04-23T03:35:28.247" UserId="123" />
  <row Id="1582" PostId="832" Score="4" Text="I think the moderators can do this. Another approach is to move the comment yourself and mark it as community wiki, acknowledging the commenter in the process." CreationDate="2011-04-25T01:44:35.037" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1583" PostId="832" Score="1" Text="@cardinal We can convert answers as comments, but not the other way around. I fully agree with your second recommendation." CreationDate="2011-04-25T08:50:52.727" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1584" PostId="832" Score="3" Text="And so, yet another comment answers ;-)" CreationDate="2011-04-25T11:22:24.683" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1586" PostId="832" Score="12" Text="@mbq: Different users are motivated by different factors and so use the site in different ways. I'm probably one of the serial commenters that @Parbury alludes to. My personal threshold is pretty high for submitting an answer, mostly because I like to be able to compose something of quality that goes a little beyond what the OP is asking for. For me, that takes time and effort (I'm slow in more ways than one!). On the other hand, sometimes providing the right word or phrase can be enough to set the OP up to find *their own answer*. Hence, I comment! ;-)" CreationDate="2011-04-25T11:56:42.013" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1590" PostId="832" Score="7" Text="@cardinal Sorry, but I think it is like writing poems on a toilet paper; maybe it has some deep value, but there is also an unbalanced usability loss. One cannot accept, downvote or edit comments, they have to be short, have no permalinks, finally discussions in comments degenerate into unreadable clutter. I also had those doubts about answer quality, but those not so good are just getting over-voted by better ones, when they appear." CreationDate="2011-04-25T14:16:34.157" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1641" PostId="832" Score="0" Text="@mbq: Thanks for your comments. Your points regarding limited feedback on comments are very well taken and I think it's important and relevant. Regarding the &quot;clutter&quot; issue, I think the feedback mechanisms in place (you *can* upvote them) and the use of the interface &quot;folding&quot; keep the clutter minimal." CreationDate="2011-04-30T14:08:55.113" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1642" PostId="832" Score="1" Text="@mbq: My purely anecdotal observations don't quite seem to match your description of answers, though. &quot;Quality&quot; is certainly a subjective thing and with the diversity of users here it's hard to know what that means. My own general perspective seems to indicate that there is a much stronger association between the *order in which the answers were submitted* and the number of votes received as compared to the association between &quot;quality&quot; and votes. Personally, I would rather see 0-3 (very) high quality answers than 2-6 responses of limited long-term value." CreationDate="2011-04-30T14:12:58.710" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1647" PostId="832" Score="0" Text="@cardinal I understand your point, and that's why I oppose on usability/SEO/standarization planes, i.e. areas where comment-answers cause/are problems. Voting~quality problems are known and frequently mentioned on meta.SO, but while this voting scheme is the core of SE those are &quot;bugs that have become features&quot;." CreationDate="2011-04-30T15:15:32.883" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="2366" PostId="832" Score="4" Text="@cardinal your recommendation is reasonable, bit it is still annoying to have to do this. A good example is chl's comment on http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/11322/9007 - the comment IS the answer, and it is difficult to improve on it. No-one wants to submit a real answer, because they'd be stealing chl's rep, so the question remained unanswered for nearly a year. I tried asking chl to convert to an answer, but got no response." CreationDate="2012-05-15T02:02:11.600" UserId="9007" />
  <row Id="2368" PostId="832" Score="0" Text="It probably wouldn't annoy me so much if the question wasn't high on the &quot;unanswered&quot; list for so long..." CreationDate="2012-05-15T02:36:16.520" UserId="9007" />
  <row Id="2454" PostId="832" Score="0" Text="@naught101 I am happy to leave a comment when question requires clarification *or* I'm unsure to have fully grasped it. I am grateful to you for taking time to provide an answer to the question you referred to. In this particular case, I have no excuse. (No worry with reputation issue: I'm not here for that.)" CreationDate="2012-05-26T10:55:37.270" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="2455" PostId="832" Score="0" Text="@chl: I know, sorry to pick on you in that way, lots of other people do it too. That was just a good example because it was such a simple answer. I generally appreciate your comments :)" CreationDate="2012-05-26T11:28:12.937" UserId="9007" />
  <row Id="2456" PostId="832" Score="1" Text="If I'm giving a fairly simple answer, I'll usually give it as a comment instead of an answer, because a couple of times I was told that my answers were not detailed enough. The reputation points aren't important to me." CreationDate="2012-05-26T23:51:28.897" UserId="3835" />
  <row Id="2459" PostId="832" Score="0" Text="@cardinal, I've certainly noticed the high average quality of your answers here on CV, &amp; I appreciate that. In fact, I sometimes comment instead of answer for the same reason. I would not want to push someone towards a strategy that isn't a good fit for them, but I do want to note that there are other viable approaches (eg, as I discuss in the last paragraph of my answer [here](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1122/how-to-stem-the-tide-of-duplicate-qs/1137#1137) as well)." CreationDate="2012-05-28T19:35:06.857" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2460" PostId="832" Score="0" Text="@mbq, 1 small point. It is possible to link to a comment (as eg, I did [here](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/27495/having-a-job-in-data-mining-without-a-phd/27561#27561)). This can be done by going to the user's profile page, clicking on activity, then right-clicking on the link to the comment in question and clicking &quot;Copy Link Location&quot;." CreationDate="2012-05-28T19:41:10.687" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2465" PostId="832" Score="1" Text="@gung That's a clever approach, but you might appreciate discovering that it's much easier to right-click on the comment's time stamp and choose &quot;Copy Link Location&quot; :-)." CreationDate="2012-05-29T14:55:43.973" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2466" PostId="832" Score="0" Text="@whuber, ha! you learn something new every day..." CreationDate="2012-05-29T14:59:19.960" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="1585" PostId="833" Score="3" Text="Reputation drain in what sense? Also, I wasn't suggesting that moderators hop around converting comments to answers, but rather if another user sees a comment that they feel is worthy of being an answer, they can also copy and CW it. I suggest CW as a courtesy; I believe that Jeff Atwood advocates or at least is not bothered by more &quot;aggressive&quot; behavior where the person copying also takes the &quot;reputation&quot;. But, I think that can be a little counterproductive and goes against the general tenor of this particular site." CreationDate="2011-04-25T11:49:57.277" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1591" PostId="833" Score="0" Text="In a sense it goes nowhere. If we create an atmosphere causing that only superb/insolent answers get rep, the whole concept will become broken. Anyway, on Physics.SE a single comment to CW conversion act caused a little war, so not all will agree with that idea." CreationDate="2011-04-25T14:25:26.180" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1644" PostId="833" Score="0" Text="@mbq: I suppose my perspective is such that I do not view &quot;reputation&quot; as some perishable resource that disappears forever never to be recovered. I also find the term a bit misleading. In my view, a more descriptive name would be &quot;activity level&quot; or &quot;participation level&quot;, as that seems to be what is most highly correlated with the numbers next to our names. Being a stats website, I think we should be more in tune with these nuances." CreationDate="2011-04-30T14:18:22.043" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1645" PostId="833" Score="3" Text="@mbq: I think if we wanted to show a bit more sense of humor and irreverence, we'd randomly generate a new number for each user every day and display that next to their name. I have some other thoughts on how the &quot;scoring&quot; of questions and answers might be more valuable, but I'll leave that for another time." CreationDate="2011-04-30T14:20:27.983" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1646" PostId="833" Score="0" Text="@cardinal I agree that rep is quite irrelevant to the quality of posts; even FAQs claim that &quot;Reputation is a rough measurement of how much the community trusts you.&quot;. However IMO it is a strong enrolling factor, especially for new users, and this is why I defend it." CreationDate="2011-04-30T15:01:24.387" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1648" PostId="833" Score="0" Text="@mbq: Yes, I am sure it is a motivating factor for many new users. Unfortunately, this can, at times, lead to counterproductive behavior." CreationDate="2011-04-30T15:16:49.710" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1684" PostId="834" Score="0" Text="Have the authors been invited?" CreationDate="2011-05-21T23:08:29.450" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1685" PostId="834" Score="1" Text="@cardinal Yes, and even agreed to visit us." CreationDate="2011-05-21T23:16:56.530" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1686" PostId="834" Score="2" Text="Very good! Nice work." CreationDate="2011-05-22T02:16:09.270" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2049" PostId="834" Score="0" Text="Can we get the transcript for this journal club?" CreationDate="2012-02-14T21:05:59.817" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1688" PostId="836" Score="0" Text="Good job organizing mbq!" CreationDate="2011-05-22T07:14:23.493" UserId="776" />
  <row Id="1593" PostId="837" Score="25" Text="Such big retaggings and changes should **always** be discussed on the appropriate meta *before* you apply them." CreationDate="2011-04-29T11:15:59.673" UserDisplayName="Bobby" />
  <row Id="1594" PostId="837" Score="0" Text="@Bobby Would you please underpin your opinion?" CreationDate="2011-04-29T11:20:24.553" UserId="3911" />
  <row Id="1595" PostId="837" Score="5" Text="I agree with @Bobby. Stuff like this needs to be discussed. See e.g. the Meta `retag-request` tag: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/retag-request?sort=newest&amp;pagesize=50" CreationDate="2011-04-29T11:25:59.493" UserDisplayName="Pekka's other trolling account" />
  <row Id="1596" PostId="837" Score="6" Text="Wouldn't *this* discussion be more appropriate on the stats meta? I assume the moderators responsible could give you their opinion, as well as the users whom it directly affects." CreationDate="2011-04-29T11:26:21.100" UserDisplayName="Cody Gray" />
  <row Id="1597" PostId="837" Score="4" Text="@GaBorgulya - When you edit many questions like this you affect their last activity date, sending them to the home/active pages for all to see, it's very disruptive.  A moderator can do this much more efficiently without that disruption, and as others have said it should be discussed on meta.  The discussion gives the community a chance to discuss editing tons of questions, rather than one person making that decision." CreationDate="2011-04-29T11:32:25.227" UserId="884" />
  <row Id="1598" PostId="837" Score="0" Text="A stats moderator may continue restricting the discussion on stats meta. The question of abuse can not be raised on a forum where they have distinguished power." CreationDate="2011-04-29T11:34:43.680" UserId="3911" />
  <row Id="1599" PostId="837" Score="3" Text="@GaBorgulya - Moderators cannot delete content where we (the dev team and other moderators) cannot see it.  If a moderators *is* abusing the system trying to do that, then report it here and I assure you it'll be dealt with." CreationDate="2011-04-29T11:36:06.097" UserId="884" />
  <row Id="1600" PostId="837" Score="6" Text="That's a pretty serious accusation. There's a big difference between restricting discussion and rolling back mass tag edits. If or when that *does* happen, then you should come here and report it. But it seems like you should give the mods responsible a chance to *explain* themselves, before accusing them of malfeasance." CreationDate="2011-04-29T11:36:38.640" UserDisplayName="Cody Gray" />
  <row Id="1601" PostId="837" Score="5" Text="Can you prove it you are not abusing the **taxonomist** badge?" CreationDate="2011-04-29T11:37:27.017" UserId="3538" />
  <row Id="1602" PostId="837" Score="1" Text="@YOU Innocence does not have to be proved. But if you question the usefulness of my efforts, please reflect on my first paragraph which gave some ideas why I think it was useful what I did." CreationDate="2011-04-29T11:41:59.197" UserId="3911" />
  <row Id="1603" PostId="837" Score="3" Text="I've moved this to meta.stats; this should *first* be discussed in the context of the site" CreationDate="2011-04-29T11:43:23.700" UserId="882" />
  <row Id="1604" PostId="837" Score="2" Text="@GaBorgulya, you said &quot;you went to bed after you got that badge&quot;. Looks like that was your goal." CreationDate="2011-04-29T11:45:02.590" UserId="3538" />
  <row Id="1605" PostId="837" Score="2" Text="@S.Mark My motivations were: 1. doing something useful for mankind (even in my unpaid free time), 2. yes, earning the badge (badges come after significant efforts, also their intended purpose is to give some additional motivation), 3. I'm admiring the nice analytical answers of users like @probabilityislogic, @cardinal, occasionally @whuber, my work is also towards the recognition of their efforts with corresponding tag-badges. I don't see anything negative in my motivations. Earning a badge is a good signal to go to bed at 2:30am after enthusiastic work." CreationDate="2011-04-29T12:03:49.647" UserId="3911" />
  <row Id="1606" PostId="837" Score="0" Text="Not me, but it looks like this was done internally - *presumably* due to it filling the front page unnecessarily. I don't want to pre-empt them, though, so I won't attempt to answer on behalf of them... check back later, maybe?" CreationDate="2011-04-29T12:05:13.717" UserId="882" />
  <row Id="1607" PostId="837" Score="0" Text="@GaBorgulya, I got your points and agreed, and upvoted this. And sorry, I didn't realized that it was 2:30am at your time." CreationDate="2011-04-29T12:07:44.043" UserId="3538" />
  <row Id="1608" PostId="837" Score="0" Text="@Cody Gray you wrote &quot;you should give the mods responsible a chance to explain themselves&quot;. However moderators have always had the possibility to contact me and to discuss. Their first step was deleting my work. They only contacted me in a private message after I had wrote my meta post, as a third step following deletion." CreationDate="2011-04-29T12:15:29.807" UserId="3911" />
  <row Id="1631" PostId="837" Score="5" Text="I can understand your frustrations, but I feel the need to object a little to your framing of this question. Certainly this is a valuable discussion to have on Meta, but I wish it hadn't started with an indictment of the moderators. Don't forget that they've earned their positions through many hours of their own &quot;salutary efforts&quot;. Even if you think they were wrong I think they deserve some respect, consideration and the room to make honest mistakes. I am willing to believe that you thought you were acting in the best interests of the community. I am willing to believe that the mods were too.." CreationDate="2011-04-29T20:17:53.790" UserId="26" />
  <row Id="1632" PostId="837" Score="3" Text="Incidentally, I found the wholesale retagging disruptive (lifting all kinds of old questions to the front page) and support remedial action of some kind." CreationDate="2011-04-29T20:23:28.043" UserId="26" />
  <row Id="1609" PostId="838" Score="0" Text="Re: meta-tag I'm not sure this is a meta-tag. The `numerics` tag also exists. I would call that numerical approximation instead and that is a complementary tag to analytical. I think of both as valid and non meta. Even if somebody thinks that it is a meta-tag that should be subject of discussion, not immediate deletion." CreationDate="2011-04-29T12:30:28.540" UserId="3911" />
  <row Id="1610" PostId="838" Score="0" Text="Re: &quot;only way&quot; There are several examples of systematic changes of tags on SE, especially replacing and merging tags. There are several examples of wanted and needed conscious &quot;taxonomic&quot; decisions complementing &quot;organic growth&quot;." CreationDate="2011-04-29T12:41:48.523" UserId="3911" />
  <row Id="1612" PostId="838" Score="1" Text="No need to XXX when quoting them. The only reason I was selective is that I couldn't quote anything etc, and they weren't around (we sleep, occasionally; not often) to add context." CreationDate="2011-04-29T13:17:39.540" UserId="882" />
  <row Id="1613" PostId="838" Score="8" Text="It was me and I have nothing to hide; and I was writing this message without knowledge of your meta.SO question, since I have better things to do than spying you across the network." CreationDate="2011-04-29T13:23:31.403" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1614" PostId="838" Score="4" Text="Meta tag describes question, not the question topic. [numerics] group questions *about* numerical methods usage in stats, ml, etc. [analytical-derivation] group questions *that* require analytical answer." CreationDate="2011-04-29T13:23:36.630" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1615" PostId="838" Score="0" Text="@mbq - oh, I was wrong then; I thought I saw a record that this was done by a developer. If it was you, then no problem. I'll go away ;p" CreationDate="2011-04-29T13:24:47.783" UserId="882" />
  <row Id="1616" PostId="838" Score="0" Text="Finally, those &quot;taxonomy decisions&quot; are just a janitorial work, and if not, there are discussed on meta." CreationDate="2011-04-29T13:25:12.043" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1617" PostId="838" Score="0" Text="@Marc No problem; thanks for handling this on Meta." CreationDate="2011-04-29T13:26:52.150" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1619" PostId="838" Score="0" Text="You answered only after my post to the meta, deleting was before my post. No, you should not be &quot;spying [me] across the network&quot;. You should discuss before deleting the work of somebody even if you believe it's of questionable utility. And even if you don't discus, an absolute minimum is that you give an explanation when you delete something. The expected SE behaviour is to give explanation even for a down-vote – deleting many hours of work has a much larger weight than down-voting." CreationDate="2011-04-29T13:33:47.837" UserId="3911" />
  <row Id="1620" PostId="838" Score="4" Text="This was imposing SE policy, thus the rush was to minimize the damage. I agree that the message to you come too late, however I assure you that it was sent ASAP, as the tag deletion requires action of a SE developer and we live in which timezone we live. And I repeat that I have no knowledge of your Meta.SO post, since I checked only Meta.CV before sending it." CreationDate="2011-04-29T13:48:06.797" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1621" PostId="838" Score="0" Text="There were questions that explicitly asked for deriving formulas. Some questions received both analytical and numerical solutions. Reading through multiple numerical solutions may give the key idea to solving a new problem. The same applies to calculus used in statistical problems." CreationDate="2011-04-29T13:48:51.060" UserId="3911" />
  <row Id="1622" PostId="838" Score="0" Text="@mbq Although you say you sent your message ASAP you left me sufficient time to worry what had happened, to check my posts and the tags, and to write a long post to the meta, re-word it and submit it. I accept that you did not know about my meta post before your message. I however reject labelling my work as &quot;damage&quot; that had to be &quot;minimized&quot;." CreationDate="2011-04-29T14:03:14.367" UserId="3911" />
  <row Id="1624" PostId="838" Score="1" Text="@mbq I find the tags feature of SE very useful, and using the right tag often needs substantial statistical knowledge. I find it sad that a moderator can think about arranging tags as &quot;just a janitorial work&quot;." CreationDate="2011-04-29T14:42:19.170" UserId="3911" />
  <row Id="1611" PostId="839" Score="0" Text="I was granted the &quot;create tags&quot; privilege at the reputation of 300 and the instruction was &quot;How do I create a new tag? Simply enter a new tag with your question and it will be created&quot;. You emphasise that I should have discussed before introducing a new tag, however that was not a requirement. On the other hand I believe you should have discussed before deleting. It seems that you deleted because I did not discuss, and I wrote on the meta because you did not discuss." CreationDate="2011-04-29T13:17:07.653" UserId="3911" />
  <row Id="1618" PostId="839" Score="3" Text="@GaBorgulya It is a very unfortunate situation because it seems those two messages crossed at some point. Anyway, there's a difference between creating a new tag for your question, and creating a new tag for retagging older ones. That's the point that deserves some meta discussion, IMO." CreationDate="2011-04-29T13:29:22.880" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1625" PostId="839" Score="0" Text="I consider myself unselfish (most people here?), maybe I'm a bit less unselfish than you are. I also answer questions because I enjoy doing so and to help the askers. However, just like scientific publications I'm ready to show my SE contributions if it gives me advantage - I have worked for them. I also find badges useful, a good example is &quot;electorate&quot; it's the easiest gold one, but it motivates to do something useful: to review hundreds of past questions and answers. I'm not ashamed of having the motivation to earn it, I learn andthe community also benefits from users who reviewed the past." CreationDate="2011-04-29T14:58:57.353" UserId="3911" />
  <row Id="1623" PostId="840" Score="0" Text="I will definitely draw my conclusions from this issue. I also suggest you moderators doing the same, and I highlight that when deletion of work of many hours suddenly occurs without any explanation in an impersonal way that is very frustrating. I still see my yesterday efforts useful and the &quot;damage&quot; label on them wrong-headed. No doubt, the label definition can be improved, a couple of labels cast may need revision, and maybe a better expression could be found for a similar topic. But there is forum for discussion, there are methods to rename tags. The constructiveness is what I lack, too." CreationDate="2011-04-29T14:28:37.720" UserId="3911" />
  <row Id="1659" PostId="840" Score="6" Text="@GaBorgulya, I am sorry that your work was lost, but this happens more often than not, when somebody starts doing something that nobody else asked whether the end result is useful or not. Note that your accusation that many hours work was lost without notification goes both ways. A lot of hours were spent to get the site as it is now, introducing major change unannounced and neglecting that work is also frustrating." CreationDate="2011-05-03T08:20:02.403" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1660" PostId="840" Score="0" Text="@mpiktas The case is far further than this now. There was a second thread to restart the tag from scratch with the required discussion. Mbq there declared s/he viewed me as malicious. After 3 days s/he did not rethink that. I'm now waiting for the answer of the SE team and that will decide if this will be my last post to stats.SE or not." CreationDate="2011-05-03T08:30:01.873" UserId="3911" />
  <row Id="1662" PostId="840" Score="11" Text="@Ga You are starting to move beyond the pale.  A search of &quot;malicious&quot; in the two meta threads pertaining to this question shows three uses, all by *you*, not by @mbq.  Making scurrilous (and false) accusations and repeatedly making threats are unconstructive and antagonistic.  As a moderator, I will feel obliged to remove any more such comments, whether made by you or anyone else, without any more warning or explanation." CreationDate="2011-05-03T13:54:56.660" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1664" PostId="840" Score="0" Text="I wish you success in running stats.SE in the future. Regards" CreationDate="2011-05-04T08:28:30.377" UserId="3911" />
  <row Id="1630" PostId="841" Score="5" Text="(+1) I appreciate that you finally decided to open a new and fresh thread on that particular issue." CreationDate="2011-04-29T18:56:03.873" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1638" PostId="841" Score="4" Text="it really would be best if you consult with the community here on meta before retagging 50 questions with a new tag of your own creation." CreationDate="2011-04-30T09:25:13.130" UserId="123" />
  <row Id="1650" PostId="841" Score="5" Text="Why do't you just add the tag to your own (relevant) post and see how it shakes out?" CreationDate="2011-04-30T16:04:59.350" UserId="26" />
  <row Id="1626" PostId="842" Score="1" Text="Tags apply to questions and answers together: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/26913" CreationDate="2011-04-29T16:32:34.320" UserId="3911" />
  <row Id="1627" PostId="842" Score="0" Text="@Ga Good point; thanks for the link and the clarification.  That makes your proposal more viable.  I still think it needs refinement, though.  For instance, how are we supposed to recognize answers that benefit from the proposed tag?  Would it be all answers that use TeX?  What about answers where the math is contained only in code?  What about answers that *use* statistical formulas but don't derive them, or explain the nature of the derivation in English only, or merely link to a formula or derivation (like today's question at http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/10142/919 )?" CreationDate="2011-04-29T16:35:12.580" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1628" PostId="842" Score="0" Text="The tag `numerics` has been used 4 times although it could have been used many more times. Once agreed on it I will immediately put the new tag on one of my questions (http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/8812/jeffreys-prior-for-geometric-distribution, you can think about it as already created), so at least one, but in my opinion many more questions need such a tag." CreationDate="2011-04-29T16:55:02.263" UserId="3911" />
  <row Id="1629" PostId="842" Score="4" Text="If &quot;numerics&quot; refers to numerical algorithms, then the tag clearly does not belong on one of those questions and is useless for two others (which ask only for references).  Only the last thread actually discusses a numerical algorithm.  This brings us back to the basic questions: what, precisely, would &quot;analytical-derivation&quot; mean and how would one know when it should be applied to a thread?  I'm not asking these questions rhetorically: I'm asking them in the spirit of having recognized some merit in your idea and now am wondering how to make it operational." CreationDate="2011-04-29T17:10:56.280" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1636" PostId="842" Score="4" Text="One of those was mine. You're right, the numerics tag was useless. IIRC the first tag I tried was numerical-optimization, but it didn't exist so I wound up with numerics and optimization. In retrospect I also don't think the numerics tag meets the standard set in the blog post linked above. I've removed it from that post." CreationDate="2011-04-30T00:08:16.010" UserId="26" />
  <row Id="1633" PostId="843" Score="1" Text="I give you 72 hours to calm down, read my proposal thoroughly and rewrite/revoke your post. Please be objective, specific and constructive. Many thanks." CreationDate="2011-04-29T20:46:02.427" UserId="3911" />
  <row Id="1634" PostId="843" Score="5" Text="@GaBorgulya No personal attack, please. @mbq's points reflect his opinion and echo parts of SE policy, and they are not directed against you specifically. If you don't like them, or feel they are counter-productive wrt. question at hand, simply downvote them. It is the way to go on meta questions that aim to bring potentially conflicting responses." CreationDate="2011-04-29T21:16:46.040" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1635" PostId="843" Score="0" Text="@chl mbq deleted my tagging work, gave only late explanation, labelled it &quot;damage&quot; to &quot;minimise&quot;, expressed that s/he thought that organising tags was &quot;just janitorial&quot; work; here s/he states s/he &quot;clearly sees&quot; that I deliberately want to violate SE policy, compares my initiative to colour book covers, believes it is &quot;leading to…total chaos&quot;, even ruining an other tag. S/he talks as &quot;we&quot;. I FIND THESE UNACCEPTABLE FROM A MODERATOR. Decisions will be made: either (a) s/he revokes/rewites the post (b) his/her moderator status will be revoked or (c) I leave stats.SE." CreationDate="2011-04-29T22:00:44.487" UserId="3911" />
  <row Id="1637" PostId="843" Score="4" Text="@Ga An ultimatum like this is counterproductive.  We will be glad for you to stay and sorry to see you go, but the choice is yours." CreationDate="2011-04-30T01:44:21.903" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1639" PostId="843" Score="0" Text="@whuber It's outrageous that my constructive intentions are believed to be deliberate destruction. All you originally should have had to do is to say: &quot;Gabor, your new tag is not OK, pls stop, read these guidelines and discuss&quot;. What mbq does is not logical and not benevolent. What I had originally expected as moderator behaviour I found written here, search for &quot;what to expect&quot;: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/05/a-theory-of-moderation/. And I add that a moderator should assume good intent, otherwise he may easily get into a position where he himself is destructive." CreationDate="2011-04-30T10:18:32.103" UserId="3911" />
  <row Id="1640" PostId="843" Score="5" Text="@GaBorgulya  Well, IMO I'm very constructive; I just stated clearly that your idea is wrong, so you could waste no more time and energy on it. As for b, you may write to the SE team using contact us link in footer, however the logs will show them that all your accusations are false. As for c, I believe there is no point in that -- I really appreciate your efforts, and that's why I want to direct them on a right path." CreationDate="2011-04-30T10:29:28.950" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1643" PostId="843" Score="4" Text="@Ga It seems you are reacting to the perceived tone of @mbq's messages rather than their content.  We have to make allowance for the different styles and idioms of English used around the world.  What to you seem like unfortunate or denigrating choices of words, like &quot;damage,&quot; or hyperbolic idioms like &quot;total chaos,&quot; are not likely to be meant in such ways.  The last sentence by mbq above (&quot;appreciate&quot; and &quot;right path&quot;) is consistent with the attitude and intentions expressed by mbq elsewhere.  Why not take that as a point of departure for further discussion?" CreationDate="2011-04-30T14:13:59.650" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1649" PostId="843" Score="4" Text="@Ga Respectfully, you're not doing your argument any favors by taking every criticism as a personal attack. Even if you disagree with what @mbq did I think its been made plain that it was done with the interest of the site and the community at heart. If you're really interested in helping the community and not just making a new tag so you can snag a badge by retagging old posts then why quit the site? That doesn't help anyone. If you truly find the action of the mods so terrible then might I suggest d) hang around until the next moderator election." CreationDate="2011-04-30T16:03:20.350" UserId="26" />
  <row Id="1651" PostId="843" Score="0" Text="@JMS @whuber mbq stated s/he &quot;clearly see&quot; that I &quot;really want…a bunch of meta-tags&quot;. In other words s/he is sure that my intention is to violate SE policy – despite I stated the opposite (&quot;This is not intended to be used as a meta tag&quot;). That also explained why s/he so quickly deleted my work and was so late to give any feedback despite SE moderating guidelines. What s/he &quot;clearly see[s]&quot; is an assumption, which is wrong and malicious. No moderator should be thinking like that. But s/he still has time to rethink." CreationDate="2011-04-30T19:14:45.817" UserId="3911" />
  <row Id="1652" PostId="843" Score="0" Text="@GaBorgulya Whacking someone with hammer is equally harmful regardless of how the whacker stated his intentions ;-)" CreationDate="2011-04-30T19:36:20.013" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1653" PostId="843" Score="0" Text="I can't recognise the signs of that you &quot;appreciate [my] efforts&quot;. I also can't imagine how the idea of &quot;whacking someone with hammer&quot; came to your mind and how that can be funny. No aspect of my stats.SE activity is comparable to that. I never thought about that and few things would be more antithetical than that to my physician's oath." CreationDate="2011-04-30T21:11:36.850" UserId="3911" />
  <row Id="1654" PostId="843" Score="2" Text="This discussion seems to be diverging (exponentially fast) from the question topic. There is already another thread here addressing the merits of the recent extensive tagging and subsequent rollback." CreationDate="2011-04-30T23:04:56.233" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1655" PostId="843" Score="0" Text="@cardinal I started this new thread to separate the objective question of the optimal tag definition from the previous debate on the rollback. From those previously involved Chl welcomed the clean and new thread, whuber answered with constructive criticism. Mbq, however, answered (&quot;Ok, so now we clearly see that you really want…&quot;) with an assumption about my motivation, assuming it to be malicious, and later reconfirmed it. S/he is also committed to &quot;minimise&quot; the &quot;damage&quot; I make. Given that s/he is a moderator with superuser deleting power there is no sense to create until this is settled." CreationDate="2011-05-01T00:09:01.223" UserId="3911" />
  <row Id="1656" PostId="843" Score="4" Text="[link](http://xkcd.com/386/) The rest of us will continue to enjoy asking and answering..." CreationDate="2011-05-01T15:02:17.523" UserId="26" />
  <row Id="1657" PostId="843" Score="1" Text="@GaBorgulya, mbq is not a native English speaker. That is why his language might seem crude and not respective." CreationDate="2011-05-03T07:30:30.390" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1663" PostId="844" Score="1" Text="+1 These sound like good principles for originating any tag, not just the one in question." CreationDate="2011-05-03T14:01:53.877" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1665" PostId="845" Score="0" Text="Do you think it is an appropriate burden on the community to have to continually retag the questions? Is it problematic that for many of the users of the site the tags will not have any immediate recognizable distinction?" CreationDate="2011-05-04T12:16:35.590" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1666" PostId="845" Score="0" Text="@Andy Those are valid concerns. My impression is that this is the *status quo*: many questions are inappropriately tagged at the outset.  That they need retagging becomes evident in light of elucidations in comments or subsequent replies. Rather than retagging being a &quot;burden&quot; on the community it becomes an ongoing tool to clarify and codify the questions and answers.  As far as &quot;immediately recognizable distinctions&quot; go, it's the purpose of the wiki entry to make those distinctions. See the [multiple-regression](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/multiple-regression) entry, e.g.." CreationDate="2011-05-04T13:28:44.000" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1672" PostId="847" Score="0" Text="What is the &quot;fix&quot; in the works that @Jeff mentioned? While it was a &quot;quick fix&quot; to reregister, it's also disturbing since anyone else could have conceivably signed up in my place and taken control of my account." CreationDate="2011-05-07T01:26:35.437" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1673" PostId="847" Score="0" Text="@cardinal, absolutely - but that's a concern for MyOpenId.  The plans Jeff mentioned are still in the works and getting closer, but not ready just quite yet." CreationDate="2011-05-07T01:29:38.260" UserId="1142" />
  <row Id="1674" PostId="847" Score="0" Text="Sure, yes, I didn't intend to imply it was a SE/SO problem. That's why I was curious about progress on some other fix. ETA?" CreationDate="2011-05-07T01:33:00.980" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1675" PostId="847" Score="0" Text="@cardinal, [6-8 weeks](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/19478/the-many-memes-of-meta/19514#19514)...soon. (:" CreationDate="2011-05-07T01:36:26.070" UserId="1142" />
  <row Id="1669" PostId="849" Score="1" Text="any reasons why he did that? Just curious :)" CreationDate="2011-05-06T12:37:43.663" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1670" PostId="849" Score="0" Text="@mpiktas I know nothing about it -- he directly asked the SE team." CreationDate="2011-05-06T12:39:05.250" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1671" PostId="849" Score="2" Text="@mp Actually, the SE team *hinted* that he asked.  They're cagey about such things.  As well they should be: although we all have probably felt the loss of Srikant's attention, this is a private matter between an individual and the site.  We still don't really know whether there is an automatic cleaning procedure for dead accounts!" CreationDate="2011-05-06T17:23:42.143" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1676" PostId="849" Score="5" Text="@whu see http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/02/when-is-an-account-abandoned/" CreationDate="2011-05-08T20:55:46.557" UserId="123" />
  <row Id="1677" PostId="849" Score="2" Text="@Jeff Thanks for pointing out that blog post: it clearly describes how you clean up dormant accounts." CreationDate="2011-05-08T22:25:39.703" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1678" PostId="855" Score="0" Text="Well, I'm certainly open to considering that. Thanks for the link to Photo - I think it's very helpful to see how it works on a similar site. My general impression (partly from [this old meta-question](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/543/is-this-question-too-local/545#comment-999) is that the community would be generally opposed to this, but I'm all for having that question answered directly. Thanks for broadening the scope." CreationDate="2011-05-13T22:55:23.533" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="1679" PostId="855" Score="0" Text="Photo really seems to have its act together on the profession-question front - those mostly seemed well-asked and well-answered, and there weren't many." CreationDate="2011-05-13T23:04:46.847" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="1680" PostId="856" Score="0" Text="Regardless of topic-fulness, it was **far** too broad.  Please don't second-guess your decision on my account - it was a good one." CreationDate="2011-05-13T23:07:11.447" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="1682" PostId="857" Score="2" Text="I would just like to say that nevertheless the efforts of the community with flagging and votes to close are always appreciated: it means the mods aren't working in a vacuum.  So even if you don't believe a question will accumulate five close votes, your vote is noticed and it's helpful." CreationDate="2011-05-18T04:58:11.283" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2407" PostId="857" Score="0" Text="I was wondering the same thing. In some cases, whether or not closure is necessary seems like a matter of voting but in some cases, such as this exact duplicate: http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/28515/no-degrees-of-freedom-in-lr-rest-of-multinomial-logistic-regression it seems like there's little or no controversy. Since it appears moderators are not notified of close votes, I'm wondering whether it is preferable to flag in this situation or not, particularly given the few close-voters on the site. There didn't seem to be a clear preference given in chl's answer- any thoughts, @whuber?" CreationDate="2012-05-18T13:59:32.033" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2408" PostId="857" Score="0" Text="Moderators are not automatically notified of close votes, @Macro, but the mod's version of the reviewing tools now includes a tab for listing recent votes to close.  I have begun systematically inspecting that about once a day, because a close vote is usually a signal that a closer look is warranted. (In marginal situations, though, I have been making an effort to hold back on immediate closure because I would like to see more community involvement in voting to close.)" CreationDate="2012-05-18T14:12:16.640" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1681" PostId="858" Score="2" Text="I second with encouraging of close voting. Some day, this site will become huge enough so we would have to relay on high-rep users in this manner." CreationDate="2011-05-17T15:14:22.183" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1683" PostId="861" Score="0" Text="Agreed.  I'm pretty sure that if it were posted on math.SE it would be migrated here anyway." CreationDate="2011-05-21T19:35:25.150" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1693" PostId="861" Score="0" Text="I +1'd it also. It's a good question." CreationDate="2011-06-05T11:20:14.767" UserId="183" />
  <row Id="1689" PostId="862" Score="1" Text="I find the idea interesting, though I will not have time to contribute much... But I wonder what we {c|w}ould put on it: general comments on the site, reviews, ads, upcoming stats conference?" CreationDate="2011-05-25T19:41:12.213" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1692" PostId="862" Score="1" Text="http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/91407/area-51-for-blogs/91509#91509" CreationDate="2011-05-27T11:00:58.987" UserId="1142" />
  <row Id="1694" PostId="862" Score="0" Text="sorry will not be able to make it. Too late for me." CreationDate="2011-06-08T14:09:23.627" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1690" PostId="863" Score="3" Text="Considering the amount of programming questions related to R on the site those sound like reasonable and helpful topics to blog about. Don't sell yourself so short!" CreationDate="2011-05-26T13:14:50.393" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1691" PostId="864" Score="0" Text="+1 Good job listing; in deed I was hoping for such a vision of this blog to arise." CreationDate="2011-05-26T14:33:56.613" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1695" PostId="868" Score="0" Text="If this is not a new tag proposal, it is rather a topic for [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/18/ten-fold)." CreationDate="2011-06-10T12:13:51.167" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1696" PostId="869" Score="0" Text="I agree that tags should come from real examples, real use; how about &quot;web-app&quot;, see if anybody uses it ?  (There's I think a deep split between most academics' paper culture, and the web / learn-by-doing / havent-read-it-but-saw-the-movie culture; it's not at all clear to me how to take advantage of the latter -- again, need real examples.)" CreationDate="2011-06-10T16:37:03.567" UserId="557" />
  <row Id="1697" PostId="869" Score="0" Text="I would call it a webserver..." CreationDate="2011-06-11T14:56:06.960" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1699" PostId="869" Score="0" Text="@mbq &quot;webserver&quot; has a more specific meaning.  For instance, an applet might run on the client machine, not the server.  Also, &quot;webserver&quot; is a term that focuses on the technology--and therefore has its rightful place on a tech-oriented site rather than a stats-oriented site--whereas the concept to be captured here concerns the statistical service being provided (i.e., software capabilities via a web page)." CreationDate="2011-06-11T16:45:33.310" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1698" PostId="870" Score="0" Text="Shall we put ideas for &quot;general&quot; posts here, in the chat, or someplace else? It might be good to have a &quot;stack&quot; of topics we can pull from &amp; vote on." CreationDate="2011-06-11T15:20:49.780" UserId="26" />
  <row Id="1711" PostId="870" Score="0" Text="@JMS This is rather something between an ad and FAQ; I think the chat room is a proper place for that." CreationDate="2011-06-12T00:04:33.790" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1716" PostId="870" Score="0" Text="@JMS, I think talking about what the community wants to see on the blog, topics, etc are fine on meta.  The community very much should have / has a voice in this." CreationDate="2011-06-15T05:09:40.967" UserId="1142" />
  <row Id="1717" PostId="870" Score="0" Text="@Rebecca I was worried that this post could get cluttered with such discussions; of course I have nothing against new thread." CreationDate="2011-06-15T07:06:06.407" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1701" PostId="871" Score="0" Text="Why do we have to limit it to the previous week?  This seems like an artificial distinction." CreationDate="2011-06-11T16:51:03.193" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1704" PostId="871" Score="0" Text="@whuber I think the motivation was to call attention to &quot;timely&quot; questions with a question of the week (and to help ensure weekly posts). Older questions could (and should) form the basis for other posts, of course." CreationDate="2011-06-11T17:29:17.680" UserId="26" />
  <row Id="1705" PostId="871" Score="1" Text="@JMS Unlike some other forums, timeliness is rarely an issue here: questions and answers from many years ago can be (or should be) fresh.  I'm suggesting that we not hobble ourselves with unconsidered emulation of what other communities might be doing." CreationDate="2011-06-11T17:33:23.220" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1707" PostId="871" Score="0" Text="@whuber you make a good point. Wish we had you in the chat the other day :P" CreationDate="2011-06-11T17:35:49.520" UserId="26" />
  <row Id="1709" PostId="871" Score="0" Text="@JMS We can't accommodate everybody's schedules around the world.  The time of that chat happened to coincide with a previously committed part of my day.  I did have a nice conversation with Rebecca Chernoff the previous evening about blogging on SE (and I believe that's one reason why she participated in yesterday's chat)." CreationDate="2011-06-11T17:41:11.573" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1710" PostId="871" Score="3" Text="@whuber Sorry if that sounded snarky; not intended at all! I do recognize that even if we were all in the same timezone coordinating would be difficult, and given the reality it's impossible. All I meant was that your consistently thoughtful and valuable input was missed." CreationDate="2011-06-11T21:08:15.070" UserId="26" />
  <row Id="1712" PostId="871" Score="0" Text="@JMS @whuber You are at least at the same continent! (-;" CreationDate="2011-06-12T00:06:46.753" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1714" PostId="871" Score="0" Text="another advantage of this question is (if asked regularly) that it serves as a newsletter for casual site visitors." CreationDate="2011-06-14T11:45:41.123" UserId="264" />
  <row Id="1718" PostId="871" Score="0" Text="There was an eye, so I used R to select the winner randomly. Details are on chat." CreationDate="2011-06-18T10:11:10.060" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1708" PostId="874" Score="0" Text="There's an interesting twist on this topic that makes it very timely: the new challenge to [Efficiently Recognize Anomalous Data in a Database Regardless of Context](https://www.innocentive.com/ar/challenge/9932624) offers a prize ($30K US) for an automated solution to the original question." CreationDate="2011-06-11T17:38:56.253" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1713" PostId="876" Score="2" Text="It is important to add that you must be logged in to get these notifications." CreationDate="2011-06-12T19:56:46.723" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1715" PostId="877" Score="1" Text="Thank you." CreationDate="2011-06-14T15:21:14.410" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1726" PostId="878" Score="0" Text="FWIW, it seems redundant to repeat the text on both front and back." CreationDate="2011-06-22T02:04:46.160" UserId="1381" />
  <row Id="1727" PostId="878" Score="0" Text="@david I don't mind shortening the description on the front side a bit. But I do think it's good to have them on both sides. The way I see it, front side tells about the person, back side tells about the site." CreationDate="2011-06-22T03:49:35.850" UserId="12" />
  <row Id="1884" PostId="878" Score="0" Text="@Jin Contrary to your last point, the contact lines are *not* optional on the Google Docs form: all three are required.  What should one do to provide only one or two contact points?" CreationDate="2011-09-20T15:00:32.763" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1885" PostId="878" Score="1" Text="@whuber I meant it can be whatever *other* info you'd like, from my mockup. We will update the template to make the 3rd line optional. meanwhile if you want to fill it out, just put &quot;n/a&quot; in it." CreationDate="2011-09-20T16:31:33.883" UserId="12" />
  <row Id="1719" PostId="879" Score="0" Text="I copied the text from the /about page. What do you suggest?" CreationDate="2011-06-20T16:29:52.113" UserId="12" />
  <row Id="1720" PostId="879" Score="4" Text="@Jin The text in our faq is a little different and more inclusive: &quot;CrossValidated is for statisticians, data miners, and anyone else doing data analysis or interested in it as a discipline.&quot;  It might read better without the &quot;else.&quot;" CreationDate="2011-06-20T20:21:51.507" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1721" PostId="879" Score="0" Text="I have updated the text based on your suggestion." CreationDate="2011-06-21T01:08:01.300" UserId="12" />
  <row Id="1802" PostId="879" Score="0" Text="@whuber your linguistic skills are sound like your statistics skills!" CreationDate="2011-08-08T06:57:30.260" UserId="1307" />
  <row Id="1722" PostId="880" Score="11" Text="Great! Thanks for this action." CreationDate="2011-06-21T08:36:08.140" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1723" PostId="880" Score="11" Text="Finally someone in real life will see where I waste my time. Hahaha (evil laugh)..." CreationDate="2011-06-21T09:11:56.770" UserId="442" />
  <row Id="1724" PostId="880" Score="0" Text="Yeah!  What Henrik said." CreationDate="2011-06-21T11:25:18.747" UserId="2129" />
  <row Id="1725" PostId="880" Score="1" Text="@Henrik: Waste? I doubt it. :)" CreationDate="2011-06-21T12:15:39.517" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1728" PostId="880" Score="0" Text="Whoo hoo!  Swag!" CreationDate="2011-06-27T00:49:16.710" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="1730" PostId="880" Score="0" Text="You guys are awesome.  :O)" CreationDate="2011-06-30T00:30:18.183" UserId="1499" />
  <row Id="1737" PostId="880" Score="0" Text="@JeffAtwood, Just out of curiosity, should we have already received the email by now?" CreationDate="2011-07-03T00:32:22.580" UserId="1499" />
  <row Id="1738" PostId="880" Score="0" Text="@m.tibbits yes definitely; check your email address in your profile and/or your spam folders" CreationDate="2011-07-03T00:36:11.597" UserId="123" />
  <row Id="1739" PostId="880" Score="0" Text="It was in spam.  Thanks again!!" CreationDate="2011-07-03T00:42:20.933" UserId="1499" />
  <row Id="1749" PostId="880" Score="0" Text="Thanks again! I could not see it until now as it was in spam!" CreationDate="2011-07-18T00:30:22.047" UserId="1307" />
  <row Id="1750" PostId="880" Score="2" Text="I wonder whether I filled out the form incorrectly, or whether there is just a delay in the line somewhere." CreationDate="2011-07-19T15:06:04.540" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="1751" PostId="880" Score="1" Text="I got an email about this a month or so ago and filled out the form, but nothing's arrived yet.  How long should I wait before re-submitting the form?  Thanks!" CreationDate="2011-07-22T12:41:08.087" UserId="2817" />
  <row Id="1760" PostId="880" Score="0" Text="@Jeff, I just moved.  Things should be forwarding, but is it possible to change the address you're sending things to?" CreationDate="2011-07-28T21:41:54.807" UserId="1499" />
  <row Id="1761" PostId="880" Score="0" Text="@m.t sure just email the address at the bottom of every page and we'll get it sorted." CreationDate="2011-07-29T00:37:14.010" UserId="123" />
  <row Id="1810" PostId="880" Score="0" Text="Hi, is there any way to check on the status of the package?  I got the &quot;shwag email&quot; a few months ago, I've submitted the form twice, but nothing's come in the mail!  Thanks" CreationDate="2011-08-12T16:52:06.623" UserId="2817" />
  <row Id="1811" PostId="880" Score="1" Text="@zach still working on it, very soon!" CreationDate="2011-08-12T17:27:32.093" UserId="123" />
  <row Id="1812" PostId="880" Score="0" Text="@Jeff Atwood: wonderful thanks!" CreationDate="2011-08-12T17:38:09.043" UserId="2817" />
  <row Id="1832" PostId="880" Score="0" Text="I am terribly jealous." CreationDate="2011-09-01T03:13:44.393" UserId="5836" />
  <row Id="1833" PostId="880" Score="0" Text="Its been a month and I haven't got mine :-(. Anyone else like me?" CreationDate="2011-09-01T20:14:15.687" UserId="1307" />
  <row Id="1834" PostId="880" Score="0" Text="@sun still working on it, will go out very soon" CreationDate="2011-09-01T20:21:37.767" UserId="123" />
  <row Id="1851" PostId="880" Score="0" Text="Thanks!! You guys rock &lt;3." CreationDate="2011-09-03T00:34:32.753" UserId="1307" />
  <row Id="1886" PostId="880" Score="0" Text="Mine's in!  Thanks SE Inc!" CreationDate="2011-09-22T23:50:47.817" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="1731" PostId="883" Score="0" Text="Sure thing - I was just trying to tidy up a few tags - I did the casual Wikipedia search as I'd only heard of auc as it relates to roc -- fine to leave it as is." CreationDate="2011-06-30T12:55:00.960" UserId="1499" />
  <row Id="1732" PostId="887" Score="1" Text="@ Jeff Atwood Currently it's possible to request a move to math, SO, and one other -- but not quant.stackexchange.com." CreationDate="2011-07-01T07:03:04.810" UserId="3651" />
  <row Id="1733" PostId="887" Score="2" Text="I think it is a good idea to add a path to quant." CreationDate="2011-07-01T07:28:17.940" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1734" PostId="887" Score="1" Text="@mbq we're a little hesitant to unlock paths to sites that are still in beta, though." CreationDate="2011-07-01T15:17:03.620" UserId="123" />
  <row Id="1735" PostId="888" Score="0" Text="Do you speak of one of your question, answer, or comment? In the latter case, I'm afraid we won't be of any help. Your last point has nothing to do with post history." CreationDate="2011-07-02T10:47:25.313" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1736" PostId="888" Score="0" Text="I cannot find any record in your info or activities page that indicates a deletion.  Do you know the thread that is involved?  What kind of &quot;post&quot; was it?" CreationDate="2011-07-02T18:09:22.140" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1740" PostId="888" Score="0" Text="@chl It was a question. @whuber See @Dori's message below." CreationDate="2011-07-05T06:23:26.637" UserId="3651" />
  <row Id="1741" PostId="889" Score="0" Text="Thanks @Dori. I noticed that some of the respondents disagreed with my premise (I think the question perhaps needs to be re-worded?), but especially when I was roundly shouted down for asking that an offensive (sexist) question on math.stackexchange, having my (perhaps confusing) question deleted on stats.SE seemed pretty strange. Thanks for allowing it a second life." CreationDate="2011-07-05T06:24:31.970" UserId="3651" />
  <row Id="1742" PostId="890" Score="1" Text="Maybe we can add [mixed-effects-model](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/mixed-effects-model) to that list as well." CreationDate="2011-07-06T14:47:27.207" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1743" PostId="890" Score="2" Text="Let's define first what you or others understand as mixed *vs.* multilevel models. (There are many definitions and theoretical approaches to such models, but some may also argue this is just reflecting a terminological issue.) If it happens that they refer to different modeling strategies or contexts of use, then it might be best to create synonyms. That being said, I agree that 'mixed-model' and 'mixed-effects-model' should be merged." CreationDate="2011-07-06T19:29:35.500" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1744" PostId="890" Score="0" Text="@chl , I would personally define multilevel models exactly how mixed-models are defined in its tag wiki. I come across the terminology &quot;mixed&quot; far less frequently than &quot;multilevel&quot; or &quot;hierarchical&quot;, so I'm less comfortable defining how &quot;mixed&quot; is used in practice. Like I stated previously there doesn't appear to be any difference in the nature of the questions that uses each tag that I can discern from a quick glance of the list." CreationDate="2011-07-06T19:37:17.193" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1745" PostId="890" Score="1" Text="An example of what I had in mind when writing my comment: I would consider that a within-subject design in a psychological experiment (repeated measures are collected on the same statistical unit, with potential crossed factors and/or one or more between-subject factor) falls under the mixed-model approach; in contrast, students nested within schools nested within counties or countries falls under the multilevel or hierarchical approach. I agree this is pure terminology. Doug Bates or JK Lindsey provided more detailed explanations." CreationDate="2011-07-06T19:54:11.470" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1746" PostId="890" Score="0" Text="@chl , I agree that is consistent with what I have encountered (casually I would say I only see mixed used in reference to repeated measures designs like in your example). Perhaps updating the tag wikis would suffice." CreationDate="2011-07-06T20:02:53.923" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1747" PostId="890" Score="0" Text="Well, I'm just reading the tag wikis :-) You're right, we need to think of refining them (I can even use a mixed-effect model to estimate an intra-class correlation coefficient :-)" CreationDate="2011-07-06T20:07:02.503" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1748" PostId="890" Score="3" Text="FYI, I merged the 'mixed-model' and 'mixed-effects-model' tags. (/cc @whuber @mbq)" CreationDate="2011-07-07T19:18:47.740" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="4465" PostId="890" Score="2" Text="I cannot find the &quot;mixed-effects-model&quot; tag now, and &quot;'mixed-model' currently has no approved synonyms&quot;. Maybe we can merge &quot;mixed-model&quot; and &quot;mixed-effect&quot; tags?" CreationDate="2013-08-28T09:52:20.793" UserId="21599" />
  <row Id="4469" PostId="890" Score="2" Text="@Randel - that seems reasonable to me, also see the [mixed](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/mixed) tag that should likely be consolidated. Feel free to either give an answer or edit my question so it gets bumped to the top. If you don't do this I will edit when I get a chance." CreationDate="2013-08-28T14:29:18.170" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="4470" PostId="890" Score="0" Text="+1. I am also curious about the difference between tag synonyms and merging tags. Or @chl has deleted the &quot;mixed-effects-model&quot; tag?" CreationDate="2013-08-28T14:38:11.550" UserId="21599" />
  <row Id="4476" PostId="890" Score="2" Text="@Randel I probably only merged the two tags, without making any synonym. (Usually when merging, an old tag is replaced with a new one; it is possible to make the old tag a synonym when doing this.) I agree with you: the [tag:mixed-model] and [tag:mixed-effect] tags should probably be merged." CreationDate="2013-08-29T08:11:07.203" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1800" PostId="894" Score="0" Text="As per Grace note suggestion we should include the suggestion to read our blog too." CreationDate="2011-08-05T14:32:57.177" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1752" PostId="896" Score="2" Text="Have you read our [FAQ](http://stats.stackexchange.com/faq)?" CreationDate="2011-07-22T16:49:46.103" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1753" PostId="896" Score="1" Text="I went back to read it again, and, yes, this time I caught the line: &quot;Please note, however, that cross-posting is not encouraged.&quot;  I missed it my first two times reading through -- it was not where I expected it to be.  I apologize." CreationDate="2011-07-22T22:41:18.427" UserId="5471" />
  <row Id="5990" PostId="896" Score="0" Text="related http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1966/stackexchange-mathematics-vs-cross-validated" CreationDate="2014-08-10T18:35:58.910" UserId="25936" />
  <row Id="1856" PostId="897" Score="0" Text="+1 for emphasis." CreationDate="2011-09-05T17:54:43.287" UserId="776" />
  <row Id="8336" PostId="897" Score="2" Text="An outright &quot;No&quot; is contrary to the &quot;not encouraged&quot; rule. If a question goes unanswered, wouldn't reaching a new userbase of users who may be more interested, or have more knowledge help to solve the question? The fact there is significant overlap between stats and maths (well technically, the former is a subset of the latter) make this even more relevant. I believe in unification, but it would be easy to cross-reference between the two sites within the question, and then maybe combine it all into one at the end." CreationDate="2015-09-26T07:30:38.620" UserId="82704" />
  <row Id="1754" PostId="900" Score="0" Text="This is of course a request for the team; my advice is to keep trying closing them, it will eventually work." CreationDate="2011-07-25T10:21:42.740" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1755" PostId="900" Score="0" Text="note that it works on meta.stats" CreationDate="2011-07-25T11:05:36.323" UserId="5509" />
  <row Id="1758" PostId="900" Score="0" Text="I merged three questions that, although not identical, were just manifestations of the same problem and have exactly the same solution." CreationDate="2011-07-25T16:00:54.507" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1762" PostId="901" Score="0" Text="You have more reputation on SO, so you probably see no ads. On stats.SE with less reputation you are served ads and this is why you got the problem." CreationDate="2011-07-29T11:30:33.203" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1756" PostId="906" Score="0" Text="That's why the reformulation from &quot;last week&quot; to &quot;recent&quot; (=" CreationDate="2011-07-25T15:10:29.183" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1757" PostId="906" Score="0" Text="@mbq I appreciate the flexibility that offers: thanks!" CreationDate="2011-07-25T15:58:45.320" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1759" PostId="907" Score="1" Text="(+1) neither complexity nor coverage of a subarea should one prevent from blogging about it. The internet is already full of basic articles about basic topics (although some fail to explain the topic they are about). Maybe writing a short intro article to this whole area beforehand might help ?" CreationDate="2011-07-26T06:20:08.170" UserId="264" />
  <row Id="1778" PostId="908" Score="0" Text="one caveat; not to diminish the work of photographers, but snapping a photo *does* seem to me to be considerably easier than producing a new data visualization" CreationDate="2011-08-03T01:12:29.617" UserId="123" />
  <row Id="1779" PostId="908" Score="0" Text="@Jeff , I do not know (I suspect they are more comparable than you give it credit for). It doesn't have to be weekly anyway (if that is why you made the remark). Also if the graphic is produced via code it can be trivially reproduced with new data (I assume something not comparable with photographs)." CreationDate="2011-08-03T02:34:00.733" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1763" PostId="909" Score="2" Text="Maybe the 'r' tag should be added to this question?  :)" CreationDate="2011-08-02T13:24:41.227" UserId="5256" />
  <row Id="1781" PostId="909" Score="4" Text="It seems that the consensus is that new SE site for R is needed. Where is the proposal in area51? I am itching to help :)" CreationDate="2011-08-03T10:48:51.760" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1782" PostId="909" Score="1" Text="This is going to be discussed at the UseR conference in a couple of weeks by SO's @spacedman (aka Barry Rowlingson) in a Lightening Talk. We have decided to wait to see what feedback Barry gets before moving forward, but discussions continue here http://chat.stackoverflow.com/rooms/2055/rproposal regarding the proposal and we are trying to collect good on/off topic Q's to define the site ready for a proposal to Area 51." CreationDate="2011-08-03T11:02:25.057" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="1783" PostId="909" Score="1" Text="I should add that it has been remarked that an alternative would be to use one of the open source clones of / alternatives to the SE engine as a wholly community owned Q&amp;A site for R. Whilst this has a lot of advantages (we really do define the rules), we would loose the ability to migrate between SE sites like SO and CV. Come and join the discussion in R Chat or in the Rproposal Room I linked to above." CreationDate="2011-08-03T11:04:11.310" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="1824" PostId="909" Score="2" Text="Today I found that Matlab for example uses some sort of [clone](http://www.mathworks.co.uk/matlabcentral/answers/) of stackexchange. Another reason to do a separate site :)" CreationDate="2011-08-19T09:22:31.123" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1940" PostId="909" Score="1" Text="For us that are new to R and that have tried the mailing lists this would be of great help - if nothing else the issue of [searching for R answers](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/102056/how-to-search-for-r-materials) would resolve." CreationDate="2011-11-09T11:49:01.980" UserId="5429" />
  <row Id="1764" PostId="911" Score="12" Text="Well said.  Opening CV up to all questions in R would overwhelm the interesting ones about statistics and data analysis generally.  I'm sure it would drive away users of all other software, too." CreationDate="2011-08-02T13:53:14.313" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1765" PostId="912" Score="0" Text="Would you be able to supply a few representative links?  I would like to see what I have been overlooking." CreationDate="2011-08-02T17:33:00.000" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1766" PostId="912" Score="0" Text="I'll collect a few and post them. I was hesitant to make it seem like I was calling out particular users/answers." CreationDate="2011-08-02T17:39:33.793" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1768" PostId="912" Score="0" Text="Here's one example I could find quickly: http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/13747/what-are-the-uses-and-pitfalls-of-regression-through-the-origin/13754#13754" CreationDate="2011-08-02T17:43:40.450" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1769" PostId="912" Score="0" Text="Interesting, because that one is not picked up by the &quot;low quality answers&quot; tool.  It therefore is a nice example of the value of community involvement in encouraging better answers: it's possible none of the mods would ever have seen it, or quite some time might pass before we do." CreationDate="2011-08-02T17:45:42.050" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1770" PostId="912" Score="0" Text="The user has pretty high rep. Maybe the low-quality answers tool filters users out once they get enough positive feedback from the community?" CreationDate="2011-08-02T17:47:56.060" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1771" PostId="912" Score="0" Text="There are several ways to earn high rep.  One of them is to answer *lots* of questions and have a colleague who upvotes all (or at least most) of your replies.  Guess what?  Soon you have a few thousand points even if the rest of the community has ignored you.  A much better gauge of rep, therefore, is to look at *average points per reply*.  (You can refine this by counting each question as half of a reply, etc., but you get the idea.) Counting high-rep replies is another good method, too. Five or more net upvotes on CV is a pretty good threshold to use. Finally, look at % of accepted answers." CreationDate="2011-08-02T17:52:07.113" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1772" PostId="912" Score="0" Text="I believe the tool looks solely at the text (of questions and replies) without regard to who wrote them.  In the last month low-quality posts by users with ~2K rep have been flagged, too.  (On another site I have seen posts by the moderators flagged this way...)" CreationDate="2011-08-02T18:16:13.940" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1773" PostId="912" Score="0" Text="I have always been a bit dissatisfied with the reputation scheme on this site, but that does not mean I have a &quot;better&quot; solution. I realize it serves as motivation for some and gives some very crude measure of &quot;trustworthiness&quot; in content. The information content of rep on stats.SE is generally somewhat higher than on other &quot;sister&quot; sites, in my estimation. My main point in mentioning was to propose a possible explanation for why the aforementioned post didn't show up. But, your empirical evidence strongly suggests otherwise." CreationDate="2011-08-02T20:10:09.353" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1774" PostId="912" Score="0" Text="Here is another that may fit the bill: http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/13690/how-to-compute-the-probability-associated-with-absurdly-large-z-scores/13735#13735" CreationDate="2011-08-02T20:10:33.130" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1775" PostId="912" Score="0" Text="Borderline: http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/13686/what-are-modern-easily-used-alternatives-to-stepwise-regression/13711#13711 and http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/13686/what-are-modern-easily-used-alternatives-to-stepwise-regression/13710#13710" CreationDate="2011-08-02T20:16:59.923" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1776" PostId="912" Score="0" Text="The first is a good example (#13690).  It slipped through the screening tools and I agree it should be amplified.  The borderline ones are, indeed, borderline.  I saw them both and left them alone because their chief merit lies in identifying a specific software tool and both are kind enough to provide direct links.  Often, that's all one really needs in the way of a reply.  I feel that some description and explanation would usually be helpful in such cases, but on the other hand I don't want to raise any barriers that might discourage such answers." CreationDate="2011-08-02T21:27:15.383" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1777" PostId="912" Score="0" Text="Agreed. (A brief discussion of what the elastic net is and why it's relevant to the question could go in one of those.)" CreationDate="2011-08-02T22:21:12.903" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1804" PostId="912" Score="0" Text="Are Wikipedia links OK? I found myself using them in almost every answer I post, and they probably comprise 80% of the links I provide. In many cases, the original papers are just too cumbersome, and better explanations (implementations, sometimes even notation) has been developed elsewhere (and, with high likelihood, summarized on Wikipedia)." CreationDate="2011-08-11T07:47:30.080" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="1814" PostId="912" Score="0" Text="@StasK, my personal opinion is that wiki links *can* be ok, but it's still good to provide a synopsis of the main point you're trying to make within the body of the post. Also, care should still be taken; I've found some grossly incorrect stuff (without even searching hard!) on some wiki pages on statistical topics. Even worse, one such example ended up referenced here on stats.SE in an answer!" CreationDate="2011-08-14T14:04:59.067" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1816" PostId="912" Score="0" Text="@cardinal: Oh my. I usually check if Wikipedia makes sense (and edit it otherwise :))." CreationDate="2011-08-16T00:44:20.963" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="1767" PostId="913" Score="0" Text="I've noticed that you and the other mods have been quite proactive about this the last couple months or so." CreationDate="2011-08-02T17:40:09.220" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1780" PostId="913" Score="0" Text="Hm which tool flags the low quality answers? Is it available for non-mods? My reading behaviour is highly skewed towards new questions, where I either edit the question, suggest more clarification, or answer it myself. If there is a feeling that  help is needed for policing, I will be glad to change my usage patterns. As for flags and votes to close, somehow I did not see anything worthy of a flag recently." CreationDate="2011-08-03T10:44:12.873" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1784" PostId="913" Score="1" Text="@mpiktas: Look under the [review](http://stats.stackexchange.com/review/) link at the top of the page to the right of your user name when you are logged in." CreationDate="2011-08-03T12:10:56.417" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1785" PostId="913" Score="0" Text="@cardinal, this is for the first time posters. I thought whuber was talking about general tool not only for first time posters." CreationDate="2011-08-03T12:23:11.227" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1786" PostId="913" Score="0" Text="@mpiktas: There are four subtabs there to choose from. The second is [low-quality posts](http://stats.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts?pagesize=15&amp;filter=day). Maybe the mods toolkit is different, but I suspect they are at least related. :)" CreationDate="2011-08-03T12:27:17.250" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1787" PostId="913" Score="0" Text="@cardinal, whoa, I did not notice the subtabs! Will be using this a lot from now on :)" CreationDate="2011-08-03T12:29:34.950" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1788" PostId="914" Score="7" Text="I usually ask the respondent to do those edits, because they are the experts and they know what to emphasize in their descriptions of the links." CreationDate="2011-08-03T13:51:36.563" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1830" PostId="915" Score="7" Text="At the very least it would be great to see R help move to a more modern stack exchange style system. I think the key to a good site is community and infrastructure. The stack exchange model is the best infrastructure I've seen so far for creating a useful ongoing question and answer resource; mailing lists fail in so many ways. Yet, R help has an awesome community of experts. Of course, at the moment, there is choice (R help or R tag on SO/CV)." CreationDate="2011-08-22T02:28:01.273" UserId="183" />
  <row Id="1790" PostId="917" Score="0" Text="Perhaps next year then.  (I'll try and remember earlier)" CreationDate="2011-08-03T22:53:59.497" UserId="1499" />
  <row Id="1805" PostId="917" Score="0" Text="If the idea is to de-virtualize, it's not too difficult to set up a meeting, even a semi-official one, that could go on a program. I've been doing this for a number of years to gather together statisticians from home country :)." CreationDate="2011-08-11T17:12:51.293" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="1793" PostId="918" Score="0" Text="I'm not important enough of a statistician to do so. (I'm still a grad student for one more week. ;O) )" CreationDate="2011-08-04T12:43:54.300" UserId="1499" />
  <row Id="1797" PostId="918" Score="1" Text="@MTibbits Even better -- fresh perspective." CreationDate="2011-08-04T18:34:10.807" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1791" PostId="919" Score="0" Text="What specifically do you want to see from Tukey's EDA?" CreationDate="2011-08-04T12:01:32.137" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1792" PostId="919" Score="0" Text="@whuber The idea was merely to graphically illustrate some of the techniques discussed in Tukey's EDA or Hoaglin, Mosteller &amp; Tukey's *Understanding Robust and Exploratory Data Analysis*, somewhat like a &quot;graphical companion&quot; to those textbooks." CreationDate="2011-08-04T12:42:08.247" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1794" PostId="919" Score="0" Text="OK.  I am fond of both books.  *EDA* is very graphical as it is.  The real value in both, IMO, is in the analytical tools they provide for diagnosing data: determining how to re-express values, finding interactions, etc.  Not all of those have made it into software even after 30 years." CreationDate="2011-08-04T13:22:08.000" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1795" PostId="919" Score="0" Text="Those all sound like pretty good ideas to me. So at this point I assume it is just a matter of implementation (and getting people to volunteer). I think I would like to start out as how the photo of the week is to get people volunteering, and then let it grow into your other suggested compliments to the &quot;pretty pictures&quot; themselves." CreationDate="2011-08-04T15:56:33.543" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1796" PostId="919" Score="0" Text="So, who writes the first survey post?" CreationDate="2011-08-04T18:25:05.463" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1806" PostId="920" Score="2" Text="As I wrote in my &quot;No!&quot; answer, this is a manner of trusting the community -- if the question have a little chance of being answered or is off-topic, it will probably get a feedback suggesting where to possibly relocate it and may be migrated. And this way is just clearer and overall more effective then prespreading the Q to all possible sites." CreationDate="2011-08-11T18:08:48.950" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1807" PostId="921" Score="4" Text="correct, taking this to an extreme, the only &quot;audience size&quot; necessary is one, *if it just so happens to be the right person*. And asking a programming question on the world's largest videogame site isn't going to produce great results either. It's all about the *correct* audience. That said, &quot;this is not getting properly answered&quot; is one of the the key reasons to migrate.." CreationDate="2011-08-12T04:02:08.557" UserId="123" />
  <row Id="1809" PostId="924" Score="5" Text="I believe the current state of affairs is that the programming/installation/how-to part of R is not part of stats; it's part of SO.  Moving R-related *statistical* questions out of stats is not under consideration AFAIK.  Are you suggesting there are a lot of statisticians following SO for the R questions but who are not participating on stats.SE?" CreationDate="2011-08-12T16:07:58.023" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1813" PostId="924" Score="2" Text="Yes, somewhat.  More than that, statisticians should learn good R programming practice, and they won't if such discussions are more invisible to them." CreationDate="2011-08-14T02:35:53.473" UserId="4253" />
  <row Id="1831" PostId="924" Score="0" Text="Judicious use of 'Ignore' tags will stop anyone with general statistics interest from seeing all the R questions. I read SO and don't get swamped by Java or C# questions. If the question turns out to be statistical rather than R-ish someone can zap the R tag." CreationDate="2011-08-22T16:38:16.560" UserId="1549" />
  <row Id="1818" PostId="925" Score="1" Text="I will say that I found your question interesting, but was a bit dissuaded from putting too much time and thought into it since each time I checked back, it had undergone a (sometimes substantial) change. Sometimes, it might be best to formulate a solid, carefully worded and thought out question beforehand and then post it, even if the answer won't fully satisfy your curiosity. You can always ask a follow-up and the feedback you get from the interaction with others here might actually stimulate further thought." CreationDate="2011-08-16T13:00:28.083" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1817" PostId="927" Score="1" Text="(+1) In the meantime, we might encourage the responder to reformat their answer. I think the references with annotations are helpful, but in the current form, quite messy." CreationDate="2011-08-16T12:54:51.427" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1819" PostId="927" Score="0" Text="It is not real clear to me what you mean by &quot;if bibtex was supported&quot;, what would you expect the end result of a bibtex reference to look like?" CreationDate="2011-08-16T19:34:04.873" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1820" PostId="927" Score="0" Text="@AndyW, just like bibtex, author with publishing date (or author with number, this can be configurable) with link to the full article information at the bottom." CreationDate="2011-08-16T19:45:08.610" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1829" PostId="930" Score="2" Text="I basically agree with what you are saying. However, I think there is an open-source versus closed source distinction here. People give their time to sites like SO for a variety of reasons, but personally I find it more meaningful to assist others to use open source software because (a) anyone in the world can replicate the example without needing to buy software; (b) supporting open-source software is the role of the community whereas  supporting closed-source software is largely the role of the developers making money from the closed source software." CreationDate="2011-08-22T02:18:59.120" UserId="183" />
  <row Id="8913" PostId="930" Score="0" Text="@whuber your example was removed by its author, could you replace by another example?" CreationDate="2015-12-17T17:11:25.757" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="8914" PostId="930" Score="1" Text="@Kjetil Thank you for noticing that.  I have now quoted the question in its entirety." CreationDate="2015-12-17T18:35:00.110" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1822" PostId="931" Score="0" Text="1) This post belongs on meta.stackoverflow.com 2) http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/11740/162890 should answer your questions about CW 3) Upvotes on comments do not earn you rep, they're just an indicator that the comment is useful" CreationDate="2011-08-19T06:57:40.930" UserId="1977" />
  <row Id="1823" PostId="931" Score="0" Text="Brilliant, thanks Jeff, just what I was after." CreationDate="2011-08-19T07:01:58.457" UserId="4226" />
  <row Id="1826" PostId="931" Score="1" Text="As you can infer from the *fourth* comment to the referenced question, I disagreed with the CW status (and still do).  That thread is flawed because of it: as a normal question, it (I suspect) would have garnered answers that were better supported and documented.  The question asks for *definitions,* after all: what could be a clearer example of something with an objective correct answer?  However, it's &quot;fuzzy&quot; in the sense that it *does not ask &quot;practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face.&quot;*  Were it phrased more pointedly it wouldn't have been made CW, IMHO." CreationDate="2011-08-19T14:06:33.907" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="13769" PostId="931" Score="0" Text="@whuber Since you linked to this thread in a recent Meta question about CW, I was wondering if you are still disagreeing with the CW status of that thread: https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/5026 (as per your comment above). If you still do, why not revisit it?" CreationDate="2017-07-03T11:00:07.383" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="1825" PostId="932" Score="2" Text="+1.  But I would like to make a plea for a fine but important distinction concerning that all-encompassing &quot;whatever&quot; in the second paragraph: purely &quot;subjective&quot; questions typically get closed (see our FAQ).  Questions that specifically seek multiple valid *objective* answers (&quot;big lists&quot;) get CW status.  Questions that by their nature will elicit subjective information that's difficult to document (asking for experiences, for instance) also are CW candidates when they're on topic and likely to prove useful." CreationDate="2011-08-19T14:01:10.307" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1827" PostId="932" Score="2" Text="(A separate remark) Note that participating in CW questions, although not contributing to reputation, does contribute to certain badges (Necromancer, Good Question, Good Answer, etc.)." CreationDate="2011-08-19T14:10:40.067" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1828" PostId="932" Score="0" Text="@whuber Thanks. These are important points, indeed." CreationDate="2011-08-19T18:22:28.233" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1836" PostId="933" Score="1" Text="What is &quot;Stack Exchange CHAOS team&quot;? :-)" CreationDate="2011-09-02T13:07:13.820" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1837" PostId="933" Score="1" Text="I appreciate your help, but it seems a bit odd you are doing this all on your own (unless you have consulted with moderators that is invisible to me). I would also mention that we have a devoted chat room, [Skewed Distribution](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/549/skewed-distribution), which is appropriate for discussion related to the blog." CreationDate="2011-09-02T14:52:02.997" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1839" PostId="933" Score="0" Text="@chl We're working on growing our communities while maintaining high quality membership." CreationDate="2011-09-02T17:29:45.873" UserId="6064" />
  <row Id="1840" PostId="933" Score="0" Text="@Andy W I'm aware of Skewed Distribution and now that it has users present we can discuss in there." CreationDate="2011-09-02T17:36:40.887" UserId="6064" />
  <row Id="1855" PostId="933" Score="0" Text="@seth even without &quot;users present&quot; you can leave messages in a chat room and others can respond to them -- it is stateful." CreationDate="2011-09-04T23:21:30.427" UserId="123" />
  <row Id="1859" PostId="933" Score="0" Text="@Seth: could you clarify what you mean by &quot;partnering with CV.SE on their blogs&quot;?" CreationDate="2011-09-10T05:03:05.390" UserId="1106" />
  <row Id="1863" PostId="933" Score="0" Text="@raegtin We would invite authors to review CV from their area of expertise." CreationDate="2011-09-12T15:30:40.873" UserId="6064" />
  <row Id="1866" PostId="933" Score="1" Text="@Seth By review CV you mean just talk about and promote CV?" CreationDate="2011-09-13T23:09:02.280" UserId="1106" />
  <row Id="1870" PostId="933" Score="0" Text="@raegtin The intention behind this post was to invite statisticians to discuss the usefulness of CV in their work/ areas of particular strength and weakness of the site. Intelligent reviews &quot;should&quot; spark some effort to bring more expertise to an area of weakness. Doesn't that enhance the utility of CV for everyone?" CreationDate="2011-09-14T13:11:23.177" UserId="6064" />
  <row Id="1881" PostId="933" Score="0" Text="@Seth Oh, yeah, I wasn't disparaging the idea :), just wasn't sure what you meant." CreationDate="2011-09-19T20:20:16.517" UserId="1106" />
  <row Id="1882" PostId="933" Score="0" Text="@Seth Actually, I guess I'm still not sure what you mean =D. Do you mean promoting CV on our own personal blogs, or do you mean you're looking for community members here to write posts for CV's blog?" CreationDate="2011-09-19T20:22:48.413" UserId="1106" />
  <row Id="1883" PostId="933" Score="0" Text="@raegtin Great comment, thanks. In this post I'm inviting you to review CV on your personal blog! Though generally, absolutely contribute to the CV blog- post in Skewed Distribution (chat) or contact our friendly neighborhood mod for CV blog entries." CreationDate="2011-09-19T21:02:13.307" UserId="6064" />
  <row Id="1838" PostId="934" Score="1" Text="@EpiGrad , feel free to stop by the Skewed Distribution chat room and we will give you access to the blogging platform to post if you would like. I can't see your blog at the moment (work filter), but given the quality of your answers on the site I'm plenty confident you would be able to make quality contributions to the blog." CreationDate="2011-09-02T15:10:06.057" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1845" PostId="934" Score="0" Text="@Andy W - I'd be happy to. I'm on Skewed Distribution at the moment." CreationDate="2011-09-02T20:52:37.890" UserId="5836" />
  <row Id="1846" PostId="934" Score="0" Text="@Seth Rogers My email is in my profile :)" CreationDate="2011-09-02T20:52:51.447" UserId="5836" />
  <row Id="1841" PostId="935" Score="4" Text="The Tex site has get togethers to attempt to answer such questions. See their [blog posts](http://tex.blogoverflow.com/) about it." CreationDate="2011-09-02T17:56:44.647" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1844" PostId="935" Score="5" Text="@Andy Comment-answers are a part of the problem ;-)" CreationDate="2011-09-02T19:33:51.207" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1842" PostId="936" Score="0" Text="I want to add that the community will be apprised of any initiatives that are on the table and we take the opinions of CV users very seriously!" CreationDate="2011-09-02T18:12:45.163" UserId="6064" />
  <row Id="1843" PostId="936" Score="0" Text="Welcome to the site! Nice to have you on board." CreationDate="2011-09-02T19:33:07.947" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1850" PostId="936" Score="1" Text="Thanks for the clarifications." CreationDate="2011-09-02T22:05:25.207" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1847" PostId="937" Score="1" Text="http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/56861/how-to-subscribe-only-to-the-questions-of-a-specific-users-feed" CreationDate="2011-09-02T21:44:45.273" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1848" PostId="938" Score="0" Text="Thanks, I didn't realize that was there!" CreationDate="2011-09-02T21:45:48.903" UserId="3331" />
  <row Id="1849" PostId="938" Score="0" Text="As an active RSS user, this would work fine for me, although in general it may be something a lot of people don't use." CreationDate="2011-09-02T21:45:54.927" UserId="3331" />
  <row Id="1853" PostId="941" Score="1" Text="So it is.  FYI, it was up yesterday, and this is first time I've seen that problem.  It's a quite active site." CreationDate="2011-09-03T15:37:03.567" UserId="5729" />
  <row Id="1858" PostId="941" Score="1" Text="My personal feeling is that analyticbridge compares to crossvalidated like programmers to stackoverflow (plus Human Resources). I was active on that site some time ago, but the amount and mean-quality of the technical discussions were not satisfying ... so I left when crossvalidated.com was born, oh joy :)." CreationDate="2011-09-09T07:20:26.363" UserId="264" />
  <row Id="1854" PostId="942" Score="5" Text="I would add that the user should be mindful and update the status of the question as well. If he/she gets an acceptable answer on MetaOptimize, he should post the answer on CV (with a link and credit to the original author), and close the question so no one further wastes their time." CreationDate="2011-09-04T04:10:36.467" UserId="1977" />
  <row Id="1896" PostId="946" Score="2" Text="Or maybe copy some quality answers-posing-as-comments and paste them into answer fields, of course mentioning the sources." CreationDate="2011-09-30T01:22:44.687" UserId="2669" />
  <row Id="1857" PostId="947" Score="0" Text="For a little more information, a [brief chat transcript](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/18/conversation/interview-discussion) about this idea is available." CreationDate="2011-09-07T21:27:24.620" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1880" PostId="947" Score="1" Text="After communicating with the ASA members magazine editor, they are indeed interested in an article containing interviews with researchers/statisticians who use CV as a resource. If CV has been a valuable resource in your work, let us know how!" CreationDate="2011-09-16T18:23:42.403" UserId="6064" />
  <row Id="1904" PostId="947" Score="3" Text="I'm an ASA member, and I started CV. Happy to be interviewed if there is interest." CreationDate="2011-10-02T07:45:51.740" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="1860" PostId="948" Score="0" Text="I've never objected to good food, and am fond of CV. What's the best way to get ahold of you?" CreationDate="2011-09-12T01:23:53.433" UserId="5836" />
  <row Id="1861" PostId="948" Score="0" Text="The best way to contact me is via email, seth@stackexchange.com (also on my user profile page)." CreationDate="2011-09-12T02:00:37.017" UserId="6064" />
  <row Id="1871" PostId="948" Score="0" Text="@Seth your email probably isn't visible to non-mods or high-rep users - it is invisible by default. Maybe put it in your bio field (like in mine)." CreationDate="2011-09-15T19:50:35.160" UserId="6123" />
  <row Id="1922" PostId="948" Score="0" Text="Will you illustrate who gets the slices of pizza with a pie chart?  Bad stats joke.  :) (And a &quot;bad stats&quot; joke.)" CreationDate="2011-10-22T13:53:04.023" UserId="5256" />
  <row Id="1865" PostId="950" Score="1" Text="That question has been asked at http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/421/what-book-would-you-recommend-for-non-statistician-scientists ." CreationDate="2011-09-13T21:39:07.237" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1864" PostId="951" Score="0" Text="Cool, thanks! :)" CreationDate="2011-09-13T20:43:10.243" UserDisplayName="user2636" />
  <row Id="1867" PostId="951" Score="0" Text="I would not say they are &quot;OK&quot;, but &quot;can be tolerated as community wiki..&quot; otherwise you get the &quot;infinite list of X&quot; question with everyone posting their favorite flavor of ice cream.." CreationDate="2011-09-14T01:54:42.063" UserId="123" />
  <row Id="1868" PostId="951" Score="2" Text="@Jeff We accept them because they proved to behave well on this site." CreationDate="2011-09-14T10:12:46.017" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1869" PostId="951" Score="0" Text="still, I would *seriously* hesitate to give this question a blanket no-strings-attached &quot;they are OK&quot;. Better to say &quot;OK under certain conditions, but be careful.&quot;" CreationDate="2011-09-14T10:15:01.903" UserId="123" />
  <row Id="1872" PostId="953" Score="1" Text="+1 You got there 9 seconds before I did :-)." CreationDate="2011-09-15T20:54:27.380" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1873" PostId="954" Score="0" Text="oh, I just hovered over the &quot;delete&quot; button and realized that it is a &quot;vote to delete&quot; button, not a straight-up delete." CreationDate="2011-09-15T20:58:28.060" UserId="5471" />
  <row Id="1874" PostId="954" Score="3" Text="remember that owners *can't* delete questions once they have at least one answer with at least one upvote." CreationDate="2011-09-16T07:54:54.573" UserId="123" />
  <row Id="1879" PostId="954" Score="2" Text="@JandR: &quot;Voting to delete&quot; your own post will delete it without requiring votes from anyone else." CreationDate="2011-09-16T16:47:07.750" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1875" PostId="955" Score="0" Text="not many LibreOffice questions though http://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=libreoffice" CreationDate="2011-09-16T12:16:54.130" UserId="123" />
  <row Id="1876" PostId="955" Score="0" Text="Also I would have never associated the `calc` tag with LibreOffice nor OpenOffice (although I suppose someone whom actually works with that software might). Perhaps it would be a good case for synonyms or a general renaming. calc is so generic I think I rather see libreoffice as the name (and it currently has only two questions with that tag)." CreationDate="2011-09-16T12:23:53.017" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1877" PostId="956" Score="4" Text="In general, I've come to accept a more *laissez-faire* attitude about things such as tags as I've used the site more. If someone wants to implement a spreadsheet tag, go ahead and see if it gets adopted by the community in general. Just don't go and do a massive retagging on your own." CreationDate="2011-09-16T12:31:07.910" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1878" PostId="956" Score="0" Text="+1 I fully agree. It is like having r-or-splus tag..." CreationDate="2011-09-16T12:58:22.170" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1887" PostId="959" Score="1" Text="[SE is starting up a Pizza Ambassadors program for this site](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/948/introducing-crossvalidated-se-pizza-ambassadors-program-calling-students-and-tea).  Free pizza and statistics help ought to get some attention..." CreationDate="2011-09-27T20:06:45.153" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="1888" PostId="960" Score="2" Text="(+1) Well said. Those three points are really important; about point 1 specifically, we expect questions to be of interest for the community as a whole: questions worded like &quot;do my job&quot; or &quot;answer my homework&quot; (in the next 5', if possible) are not welcome here. Yes, this means an extra effort to frame the question; but it's also a good exercise." CreationDate="2011-09-28T19:06:28.067" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1897" PostId="960" Score="2" Text="@chl Yes, you have articulated my concern.  I welcome student questions, but the [bad ones](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/16258/normal-distribution) are starting to come in.  Kids copying their homework onto the site just generate noise and lots of work for the community.  These are *not* the users who will add value for years to come; at best, they will add value *after* many years to come, if they are inspired to go on in a related field.  (Note that the OP was careful to refer explicitly, and twice, to &quot;conceptual questions&quot;.)" CreationDate="2011-09-30T03:25:27.480" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1890" PostId="961" Score="0" Text="Does this really belong on CV meta?" CreationDate="2011-09-28T19:59:48.007" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1891" PostId="961" Score="2" Text="Probably not, but I feel it is worth it." CreationDate="2011-09-28T21:21:35.097" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1892" PostId="961" Score="0" Text="IMO I don't mind this type of shameless promotion (at this point). Traffic is low enough it is not particularly bothersome." CreationDate="2011-09-29T12:30:55.610" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1893" PostId="961" Score="0" Text="@Andy I agree that this is not bothersome, but that's not the point.  If high-rep users and mods are to get any benefit from invoking standards in making decisions about closing and migrating questions, those standards need to be applied consistently and fairly.  In this case there are obvious problems about the topic (where is the meta-CV interest in this question?) and localization." CreationDate="2011-09-29T16:51:36.543" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1894" PostId="961" Score="0" Text="I really regret that CompSci is mine, it would be easier to promote the other way; anyway IMO it is bad only because it is off-topic (not about CV), not because it is a shamelessly smuggled ad (in fact I believe it qualifies as higher good). Some time ago one user was doing [similar promotion](http://meta.physics.stackexchange.com/questions/687/area51-proposal-on-chemistry-is-in-commitment-phase) of Chemistry proposal on Physics and it seemed to be judged as acceptable." CreationDate="2011-09-29T19:10:56.427" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1895" PostId="961" Score="1" Text="mbq, It's a gray area.  The close connection between chem and physics suggests there may be considerable overlap in audience (and even topics), so the creation of a chemistry site could be on-topic on physics meta.  I see only tenuous connections (but they are there) between your five proposals and CV.  Maybe we could compromise by asking that any replies to this thread (as well as the original question) explain why CV users might be interested in the proposals that are mentioned." CreationDate="2011-09-29T21:49:57.930" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1898" PostId="963" Score="0" Text="Thanks, Stas.  We're not looking for &quot;median users&quot; or even typical users.  In fact, you're actually quite active: by &quot;post&quot; I mean generically a reply, comment, or a question (and I doubt any ASA member would interact on this site primarily by asking questions).  Remember, the SE folks don't really know the ASA, so if they are going to gather information about CV that might be of interest to ASA members, it would be best for them to talk to ASA members!  You would be a good candidate for that." CreationDate="2011-09-30T14:51:31.533" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1899" PostId="963" Score="0" Text="By &quot;post&quot; I meant, &quot;ask questions&quot;. Most of the time, if I have statistical/methodology questions, I know exactly the person who can answer them, so ask them directly, and they won't be on CV, anyway. If you think I am a good face to show up in AmStat News, I'll be happy to chat with whomever is doing the article." CreationDate="2011-09-30T15:02:56.667" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="1903" PostId="963" Score="0" Text="@Stask Maybe the idea would be to introduce those persons you know to SE, through the ASA network?" CreationDate="2011-10-01T20:12:57.233" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1900" PostId="964" Score="4" Text="+1 I have been trying to implement this suggestion (keep the stats questions that are couched in R, boot the rest) but have been very conservative about it, which means lenient: if someone chooses to post their question here, they must have some reason to have done it, so if there's even a remote connection to stats or data mining, I hesitate to migrate it.  The two questions you point to are in a frank area of overlap: here, I construed it as a visualization question (which is on topic); on SO it's appropriate as a programming question.  Maybe the *answers* should determine the location?" CreationDate="2011-09-30T20:03:54.357" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1901" PostId="964" Score="0" Text="@whuber - If he'd not had an idea of what it should look like - how to visualize it in the _abstract_ sense - I'd think you might want to keep it.  But he knew exactly what he wanted - just didn't know which buttons to push in R.  Those I'd push to SO.  IMHO!" CreationDate="2011-09-30T20:09:49.520" UserId="6585" />
  <row Id="1902" PostId="964" Score="2" Text="I wish it were that simple, Ed.  There's no one best algorithm for placing labels; they all make tradeoffs that have effects on communicating the data; so the *great* answers we seek here would necessarily discuss issues of interest on CV.  A truly button-pushing answer just wouldn't be very good, IMHO. This line of thought suggests the ultimate resting place of a question might properly depend on the answers it gathers.  (Ironically, the best answer so far has appeared on SO and all the CV answers are the pedestrian push-this-button ones!)" CreationDate="2011-09-30T20:36:53.403" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1907" PostId="966" Score="1" Text="Notice the *i* beneath the $\Sigma$ in the first equation: it appears to be almost in the correct location with respect to the summand and clearly is shifted left of center.  This suggests that the positioning algorithm thinks the $\Sigma$ is much smaller than it really is, but then rendered it at the correct size, fixing the bottom left corner position.  The only apparent difference between the two &quot;\sum&quot; commands is that one of them initiates the $\TeX$ line and the other does not." CreationDate="2011-10-07T15:05:55.853" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1905" PostId="967" Score="1" Text="it is not clear how this proposal would be better than the Biology proposal. I think that there is a lot of overlap with other fields of biology." CreationDate="2011-10-05T22:56:22.003" UserId="2750" />
  <row Id="1906" PostId="967" Score="1" Text="@Abe By &quot;this proposal&quot;, are you referring to the Public Health and Epidemiology proposal? If so, there's no assertion it's &quot;better&quot;. Just different. In the same way SuperUser and Serverfault are different. There's not even an opportunity cost between them, as they're in different stages of development." CreationDate="2011-10-05T23:00:46.773" UserId="5836" />
  <row Id="1908" PostId="970" Score="1" Text="As I like to say, &quot;nobody should be more committed to getting an answer to your question than you.&quot; So yes, subsequent edits to refine, explain, are always helpful. Even self-answers." CreationDate="2011-10-08T02:23:15.957" UserId="123" />
  <row Id="1991" PostId="971" Score="0" Text="The subject is fascinating and potentially could benefit from the SE treatment.  I do find it strange, however, that you seem to think a discussion of world population in 50 years or a discussion of anything after 100 years would be off topic.  This seems to confuse uncertainty with lack of importance." CreationDate="2012-01-03T23:40:57.867" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1992" PostId="971" Score="0" Text="@whuber We cannot predict technological and environmental progress in 100-200 years, we dont know what research will drive that future, but we for example that superconducters and quantum computing(current research) will trigger this century. 100 years is just a rule of thumb to me, most simulated future scenarios do calculate within this time frame, as computer power and models dont offer more. And this proposal is not about crystall ball rubbing like singularity, but prediction based on scientific models, simaulations, knwoledge, then you have to draw a line imho." CreationDate="2012-01-05T15:45:41.557" UserId="5066" />
  <row Id="1993" PostId="971" Score="0" Text="But i would be intersted to see a question from you in the time frame of 200-500, you think one can give a objective answer and not just guessing or sci-fi." CreationDate="2012-01-05T15:47:29.633" UserId="5066" />
  <row Id="1994" PostId="971" Score="0" Text="E.g., &quot;what is the basis of industry projections that [peak coal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_coal) will not occur for another 200 years?&quot;  &quot;Where would the inhabitable areas of the earth be if global warming were to continue at currently extrapolated rates for 200 years?&quot;  &quot;What are the chances of a globally catastrophic asteroid strike in the next 1000 years?&quot;" CreationDate="2012-01-05T15:51:36.697" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1997" PostId="971" Score="0" Text="@whuber the proposal is really more about factors and models for future scenarios, your questions would need deeply tricky calculations and simulations exceeding a shorter answer. Also I have made the experience that people and politics don't really care about things outside of their life-expectancy (roughly 100 years). If a asteroid crashes on earth within the next 1000 10000 years is not really of interest and anyway more determined by a general likelihood with has not much to do with the absoulte" CreationDate="2012-01-08T03:49:14.200" UserId="5066" />
  <row Id="1998" PostId="971" Score="0" Text="number of years you are asking in your question, Such questions would be allowed, but not &quot;how will energy consumption develop based on population growth rates in 2200&quot;. That's not answerable and therefore not interesting. Same imho with your sea level raise due to global warming. Here you have to set up a time limit or it becomes crystal ball rubbing with so much side-factors. No serious economic or climate future simulation goes beyond 50-100 years currently. Please show me one." CreationDate="2012-01-08T03:49:26.680" UserId="5066" />
  <row Id="1913" PostId="974" Score="1" Text="Let me add something:  I think most of my surprise comes because beginner questions are allowed, and thus I would have imagined there is a far greater number of question askers than people qualified to answer questions." CreationDate="2011-10-12T12:38:45.210" UserId="5471" />
  <row Id="1916" PostId="974" Score="1" Text="Honestly beginner questions are easy enough to answer that I don't think being outnumbered is the problem." CreationDate="2011-10-12T18:03:42.227" UserId="5836" />
  <row Id="4140" PostId="974" Score="1" Text="Many of the answers given below resonate with me but generally speaking I am not so sure whether I (or you) really know what motivates me to do anything. Received wisdom within psychology is that we don't, even when we really feel that we do." CreationDate="2013-06-28T11:32:51.593" UserId="6029" />
  <row Id="4037" PostId="976" Score="4" Text="I think you gave the best answer. It's just *fun*. (Sure enough, EpiGrad's and Peter's reason are totally valid and I probably follow them also, but more than anything I simply like this)" CreationDate="2013-04-06T02:48:44.593" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="1939" PostId="977" Score="0" Text="Hi Ari, I am very much interested.  Sorry for the late response.  When would you like to start doing problems?" CreationDate="2011-11-07T03:12:49.143" UserId="6369" />
  <row Id="1949" PostId="977" Score="0" Text="Surely. When can we start? And what you want to start with?" CreationDate="2011-11-11T01:14:19.920" UserId="4278" />
  <row Id="1950" PostId="977" Score="0" Text="We can start whenever you're ready.  It would be nice if we had a way to share some contact info without posting it on the web.  Is there such a way?  I'd like to start with either time series, or the statistical learning.. You said you'd already done the time series, so I guess let's go with Elements of Stat Learning." CreationDate="2011-11-11T02:04:23.227" UserId="6369" />
  <row Id="1917" PostId="978" Score="2" Text="Actually, I suspect that becoming well-known in schools and colleges would be a net benefit - we'd have more students coming to the site, true, but they're drawing on the same set of questions over and over; I think we'd have a very low question/student rate.  But we'd also get many of those teachers onboard to answer questions, and I expect our answers/teacher rate would be high.  Just a couple of users like whuber and Jeromy go a long, long, long way..." CreationDate="2011-10-14T16:16:10.030" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="1918" PostId="978" Score="2" Text="Keep in mind that becoming well-known in schools also attracts graduate students - like myself. While inexperienced compared to some here, we've got pretty decent educations, and experience answering basic questions posed repeatedly by undergrads." CreationDate="2011-10-16T00:50:43.013" UserId="5836" />
  <row Id="1914" PostId="979" Score="1" Text="Do you think a limit should/will ever be imposed on how many questions one can ask without also providing answers? Or some &quot;cost&quot; deducted from reputation required to ask, after an initial &quot;fist one(s) free period&quot; with a clever design to discourage creating new accounts all the time?" CreationDate="2011-10-12T16:27:41.113" UserId="5471" />
  <row Id="1915" PostId="979" Score="7" Text="@JandR It's not much of a problem.  Newbies who ask a lot of questions in a short time usually find most of them quickly get closed because they tend to be repetitive.  A few people survive this process, learn to ask good questions, and quickly stop being troublesome." CreationDate="2011-10-12T16:29:59.177" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1921" PostId="983" Score="1" Text="Because we love you, rosser!" CreationDate="2011-10-21T15:41:51.597" UserId="4454" />
  <row Id="1929" PostId="983" Score="1" Text="We also like coffee :)" CreationDate="2011-10-23T08:42:04.753" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="1931" PostId="983" Score="8" Text="&quot;Unnecessarily&quot; edited?  Are you intimating that questions with bad grammar and punctuation *ought* to stand?  I am curious why someone would prefer such a state of affairs.  If the concern is that dedicated editing might be altering the meaning of some questions, then let's air that and examine our options--but such a concern is not evident in the present question." CreationDate="2011-10-24T13:17:40.963" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1933" PostId="983" Score="0" Text="No it was a concern for the ongoing mental health of Moderators, that is all." CreationDate="2011-10-27T11:16:17.740" UserDisplayName="user6666" />
  <row Id="1923" PostId="985" Score="2" Text="This is the most [canonical source](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/100137/what-is-the-meaning-of-chaos-is-it-related-to-the-psi-character)... and in fact it seems to be psi, just capital." CreationDate="2011-10-22T14:46:38.570" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1924" PostId="985" Score="0" Text="Want to make that an answer, so I can accept?  :)" CreationDate="2011-10-22T15:10:09.450" UserId="5256" />
  <row Id="1927" PostId="985" Score="0" Text="Well, I tried, but the engine converts it into a comment..." CreationDate="2011-10-22T17:37:57.640" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1928" PostId="985" Score="0" Text="It's because the answer is short.  Don't give up, else the chaos wins,  :)" CreationDate="2011-10-22T18:30:44.240" UserId="5256" />
  <row Id="1930" PostId="986" Score="0" Text="Thanks.  :)  I suspect that the choice of Psi is inexplicable.  It's good to know that there's Chaos in the realm." CreationDate="2011-10-24T01:14:26.490" UserId="5256" />
  <row Id="1932" PostId="986" Score="0" Text="One prong for liberty, one for bravery and one for glory." CreationDate="2011-10-24T18:36:18.557" UserId="6064" />
  <row Id="1934" PostId="988" Score="0" Text="Are reviews blinded?  I have been informing some colleagues of this opportunity, and therefore would potentially have a conflict of interest if I were asked to review applications by their students." CreationDate="2011-10-30T23:43:59.183" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1935" PostId="988" Score="1" Text="@whuber Yes, great question- thanks for bringing up. Reviews will be blinded." CreationDate="2011-10-31T14:55:24.063" UserId="6064" />
  <row Id="1963" PostId="988" Score="1" Text="in my opinion, it's a bit unclear how the funding should be used. Hardware needed for the project ? Subsistence of the fellow for the duration of the project ? In the latter case, the estimated time needed to complete the project (e.g. as estimated by the reviewer) combined with the cost of living where the project proposer lives would determine the proposed amount of funding." CreationDate="2011-11-24T10:00:03.027" UserId="961" />
  <row Id="1964" PostId="988" Score="0" Text="@AndreHolzner Did you read the application? Prototypical uses of funds are listed in there. Also, the time frame needed for the project is up to the applicant, not the reviewer." CreationDate="2011-11-28T14:55:46.827" UserId="6064" />
  <row Id="1965" PostId="988" Score="0" Text="@SethRogers ok, I see, the eligible expenses are listed on three." CreationDate="2011-11-28T21:09:02.333" UserId="961" />
  <row Id="1967" PostId="988" Score="0" Text="How are the funds distributed? Direct to the applicant, reimbursed from StackExchange, or through the department? It helps determine the Effort:Reward ratio for dealing with departmental red tape." CreationDate="2011-11-30T00:36:09.567" UserId="5836" />
  <row Id="1968" PostId="988" Score="0" Text="@EpiGrad Once the proposal is approved, SE will send the awarded funds directly to the applicant." CreationDate="2011-11-30T14:49:25.070" UserId="6064" />
  <row Id="2011" PostId="988" Score="1" Text="1) are applications still being accepted? I just noticed the banner ad on stats.SE. If the deadline has past, please consider removing the banner ad. 2) Does my work _really_ have to fall into one of those fields? I work in neuroscience and human-computer interaction, and my work requires lots of statistical knowledge-- but it doesn't fall into any of the categories listed. Can I still apply?" CreationDate="2012-01-19T00:09:56.237" UserId="1977" />
  <row Id="2015" PostId="988" Score="0" Text="@Jeff Thank you for your questions! Applications are currently not being accepted as the deadline for this round was on Dec. 31. The banner ads should not have been running- that is now corrected. Thanks again Jeff." CreationDate="2012-01-20T16:31:56.883" UserId="6064" />
  <row Id="1936" PostId="994" Score="1" Text="If nobody disagree with that, I will apply the suggested tag update. I don't know how and why the `multiple-hypothesis` tag once has been created but it is certainly misused from what I've seen." CreationDate="2011-11-02T22:25:24.787" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="8892" PostId="994" Score="0" Text="As this suggestion has been implemented long ago, consider accepting chl's answer to make this thread visually appear as &quot;resolved&quot;. Thanks." CreationDate="2015-12-11T11:34:09.537" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="1937" PostId="995" Score="5" Text="Not sure about methodological research. Another point is that CV is quite young for any paper to have made it through a publication cycle. Also, for the most part, the questions here are usually not research level, even in applications, as far as I can tell. There are some questions and answers here or there that have likely gotten someone over a hump (or at least out of a trough) on some of their work." CreationDate="2011-11-03T23:36:43.373" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1938" PostId="995" Score="5" Text="I think it would be good if someone could write up a paper describing the site, which people who want to acknowledge/thank the site could then reference. Biostar has done something like this." CreationDate="2011-11-06T15:59:36.813" UserId="7008" />
  <row Id="1946" PostId="1000" Score="2" Text="This sounds terrific for a graduate or advanced level course where the students are intrinsically motivated and deeply interested in stats. +1" CreationDate="2011-11-10T16:23:25.063" UserId="6064" />
  <row Id="1945" PostId="1001" Score="3" Text="One could use other aspects besides reputation as well. Such as a quality question/answer (based on evaluated content as opposed to upvotes, same as whuber said). To @JohnRos, how about you act a filter of sorts. Have the student submit the question/answer to you first, and then encourage the student to post that themselves if you approve and it is not redundant with other questions/answers." CreationDate="2011-11-10T16:20:46.473" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1947" PostId="1001" Score="1" Text="+100, if I could." CreationDate="2011-11-10T17:25:50.520" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1952" PostId="1001" Score="0" Text="I am curious who are these perpetrators? How were they detected?" CreationDate="2011-11-12T14:16:25.193" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1953" PostId="1001" Score="0" Text="@mpiktas It's probably best not to provide details of the detection mechanism.  Suffice it to say that some cross-checks are routinely run whose results are visible to moderators. We *don't* have the ability to see any details about votes, but clearly that information is available to SE technical staff." CreationDate="2011-11-12T16:58:26.347" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1954" PostId="1001" Score="0" Text="@whuber: Another way to go about, would be to send the students to find interesting problems in CV to discuss in class. Except for the tag, how would you recommend &quot;fishing for problems&quot;?" CreationDate="2011-11-13T13:08:35.663" UserId="6961" />
  <row Id="1955" PostId="1001" Score="1" Text="@John, the best way to fish for problems is just to read over the new problems regularly.  (I do this with math@SE for a problem-solving course I teach; it turns up about one good problem a week.)" CreationDate="2011-11-14T02:31:05.383" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1956" PostId="1001" Score="0" Text="@whuber: Pure curiosity, but what are the breadth of topics covered in the problem-solving course?" CreationDate="2011-11-14T03:06:29.767" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1957" PostId="1001" Score="3" Text="@cardinal Anything related to math, including (on occasion) some computer science, physics, and economics applications.  We meet once a week for an indefinite period that usually stretches to 5 hours.  Students often bring in interesting problems, but if not, I keep a collection of good ones and we can always look at old Putnam exams :-).  After they create a solution on their own, I encourage them to find alternative solutions and then I draw connections among various branches of math that might be implicated, as a way to help them unify their undergraduate studies." CreationDate="2011-11-14T03:39:44.617" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1958" PostId="1001" Score="4" Text="@whuber: Thanks. It sounds like you're creating quite the stimulating atmosphere for your students. That is wonderful!" CreationDate="2011-11-14T09:31:24.867" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="1948" PostId="1002" Score="3" Text="This could have good overlap with the [journal-club](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/journal-club) as well." CreationDate="2011-11-10T22:43:10.403" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1951" PostId="1002" Score="0" Text="@AndyW Yes, definitely. What do you suggest?" CreationDate="2011-11-11T14:21:44.897" UserId="6064" />
  <row Id="1959" PostId="1003" Score="0" Text="What has happened to your Psi?" CreationDate="2011-11-14T21:58:11.127" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1960" PostId="1003" Score="0" Text="@mbq check out [this post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/110963/did-everyone-on-chaos-get-fired-or-something-what-happened-to-their-pitchforks) for an explanation." CreationDate="2011-11-14T22:17:19.567" UserId="6124" />
  <row Id="1961" PostId="1003" Score="1" Text="The 8 meta questions: [Math](http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/q/3212) [History](http://meta.history.stackexchange.com/q/125) [Physics](http://meta.physics.stackexchange.com/q/965) [CSTheory](http://meta.cstheory.stackexchange.com/q/1422) [Stats](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/1003) [Philosophy](http://meta.philosophy.stackexchange.com/q/263) [English](http://meta.english.stackexchange.com/q/2156) [Linguistics](http://meta.linguistics.stackexchange.com/q/207)" CreationDate="2011-11-15T00:01:44.220" UserId="2356" />
  <row Id="1962" PostId="1004" Score="1" Text="Agreed on all points.  This contest is not right for these sites.  And judging by the responses, our &quot;#1 seed&quot; is not on board at all." CreationDate="2011-11-15T05:21:35.897" UserDisplayName="user5594" />
  <row Id="3636" PostId="1007" Score="1" Text="I think references and books are quite separate - books is a subcategory of references, but not synonymous. It appears that books is now a synonym for references on the main site, and that sits pretty oddly with questions like this: http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/41726/pop-stats-books-are-there-any" CreationDate="2012-11-02T05:08:03.490" UserId="9007" />
  <row Id="1969" PostId="1010" Score="0" Text="I have not been long enough on the site to respond if this question is acceptable or not. But, I am a bit surprised to see that none of the 'old timers'/mods have not responded. Could a mod or someone with a knowledge of the history of the site respond?" CreationDate="2011-12-06T15:16:51.133" UserId="7199" />
  <row Id="1970" PostId="1010" Score="2" Text="@varty and Will, it is definitely on topic, so no worries in that regard. The question is not within my ken though, so I can not say what your chances are of receiving an answer. I believe a more thorough response should address the hostility on the MO site though, and how as a site we should try to handle such situations here on Cross Validated." CreationDate="2011-12-06T15:50:08.830" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1971" PostId="1010" Score="1" Text="@AndyW I fail to see the relevance of how MO treated the question. All *we* have to decide is whether such a question is acceptable or not irrespective of *where* it comes from and irrespective of *how* it was treated at the source. Of course, just as any other question, it may be unanswered for a wide variety of reasons (e.g., lack of focus/clarity, lack of experts etc)." CreationDate="2011-12-06T17:35:13.297" UserId="7199" />
  <row Id="1972" PostId="1010" Score="1" Text="@varty, the issue that I was bringing up, as I see it, is the code of conduct for people whom ask questions is the same on here as it is at MO. The reason for the hostility at MO wasn't because of the question content, it was because of the ensuing comments that escalated into arguments." CreationDate="2011-12-07T13:21:14.810" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1975" PostId="1010" Score="0" Text="Thanks to everyone. I thought to send the AdaBoost question here after researching tags on your Main. For the curious, let me emphasize that some comments at the question were deleted by moderators. A fuller story, but perhaps still not everything, is at http://meta.mathoverflow.net/discussion/1233/82499whatisthestepbystepprocedureforclassifyinganewdat" CreationDate="2011-12-07T20:42:56.500" UserId="7816" />
  <row Id="1979" PostId="1010" Score="2" Text="Will, I am very sorry that your student had a bad experience on MO.  The moderators at CV do everything we can to avoid such experiences and our community has been very well behaved: we are used to questions that take some back-and-forth to formulate effectively; it's part of what makes statistics different from mathematics." CreationDate="2011-12-09T23:11:00.653" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="1980" PostId="1010" Score="0" Text="Thank you, whuber. I ought to clear up one point. The question with &quot;RBF kernel SVM&quot; happened first. One MO user suggested that the questioner post here, which was ignored. The next day, a young person asked the AdaBoost question on MO. I thought, why not look into this a little more, so I searched here for related questions here. What I found was encouraging, so the very first comment on the MO AdaBoost question was me saying &quot;You might have a better experience on stats.stackexchange, here are some numbers of questions posted on related matters.&quot; Not my student...I am pleased he came here." CreationDate="2011-12-11T23:42:25.060" UserId="7816" />
  <row Id="1973" PostId="1011" Score="1" Text="I think a discussion of a specific user's behavior should be preferably be avoided. If you agree then could you please edit out any mention of the user by name/id etc." CreationDate="2011-12-07T16:41:02.673" UserId="7199" />
  <row Id="1974" PostId="1011" Score="0" Text="Thank you for answering. Some of the comments were deleted by moderators, including the first one (which certainly qualified as &quot;hostile&quot;) which complained about the use of acronyms without any explanation. In case anyone is curious, this case is still being debated on MO Meta, at http://meta.mathoverflow.net/discussion/1233/82499whatisthestepbystepprocedureforclassifyinganewdat" CreationDate="2011-12-07T20:35:36.157" UserId="7816" />
  <row Id="1976" PostId="1011" Score="0" Text="varty and mpiktas, on MO the person posting the original question is referred to as &quot;the OP,&quot; which is probably &quot;the Original Post-er.&quot;" CreationDate="2011-12-07T20:48:03.713" UserId="7816" />
  <row Id="1977" PostId="1011" Score="1" Text="I've edited my answer, but I do not understand the objection. The name of the author of the question was mentioned in the original question, even with the link to the author's webpage. Why then I cannot use this name in my answer?" CreationDate="2011-12-08T03:21:21.840" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="1978" PostId="1011" Score="5" Text="The issue is this: we do not know the full story of what happened on MO. We do not know who provoked who etc. It is my opinion that we should treat every question on its merit irrespective of what happened at some other site. Thus, any reference to the OP's behavior at MO is irrelevant to whether the question per se is acceptable or not. Perhaps, I should have been clearer in my first comment- my preference is to avoid discussing the behavior of users at another site when considering if their question is acceptable here. Let us give the OP and the qn a fresh start." CreationDate="2011-12-08T03:27:40.013" UserId="7199" />
  <row Id="1981" PostId="1013" Score="2" Text="You can also get the captcha if it takes you *too long* to compose your answer (on the order of 15 to 20 minutes)." CreationDate="2011-12-12T17:31:32.407" UserId="2227" />
  <row Id="1982" PostId="1017" Score="0" Text="I concur. I would love it if there were a flood of work to vote on, but at this point we just need volunteers. I'm apparently not a very effective recruiter. I already gave a list of questions I think have very interesting examples in the initial thread, [Weekly featured data visualization for the blog?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/908/1036)." CreationDate="2011-12-14T17:47:40.970" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1984" PostId="1018" Score="0" Text="I'm afraid we won't be able to do anything because @user2491 is 'dead' (at least for us!)... That's probably a question to ask to the SE team directly." CreationDate="2011-12-18T23:11:04.493" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="5727" PostId="1018" Score="0" Text="Despite old, maybe this thread should be tagged as &quot;feature-request&quot;." CreationDate="2014-05-29T19:42:38.803" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="1983" PostId="1019" Score="0" Text="I also see when I visit the comp sci site and getting the banner, the header links/search box are pushed down below the banner (so still visible). I don't know if this is browser specific though (using Chrome). If it isn't browser specific though, that would be a reasonable solution as well." CreationDate="2011-12-17T03:22:21.970" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1985" PostId="1019" Score="3" Text="This will be fixed in the next build (after midnight tonight EST)" CreationDate="2011-12-19T17:09:11.667" UserId="12" />
  <row Id="3615" PostId="1019" Score="0" Text="Also, this is no longer an issue, as we don't use the redbar thingadongdong anymore." CreationDate="2012-10-26T20:05:29.490" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="1986" PostId="1023" Score="0" Text="Welcome to CrossValidated, omatai!  This question should be asked on meta, not on the main site.  Click on &quot;meta&quot; at the top of the page, and ask there." CreationDate="2011-12-21T00:04:57.597" UserId="2921" />
  <row Id="1987" PostId="1023" Score="1" Text="[FAQ](http://stats.stackexchange.com/faq) may also be useful." CreationDate="2011-12-21T00:20:35.977" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="1988" PostId="1024" Score="5" Text="Thanks... although as the comments on that page suggest, it would at least be useful to make a link from the error message to where you can get information on what the error might mean." CreationDate="2011-12-21T00:33:54.710" UserId="8123" />
  <row Id="1989" PostId="1025" Score="0" Text="Stop on by the [Skewed Distribution](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/549) chat room if you are interested in contributing to the blog. I'm not worried about graphs being too standard (they are standard because they are helpful I would imagine!)" CreationDate="2011-12-22T13:02:41.997" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="1990" PostId="1025" Score="0" Text="thanks i definitly will as soon as my the graphs are done! (but could still last until late january)" CreationDate="2011-12-22T13:19:21.833" UserId="8041" />
  <row Id="4278" PostId="1026" Score="6" Text="The paper is currently in review." CreationDate="2013-07-18T12:04:43.893" UserId="887" />
  <row Id="8556" PostId="1026" Score="0" Text="Has this paper been published by now?" CreationDate="2015-10-22T15:47:07.003" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8558" PostId="1026" Score="2" Text="No, it was rejected (despite statistically significant result ;o), am still working on the second draft, hopefully it will be a better paper for the revisions." CreationDate="2015-10-23T08:28:21.063" UserId="887" />
  <row Id="21172" PostId="1026" Score="0" Text="Did you ever get this published?" CreationDate="2022-01-20T22:40:00.337" UserId="247274" />
  <row Id="21173" PostId="1026" Score="0" Text="No, unfortunately I have had some issues in real life that have limited my research activity (and a huge teaching load!)  It is quite difficult to get rigorous studies of things that make minor, but worthwhile improvements to best practice.  Especially frustrating as what I was suggesting is *less* computationally expensive!" CreationDate="2022-01-21T09:28:56.750" UserId="887" />
  <row Id="1995" PostId="1029" Score="1" Text="Make sure y'all make a [community promotion ad](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1030/community-promotion-ads-1h-2012/1031#1031) for this! :D It would help get the word out about this recurring chat event. [DIY](http://diy.stackexchange.com) has an ad like this up on their site." CreationDate="2012-01-06T17:12:36.603" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="1996" PostId="1029" Score="0" Text="@Aarthi Good idea; I still forget that there are people not using AdBlock (-;" CreationDate="2012-01-06T23:18:31.233" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="2041" PostId="1029" Score="0" Text="fyi - http://akademeia.ca is a relatively new open-source journal. They've only had 2 issues so far, but might be something to keep an eye on for papers in the future." CreationDate="2012-02-01T16:42:26.287" UserId="6124" />
  <row Id="1999" PostId="1032" Score="0" Text="Thanks for starting this." CreationDate="2012-01-09T11:00:51.370" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="2000" PostId="1032" Score="2" Text="Please note that &quot;off-topic&quot; is just one of several reasons for closing that particular question.  Another is for lack of research: the answer is easily obtained through simple means such as Google searches.  This is of interest because it would also place the question off topic in the &quot;Data&quot; SE proposal, which specifically focuses on &quot;statistical data that is publicly available but is difficult to find with a Google search.&quot;  IMHO, that proposal (in its current form) won't go anywhere because it is far too broad and unfocused to be sustainable or build a community." CreationDate="2012-01-09T14:28:30.283" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5946" PostId="1032" Score="0" Text="@whuber: Lack of research isn't a reason for closure that the SE network supports. See &quot;[Introduce a “general reference” close reason](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/86043/246931)&quot; and &quot;[Should a clear lack of research be grounds for closing a question?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/102811/246931)&quot; (Don't mind me if you already knew this; I realize your comment is 2.64 years old by now...)" CreationDate="2014-07-31T17:28:44.263" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="2001" PostId="1033" Score="3" Text="I agree with these thoughts, including those about a proposed data SE.  The wording in the FAQ is carefully chosen--&quot;collecting&quot; data distinguishes it from &quot;finding&quot; data--but of course we can make that distinction stronger at any time.  Suggestions are welcome. Note, though, that we explicitly decided that questions about how to go about generating (and, to an extent, managing) your own data *are* on topic.  I probably should add that (a) mods don't often have to close off-topic &quot;where do I find data&quot; questions and (b) if you think that's inconsistently enforced, please flag the violations." CreationDate="2012-01-09T23:58:57.147" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2002" PostId="1033" Score="3" Text="@whuber I'm completely in agreement that the generation and management of data are on-topic.  I've only seen one or two &quot;where do I find&quot; questions in quite some time, so I don't think it's a pressing matter at all - but I do think a more direct prohibition of &quot;where do I find data&quot; questions would be nice to have.  Realistically, I doubt most people check the FAQ before asking - but I'd feel a bit better if we could point authors to that exact question.  Overall, though, this hasn't been nearly the problem that I feared it would be when we were starting up." CreationDate="2012-01-10T00:34:01.130" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="2003" PostId="1035" Score="9" Text="(+1) Nice idea!" CreationDate="2012-01-11T13:43:36.947" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2004" PostId="1035" Score="2" Text="excellent idea +1" CreationDate="2012-01-12T18:24:06.343" UserId="6064" />
  <row Id="2005" PostId="1036" Score="2" Text="I realize that there are many other sites that provide this service, but there is no guarantee of long-term hosting with these sites (AFAIK). With imgur, the image stays as long as imgur survives. If I link to a file on dropbox and in a few weeks remove the file, the benefit of the question is significantly reduced. The other benefit of storing it 'in house' could be to ensure that the data conforms to a specific structure (e.g. csv, rather than something random)." CreationDate="2012-01-12T21:30:04.730" UserId="2635" />
  <row Id="2006" PostId="1036" Score="6" Text="@celenius - We  would offer no such guarantee either! More seriously though, there are virus concerns, an entire infrastructure has to be setup and maintained that doesn't exist now....for little benefit, especially when such hosting services exist.  Keep in mind we host *nothing* now, nothing at all, images are just links - this is a huge time and technology investment on our side....for no real reason, so we won't be doing this." CreationDate="2012-01-12T21:48:16.620" UserId="884" />
  <row Id="2007" PostId="1036" Score="1" Text="@NickCraver I understand that the images are not hosted by SE, but if I remember correctly they are permanently there due to some agreement. Could something similar be developed for file-hosting? In addition a small snippet of the data could be displayed in-browser, read from the hosted file. (Not trying to repeat myself, just clarifying what I mean)." CreationDate="2012-01-12T21:54:35.177" UserId="2635" />
  <row Id="2008" PostId="1036" Score="3" Text="@celenius - I'm unaware of any service that has such options for us to use...and in any case, the risk of our domain linking to a virus file and being labeled as malware is a *huge* risk, one not readily recovered from in today's internet (which consist of aggregated blacklists for such things).  There are other reasons, this is just one example of **very bad things** that can happen from doing any file hosting." CreationDate="2012-01-12T21:59:11.550" UserId="884" />
  <row Id="2009" PostId="1036" Score="0" Text="I had not thought about the security concern when I first suggested this; perhaps it could be allayed by only allowing users with a certain reputation access to this functionality. Is checking what files people link to currently, a security concern for the site at the moment?" CreationDate="2012-01-12T22:09:38.020" UserId="2635" />
  <row Id="2010" PostId="1036" Score="0" Text="@celenius - Files being linked to and files being linked to on a site *under our domain* are 2 different things, e.g. a file flagged as a virus on our domain can be flagged and propagated, filtering down into people's local antivirus labeling our domain as evil pretty much, this is one of those very bad things :) Unfortunately rep doesn't really mitigate this, especially in the not-intentionally-malicious case.  As I mentioned before though, this is one of many issues around hosting, backups, distributed hosting, bandwidth, etc. come readily to mind." CreationDate="2012-01-12T22:31:48.257" UserId="884" />
  <row Id="2031" PostId="1036" Score="0" Text="@NickCraver While StackExchange couldn't guarantee the long-term survival of these files, the threat is considerably less as if SE goes away, the questions go too. This is a considerably different problem than questions littered with broken links to data." CreationDate="2012-01-28T20:53:15.623" UserId="5836" />
  <row Id="2032" PostId="1036" Score="3" Text="@EpiGrad - That's not true :)  That's also an argument *against* this, if SE goes away the questions **do not go away**.  Remember all the content you post here is under the Creative Commons share alike license meaning it belongs to the community not us.  Every 2 months or so we provide a data dump from all our non-beta sites via torrent so that the knowledge lives on and can be hosted elsewhere should something happen to us...or just general experiments with the data.  *If* we hosted files, providing every file as part of that data dump would get to be unreasonable very quickly." CreationDate="2012-01-29T12:04:26.367" UserId="884" />
  <row Id="2035" PostId="1036" Score="0" Text="@NickCraver Didn't actually know that. Interesting..." CreationDate="2012-01-29T19:24:32.723" UserId="5836" />
  <row Id="2095" PostId="1036" Score="1" Text="@NickCraver I think that you host images.  What do you do with them in a data dump? I think that it would be useful even if data uploading was restricted to .csv files (no virus problems) and with a limit of say 1 or 2 meg (about the size of a large image).  The existing image infrastructure should be usurpable.  One meg would allow 10,000 to 100,000 x,y pairs, which should be more than enough to illuminate a question." CreationDate="2012-02-22T02:04:37.127" UserId="72" />
  <row Id="2017" PostId="1038" Score="2" Text="For those that have access, there are also several &quot;discussion&quot; papers and a rejoinder. Links to them can be found on [projecteuclid](http://projecteuclid.org/euclid.ss/1320066918). I'm not sure if there is an open-access link to them." CreationDate="2012-01-21T03:04:32.237" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2018" PostId="1038" Score="0" Text="I think I saw them on arXiv, in connection with this paper. Will have a look again as soo  as I have the time." CreationDate="2012-01-21T17:08:08.490" UserId="8507" />
  <row Id="2019" PostId="1038" Score="2" Text="I chased down all of them except for Larry Wasserman's. A couple of them looked like they might not be the final official version." CreationDate="2012-01-21T23:26:49.890" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2081" PostId="1038" Score="0" Text="I don't know whether Bayes posterior is dirty, but what I know for sure is that it's not quick! :-)" CreationDate="2012-02-20T20:39:53.770" UserId="5509" />
  <row Id="2082" PostId="1038" Score="0" Text="BTW, I had a look at the paper and don't really understand what this means. Are there any practical consequences for us ecologists using WinBUGS? I'll be curious for conclusions of your debate!!" CreationDate="2012-02-20T20:41:59.337" UserId="5509" />
  <row Id="2104" PostId="1038" Score="0" Text="I am probably going to be late at this starts at 5am Sat for me, but I will show up when I wake up. :)" CreationDate="2012-02-24T09:13:17.007" UserId="8605" />
  <row Id="2013" PostId="1039" Score="2" Text="I am sincerely very sorry my comments have come across as &quot;flak&quot;. That was not my intention at all. Certainly no offense was intended either; quite the contrary." CreationDate="2012-01-20T03:37:26.793" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2014" PostId="1039" Score="1" Text="If you have some free time and the inclination, perhaps we could set a time to chat for a bit and try to reach a point of convergence. I would be interested." CreationDate="2012-01-20T03:39:55.917" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2024" PostId="1039" Score="1" Text="An answer (or question) that has been edited by others or has collected *thoughtful* or *constructive* comments is, in that richer sense, no longer the property of an individual: it is the product of the community.  Arguably, then, it should not be deleted.  A counter-argument is that an individual's name is attached to it and thereby makes them nominally responsible, whence they *must* have full control.  But perhaps that tension can be mitigated through appropriate comments or through the CW mechanism.  Do not most users have the ability to mark their own reply (by itself) as CW?" CreationDate="2012-01-23T15:29:04.417" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2012" PostId="1040" Score="0" Text="Strangely enough, I never received the prompt to continue in chat. I was expecting it, but it never came. No idea why." CreationDate="2012-01-20T03:35:50.477" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2021" PostId="1040" Score="1" Text="@Cardinal I believe you may have enough reputation to make that proposal yourself and open up a private chat room.  (I just checked our FAQ but it doesn't mention what the threshold is for that privilege: maybe someone else knows for sure.)" CreationDate="2012-01-23T15:18:43.407" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2025" PostId="1040" Score="0" Text="@whuber: This is a good point that I hadn't considered. Perhaps I should have been more proactive about migrating to chat. I will keep this in mind for the future." CreationDate="2012-01-23T17:26:40.360" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2029" PostId="1040" Score="2" Text="@whuber /cc cardinal http://stats.stackexchange.com/privileges/ indicates that 100 rep is required to create a new chat room. However, I don't know if this applies to &quot;let us continue in chat...&quot;-like invitations." CreationDate="2012-01-25T14:24:26.363" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="2020" PostId="1042" Score="5" Text="A very big +1 for this answer that might well become our reference for future issues like this. It would be a shame if all comments have to disappear at some point, because a lot of them are of great quality and provide supplementary information that would simply be lost. I'm sure your commenting activity is greatly appreciated by the community, so no worries about that." CreationDate="2012-01-22T11:30:40.113" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="2022" PostId="1042" Score="4" Text="I agree wholeheartedly with @chl.  My only regret, Cardinal, is that you tend (more than most) to leave your contributions buried in comments and do not put them into actual replies, which makes your contributions a little harder to find than they should be.  I believe I have similar tendencies but I have learned that it is not too hard to paste a comment or two into a reply :-)." CreationDate="2012-01-23T15:22:21.793" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2023" PostId="1042" Score="2" Text="...and amen about the comments on tone.  600 characters is such a precious resource that often the polite words that usually smooth the way to new or different ideas get lost by the wayside." CreationDate="2012-01-23T15:24:10.713" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2026" PostId="1042" Score="0" Text="@whuber: Thank you for your comments. I will try to post more comments as answers in the future. I know others have suggested this in the past. I suppose I'm (too) fussy about that." CreationDate="2012-01-23T17:29:10.747" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2027" PostId="1043" Score="3" Text="Very well put.  I have had similar experiences in trying to answer easy (looking) questions.  (I'm still working on some of them... :-)" CreationDate="2012-01-23T22:53:10.653" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2028" PostId="1043" Score="11" Text="I find it very interesting that your questions were answered by people with low reputations on this site.  It goes to show that reputation and badges are not everything; the size and diversity of the community are highly meaningful and valuable.  I hope the people who answered your questions read this reply and recognize themselves and what they have accomplished for you, and that it encourages them to keep contributing.  We all value that." CreationDate="2012-01-23T22:56:38.387" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2030" PostId="1043" Score="8" Text="Where else will I get achievement points now I no longer playing World of Warcraft? :)" CreationDate="2012-01-26T18:23:15.243" UserId="8605" />
  <row Id="2033" PostId="1044" Score="2" Text="[book] is a kind of post-merging artifact, hopefully some maintenance will wipe it out (it cannot be added to new questions, since it will be automatically converted to [books]). Anyway, thanks for your edits!" CreationDate="2012-01-29T12:22:27.110" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="2034" PostId="1045" Score="0" Text="Yes, all I have been doing is editing the tag wiki short description, as in adding one. I have not touched any with content. And I have only retagged two recent posts with existing tags to try to help get more interested readers." CreationDate="2012-01-29T17:15:42.590" UserId="8605" />
  <row Id="2036" PostId="1045" Score="0" Text="I love the idea that &quot;the tags on the site have almost policed themselves, and have required very little systematic intervention.&quot;  Over time, *somebody* has put a lot of effort into creating these and checking them.  (Actually, it's more than one person, but it is a very small number of them.)" CreationDate="2012-01-29T23:11:45.937" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2037" PostId="1045" Score="0" Text="@whuber, I apologize, and I did not mean to belittle the work you, the other moderators, or anyone else has done in maintaining said tags. I have tried to re-word my statement to accurately reflect my opinion without diminishing the contributions yourself or others have put into making the site function so smoothly. Also I notice the tag-wiki's are much more complete than I had previously remembered (or perhaps misremembered). I assume I have those same individuals to thank for such contributions to the site." CreationDate="2012-01-30T13:33:19.717" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="2038" PostId="1045" Score="0" Text="@Michelle, given the quality of your answers so far on the site I have faith you would be able to positively contribute to both the body and excerpt for the tag wiki. The same goes for re-tagging questions." CreationDate="2012-01-30T13:36:31.647" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="2039" PostId="1045" Score="0" Text="No complaints, Andy: I just wanted to set the record straight.  RE your new version: please note that tag edits and wiki edits do not affect any questions; nothing will get &quot;bumped.&quot;  Only changes to the set of tags actually *applied* to a question will update the question and cause it to appear higher in the &quot;Active&quot; list." CreationDate="2012-01-30T15:27:28.503" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2042" PostId="1048" Score="1" Text="I removed the online tag on the above 4 questions, but do not have sufficient rep and need my edits approved." CreationDate="2012-02-01T18:14:49.187" UserId="4872" />
  <row Id="2043" PostId="1048" Score="1" Text="Done.  I created a new &quot;Internet&quot; tag and applied it to two of those questions." CreationDate="2012-02-01T18:53:04.080" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2040" PostId="1049" Score="1" Text="the only problem might be that people will continue to misuse the online tag to tag internet-resources questions in the future. I guess we could write a tag wiki, but it is not obvious that people read those. If we replace online by online-algorithm then no such confusion would arise." CreationDate="2012-01-31T19:46:53.610" UserId="4872" />
  <row Id="2044" PostId="1051" Score="1" Text="I don't know the answer, but would like to point out that expressions like this are likely to be marked up in $\TeX$ and therefore would not match the special characters anyway." CreationDate="2012-02-06T15:29:05.640" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2045" PostId="1051" Score="0" Text="Plus most formulas has some &quot;verbalization&quot; under which it is a better idea to look -- for instance *large p small n* for $p\gg N$." CreationDate="2012-02-06T16:09:28.573" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="3605" PostId="1051" Score="0" Text="In what sense do you want to search for this? We do have a tag for [underdetermined](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/underdetermined), which we use for &quot;p&gt;&gt;n&quot;." CreationDate="2012-10-26T18:36:31.707" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2046" PostId="1054" Score="0" Text="Thanks! Which site is likely to have answers to my questions, in your opinion?" CreationDate="2012-02-11T00:45:41.873" UserId="1005" />
  <row Id="2047" PostId="1054" Score="1" Text="The abstract way in which you pose the question is more conducive to the math site.  The question itself is of greater interest here." CreationDate="2012-02-11T01:55:09.320" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2048" PostId="1054" Score="0" Text="@whuber: Thanks! The first link is just asking about a simple example, which I think may be suitable for migrating to this site? The second link is about its formal statement, which I think may be suitable for staying at math.se?" CreationDate="2012-02-11T02:52:18.750" UserId="1005" />
  <row Id="2050" PostId="1055" Score="4" Text="You could always put links to them in your &quot;about me&quot; box. I've seen users do similar things on some other SE sites (math.SE, for example)." CreationDate="2012-02-16T17:37:18.047" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3613" PostId="1055" Score="0" Text="I'm marking this `[status-declined]` not because I think it's a bad idea (actually, I personally thing this is a really fun idea!) but because this type of thing isn't what the system is built for. I suggest following @cardinal's advice, above, or linking to these answers in your [Careers 2.0 profile](http://careers.stackoverflow.com/podcast)." CreationDate="2012-10-26T20:02:38.620" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="2065" PostId="1056" Score="0" Text="Thank you for the compliment. If it's not to forward, let me be more pointed. Eg, I've noticed that you've given many strong answers on cluster analyses, a topic I should know more about. What if I wondered which set of your responses you would put forward as your best there? Or, someone else might come along &amp; really want to know more about ANOVA; &amp; having come to trust your answers, would prefer to start there, rather than a generic search on CV. (I apologize if I put you on the spot here inappropriately.)" CreationDate="2012-02-18T23:59:24.637" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2067" PostId="1056" Score="0" Text="@gung Thanks for your comment on my posts. To speak frankly, I don't know how I would rank my own responses because I tend to find other's replies better :-) I also tend to believe that the SE community will help to discriminate bad from good responses, even if the latter got few votes. SE sites are really dynamical systems." CreationDate="2012-02-19T22:00:31.003" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="2052" PostId="1057" Score="0" Text="I agree. I first thought that it would be good idea to have a separate site, but now it seems that ml.SE has not attracted enough experts (but mostly enthusiasts like me) ... I shouldn't have signed up :(" CreationDate="2012-02-16T22:27:33.290" UserId="264" />
  <row Id="2053" PostId="1057" Score="2" Text="The active participating experts have refused such a merge multiple times for reasons I do not understand. So I guess even if such a merge would happen, they would wander off elsewhere ..." CreationDate="2012-02-16T22:31:21.833" UserId="264" />
  <row Id="2054" PostId="1057" Score="0" Text="If it's likely to be shut down, what is the point of a merger?" CreationDate="2012-02-16T22:38:32.417" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2055" PostId="1057" Score="2" Text="@whuber I assume the benefit is that we would inherit their questions and answers, which would seem to be better than letting them drift into oblivion." CreationDate="2012-02-16T23:06:32.900" UserId="72" />
  <row Id="2056" PostId="1057" Score="4" Text="I guess it depends on their quality.  Beta is a time when the community is just figuring things out and a lot goes on that would be unacceptable in a more mature setting like ours.  I do not relish the idea of reviewing hundreds of threads for suitability to our site.  Presumably, that community has good reasons for not wishing to post their questions here, which I take as *prima facie* evidence that many of them might *not* be appropriate." CreationDate="2012-02-16T23:12:02.627" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2057" PostId="1057" Score="0" Text="You should please post your comments as replies, @Steffen, to make them more visible as such and to enable the community to vote them up or down.  Now that the question is on meta (thank you for that suggestion!), voting will have no effect on anybody's reputation: its purpose is to get a sense of the community." CreationDate="2012-02-16T23:14:54.777" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2058" PostId="1057" Score="0" Text="Sorry all for posting on main site -- too many tabs :[" CreationDate="2012-02-17T00:43:21.770" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="2059" PostId="1057" Score="0" Text="I'd like to add that the ML site's community is [very very resistant](http://stackmobile.com/meta.machinelearning.stackexchange/questions/24) to merging into CV." CreationDate="2012-02-17T18:37:26.597" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="2060" PostId="1057" Score="0" Text="@Aarthi, it would be best to summarize that sentiment here directly in this thread. The private beta is blocked to the general public (although it appears by the message I received trying to access the site that won't be the case in a few days?)" CreationDate="2012-02-17T19:29:06.657" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="2061" PostId="1057" Score="0" Text="@AndyW Oh! Whoops a doo -- I fixed that link so that y'all can see the conversation now. :)" CreationDate="2012-02-17T19:36:09.890" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="2062" PostId="1057" Score="4" Text="@Aarthi I think I detect a great overlap among the *objectives* of the questions asked here and at ML; the resistance seems to come from an aversion to the use of *statistical thinking* among some vocal members of the ML community.  That's too bad; I would love to see novel methods and concepts applied to problems of data analysis and statistics.  The complaints that we don't have enough ML questions (or answers) here seem rather tautological and self-fulfilling: &quot;I don't want to contribute ML Q's or A's to the stats site because it doesn't have many such threads.&quot;  Gosh." CreationDate="2012-02-17T20:42:38.983" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2063" PostId="1057" Score="0" Text="@Aarthi Our main problem is that once we have established a broader scope here it is a constant struggle to make people acknowledge this -- for instance this is why I so desperately fought for CrossValidated. It is hard to make people believe that they can talk about ML without &quot;statistical burden&quot; on *stats*.SE." CreationDate="2012-02-18T09:12:59.407" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="2064" PostId="1057" Score="4" Text="Looking over their complaints about merging, the issue seems to be that while some of ML overlaps w/ stats, other ML issues overlap elsewhere, &amp; they want the topic brought together in one place w/o the fragmentation that might otherwise occur. That's a reasonable point. I wonder if SE can create a system where some people could log on, not to a specific site like CV or SO, but to an account that returns a join from multiple sites. This would allow them to keep tabs on a topic that spills over w/ multiple sites." CreationDate="2012-02-18T23:12:49.473" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2066" PostId="1057" Score="0" Text="@Aarthi Come on, their arguments are like &quot;I hate CV because of all those R questions&quot; or &quot;It is too *statistical*&quot; (while they have questions about PCA and regression)." CreationDate="2012-02-19T12:06:15.183" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="2077" PostId="1057" Score="3" Text="@mbq,  I stumbled upon this today, http://www.r-statistics.com/2010/07/statistical-analysis-qa-website-did-stackoverflow-just-lose-it-to-metaoptimize-and-is-it-good-or-bad/  when stats.SE &amp; Metaoptimize was only at the beginning.... IMHO SE somewhat lost the battle as it seems that most of the ML community is now at metaoptimize and i think that stackexchange is doing the same mistake again ..." CreationDate="2012-02-20T20:08:19.347" UserId="6637" />
  <row Id="2079" PostId="1057" Score="0" Text="@mbq, please check this : http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/21568/softmax-regression-bias-and-prior-probabilities-for-unequal-classes and this http://metaoptimize.com/qa/questions/8900/softmax-regression-bias-and-prior-probabilities-for-unequal-classes and I can give you many more examples" CreationDate="2012-02-20T20:11:44.493" UserId="6637" />
  <row Id="2085" PostId="1057" Score="0" Text="@Dov Well, if you think Metaoptimize is better, use it. It is not SE, so I don't care." CreationDate="2012-02-20T22:11:00.547" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="2087" PostId="1057" Score="2" Text="@Dov your hyped metaoptimize has created 1473 questions since the start around july 2010, meanwhile stats.stackexchange created 7962 questions. The quota of roughly 1473 / (20 months * 30 days)=2.45 questions per day aligns pretty well with my experience from the rapidminer-forum that the ML - community is splitted up way too much." CreationDate="2012-02-21T07:44:49.120" UserId="264" />
  <row Id="2088" PostId="1057" Score="1" Text="So creating a new site stating &quot;this is the one everyone should go to&quot; is like setting a standard when already five standards exist. The result is not one, but six standards ;)." CreationDate="2012-02-21T07:49:09.037" UserId="264" />
  <row Id="2083" PostId="1058" Score="0" Text="&quot;I think that the stats- and ML-folks should learn more from each other&quot; -- that for sure! but ML should have there own site..." CreationDate="2012-02-20T21:40:02.333" UserId="6637" />
  <row Id="2089" PostId="1058" Score="0" Text="@Dov yes, they will. But this is like the first settlers reaching North America and before they even have built the first city stating that they want to be independent of Britain. I think the time has not come yet." CreationDate="2012-02-21T07:52:12.777" UserId="264" />
  <row Id="2068" PostId="1059" Score="2" Text="Again, this not a site on which you just &quot;can&quot; ask about ML, this is a site which is explicitly devoted to ML (among stats and visualization). This is like arguing that there should be C++.SE because you can ask C++-featuring questions on circa half of SE sites." CreationDate="2012-02-20T10:32:20.247" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="2069" PostId="1059" Score="0" Text="Well, maybe. But to me it's more like Game Development being a separate one, and Security being a separate one - why not just ask everything on stackoverflow, eh? :) But I do understand your point and still don't agree - perhaps because I'm not used to SE." CreationDate="2012-02-20T11:10:39.473" UserId="9013" />
  <row Id="2070" PostId="1059" Score="0" Text="Because questions about game AI, best looking stone textures, password strength or deploying fake GSM station are not about programming." CreationDate="2012-02-20T12:51:41.047" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="2071" PostId="1059" Score="1" Text="Similarly as questions about machine learning are not necessarily for _&quot;statisticians, data analysts, data miners and data visualization experts&quot;_ per se, no?" CreationDate="2012-02-20T13:27:39.413" UserId="9013" />
  <row Id="2072" PostId="1059" Score="1" Text="The official scope is in the [FAQ](http://stats.stackexchange.com/faq#questions). This tagline is very hard to change, thus its far from perfect." CreationDate="2012-02-20T14:49:48.203" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="2074" PostId="1059" Score="0" Text="How would you propose modifying the FAQ tagline, @mbq?  (As you know, mods can easily edit it, so I presume by &quot;hard&quot; you mean that significant changes are usually discussed first.)" CreationDate="2012-02-20T19:14:59.863" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2075" PostId="1059" Score="1" Text="@whuber I meant the description from [SE.com](http://stackexchange.com/sites) and [about page](http://stats.stackexchange.com/about). Those are controlled by the team only; an extensive discussion is of course also an inevitable step." CreationDate="2012-02-20T19:48:12.137" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="2076" PostId="1059" Score="0" Text="@mbq OK, got it.  But my question still stands: you have said the tagline is &quot;far from perfect.&quot;  Would you like to initiate a conversation (chat or meta) about how to improve it?  Or, imperfect as it may be, perhaps it's passably ok? :-)" CreationDate="2012-02-20T19:51:14.360" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2073" PostId="1060" Score="3" Text="Ok, I agree that this is not trivial to guess that this site is *the* place for ML on SE. But there are better ways to fix that than making a new site with no visibility. Moreover this does not really matter since people come to SE not by reaching list on stackexchange.com and picking site which matches their questions but by discovering a site which already have questions similar to their via Google." CreationDate="2012-02-20T17:43:47.820" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="2084" PostId="1060" Score="1" Text="@mbq, Trust me, what that Vass say is the reason!.. and please let me add something: I see that you have a high reputation here and I see that people are tend to listen to your advises...but saying (over and over) that ML and Stat.SE can leave in the same place - IMHO is sort of a miss-understanding of the ML material...I think that &quot;newbies&quot; at ML could be mislead by the answer at stat.SE and your statements here... I might be wrong - but PLEASE think about it." CreationDate="2012-02-20T21:50:08.670" UserId="6637" />
  <row Id="2086" PostId="1060" Score="0" Text="@Dov I'm afraid I don't comprehend your comment." CreationDate="2012-02-20T22:18:46.747" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="2090" PostId="1060" Score="1" Text="@Vass As I have posted in a comment above, metaoptimize created a whopping amount of 1473 questions in 600 days meanwhile stats.SE created 7962. So metaoptimize may be far from small, but it is certainly not big." CreationDate="2012-02-21T07:59:44.357" UserId="264" />
  <row Id="2091" PostId="1060" Score="1" Text="@steffen. but in metaoptimize they are all ML question where Stat.SE has only 430 on ML. http://stats.stackexchange.com/tags/machine-learning/info while about 20% unanswered http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/machine-learning?sort=unanswered" CreationDate="2012-02-21T13:26:03.430" UserId="6637" />
  <row Id="2092" PostId="1060" Score="3" Text="@mbq although Dov's English isn't that good, I think the point he's trying to make is that ML and stats have separate identities. I have to say I agree - I struggle with the content on here but am very comfortable with questions on MO, and was also on the ML.SE beta." CreationDate="2012-02-21T13:27:15.557" UserId="7365" />
  <row Id="2093" PostId="1060" Score="1" Text="@steffen agreed on that point - but I think this was a opportunity for ML.SE to become *the* place for ML questions, rather than being indicative of a general lack of interest in the area. I think once people have &quot;bought in&quot; to the SE idea, they're likely to have accounts in many places. However having an account on a standalone clone clearly doesn't have the same appeal." CreationDate="2012-02-21T13:29:06.990" UserId="7365" />
  <row Id="2096" PostId="1061" Score="2" Text="**To all**: Most of these questions likely will not need any action from our community.  Consider using the list provided by Rebecca as a guide to a collection of threads you might wish to read in the near future; I hope you enjoy them.  As you catch up, your help would be **much** appreciated in identifying any (near) duplicates, as well as any that might possibly be off topic.  When you run across such a situation, please just click on the `flag` link beneath the question to let a moderator know about it.  Thank you!" CreationDate="2012-02-22T21:27:15.833" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2097" PostId="1061" Score="0" Text="Now all we need is AI to be included and everybody can be very happy" CreationDate="2012-02-22T22:18:06.217" UserId="420" />
  <row Id="2099" PostId="1061" Score="2" Text="@IvoFlipse and change the name of it to ML.SE ..... ;-)" CreationDate="2012-02-23T10:02:25.980" UserId="7365" />
  <row Id="17351" PostId="1061" Score="0" Text="Tried to go through and edit the tags on my own questions but quickly got: &gt; **Too many edits** &gt; You have already edited 5 of your own posts today (not including very recent posts). Further edits are not allowed until tomorrow. &gt; Please contact a moderator if you require assistance." CreationDate="2012-02-23T10:01:00.490" UserId="7365" />
  <row Id="17352" PostId="1061" Score="0" Text="Yeah, the system thinks you are self-vandalizing -- unfortunately I can't remove the blockade manually. We (mods) are working to fix untagged questions -- lack of machine-learning tag is not a big problem because many of the CV's original ML questions were missing this tag." CreationDate="2012-02-23T10:31:02.070" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="17353" PostId="1061" Score="0" Text="@mbq not just machine-learning tag - any tags that were used on ML.SE but didn't exist on stats.SE got lost on the way over, so some Q's have no tags at all" CreationDate="2012-02-23T16:39:37.617" UserId="7365" />
  <row Id="17354" PostId="1061" Score="0" Text="Precisely -- you can check that there are no more untagged posts from ML, we are working to adjust the rest." CreationDate="2012-02-23T18:11:32.197" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="17355" PostId="1061" Score="0" Text="Ok gone through them all." CreationDate="2012-02-24T09:27:37.903" UserId="7365" />
  <row Id="2080" PostId="1062" Score="1" Text="A must read: http://www.r-statistics.com/2010/07/statistical-analysis-qa-website-did-stackoverflow-just-lose-it-to-metaoptimize-and-is-it-good-or-bad/" CreationDate="2012-02-20T20:32:25.107" UserId="6637" />
  <row Id="2094" PostId="1062" Score="1" Text="Thank you for the link Dov.  I almost forgot I put it up there.  What do you take from that post?" CreationDate="2012-02-21T21:03:25.160" UserId="253" />
  <row Id="2103" PostId="1062" Score="0" Text="@TalGalili. I think that I'm the one that need to say &quot;thank you for this post&quot;... :) though at that time, you thought that there is sort of &quot;battle&quot; between the sites. SE become more statistically oriented where MO become a machine learning oriented. Hence, I think that although those fields are sometime overlap and each community can learn from each other, I think that ML could benefit from a site for its own. Theoretically, I wish to see it here at SE – as the setup here is more convenient. (Until this will happen, I think that will be mostly at MO). - Excuse me for my Israeli accent :)" CreationDate="2012-02-23T22:25:09.227" UserId="6637" />
  <row Id="3611" PostId="1063" Score="0" Text="I'm sure the moderators would be more than happy to add this tag, but they'd need a few examples of questions that would be improved by having this tag added to them!" CreationDate="2012-10-26T20:00:44.083" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="2098" PostId="1064" Score="2" Text="Seems like none of them got the tag [machine-learning]?" CreationDate="2012-02-23T09:54:18.953" UserId="7365" />
  <row Id="2106" PostId="1066" Score="3" Text="Have you looked at threads associated with the [media tag](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/media)?" CreationDate="2012-02-24T16:01:11.693" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2107" PostId="1066" Score="0" Text="@whuber  I had not - I had searched for several tags, but didn't come across that one.  Thanks!" CreationDate="2012-02-24T16:38:11.760" UserId="5256" />
  <row Id="2108" PostId="1067" Score="18" Text="(+1) Regarding the linked question, I would like to state here (rather than the comment stream on the main site) that I do not generally think it is a good idea to *downvote* a duplicate simply for *being* a duplicate unless the OP is doing something else egregious or obnoxious. This is especially true given that the search facilities are not always the best on this site and it's not always obvious that something is a duplicate. Indeed, in the case in question, there is a certain amount of grey area." CreationDate="2012-02-26T03:08:34.747" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2109" PostId="1067" Score="0" Text="Major points for writing such an awesome post. :D You may also consider [stealing this post](http://meta.crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/129/a-guide-to-moderating-crypto-stackexchange-yourself-close-voting/) for your meta. A number of sites have -- just make sure you attribute your source!" CreationDate="2012-02-26T03:13:06.380" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="2134" PostId="1067" Score="1" Text="+1 to @cardinal, I feel rather uncomfortable downvoting &amp; I'm not sure I've ever downvoted a question. I tend to think a fairly lenient approach is best--even if a question is pretty similar to a previous one. I think it's better to leave a comment linking to the other answer, or asking for clarification; the OP may not have gotten what they needed from the other question. If nothing happens after a few days, perhaps then it could be closed." CreationDate="2012-03-04T08:16:39.073" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2139" PostId="1067" Score="5" Text="@gung: My feeling is we should be as welcoming as possible to new users in particular. In my mind this means displaying patience and eschewing strong negative feedback at the outset. Anecdotally I seem to have noticed that since the introduction of no penalty for downvoting questions, we see a lot more of that on this site, even for new users. I would rather see us help the user reformulate their question in a positive way to make it amenable to the site. (...)" CreationDate="2012-03-04T19:14:51.237" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2140" PostId="1067" Score="4" Text="@gung: (...) I don't downvote very often (questions or answers), but I have probably downvoted a handful of questions, generally from experienced users that I know are familiar enough with the site to know how to write a useful question. In some such cases it can be a useful feedback mechanism." CreationDate="2012-03-04T19:16:58.677" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2141" PostId="1067" Score="1" Text="@cardinal, +1 (or 2) again. I agree entirely, &amp; I think your policy of only downvoting questions from experienced users is a good one. OTOH, I just made my 1st question downvote on an absurd &amp; inappropriate question from a brand new user, so I guess there will always be exceptions..." CreationDate="2012-03-04T20:47:38.157" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2142" PostId="1067" Score="1" Text="@gung: I'm pretty sure I know the question and I downvoted as well. Please vote to close if you haven't. You have the reputation to do so. Cheers. :)" CreationDate="2012-03-04T20:54:29.087" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="16688" PostId="1067" Score="0" Text="Echoing some others, new users often have questions that could benefit others but don't always phrase it accordingly and thus draw the close votes. Using comments to help get question rephrased to benefit both the OP and others is probably wise, then close if no action taken by OP." CreationDate="2018-09-18T17:07:29.513" UserId="177387" />
  <row Id="2110" PostId="1068" Score="0" Text="Hmm, an interesting answer.  :)  In some cases, I actually prefer the idea of having multiple questions, such as those mentioned in the Q (e.g. what is the model, what are the assumptions of the model, etc. - even these 2 could well be separate questions, as the first may be a pain to pin down, and they may be serial in nature).  (Cont'd)" CreationDate="2012-02-26T22:32:21.803" UserId="5256" />
  <row Id="2111" PostId="1068" Score="0" Text="(Cont'd)  As for the blog, I think it would play a useful role: it could be a good place for a &quot;conclusion&quot;, i.e. to wrap up some of the community insights.  It could well be a good place to introduce the topic and encourage people to follow the site.  I'm not too familiar with how the site's blog works and what inspires or produces the topics that will be addressed." CreationDate="2012-02-26T22:33:39.150" UserId="5256" />
  <row Id="2115" PostId="1068" Score="1" Text="(+1, hours ago, but never got around to commenting) I think the blog is the place for this, generally speaking. *But*, we really need to find some way to make the blog more prominent on the main site, particularly once someone logs in. I don't see an obvious link to it. There *is* one buried in the navigation bar at the bottom once you're logged in, but that really can't be driving much traffic." CreationDate="2012-02-27T02:15:13.370" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2117" PostId="1068" Score="1" Text="@cardinal, That may be best to address that in a separate question here on the meta site. I don't think I have the best perspective on  visibility to the casual user since I'm involved with the blog already and know when things are published. Although I agree that the header of the site should have a permanent link to the blog." CreationDate="2012-02-27T12:55:57.320" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="2118" PostId="1068" Score="1" Text="Yes, you're right. Just wanted to point it out here since we really should be integrating it more. You and others have done some nice work there and I'd like it to be more visible to all CV users. That's what I was ineloquently trying to say." CreationDate="2012-02-27T13:17:00.870" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2112" PostId="1069" Score="0" Text="Seems to be a CV issue. math.stackexchange.com's MathJax works fine." CreationDate="2012-02-26T23:27:52.227" UserId="2660" />
  <row Id="2113" PostId="1069" Score="0" Text="It seems to be working fine for me at the moment (Firefox and Safari on Mac OS X). I saw some intermittent problems earlier in the day, though. I've heard of similar problems on the math.SE site in the recent past. There may even be a meta thread there on it." CreationDate="2012-02-27T00:02:40.750" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2114" PostId="1069" Score="0" Text="Yeah, I've looked there and I've tried everything they've said to do. Thanks though." CreationDate="2012-02-27T00:11:09.377" UserId="2660" />
  <row Id="2116" PostId="1069" Score="0" Text="It works again, whoohoo!" CreationDate="2012-02-27T03:13:57.560" UserId="2660" />
  <row Id="2119" PostId="1070" Score="0" Text="PS, math.stackechange.com has been using the 2.0-beta copy of MathJax for several weeks, and so were not affected by the CDN problems, which only affected the mathjax/latest URL." CreationDate="2012-02-27T18:19:46.707" UserId="9462" />
  <row Id="2120" PostId="1071" Score="2" Text="Quick comment, a large part of the blog traffic referrals has come from when other key people have mentioned posts in social networking sites. Referrals from two prominent &quot;tweets&quot; and blog posts is about equal to all of the referral traffic from the main site. Those and the posts that have been forwarded to Tal Galil's r-blogger syndication have enjoyed the most traffic." CreationDate="2012-02-29T14:12:43.853" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="2121" PostId="1071" Score="0" Text="@Andy (+1), is that info only available to blog administrators? Would you interpret your analysis as possibly suggestive that increasing the visibility of the blog on the main site could increase traffic? Or, do you think that the main driver of traffic (long term) will be tweets and other social-networking activity independent from the main site?" CreationDate="2012-02-29T16:02:32.637" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2122" PostId="1071" Score="2" Text="I would take it to be *suggestive* that even if we improve visibility on the main site, tweets (and other social networking tools) have a *much greater potential* to drive traffic to the blog. A caveat to that is though I don't have a good gauge of the potential traffic the main site could bring to the blog. How many people visit the main site on a daily basis? I still think it is a good idea to improve visibility on the main site though (to the extent we can)." CreationDate="2012-02-29T16:36:59.183" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="2123" PostId="1071" Score="0" Text="I can either post the data here or one can get access to the blog if you (or anyone else) wants to see the data. If by chance one gets the inclination to write a post while one is in there looking at the data all the better! In the meantime I am going to ask the other blog moderators about disseminating the data (allthough I doubt I am betraying any confidences in releasing such info)." CreationDate="2012-02-29T16:37:27.683" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="2136" PostId="1071" Score="0" Text="Here is a link to a zip file that contains stats on the blog for the number of views per post, the dates that each post was published, and referrals. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3385251/statsblog_asof03042012.zip Still working on exporting the actual views per day for the whole site and for each individual post. I'll post a comment in the chat room to let everyone know this is available if they are interested." CreationDate="2012-03-04T14:01:31.167" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="2151" PostId="1071" Score="0" Text="I've created another zip file in my dropbox with the statistics for site views over the time frame, http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3385251/site_views_asof03052012.zip (if anyone is interested in critiquing my assertions!)" CreationDate="2012-03-06T19:33:51.297" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="2155" PostId="1071" Score="2" Text="If you (or gung is interested) I have uploaded another blog post (which is scheduled to be published on March 20th) about analyzing the site traffic. Feel free to navigate to the blog and give your opinion if you want to. I don't mean to badger though, so if you are not interested feel free to just wait (I doubt it is anything real controversial)! Also I don't want it to seem like I'm avoiding the discussion here by making a blog post. It is really just an elaboration of my previous comments about site traffic plus some of my opinion on the matter. (same comment left on gungs post below)" CreationDate="2012-03-15T18:50:53.267" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="2157" PostId="1071" Score="0" Text="@Andy, this sounds great. Thanks for pinging me. I'll have a look, but I may not get to it until it's just about published. And, you're not badgering at all. Thanks for all the hard work!" CreationDate="2012-03-15T20:02:11.897" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2158" PostId="1071" Score="0" Text="@Andy: Do you have a link to your new post? I tried to find some link to unpublished posts on the main blog site, but didn't see anything. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place." CreationDate="2012-03-15T23:51:17.690" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2159" PostId="1071" Score="0" Text="Did you [sign in to the wordpress site](http://stats.blogoverflow.com/wp-login.php)? The (current) link is http://stats.blogoverflow.com/2012/03/increasing-visibility-of-the-cv-blog-and-why-pie-charts-kind-of-suck/ ,but I believe you need to be signed in to see it." CreationDate="2012-03-16T00:04:15.647" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="2170" PostId="1071" Score="0" Text="Just one thing about the blog (which I've also only just noticed). Whatever you decide to do with it, integrate the user identities from here for comments.  It's tiresome to make a name and pass a captcha when you're already logged in." CreationDate="2012-03-26T14:32:58.913" UserId="1739" />
  <row Id="2124" PostId="1072" Score="8" Text="Thank you for bringing this to our attention.  (I usually check for possible red/green confusion, but it did not occur to me that green could be confused with gray!)  Perhaps @Jin could take a look?  Probably a solution could be as simple as using the same (dark) green for the checkmark as for the voting symbols." CreationDate="2012-02-29T18:56:12.423" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2125" PostId="1072" Score="0" Text="Thanks for the response. Its strange when it comes up. The only times it matters for me is the red green color blind test (you know the circles), stop signs obscured by leaves (whoops!) and occasionally on websites. Hard to quantify exactly when on websites and it generally doesn't matter, but the fix is usually painless. I am terrible at color matching games though." CreationDate="2012-02-29T19:21:45.980" UserId="9497" />
  <row Id="2137" PostId="1072" Score="0" Text="I totally agree with asjohnson's as I have the same problem. Please do something about it. Darker green and or clearly lighter grey would be great (I think the best would be to change both colours). For me the basic issue is also that there is too little contrast between the colors." CreationDate="2012-03-04T14:21:08.807" UserId="442" />
  <row Id="2166" PostId="1072" Score="0" Text="Could this be fixed by, e.g. use of a larger tick mark when the answer has been accepted, or adding in a title &quot;Accepted Answer&quot; above the relevant answer? It would appear that a change in the form used to identify the accepted answer might be more useful." CreationDate="2012-03-26T03:02:36.813" UserId="8605" />
  <row Id="2167" PostId="1072" Score="0" Text="I imagine a larger tick mark would be more noticable and text would be another solution that would get it done. I guess I would have to check the specific solution to be certain, but I don't see why either of them would not work." CreationDate="2012-03-26T13:51:21.837" UserId="9497" />
  <row Id="8200" PostId="1072" Score="6" Text="+1 It's a reasonable request--designers ought to pay attention to this issue.  In the meantime, note that when you hover the mouse over an arrow corresponding to a vote you already cast, the hovertext will end in &quot;(click again to undo)&quot;." CreationDate="2015-09-04T14:56:15.110" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="8202" PostId="1072" Score="5" Text="I am confused by what you mean by saying that `I have already had my votes locked on a few questions by trying to up-vote them when they were already up-voted`. Trying to upvote an already upvoted or downvoted question does not lead to any consequences! You get a notification saying that your vote is locked. The vote is locked automatically after a short delay (I think it's 5 min) following the original voting; **it is not the attempt to re-vote that locks it!**" CreationDate="2015-09-04T15:13:35.327" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8203" PostId="1072" Score="0" Text="@amoeba thanks. That makes sense. I was confused by the message I was getting. Anyway I think I up-voted and then forgot and tried again because it looked similar to the neutral color." CreationDate="2015-09-05T01:50:35.317" UserId="36757" />
  <row Id="8271" PostId="1072" Score="2" Text="I'm not color blind but I have one crummy monitor that I can't tune really well so gradients are always washed out.  On that monitor the colors are very close, and it is worse on Meta." CreationDate="2015-09-18T17:20:35.933" UserId="89026" />
  <row Id="8371" PostId="1072" Score="0" Text="@whuber I'd like to add that I too have trouble distinguishing between a pressed and unpressed vote arrow, as the color contrast ratio (CR) between the two is extremely poor. On the main site, the colors are Unpressed `#818185 : #027187` Pressed, CR = 1.46:1, and on Meta, Unpressed `#818185 : 3b3b3b` Pressed, CR = 2.89:1. Both are failing ratios according to [WCAG](http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/#qr-visual-audio-contrast-contrast), which requires 4.5:1. Using [Flux](justgetflux.com) at night makes the CR even worse, due to the faint blue tinge of the buttons getting completely erased." CreationDate="2015-09-29T21:39:50.103" UserId="66798" />
  <row Id="8448" PostId="1072" Score="1" Text="@AnnaLear, could you explain what has changed, after the tag `status-completed` was added into this question? We were talking about this in the chat ([ten fold room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/18/ten-fold)), but we couldn't figure it out. Thanks." CreationDate="2015-10-07T12:49:21.140" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="8449" PostId="1072" Score="1" Text="@AndreSilva ... I was on the wrong post. Sorry about that." CreationDate="2015-10-07T13:55:36.497" UserId="8588" />
  <row Id="2135" PostId="1073" Score="0" Text="You seem to think it's not quite right, but don't want to turn it down either. I think that if I were a moderator, I would have a fairly light hand as well. You could approve it &amp; then edit it to fix any problems (&amp; likewise for similar situations in the future). It seems to me tag wikis should be reasonably editable. For a regular answer, egos would often be bruised if we went into someone else's answer and made major revisions (even though we have the privilege to do so), but no one owns the tag wikis--so, no feelings should be hurt." CreationDate="2012-03-04T08:32:06.197" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2147" PostId="1073" Score="1" Text="@gung [Tag wikis](http://stats.stackexchange.com/privileges/approve-tag-wiki-edits) have strong restrictions with respect to editing (need to be in the 'top users' ) and reviewing (need to have a certain amount of rep). I think the basic idea here is to offer the community a way to discuss and improve this particular tag, that reflects a proeminent field in statistics, instead of leaving the last word to us, mods." CreationDate="2012-03-04T21:47:10.900" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="2148" PostId="1073" Score="0" Text="@chl, that's fair, but I wonder if the ultimate answer is that it would be better if tag wikis were more readily editable. Tags can be created w/ 300 rep, questions re-tagged w/ 500 rep, questions edited w/ 2k rep; requiring 5k rep to edit a tag wiki may be too high. I count 17 CVers currently who meet that requirement, &amp; many empty tag wikis. Perhaps 2k is enough to edit tag wikis, but 5k is required to accept edits from users w/ less, or some other scheme. BTW, I acknowledge these comments are not quite on topic; I have no problem w/ the community improving this tag here." CreationDate="2012-03-04T22:38:12.373" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2149" PostId="1073" Score="1" Text="Gung, unlike most other moderation tasks, approving a tag wiki edit (or improving on one) can require good subject-matter knowledge and much thought and care.  You are correct that a mod could &quot;approve it &amp; then edit to fix any problems,&quot; but that is a relatively heavy burden; often it's not a matter of just a few minutes' work.  The hard part comes when it's clear that somebody without the reputation to suggest they are an expert has put a lot of effort into a tag wiki but their proposed text is not entirely correct or suitable--or maybe the mod just isn't sure. The community can help here." CreationDate="2012-03-04T23:42:36.660" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2126" PostId="1074" Score="2" Text="Of course -- in fact you should be able to see it. If it is somewhat not working, I can e-mail it to you, post here or even undelete on the site." CreationDate="2012-03-01T11:01:25.130" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="2127" PostId="1074" Score="0" Text="No, I'm getting a &quot;page not found&quot; error. Could you please undelete it (with the comment(s)) but keep the &quot;closed&quot; state?" CreationDate="2012-03-01T15:35:02.343" UserId="6432" />
  <row Id="2128" PostId="1074" Score="1" Text="mbq is right: the question is still there.  As I was the one who deleted it (at your request), I have undeleted it so you don't have to wait any longer to get access to it.  (It still would be good to find out why you can't see the deleted question.)  You should be able to delete it or close it yourself, but the best action simply is to edit it as you see fit." CreationDate="2012-03-01T15:36:51.190" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2129" PostId="1074" Score="0" Text="Now I see the question again. Thank you." CreationDate="2012-03-01T15:45:56.557" UserId="6432" />
  <row Id="2133" PostId="1074" Score="2" Text="@whuber People below 10k rep can't see deleted questions, including their own. That's basically by design." CreationDate="2012-03-04T01:21:47.427" UserId="8588" />
  <row Id="2150" PostId="1074" Score="0" Text="Thanks for the clarification, Anna." CreationDate="2012-03-04T23:43:57.423" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2130" PostId="1076" Score="1" Text="Interesting, thanks for the link! However, the post on Oct 1 wasn't actually mine, it was someone else's, and I got +2 for editing it. It seems kind of weird that I should lose that rep-- doesn't that mean I could lower the rep of thousands of people all at once by deleting my own account? Anyone who's ever posted a response suddenly loses credit? Not really a big deal, I just thought it a strange system..." CreationDate="2012-03-01T22:58:37.787" UserId="1977" />
  <row Id="2131" PostId="1076" Score="0" Text="Yes, when a post is deleted, the reputation goes with it." CreationDate="2012-03-01T23:05:53.677" UserId="1142" />
  <row Id="2132" PostId="1078" Score="4" Text="I immediately thought of the **[xkcd radiation graphic](http://xkcd.com/radiation/)** as I read the last paragraph. It was interesting to see that it was actually *in* the article you cite." CreationDate="2012-03-03T16:46:52.403" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2138" PostId="1079" Score="0" Text="(+1) Thank you for your thoughtful comments. I agree with the general premise of your statements. I think the blog administrators have put some thought into what its &quot;mandate&quot; should be and it's pretty close to what you state. My personal feeling is that blog entries should serve to augment the content on the main site. Two main ways of doing this that I see are: (1) Provide expanded exposition of some topic(s) that occur frequently on the site but aren't easily handled in a short answer and (2) Provide general-purpose statistical knowledge and insight not easily available from other sources." CreationDate="2012-03-04T19:10:21.977" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2143" PostId="1079" Score="0" Text="@cardinal, your #1 is what I have in mind, but I'm disinclined to impose that on the community by myself--some discussion &amp; consensus-building is appropriate (whence the question upvote). One issue here is that this would probably require moderately serious re-coding of SE &amp; to be implemented SE-wide, so consensus needs to be achieved elsewhere as well. I believe there is a meta for SE, perhaps we should bring it up there if enough CVers sign on to this idea. Is there a way of keeping track here of how many CVers agree, or is it just a sense that builds over time from the comments?" CreationDate="2012-03-04T21:01:45.177" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2144" PostId="1079" Score="1" Text="One thing that I could do would be to post two &quot;answers&quot; simply asking people to vote one up (but not downvote the the other) if they &quot;agree&quot; (answer 1) or &quot;disagree&quot; (answer 2). Obviously that's a bit of an ugly hack that also forces a dichotomization of the discussion, where grey areas certainly exist." CreationDate="2012-03-04T21:04:33.083" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2145" PostId="1079" Score="0" Text="(You should both receive invitation that will grant you access to the blog.) In my view, the blog might be a good way to summarize main issues raised on CV (this has been discussed in previous thread there) and as a 'media' for developing thoughtful posts on current or past ideas regarding theoretical or applied statistics. I agree that the blog isn't visible enough actually, especially for newcomers or occasional visitors (although there should be a notification in the top navigation bar). (...)" CreationDate="2012-03-04T21:20:25.677" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="2146" PostId="1079" Score="1" Text="(...) A link somewhere on the site would be much appreciated, IMO (below the chat boxes on the right, or in the navigation bar directly?)." CreationDate="2012-03-04T21:20:32.137" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="2156" PostId="1079" Score="1" Text="If you (or cardinal is interested) I have uploaded another blog post (which is scheduled to be published on March 20th) about analyzing the site traffic. Feel free to navigate to the blog and give your opinion if you want to. I don't mean to badger though, so if you are not interested feel free to just wait (I doubt it is anything real controversial)! Also I don't want it to seem like I'm avoiding the discussion here by making a blog post. It is really just an elaboration of my previous comments about site traffic plus some of my opinion on the matter. (same comment left to cardinal)" CreationDate="2012-03-15T18:52:39.923" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="2171" PostId="1080" Score="0" Text="Some interesting discussion for making the blogs more integrated with the Stack Exchange engine [here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/110998/150339) on meta.so. Many of the questions that are coming up here have been [broached on meta.so as well](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/blog), so perusing those questions are worthwhile if you have any questions." CreationDate="2012-03-27T14:27:11.507" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="2152" PostId="1082" Score="2" Text="(+1) That really looks like an awesome feature! (I should note that you will need to have an account on CV in order to get formatted references.)" CreationDate="2012-03-13T20:20:04.720" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="2153" PostId="1082" Score="1" Text="That's really nice. Would there be a way of implementing it on other sites also?" CreationDate="2012-03-15T00:03:55.097" UserId="2635" />
  <row Id="2222" PostId="1082" Score="2" Text="What about encouraging (by example) to reference articles using [CiteULike](http://www.citeulike.org/user/newton1234/article/2903100).  The link points to an example reference, if you scroll to export records, you will be able to export the citation into different formats.  Citations like this will help readers of CV with their research and also increase the legitimacy of answers.  The only problem with this method is that it increases the distance between the actual article referred to (when available online) and the answer." CreationDate="2012-04-09T21:12:14.853" UserId="10322" />
  <row Id="2230" PostId="1082" Score="0" Text="@Andrew that is a good idea, but the goal here is to enable citations to be exported for answers (and questions) on _this_ site, not from the primary literature." CreationDate="2012-04-11T20:53:36.677" UserId="1381" />
  <row Id="2231" PostId="1082" Score="0" Text="I see your point now @David - never thought people cited these articles directly (and hence never recognised the screenshot). What I suggested / am looking for actually exists in another question in meta." CreationDate="2012-04-12T12:39:56.890" UserId="10322" />
  <row Id="2234" PostId="1082" Score="0" Text="For what I know, the review process in math community is different from that in statistics. My understanding is that every party knows all others' identities (authors, editors, reviewers), and you see the acknowledgement of who reviewed a particular paper along with the authors' names. It might be OK for mathematicians to consider a math.SE post as peer reviewed if there indeed were other mathematicians who looked at it and OK'ed it. In the end, it may suffice to have an arXiv paper to win the Fields Medal (TBC)" CreationDate="2012-04-13T16:30:25.883" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="2236" PostId="1082" Score="0" Text="(...continued) Statisticians, on the other hand, tend to rely on blind review. Some problems may have different valid answers (frequentist or Bayesian? model heteroskedasticity or utilize methods robust to it?). How strong an endorsement is that CV provides in this culture is not entirely clear. I like the cute functionality of what math.SE does, and I totally don't mind having it, but I am not sure it will eventually become super-impactful on CV." CreationDate="2012-04-13T16:34:12.900" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="2244" PostId="1082" Score="1" Text="@StasK if the an answer to CV helps guide an analysis, but has not been previously published, and the choice is either to cite the CV answer or to not cite any source (thereby implying that the idea is original to the manuscript), then it would be preferable to cite the CV answer. Perhaps this is not the current status-quo, but I think that it would be helpful to support moving in that direction." CreationDate="2012-04-16T15:22:50.737" UserId="1381" />
  <row Id="2246" PostId="1082" Score="1" Text="@David, I see your point. But if I as an editor would see a reference like [23] CrossValidated user David (2012), &quot;Support for bibtex / ams citation exports from stats.SE Q/A&quot;, http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/1082/ -- I would likely ask the author(s) to rectify it, even though it does contain a sort-of-permanent URL. As an editor, I would certainly prefer a real name (and so would you if you were in an academic world and welcome every evidence of your &quot;ACADEMIC IMPACT&quot;) -- should we then oblige everybody to provide their real names? Some people are paranoid about never doing that online." CreationDate="2012-04-16T18:17:53.663" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="2248" PostId="1082" Score="1" Text="@StasK from the perspective of the editor / audience, I see how the ambiguity could cause concern, since the reference would not be to a specific person. If a person uses a real name, the reference could be to &quot;personal communication&quot; but that would not give any credit to the site for facilitating the communication. From the perspective of the CV user being cited, it would be up to them to use a real name to get credit. I am not sure what the best solution is, but I am inclined to give credit when possible. Specific uses of the feature can be negotiated between author and editor as required." CreationDate="2012-04-16T23:33:39.583" UserId="1381" />
  <row Id="3671" PostId="1082" Score="1" Text="when are we going to get this? [this feature request was posted on Mar 13!!!]" CreationDate="2012-11-20T09:08:13.867" UserId="603" />
  <row Id="2154" PostId="1084" Score="1" Text="Whoops… I didn't notice the unregistered account had posts. I forgot an unregistered account is not allowed to flag posts, and that is the reason the user didn't flag any post. As moderator, I could have also sent a message from the Teachers' Lounge. `:)` Thank you for your reply." CreationDate="2012-03-15T18:38:20.237" UserId="5720" />
  <row Id="2163" PostId="1087" Score="0" Text="I believe it takes very little reputation to create a new tag when you formulate a question.  This causes tags to evolve as the community and the nature of its questions evolve.  It appears that we already have tags for your topic, including [tag:books] and [tag:references].  Are you looking for something other than what those offer?" CreationDate="2012-03-22T14:02:17.467" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2164" PostId="1087" Score="2" Text="I can see potential value in such a tag as a *meta*-tag counterpart to `[homework]`. In particular, if users understand that `[self-study]` means &quot;sounds like a homework question, but it's not really homework&quot; this could be useful and cut down on such commentary to the actual question. Of course, that can be abused, but so can the lack of tagging as `[homework]` in the first place. That said, used in this way, it should *not* be a tag that is used in isolation (i.e., the question should have other tags as well)." CreationDate="2012-03-22T14:33:01.000" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2165" PostId="1087" Score="0" Text="@whuber: 300 rep. Yeah, I'm looking for something that encompases (most of) those, and also talks about methods of learning.  #cardinal: I see &quot;homework&quot; as more about &quot;help me answer my specific question&quot; type questions. I'm looking more for &quot;I'm trying to find my way through the forest of statistics blind, and I keep getting poked with sharp sticks. What tools/strategies can I use to get me out of this predicament?&quot; kind of questions." CreationDate="2012-03-22T23:43:22.240" UserId="9007" />
  <row Id="3726" PostId="1088" Score="0" Text="Can we make the next paper chosen language agnostic. I can follow the code and function calls, but it's not as pleasant." CreationDate="2012-12-14T00:20:15.053" UserId="11867" />
  <row Id="3727" PostId="1088" Score="0" Text="I registered, but how can I see the discussion ?" CreationDate="2012-12-14T16:50:43.700" UserId="11405" />
  <row Id="2168" PostId="1089" Score="0" Text="Same for me, on several other occasions! It looks like there's a conflict with `$` (parsed as $\LaTeX$ or whatever)." CreationDate="2012-03-26T14:20:51.237" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="2169" PostId="1089" Score="1" Text="that is somehow avoided on the preview page..." CreationDate="2012-03-26T14:26:21.370" UserId="1739" />
  <row Id="8327" PostId="1090" Score="14" Text="NumPy and related questions get jumped on pretty quickly on [SO] ... As a python programmer, I can actually recommend [SO] as a default." CreationDate="2015-09-25T04:50:14.033" UserId="90384" />
  <row Id="21616" PostId="1090" Score="2" Text="Tensorflow, Tensorflow Probability ( and the pytorch equivalents) for scalable probabilistic programming" CreationDate="2022-11-27T17:13:43.070" UserId="11476" />
  <row Id="2175" PostId="1093" Score="0" Text="Thank you, Geoff.  (And thanks to the SE team.)" CreationDate="2012-03-29T23:39:00.493" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2176" PostId="1093" Score="3" Text="As you say, it is now fixed.  This implies is was *not* [status-bydesign](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/status-bydesign)" CreationDate="2012-03-30T07:56:20.787" UserId="1739" />
  <row Id="2177" PostId="1095" Score="2" Text="Updated the question." CreationDate="2012-03-30T15:46:35.830" UserId="10197" />
  <row Id="2178" PostId="1095" Score="3" Text="@Why: updated the reply :-)." CreationDate="2012-03-30T16:11:37.023" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2179" PostId="1096" Score="0" Text="Hrm, I realised after I posted this that edit permissions seem to be different for different sites. So community wiki is still the only way to let anyone edit questions/answers on CV. Regardless, I think cooking.SE's policy is interesting, and worth considering." CreationDate="2012-04-03T00:57:45.917" UserId="9007" />
  <row Id="2180" PostId="1096" Score="0" Text="Naught, I think the reality is in the middle of your two characterizations.  Users with sufficiently high reputation can edit questions and answers by anyone.  For more information, please read our [FAQ](http://stats.stackexchange.com/faq#reputation).  If you're still serious about your proposal, please start a new meta thread: replies are not the place to be asking new questions." CreationDate="2012-04-03T06:24:03.687" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2181" PostId="1096" Score="0" Text="BTW, some of the information in the cooking meta post is outdated.  For instance, although I haven't tried it, I have access to an option to &quot;remove wiki&quot; status from any CW post on our site." CreationDate="2012-04-03T06:28:03.027" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2182" PostId="1096" Score="1" Text="Good to know about removal of CW status. I'm not really looking to put forward a proposal (not yet, anyway), just trying to (help) figure out WTF community wiki is actually for." CreationDate="2012-04-03T07:48:00.787" UserId="9007" />
  <row Id="2183" PostId="1097" Score="1" Text="Please note that the referenced thread is part of the SE meta FAQ: it reflects *sitewide* policy, not just CV policy.  I cannot speak for the other mods here, but I tend to mark *any* flag as &quot;helpful&quot; unless it absolutely has to be declined, because I want to encourage people to flag things when appropriate and there are a lot of gray areas.  So please don't take these &quot;helpful&quot; responses as reflecting any disagreement or confusion among mods." CreationDate="2012-04-03T17:49:49.467" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2184" PostId="1097" Score="0" Text="OK. But, in your opinion, apparently, the flags I raised simply had to be declined, whereas similar ones in the past have been deemed helpful (and often times resulted in deletion of the answer) - this seems like disagreement among the mods. What am I missing?" CreationDate="2012-04-03T17:59:44.090" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2185" PostId="1097" Score="0" Text="Perhaps only an evolution in my understanding of what is an appropriate action to take :-). Mods undergo (voluntary) regular training to help us understand policies, deal with common issues, etc. One thing that has become clearer to me over time--as explained in the referenced threads--is that flags are for *problems.*  Use your votes to indicate good or bad answers.  Overall, this community tends not to vote, **which is a real problem.** We get about 1/2 the upvotes per question per user seen on other sites and almost nobody downvotes bad entries. Use your votes, early and often!" CreationDate="2012-04-03T18:03:33.337" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2186" PostId="1097" Score="0" Text="I understand, @whuber. In that case, I'm just trying to reconcile the disconnect between what is written in the flag box under &quot;not an answer&quot; and what is written in the SE meta thread I linked to. Obviously, I think an answer that has nothing to do with the question is... not an answer... It's not an answer which represents some misunderstanding of the subject at hand, which is what I thought downvotes represented. It's like the difference between recommending the wrong test for the right problem (downvote) or the right test for an unrelated problem (not an answer) - this was my understanding" CreationDate="2012-04-03T18:13:51.920" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2187" PostId="1097" Score="2" Text="@Macro &quot;I'm just trying to reconcile the disconnect between what is written ...&quot; and &quot;this seems like disagreement among the mods ...&quot; are *really* two different things. I share whuber's point of view: I mark flags as &quot;helpful&quot; when they suggest inappropriate responses (&quot;thanks!&quot;, &quot;I have the same problem...&quot;) that I delete immediately, but also when they catch my attention onto a potential issue with someone's reply; in the latter case, I won't necessarily act by deleting the related post. (...)" CreationDate="2012-04-03T21:01:46.480" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="2188" PostId="1097" Score="0" Text="(Con't) You can vote down and leave a comment to indicate what's wrong with the response. Other users can vote on your comment and the response as well. Few responses with -5 votes have survived here. -- Edit: Ah, and now that I've read whuber's response below, I think he developed much better than I did the above point (voting vs. flagging)." CreationDate="2012-04-03T21:03:41.643" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="2226" PostId="1097" Score="1" Text="OK, chl. &quot;this seems like disagreement among the mods ...&quot; was not meant as a focal point and seems to be taking away from the real question so I've deleted it." CreationDate="2012-04-10T12:27:28.167" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2233" PostId="1097" Score="4" Text="@whuber, the issue with upvotes (and even more so with downvotes) per user is that there may be really few people who (think they) are in a position to judge on the quality of an answer. People come to CV to ask a question they have been desperately trying to answer offline using the networks of colleagues, advisers, etc., and at any given time, at least half of the questions on the first screen are from users with rep 1. They are unlikely to have the culture that a Yearling or a Marshal would have. Other SE sites may have a relatively higher proportion of experts and enthusiasts among users." CreationDate="2012-04-13T16:19:43.527" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="2235" PostId="1097" Score="3" Text="@Stas Let me share some data with you :-).  We average 150-200 upvotes per day.  We have about 170 1K+ users, 373 &quot;yearlings,&quot; and 151 &quot;enthusiasts.&quot; This suggests between 150 and 300 people revisit the site several times weekly, if not daily.  Thus, each *avid,* regular user casts an average of 0.5 to 1 vote per day.  In fact, the distribution is highly skewed, as the &quot;Users&quot; tab shows: only about 30 people--around 10-20% of the core community, however you look at it--cast almost all these votes.  There's room for improvement." CreationDate="2012-04-13T16:31:18.537" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2237" PostId="1097" Score="2" Text="@whuber, what you've just said seems like evidence that the sloppy things I've been flagging (that seem, by an reasonable interpretation, to fall under the written description of the 'Not an answer' flag) won't get taken care of &quot;on their own&quot;." CreationDate="2012-04-13T16:45:16.287" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2238" PostId="1097" Score="0" Text="Good point, @Macro. The natural follow-up to the implied question about who should be tending the &quot;sloppy things&quot; (that is, incorrect or ambiguous or misleading replies) is &quot;if not the community, then who?&quot; The answer is *not* the mods and not the SE team. (This is just how it is: I'm not stating a personal opinion.) On SE, it always comes back to the community: information about the quality of Q's and A's has to come from our *collective* votes and comments.  That's a great argument for why community members should vote far more often than they actually do!" CreationDate="2012-04-13T16:52:20.087" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2239" PostId="1097" Score="2" Text="OK then is it possible to resolve why the 'Not an Answer' flag indicates, verbatim - &quot;This was posted as an answer, but it does not answer the question. It should possibly be an edit, a comment, another question, or deleted altogether.&quot; when this is not how it's enforced? It seems like it's someone's responsibility to enforce that and no one has the power to except the mods. Again, I'm talking about when the answer, while not being &quot;Thanks!&quot; or &quot;Me too!&quot;, doesn't remotely answer the question. To me, it's clear that this falls under the verbatim definition above. Where am I going wrong?" CreationDate="2012-04-13T17:01:06.517" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2240" PostId="1097" Score="0" Text="Particularly since we seem to agree that these things aren't weeded on &quot;on their own&quot; by the democratic process." CreationDate="2012-04-13T17:04:50.727" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2241" PostId="1097" Score="2" Text="I have reviewed your flag history, Macro.  What it shows is that *enforcement* of the &quot;Not an answer&quot; flag has been consistently as I describe it: only the replies that are truly non-answers have been deleted. Those that were merely wrong or off the mark were not deleted. What may be confusing you is that in half a dozen cases, you flagged a reply as &quot;not an answer&quot;; those replies were *not* deleted (and still stand), indicating the flag really wasn't deemed correct; but your flag was marked &quot;helpful&quot; by a moderator. This is likely because we appreciate the help and want to encourage flagging." CreationDate="2012-04-15T15:10:58.580" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2242" PostId="1097" Score="0" Text="Thanks for the info @whuber. I'm not arguing, in particular, with consistency of enforcement or what constitutes marking something as 'helpful' (I've tried to reduce emphasis on that, although it was in my original post, pre-editing) - I'm only trying to resolve the disconnect with the verbatim purpose of the 'Not an answer' flag, which I've quoted several times, and what you've described as what happens in practicality - that's all. It doesn't appear we're moving toward resolving that disconnect but whenever anyone has something to say regarding that, I'd be very interested." CreationDate="2012-04-15T16:47:49.677" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2243" PostId="1097" Score="0" Text="@Macro, I guess I just don't see a disconnect: you seem to interpret that language in a way that is different from what the SE folks intend.  If there's still an issue that you would like resolved, I would be happy to chat about it.  (Public chat ought to be fine, given the general interest of this issue.)" CreationDate="2012-04-16T14:20:46.000" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2245" PostId="1097" Score="0" Text="Sure, I'd like to chat with you. But, I don't know how to start a chat and now is not a great time (maybe this evening?)" CreationDate="2012-04-16T16:15:28.037" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2247" PostId="1097" Score="2" Text="@Macro, I won't be available to chat in real time most of this week, but we (and anyone else who cares to join) can still continue this conversation in the chat room at http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/3128/what-is-not-an-answer.  Liberal use of the &quot;@&quot; construct will help notify people when new material is available and awaiting their reply." CreationDate="2012-04-16T21:25:35.247" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2252" PostId="1097" Score="2" Text="Perhaps it's obvious, but reformulating 'this is not an answer' into 'this is not the kind of response that could be an answer to this or any other question' makes things perfectly clear.  Also, I actually never noticed I could do this, so I shall now happily become part of the problem..." CreationDate="2012-04-17T13:01:46.920" UserId="1739" />
  <row Id="2332" PostId="1097" Score="0" Text="I like this discussion.  So far I have come on every day and I vote a lot.  Mostly I vote up.  Sometimes I vote down a poorly expressed question but not when it seem poorly question but is in a subject area I know little about.  On the &quot;not an answer&quot; issue, I think I was downvoted once because a question had three parts and I only answered  the one I could address.  Does anyone think that really should eb considered &quot;not an answer&quot; and reserved for comment?" CreationDate="2012-05-09T19:45:09.730" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2383" PostId="1097" Score="0" Text="@Michael: I think it is perfectly fine to address only part of the question as long as a substantive answer is given. It probably helps to explicitly point out that you're only answering a certain part to avoid misunderstandings." CreationDate="2012-05-15T23:32:50.250" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2224" PostId="1098" Score="1" Text="Re: &quot;moderators do not adjudicate the correctness of answers.&quot; I was never asking you to make a judgment about the correctness of an answer. Once again, I'm only interested in cases where the answer, by no stretch of the imagination, answers the question. For example, if someone asks about discretizing data by using a quantile split, and I respond with an answer about quantile regression - this may be a fine answer... to a completely different question that has nothing to do with the question at hand." CreationDate="2012-04-10T12:24:39.263" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2225" PostId="1098" Score="1" Text="I still don't feel the conflict with &quot;This was posted as an answer, but it does not answer the question. It should possibly be an edit, a comment, another question, or deleted altogether&quot; and what you've described as the way flagging/moderating happens in practice has been resolved (or even addressed, for that matter)." CreationDate="2012-04-10T12:25:13.037" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2189" PostId="1099" Score="1" Text="Here's another one that turned up at the top of 'related questions' for my one. http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/155/what-is-your-favorite-laymans-explanation-for-a-difficult-statistical-concept So I guess I'm asking, if general communications-y questions like this are popular here, how should we deal with and classify specific ones? I'm thinking &quot;communications&quot; and/or &quot;layman&quot; might be good tags" CreationDate="2012-04-04T15:53:54.490" UserId="8489" />
  <row Id="2315" PostId="1099" Score="0" Text="I think good communication is not only important in teaching statistics but also terribly important when doing statistical consulting.  I discuss thia a lot on the ASA Statistical Consulting Sections eGroup.  Have it here if there is nowhere else for it." CreationDate="2012-05-09T17:04:43.437" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2190" PostId="1100" Score="0" Text="Glad to hear you are in favour! re &quot;you can go ahead and create that tag&quot; - hypothetical third person singular can go ahead and create the tag, but sadly 2nd person singular needs 300 rep to do so... re intuition tag: I used 'intuition' in my question as the closest option, as well as 'teaching' which isn't a very good match. It looked like around a third of the existing 'intuition' questions were communications-related, while around two thirds were more to do with an analyst's intuitions while interpreting data: a separate worthy topic and maybe a better fit for that tag." CreationDate="2012-04-04T16:05:22.107" UserId="8489" />
  <row Id="2191" PostId="1100" Score="2" Text="Whenever you don't have enough rep to do something you think would help the site, please just flag the question to contact a moderator with your suggestion.  I'll take your post and comments here as tantamount to such a flag and give you a provisional [tag:communication] tag so we can see what happens with it." CreationDate="2012-04-04T16:07:23.400" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2192" PostId="1100" Score="0" Text="Cool, thanks. I've dropped the less appropriate tags from the linked question." CreationDate="2012-04-04T16:16:36.397" UserId="8489" />
  <row Id="2193" PostId="1100" Score="3" Text="@user This is a friendly reminder to be careful about wholesale tagging (or retagging) of lots of questions.  Give the community some time to weigh in and to see the effects.  (A year ago, one of our more avid members went a little overboard with retagging and feelings were hurt when some of his work was reversed.)" CreationDate="2012-04-04T16:24:20.477" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2194" PostId="1100" Score="0" Text=":) don't worry, I'd just finished! I thought it made sense to get the balling rolling by retagging a few of the posts I'd linked to. Good advice though." CreationDate="2012-04-04T16:27:29.737" UserId="8489" />
  <row Id="14991" PostId="1100" Score="0" Text="@whuber I hope I'm not the culprit in question :) I know I lobbied for an &quot;analysis&quot; tag. I wasn't hurt to see it go, but like OP I thought it could have organized the site's content-flow a bit better. I would definitely echo the aspect of letting users direct their questions' tagging when appropriate." CreationDate="2017-12-12T14:49:48.283" UserId="8013" />
  <row Id="14992" PostId="1100" Score="0" Text="@AdamO The person to whom I was referring quit the site as a result of that contretemps and has long since been forgotten by all but a few old-timers (who wish, I suspect, that he had continued contributing).  I am grateful for all your work here and especially for your frequent (and good) answers." CreationDate="2017-12-12T15:06:53.040" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2196" PostId="1102" Score="0" Text="&quot;Appropriated&quot; means &quot;assigned to&quot; or &quot;taken&quot; whereas &quot;appropriate&quot; means &quot;suitable for.&quot;  I think you want to lose that terminal &quot;d&quot;... :-)" CreationDate="2012-04-05T14:26:24.297" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2197" PostId="1102" Score="0" Text="soooorry! Not primary language. Thanks for calling my attention on that too, very much appreciated :)" CreationDate="2012-04-05T14:49:19.273" UserId="9887" />
  <row Id="2198" PostId="1103" Score="0" Text="thanks that was helpful! I don't mind adding to the list, however from the example I am confused if this tool would fit there as a suggestion. Taverna is more of a tool to create workflows, so for example I can get everything automated. It does wonders as I have learned to glue your open source repositories, with a metrics tool, use resources easily, get pre-created workflows by other authors and all that. Where would this fit? Its not like it does things like R or Excel. But it is helpful on data mining. If I got the idea wrong on the question or being appropriate here please let me know :)" CreationDate="2012-04-05T14:53:19.783" UserId="9887" />
  <row Id="2199" PostId="1103" Score="0" Text="I see what you mean.  However, the main purpose of our software list is to help people who think of posting a question here but then realize this is not the right place: they make progress and we don't have to close an off-topic question.  If you think people may come here with Taverna questions, then having a Taverna reply on our list will help them." CreationDate="2012-04-05T14:56:13.137" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2200" PostId="1103" Score="0" Text="great! added to the section already. Thanks for the pointer to it, didn't see the list before." CreationDate="2012-04-05T15:09:01.353" UserId="9887" />
  <row Id="2201" PostId="1105" Score="1" Text="I appreciate your willingness to contribute ideas: newcomers often see what those more familiar with the site may overlook.  But may I suggest that you learn a little more about how our site works before posting so many suggestions at once?  In this case, if I have understood you correctly, you are asking for a feature that has always been available: if you scroll the page while editing, you will see everything on it.  You can also dynamically adjust the height of the editing window by dragging its bottom." CreationDate="2012-04-05T15:24:36.907" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2202" PostId="1105" Score="0" Text="Maybe I was misunderstood or I am missing something. I scrolled down the whole page but what I see is a preview of my question, while what I was suggesting here is to see what other people answered on my question. No such thing is show here. Do I need to click somewhere or change a settings then? Sorry for asking too much, I thought that as long as the question was relevant it wouldn't be a problem about how many would be posted. Will hold on my horses more from now!" CreationDate="2012-04-05T15:29:17.337" UserId="9887" />
  <row Id="2203" PostId="1105" Score="0" Text="I'm afraid I'm unable to reproduce the behavior you are describing, Carlos.  Please note that if you scroll with a mouse wheel, the behavior depends on the focus: if you are editing, scrolling occurs within the editing window; if you click *outside* the editing window to give focus to the entire page, then scrolling will move the page.  I'm not too concerned about how *many* questions you post here on meta, but the fact that there is a growing number may be related to your newness to the site and unfamiliarity with how things work." CreationDate="2012-04-05T15:33:01.827" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2204" PostId="1105" Score="1" Text="I understand! I will go over the FAQ again and your pointed links more times to avoid extra trouble for the community on answering questions that is already documented then! I just added a figure to the question, I hope this make it clear now what I am suggesting!" CreationDate="2012-04-05T15:44:42.200" UserId="9887" />
  <row Id="2205" PostId="1105" Score="0" Text="I do not recognize that screen shot, Carlos.  What site is it from?  Why is it relevant here?" CreationDate="2012-04-05T15:46:58.377" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2206" PostId="1105" Score="0" Text="Its not about the site. Please look the `Replying to post xxx`. The original question is listed there. I just edited my question explaining what I want noticed from the figure: We have information from another page (here the original question). The feature I am suggesting would be when we move to editing our question, have a small box on the bottom pointing to the answers, such as this one point to a original question. Does this make more sense? I am certain I understand what you are talking about the scrolling, but this is not what the feature I am suggesting is about!" CreationDate="2012-04-05T15:50:40.320" UserId="9887" />
  <row Id="2209" PostId="1105" Score="0" Text="I'm totally lost here, Carlos.  If your question is not about this site, it certainly doesn't belong here!" CreationDate="2012-04-05T17:22:11.130" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2210" PostId="1105" Score="3" Text="@whuber What Carlos is asking about makes sense.  When we're *answering* questions, we get to see the question and all previous questions on the same page.  When we're *editing our own questions* (e.g., to clarify the question in response to a comment or question), all we can see is the question itself.  So if I want to edit a question in response to a particular comment/answer, I'd have to have that answer open in a different tab in order to reference it/copy text from it." CreationDate="2012-04-05T17:35:27.383" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="2211" PostId="1105" Score="1" Text="@whuber That screenshot is from a traditionally-threaded forum, in which there are no questions and answers - just messages, which you can see all at once." CreationDate="2012-04-05T17:36:23.390" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="2212" PostId="1105" Score="0" Text="Thank you, I am happy it made sense to someone, my english might be failing on me. It certainly belongs and is about this community site. I hope it is clear now! Sorry for the confusion.." CreationDate="2012-04-05T17:37:46.013" UserId="9887" />
  <row Id="2213" PostId="1105" Score="0" Text="I tested, Matt, and did not have that experience: when editing my own question, it was possible to scroll through the entire page--answers, comments, and everything.  So I'm mystified concerning just what the problem is, and doubly mystified at the appearance of a screenshot from some other site!" CreationDate="2012-04-05T18:53:56.917" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2216" PostId="1105" Score="2" Text="After all this, +1 to the proposition - the screen already exists for people with edit privileges, seems useful, and doesn't seem to confer any additional privileges in and of itself.  So yes, I'd like to use it whenever I have the appropriate privileges - especially on my own questions!" CreationDate="2012-04-05T19:48:58.033" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="2220" PostId="1105" Score="0" Text="So,  am still confused what was the conclusion? @whuber is there any particular reason for not being available for those who do not have edit privileges or it is believed that wouldn't be worth making it available?" CreationDate="2012-04-06T23:14:40.653" UserId="9887" />
  <row Id="2227" PostId="1105" Score="0" Text="@OeufcoquePenteano I think whuber would have answered that if he could.  He's a moderator of this site, but not actually a StackExchange employee.  I think we just need to wait for this to catch their attention.  They seem to respond pretty consistently to `feature-request` tags." CreationDate="2012-04-10T16:33:15.413" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="2228" PostId="1105" Score="0" Text="MattParker: Ohhh sorry about that I forgot about this distinction that we are normal users in the end! Alright I understood. Thanks for the feedback! :)" CreationDate="2012-04-10T16:57:28.077" UserId="9887" />
  <row Id="2313" PostId="1105" Score="1" Text="I think all this discussion is just an example of how complicated this site can be to use." CreationDate="2012-05-09T16:55:41.733" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2207" PostId="1106" Score="0" Text="Hello, thanks for the pointers. I will clean up the question using the pointers given here and by @whuber soon! However, there was indeed a loss of reputation. It dropped from 53 to 51 when I did this. Currently there is no loss of reputation because I switched back to the original accepted answer, and them it moved to 53. Does this make it more clear? I just switched the answer again, my reputation dropped from 58 to 56. I added a figure to the original question as well." CreationDate="2012-04-05T16:06:12.110" UserId="9887" />
  <row Id="2208" PostId="1106" Score="1" Text="Well, that probably means that you got your +2 before the thread turned to CW. After CW, you won't earn anything more, except badges. I guess the system is trying to accommodate rep gain depending on timestamp. Answers posted before the post became CW-owned won't turn to CW, so the one you elected will get +15." CreationDate="2012-04-05T16:30:52.047" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="2219" PostId="1108" Score="1" Text="+1 Because this reply includes all the information in mine, I'm deleting mine in the interest of streamlining page size and loading time." CreationDate="2012-04-06T18:22:37.503" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5020" PostId="1108" Score="0" Text="+1 I didn't realize this shortcoming and would also appreciate this feature. I'm hoping it propagates across SE network." CreationDate="2013-10-31T20:38:49.743" UserId="32124" />
  <row Id="2217" PostId="1109" Score="5" Text="There has been a small topic based on an answer and a comment I made about it from several months back that's been rattling around in my head and might make an OK blog post. There doesn't seem like another good way to include it here. It is slightly more mathematical, but I think I could work some $R$ into it as well. The basic gist is: *A short treatment of ridge regression as an optimization problem*. Not sure that would be of any utility or interest, though." CreationDate="2012-04-06T17:30:22.527" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2218" PostId="1109" Score="0" Text="@cardinal, Given your experience and contributions to the community I have no doubt you could write a blog post that is useful to the community. Part of my motivation for the tables post I did was it didn't fit well in an answer, seems like your motivation is similar." CreationDate="2012-04-06T17:58:49.843" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="2221" PostId="1109" Score="0" Text="I'm too much of a rookie to blog here but this is just a +1 for the idea. I've been learning a lot in statistics from the community, having this would be great!" CreationDate="2012-04-07T22:01:46.063" UserId="9887" />
  <row Id="2311" PostId="1109" Score="0" Text="I think I would be more interested in participating in a Blog than in the questions part of the site.  But I am new here and still trying to decide whether it is worth sacrificing the time I spend with the ASA eGroups for this." CreationDate="2012-05-09T16:49:48.837" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2322" PostId="1109" Score="0" Text="@MichaelChernick, Feel free to stop by the [skewed distribution chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/549/skewed-distribution) if you would like to either propose or contribute any work to the blog. I'm not familiar with the ASA eGroups so I can't speak to much in regards to that." CreationDate="2012-05-09T18:21:46.230" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="2223" PostId="1110" Score="1" Text="Thank you, this was inspiring :) Im highlighting them on the original post edited as well although this doesn't seem as an unusual practice, but as a wiki user I ended up organizing as that by preference since I can't go on editing each answer. Im glad that post ended up as a cw, the amounts of views have been considerable now for what I expected." CreationDate="2012-04-10T04:32:56.837" UserId="9887" />
  <row Id="2314" PostId="1110" Score="1" Text="I don't think it is acceptable to say that losing points is no big deal.  When points can be lost for silly reasons these losses can pile up." CreationDate="2012-05-09T17:00:38.467" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2229" PostId="1111" Score="0" Text="I agree with you! Either way I opted for the best answer and not the 2 reputation points, so its all good :)" CreationDate="2012-04-10T21:31:22.320" UserId="9887" />
  <row Id="8893" PostId="1113" Score="1" Text="Hi David, I know this is a very old question, but I have been looking through [tag-synonyms] threads to see if some are still unresolved. Consider accepting whuber's answer if you think it resolved this issue. Cheers. By the way, by now there is [parameter] tag, it's a synonym of [parameterization] (and rarely used)." CreationDate="2015-12-11T11:39:46.823" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="2249" PostId="1114" Score="1" Text="I removed the tag, but don't [tag:random-variable] and [tag:summary-statistic] have similar ubiquity?" CreationDate="2012-04-17T08:50:42.347" UserId="1381" />
  <row Id="2250" PostId="1114" Score="0" Text="Indeed this description could fits many (most?) of the tags to varying degrees" CreationDate="2012-04-17T08:55:09.190" UserId="1381" />
  <row Id="2251" PostId="1114" Score="0" Text="Parameter is simply the number, hence as a tag it is too general. Concerning your question, only tag bayesian should be left in my opinion." CreationDate="2012-04-17T11:28:09.267" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="2253" PostId="1114" Score="0" Text="@mpiktas I have retagged, adding the [tag:estimation] suggested by whuber and keeping the [tag:bayesian] and [tag:summary-statistic] tags - the later seems appropriate to me since two the question is about the equivalence of two summary statistics." CreationDate="2012-04-17T14:37:53.003" UserId="1381" />
  <row Id="2558" PostId="1114" Score="0" Text="@Macro, what is the &quot;this&quot; to which you refer?" CreationDate="2012-06-08T14:02:14.943" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2559" PostId="1114" Score="1" Text="I noticed that we do have a 'parameter' tag. While considering what possible use that tag could have, I searched the meta site and found this thread but it also appears the 'parameter' tag hasn't been deleted. Was it meant to be? If not, why not? I'm confused, given the discussion here which seems to indicate that it would be deleted." CreationDate="2012-06-08T14:03:50.827" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2560" PostId="1114" Score="2" Text="@Macro, I have merged [tag:parameter] with [tag:parameterization] and have cleaned up the (few) instances of &quot;parameter&quot;.  Thanks for following up on this." CreationDate="2012-06-08T14:06:38.480" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2254" PostId="1116" Score="0" Text="Regarding the second issue, I agree: I see plenty of SVM kernel questions marked with [kernel] and this problem is definitely not obvious.  Creating a new tag will have the downside of added moderator overhead (imagine fixing all those wrong [kernel] tags and replacing them with [kernel-trick] or [svm-kernel] tags...)" CreationDate="2012-04-18T07:57:32.013" UserId="10322" />
  <row Id="2255" PostId="1116" Score="0" Text="I'm going to go ahead and create a new tag [kernel-trick] and we will see how it goes.  With respect to non ML use, we might perhaps look into how to decompose that at a later stage." CreationDate="2012-04-21T20:03:36.483" UserId="10322" />
  <row Id="2256" PostId="1116" Score="0" Text="@Andrew, because [tag:svm] + [tag:kernel] imply [tag:kernel-trick], creating a new tag seems unnecessary." CreationDate="2012-04-22T21:03:39.153" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2257" PostId="1116" Score="0" Text="Ok @whuber. Could you post that as an answer so that I accept and end this discussion? Unless anybody else adds something new or prefers another option it seems as if we have reached a satisfactory conclusion. Thanks." CreationDate="2012-04-22T21:38:31.383" UserId="10322" />
  <row Id="2258" PostId="1116" Score="0" Text="@Andrew, that comment is merely a clarification of what mbq has already said here, so accepting his reply would be fine." CreationDate="2012-04-22T21:41:19.603" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="17241" PostId="1117" Score="0" Text="Good idea - Can someone please explain the mechanics of migrating a question from Economics.SE to Crossvalidated.SE." CreationDate="2019-02-08T01:27:55.553" UserId="173082" />
  <row Id="17248" PostId="1117" Score="2" Text="@Ben: The same way you'd migrate questions between any other sites that don't have a predefined migration path: by flagging them and asking a moderator to do it. But it's probably worth noting that this meta post is from 2012, and the current [economics.se] site is [not the same site as the one that was shut down back then](https://economics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/155/how-will-this-be-different-from-the-previous-economics-site)." CreationDate="2019-02-08T08:44:19.927" UserId="9808" />
  <row Id="17249" PostId="1117" Score="3" Text="I'm voting to close this question because it is obsolete. The old Economics site which this post is about was shut down in 2012, and a new site was created in its place in 2014." CreationDate="2019-02-08T09:08:59.560" UserId="9808" />
  <row Id="2259" PostId="1118" Score="0" Text="Okay, so game theory is on topic on Math.SE, apparently. What about this question: http://economics.stackexchange.com/questions/302/using-econometrics-how-do-i-solve-out-the-endogeneity-problem ? I haven't received an answer that I find satisfactory, and identifying an appropriate intermediate variable is incredibly difficult. Would this question fit here?" CreationDate="2012-04-27T19:47:00.910" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="2260" PostId="1118" Score="0" Text="Hi @Aarthi, yes, that one looks appropriate too.  I had skipped over it because on CV just about any question that mentions &quot;endogeneity&quot; seems not to get any accepted answer (unless it focuses on correlation or collinearity :-))." CreationDate="2012-04-27T21:16:30.753" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2261" PostId="1118" Score="2" Text="Haha, that's totally understandable! It's a really tough issue that doesn't have one really good answer. Techniques for identifying potential intermediate variables might be how that question needs to be rephrased, and hopefully that will garner better answers. :)" CreationDate="2012-04-27T21:27:38.503" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="2262" PostId="1118" Score="0" Text="@whuber, just looking at the titles, these seem like reasonably straightforward econometrics questions an average Ph.D. economics student would be asking when they were told to apply a particular econometric technique without helpful guidance from the adviser. They can be migrated here with some special tagging, but frankly I doubt that we have a huge presence of econometricians on CV to answer these questions much better than economists have done so far on their website. I could probably pass as an econometrician, but that's a rather distant shot." CreationDate="2012-04-29T19:57:40.197" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="2263" PostId="1118" Score="0" Text="@StasK Consider this an opportunity to shore up the `econometrics` tag here on CV? :D All joking aside, I'm reasonably certain the *really good* econometricians will stumble over here by necessity." CreationDate="2012-04-29T23:00:39.483" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="2264" PostId="1118" Score="0" Text="Thanks for compiling this list! Ps. What do you folks think about [this homework question](http://economics.stackexchange.com/questions/353/how-to-extract-a-set-of-values-from-a-specific-range-of-indexes)? I see it was suggested for migration here when it was first asked. Myself, I have no idea what a &quot;chaining index&quot; is, so I can tell if it would fit here or not." CreationDate="2012-04-30T21:21:04.520" UserId="9808" />
  <row Id="2265" PostId="1118" Score="0" Text="@Ilmari That's purely a question of arithmetic, not of statistics.  It asks the respondent to multiply lists of values by 207/100 or 100/207." CreationDate="2012-05-01T06:32:00.747" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2266" PostId="1118" Score="0" Text="@whuber: ...oh. So it's _that_ basic. \*slaps forehead\* I guess I was more tired last night than I thought. Anyway, thanks. :)" CreationDate="2012-05-01T06:52:14.623" UserId="9808" />
  <row Id="2268" PostId="1118" Score="2" Text="I'm the last mod standing on Economics.SE - would it be ok to start migrating this lot?" CreationDate="2012-05-03T07:28:12.450" UserId="1105" />
  <row Id="2269" PostId="1118" Score="2" Text="@Turukawa Please go ahead.  Thank you for your dedication!" CreationDate="2012-05-03T15:24:02.773" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2270" PostId="1118" Score="2" Text="I have migrated this list.  Thanks so much for the support and don't feel obliged to keep them if they don't work for you guys.  Grateful for the consideration." CreationDate="2012-05-03T18:27:36.370" UserId="1105" />
  <row Id="2271" PostId="1118" Score="0" Text="@Turukawa: It looks like three questions on the list were not migrated. Was there a reason or did you just miss them?" CreationDate="2012-05-03T21:36:14.133" UserId="9808" />
  <row Id="2272" PostId="1118" Score="0" Text="Missed them ... ;p" CreationDate="2012-05-04T04:39:20.917" UserId="1105" />
  <row Id="2310" PostId="1118" Score="1" Text="My feeling is that we have more than enough questions on this site.  We don't need to add a lot of old ones from another site even if they fit well here.  I think probably members from the economics community having lost their home might migrate to statistics or at least post here more frequently.  I think it would be better to get fresh questions on those topics." CreationDate="2012-05-09T16:46:07.733" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2267" PostId="1120" Score="1" Text="As a workaround, click on the question title to get taken directly to the question.  Your actions will still be captured to keep track of your review.  When you're done with that page, click the `review` button again or just go back a page in your browser." CreationDate="2012-05-02T19:11:25.077" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2308" PostId="1120" Score="2" Text="How about a fix to the system instead of just doing a &quot;work-around?&quot;" CreationDate="2012-05-09T16:40:51.080" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3150" PostId="1120" Score="0" Text="Not to offer another workaround, but see [this answer](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/129014/) to an MSO post on this topic.  You can use a bookmarklet to render it while in review." CreationDate="2012-08-12T07:30:48.457" UserId="3826" />
  <row Id="2273" PostId="1122" Score="3" Text="Community members like you have been very helpful all along in (a) voting to close apparent duplicates and (b) flagging questions as possible duplicates.  As a moderator I am constantly grateful for that effort and welcome your suggestions to help us avoid duplication and redundancy.  Note, however, that many of the suggestions here appear to apply to the entire SE model itself and perhaps should be made in the [MetaSE forum](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/)." CreationDate="2012-05-07T14:48:48.587" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2303" PostId="1122" Score="1" Text="I really like seeing this post!  I have searched through just the FAQs looking for interesting questions and find that they are so cluttered that it is hard to find anything.  i think I would have to rely on a moderator to point me to what I want." CreationDate="2012-05-09T16:26:33.267" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2305" PostId="1122" Score="1" Text="I also find it irritating that regardless of how good a question is if a moderator or a member sees a different place the question somewhere else. Bill Huber's comment above may be an example unless he means that it would nice to post this at MetaSE in addition to here rather than in place of here." CreationDate="2012-05-09T16:29:43.043" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2274" PostId="1123" Score="3" Text="The only problem with that is, to use that option one has to go and find the duplicate. I've done a fair amount of this over the last year and a half and I find it tedious to sort through similar threads to find the best one to designate as the one being duplicated.  Call me ungenerous, but I think the burden of searching through prior threads should be on the person asking the question." CreationDate="2012-05-08T00:02:26.097" UserId="2669" />
  <row Id="2275" PostId="1123" Score="1" Text="@rolando2 Agreed; I didn't want to be harsh, rather to promote closing as a duplicate. Improving automatic anti-duplicate shielding is of course a fair topic, but as whuber mentioned it fits better on Meta SO." CreationDate="2012-05-08T18:43:21.773" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="2306" PostId="1123" Score="1" Text="Huber said MetaSE.  Are there two sites, MetaSE and MetaSO.  If so it seem that you moderators can't even agree on where to move something.  Why don't you cut down on so many of these suggestions! I think rolando2 is hitting on something that has bothered me and I have only been here 8 days.  Much of what people suggest that we do to solve a problem is tedious and time consuming.  Asking us to work harder is not the way to solve a problem." CreationDate="2012-05-09T16:34:04.800" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2309" PostId="1123" Score="3" Text="@Michael: mbq and whuber were referring to the same site, i.e., the &quot;global&quot; [meta](http://meta.stackoverflow.com) one." CreationDate="2012-05-09T16:42:21.103" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2312" PostId="1123" Score="2" Text="@Michael, concerning moderator consistency please see the last part of my post at http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/a/1098." CreationDate="2012-05-09T16:52:23.560" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2317" PostId="1123" Score="2" Text="A great suggestion @mbq but not a realistic one. rolando2's reason is the main one - it's a pain to search sometimes, especially when the thing it duplicates used non-standard terminology. Also, there are some posters who've amassed an incredible number of reputation points by essentially answering the same few questions over and over and over again - so, there's an anti-incentive for some posters to flag as a duplicate." CreationDate="2012-05-09T17:50:58.107" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2277" PostId="1124" Score="5" Text="You have my sympathies. All you wanted was an answer to your question, which you not only didn't get, but you lost your points, too. Speaking for myself, unfortunately, I don't know the partial proportional odds model. I do know that Agresti--discussing other situations (eg, PO)--has suggested that people go ahead &amp; make up values for your categories and run them as though they were continuous. I find this somewhat discomfiting, but his argument is that unless you're way off, the induced bias will be small. HTH" CreationDate="2012-05-09T02:29:25.317" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2279" PostId="1124" Score="1" Text="Thank you so much for your comment! I really appreciate it. I actually did go over Agresti and Harrell's books before I decided to code the categorical variables as continuous values. Harrell and his student Peterson have the seminal papers on the PO and partial PO models. But unfortunately, they don't discuss trend testing. I was just worried that the solution I posted might be too hacky and introduce some random bias. Please do post this as an answer to that question so the discussion can expand. Thanks again!" CreationDate="2012-05-09T02:46:00.017" UserId="6250" />
  <row Id="2302" PostId="1124" Score="5" Text="I answered a bounty question and I am hopeful to get it tomorrow.  I felt I had given a complete answer and the poster explained that he wanted more. So I gave him what he asked for. But in thinking about it occurred to me that a poster could set a bounty just to make sure that more work is done on the question.  Then in the end he could decide that no one deserved the bounty.  It is his subjective choice.  But if he got his bounty back then he could be playing games with the system.  I think the policy not to return bounties may be a good way to discourage such practice." CreationDate="2012-05-09T16:21:39.403" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2276" PostId="1125" Score="3" Text="I recognize that is the answer, but the very last phrase does assume that *someone* had answered, which could make it somewhat confusing." CreationDate="2012-05-09T02:20:43.190" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2278" PostId="1125" Score="1" Text="Thanks for the answer, but as gung has commented, what if the question receives no answers? It seems like such a waste to give up points accumulated purposely for setting bounties to hard questions and a good way to discourage setting bounties at all. Is there someway to appeal to stackexchange to reconsider the bounty situation for unanswered questions? It isn't really addressed in that FAQ well." CreationDate="2012-05-09T02:36:26.800" UserId="6250" />
  <row Id="2280" PostId="1125" Score="1" Text="It is a bit of a waste, but no system is perfect. You could raise the issue on the big Meta, but this is likely the policy. I think they assume that someone will answer questions with bounties--I think this is a pretty rare case." CreationDate="2012-05-09T03:50:17.743" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2281" PostId="1125" Score="4" Text="I checked out the big Meta as you suggested. [A post there talks about the exact same issue](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9902/what-happens-if-there-are-no-answers-to-a-bounty-question).  Some of the posters have argued that it is the &quot;cost for advertising&quot;. Some also note that bounty questions are generally more difficult than the average so awarding/or losing bounty points at random is arbitrary. I am not seeing much hope of this somewhat unjust policy changing." CreationDate="2012-05-09T08:55:57.030" UserId="6250" />
  <row Id="2282" PostId="1125" Score="0" Text="@Gung I cannot divine any assumption of the existence of an answer in the last paragraph of the quotation.  Isn't &quot;In any case&quot; sufficiently explicit?" CreationDate="2012-05-09T14:09:51.533" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2283" PostId="1125" Score="6" Text="The part I'm referring to is &quot;... be sure to follow up and award your bounty to the best answer&quot;. To my mind, &quot;the best answer&quot; assumes that there *is* an answer, and &quot;best&quot; implies to me that there is more than 1. I do take your point, I just want to acknowledge that a person could be thrown off by this." CreationDate="2012-05-09T14:16:58.387" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5204" PostId="1125" Score="0" Text="I was definitely confused by the wording which is why I started a question abut this very same issue before I found this one. This is apparently by design but I very much disagree with it." CreationDate="2014-01-10T19:28:37.633" UserId="10416" />
  <row Id="2285" PostId="1127" Score="0" Text="My thanks to whoever moved it.  Macro I believe." CreationDate="2012-05-09T14:58:33.063" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2287" PostId="1127" Score="5" Text="Migrations are made by the community, Michael.  A record of the voting appears beneath your original post at http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/28107.  And yes, @Macro, you *do* have the ability to migrate posts--just not unilaterally." CreationDate="2012-05-09T15:03:35.367" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2289" PostId="1127" Score="0" Text="@whuber Yes I suspected a migration was appropriate.  I am just guessing that Macro moved it because he made the suggestion.  Do you know for sure that he was the one?" CreationDate="2012-05-09T15:35:28.773" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2290" PostId="1127" Score="4" Text="As I wrote, Michael, the migration is made by the *community*, not an individual (except when a moderator is solely involved as a representative of the community).  In this case *three* people migrated the question, as documented beneath the original post.  Given your active and intense involvement in our site recently, I think you will now find a close reading of the entire FAQ to be rewarding because it will help you understand how the site works and how to optimize your interaction with it." CreationDate="2012-05-09T15:40:44.587" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2323" PostId="1127" Score="0" Text="I agreed with the migration of this question. There is no complaint here.  I was asking for it to be moved where it would be appropriate.  I think looking through the FAQs could be rewarding but too time ocnsuming.  I am already concerned that I am spending too much time on this site." CreationDate="2012-05-09T18:36:34.383" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2338" PostId="1127" Score="6" Text="With respect to question 1, you may be interested to know that a number of our top contributors here, in fact, work as private (self-employed) statistical consultants. There are a number of very strong answers already, but, curiously enough, not by any of the ones that I know are consultants. I'm guessing they just don't have this problem w/ the site, but it might be interesting to hear what they have to say. Paging @[name-redacted]." CreationDate="2012-05-10T03:17:07.223" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2471" PostId="1127" Score="0" Text="I guess this is general enough and should be migrated to meta.stackoverflow.com." CreationDate="2012-05-30T16:46:19.037" UserId="5509" />
  <row Id="2293" PostId="1128" Score="0" Text="I like your answer Macro but what you would do and what I would do may be different from what others do.  My main concern is about the consulting issue and not the tutoring of students part. But my point is that the service we provide on homework can encourage laziness.  Not all student problems are trivial that can be abswered at a glance and many times we probe to help us and the student understand the problem. We give detailed hints and sometimes full solutions.  I find myself giving full solutionsin some cases." CreationDate="2012-05-09T15:48:30.553" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2296" PostId="1128" Score="9" Text="@Michael, When a homework problem is nontrivial, wouldn't such probing--and indeed a full solution--be of use to the solver and of interest to the community?  I would have little concern about whether this encourages &quot;laziness&quot; on the part of the original proposer: how they go about learning is up to them.  And surely you don't find yourself giving full solutions in the trivial cases!" CreationDate="2012-05-09T16:13:27.493" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2288" PostId="1129" Score="5" Text="(+1) - &quot;**But to compete with you with just the help of this site, they have to be already more or less in the same league.** No company needing statistical consultancy will be able to just use this site instead, it might just help their resident expert&quot; is a very good point and, in my opinion, there's nothing wrong with the resident expert coming here to bounce ideas off of people - that just makes for more good science." CreationDate="2012-05-09T15:15:17.207" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2291" PostId="1129" Score="0" Text="@macro and Erik I understand the value especially in a colleagial setting.  But I see plenty of people enter the site who are very naive in statistics but have a project at work that they need help with.  Sometimes it is obvious that they don't know much statistics by the way they word the question.  What bothers me is that often the experts go to great lengths to solve these problems.  Not only do I think people can use it to avoid paying a consultant but I also think they sometimes are demanding too much and we probably spend too much time helping." CreationDate="2012-05-09T15:42:38.797" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2292" PostId="1129" Score="3" Text="@MichaelChernick, if the person is truly clueless in that situation, using this site will not help them much, since any recommendations we give will not make any sense to them. You won't find any examples on this site of someone taking the data provided by the asker and returning an analysis of their data, etc... in the answer. Perhaps you can give an example of an answer you think was going too far?" CreationDate="2012-05-09T15:45:27.857" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2294" PostId="1129" Score="0" Text="@Macro It is a general impression I have and no specific question comes to mind.  But I have been looking at so many questions this week and I think I can find an example for you. I don't see people taking large or moderately large data sets and solving the posters question that way.  But many posters ask how to do something in R or whether or not something can be done in R and I am sure in some (possibly many) cases they get a complete solution coded in R." CreationDate="2012-05-09T16:06:07.333" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2295" PostId="1129" Score="0" Text="I know that many of you love this site and so I expect to get some dissent.  But is there anyone out there that agrees with me on any of the points I have been making?" CreationDate="2012-05-09T16:07:10.840" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2297" PostId="1129" Score="1" Text="@Michael, as a moderator I obviously have an investment in this site, but nevertheless--or really because of this--I warmly encourage raising challenging questions like yours. Regardless of the amount of agreement or disagreement they evince, such questioning helps us improve the site and the community's experience." CreationDate="2012-05-09T16:16:19.310" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2298" PostId="1129" Score="1" Text="@MichaelChernick, there are certainly cases where people write `R` code as part of their answer, with an example given on some simulated toy data (or publicly available data - not the question asker's data though). This would still require the asker to understand what the answer is saying in order to implement the idea on their own data, let alone write a results and discussion section of a manuscript. I'll wait until you have an actual example of someone doing the equivalent of full service statistical consulting on this website before I'll concede that this could be a problem." CreationDate="2012-05-09T16:18:45.257" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2299" PostId="1129" Score="0" Text="@Macro There are some notable exceptions; that is, examples &quot;of someone taking the data provided by the asker and returning an analysis of their data, etc...&quot;.  A (very small number of) users do take the data and analyze them--or at least pump them through automated software.  As to the value or efficacy of this approach, I will leave it to you to decide.  See http://stats.stackexchange.com/a/9017 for a good example." CreationDate="2012-05-09T16:19:52.680" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2300" PostId="1129" Score="0" Text="@whuber, that is just showing a generic example with some real data - that's not analyzing the asker's data for them, which is what I was referring to" CreationDate="2012-05-09T16:21:03.757" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2301" PostId="1129" Score="0" Text="@Macro Take a look at other replies by the same respondent ;-)." CreationDate="2012-05-09T16:21:32.587" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2304" PostId="1129" Score="0" Text="Who's side are you on @whuber??? ;) Seriously though, IrishStat has over 200 answers so I'm not sure where to look. In any case while I do generally object to doing full service consulting on this site, I think characterizing that as the norm or even moderately pervasive at all (or even common enough to be an issue) would be a major overstatement." CreationDate="2012-05-09T16:26:58.523" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2307" PostId="1129" Score="0" Text="@Macro I merely wanted to preempt a possible continuation of this comment thread in which such relatively rare full analyses might be called out as counterexamples to your (correct) characterization of answers on this site. Please bear in mind that as a moderator my first duty is to assure good communication rather than to take sides in a discussion (although frequently I do both, because I am also an active community member). So please bear with me if sometimes my comments don't suggest a clear stand on a particular issue." CreationDate="2012-05-09T16:39:20.847" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2318" PostId="1129" Score="0" Text="I appreciate that Bill Huber at least acknowledges that I raise good issues that can be helpful.  I don't expect him to agree with me.  i don't think I am taking sides or attacking people personally. I am not alone at having some discontent with the site. I am certainly not against you Macro.  I thought you did the right thing to suggest moving this question to meta and I think most of your comments and answers to questions are fabulous." CreationDate="2012-05-09T17:57:42.263" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2319" PostId="1129" Score="10" Text="@MichaelChernick: o offense meant!, but: &quot;We probably spend too much time helping&quot; may be more true for someone with &gt; 80 answers in 8 days than for other people..." CreationDate="2012-05-09T17:59:45.347" UserId="4598" />
  <row Id="2349" PostId="1129" Score="0" Text="@cbeleities.  I agree that in my first week I have spent much more time on the site than most people would.  But it isn't just the amount of activity.  It takes a lot longer to do things here than what it would take to do the same things at others site." CreationDate="2012-05-11T03:25:17.877" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2673" PostId="1129" Score="0" Text="@cbeleities I dare say that moderators like whuber and chl put tremendous effort (more than I do) because in addition to giving intricate and well crafted solutions they read most of the posts and have duties as moderators to move, close or recommend modifications to queations and answers." CreationDate="2012-06-21T22:05:25.000" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2316" PostId="1130" Score="4" Text="This is useful for statisticians, since we are more likely to use similar terminology but, as I'm sure you've seen, some of the laymen on this site use very odd ways of describing very standard problems and the filter has a tough time catching the duplicates in that case. Also, unfortunately, I'm not so sure that some of the more transient users of the site even look at the list. Especially the &quot;lazy&quot; ones you referred to in the other thread, who want their answer now and don't care to search through the existing list of questions..." CreationDate="2012-05-09T17:47:25.423" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2320" PostId="1131" Score="1" Text="I will agree that the self policing helps. Again i think the main issue is stealing business from consultants.  I don't agree with those of you that say it can't happen.  Why do we put in so much time to this site with little or no reward.  I can't figure it out.  I am as guilty or more guilty than most at this.  As a person who does part time statistical consulting I am sensitive to this issue.  I have seen many people try to take advantage of consultants for free advice.  The reason it doesn't happen on this site may be that those people are not aware of its existence yet." CreationDate="2012-05-09T18:03:35.237" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2321" PostId="1131" Score="8" Text="Re: &quot;...with little or no reward. I can't figure it out&quot; - what is there to figure out? We are all statistics enthusiasts and have a lot of fun talking about statistics. It's a great reward to me since I sure can't talk to my wife about statistics. Also during relatively uneventful days at work like today, this is a great way to pass the time." CreationDate="2012-05-09T18:10:24.107" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2324" PostId="1131" Score="2" Text="@Macro And a great way to learn something new in the way! This site is full of new challengues and more to come!" CreationDate="2012-05-09T18:41:52.047" UserId="9174" />
  <row Id="2328" PostId="1131" Score="1" Text="@MichaelChernick: I agree that if the site were very well-known, we'd have about 10x the number of homework questions and questions by folks who simply want a &quot;press this button&quot; statistical answer and are sure we have it here. It also makes me a bit nervous, but as long as it lasts, we can simply think about it and not worry." CreationDate="2012-05-09T18:55:15.667" UserId="1764" />
  <row Id="2330" PostId="1131" Score="3" Text="@Wayne: I think this is one reason it is important to have a clear vision regarding what we want the site to be. That can evolve with time---and it has---but should be done with care. This is also a good reason for having good procedures and content scoping. If you compare us to the math.SE site, we get a lot less traffic but they seem to have *much* more of an issue with homework and help-me-right-this-instant questioning. The policies for treating such questions are a continuing matter of lively and spirited debate over there. Moreso now that they have an election in progress." CreationDate="2012-05-09T19:07:54.703" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2331" PostId="1131" Score="0" Text="@cardinal The way Cross Validated handles homework is indeed a very good way to avoid the problems you mention." CreationDate="2012-05-09T19:29:23.743" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2337" PostId="1131" Score="7" Text="@MichaelChernick, in response to your question in the top comment, &quot;Why do we put in so much time to this site with little or no reward&quot;, you may want to read [this question](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/974/what-motivates-people-to-answer-questions). Speaking for myself, I put in a lot of time on this site (I keep thinking I need to spend less time here...), but I certainly wouldn't say I've gotten no reward; I've learned an enormous amount &amp; especially about things that don't necessarily come up in formal classes or statistics textbooks." CreationDate="2012-05-10T03:00:50.020" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2385" PostId="1131" Score="7" Text="@MichaelChernick: &quot;stealing business from consultants&quot;? How? The market for consultants mostly is people/businesses with no expertise in stats, and no interest in learning it. This site is not threatening that market. I can't see why they would even come here, and I doubt someone could learn enough stats here, from scratch, to put a consultant out of work, at least not without lots work and other learning resources. The only thing I can see happening is this site improving the quality of consultations, and maybe helping a few new consultants of their feet. Scared of a little competition? :D" CreationDate="2012-05-16T06:07:01.150" UserId="9007" />
  <row Id="2325" PostId="1132" Score="1" Text="I really appreciate your response.  There is no question that this site serves a very useful purpose for those who use it.  I have spent countless hours on here over the past 8 days , mostly answering questions and supplying statistical background.  i like teaching and consulting and find what I am doing here very rewarding.  My point was really quite different.  I am asking whether this is harmful to professional consultants (in any profession on here and not just statistics)." CreationDate="2012-05-09T18:45:22.253" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2326" PostId="1132" Score="2" Text="I am 65 and have been a practicing statistician for 30 years and yet I learn a lot from teh bright people hear both young and old. I am trying to make up my mind whether or not it is worth the effort i have been putting in to stay on the site and when I think about that I think about how it absorbs the valuable time of people who could be spending this time making money working or consulting. I will probably stick with it.  I raised the question to hear both sides and make up my mind how much to invest in this." CreationDate="2012-05-09T18:48:56.430" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2329" PostId="1132" Score="3" Text="@MichaelChernick: To be honest, sites like this suck up too much time, if you contribute. The question is: how fun is it, how much do you learn by teaching, and how much do you give back in return for what you learn? The time has to come out of work, home, or something else -- if you have a real life, anyhow." CreationDate="2012-05-09T18:58:40.420" UserId="1764" />
  <row Id="2334" PostId="1132" Score="1" Text="The other sites I have posted on &quot;suck up&quot; far less time than what I am taking here and people seem to be just as appreciative of my efforts there as they are here.  The only difference is that it is directly expressed by some in email on those sites.  Here it comes across quantitatively in reputation points that they award to me." CreationDate="2012-05-09T20:44:14.007" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2327" PostId="1133" Score="0" Text="I think I am being misunderstood in a lot of ways. I have no objection to naive questions.  I was just saying that those people do come here.  There alternative is to find a statistician to hire for consulting.  There are plenty of us out there and a few hours of consulting help is not going to bust someones wallet. Again the advantage to the users of the site is clear.  That is not what i am arguing about." CreationDate="2012-05-09T18:53:40.247" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2339" PostId="1133" Score="0" Text="@MichaelChernick: What I try to say and what Wayne also said in his answer is that these people do not see the alternative of going to a statistician. I'll try to expand a few points that I have experienced or seen in that respect." CreationDate="2012-05-10T10:15:57.117" UserId="4598" />
  <row Id="2335" PostId="1134" Score="2" Text="People are using it means it is good for many of those using it.  My question is addressed to how it affects outside parties namely the professional consultant." CreationDate="2012-05-09T22:12:35.270" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2369" PostId="1134" Score="3" Text="People use tobacco, so it's a good idea?  Oops." CreationDate="2012-05-15T11:27:16.627" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="2370" PostId="1134" Score="3" Text="@PeterFlom For tobacco business? Certainly. Seriously, it is just a OA publishing place -- whether it is harmful for anyone or not is irrelevant since it is and will happen anyway." CreationDate="2012-05-15T12:01:34.580" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="2336" PostId="1135" Score="1" Text="(+1) I was thinking this whole discussion was very analogous to open-source software like R (which I strongly support). Interesting backstory." CreationDate="2012-05-10T02:00:22.563" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2350" PostId="1135" Score="1" Text="Thanks Momo.  I wouldn't expect this site would be harmful to journal editors or people who contribute software to the CRAN library.  My only concern is for the professional statistical consultant.  Maybe my concern is unfounded.  That is what I wanted to find out from you and others.  What did you mean when you said you are an outside professionalist.  Does thaat mean that you do private consulting for profit?" CreationDate="2012-05-11T03:33:26.027" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2355" PostId="1135" Score="1" Text="Exactly. I do consulting for a living, but am active in community efforts like open access journal or open source software. I mentioned it to show that open knowledge needs not be a threat, that one can do both. The knowledge accumulated and reputation earned actually positively effects my consulting." CreationDate="2012-05-11T23:13:50.007" UserId="8413" />
  <row Id="2671" PostId="1135" Score="1" Text="The development of R did hurt the business of SPlus rather severely.  I wonder how those employees and former employees feel about that.  I know some went to Google." CreationDate="2012-06-21T21:51:07.783" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="8547" PostId="1135" Score="3" Text="@Michael Chernik: well thats how things is supposed to work in a competitive economy. I doubt those former employees really was hurt!" CreationDate="2015-10-20T13:57:05.393" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="2340" PostId="1136" Score="4" Text="(+1) The meta list seems like a very fruitful path forward for everyone, as it should become a repository of useful references. It seems a bit unwieldy though, any thoughts on whether the format should be copied (or modified) here?" CreationDate="2012-05-10T12:22:39.727" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="2341" PostId="1136" Score="1" Text="@AndyW: I don't have any really strong opinions on the format (yet). I think they've done alright under the basic constraints imposed by the site. I like the idea of having everything in a single question or answer, rather than split across multiple answers, if for no other reason that it keeps things in a consistent order that can't be &quot;manipulated&quot; by voting things up or down. I'll give that some more thought." CreationDate="2012-05-10T12:32:42.503" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2353" PostId="1137" Score="2" Text="I feel gratified by the way so many of you have taken this seriously and given such thoughtful answers." CreationDate="2012-05-11T19:32:29.943" UserId="2669" />
  <row Id="2342" PostId="1138" Score="0" Text="The link to the questioner now is invalid because the accounts have been merged :-)." CreationDate="2012-05-10T15:14:53.833" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2348" PostId="1138" Score="0" Text="Note that myOpenID.com has more or less gone belly-up over the last few days to the extent that it ended up being completely removed from the stats.SE sign-on page. I had to create a new account myself as a result of this and others---potentially even the one you mention---may have had to as well. In addition the SE developers were dealing with cases where the automatic merging of accounts was failing (like mine)." CreationDate="2012-05-10T16:18:56.547" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2344" PostId="1139" Score="0" Text="I hadn't seen an option, I guess it would just go under flag-&gt;needs moderator attention-&gt;other, then?" CreationDate="2012-05-10T15:18:35.110" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2345" PostId="1139" Score="0" Text="Yes, gung, that sounds like the most convenient way to do it.  Thanks for your careful attention to these details!" CreationDate="2012-05-10T15:20:06.260" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2346" PostId="1139" Score="0" Text="Also, I can't accept an answer for *6 minutes*?! That's an awfully specific requirement." CreationDate="2012-05-10T15:22:23.747" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2347" PostId="1139" Score="0" Text="@gung: I believe it's actually 6.283185... minutes. (No, not really.)" CreationDate="2012-05-10T16:16:34.757" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2351" PostId="1139" Score="0" Text="How do we know when there is a duplicate?" CreationDate="2012-05-11T13:43:10.010" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2352" PostId="1139" Score="2" Text="@Macro: The identicon (gravatar icon) will be identical assuming they use the same email address to register both accounts." CreationDate="2012-05-11T13:44:48.950" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2358" PostId="1139" Score="0" Text="Thanks for these questions and answers.  I got a question migrated to Mathematics where I started an account but somehow I did something unintentionally that created a second acount there.  One account included my bonus transfer points and the other doesn't. Can someone eliminate the second one for me?" CreationDate="2012-05-12T23:58:47.907" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2360" PostId="1139" Score="0" Text="@Michael: Either flag one of your questions or answers at math.SE and put in the two user numbers of the accounts you want merged (You can see the user number in the top right search box in the two profile pages). Or you can send email to team+math@stackexchange.com with the relevant information. [See here](http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/3542/merging-of-accounts)." CreationDate="2012-05-13T00:20:55.790" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2363" PostId="1139" Score="0" Text="thanks for the suggestion" CreationDate="2012-05-13T01:47:03.657" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2672" PostId="1141" Score="0" Text="Good comments Stask!  I especially like the part about my answers and Bill Huber's being worth a lot more than one vote.  The same could be said for yours." CreationDate="2012-06-21T21:58:34.683" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2679" PostId="1141" Score="7" Text="I don't believe that last part was what Stas was saying, @Michael." CreationDate="2012-06-22T12:00:31.170" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2357" PostId="1143" Score="1" Text="As this is a discussion I think any only comments are appropirate responses to this.  I gave a +1 because this bothered me too.  But I have done it too because one time I gave a partial answer and someone downvoted me saying it was not an answer. so to avoid the silly downvotes I started putting them in comments where people don't downvote." CreationDate="2012-05-12T23:53:58.647" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2361" PostId="1143" Score="0" Text="@cardinal What does this comment of yours mean?" CreationDate="2012-05-13T01:31:01.383" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2362" PostId="1143" Score="0" Text="If you mean that might comment is an answer to the title I would say that it is a partial answer explaining why I put aprtial answers in comments.  I didn't make this comment an answer because it was partialand I don't consider titles to be questions.  I would asnwer it if it was mentioned in the authors original discussion." CreationDate="2012-05-13T01:45:40.850" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2364" PostId="1143" Score="1" Text="@MichaelChernick: It is an automatically generated comment when one votes to close a question as a duplicate." CreationDate="2012-05-13T01:59:50.470" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2365" PostId="1143" Score="1" Text="Let us continue this discussion on the duplicate. FYI, nothing has changed regarding mod capabilities for comment-&gt;answer conversion. (Sorry, but the automatically generated comment pointing to the duplicate referred above will disappear when this question is closed.)" CreationDate="2012-05-13T08:06:46.700" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="2367" PostId="1144" Score="0" Text="Most to least popular? Anecdotally, that once appeared to be the case when I noticed this same thing. I never checked that closely." CreationDate="2012-05-15T02:22:53.040" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2373" PostId="1145" Score="0" Text="Huh. Is there any way to coerce the system to order the tags in a particular order? If people search on a tag, the question would still show up, but for human readers, I would prefer to order tags by relevance to the question." CreationDate="2012-05-15T14:00:29.210" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2374" PostId="1145" Score="0" Text="Please refer to the [related threads on the meta site](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/search?q=%2Btag+%2Border+%2B[discussion])." CreationDate="2012-05-15T14:02:45.043" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2389" PostId="1147" Score="1" Text="Thank you, chl. This is a concise, respectful description of your disagreement with my flag there. I think this is a clear description of when &quot;nothing more than a link&quot; can be a serviceable answer. I happen to disagree that the flag you just brought up was a serviceable answer, but I accept the 'declined' as reasonable. My position on this is evolving from &quot;strict adherence to what is posted verbatim in the guidelines&quot; to something less well defined." CreationDate="2012-05-16T15:07:34.177" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2391" PostId="1147" Score="0" Text="FYI: The way I'd been handling these kinds of flags was pretty closely in line with whuber's answer here: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/912/handling-look-at-this-link-type-of-answers/913#913 ... Based on the number of such flags of mine that have been declined, I suppose the mod's view on this subject has evolved as well. In any case, as I said, I'm modifying my threshold of what is &quot;flaggable&quot;" CreationDate="2012-05-16T15:18:27.343" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2398" PostId="1147" Score="4" Text="Macro, because we have mutually agreed to suspend the long comment thread accompanying my second reply, and because you continue to object to the reply itself and I don't want to offend, I have deleted that reply.  I am grateful to @chl for weighing in here and am glad to see your constructive reactions to his points." CreationDate="2012-05-16T16:02:59.153" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2399" PostId="1147" Score="5" Text="very good, @whuber. I'm realizing now that all along we seemed to be arguing completely different points. While I harped on a literal interpretation of the FAQ, you argued for more of a &quot;spirit of the rule&quot; type of interpretation, which my view on is evolving. My apologies if my flagging bugged you but my intentions were not malicious - I'll trust your intentions in the comments I objected to also were not. Now, let's get back to using this site to provide high quality statistical advice..." CreationDate="2012-05-16T16:15:47.803" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2400" PostId="1148" Score="8" Text="(+1) Well said." CreationDate="2012-05-16T23:35:37.473" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2670" PostId="1148" Score="1" Text="This type of consulting is valuable.  Hence giving it out for free raises questions and does cut into legitimate business.  I volunteer here quite a bit and I also do private consulting.  It is not like comparing a cheap pot luck dinner to a catered affair.  This is valuable high quality consulting coming very cheaply. But I do agree with Macro that the work is not to the detailed extent of a typical consulting project.  Still i do think it might take away some business from consultants and I do not necessarily see that as a good thing." CreationDate="2012-06-21T21:48:51.713" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2674" PostId="1148" Score="8" Text="Yet you're the most active user on the site.  Why?" CreationDate="2012-06-21T22:49:10.670" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="2403" PostId="1149" Score="5" Text="I've not much to add to @Matt's reply. I am grateful to you, Peter, for showing such a positive attitude. This user has been kindly notified by the system that constructive and respectful exchanges are expected on this community site." CreationDate="2012-05-18T10:20:22.300" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="2405" PostId="1149" Score="6" Text="On behalf of the community I apologize to you, Peter, for any grief your valiant attempts at helping with this thread may have brought you. It was left open while there was some hope for a constructive resolution. To my view, that hope is largely gone now, but not for lack of any effort on your part (or on the part of other interlocutors). One way or another, the entire exchange will be cleaned up soon." CreationDate="2012-05-18T13:50:57.633" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2418" PostId="1149" Score="0" Text="No problem, thanks." CreationDate="2012-05-18T22:34:05.033" UserId="7972" />
  <row Id="2424" PostId="1149" Score="0" Text="@All By means of deletion and judicious editing of comments to the referenced thread, I have retained the content relevant to the question and removed the other remarks contained therein. I hope everyone involved views this as constructive, but if any of these changes have (inadvertently) changed the meaning, please feel free to make suitable modifications or additions.  Please just make sure your comments address the *substance* of the question." CreationDate="2012-05-21T15:42:33.663" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2425" PostId="1149" Score="0" Text="I have no problems with your edits, @whuber, but his final comment on that thread - &quot;You people are geniuses, providing a great deal of insight into answering the question. Problem solved! If you're ever in town be sure to look me up so that I can buy you a beer.&quot; was clearly sarcasm though I refrained from flagging it. Re: the thread where you ask us to vote on the merits of the question - I admit to being a downvoter. My rationale was that his third question was a thinly veiled re-phrasing of the previous question. I almost close voted but decided to simply downvote." CreationDate="2012-05-21T16:07:46.087" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2427" PostId="1149" Score="3" Text="Why don't we just take the final comment at face value and leave it at that? :-)" CreationDate="2012-05-21T16:40:27.520" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2457" PostId="1149" Score="0" Text="@whuber, I had another run in with this guy. See the edit history at http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/28847/how-to-estimate-the-extrema-of-an-unknown-function-relating-two-predictors-to-a ... I deleted his solicitation for contact outside of the site a few times in a row (the same material you deleted a few days ago). Eventually he had an outburst that I reverted by editing. At that point I flagged the post. For future reference, should I have just left it alone after he was resisting the edit and flagged it at that point? Or...?" CreationDate="2012-05-27T05:59:08.290" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2458" PostId="1149" Score="1" Text="@Macro Thank you for your efforts. It's hard to say what's the right course of action in such circumstances. It's probably a good idea to flag any situation where a fight seems to be emerging, such as an editing/rollback war (as in this circumstance) or when language becomes uncivil. Even the most tactful and reputable user has only limited capabilities to stop a determined individual from harming a thread or abusing the site. Moderators can lock posts to prevent additional changes (both temporarily and permanently); they can contact users behind the scenes; and they can suspend user accounts." CreationDate="2012-05-28T18:41:43.927" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2402" PostId="1150" Score="0" Text="Yes, I think you're probably right on all counts, including that the system is basically working." CreationDate="2012-05-18T01:44:15.650" UserId="7972" />
  <row Id="2409" PostId="1151" Score="3" Text="Sounds like reasonable advice to me.  Questions can sometimes be revised to the point that only people who have followed them from the beginning have any idea what's going on." CreationDate="2012-05-18T17:49:29.880" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="2430" PostId="1151" Score="1" Text="I agree with @MattParker. I don't think there is much point in keeping questions just for the sake of keeping them." CreationDate="2012-05-23T17:03:06.633" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="2419" PostId="1154" Score="0" Text="It is appropriate to answer your own question, and often you are in the best position to do so." CreationDate="2012-05-19T04:04:13.600" UserId="1381" />
  <row Id="2416" PostId="1155" Score="0" Text="Re: &quot;the system may automatically do some nasty things once 20 or more comments appear. (I believe the thread will automatically become &quot;community wiki,&quot; for instance.)&quot; - I never knew this. Does this happen even if the comments are occurring on an answer to the question? That's the case with the original poster's situation." CreationDate="2012-05-18T21:50:14.783" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2417" PostId="1155" Score="0" Text="@Macro, I'm not sure.  This happens rarely enough that I haven't noticed whether it matters whether the comments are to a Q or A.  Perhaps a search on meta SO would yield an answer if you're curious." CreationDate="2012-05-18T22:05:25.693" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2412" PostId="1156" Score="0" Text="Thanks to the pair of you (sorry I haven't figured out if it is appropriate to answer my own question yet so I commented instead). I might take the chat option, unless there is a way to leave a message for someone because I need to go away and figure out how to do things to take this forward (my background is a touch lacking) - he picked up on a comment I made yesterday a couple of days after my last comment. The question I think will be somewhat buried so I feel it's unlikely anyone else will become involved but thanks for the advice." CreationDate="2012-05-18T21:38:20.830" UserId="8812" />
  <row Id="2414" PostId="1156" Score="0" Text="@user8812, as far as I know there is no way to send private messages. Also, if someone answers your question it will be &quot;bumped&quot; to the top of the list, where more activity may follow." CreationDate="2012-05-18T21:42:39.100" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2415" PostId="1156" Score="0" Text="@Marco, thanks for the information, I didn't think there was the PM option but thought I may have missed it. I've just realised that I can't take the chat option anyhow as my reputation is below the lowest required level, so I will be commenting for a while but I will stop well short of 20 to avoid the community wiki issue. Thanks again." CreationDate="2012-05-18T21:47:06.130" UserId="8812" />
  <row Id="2420" PostId="1157" Score="1" Text="I'm sorry but we cannot move those comments below your answer. I don't have enough rep on SO to see deleted answers, but as I understand from the meta.SO thread, your reply was deleted before migration and comments moved to the question. A quick fix could be to copy/paste them under your reply and clean up the comment thread under the question (that's something that I can do). However, you'll lose ownership of these comments. Please, let me know." CreationDate="2012-05-19T08:11:02.723" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="2421" PostId="1157" Score="0" Text="copy-paste sounds like a good solution. thanks" CreationDate="2012-05-19T14:30:27.310" UserId="1381" />
  <row Id="2487" PostId="1159" Score="3" Text="Good point about losing the comments. Specifically, if they were asking the wrong question *in a way that future searchers are also likely to ask it* then it's valuable to preserve the conversation. The OP could even add an answer explaining that they reformulated the question and link to the new version. That way, future readers who are asking the same question will find it, rather than finding nothing and asking the same question from scratch again." CreationDate="2012-06-01T23:07:48.000" UserId="9816" />
  <row Id="2609" PostId="1159" Score="0" Text="I agree. The enormousstock of googlable questions is part of what makes stackoverflow.com so valuable." CreationDate="2012-06-14T00:00:21.463" UserId="179" />
  <row Id="2428" PostId="1160" Score="0" Text="Another option would be to rename it [twin-study] and add the tag to questions like this: http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/24155/why-isnt-this-a-problem-with-heritability-studies" CreationDate="2012-05-22T04:02:54.810" UserId="9007" />
  <row Id="2429" PostId="1160" Score="1" Text="or just merge it with the `[genetics]` tag..." CreationDate="2012-05-22T04:03:45.917" UserId="9007" />
  <row Id="2422" PostId="1162" Score="0" Text="Thanks @gung - sometimes it's hard to find the relevant part of the FAQ :)" CreationDate="2012-05-20T17:46:34.793" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2423" PostId="1162" Score="1" Text="It was hard for me to find, too. I knew that I had seen it somewhere, but it wasn't in the FAQ; it took a bit of searching before I could find it." CreationDate="2012-05-20T18:07:41.783" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2431" PostId="1165" Score="0" Text="thanks for this it is immensely helpful. 1&amp;2 - I kind of figured but wanted to ask to make sure and it is why I asked the question the other day (and included about the point of is it okay/appropriate to answer your own question). Re: point 3; I think I understand the point about confounding the markup, thanks for the workaround idea - I could also do a screen grab and paste that in. Re: point 4, understood I will check the reputation required. If I can't do that I'll need to go and figure out how to post an image on the web to link to. Thanks." CreationDate="2012-05-23T19:55:52.157" UserId="8812" />
  <row Id="2432" PostId="1165" Score="0" Text="One further thing, re: point 4 above and where you mention embedded images, if I paste an image in of the chart, is there any specific markup language I need to put around it or can I just edit/copy, edit/paste so to speak? I just tried to edit my original question to add the chart in and couldn't get this to work so I canceled the edit and thought I should ask. Many thanks." CreationDate="2012-05-23T20:21:47.447" UserId="8812" />
  <row Id="2433" PostId="1165" Score="0" Text="Yes there's markup language, but it won't work for you yet.  (This is a spam prevention mechanism.)  Just insert the URL as text so people can find it.  For more help, use the markup controls while you're editing and also investigate the &quot;help&quot; link that appears in editing mode." CreationDate="2012-05-23T20:23:37.957" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2437" PostId="1165" Score="0" Text="Re #2, wouldn't it be best to update your question, or am I misunderstanding you? It sounds like you are suggesting the OP provide a faux-answer w/ pasted data to respond to something (a comment or question). I sometimes see that &amp; I always leave a comment chastising them not to." CreationDate="2012-05-24T02:46:15.617" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2443" PostId="1165" Score="0" Text="@gung I apologize for not being clearer: I have interpreted the question as stating that the OP has *a valid reply* to their own question.  Assuming this, in keeping with site guidelines, I have recommended posting that reply." CreationDate="2012-05-24T13:56:44.353" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2445" PostId="1165" Score="1" Text="I guess I misread the question. I gather you're keying in on &quot;I think I may have partly solved my own query&quot; right at the beginning. That makes sense. From there the question goes on to discuss adding data in response to comments, so I guess I forgot about the first part." CreationDate="2012-05-24T14:07:37.697" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2434" PostId="1166" Score="0" Text="Mathematica is a great tool for statistical graphics, theoretical stats, and even some applications. :-) This site (still in beta) boasts some impressive answers to stats- and graphics- related questions: check it out." CreationDate="2012-05-23T20:52:54.850" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2436" PostId="1166" Score="2" Text="shouldn't this be posted [here](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/1030/6109) instead?" CreationDate="2012-05-23T21:50:12.470" UserId="6109" />
  <row Id="2438" PostId="1166" Score="0" Text="This question should probably be closed as a duplicate of the [2012 version](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/1030/4764).  This way the old ads will be kept (in case someone wants to copy them over), and people won't post in the old thread my mistake (I didn't notice that it was last year's thread either)." CreationDate="2012-05-24T09:23:05.100" UserId="4764" />
  <row Id="2442" PostId="1166" Score="0" Text="Thanks for flagging this: I have reposted the ad in the current thread (for 1H 2012) and closed this one.  (We need a better mechanism for proposing ads...)" CreationDate="2012-05-24T13:54:49.427" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2435" PostId="1167" Score="6" Text="what a great reference! I couldn't resist pasting a shot of the back cover into your answer - I hope you don't mind, but I think that the approach is effective in this particular context (that is, to illustrate your point)." CreationDate="2012-05-23T21:49:21.617" UserId="1381" />
  <row Id="2520" PostId="1167" Score="0" Text="I posted a new question that has brought up the issue again http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/29994/1381. It is differently focused enough to provide a good test of what is on topic here. Although based on this post it would seem on topic, it could be a better fit for academia.se." CreationDate="2012-06-07T15:30:04.207" UserId="1381" />
  <row Id="2521" PostId="1167" Score="1" Text="Thanks for the comment. I moved the question to http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/1933/258" CreationDate="2012-06-07T16:00:57.213" UserId="1381" />
  <row Id="2444" PostId="1168" Score="0" Text="+1 for the clarification in the second paragraph: that's a good statement of our policy.  (Concerning the first paragraph, I'm sure it took an effort to agree with me about something: thanks! :-)" CreationDate="2012-05-24T14:04:48.650" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2446" PostId="1169" Score="0" Text="(+1) But, *funnest*. Really? :-)" CreationDate="2012-05-24T14:12:22.977" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2447" PostId="1169" Score="0" Text="@cardinal Yes, it makes me wince. It's almost as bad as the Apple site's logo--but not quite as bad, because the grammatical solecism is so *obvious* here.  Apple's error is not only intentional, but perhaps too subtle for many, which IMHO is an insidious thing to do to our language." CreationDate="2012-05-24T14:16:19.573" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2448" PostId="1169" Score="0" Text="@cardinal yeah, it makes me twitch, too, and I helped approve it. But, whatever works." CreationDate="2012-05-24T15:02:09.530" UserId="6109" />
  <row Id="2450" PostId="1169" Score="0" Text="@cardinal the slogan was my doing. Yes, it's deliberate. Ironically, I heard the word used by Steve Jobs in a keynote once. The grammatically correct version would have sounded flat. It got your attention, didn't it?" CreationDate="2012-05-24T20:13:47.110" UserId="11510" />
  <row Id="2449" PostId="1170" Score="1" Text="thanks this is very helpful and exactly identifies some of the problems that I have had, e.g. hit return by accident (or force of habit) and add a comment (and then run in to the 5 minute limit when trying to edit your mistake and then you add a second message to carry on where the mistake finished). I think there are some comments I can delete without breaking the flow so I may tidy it up. Thanks for the advice." CreationDate="2012-05-24T17:34:13.477" UserId="8812" />
  <row Id="3508" PostId="1172" Score="0" Text="What does homework smell like?" CreationDate="2012-10-02T10:17:21.970" UserId="9007" />
  <row Id="3968" PostId="1172" Score="2" Text="@naught101 Homework smells like stuff my dog would potentially eat. Looking at the number of times that has happened! :)" CreationDate="2013-03-09T18:42:34.000" UserId="21072" />
  <row Id="5666" PostId="1172" Score="1" Text="^ says the @curious_cat! &quot;Libel!&quot; the dog says!" CreationDate="2014-05-07T02:08:43.603" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="2452" PostId="1173" Score="5" Text="that is a good point. I asked a [non-homework question on serverfault](http://serverfault.com/questions/320518/can-read-write-jobs-be-put-in-a-queue) that elicited [this answer with a snarky lecture](http://serverfault.com/a/320540/60508) on asking homework questions." CreationDate="2012-05-25T20:43:33.417" UserId="1381" />
  <row Id="2453" PostId="1173" Score="1" Text="@David, Re: your link - &quot;thanks for the apology in advance&quot; - hilarious. I hope to use that one in the future :)" CreationDate="2012-05-26T00:55:32.240" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2462" PostId="1173" Score="0" Text="I think the line between homework and not homework is very fine. We may be motivated individuals studying on our own and working out &quot;homework like&quot; questions. Should these be considered homework?" CreationDate="2012-05-29T01:52:53.897" UserId="7448" />
  <row Id="2464" PostId="1173" Score="0" Text="@RJ I added a supplement to respond to your query." CreationDate="2012-05-29T13:43:08.307" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2467" PostId="1173" Score="0" Text="+1, the &quot;supplement&quot; adds a lot. This seems like a good policy. I find the parenthetical comment in the 2nd bullet point (top) to be especially definitive. 1 suggestion: you could explicate your bolded sentence a little more; I'm pretty sure I know what you mean, but it doesn't flow from the previous sentence quite as clearly as you may have thought when writing it. Eg, are questions tagged &quot;homework&quot; less likely to come up in a search, or is it just that searchers will more quickly continue scanning the search results upon noticing the tag?" CreationDate="2012-05-29T15:13:25.257" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2468" PostId="1173" Score="1" Text="@gung There's no special treatment for [tag:homework], but you can explicitly *exclude* it with &quot;-[homework]&quot; in the search or even *include* it with &quot;+[homework]&quot;. Different users will appreciate both options (for obvious reasons)." CreationDate="2012-05-29T16:28:30.980" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2472" PostId="1173" Score="0" Text="@whuber if I understand, you propose that the requirement for tagging a question as homework is that it is routine. Thus, it is okay to tag non-homework questions as homework, e.g. textbook questions attempted during self-study, or even potential homework questions being developed by an instructor?" CreationDate="2012-05-31T00:52:56.317" UserId="1381" />
  <row Id="2473" PostId="1173" Score="0" Text="@David Yes, that is one of the implications of our tag wiki excerpt." CreationDate="2012-05-31T13:18:14.487" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3469" PostId="1173" Score="0" Text="I agree with @whuber.  As a monitor with over 2 years experience as a member I think he knows more about the frequencies with which things happen on CV than anyone else.  I personal do not like taking the initiative to tag a question as homework.  I think it should be up to the OP to do that.  My preference is to suggest that they tag it as homework when it appears to be.  I guess what is important is when you see that a problem seems like homework treat it as such when you answer until the OP resolves the issue." CreationDate="2012-09-27T23:13:24.870" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2461" PostId="1175" Score="3" Text="I've noticed that myself. I don't know what the deal is w/ it; it does seem a little strange. Another approach is to click on a tag that is related to what you are interested in, which will return all the questions associated w/ that tag, that sometimes works better than the search feature also. I still do use CV's search feature sometimes. It can be helpful for finding a question when you remember the question loosely (less helpful in your case where you don't know). Google also works sometimes." CreationDate="2012-05-29T00:10:28.657" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2463" PostId="1175" Score="2" Text="I use the search function and it seems to work well for my purposes. What's an example of a search you've done that didn't find what you wanted?" CreationDate="2012-05-29T09:57:31.207" UserId="3835" />
  <row Id="2469" PostId="1175" Score="1" Text="@mark999 I thought someone would ask that... It's tricky, since you're proposing a post hoc test. I'm sure I could state any subject I was trying to search for and the appropriate search terms could be found that appears demonstrate that the search capability works just fine. But that doesn't demonstrate that it works well for an imperfect user before they know the secret combination of terms. My point is that on a number of occasions I have had much better and much more rapid success just typing in a question rather than using search." CreationDate="2012-05-29T23:38:53.207" UserId="10354" />
  <row Id="2470" PostId="1175" Score="2" Text="Not sure, but items 3 and 4 [in this answer](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1122/how-to-stem-the-tide-of-duplicate-qs/1136#1136) might be helpful, if you haven't seen it already." CreationDate="2012-05-30T13:13:48.850" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2489" PostId="1175" Score="0" Text="@Bogdanovist I wasn't proposing any sort of test. It seems strange that you criticise the effectiveness of the search function but you're not even willing to provide an example." CreationDate="2012-06-02T09:42:03.647" UserId="3835" />
  <row Id="2492" PostId="1175" Score="0" Text="I didn't make myself clear enough. I'm not saying &quot;search doesn't work&quot;. If I was, I could provide an example &quot;I tried to search for logistic regression and search returns nothing&quot;, which is an objective fact that can be confirmed or refuted. This is not what I am claiming. What I am reporting is that in my experience, I have found it quicker and easier to find existing questions by starting to ask them and waiting for suggestions than by using the search function. An example of why would involve reporting every dumb mistake I made using both before finding what I was after." CreationDate="2012-06-05T06:11:04.507" UserId="10354" />
  <row Id="2493" PostId="1175" Score="0" Text="So what I am saying is that &quot;I always find it much easier to find things by trying to ask a question than using search&quot;. That's irrefutable, since it's a question of my subjective experience, even if it is because I'm using search wrong. The main point is that SE have put a heap of effort into an awesome dynamic system for suggesting questions as you type, but stick with a older style query-response type search function which doesn't really encourage you to actually use it." CreationDate="2012-06-05T06:17:14.810" UserId="10354" />
  <row Id="2475" PostId="1178" Score="9" Text="Google is a primary search engine for the Web.  StackExchange has an internal search engine which serves the same role: access to it appears at the top right of every page.  With it, you will find that this question is an [SE FAQ](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8724).  Is that ironic or what? :-)" CreationDate="2012-05-31T17:59:08.020" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2476" PostId="1178" Score="0" Text="Hilarious, @whuber. I believe the modern term for that is &quot;Oh snap&quot;. Seriously though, I thought the search field in the top right only queried whatever board you were on, not the entire network." CreationDate="2012-05-31T18:22:08.407" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2477" PostId="1178" Score="4" Text="@Macro True; you need enough experience to recognize when a meta question--because it might apply network-wide--should be searched on Meta SO. But even a [naive search](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=google) for &quot;Google&quot; here turns up 23 threads, many of which discuss this issue. I don't mean &quot;naive&quot; in any pejorative sense, but only to emphasize that people like me whose search strategies tend toward simple combinations of keywords can still find satisfaction. Nor did I intend to imply the current question is redundant. But its somewhat self-referential nature is amusing :-)." CreationDate="2012-05-31T18:28:53.960" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2474" PostId="1179" Score="6" Text="(+1) Particularly for the last paragraph, and, specifically, for the point regarding familiarity with statistical terminology. As one becomes more knowledgeable about a subject, it becomes easy to forget how important a command of the basic vocabulary is toward your understanding and ability to find things." CreationDate="2012-05-31T17:52:38.910" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2478" PostId="1179" Score="0" Text="@Macro I like your answer and gave iy a plus 1.  I was very serious about the question and I appreciate your answer.  I would accept it but someone else already has.  Why can someone other than the OP accept the answer?" CreationDate="2012-06-01T01:31:02.660" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2479" PostId="1179" Score="0" Text="@MichaelChernick, thanks. I don't think anyone has accepted the answer though." CreationDate="2012-06-01T01:34:31.407" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2480" PostId="1179" Score="0" Text="Now this question is only half serious.  Do you think that by answering with a citation from Google merits reputation points.  I guess it goes to show that I am adept at Google. But of I do that it means I didn't know the answer myself." CreationDate="2012-06-01T01:34:40.800" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2481" PostId="1179" Score="1" Text="Yes I do think that merits reputation points. You had to put forth some effort to do it,right?" CreationDate="2012-06-01T01:35:29.253" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2482" PostId="1179" Score="0" Text="@whuber Do you really compare the StackExchange search engine to Google?" CreationDate="2012-06-01T01:41:31.910" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2483" PostId="1179" Score="0" Text="@Macro I saw a check mark. But it was in gray. I checked it and it turned green.  Did you get the 15 points from me?" CreationDate="2012-06-01T02:40:12.267" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2484" PostId="1179" Score="0" Text="Yeah I got the check mark. You don't get points for meta posts though." CreationDate="2012-06-01T02:45:38.137" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2485" PostId="1179" Score="8" Text="Michael, the comparison of SE search to Google is not in terms of capability, but rather it speaks to the spirit of your question. One interpretation is that it asks &quot;why do people rush to ask questions without first doing appropriate research?&quot; Well, on SE sites appropriate research includes using the SE search: [&quot;Have you thoroughly searched for an answer *before* asking your question?&quot;](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask). Perhaps turning your comment around would be illuminating: do you really think Google is the only way to do research on the Web?  (I'm sure you don't.)" CreationDate="2012-06-01T15:19:48.947" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2486" PostId="1180" Score="1" Text="I believe credit for deleted questions disappears. This is one reason moderators and high-rep users may un-delete questions. The primary reason, though, is that when replies or comments in a thread reflect an effortful discussion and show progress toward understanding or solving a question, then--regardless of how much reputation is or is not involved--it has become a community product and should not unilaterally be deleted." CreationDate="2012-06-01T21:30:51.130" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2488" PostId="1180" Score="1" Text="@whuber: exactly. A second, better-(in)formed question may be the best option for posterity, but if the first thread is informative it should be kept. I've tried to even leave my own answers that illustrated a misunderstanding that was corrected by comments because I figured that other people might have the same misconceptions." CreationDate="2012-06-02T00:03:45.377" UserId="1764" />
  <row Id="2490" PostId="1181" Score="0" Text="I think you're right about not wanting to keep posting the edits partway through. I don't have a problem with the site crashing while I post or edit, however. I'm not sure why it would be better for me--I'm mostly working from an old machine." CreationDate="2012-06-04T04:13:58.110" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2494" PostId="1186" Score="0" Text="Re: &quot;If the OP unaccepted your answer, I'm not sure what would happen. As I read the FAQ, the owner would lose the points, but you would not get them (at least as it stands now)&quot;, but the whole &quot;during the bounty period&quot; clause seems like it would still hand me the points, and that's the question. Also, I think that's a good practice not to vote on things you can't say definitively are good/bad answers :) I do the same." CreationDate="2012-06-05T11:03:52.317" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2495" PostId="1186" Score="0" Text="The purpose of a grace period otherwise may be to give the bounty owner some chance to think about which answer they want to award the bounty. In this case there's only one answer, which the owner accepted, so it seems like there's nothing to be decided during the grace period, which is why the bolded part in the post I quoted was of interest to me" CreationDate="2012-06-05T13:43:44.030" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2496" PostId="1187" Score="12" Text="If residual consulting opportunities come your way due to your participation, that is one thing. But, I think the general philosophy of the network is such that someone who is actively promoting themselves in an effort to procure outside work is looked down on. This is even mentioned (tangentially) in the site FAQ. The consultants on stats.SE are usually pretty low key. I've seen the occasional attempt to take things off-network and I think that should be generally discouraged." CreationDate="2012-06-05T18:40:41.803" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2512" PostId="1187" Score="1" Text="It appears in my bio that I do private consulting.  I do not adverties on the site unless this question sounds like advertising.  The potential opportunity was initiated by the OP strictly because he liked the way i handled his question." CreationDate="2012-06-05T19:25:24.010" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2513" PostId="1187" Score="2" Text="Yes, I know Michael. My comments weren't directed at you; it was a wholely general and abstract statement. In fact, if anything, what I was attempting to express was that what's happened in your particular circumstance seems perfectly fine and appropriate, in my view." CreationDate="2012-06-05T19:29:58.653" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2514" PostId="1187" Score="1" Text="I am still not sure anything will come of it.  It is not uncommon for people to say that they plan to use you and never follow up.  But it did get me to think of this question and i am interested in other people's experience here." CreationDate="2012-06-05T19:41:09.763" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2515" PostId="1187" Score="3" Text="A friendly suggestion: @whuber (+1) has given a very nice answer, but leaving a question unaccepted for a suitable amount of time tends to draw more responses. If you think you've not yet heard the last word on this topic, you might leave the question open for a few days. :)" CreationDate="2012-06-05T19:44:33.923" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2517" PostId="1187" Score="0" Text="Yes cardinal I understand that." CreationDate="2012-06-06T13:09:00.290" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="14095" PostId="1187" Score="2" Text="@MichaelChernick, after 5 years since asking the question, what is your opinion on the subject? Did you get any work through CV channel?" CreationDate="2017-08-21T18:07:49.073" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="19354" PostId="1187" Score="0" Text="@Akaska It has been so long that i don't know since I wasn't specific about who it was. I did get some consulting jobs around that time but I retired shortly after that. I do think that people on Stack Exchange can find be reading questions &amp; answer can find people that they would like to consult with &amp; that's a good thing. This could equally apply to other Stack Exchange sites in addition to Cross Validated." CreationDate="2019-11-05T04:18:06.287" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2507" PostId="1188" Score="2" Text="Have you looked at our FAQ? http://stats.stackexchange.com/faq#reputation" CreationDate="2012-06-05T18:50:55.097" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2510" PostId="1188" Score="0" Text="My apologies - I was looking at the general FAQ and didn't realise that there was one specifically for reputation (which does make sense given the importance of it). Apologies and thanks for the help." CreationDate="2012-06-05T18:56:10.460" UserId="8812" />
  <row Id="4072" PostId="1189" Score="24" Text="&quot;I want to have the door to my office open so anybody can drop in and ask questions. I want to help them solve their problems.&quot; It sounds like academia lost a rare gem." CreationDate="2013-05-24T02:09:08.450" UserId="24617" />
  <row Id="4565" PostId="1189" Score="4" Text="It's all about credibility. Internet marketing has been my job for many, many years now. After trying so many things (and I wish I was more of an expert in something besides such a cliche' topic), I can say, especially after witnessing it myself repeatedly throughout the years, that Whuber &quot;gets&quot; it. He genuinely wants to help people and thus _cannot_ &quot;fake&quot; credibility, enthusiasm, or genuinity. That's rare. It's easy to recognize users that are here for other reasons. Anecdotally, I've found users like this = bad quality. Special experts like @Whuber or Glen_B are searched long and hard for." CreationDate="2013-09-10T11:41:21.727" UserId="28928" />
  <row Id="4566" PostId="1189" Score="1" Text="Heh, there's so much more to say in how I agree with this post so much, but I'll just try to leave it at that.  I'll be referring anyone trying to &quot;make it&quot; in almost ANYTHING to this post as for some reason whuber seems to have a way of wording things in just the exact right way." CreationDate="2013-09-10T11:43:53.330" UserId="28928" />
  <row Id="14096" PostId="1189" Score="1" Text="So, whuber, does your answer still stand after 5 years since answering it?" CreationDate="2017-08-21T18:09:41.747" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="14097" PostId="1189" Score="10" Text="@Aksakal Very much so! I get several inquiries a year to work on projects or collaborate on research from people who specifically mention this site.  I have also been able to use my posts (as well as those of others) as references or additional support for claims and explanations in my reports.  More generally, the broad exposure to what's going on in ML and stats afforded by years of reading a large portion of the posts on this site has enabled me to engage in significant projects that I would have turned down or not even understood before." CreationDate="2017-08-21T18:18:24.880" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="14098" PostId="1189" Score="0" Text="@whuber, that's great to know, thanks" CreationDate="2017-08-21T18:19:52.470" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="2497" PostId="1190" Score="1" Text="I am going to use it to see if I can notify myself :P @Procrastinator" CreationDate="2012-06-05T18:24:39.530" UserDisplayName="user10525" />
  <row Id="2498" PostId="1190" Score="10" Text="Not constructive, too localized, not a real question AND off topic all at once! ;)" CreationDate="2012-06-05T18:27:31.477" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2499" PostId="1190" Score="2" Text="I don't believe the @ notification works *at all* outside of the comments." CreationDate="2012-06-05T18:30:08.807" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2500" PostId="1190" Score="2" Text="Nice edits @Procrastinator (lol...). Who is upvoting this?" CreationDate="2012-06-05T18:40:30.697" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2501" PostId="1190" Score="2" Text="I haven't been notified, not for this one nor for the Frequentism question one.  I'll upvote this!" CreationDate="2012-06-05T18:42:11.770" UserId="7555" />
  <row Id="2502" PostId="1190" Score="3" Text="You guys are having too much fun with this. ;-)" CreationDate="2012-06-05T18:43:44.297" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2503" PostId="1190" Score="1" Text="@Procrastinator, did you create the knowledge-discovery tag just for this question?" CreationDate="2012-06-05T18:45:58.817" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2504" PostId="1190" Score="2" Text="Well, the self-notification didn't work either.  I think we've learned what we needed to: &quot;@&quot; is for comments (and maybe chat--maybe there's another experiment worth making there?), but does not appear to work within questions.  (We probably could have looked that up on SO meta, but it sure is more fun to take the radically empirical route, and didn't take any longer...)  I'll migrate this question to our meta site now." CreationDate="2012-06-05T18:46:14.790" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2506" PostId="1190" Score="1" Text="Sorry, @Procrastinator, your tag edits seem to have been wiped out by the migration.  They're still visible in the old closed version." CreationDate="2012-06-05T18:49:21.153" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2509" PostId="1190" Score="0" Text="@whuber: Yes, I forgot about chat! I know for a fact that on occasion someone will cite a user in a question or answer and in the instances I've been cited, I've never received a notification even when I've participated in the comment stream below." CreationDate="2012-06-05T18:52:32.257" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2511" PostId="1190" Score="0" Text="My understanding of the notification is that it's a local lookup from the comment stream, not a global lookup. That makes sense given that user names do.not have to be unique. I've sometimes wanted a global lookup feature like @user1234 where 1234 is the user id to notify a participant. My guess is they purposefully don't do.this so that whuber and other prolific users don't get a deluge of look-at-my-thread-please notifications." CreationDate="2012-06-05T18:56:48.273" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2516" PostId="1192" Score="1" Text="I asked a [somewhat related question](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/134499/search-all-sites-on-stackexchange-com-not-returning-results-from-site-specific) on SO meta regarding the SE-wide search not returning results that are returned in site-specific search. The question has not gotten much traction, but I'm interested if anyone has any insight." CreationDate="2012-06-05T20:58:13.223" UserId="2981" />
  <row Id="2518" PostId="1193" Score="0" Text="Yeah, I thought I remembered that the bounty was actually awarded some time after the grace period ended." CreationDate="2012-06-07T04:39:59.963" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2519" PostId="1193" Score="0" Text="@gung Well it's good to have this documented now. I found one thread on Meta SO that indicated it could take 4-5 hours tops but now we know it can take as much as 16 hours." CreationDate="2012-06-07T12:14:22.833" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2554" PostId="1197" Score="0" Text="thanks for your answer! I'll look at Public Health &amp; Epidemiology and will decide if I post my question there or here at CV." CreationDate="2012-06-08T08:28:14.253" UserId="1573" />
  <row Id="2555" PostId="1197" Score="0" Text="@psj: Public Health &amp; Epidemiology is just a proposal for a Q&amp;A site, not an actual Q&amp;A site. Post the question on CV. If you support a future Public Health site, consider participating in the proposal on Area51." CreationDate="2012-06-08T10:24:49.710" UserId="2981" />
  <row Id="2548" PostId="1198" Score="1" Text="These two cases are barely related to data-visualization. The tag [tag:figures] is a bad choice, IMHO. I would rather be inclined to delete this tag for those two questions." CreationDate="2012-06-07T21:47:25.010" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="2651" PostId="1198" Score="2" Text="Tags removed. I made a synonym `figure` &lt;-&gt; `data-visualisation` for future use." CreationDate="2012-06-19T21:10:58.130" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="2522" PostId="1199" Score="3" Text="+1. If this is a vote, I'd also say yes. There are many other examples of tags like this on the site and there aren't enough active people to get the whole tag synonym thing to work well." CreationDate="2012-06-07T16:23:24.627" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="9012" PostId="1200" Score="1" Text="Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been [moved to chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/34658/discussion-on-question-by-gung-current-tag-synonym-candidates)." CreationDate="2016-01-21T14:55:04.240" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2561" PostId="1206" Score="2" Text="http://stats.stackexchange.com/faq#bounty" CreationDate="2012-06-08T14:18:10.930" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2564" PostId="1206" Score="0" Text="@whuber, he doesn't have enough rep to offer a bounty" CreationDate="2012-06-08T15:04:00.500" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2566" PostId="1206" Score="0" Text="@Macro That reference is to more than bounties: it is the part of our FAQ that addresses &quot;What if I don’t get a good answer?&quot;.  Among other things, it links to http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask.  It's worth a read!  (2) Re your second comment (+1): in a nutshell, [TL;DR](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Too_long;_didn%27t_read)." CreationDate="2012-06-08T15:10:00.867" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2568" PostId="1206" Score="1" Text="@whuber I have to be honest that your response makes me feel depressed. I don't know enough about statistics to really know if my question is good (as per the links you put) or not (is this site only for people who know a lot already ?) and I don't have enough reputation to offer a bounty (which I would gladly offer if I could). I feel a bit unwelcome now." CreationDate="2012-06-08T15:22:09.823" UserId="11405" />
  <row Id="2569" PostId="1206" Score="0" Text="I'm sorry about that impression, Joe: it was unintended. I have reviewed your question several times and although it's a bit long and dense, it's quite clear and well written. The only advice I have right now--apart from the standard material I have referenced--is to be patient. A tough question usually doesn't get an instant answer. Good answers often require an overnight wait or even waiting through a weekend when expert readers may have more time to reply." CreationDate="2012-06-08T15:27:09.083" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2570" PostId="1206" Score="1" Text="@whuber thank you very much. I feel much better now. I am new to SE and I had the impression that questions that are not answered quickly (say within a day) tend not to be answered at all. I'm very happy to be patient and if I can accumulate some more reputation I will make a bounty..." CreationDate="2012-06-08T15:41:14.433" UserId="11405" />
  <row Id="2575" PostId="1206" Score="0" Text="@whuber as per Macro's answer I have edited the question significantly." CreationDate="2012-06-08T18:11:39.377" UserId="11405" />
  <row Id="2567" PostId="1207" Score="0" Text="Thank you. I could cut the question down to a couple of short sentences for each part: how to partition variance in a logistic mixed model ? And how to compare residual variance over time in a mixed model ? I just fear that people might think I didn't put much effort into solving the problem myself (hence my original question, and the updates...)." CreationDate="2012-06-08T15:16:33.933" UserId="11405" />
  <row Id="2571" PostId="1207" Score="0" Text="Also, I thinking of a better title. Thanks again !" CreationDate="2012-06-08T15:45:10.077" UserId="11405" />
  <row Id="2572" PostId="1207" Score="0" Text="No problem - I'm looking forward to it. The type of question you asked is within my (and some other posters I know of) area of expertise, so I do expect that a good answer will come forward." CreationDate="2012-06-08T15:49:10.693" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2574" PostId="1207" Score="0" Text="OK, I have shortened the question, removing as much verbosity as I can. I hope it still makes sense ! ? I have also updated the title. Thanks !" CreationDate="2012-06-08T18:11:01.423" UserId="11405" />
  <row Id="2591" PostId="1210" Score="1" Text="Do you think we need more moderators?" CreationDate="2012-06-12T13:49:48.537" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2592" PostId="1210" Score="4" Text="@whuber: No, from what I can see three (at least the current three) certainly seems to be enough. But as I understand it, there should be regular elections... right? Who decides when we have these?" CreationDate="2012-06-12T14:18:47.423" UserId="8507" />
  <row Id="2593" PostId="1211" Score="0" Text="Thanks, that was what I wanted to know. :)" CreationDate="2012-06-12T14:32:00.193" UserId="8507" />
  <row Id="2603" PostId="1213" Score="2" Text="The message to you was a response to *many* events; although it may have been triggered by a comment thread in which you were involved, your criticism of a moderator's actions was *not* the reason for the contact." CreationDate="2012-06-13T14:36:55.417" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2605" PostId="1213" Score="0" Text="@whuber Thanks for that information.  I don't think the message was necessary." CreationDate="2012-06-13T14:54:38.093" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2604" PostId="1214" Score="1" Text="Thank you for your well-crafted answer.  I think that sometimes the criticism belongs in the comments to the specific question because it deals with the specifics of that situation and may affect actions taken by the respondent regarding editing or deleting a post.  it is true that with reputation comes autority and privileges.  But there is a difference between community members and moderators.  I do not think that the community members do much in the way of closing questions and moving answers to comments.  This is done by the moderators and is viewed to be part of their job." CreationDate="2012-06-13T14:53:27.703" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2606" PostId="1214" Score="7" Text="That last point is important, Michael: **I believe all the moderators here would appreciate *more* involvement from the community in voting to close or migrate questions and editing questions and answers.** I, for one, would be *much* happier seeing the community take these actions, because it would show in most cases that such actions are neither arbitrary nor expressions of authority. (Many mods are uncomfortable with the immediate, overriding nature of their votes to take such actions, but there are good reasons for that and it won't change.)" CreationDate="2012-06-13T14:59:39.773" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2607" PostId="1214" Score="0" Text="@whuber, is it true that community members can acquire the privilage to convert answers to comments? I don't remember reading about this in the description of privilages." CreationDate="2012-06-13T15:38:09.350" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2608" PostId="1214" Score="0" Text="@Macro No, you caught me: I purposely left out that particular capability in the enumeration in the first bullet item.  Moderators (and only mods) can do a lot with comments, including editing them, converting them into edits to the question, converting answers into comments, deleting comments, and viewing deleted comments. I haven't found a way to undelete comments, unfortunately... ." CreationDate="2012-06-13T15:41:49.640" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2611" PostId="1214" Score="2" Text="Community members w/ rep &gt;3k can vote to close questions, &amp; if 5 do so, it will be closed, even w/o action from mods. I have voted to close some questions, although I am typically reluctant to do so, eg `R` questions that belong on SO (nb, w/o mods, they would just be closed, not migrated). In addition, I have flagged answers to be converted to comments, because I believed that they weren't really answers. I strongly suspect I am not the only one who has done so. My point is that, while I agree we can criticize mods, we should be cautious about assuming that they are just being arbitrary." CreationDate="2012-06-18T18:14:56.737" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2612" PostId="1214" Score="1" Text="@gung: Is that last part true? For example, if everyone votes to close as *off-topic* and belonging on SO, it will be closed as off-topic rather than migrated based on consensus? Gathering the five votes to close is so rare on this site that I don't know if I can identify a definitive case either way. (Luckily the mods are very attentive and more times than not will migrate after just one or two close votes, I've [anecdotally] found.)" CreationDate="2012-06-18T18:53:32.740" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2620" PostId="1214" Score="0" Text="@cardinal, I *thought* that was the way it worked--maybe I'm wrong. You're right that we never get to 5 votes here, so, who knows?" CreationDate="2012-06-19T05:38:13.553" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2624" PostId="1214" Score="1" Text="@gung: I honestly don't know the answer and thought you might have seen this behavior on this site or another one, or had uncovered a meta.SO thread to this effect. I'd be curious to know. I'd like to see this site continue to grow in active users making positive and high-quality contributions to the site, in part so that the community has a critical mass of users more able and willing to self-police the content." CreationDate="2012-06-19T10:44:18.620" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="21327" PostId="1214" Score="0" Text="@whuber Is there a way to re-open the closed question because we as community members did not agree with the moderator’s reasoning? For example, I don’t have high reputation but I do believe the moderator was sparingly closing questions not so appropriately this one time. Is there a way for us to at least get more ideas to discuss the correctness of moderator’s action and if, for example, by voting that most of us did think moderator was incorrect, we can undo his action? Thanks.!" CreationDate="2022-05-08T05:46:53.427" UserId="179103" />
  <row Id="21328" PostId="1214" Score="0" Text="@Stucash I believe you can vote to reopen a closed question.  However, the intention behind your inquiry is unclear: are you concerned about the status of a thread or about criticizing moderators?  If you want to criticize moderators, would you mind explaining why?" CreationDate="2022-05-08T12:47:08.770" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21329" PostId="1214" Score="0" Text="@whuber Thanks for reverting back; my concern is about criticizing moderators if I have to pick one; the issue for me here was that the points made by the moderator and the questions the moderator raised about my question being off-topic, were not valid from my perspective. I have shown the moderator why the points weren't valid and why the moderator didn't peruse my question. The moderator closed my question nevertheless. (1/2)" CreationDate="2022-05-08T15:28:14.533" UserId="179103" />
  <row Id="21330" PostId="1214" Score="0" Text="@stucash Have you seen https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/reopen-questions?" CreationDate="2022-05-08T15:33:21.773" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21331" PostId="1214" Score="0" Text="(Sorry this gets a bit long-winded, 2/2) I didn't want to criticize the moderator per se (although the moderator did seem a bit unreasonable to me), I wanted to, probably share/involve the reasoning with other moderators/high reputation members such that I can see, if any, what I did not see, making my question off-topic, or simply otherwise." CreationDate="2022-05-08T15:34:17.500" UserId="179103" />
  <row Id="21332" PostId="1214" Score="1" Text="Thanks! @whuber I did not read that before; that's what I was looking for." CreationDate="2022-05-08T15:36:16.003" UserId="179103" />
  <row Id="21333" PostId="1214" Score="0" Text="@stucash I just skimmed your question and the comment thread.  My sense is that you have a genuine statistical question here but (1) part of any good answer will appeal to the properties of financial markets and (2) it is framed quite broadly.  An effective tactic in such cases is to edit the post to emphasize the aspect(s) of the problem that indicate statistical reasoning or experience would help with its solution and to focus it on a clear, specific application with a definite objective. That editing will put your post into the review queue, bringing it to everyone's attention." CreationDate="2022-05-08T15:37:59.227" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21334" PostId="1214" Score="0" Text="@whuber Thanks very much. I'd have been welcoming these constructive comments back then. I didn't originally come from Statistics background, is there something like a template that I can learn to use, to help me clearly demonstrate the statistical reasoning behind my problem? ( I was thinking the alike of Minimal, Complete, Verifiable Example [MCVE] on SO, we probably have something that's to this effect here on CV as well )" CreationDate="2022-05-08T15:49:03.537" UserId="179103" />
  <row Id="21335" PostId="1214" Score="1" Text="@stucash I recommend not trying to use statistical language unless you are well versed in statistics.  Explain your problem in your own terms, but emphasize that aspect that causes you to think statistical methods could be of help.  In your case I believe you have a good sense that (1) standard methods of time series analysis require unbroken, regularly spaced series of observations; (2) because markets are closed on nights, weekends, and holidays, series of market prices are naturally interrupted; (3) perhaps this causes problems for the purpose of [fill in the blank]--why or why not?" CreationDate="2022-05-08T16:36:19.150" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2610" PostId="1218" Score="6" Text="You may be interested in this related thread on the main site, [How can I improve my analysis of the effects of reputation on voting?](http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/13858/930)." CreationDate="2012-06-18T17:32:22.353" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="2613" PostId="1218" Score="9" Text="I think no matter what criteria you choose, there will be examples of when that criteria, in isolation, fails as a measure of quality. That being said, I say we should choose a criteria that ranks me highly. How about number of silver badges?" CreationDate="2012-06-18T22:43:28.267" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2614" PostId="1218" Score="4" Text="@Macro Well done!" CreationDate="2012-06-19T01:14:25.347" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2615" PostId="1218" Score="2" Text="@whuber What is it with you guys?  I raised this as a serious question and you treat it as a joke." CreationDate="2012-06-19T03:14:04.317" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2616" PostId="1218" Score="0" Text="I really would be interested to know what people think constitutes good answers. To add fuel to the fire here is an example as a point of discussion.  A question was asked about characterizing accuracy of 4 km trips where the distance was measured receiving a GPS signl using a cell phone.  The OP said the he knew that the minimum distance estimate was soemthing like 3.9 km and the maximum 4.05 km but he had no way of computing a mean value." CreationDate="2012-06-19T03:27:57.337" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2617" PostId="1218" Score="3" Text="The voting system here has too many flaws and sources of bias to provide a single metric or even set of metrics. Often the first answer will have many times more up votes than the best answer. I think any metric would be more valuable if weighted by voter rep - eg sum of the log (or sqrt) of voter rep over all votes for each question, perhaps also weighted by other metrics like number of votes for the OP, but all of these would also have biases. Just like impact factors and citation counts. How will the metric be used?" CreationDate="2012-06-19T03:34:58.480" UserId="1381" />
  <row Id="2618" PostId="1218" Score="0" Text="My suggestion was simply to use nonparametric tolerance intervals and I mentioned how many samples would be needed for the range to represent 90% confidence of 90% coverage for example.  The OP liked the answer and accepted it and gave it an upvote.  His comment was that he thought my answer gave him a sense of how little can be said based on this somewhat shaky data. Now Bill Huber suggested that the GPS could be highly biased and went through a very careful, detailed description of a simulation for GPS traced path of a circular trip along with a histogram of the error distribution." CreationDate="2012-06-19T03:35:01.350" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2619" PostId="1218" Score="1" Text="While my answer only got 1 upvote Bill's got 6. Was one asnwer better than the other?  Mine directly addressed what the OP was interested in, a statistical method to assess the variability of the estimates when an estimate of the mean is not available.  Bill's on the other hand was a beautifully displayed and detailed example of the intricacies of GPS errors and what its bias might be.  Maybe we shouldn't be comparing answers this way.  Both answers served a purpose related to the question but in vastly different ways." CreationDate="2012-06-19T03:41:45.863" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2623" PostId="1218" Score="2" Text="@MånsT: Please consider copying your comment into an answer so that we may evaluate your answering performance. ;-) (Seriously, your comment contains a handful of important nuggets.) Cheers." CreationDate="2012-06-19T10:36:54.277" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2653" PostId="1218" Score="3" Text="At the risk of injecting more humor into the comments, look here: http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1994-11-21/ .  The problem is that this is to some degree an adversarial game." CreationDate="2012-06-20T02:05:11.717" UserId="8991" />
  <row Id="2654" PostId="1218" Score="1" Text="Dear god, no, @Patrick, not more humor! (+1)" CreationDate="2012-06-20T12:19:13.367" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2719" PostId="1218" Score="2" Text="Michael, Congratulations on the [Sportsmanship badge](http://stats.stackexchange.com/badges/63/sportsmanship)! (I see @Gung recently earned it too: well done!) I believe you earned that one in record time. By requiring a combination of many answers and many votes, it reflects someone with a balanced and unbiased mode of participation, someone who is demonstrably an asset to our community." CreationDate="2012-06-27T04:07:49.170" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2625" PostId="1219" Score="0" Text="+1 For not considering Freudian metrics ;)" CreationDate="2012-06-19T10:58:15.630" UserDisplayName="user10525" />
  <row Id="2626" PostId="1219" Score="9" Text="Great answer. Couldn't agree more. You and Procrastinator are good examples of posters with relatively low numerical reputation but are (at least to me) trusted users. This is why I think quoting your (numerical) reputation (which is possibly what started this whole discussion) in order to further some other point doesn't make any sense. It's easy to optimize a metric if all you want to do is optimize a metric." CreationDate="2012-06-19T11:23:52.563" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2627" PostId="1219" Score="0" Text="+1 for MansT.  So far I really like David's comments the most though." CreationDate="2012-06-19T11:50:11.753" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2628" PostId="1219" Score="1" Text="Maybe one take home message I am getting from this is that reputation points are overemphasized.  I don't think the badges are really an incentive.  Many of them are achieved based on doing unusal things.  For me I get my badges mostly by chance through activity on the site.  There are very few that I have looked at and made it a goal to achieve." CreationDate="2012-06-19T11:55:25.770" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2629" PostId="1219" Score="2" Text="I particularly like to answer questions on the bootstrap and on textbooks and maybe a little on time series.  Those are areas where I think I have special expertise." CreationDate="2012-06-19T11:57:40.370" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2630" PostId="1219" Score="2" Text="@michael don't hesitate to reference and/or excerpt your own publications - I suspect that adding something like 'more details can be found on page x of Chernick 2020' with a link and even a quote or screenshot ([as I did here](http://stats.stackexchange.com/a/29922/1381)) would give your answers more value and credibility (and as a result increase votes, sales, citations, students of your work)." CreationDate="2012-06-19T15:19:01.577" UserId="1381" />
  <row Id="2646" PostId="1219" Score="0" Text="@David I think there are a number of questions regarding bootstrap and variable selection where I referred to relevant work of mine, papers with LaBudde and Gunter and my forthcoming monograph with Lacey Gunter on variable selection and recently published book on bootstrap with LaBudde.  I hope that people apprciate that the references are ther because I think they are relevant and not that I just want to toot my horn." CreationDate="2012-06-19T20:43:34.307" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2647" PostId="1219" Score="1" Text="Also we have well known experts on regression and variable selection in regression such as Frank Harrell and for time series modeling IrishStat and his Box-Jenkins time series/transfer function software autobox. So i toot other people's horns too." CreationDate="2012-06-19T20:44:22.450" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2631" PostId="1220" Score="0" Text="To whoever downvoted my answer, would you look please look at the way I revised it to see if you still think it deserves a downvote. The OP asked if it was appropriate to ask clinical trial/regulatory questions on CV.  That question was answered.  I was attempting to expound upon that by saying that not only is it permissible to do so but also there are enough authroities on the subject here that he could expect good asnwers." CreationDate="2012-06-19T17:46:38.153" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2632" PostId="1228" Score="0" Text="Having CSV format is the best overall, although it would be good for R users to also have Rdata format available.  This compressed and can store complex data structures." CreationDate="2010-09-23T16:34:46.687" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="2633" PostId="1229" Score="1" Text="+1, Really excellent points. At some point I would have suggested a wiki as a way to document progress. Perhaps, we need one right now before the threads get out of hand. Can someone volunteer to set one up for this project?" CreationDate="2010-09-23T15:07:09.837" UserDisplayName="user28" />
  <row Id="2634" PostId="1229" Score="1" Text="I can set one up, yes." CreationDate="2010-09-23T15:20:54.230" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="2635" PostId="1229" Score="0" Text="@Shane Great. Please let us know the link once it is up and running." CreationDate="2010-09-23T15:23:22.110" UserDisplayName="user28" />
  <row Id="2636" PostId="1229" Score="0" Text="@Srikant: It's here: http://www.statalgo.com/polystatsproject/wiki/.  I'll try to make it a little more attractive, etc. as time goes on.  I may also install the R mediawiki plugin.  But this should do the trick for now." CreationDate="2010-09-23T15:39:52.127" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="2637" PostId="1230" Score="0" Text="I can make a citeulike group library with which to store suggested references if people would like me to. You don't need an account to see the library and follow the DOI, but you do need an account to post articles to the group. I have found plenty of work examine all sorts of aspects of online communities in just a short time span. I think this article looks pretty interesting, http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1341549 PDF here http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~lars/wsdm08.pdf" CreationDate="2010-09-23T20:32:58.420" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="2638" PostId="1230" Score="0" Text="Also does anybody know of a Sociological/Psychological/Anthropological literature that is applicable to this topic (keywords or specific scholars)?" CreationDate="2010-09-23T20:35:10.897" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="2639" PostId="1230" Score="0" Text="@Andy I would go ahead with whatever you think makes sense. If you could collect a few relevant references then perhaps we can divide up the task of reading the relevant articles and providing a summary on the wiki." CreationDate="2010-09-24T13:20:54.640" UserDisplayName="user28" />
  <row Id="2640" PostId="1230" Score="0" Text="@all: Once we have some reading materials we need some volunteers to take up the task of reading some of that material. Could you please add your name as a comment or in the answer so that we can decide how to divide the readings?" CreationDate="2010-09-24T13:21:39.060" UserDisplayName="user28" />
  <row Id="2641" PostId="1230" Score="0" Text="@all, I've gone ahead and made a group library on Citeulike, which can be found here, http://www.citeulike.org/groupfunc/14031/home , you can make suggestions for articles to post either here or at the actual site. And if you have a citeulike account you can post articles yourself. So make some recommendations, as it is pretty sparse at the moment." CreationDate="2010-09-24T16:40:05.393" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="2642" PostId="1240" Score="0" Text="So for clarification its ok to upvote answers (you want to give rep to people for participating), you just don't think it is fair (or appropriate) to give rep for asking the question to begin with?" CreationDate="2010-09-15T12:33:17.610" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="2643" PostId="1240" Score="0" Text="@andy yes that is the intent. As the project evolves it will be necessary to reward effort as when someone provides a good answer. However, the questions itself are more about moving the project from one phase to the next. So, I do not think the qn 'asker' should get rep." CreationDate="2010-09-15T13:03:22.257" UserDisplayName="user28" />
  <row Id="2644" PostId="1240" Score="0" Text="@Srikant: You should post your proposal (from the question) as an answer so that people can vote on that too..." CreationDate="2010-09-15T17:11:38.743" UserId="5" />
  <row Id="2645" PostId="1240" Score="0" Text="@shane What you say makes sense. Perhaps, in the future, the project owner (me for now or someone else) can trim the question text to make it a bit more precise and post their own ideas as an answer. I will do it shortly." CreationDate="2010-09-15T18:35:00.607" UserDisplayName="user28" />
  <row Id="2648" PostId="1244" Score="0" Text="Thanks.  I like it that you took the time to write a serious and thoughtful answer and I agreed with MansT as well.  Both very good answers.  I thought yours deserves the check mark though." CreationDate="2012-06-19T20:46:30.887" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2649" PostId="1244" Score="1" Text="(+1) Interesting thoughts. That's funny because I had in mind an answer which started by considering a common formalisation for the expectation of a given outcome ($y$ = No. upvotes), $\mathbb{E}(y|x)=\text{fixed part} + \text{random part}$, where the 'fixed part' would be a mix of *exactness*, *authoritativeness*, *creativity*, *openness*, *experience*, among others, while the random component would include *voting mimicry*, *accidental upvote*, *subjective bias* and all measurement errors we can imagine." CreationDate="2012-06-19T21:00:22.773" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="2650" PostId="1244" Score="2" Text="(Con't) I haven't decide where to put 'reputation effect' yet, but that would probably go under the fixed part of the model :-) I have some fairly knowledge of basic psychometrics, but I think defining a measurement model will be a hard task." CreationDate="2012-06-19T21:02:55.063" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="2652" PostId="1244" Score="0" Text="@chl, I think you're right that figuring out the model would be extremely difficult. It's a big part of what I was trying to highlight. I'm sure you'd be able to do a much better job of it than I would, though. I'm interested in the topic, but not an expert (much like a number of other statistical topics, I suppose)." CreationDate="2012-06-19T21:13:23.830" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2669" PostId="1245" Score="4" Text="(+1) I've upvoted nearly all the answers to this question at this point. This is yet another carefully considered and well thought out reply. Thanks for taking the time to provide your perspective." CreationDate="2012-06-21T16:50:54.887" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2655" PostId="1246" Score="1" Text="do you mean the &quot;right side&quot;, and &quot;stats-targeted&quot;?" CreationDate="2012-06-20T23:14:31.857" UserId="1381" />
  <row Id="2656" PostId="1246" Score="0" Text="My group has an opening for a [scientific web programmer](https://jobs.illinois.edu/default.cfm?page=job&amp;jobID=20373) to help with some super neat projects - how can I get this posted on a relevant SE website, like webmasters.SE or even SO? Are they targeted using user-specific information?" CreationDate="2012-06-20T23:17:52.553" UserId="1381" />
  <row Id="2657" PostId="1246" Score="1" Text="@David: I think by *geo-targeted* Seth means they are targeted to geographical location of the viewer/user, probably based on IP address." CreationDate="2012-06-20T23:49:29.157" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2658" PostId="1246" Score="0" Text="My $0.02, but, I think those job ads would flow a bit better on the page if swapped to appear below the community ads." CreationDate="2012-06-20T23:51:35.613" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2659" PostId="1246" Score="0" Text="At what are other sites is this being tested?" CreationDate="2012-06-21T14:38:18.697" UserId="1381" />
  <row Id="2660" PostId="1246" Score="0" Text="@David cardinal is right. The jobs are community targeted and location based. We are working to improve the relevancy of the postings in this early version. Right now CV is the only site with it with one more expected to enjoy a test run soon." CreationDate="2012-06-21T14:46:04.003" UserId="6064" />
  <row Id="2662" PostId="1246" Score="0" Text="I'd be curious how large the &quot;location&quot; area is. Our search is global, but our location is rural (small college town in the midwest). Even if not global, a reasonable search would include major cities and college towns within a 200 mile radius or so. In rural midwest, expanding from a 15mi radius to a 200 mi radius would increase the target population from about 100k to &gt; 5 million." CreationDate="2012-06-21T14:55:11.063" UserId="1381" />
  <row Id="2663" PostId="1246" Score="0" Text="Seth, are the jobs notices displayed only for certain users? All I ever see in the new job board is the text &quot;Related Jobs.&quot;  I'm not using ad blockers." CreationDate="2012-06-21T15:57:17.573" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2665" PostId="1246" Score="0" Text="@whuber are you at home or work?  corporate proxy or filtering in play here?" CreationDate="2012-06-21T16:17:03.087" UserId="1142" />
  <row Id="2666" PostId="1246" Score="0" Text="@Rebecca Home=work :-). No proxy or filtering.  I use FireFox. As a test, I fired up IE: it does show the jobs, so it's probably a FireFox setting I'm not aware of. Sorry to bother you... (But since this may be a default setting, it might help to direct users to a page that helps them change it.)" CreationDate="2012-06-21T16:36:07.603" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2667" PostId="1246" Score="0" Text="@whuber: As an additional data point, they *do* show for me on both Windows and Mac versions of Firefox with maximal privacy settings enabled." CreationDate="2012-06-21T16:47:04.247" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2668" PostId="1246" Score="2" Text="@Cardinal thanks.  I have tracked this behavior to an ad blocker (which I had totally forgotten), so I was wrong in my initial query when I wrote there were no blockers involved.  The solution is to enable ads from 'indeed.com'." CreationDate="2012-06-21T16:50:07.883" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2661" PostId="1247" Score="0" Text="On CV, the presented jobs rotate through a range of listings in the sidebar. @David, if you're looking to hire a developer Careers 2.0 on SO is a great place to find fantastic candidates. Currently, this test feature is not at all related to Careers 2.0." CreationDate="2012-06-21T14:54:29.670" UserId="6064" />
  <row Id="2675" PostId="1248" Score="3" Text="+1, For the record, I *do* aspire to that kind of contribution, I just usually fall short..." CreationDate="2012-06-22T05:27:35.437" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16503" PostId="1248" Score="0" Text="[I disagree](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5404/1352). I frequently write short answers that get zero or one upvotes, sometimes require clarification in comments, and to my knowledge are not flagged. Sometimes I'll write a longer and more thoughtful answer. The time differential for me is not 1:5, but rather 1:20, or even more. I do not want to leave 20 questions alone where I could help someone with a quick answer, even if that does mean writing one long answer that may (or may not) help 10 people down the road. ..." CreationDate="2018-08-30T07:02:59.297" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16504" PostId="1248" Score="0" Text="... If I understand you correctly (and if you still hold this opinion), then your proposed course of action will result in more unanswered questions, [which the community seems to believe is a problem](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5325/1352)." CreationDate="2018-08-30T07:07:12.217" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16508" PostId="1248" Score="0" Text="@Stephan That's right.  But I feel strongly that your proposed solution--namely, degrade the quality of answers--is the wrong solution to the problem." CreationDate="2018-08-30T12:26:41.500" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="17250" PostId="1248" Score="0" Text="Here is a [query](https://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/968211/answer-reputation-rank-from-new-users?days=10000) I wrote today for finding potential new users based on reputation from answers. If you set 'n' to let's say 10k you get 10 top all time users in reputation from answers in CV. Sorting by the 'Answer rep rate' column will rank 'chl' 2nd ('amoeba' is 1st, you are 3rd)." CreationDate="2019-02-09T01:31:38.703" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="2676" PostId="1249" Score="3" Text="This would be on the fringes, I would think. It sounds like your *real* question is probably something different, like: *I'm using X package on a data set of size Y, and I'm finding it's take Z seconds (minutes, years, millennia, etc.) to run. What can I do to optimize things? My target acceptable execution time is T.*" CreationDate="2012-06-22T11:48:50.937" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2677" PostId="1249" Score="1" Text="If the answer comes back and is: *Buy a bigger box* then so be it." CreationDate="2012-06-22T11:51:43.850" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2678" PostId="1249" Score="0" Text="Here's a recent example of such question: http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/29669" CreationDate="2012-06-22T11:53:56.547" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2680" PostId="1249" Score="2" Text="And (+1) for raising the question on meta first since you had doubts!" CreationDate="2012-06-22T12:05:05.297" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2681" PostId="1249" Score="1" Text="@cardinal thanks, I appreciate the &quot;buy a bigger box&quot; comment, but since resources (money) are finite, I need to $prioritise$ where to spend the money. The link you gave doesn't really address this, from what I can tell. I am using built-in routines, for example just the `MCMCglmm()` function in the `MCMCglmm` package and one single call to that takes around 6 hours and I have many models to run, so I don't think I can obtain any speed-up by coding....." CreationDate="2012-06-22T12:34:29.343" UserId="11405" />
  <row Id="2682" PostId="1249" Score="4" Text="Thanks for the reply, Joe. My current opinion is that your question has the best chance of being on-topic and attracting attention here if you describe the *statistical computing* problem you're actually trying to solve, perhaps accompanied by your explicit concern that the only &quot;out&quot; you have is to purchase a bigger machine and you're unsure how to trade off the specs. This way you also leave yourself open to potentially &quot;surprising&quot; solutions, e.g., alternative packages, use of multicore support or linking R to different computational backends/libraries." CreationDate="2012-06-22T13:01:12.637" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2683" PostId="1249" Score="1" Text="You seem to be doing some impressively advanced stuff, by the way." CreationDate="2012-06-22T13:02:19.860" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2695" PostId="1249" Score="2" Text="Not that this will answer your question, but how you approach the problem will determine the correct site. An alternative would be to use the cloud, which provides resources on-demand. I use a shared server, which is conceptually similar, and it performs computations in an hour that would take my machine days, and my machine is pretty quick, but I spend more time analyzing the results than generating them, and this post-analysis takes way less memory, and can generally be done on my desktop. That way, I can have a regular desktop and still get work done." CreationDate="2012-06-22T14:28:29.620" UserId="1381" />
  <row Id="2696" PostId="1249" Score="3" Text="some related questions on SO are about [using a cloud server](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/r+amazon-web-services?sort=votes&amp;pagesize=50). Your question might be a better fit at SO, superuser, serverfault, etc. etc., depending on the direction that you go, and if you ask it, it could always be migrated." CreationDate="2012-06-22T14:28:53.033" UserId="1381" />
  <row Id="2698" PostId="1249" Score="0" Text="@cardinal I am out of my depth, to be honest, so I'm really grateful for the help from members here. I will do as you suggest." CreationDate="2012-06-22T14:44:00.987" UserId="11405" />
  <row Id="2701" PostId="1249" Score="0" Text="Just providing a link to your question (nicely done, by the way, with a +1 from me): http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/30942/2970" CreationDate="2012-06-24T15:18:57.257" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2684" PostId="1250" Score="5" Text="Nope, not possible. The SE team seem to have strongly resisted this idea, though I think it could be useful at times." CreationDate="2012-06-22T13:04:14.960" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2685" PostId="1250" Score="2" Text="If you let the person know you're trying to contact them via a judiciously placed comment (which you can later delete), you might get an email address from them. That's a hack (to be used sparingly), of course. :-)" CreationDate="2012-06-22T13:05:35.977" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2686" PostId="1250" Score="0" Text="Ok, thank you. I think it could be useful too." CreationDate="2012-06-22T13:15:10.650" UserId="8402" />
  <row Id="2687" PostId="1250" Score="5" Text="@cardinal Your moderators do not appreciate that hack, because we have to detect its occurrences and clean them up. Please use alternative mechanisms." CreationDate="2012-06-22T13:40:02.090" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2688" PostId="1250" Score="1" Text="@whuber: (+1) I almost did not suggest it and felt a considerable degree of resistance to the idea myself. I intended it as a last-ditch sort of idea and also didn't fully realize it would generate more work on your parts (which I would like to find ways to further *minimize* anyway). Apologies. :)" CreationDate="2012-06-22T13:51:53.307" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2689" PostId="1250" Score="0" Text="(Please feel free to delete the offending comment, too, @whuber, if you feel it is best that it not remain publicly visible.)" CreationDate="2012-06-22T13:56:39.730" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2690" PostId="1250" Score="1" Text="In my case I wanted to point out one of my questions to a user because I think he possibly has a good advice about this question and I'm not sure he daily check new questions on stats.stackexchange. Hence I have followed @cardinal's suggestion with the help of a comment to a related question to which he replied: http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/26556/equivalent-mixed-models-yielding-different-results-in-sas" CreationDate="2012-06-22T13:59:36.497" UserId="8402" />
  <row Id="2691" PostId="1250" Score="2" Text="Stephane, I think *that* usage is fine, fairly commonly used already and potentially *beneficial* to the site as a whole since it presumably links related questions and content." CreationDate="2012-06-22T14:02:10.783" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2692" PostId="1250" Score="0" Text="Yes, but I have noted that I do not always receive notifications to new comments on the questions where I have participated, hence I'm not sure he will receive a notification. Maybe this absence of notification is another question for meta.stats.stackexchange..." CreationDate="2012-06-22T14:09:59.573" UserId="8402" />
  <row Id="2693" PostId="1250" Score="1" Text="Since Aaron is the author of the answer, he will receive notification. The times you wouldn't receive notification as a comment participant is if (a) you are not the editor or author of the immediate post, (b) there is more than one non-author participant already *and* (c) the @-notification was not used to address you." CreationDate="2012-06-22T14:13:40.877" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2694" PostId="1250" Score="0" Text="aaaahhhhhh now I understand the utility of @ ! Thanks !" CreationDate="2012-06-22T14:25:28.757" UserId="8402" />
  <row Id="2697" PostId="1250" Score="1" Text="As an example, note that, somewhat ironically, I did *not* receive notification of your most recent comment since whuber is another participant in this stream (but you *will* receive notification of this one!). ;-) A little complicated, isn't it! Cheers." CreationDate="2012-06-22T14:34:59.290" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="10025" PostId="1250" Score="1" Text="Possible duplicate of [How to contact other user?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1607/how-to-contact-other-user)" CreationDate="2016-06-17T14:29:21.450" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="2699" PostId="1252" Score="2" Text="There is also a computational science SE to consider" CreationDate="2012-06-23T04:00:06.883" UserId="1381" />
  <row Id="2700" PostId="1252" Score="0" Text="@David: Thanks, I had forgotten about computational science. I think it is the best fit for OP after all." CreationDate="2012-06-23T13:40:36.270" UserId="2981" />
  <row Id="2702" PostId="1253" Score="3" Text="I wouldn't worry too much, the radius seems to be on the order of 4000km. The content targeting seems to be the bigger issue, unless there are some new developments in the field that I'm unaware of (quite likely). Apparently there are a lot of *physical therapists* that frequent CV." CreationDate="2012-06-25T13:38:43.013" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2725" PostId="1253" Score="1" Text="Something weird is clearly going on with the backend; sometimes the targeting is eerily accurate and other times it's recommending jobs literally half a world away. Still, I saw position I'm actually interested in, so to +1 to this new feature (+2 if they hire me)." CreationDate="2012-06-28T00:49:35.773" UserId="7250" />
  <row Id="2703" PostId="1254" Score="0" Text="Almost everyone I checked lost points, most of them far more than 60 points (look at some of the high rep people). I'm more curious about **who** it was that got removed. Whoever the person is doled out at least 1000 rep points to various people, so it must've been a long time user who was active recently (considering that you, a newer member, lost 6 upvotes)." CreationDate="2012-06-26T21:31:09.177" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2704" PostId="1254" Score="0" Text="@Macro This is the first time I have lost points this way.  I wasn't aware of this.  Why are users removed and why do their votes get taken off?" CreationDate="2012-06-26T21:35:56.120" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2705" PostId="1254" Score="2" Text="It's the first time I've seen it too. But this thread on meta stackoverflow explains it: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/126470/what-does-user-was-removed-mean-and-why-did-my-reputation-change-because-of-it apparently people are removed for violating terms of service." CreationDate="2012-06-26T21:39:26.443" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2706" PostId="1254" Score="0" Text="I don't understand why this should result in reputation points being changed. I don't see that being dropped necessarily has anything to do with the validity of the vote." CreationDate="2012-06-26T21:51:13.673" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2707" PostId="1254" Score="0" Text="I think it's simple - if the user ceases to exist then so does everything they've done on the site - questions, answers, votes, etc.." CreationDate="2012-06-26T22:02:37.737" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2708" PostId="1254" Score="0" Text="Makes sense to me both ways, so I'm good with it (I only lost 60 pts, though).  Seems a little odd that someone who had been that active would violate terms of service at this point in their CrossValidated career... I wonder if they asked to be removed for some reason.  Oh well, we'll probably never know." CreationDate="2012-06-26T22:10:00.507" UserId="7555" />
  <row Id="2709" PostId="1254" Score="1" Text="@Macro The user's work does not get deleted: that's retained by the site. (For instance, you can no longer find user28, because over a year ago he *requested* to be removed, but you can still [read his posts](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1240).) But certainly if there has been an irregularity in their voting there is a strong argument to reverse their votes." CreationDate="2012-06-26T22:12:54.323" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2710" PostId="1254" Score="0" Text="@whuber, yes that would be a strong argument. But, the meta SO thread seemed to indicate that whenever a user is deleted, their votes are removed, regardless of the reason for deletion. Is that not true?" CreationDate="2012-06-26T22:15:11.213" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2711" PostId="1254" Score="1" Text="@Macro Yes, apparently it is.  But why worry?  We seem to be talking about less than 1% of the votes. If that appreciably changes anybody's *relative* reputation on the site, then there must have been some favoritism in the voting patterns in the first place.  (PS I didn't mean to suggest I thought *you* were worried. :-)" CreationDate="2012-06-26T22:18:40.080" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2713" PostId="1254" Score="0" Text="@whuber I don't see any general rationale for removing the ovtes.  If the votes were good while the user was part of StackExchange why do they suddenly become invalid when he leaves and apparently this happens regardless of the reason for the person to leave. I am not worried about the lost rep votes either but the sudden loss of 60 votes out of the blue is a bit of a shock." CreationDate="2012-06-26T22:38:07.303" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2714" PostId="1254" Score="0" Text="Michael, there are circumstances where it would make sense. For example, what if someone created a second account just to add to the rep on their primary account? I agree that having a blanket policy seems unnecessarily restrictive but it seems that it's more fair overall to _always delete the votes_ rather than _never delete the votes_, if you had to choose between the two." CreationDate="2012-06-26T22:45:24.333" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2716" PostId="1254" Score="0" Text="I have identified the user; they tended to post nice answers at an intuitive, high level (i.e., big picture). Though possible, it would surprise me a bit if the removal was due to any impropriety." CreationDate="2012-06-27T00:45:59.657" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2717" PostId="1254" Score="1" Text="@cardinal, can you drop a hint? I'm really wondering what the deal is. I seem to have lost 10 upvotes, but not any that I can detect on any of my top answers. This person must have only upvoted my lower answers (which seems strange on top of everything else). Nor do I notice anyone missing in the SE all time league rankings. It's certainly a shame to have lost someone who was providing good answers. I can't help but wonder why (and who)..." CreationDate="2012-06-27T02:05:37.090" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2728" PostId="1254" Score="1" Text="@gung, I don't personally mind identifying them, but I'm not sure how that would be viewed by the moderators and SE team and so, thus far, I've refrained from doing so. I'm also not too sure of the purpose it would serve. That said, on one hand, the SE team makes much of their site data visible on a monthly basis and on the other hand, I have seen them be extremely reticent about &quot;naming names&quot; in public about users that leave the site. I have no idea why, since the data dumps can be used to determine/infer this." CreationDate="2012-06-28T16:43:56.680" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2729" PostId="1254" Score="0" Text="@cardinal, no problem. It's not really a big deal, it was kind of a shock to me at the time &amp; the whole thing seemed so weird. Eg, it appears that the *votes* have stayed, but that the *rep* gained from them have gone (actually, that's a guess, but it looks right)." CreationDate="2012-06-28T16:49:17.760" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2730" PostId="1254" Score="0" Text="@gung: I think that's probably right. It was a little hard for me to tell as they had only ever upvoted one answer of mine." CreationDate="2012-06-28T16:52:44.317" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2736" PostId="1254" Score="0" Text="@gung: The votes are (now) also removed. I only noticed since there was a mismatch between the votes on of my answers and the corresponding quantity needed for a certain badge." CreationDate="2012-06-30T17:13:29.003" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2737" PostId="1254" Score="1" Text="@cardinal, so they have been. Which in turn raises an interesting question, can we earn NA badges *twice* for these questions if/when we get another upvote? (Really, isn't this all just a little bit much?)" CreationDate="2012-06-30T17:19:48.723" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2765" PostId="1254" Score="0" Text="@gung Great question and great closing point :-)" CreationDate="2012-07-06T22:21:14.727" UserId="2669" />
  <row Id="2776" PostId="1254" Score="0" Text="@gung: To answer your questions: (1) No. The one question I had with a vote removed took it from 25 to 24 votes. Someone has voted that back up to 25, but, alas, no new *Good Answer* badge. (2) *A bit too much*? No idea. But, I am not a terribly big fan of the reputation setup, in general. There are probably better ways of sorting quality of content with less confusion and consternation on the part of users. :)" CreationDate="2012-07-09T14:03:45.947" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="12903" PostId="1254" Score="0" Text="@AndreSilva, I think this thread should be a duplicate of that one, rather than the other way around. I'm voting to leave open." CreationDate="2017-03-28T14:33:00.757" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12904" PostId="1254" Score="0" Text="@gung, Would you mind sharing the 'why'? Because the answer on the other post is more detailed and updated in relation to this one." CreationDate="2017-03-28T14:34:46.020" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="12905" PostId="1254" Score="0" Text="In any case, I think one post should be closed, because they are clearly duplicates." CreationDate="2017-03-28T14:36:11.710" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="12906" PostId="1254" Score="0" Text="Mostly because this is older, &amp; the answer here (the SE team isn't going to do it) remains the answer there. So that was a duplicate when it was asked." CreationDate="2017-03-28T14:36:26.627" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12907" PostId="1254" Score="2" Text="@gung, the 'older argument' is more valid for equal quality/relevant content between posts. Note that the SE team **did** a major change in how points are removed from deleted users, since this question was asked. It is addressed in that answer." CreationDate="2017-03-28T14:41:21.500" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="12908" PostId="1254" Score="2" Text="OK, @AndreSilva, that's a fair argument.  I'll vote for this to be a duplicate, &amp; retract my close vote there." CreationDate="2017-03-28T14:54:58.680" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12909" PostId="1254" Score="0" Text="I remember this but I do not understand why we are bringing it up again." CreationDate="2017-03-28T15:10:31.497" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2715" PostId="1255" Score="1" Text="So it is hard to delete users without deleting their votes but yet we can keep their answers. Why don't we have to wipe out answers too? If there are good reasons to keep votes why not go to the trouble to do it?" CreationDate="2012-06-27T00:10:46.413" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2718" PostId="1255" Score="1" Text="Please ask that question of the SE people on SO meta, @Michael." CreationDate="2012-06-27T03:12:41.237" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2735" PostId="1255" Score="1" Text="Could well be a primary vs secondary key in a database sort of thing - votes are linked to a voter X question key, but answers may be linked to the question with at best an secondary key link to the answerer and therefore don't actually need an answerer (can have a NULL answerer.)" CreationDate="2012-06-29T21:20:27.337" UserId="7555" />
  <row Id="2723" PostId="1256" Score="4" Text="[FYI](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/users/11405/joe-king). :)" CreationDate="2012-06-27T20:08:25.290" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2726" PostId="1256" Score="0" Text="OK. Future statistician, then :)" CreationDate="2012-06-28T11:45:31.720" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="2727" PostId="1256" Score="2" Text="Yes. Let's hope so!" CreationDate="2012-06-28T13:19:27.250" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2734" PostId="1256" Score="0" Text="Thank you. _dimensionality of the problem_ is the number of predictors in the model ?" CreationDate="2012-06-29T20:05:53.880" UserId="11405" />
  <row Id="2757" PostId="1256" Score="2" Text="If you have a regression-like model, then you only need to inverse the $p\times p$ matrix once. However, in my factor analysis/multivariate problem, I had to compute the $p\times p$ matrix for every evaluation of the likelihood, and that's what took the toll. So whether the number of variables is a good predictor of the computing time really depends on the model that you are dealing with. If you are building some regression trees, the measure of complexity would probably be some combination of the # of variables and the # of splits." CreationDate="2012-07-05T15:21:05.770" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="2721" PostId="1258" Score="0" Text="Super, thanks for the help!" CreationDate="2012-06-27T17:00:21.247" UserId="10461" />
  <row Id="2722" PostId="1258" Score="0" Text="@enthdegree No problem. Thanks for bringing this to our attention and removing the dup on math.SE." CreationDate="2012-06-27T19:47:56.473" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="2724" PostId="1262" Score="1" Text="Yes, we can migrate questions to any sites, including beta sites. (Or see [Is it possible to migrate questions to a beta SE site?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/136687/150510))" CreationDate="2012-06-27T21:21:31.220" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="2731" PostId="1262" Score="1" Text="SO and math have been handy targets indeed. To date--after moderating for 15 months--I recall seeing exactly *one* close vote given by the community for a message that needed to be migrated anywhere else, so additional options currently have little use. A method that works well is to vote to close and make a suggestion in a comment to the original question concerning a good migration destination. You can also flag the question and make a recommendation.  (I have sent a bunch of questions to CogSci through that mechanism thanks to flags by an attentive member of both sites.)" CreationDate="2012-06-28T18:46:38.930" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2738" PostId="1263" Score="2" Text="I'm interested in hearing what the community thinks.  In the meantime, if you have commented about an inaccuracy in a question or an answer and the writer will not correct it (or does not respond within a reasonable time, which should be at least a day), then you should downvote it: that strengthens the message and provides more incentive to fix the problem.  Just be really sure you're right and they're wrong!" CreationDate="2012-07-02T16:39:37.443" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2739" PostId="1263" Score="6" Text="My personal opinion is that a comment to seek clarification (or to *make* a clarification) should be preferable if your edit would potentially materially change how the question is likely to be understood." CreationDate="2012-07-02T18:17:22.917" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2770" PostId="1263" Score="1" Text="@whuber I really only mostly lurk here, but I added my 2 cents below, _strongly_ agreeing with cardinal." CreationDate="2012-07-08T00:48:57.450" UserId="5055" />
  <row Id="2740" PostId="1264" Score="7" Text="Re: **&quot;as high scored users has a deeper understanding of the subject discussed&quot;** - that certainly isn't true. If Brad Efron joined our site tomorrow, his reputation would be '1'. Does that mean you or I have a deeper understanding of the bootstrap than he does?" CreationDate="2012-07-03T12:22:36.387" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2741" PostId="1264" Score="0" Text="yes i know, but this is a temporary situation. In the long time my statement is true. Is the same problem of entry level elo ranking in chess." CreationDate="2012-07-03T12:25:48.767" UserId="10017" />
  <row Id="2742" PostId="1264" Score="4" Text="ELO is based on a model of competition. It is difficult to see how that could be adapted to voting or a collaborative reputation system, which is what this site is based on." CreationDate="2012-07-03T13:13:22.943" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2743" PostId="1264" Score="1" Text="Yes you right, indeed i am talking about the entry level ranking problem. I am not saying that Elo ranking would be a better method to rank the vote." CreationDate="2012-07-03T14:23:49.437" UserId="10017" />
  <row Id="2744" PostId="1265" Score="0" Text="I am not sure that this is a true problem. Indeed reputation is a sort average over the tags score. Another solution may a wider ladder on voting system. &#xA;&#xA;    eg: `very bad, bad, neutral, good, very good`" CreationDate="2012-07-03T14:25:57.017" UserId="10017" />
  <row Id="2745" PostId="1265" Score="6" Text="&quot;although appealing **and certainly more correct**&quot; - the bolded part just isn't true. This is putting complete faith in numerical reputation. See http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1218/how-should-performance-answering-questions-best-be-evaluated - for a discussion of how numerical reputation is not always a great measure of quality. If all you want to do is get a ton of points, that's not so difficult. Just answer as many questions as possible. As long as your answers aren't complete nonsense, you will have lots of rep in no time, even if you receive more downvotes than upvotes." CreationDate="2012-07-03T14:50:18.687" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2752" PostId="1265" Score="0" Text="thanks @Macro for the comment. I see the point. However, any system which relies solely on the numerical rep points has this problem, may it be the current one or the suggestion of the OP. My point was to make it less broken by extension (as gung suggests in the linked question). Thanks again for the comment." CreationDate="2012-07-03T21:17:23.750" UserId="264" />
  <row Id="2750" PostId="1266" Score="6" Text="+1 For **&quot;I worry that this could narrow the site to reflect only the interests of its most active users&quot;**." CreationDate="2012-07-03T16:02:42.830" UserDisplayName="user10525" />
  <row Id="2751" PostId="1268" Score="3" Text="Thank you. I've already got a great answer so I'm sorry to have been impatient asking about it here (better than cross-posting, though, right ?)" CreationDate="2012-07-03T17:41:46.413" UserId="11405" />
  <row Id="2756" PostId="1269" Score="3" Text="The 24-hour rule would need some adjustment to take into account weekend, public holidays, etc., and users that don't necessarily check the website on a regular basis. Also, keep in mind that unregistered users don't get system-wide notifications." CreationDate="2012-07-04T19:55:15.867" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="2758" PostId="1270" Score="0" Text="+1 for the &quot;people here seem a bit more friendly&quot;. However, note that many CV users also answer questions on SO." CreationDate="2012-07-06T16:42:47.133" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2768" PostId="1271" Score="1" Text="On the data confidentiality issue - check out [this SO post](http://stackoverflow.com/a/10455661/1480928) for an R function that anonymizes a dataframe automatically." CreationDate="2012-07-07T14:23:33.467" UserId="12258" />
  <row Id="2769" PostId="1271" Score="0" Text="Thanks, @atiretoo. We also have had some discussion around [statistical disclosure](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/949/930) and [anonynimisation](http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/712/930)." CreationDate="2012-07-07T15:54:56.863" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="2775" PostId="1273" Score="3" Text="(+1) Very nice. In particular, I've found that factual errors in questions tend to be directly *related* to the reason the question is being asked, even though that may not be apparent at first to either the OP or those of us reading the question." CreationDate="2012-07-09T02:33:20.697" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2832" PostId="1277" Score="0" Text="Thanks whuber, I wasn't sure if it was appropriate to link to the specific question, or if it should stand on its own in Meta." CreationDate="2012-07-10T18:38:17.403" UserId="10217" />
  <row Id="2833" PostId="1277" Score="4" Text="Possibly of interest: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1151/what-to-do-when-the-original-question-is-transformed-considerably-after-getting" CreationDate="2012-07-10T18:49:17.230" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2835" PostId="1277" Score="0" Text="In your specific case, you could probably just link to a description of the process elsewhere, if available; or give a string to search the help feature of excel with." CreationDate="2012-07-11T00:59:34.420" UserId="9007" />
  <row Id="2836" PostId="1277" Score="1" Text="The solution is somewhat out of the box as far as Excel goes (plus, We're talking Microsoft Help, so I'm not sure that will do anyone much good). I think Macro's link and Andy W's answer frame the argument pretty well, right now I'm wondering if there's enough difference to warrant separating the answers and providing a link like you recommend." CreationDate="2012-07-11T01:15:30.597" UserId="10217" />
  <row Id="2837" PostId="1278" Score="0" Text="I appreciate the thoughts and guidance here.  Andy W's answer seemed to work well for this instance, and the open-endedness of &quot;diverged enough&quot; I think provides enough leeway to address issues as they arise.  Plus, there's always the mods and community to help keep things from going to far off-track.  Thanks" CreationDate="2012-07-12T12:23:42.283" UserId="10217" />
  <row Id="2838" PostId="1279" Score="0" Text="Some locations, particularly outside the U.S., lack listings in this early version. Sorry mate!" CreationDate="2012-07-13T15:19:21.787" UserId="6064" />
  <row Id="2839" PostId="1279" Score="0" Text="@Seth: One way to potentially add value would be to make some element clickable that would take one to a longer list of options. Of course, I don't know the feasibility of this or whether your incentive structure is conducive to this. :)" CreationDate="2012-07-13T16:23:20.783" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2840" PostId="1279" Score="0" Text="@cardinal good suggestion we can consider down the line. There is no incentive structure for this - it's for you guys!" CreationDate="2012-07-13T17:32:41.060" UserId="6064" />
  <row Id="2841" PostId="1279" Score="0" Text="@Seth: I have to imagine there is some (potential) revenue stream associated with this project and also the &quot;risk&quot; of taking users away from the network when following a link.  To me, these, along with potential value added from access to more suggested positions, are all incentives/disincentives to weigh in a business decision. That's what I meant. :)" CreationDate="2012-07-13T17:46:40.777" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2842" PostId="1280" Score="3" Text="Hi Joe - it seems to me that the true spirit of your question is how/if you can differentiate under the integral sign and I agree with you that the fact that the integrand involved is a density function is not particularly relevant. Thinking of it that way, there's not really any statistical content, so I'd tend to agree that the move to math.se was the right thing to do. Also, note that the person who answered your question is a regular poster on the stats.se so you might've gotten the same answer either way :)" CreationDate="2012-07-14T13:06:06.553" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2843" PostId="1280" Score="0" Text="@Macro thank you. It was the _conditional_ part that I didn't think was relevant. I thought it was relevant that it involves and distribution and density, because of the relationship between them. I want to differentiate the CDF and get a result involving the PDF. Of course the relationship between them is purely mathematical, so I do take the point." CreationDate="2012-07-14T13:24:03.957" UserId="11405" />
  <row Id="2845" PostId="1282" Score="0" Text="I get that, as a moderator, you were trying to squash a conflict, but I'm not sure how constructive it is to suggest that I was in the wrong for suggesting that Michael could be more helpful to the community by modifiying his &quot;answer first, ask question later, if ever&quot; approach. I've suggested that Michael consider using close votes (e.g. here: http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/32000/excluding-the-components-and-only-including-the-interaction-term-in-a-logistic-r) before but to no avail. He's on this site as much or more than anyone else so I was just pointing out that he can aid in" CreationDate="2012-07-16T19:55:27.760" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2847" PostId="1282" Score="0" Text="(cont)this vitally important service to the site. I suggested it again in a situation I (still) think is completely justified but after apparently being validated by you in the discussion today, I doubt that much progress will be seen on that front. You know as well as I do that the &quot;close&quot; system is rather broken on this site because almost no one uses it ... p.s. I don't think I was rude or unwelcoming to the OP in that thread - I unemotionally suggested that she provide more details and perhaps peruse the wealth of existing questions on the subject, so I'm not sure I understand that comment" CreationDate="2012-07-16T20:00:55.040" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2848" PostId="1282" Score="1" Text="@Macro I'm sorry you took any of my comments (or this question on Meta) as suggesting you have been wrong about anything, because I don't think that. (I think you and Michael are *both* right, which is what makes this a thorny issue.) I just hope there may be some more creative and constructive ways to deal with it than have been exhibited recently. Gathering ideas about that is the purpose of the present thread. I don't think anyone wants to see 15+ comments develop beneath almost every question and answer on our site. (I exaggerate, but you get the point, I know.)" CreationDate="2012-07-16T20:06:02.333" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2849" PostId="1282" Score="4" Text="To be clear: the present question is not about you or any other user in our community specifically. **It's a question of policy, practice, (and maybe etiquette)** that I hope we can discuss collegially and impersonally." CreationDate="2012-07-16T20:08:06.607" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2864" PostId="1282" Score="2" Text="related meta thread: [Your votes are useful, use them!](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1067/your-votes-are-useful-use-them)" CreationDate="2012-07-17T13:07:12.290" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2906" PostId="1282" Score="1" Text="One note for the community: I appreciate that @PeterFlom had written [this post](http://www.statisticalanalysisconsulting.com/how-to-ask-a-statistics-question/) on his personal blog, &amp; has started linking to it a couple of times. Since noticing it, I have also linked to it in a comment &amp; plan to use it in the future." CreationDate="2012-07-19T16:20:33.657" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2852" PostId="1283" Score="3" Text="**Some data**: (*Questions migrated or deleted*) There have been 998 votes to close on this site since inception. Of these, 502 of them were on 345 questions that were either migrated or later deleted. At least 342 of those votes were from a moderator. Of these 345 questions, 235 of them were handled by a single close vote, i.e., a moderator taking sole action." CreationDate="2012-07-16T23:31:05.027" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2853" PostId="1283" Score="2" Text="**Some data**: (*Other questions receiving close votes*) Of the remaining questions on this site, 330 of them have received at least one close vote. Of those, 222 received *exactly* 1. A total of 244 of the 330 were ultimately closed with 158 of those done with one vote (i.e., by a unilateral moderator action). There have been a total of **6** questions that have received the full five close votes on this site (3 were migrated/deleted and the other 3 were closed). We can thus infer that *at least* $241 + 342 = 583$ (58.4%) of the sum total close votes on this site have been made by moderators." CreationDate="2012-07-16T23:33:28.847" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2854" PostId="1283" Score="0" Text="(I have personally cast another 50 close votes, starting in November 2011.)" CreationDate="2012-07-16T23:36:06.380" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2856" PostId="1283" Score="0" Text="Here are the two questions receiving the full five votes: [28062](http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/28062/2970) and [29303](http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/29303/2970). Questions 26784 and 26826 were deleted and questions [26154](http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/26154/2970) and [30238](http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/30238/2970) were migrated to SO." CreationDate="2012-07-16T23:47:01.887" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2857" PostId="1283" Score="3" Text="So do you have any suggestions for how the community should conduct itself in the future? Unfortunately just saying &quot;more effort, as a community, needs to be put into raising the quality of the answers and not answering low quality questions&quot; in a meta thread is unlikely to result in changes in behavior." CreationDate="2012-07-17T02:13:53.987" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="2858" PostId="1283" Score="1" Text="@AndyW, my point was the bolded statement immediately after the quote you gave and, I think, almost all of the &quot;regulars&quot; on this site have enough expertise to know when a question falls into that category. In that case, I'm suggesting asking for clarification and perhaps subsequently close voting rather than ignoring the question or just answering one possible interpretation of the question. I tried to make that point but maybe I wasn't successful. I edited the first paragraph accordingly." CreationDate="2012-07-17T11:39:09.803" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2859" PostId="1283" Score="3" Text="So to be clear you are just suggesting what site etiquette should be in such cases? IMO asking for clarification happens in many cases (via very judicious use of comments on this site). I agree with your suggestions for etiquette for the most part, but IMO this just comes off as a rant against one person (whose behavior certainly isn't representative of all the individuals on the site)." CreationDate="2012-07-17T12:21:28.973" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="2860" PostId="1283" Score="0" Text="@AndyW, I took the question as asking what site etiquette should be so, yes, I guess that's the scope of my suggestion. The main example seems very on topic to me. Yes, a particular user was involved, but whuber himself indicated (in that question) he, potentially, saw merits in answering a question under the given circumstances, so it seems like a good example for discussion. Also, given that the linked question was the one that lead to this meta thread, I thought it was a good example of why, I think, clarification should be sought in that case and others like it." CreationDate="2012-07-17T12:31:18.663" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2861" PostId="1283" Score="1" Text="I do think that the lack of close-vote use is a more widespread issue so I think you've correctly pointed out that singling out that one example doesn't really add anything to my answer so I deleted it. I agree that seeking clarification does happen frequently by particular, active members of the site. But, it takes almost no time to search the site for a very low quality question that probably should've been closed or clarified months/years ago. The number of such questions could be reduced if there were _more_ already active members who put effort into doing so - which is my entire point." CreationDate="2012-07-17T12:33:48.160" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2862" PostId="1283" Score="1" Text="I would have thought with your reputation you could close a question on your own anyway (but apparently only moderators can?) There are things we can try to do to increase close votes, some sites have community &quot;round-ups&quot; in which they try to deal with old un-answered questions (such as by giving new answers, upvote current answers, or delete/close because of an absentee OP). I'm just prodding for a clear exposition on your ideals and any actionable advice for the general community." CreationDate="2012-07-17T12:41:43.957" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="2863" PostId="1283" Score="0" Text="@AndyW, I don't think any amount of rep can let you close questions on your own - don't let the 10k &quot;moderator tools&quot; privilage fool you! it's basically just a bunch of tools for viewing high-traffic areas in various ways (not complaining - I think it's very cool). I've trimmed the answer substantially to get to the point of what I'm trying to say without clouding it by making it seem like I was railing on one person. I hope it's more clear now." CreationDate="2012-07-17T12:51:03.257" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2865" PostId="1283" Score="0" Text="@AndyW, I don't have any clear prescriptions for solving the close-vote issue. I'm not sure that absentee OP, in itself, is a good reason to close a question since questions are often viewed as having broader utility than just to the OP. Perhaps when a 3000+ user downvotes, it should ask whether you want to close vote? Or, there could be a list of automatically detected &quot;potentially low quality&quot; questions that high rep users could review and close vote if applicable. In fact, I think there a rough version of this under the 'Review' tab, but it may require 5000+ rep to see it." CreationDate="2012-07-17T13:13:54.923" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2900" PostId="1283" Score="0" Text="Macro &amp; @AndyW, remember that users w/ &lt;3k rep can flag questions for closing by moderators." CreationDate="2012-07-19T15:43:44.763" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2901" PostId="1283" Score="1" Text="@cardinal &amp; Macro, I do agree that the close vote system doesn't work well on CV b/c there are few users &gt;3k, &amp; few of those are sufficiently active. However, thresholds for close votes vary, &amp; I think comments are generally a better approach. I have often voted to close for migration purposes, but I think only twice for other reasons. Eg [29303](http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/29303/2970), while pathetic (to be blunt) also elicits some sympathy from me. This person does not appear to have put much effort in, but also is clearly not a native English speaker: ..." CreationDate="2012-07-19T16:09:28.867" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2902" PostId="1283" Score="2" Text="the question is somewhat mangled &amp; they may not have been able to follow the documentation well, leading to frustration &amp; a sense of helplessness. These can be true even for native English speakers if they really don't know much about stats or programming. OTOH, [this](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/32460/) gets under my skin. Their English is fine (albeit not native), they are a *professor*!, &amp; have neither bothered to do their homework first nor accepted any answer." CreationDate="2012-07-19T16:09:43.763" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2903" PostId="1283" Score="0" Text="@gung: (+1) To your comments. Regarding the very last issue you raise, I suspect this may be lack of familiarity with site functionality, which has just been brought up in [another meta question](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/1291/2970). The more unfortunate result of the second question is that an attempt to respond to my comments was made, but the intent of my comments must have been misunderstood and/or misinterpreted. (cont.)" CreationDate="2012-07-19T16:16:12.733" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2904" PostId="1283" Score="1" Text="While having English as the primary language on CV makes a lot of sense, I wish we would make it more clear to nonnative speakers that they should feel free to post in their native language if it allows them to more freely express themselves. I suspect we have enough fairly active users that could adequately translate from several major languages to make this feasible. Maybe we should *actively encourage* (e.g., via comments) such posting in certain cases where it seems like language is the primary barrier, but I haven't thought that through carefully." CreationDate="2012-07-19T16:18:28.253" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2905" PostId="1283" Score="0" Text="@cardinal, I'm not sure I recall seeing any questions where language was the primary problem. Re: the first question gung linked to, regardless of english language ability, mpiktas's comment is right on." CreationDate="2012-07-19T16:20:11.967" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2908" PostId="1283" Score="0" Text="@Macro: I see questions quite often where (I believe) language is the primary barrier. Usually they end up downvoted, closed, or just ignored. They tend to be terse and opaque, precisely because the user is having difficulty expressing themselves. The question 29303 was *rightly* closed; I agree 100%. I wasn't arguing against this particular example. :)" CreationDate="2012-07-19T16:24:58.747" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2909" PostId="1283" Score="0" Text="I even know of a case where a (likely, very interesting) question *hasn't been asked at all* (yet), due to a perceived language barrier. (Though, I think the user in question is vastly underestimating their ability in this regard.)" CreationDate="2012-07-19T16:28:16.810" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2916" PostId="1283" Score="2" Text="@cardinal There is an [official SE policy](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/07/non-english-question-policy/) on non-English questions. I think it's a little Draconian, but it does make sense. For background, check out the [SO meta posts](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/search?page=2&amp;tab=relevance&amp;q=%2bforeign%20%2blanguage)." CreationDate="2012-07-19T19:19:41.877" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2917" PostId="1283" Score="2" Text="@whuber: (+1) Thanks. At first blush, I see little reason to follow this policy to the letter. I think if we see a user struggling to express themselves and can help them get mileage out of the site, we should be flexible in how we go about it. If that means suggesting via comment that they edit to include a non-English version, I don't see much problem with that, provided the question is edited to include a full English traslation. I agree that posting a non-English question *from the outset* may be a little undesirable." CreationDate="2012-07-19T19:24:48.833" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2921" PostId="1283" Score="0" Text="Regarding my second **data** comment above: Make that [seven](http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/32670/2970)." CreationDate="2012-07-20T16:19:48.277" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2866" PostId="1284" Score="7" Text="Although it's hard to find solid guidance, and I'm sure people vary in their standards, you may learn much from this Meta SO post on [reasons for rejecting suggested edits](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/106867/what-are-the-rejection-reasons-for-suggested-edits).  I usually approve anything that's reasonable, but recently there has been a spate of trivial pedantic edits, so it seemed like the time was right to reject one or two of them to get the message across that edits ought to be worth one's while to do and worth a reviewer's while to approve." CreationDate="2012-07-17T17:07:07.553" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3030" PostId="1284" Score="0" Text="I have just received a notification saying: &quot;An edit was suggested to your post ..., please review it.&quot; Do I have to click somewhere to accept the edit ?" CreationDate="2012-07-31T05:07:41.250" UserId="8402" />
  <row Id="4023" PostId="1284" Score="5" Text="Re the edits: (1) In response to comments to my answer, I now tend to approve minor edits when they are suggested within a few hours after the question's appearance. Older questions need stronger reasons for editing. (2) Why not be generous and *approve*, rather than reject, proposed changes that you will further edit? Give people the benefit of the doubt and reward them for bringing an issue to our attention, even if they haven't completely or perfectly addressed it. We need to provide abundant, positive reinforcement for all actions taken by the community to improve our site." CreationDate="2013-04-02T14:49:11.070" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4024" PostId="1284" Score="2" Text="Thanks @whuber. Regarding your second point, my response is concisely summarized by your first bullet point in your original answer to this question, and is amplified when we're talking about edits that actually have mistakes in them, like texifying non-math and leaving the most glaring errors uncorrected." CreationDate="2013-04-02T19:32:34.620" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4025" PostId="1284" Score="4" Text="I confess to not having noticed the texifying of non-math elements until you pointed it out (the interface makes it a little difficult to catch this until after the fact); I have already rolled back one of those today. Generally, however, if I rejected all proposed edits that leave glaring (but inconsequential) errors uncorrected, the majority of edits would be rejected: better a partial improvement than no improvement at all--and no, I do not want to undertake to improve every proposed edit I review; it would be endless work." CreationDate="2013-04-02T19:52:07.527" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4026" PostId="1284" Score="1" Text="@Macro: Regarding **&quot;file names should not be TeXed&quot;** I only have precedent to offer (humbly). e.g. *&quot;R/likert.R&quot;* in this post by _ChI_ (a mod?) http://stats.stackexchange.com/a/25156/21072 Also, precedent seems to texify &quot;R&quot; and library names or even variable names so why not a filename? e.g. http://stats.stackexchange.com/a/26205/21072--------Your &quot;very active edit suggester&quot;  :)" CreationDate="2013-04-02T20:59:15.557" UserId="21072" />
  <row Id="4027" PostId="1284" Score="1" Text="@Macro: Regarding your critique &quot;TeXified computer code&quot; of my (3) I did not understand where I erred. Can you elaborate. Apologies." CreationDate="2013-04-02T21:04:47.567" UserId="21072" />
  <row Id="4030" PostId="1284" Score="3" Text="@curious_cat, I don't see your point in the examples you link. &quot;TeXified&quot; means putting dollar signs around something, e.g., $R^2$ (i.e., \$R^2\$), whereas those posts seem to use *code formatting*, which puts &quot;\`&quot; (I don't know what you call it) around something, e.g., `likert` (i.e., \`likert\`)." CreationDate="2013-04-02T21:51:25.860" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4031" PostId="1284" Score="0" Text="gung, thank you for explaining the difference. @curious, I think my opinion opposes the prevailing view here but I think it is correct so please don't take it personally if I reject some of your edits :)" CreationDate="2013-04-03T00:57:56.560" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4032" PostId="1284" Score="2" Text="@gung. Ah! Now I get it. $R$ and `R` seem to render both a bit distinctively so was hard to know. Now I get it. :) Thanks. So it's ok to `filename.foo` but not $filename.foo$" CreationDate="2013-04-03T06:03:08.000" UserId="21072" />
  <row Id="4033" PostId="1284" Score="1" Text="@Macro: Are rejects and accepts based on number of votes? What happens when you reject and someone else would accept. Or is it based on who gets to it first. Personally, if I get too many rejections I'll just see it as a nudge to quit editing. :)" CreationDate="2013-04-03T06:06:37.813" UserId="21072" />
  <row Id="4034" PostId="1284" Score="1" Text="When someone types &quot;Consider the equation colgpa = b0+b1hsize+b2hsize2+b3hsperc+&#xA;b4sat + b5female + b6athlete + u;&quot; am I supposed to texify, code or leave it alone?" CreationDate="2013-04-03T06:10:36.283" UserId="21072" />
  <row Id="4035" PostId="1284" Score="4" Text="@curious_cat, I have no idea really. A while back, it was just whoever reviewed it first. From what I can tell, pretty much everything that I've voted to reject ends up getting accepted. I'm not suggesting that you stop editing - I've actually accepted a vast majority of your posts that I've reviewed - I'm just suggesting that edit-suggesters, and reviewers, be a little more thoughtful. Please don't take it personally or as an indication that you should stop suggesting edits. Cheers." CreationDate="2013-04-03T17:57:13.847" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4036" PostId="1284" Score="2" Text="@Macro: I won't. :) Thanks. Hopefully I'll give you less reason to reject in future." CreationDate="2013-04-03T19:40:37.313" UserId="21072" />
  <row Id="4176" PostId="1284" Score="2" Text="@curious_cat I don't think getting some rejections suggest 'quit editing' (editing is, on the whole, a good thing), so much as to consider whether some edits are as necessary or useful as others." CreationDate="2013-07-01T01:01:20.977" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="2867" PostId="1285" Score="10" Text="Because question titles appear everywhere, a good case could be made for even tiny cosmetic edits to titles--at least to assure good grammar, good punctuation, brevity, and clarity." CreationDate="2012-07-17T17:44:01.257" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2868" PostId="1285" Score="6" Text="The fourth point is, I think, an important one. Personally, I don't mind small edits to _recent_ questions, but it can be annoying when old questions (sometimes even with accepted answers) pop up again with a &quot;1&quot; turned into a &quot;$1$&quot;." CreationDate="2012-07-18T06:14:30.823" UserId="8507" />
  <row Id="2886" PostId="1285" Score="4" Text="I have to admit that I have strong perfectionist tendencies, &amp; I often have to restrain myself from correcting things that others may find &quot;trivial&quot;; I suppose sometimes I'm not successful. However, I do think a distinction can be made for questions that are new &amp; already on the top of the main page, &amp; questions that are 6 months old &amp; stale; the former don't seem so bad, whereas the latter are egregious." CreationDate="2012-07-19T14:50:09.230" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2957" PostId="1285" Score="11" Text="Note that Jeff has a) strong opinions not always shared by a majority (even SE staff) and b) rarely perceives non-trilogy (SO, SU, SF) sites. On the high-volume sites, loads of trivial edits can overwhelm the moderators and high-reps (many of which don't care to work on the queue). Smaller communities don't have this problem but might instead want to focus on quality in every aspect. Therefore, it might be feasible to edit smaller stuff on a smaller site." CreationDate="2012-07-26T15:25:47.400" UserId="12868" />
  <row Id="4038" PostId="1285" Score="3" Text="I don't mind *why* people make trivial edits (so long as they're improvements, albeit small ones). I don't mind if an edit opens up a post to re-voting. If an edit changes the correctness/meaning of a post it's a mis-edit &amp; should be rejected. The last implication is the only worrisome one in my opinion, &amp; I wonder (I doubt I'm the first to do so) if the system mightn't be changed so that minor edits don't bump up the question. In the interests of full disclosure I'm a trivial editor - seeing '$log(x)$' or 'Poison distribution' is like a dagger through my heart - but sympathize with the ..." CreationDate="2013-04-09T20:05:20.480" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="4040" PostId="1285" Score="5" Text="... reviewers, &amp; as soon as I reach 2k rep. I swear to shoulder my part of the burden. BTW I really, really wanted to edit 'continal' in Jeff's post, but restrained myself." CreationDate="2013-04-09T20:49:16.617" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="4145" PostId="1285" Score="3" Text="I actually find it useful when some random older question get some new exposure (I believe there is even some automatic routine randomly doing that for unanswered questions) so I am not sure that it is a big problem, at least when it's not more than two or three questions at a time." CreationDate="2013-06-29T12:32:11.907" UserId="6029" />
  <row Id="5199" PostId="1285" Score="1" Text="@Scortchi: I bet you weren't the only one to have that idea; the edit has probably been attempted and rejected many times :D" CreationDate="2014-01-10T15:19:28.830" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="2871" PostId="1286" Score="4" Text="+1 Great reply. My favorites: &quot;It seldom requires a quick answer&quot; and &quot;we should at least try to be clear about how we interpreted the question.&quot;" CreationDate="2012-07-18T12:35:56.787" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2920" PostId="1286" Score="0" Text="(+1) (I think my previous joke may not be so easy to decipher as such, so I removed it.) Let me just say that I agree wholeheartedly with this answer to the point of wishing I had been capable of writing such a nice one myself. Your thoughts almost perfectly match my own on this matter. :)" CreationDate="2012-07-20T01:13:07.367" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="19835" PostId="1286" Score="0" Text="I agree especially with &quot;StackExchange sites do not lend themselves well to the kind of dialogue that is essential for statistical discussions&quot;, but it may persuade me that it's not worth spending my time on this site." CreationDate="2020-05-26T15:43:05.510" UserId="225256" />
  <row Id="2877" PostId="1287" Score="5" Text="I think re-tagging an old question, regardless of whether there are good answers already there, is important and furthers the purpose of the SE community if done appropriately. It's my understanding that a big part of the goal of stackexchange is to serve as a repository for Qs and As so that future users (not just the OP) can find the answers they need. Tagging old questions appropriately could go a long way in accomplishing this goal" CreationDate="2012-07-18T13:15:06.637" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="16915" PostId="1287" Score="3" Text="Funny that  I just retagged this old question by adding the &quot;tags&quot;-tag ;-)" CreationDate="2018-11-16T14:12:35.603" UserId="128677" />
  <row Id="16916" PostId="1287" Score="2" Text="I agree that re-tagging is useful. But, it annoys me that it bumps up questions (ironically this question gets bumped '6 years later' with a tag-edit on 2018 nov 16). Still, this bumping can be useful, for the same reason that user 'community' sometimes bumps older questions. But it would be nice if it would be more clearly visible that such question is a bump. I've had occasions of investing time in &quot;interaction&quot; with OP's of bumped up questions, when I found out later that it was an old question. But then again the universe is strange and maybe this teaches me a lesson, and is still useful." CreationDate="2018-11-16T16:44:14.570" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16917" PostId="1287" Score="2" Text="@Ferdi If you decided to bump such an old question by adding a tag, then I'd say it makes sense to make as many useful edits as possible in one go. I have just added more tags and edited title to be more self-explanatory." CreationDate="2018-11-16T20:54:11.177" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="2870" PostId="1288" Score="1" Text="Cheers, @cardinal! What you wrote is very close to my own thoughts on this subject. I'd be interested to know if others agree with us." CreationDate="2012-07-18T12:29:15.240" UserId="8507" />
  <row Id="2872" PostId="1288" Score="0" Text="I agree with much of what you've said but note that it can be difficult to make all the relevant edits in one go. Due to the issue I mention in http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1181/when-the-page-crashes-while-youre-posting-editing-an-answer, I've been 20 minutes into editing something then have the page crash and having to start all over (this has happened on several different comps, btw). For that reason, I'm more inclined to make incremental edits at times. At one time you noted that I made 8 edits in 2 hours or something and this is the reason why." CreationDate="2012-07-18T12:39:43.683" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2873" PostId="1288" Score="0" Text="Overall, I think, if the edit you're making at a particular moment in time is a good edit, then I don't see a problem. Some people may undergo a process of &quot;simulated annealing&quot; with respect to a particular question or answer and I don't think they should be specifically discouraged from that if what they're doing is actually improving the question/answer (if they're not, that's an entirely different issue). Also note that you can sort the questions however you want (e.g. by newest) so this doesn't have to be a problem for you if you don't want it to be." CreationDate="2012-07-18T12:43:31.790" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2874" PostId="1288" Score="0" Text="@Macro: Sure, there are always cases where we overlook things or find new ways of saying things better! I've even made somewhat small edits just to get the layout to flow nicer on a couple occasions. The sorting issue is a good point, though I think the default is the &quot;active&quot; tab. Simulated annealing can be done in &quot;offline&quot; fashion, too, especially if someone's thoughts are evolving on the matter. That also avoids the crashing issue you mention, which is really unfortunate. I'm glad I haven't run into that, myself! (Though, I often *do* compose first drafts of mine in a text editor.)" CreationDate="2012-07-18T12:47:34.367" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2875" PostId="1288" Score="0" Text="Another issue is that the editor can't help the fact that the question is bumped when they edit it. I edit my own questions/answers a lot (and others but obviously I'm more familiar with the questions I've posted in) and I can honestly say I'd still do that even if the posts were not bumped. I regularly look back at various answers of mine (maybe they are recent, or I'm reminded of them somehow) and see something I should change. The fact that the question gets bumped shouldn't determine whether or not this action is &quot;ok&quot;, especially since it can be trivially handled with one click." CreationDate="2012-07-18T13:04:58.193" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2879" PostId="1288" Score="1" Text="@Macro: [See here](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/755/2970); sadly the powers-that-be do not agree with us. An obvious safeguard to protect against hiding malicious edits would be to only make the edit-without-bumping capability available to high-reputation users and, maybe, only on their own posts. My answer speaks to repetitive/piecemeal editing, not one-time changes. Indeed, I'm *suggesting* making changes in batch if one is going to edit at all. If a user thinks there answer is in a high state of flux, my opinion is it is better to collate those changes offline and update later." CreationDate="2012-07-18T17:25:04.427" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2880" PostId="1288" Score="0" Text="@Macro: My (current) opinion is this is a more sensible approach than suggesting that readers should just click on the &quot;new&quot; tab (which, on a site like this, is not too active, nor as interesting or informative, at times). But, maybe I misinterpreted what you were suggesting regarding this last bit. :)" CreationDate="2012-07-18T17:27:05.377" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2881" PostId="1288" Score="0" Text="@cardinal, re: *&quot;My answer speaks to repetitive/piecemeal editing, not one-time changes. Indeed, I'm suggesting making changes in batch if one is going to edit at all.&quot;* I get what your point is, but I simply disagree that piecemeal editing is bad, in itself. If the edits each improve the post, then I see no issue. There's a reason you can edit your post 10 times before it's automatically community wiki-ed. If the edits truly are useless, then I say flag a moderator and ask them to reprimand someone for trying to bump with no real useful edit (I'd be interested in what the mods think of that)." CreationDate="2012-07-18T17:34:07.257" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2882" PostId="1288" Score="0" Text="Related: http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/q/4666/7003" CreationDate="2012-07-18T20:01:57.777" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2884" PostId="1288" Score="1" Text="For my part, I agree w/ basically everything here. I like the question, @Macro's comment to it (+1), find the answer thoughtful &amp; balanced, &amp; agree w/ the subsequent comments. This may seem odd, since it seems like there's a debate here, but I wonder if there needn't be: ..." CreationDate="2012-07-19T14:39:56.247" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2885" PostId="1288" Score="0" Text="I'm familiar w/ Macro's editing style, but I don't think it causes any of the problems mentioned. The edits are multiple, but occur within a short window this only interrupts the main page if someone else posts during that window. Even then, it would just switch the order of the top 2 Qs. It would be different if it dropped off the page &amp; then were re-edited, repeatedly, but that's not the case." CreationDate="2012-07-19T14:40:08.290" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2887" PostId="1288" Score="0" Text="Thanks for the input @gung (I was beginning to wonder if anyone else had opinions on the subject). I think that if the question did drop off of the main page and _then_ get bumped it would be more debatable but I still think that's fine, as long as the edits were constructive. Re: cardinal's suggestion to take one's thoughts &quot;offline&quot; and edit all in one batch - if it's a complicated, multi-part issue you're pondering, it may be better to edit parts as they occur to you so that you don't receive critical comments/downvotes in the meantime on an issue that you're already aware of." CreationDate="2012-07-19T14:56:41.443" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2889" PostId="1288" Score="0" Text="@gung: Just to be clear in case it is not: My answer was certainly not directed towards any individual user or intended as explicit criticism; it was meant as one view on a sensible approach to tagging and editing. Among other things, it is meant to articulate the view that I don't think it's unreasonable to condense a set of preplanned edits to a page to a single operation and it gives readers and users a better sense of what is actually new content. Of course, as I said, this is just one viewpoint; I do not expect everyone to agree with that and there may be good counterarguments. :-)" CreationDate="2012-07-19T15:00:03.577" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2890" PostId="1288" Score="0" Text="@Macro, I don't disagree w/ editing Q's that drop off the main page. The key word there was &quot;repeatedly&quot;. That is, what I would find abusive, is if someone waited until an answer dropped off, &amp; then re-edited to bump it, waited until it dropped &amp; bumped *repeatedly*. (Of course I'm inferring a lot about someone's intentions here, in practice we would only see the manifestations of that behavior.) At any rate, as you are not doing that, I don't think there's any problem." CreationDate="2012-07-19T15:02:10.557" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2891" PostId="1288" Score="0" Text="@cardinal, it was clear to me that you were just trying to state a reasonable alternative option. I just thought it might be worth pointing out how you both were right." CreationDate="2012-07-19T15:04:06.653" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2892" PostId="1288" Score="0" Text="@gung: Just an aside: &quot;the first page&quot; is only defined up to the user's length selection. If you happen to keep it at the default of 15, this will appear to happen more often than if it is set to 50. For me, 30 is a pretty happy medium. :-)" CreationDate="2012-07-19T15:07:17.467" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2893" PostId="1288" Score="0" Text="@cardinal, I wonder if the default is longer? I don't think I've ever changed it, &amp; it's definitely &gt;15. I'm guessing it's 30 for me, but I'm not going to count..." CreationDate="2012-07-19T15:08:57.380" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2894" PostId="1288" Score="0" Text="I have to agree with @gung: both cardinal and Macro make excellent points and both opinions seem very reasonable." CreationDate="2012-07-19T15:09:25.557" UserId="8507" />
  <row Id="2895" PostId="1288" Score="0" Text="@gung: Shouldn't have to count. There are boxes with numbers near the bottom of the page. It should show which one is selected. :)" CreationDate="2012-07-19T15:11:54.077" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2896" PostId="1288" Score="0" Text="@cardinal, that only works if you go to 'Questions' then to 'Active'. If you just go to stats.stackexchange.com (which sends you to the 'active' list) there are no numbers. Weird." CreationDate="2012-07-19T15:16:32.260" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2898" PostId="1288" Score="0" Text="@Macro: Good point! I nearly always go through this click sequence *anyway* since I have noticed that there are inconsistencies in the states for these two pages. Some differences are intentional, but others I believe are bugs. I find the Questions-&gt;Active selection to be a little better on average." CreationDate="2012-07-19T15:21:49.367" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2919" PostId="1290" Score="4" Text="I find it somewhat strange that a question more than a year old with many answers and upvotes could be closed because it &quot;isn't a good fit to this type of Q&amp;A site&quot;. I'd say the *users* of SO had clearly demonstrated that it was a great question and a perfectly reasonable fit to the format. I can't fathom how a moderator thought their individual wisdom was far greater than the collective wisdom of the people who actually *generate the content*. Empiricism replaced deduction several centuries ago. Let's see how it works out here." CreationDate="2012-07-20T00:05:50.163" UserId="10354" />
  <row Id="2934" PostId="1290" Score="2" Text="@Bogdanovist This issue has been debated _to death_ on meta.SO, so I won't rehash any more of it here, except to say this: trust me, this is a contentious issue with significant numbers of folks who feel passionately about it _on both sides_. big-list question may be good or bad, but don't be fooled by up/down vote patterns into thinking that there isn't a _significant_ number of folks who think they should all be closed." CreationDate="2012-07-21T17:35:23.380" UserId="5055" />
  <row Id="2883" PostId="1291" Score="7" Text="I like your suggestion. I personally will shamelessly suggest that a user consider upvoting/accepting under certain circumstances. One being when they leave a comment like &quot;This is great! Thank you so much!&quot; but don't upvote or accept. The other being when I notice that they've asked several questions (say $&gt;5$) that have, in my opinion, gotten decent answers but you can see on their profile that they've never once voted or accepted. I take both of these as a potential indication that they don't understand the system. If I suggest this as see no change in their behavior I let it go, though." CreationDate="2012-07-19T13:43:16.433" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2918" PostId="1291" Score="1" Text="Good suggestion. Can it be done though, or are we limited by the mechanics of the whole SE network? This sounds like an issue that is unlikely to be unique to this site, so perhaps this suggestion could be put more broadly. Is there a SE meta? (I looked and couldn't find one.)" CreationDate="2012-07-19T22:10:06.457" UserId="10354" />
  <row Id="2937" PostId="1291" Score="2" Text="@Macro Regrettably I've now taken up your shameless strategy.  And fwiw I object to the idea that there is not any (even minimal social) obligation to at least *respond* to an answer.  If deliberate, it's just rude.  Oddly I don't ever remember having this problem before, and now I have it a lot.  I don't *think* there's any sudden quality drop in my answers..." CreationDate="2012-07-23T14:44:34.620" UserId="1739" />
  <row Id="3573" PostId="1291" Score="2" Text="@ConjugatePrior, there's a sudden influx of newbies who only care to have their questions answered, like on any mailing list or a standard forum. I agree with Macro that they most likely don't understand the system, and did not read the FAQ and explanations how the system works." CreationDate="2012-10-21T15:11:50.740" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="2897" PostId="1292" Score="0" Text="I hope you're not adding unnecessary words/punctuation or editing unnecessary tags to do this, @gung ;) Really though, I think most questions which earn the 'tumbleweed' badge are in need of editing, so I think that's a good service you're performing." CreationDate="2012-07-19T15:17:55.050" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2899" PostId="1292" Score="1" Text="@Macro, I don't think I've ever made an edit that I thought was *unnecessary*, b/c I think they typically didn't get attention b/c they were mis-tagged or whatever. But it is an interesting question of what to do if you thought the question was *perfect* but still didn't get any attention. I suppose in that case I could offer a bonus, but it would depend on how strongly you felt about it / how generous you felt etc. As I say, I haven't seen that situation yet." CreationDate="2012-07-19T15:24:47.300" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2907" PostId="1292" Score="1" Text="(+1) Particularly for mentioning that you look over recent badges. That is something that I *don't* do, mostly because I have a hard time understanding the motivation for acquiring badges. But, in a sense, there *is* useful information content in (some of) them that can be leveraged to improve the general site experience." CreationDate="2012-07-19T16:21:35.880" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2910" PostId="1292" Score="2" Text="@cardinal, if one of your main purposes in using / visiting CV is to learn stuff that you wouldn't otherwise (eg, doesn't tend to show up in textbooks), as is the case for me, looking at popular &amp; highly voted questions &amp; answers is a really useful discovery strategy. On a different note, while I sheepishly admit I like getting badges, I readily acknowledge that many of them are strange &amp; could probably be eliminated." CreationDate="2012-07-19T16:29:19.637" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2911" PostId="1292" Score="0" Text="@gung: No need to be sheepish! I didn't mean my comments to sound critical of others. It would be naive to discount the effects of [gamification](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamification) on the success of this site. We are all influenced, albeit in different ways and to differing degrees, by this. Some of the badges actually strike me as *counterproductive* to site functionality; but, I'd have to look through the descriptions again to remember which ones." CreationDate="2012-07-19T16:32:41.020" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2912" PostId="1292" Score="0" Text="@cardinal, the gold badge for having lots of zero score accepted answers ('Unsung Hero') is weird. I guess it's good for your answer to be deemed good by no one but the OP (who didn't upvote for some reason??)? I'm guessing, based on your comments in this thread, you don't like the 'Archaelogist' badge which rewards you for editing ancient posts. It does seem odd but it'd probably benefit from requiring that these edits take place on at least 10 unique days (or something) so someone won't just go on an editing spree." CreationDate="2012-07-19T16:51:55.640" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2913" PostId="1292" Score="0" Text="@Macro: I believe if you don't have rep of 15 you can't vote at all, even on answers to your own question, which is a likely way that this could occur. It seems a little silly for you not to be able to give (at least, positive) feedback on answers to your own questions, regardless of rep." CreationDate="2012-07-19T16:55:15.400" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2915" PostId="1292" Score="0" Text="@Macro, the question for SE is, 'does the existence of this behavior tend to benefit the site on the whole?' &amp; at a minimum, I think it's clear that it hasn't *hurt*. There have been a couple of isolated cases where it has been detrimental, but I suspect a large number of cases in which it's been beneficial, and thus a net plus. As for *Tumbleweed*, *Tenacious*, and *Unsung Hero*, they are described [here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/67397/list-of-all-badges-with-full-descriptions) as intended to acknowledge &quot;unrecognized contributions&quot;." CreationDate="2012-07-19T17:26:37.413" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2922" PostId="1294" Score="6" Text="Your correct in your guess that the system does not allow the original poster of the question to get more points by answering and accepting their own answer. Also FYI it is ok to answer your own question, see [this response](http://meta.gis.stackexchange.com/a/141/751) about it on the GIS meta site." CreationDate="2012-07-20T19:05:32.250" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="2924" PostId="1294" Score="6" Text="Reasons for encouraging users to answer their own questions has been discussed a bit on meta.SO.  For example: [Etiquette for answering your own question](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/17845/etiquette-for-answering-your-own-question) and [What is this “answer your own question” jazz?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/132886/what-is-this-answer-your-own-question-jazz)" CreationDate="2012-07-20T19:56:56.353" UserId="2981" />
  <row Id="2926" PostId="1294" Score="0" Text="Yes I can see the value to answering your own question.  Sometimes you discover the answer before someone else or find a better answer.  Posting it benefits the community.  But I have also seen cases where someone just poses a question to show off that he is clever and he immediately posts the answer after asking the question and before anyone else has a chance to answer.  I think that is bad form and really not beneficial to the community.  I am glad that the system prevents someone from gaining points by answering his own question.  I see no point to check your own answer." CreationDate="2012-07-20T20:22:15.303" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2927" PostId="1294" Score="0" Text="They should give the credit to someone who deserves it for a good answer rather than throwing it away with an ego boost being the only possible motivation." CreationDate="2012-07-20T20:23:26.347" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2928" PostId="1294" Score="2" Text="Michael, is there a specific example on *this* site that motivated the question? I do know there has been a big dust-up on math.SE about a related matter lately." CreationDate="2012-07-20T20:41:54.900" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2929" PostId="1294" Score="0" Text="Note that there is a new &quot;ask-and-answer&quot; feature (can't remember off-hand what they're officially calling this) just released by the SE developers. I don't think it immediately marks your own answer as accepted, though. At the very least this seems to suggest they are encouraging asking and answering your own question. If the goal is to have a central knowledge repository, this doesn't seem unreasonable." CreationDate="2012-07-20T20:46:30.417" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2930" PostId="1294" Score="1" Text="@MichaelChernick In this [particular case](http://stats.stackexchange.com/a/27195/930) (correct me if I am wrong when referencing this thread), the OP answered 15 days after the question was asked, and provided a summary of the main points raised. As you noticed, this demonstrates that the asker was paying a special attention to this thread, and nothing is wrong in marking his response as the correct response when nothing else happened. Green marks are not definitive; if someone comes with a better response, the OP is free to change his decision." CreationDate="2012-07-20T21:15:01.600" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="2931" PostId="1294" Score="0" Text="@chl I agree that the OP answering his own question was appropriate in the case I noticed yesterday.  I don't recall how much time passed between the question and his answer. But it personally bothers me if he went ahead and gave the check mark to his own answer. It is not necessary and it doesn't get him reputation points. Why do it?  Doesn't it seem a little egotistical?" CreationDate="2012-07-20T21:31:23.720" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2932" PostId="1294" Score="7" Text="-1 for relying on others to dredge up old meta discussions on SE policy matters that have minimal impact on the actual quality of the site. I don't think I've ever seen this being abused, and I don't think it would be worthwhile to remove the questioner's ability to correctly mark their own answer as best because some tiny fraction of people would abuse the ability." CreationDate="2012-07-20T22:40:58.917" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="2933" PostId="1294" Score="7" Text="@MichaelChernick: &quot;Why do it?&quot; Because it makes sense to mark questions that have received a satisfactory answer as being answered. &quot;Doesn't it seem a little egotistical?&quot; Not in the least." CreationDate="2012-07-21T12:48:49.590" UserId="8507" />
  <row Id="2938" PostId="1296" Score="3" Text="+1 Good advice." CreationDate="2012-07-23T16:36:57.370" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3137" PostId="1296" Score="2" Text="I upvoted this answer, &amp; I think it has a lot of good advice. But FWIW, I think correcting a misspelling in titles so that the Q will be findable is worthwhile; I do agree that this should be discussed on meta 1st, though." CreationDate="2012-08-05T15:59:18.497" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5200" PostId="1296" Score="1" Text="I'm one of the recent serial editors myself. My edits certainly haven't been rejected *en masse*, and I've been careful enough to make most of them complete and at least mostly correct. I'd say that if there's a single person making a single kind of edit throughout, that kind of edit should be judged on its own merits, though the person should be contacted if all the inadvertent thread-bumping disrupts the site's organization. However, I've noted that there is not a consensus that even this effect is harmful enough to justify rejecting valid edits on old posts. (+1 overall btw!)" CreationDate="2014-01-10T15:26:13.073" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="2935" PostId="1297" Score="10" Text="The decision on who's answer to accept is yours and yours alone. That is precisely why StackExchange has _two_ potential measures of the &quot;best&quot; answer: the one marked as accepted, versus the one with the most up votes. If folks are unhappy with the answer you found most useful, they are welcome to write/up vote another one. But only you know which answer was most useful to _you_." CreationDate="2012-07-21T23:01:43.243" UserId="5055" />
  <row Id="2936" PostId="1297" Score="8" Text="(+1) I'll second @joran's comment, and I would like to reiterate that **marking an answer as accepted has no other purpose than to indicate a correct solution** (for future visitors), especially where no other has been proposed, and there's no problem with that." CreationDate="2012-07-22T09:37:41.450" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="2942" PostId="1297" Score="5" Text="I would just like to state that I think your answer on the main site serves as a *prototypical* case that SE must have had in mind when they encouraged people to provide answers to their own questions (and accept them). (It is also *very* nice to see that it elicited a response from Prof. Kruschke. Any idea how he came across it?) (+1 here and there)" CreationDate="2012-07-24T18:51:06.513" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2974" PostId="1297" Score="0" Text="Thanks, @cardinal, that's very kind of you. I have no idea how Prof. Kruschke came across it my question, but I am tickled that he responded." CreationDate="2012-07-27T02:09:52.230" UserId="7250" />
  <row Id="2986" PostId="1297" Score="1" Text="I am not questioning anyones decision to mark an answer as correct. My original reason for asking the question was to find out if checking a self-given answer could give yourself reputation points.  That would be a flaw in the system.  It turns out that it can't.  So this question was educational for me about how the system works and maybe for others.  Hence I do not see why it got downvotes.  I also see no harm in checking your own answer in light of the rule.  It has merit since in some situations it alerts readers that a correct answer has been found.  So that justifies it in some cases." CreationDate="2012-07-27T17:09:07.603" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2987" PostId="1297" Score="0" Text="In a different situation and a different issue I saw someone ask a question and give his own answer to almost immediately.  This seemed to indicate that the OP knew the answer and was just showing off.  That is not something that the site should be used for. So it makes me wonder if the OP should evn be allowed to answer his own question.  Of course it could be argued that the purpose of StackExchange is to ask interesting questions and learn from the answers." CreationDate="2012-07-27T17:17:20.967" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2988" PostId="1297" Score="1" Text="Joran makes a good point.  I feel hostility in some of the responses though and I hope that people do not object to the way i posed the question.  My purpose was to learn how the system works and not to object to self answers.  Checking your own answer is not a problem since you don't get rewarded rep points.  But if i get one more dwonvote i am going to take the question down." CreationDate="2012-07-27T17:22:30.213" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2989" PostId="1297" Score="1" Text="@MichaelChernick: This answer has several upvotes, so I [doubt you'll be able to take the question down](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/141367/why-cant-i-delete-my-own-question). Note that there is a *new* feature of SE that allows a user to ask and answer a question *simultaneously*, so the behavior you observed is normal and, even, in the eyes of the SE development team, desirable. See jhetzel's comment to your question. :) I think the way you've reworded your question is also constructive, by the way." CreationDate="2012-07-27T17:34:57.520" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2991" PostId="1297" Score="1" Text="@Michael, I suspect the reason for the abundant downvotes was that the answer to this question could easily be found by a search of meta.stackoverflow.com, as indicated by a highly upvoted comment to the main question. Don't take it personally." CreationDate="2012-07-27T17:46:06.670" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2998" PostId="1297" Score="0" Text="I don't think that I should get downvotes for that reason although I suspected that something like that could be a rationale.  I do take downvotes personally because i think that if someone gives me one they think I have dne something wrong.  Many times it turns out that I have and I accept it and try to correct things.  But it bothers me when I think it is unjustified.  It would also bother me if I thought someone else were being downvote without good justification.  This was a quick and effective way to find out and it generated some interesting discussion." CreationDate="2012-07-27T18:17:58.103" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2999" PostId="1297" Score="0" Text="If people want me to take it down now I will take it down.  Please note I did make some edit changes to tone things down and better express my real intent of the question." CreationDate="2012-07-27T18:19:48.460" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3014" PostId="1297" Score="0" Text="i was going to delete because it got the fourth downvote but I learned that if it has answers you can't.  Isn't that strange some people hate the question and yet several loved the answer. If people are intersted enough to write long annsers and 11 of the many that viewed it take the time to read and upvote the answer doesn't that reflect some value on the question?" CreationDate="2012-07-27T23:47:57.090" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3015" PostId="1297" Score="0" Text="@Ccardinal If you ask and immediately answer the question it is not a real question.  Why ask it?  Why would that be encouraged? If you want to teach something it should not be through a gimmick where you ask your question knowing the answer.  If I am wrong about this maybe I don't understand this site and maybe I don't belong her." CreationDate="2012-07-28T02:11:22.240" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3016" PostId="1297" Score="4" Text="@Michael, if it is a good question/answer that others are likely to seek out and find useful in the future, then what is the problem? That would seem to be in line with the purpose of the site." CreationDate="2012-07-28T03:38:15.300" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2939" PostId="1298" Score="2" Text="Have you discovered the [meta thread where this topic was originally discussed](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/486)? That looks like a duplicate to me--maybe we should continue the discussion there." CreationDate="2012-07-23T18:27:17.760" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2940" PostId="1298" Score="1" Text="I saw that when I was searching, but I thought the question suffered from picking an example where the line was very clear. Gini coefficient for taxation seems to be pretty specific and the answer made sense (at least when the econ site was around). I want to understand where that line is. Are there any such questions that are appropriate?" CreationDate="2012-07-23T19:07:11.923" UserId="7071" />
  <row Id="2949" PostId="1298" Score="4" Text="In my experience, separating the data folks from the analysis folks is problematic. It's a two-sided market, and cleaving the two is like opening a singles bar with gender-specific sections. Questions about data should be handled by the people who analyze it. They have the best understanding of its limitations and potential. I've spent a lot of time dealing with data librarians and database admins who did not really have a clue. But I guess the consensus is that these questions do not belong." CreationDate="2012-07-25T22:58:46.987" UserId="7071" />
  <row Id="2943" PostId="1299" Score="0" Text="Interesting. I have not experienced this. I have had to kill the browser on a few occasions because something with the scripting gets screwed up. Does the &quot;m&quot; in the Chrome version indicate &quot;Microsoft&quot;? If not, you might add the OS information to this. :)" CreationDate="2012-07-24T22:58:46.207" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2944" PostId="1299" Score="0" Text="@cardinal Good suggestion, thanks! I'm sure it's something along those lines with the scripting - just peculiar that it only happens on this particular SE site." CreationDate="2012-07-24T23:08:47.273" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="2945" PostId="1299" Score="1" Text="This does not happen with Firefox." CreationDate="2012-07-25T16:15:43.923" UserDisplayName="user10525" />
  <row Id="2951" PostId="1300" Score="0" Text="That is not a use I had in mind, but this does seem useful." CreationDate="2012-07-26T03:47:33.387" UserId="7071" />
  <row Id="2972" PostId="1300" Score="2" Text="I confess to a prejudice here: I react negatively to requests for generic datasets intended solely to demonstrate some statistical technique or another. It's hard to resist the feeling, perhaps unwarranted, that anybody making such a request needs to get out and *do* some real statistics. They'll collect loads of interesting rich datasets in short order. The world is literally at our fingertips on the Web and the data are pouring out at us: people shouldn't have to come here to ask where to find it!" CreationDate="2012-07-26T21:52:07.270" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3134" PostId="1300" Score="2" Text="@whuber, in a way, this is the argument concerning the homework tag. The world is full of good statistics books... heck, you have Wikipedia right on the same computer on which you are submitting the question to CV. Go on and read what the lack of memory of the exponential distribution means. Or how to add two independent Poisson random variables. Does it mean that we have to boycott all the homework smelling questions? (I tagged two or three today, and thought of giving Michael Chernick a yellow card for solving all the problems for the slacking students ;) )" CreationDate="2012-08-05T15:40:53.997" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="3136" PostId="1300" Score="2" Text="@whuber, I think we may disagree here. As I answered [here](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/33526/33636#33636), playing w/ data is an important part of getting yourself up to speed. You can use the datasets in your textbook, but might want more. It could be valuable for teachers too. I note that other (less useful, IMHO) 'big-list' answers (eg, jokes) are among the most popular, upvoted, &amp; heavily commented / answered Q's on CV. But I respect the community's ambivalence, &amp; good citizenship is an important part of keeping the ship running smoothly." CreationDate="2012-08-05T15:51:05.560" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2946" PostId="1301" Score="0" Text="Just to say: I have decided to edit the question. Hope that's OK !" CreationDate="2012-07-25T18:15:29.997" UserId="11405" />
  <row Id="2947" PostId="1301" Score="2" Text="I think editing the question is usually the way to go (see more [here](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1259/what-is-the-best-way-to-ask-a-follow-up-or-slightly-revised-question?rq=1)), and was certainly OK in this case." CreationDate="2012-07-25T22:06:56.933" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2948" PostId="1301" Score="1" Text="I too think this is ok in this case. Given your edits, your audience might well provide additional and useful updates. Of note, I think there's nothing wrong in first asking a theoretical question, and then a follow-up question with application on real or artificial data with different questions." CreationDate="2012-07-25T22:34:11.790" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="2950" PostId="1302" Score="3" Text="If you could attach a file here it would be exposed to the world, so what's the problem with posting it somewhere else and providing a link?" CreationDate="2012-07-26T00:12:14.813" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2956" PostId="1302" Score="1" Text="@whuber. I see your point. I guess I just had never posted anything online outside of the capability that is provided here at work. But I now see I can use something like Google Docs and just provide a link to it. Still it would have been one less step if the ability to add attachments where there to begin with." CreationDate="2012-07-26T14:41:52.807" UserId="11944" />
  <row Id="2953" PostId="1304" Score="4" Text="Two quick questions, 1) is there any visual distinction between a super-ping and the regular ping (a red circle or square depending on the browser). 2) What exactly is a private chat room? Can you see it on the [chat room page](http://chat.stackexchange.com/) or is it invisible to everyone except the participants? If it isn't invisible to everyone, can others enter the chat room and see the discussion (just not participate)." CreationDate="2012-07-26T12:57:26.667" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="2954" PostId="1304" Score="3" Text="@Andy 1) No; the only way you can tell it's a super-ping is by not recognizing the link to the chat room! 2) A fully [private room](http://bit.ly/SVIt7I) is invisible and can be entered or viewed only by moderators and anyone specifically granted permission by the room's creator. (There are intermediate versions like [gallery](http://bit.ly/SVIqbV) where, for instance, anyone can view the chat but only specific people can participate.)  (This comment reflects enhancements by chl, who also found the links.)" CreationDate="2012-07-26T13:01:32.527" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2958" PostId="1305" Score="2" Text="+1 It seems to me that many of these migrated questions fall in the category &quot;data visualisation&quot;, which is clearly [in scope](http://stats.stackexchange.com/faq) for CrossValidated. Here are some more examples: http://stackoverflow.com/q/11610377/602276, http://stackoverflow.com/q/11544051/602276, http://stackoverflow.com/q/11449584/602276" CreationDate="2012-07-26T17:58:34.960" UserId="3556" />
  <row Id="2959" PostId="1305" Score="5" Text="@Andrie Those particular questions aren't really in scope for CV, because they're strictly questions about implementation of visualizations in a particular language. To paraphrase the FAQ: &quot;If your question requires **statistical expertise**, ask here - otherwise, ask elsewhere.&quot;" CreationDate="2012-07-26T18:15:23.807" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="2960" PostId="1305" Score="0" Text="@MattParker That makes sense, but ever since I was [lightly wrapped over the knuckles](http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/14101/3556) for daring to suggest that to a CV question, I have tried to keep myself to myself." CreationDate="2012-07-26T18:18:22.483" UserId="3556" />
  <row Id="2961" PostId="1305" Score="8" Text="Crap is in the eye of the beholder. I would take low quality to typically mean that the question is ill-phrased or hard to answer because a lack of critical detail (or just very poorly written/formatted). I wouldn't take trivial to answer (or RTFM) questions as crap. Perhaps you should post an answer to dictate examples of what should and should not be migrated." CreationDate="2012-07-26T18:27:21.720" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="2962" PostId="1305" Score="4" Text="One of the things I have found difficult in deciding whether it should be closed or migrated are questions I suspect are R questions already asked and answered on SO (no point in migrating a duplicate right?) But is it reasonable to expect the CV people to find the duplicate on SO before determining if it should be migrated or just closed?" CreationDate="2012-07-26T18:28:29.210" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="2963" PostId="1305" Score="3" Text="@AndyW I'm less concerned with duplicates being migrated than with questions that are generally low quality. For instance, questions where the OP says something like &quot;I want to do X. How do I do that in R?&quot; without providing any evidence that they have tried something themselves." CreationDate="2012-07-26T18:31:36.357" UserId="5055" />
  <row Id="2964" PostId="1305" Score="3" Text="@Andrie Hm! If it's any consolation, I completely agree with your suggestion there (and I think it's completely in concordance with our &quot;statistical expertise&quot; guideline)." CreationDate="2012-07-26T18:32:53.663" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="2965" PostId="1305" Score="0" Text="@MattParker Then all is forgiven! ;-)" CreationDate="2012-07-26T18:33:47.337" UserId="3556" />
  <row Id="2967" PostId="1306" Score="5" Text="big +1, I wholeheartedly agree w/ this. Moreover, I want to say that CV &amp; SO are **question and answer** sites. The reason people are asking is because *they don't know*. Certainly there are questions that are garbage &amp; don't show any effort on the part of the OP, these are commented, ignored, downvoted, edited, and/or closed. I've been as frustrated as anyone. Nonetheless, this is a Q&amp;A site, and our 1st obligation is to give the benefit of the doubt &amp; try to work w/ the person to improve (hence the &quot;serial abuser&quot; part)." CreationDate="2012-07-26T20:01:42.930" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2968" PostId="1306" Score="6" Text="SE sites are not, IMHO, primarily about providing an intellectual challenge for high-rep users. If your attitude is that 'any question that's easy for me to answer is crap', then maybe public Q&amp;A sites aren't for you." CreationDate="2012-07-26T20:01:49.390" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="2969" PostId="1306" Score="4" Text="OK, @gung, but maybe I should have made it clearer that I don't think this attitude applies to joran.  It just seems that the easy=crap equation may be a logical consequence of what we are being asked to do, and in light of that we should be thinking harder about what our criteria for closure and migration should be, as chl is asking in his reply." CreationDate="2012-07-26T20:05:12.957" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2971" PostId="1306" Score="3" Text="Thanks for the detailed responses. I'm tied up this afternoon with a small infant, but based on this and @chl's response I think it's a good thing I raised this issue as I suspect it will help highlight some differences between the two sites. Once the little one is in bed tonight, I'll post a more thoughtful reply." CreationDate="2012-07-26T20:51:37.587" UserId="5055" />
  <row Id="2973" PostId="1306" Score="3" Text="I don't get the slight at R's documentation, &quot;notoriously bad&quot; is the kind of thing someone would say when they hear bad press but don't check for themselves, though that's clearly not quite the case here. R's documentation is amazingly good." CreationDate="2012-07-27T01:54:50.407" UserId="3343" />
  <row Id="2977" PostId="1306" Score="0" Text="As far as I know, the usual process in case of doubt is to ping the target site's mods in TL. That might not work well here as your target is a particular tag on SO, but I guess you guys could easily establish a chat room for migration purposes. I would expect you to come to mutual understanding of standards quite quickly, and you can communicate *before* migration (less user frustration)." CreationDate="2012-07-27T09:45:32.780" UserId="12868" />
  <row Id="2982" PostId="1306" Score="6" Text="@md I would *love* to know what documentation you are reading.  Most of the stuff I find consists of these alphabetized abstract lists of functions and classes offering no significant examples of use, no theoretical explanations (apart from literature references), and amazingly inconsistent conventions for passing arguments and structuring output. This is a natural consequence of software organically built by a large disparate user community, so I'm not condemning it, but it's a huge stretch to call this stuff &quot;amazingly good.&quot;" CreationDate="2012-07-27T13:25:27.940" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3029" PostId="1306" Score="4" Text="@whuber: I think it's very important to distinguish between R-base/recommended and user-contributed packages.  R-base/recommended documentation is better than most of the commercial software I've used, and--while I agree that many user-contributed packages are very poorly documented--I don't think it's fair to broadly attribute that to &quot;R&quot;." CreationDate="2012-07-30T21:52:24.197" UserId="1657" />
  <row Id="2970" PostId="1308" Score="6" Text="(Sorry, Grandma and other grandparents)" CreationDate="2012-07-26T20:14:25.270" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="2976" PostId="1309" Score="7" Text="Participation in Stack Exchange sites is based on a *principle of good will*. We do not sign contracts and especially we do not have targets set in advance, although most will agree that we should aim for [quality over quantity](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/a/1248/930). Some users may be very active during some period and take a break, for whatever reason. This poses no problem really with respect to the operation of this community-owned and wiki-based repository of QAs." CreationDate="2012-07-27T07:39:53.513" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="2980" PostId="1309" Score="4" Text="Michael, you may notice that there are lots of lulls on this site. For example, weekdays seem to get more traffic that weekends (procrastinators??? :)) and good answers on the weekends often get fewer views/upvotes than good answers on weekdays from what I can tell. I'm not sure about JSM in particular but I wouldn't be surprised to see a bit less activity here than normal - what exactly motivates this question?" CreationDate="2012-07-27T12:44:27.063" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="2981" PostId="1309" Score="6" Text="I would be more surprised if a significant proportion of people attending the JSM are active members of CV or even if they are aware of its existence. @Macro nice description, although I felt a bit alluded ;)." CreationDate="2012-07-27T12:58:32.017" UserDisplayName="user10525" />
  <row Id="2992" PostId="1309" Score="0" Text="@Macro My question was just out of curiousity because I have not seen what happens when big meetings occur.  I make no judgements about the site or the community. I think chl was reading too much into the question.  I am also curious as to how many of the statisticians on this site are active members of professional societies who do attend major meeting such as the JSM.  It is clear that many of the people aasking questions are prectitioners and not professional statisticians.  But based on the quality of most answers I can see that the high rep people probably are professional statisticians." CreationDate="2012-07-27T17:48:20.223" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2994" PostId="1309" Score="0" Text="I also think that although many of you are very anonymous with the use of pseudo-names and minimal bibliographic material on your page that you have PhDs in statistics or probability.  Stephane does, Macro does, Bill Huber does. I suspect cardinal, chl, gung, MansT, Peter flom, Rob Hyndman, StasK, Jeromy Anglim, jbowman, gui11amd, procrastinator and many others do too" CreationDate="2012-07-27T17:55:52.180" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2975" PostId="1310" Score="2" Text="(+1) Thanks for clarifying those points. As I am short of time right now, I will comment on later. I've created a [chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/4268/discussion-on-migration-issues-between-so-and-cv) if anybody want to discuss in a more direct manner." CreationDate="2012-07-27T07:23:39.290" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="2978" PostId="1310" Score="2" Text="We have a library of [helpful responses](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/771/1036), we could probably  adapt one to this particular situation (it certainly occurs more than some of the other helpful responses listed so far)." CreationDate="2012-07-27T12:08:35.643" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="2983" PostId="1310" Score="2" Text="+1 This is great post: thank you for taking the time and effort to respond to our questions and concerns. The &quot;urban/rural&quot; metaphor seems to capture much of what's going on.  It gives me some ideas about how to better evaluate questions we get here, not just those we intend to migrate." CreationDate="2012-07-27T13:29:25.300" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2984" PostId="1310" Score="0" Text="@AndyW That's a good idea. It might also be possible to create a dedicated entry, and perhaps link to it from our FAQ. It would also be accessible from main sites (SO and CV)." CreationDate="2012-07-27T13:29:50.943" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="2990" PostId="1311" Score="3" Text="Will you be there? I can think of no better ambassador. :)" CreationDate="2012-07-27T17:36:30.480" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="2993" PostId="1311" Score="0" Text="Sorry, not this year.  Next year it will be closer :-).  But thank you for your confidence!" CreationDate="2012-07-27T17:53:38.463" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="2995" PostId="1311" Score="0" Text="I will promote the site there. Bill Huber's answwer is the kind of answerI was looking for. The JSM includes the Institute of Mathematical Statistic and the Canadian Statistical Society as joint societies that hold their annual meetings at the JSM. So it has an international touch. My colleague Geoff McLachlan from Australia attends regularly. Sir David Cox has been an invited speaker on a number of occasions. So the meetings do have an international flavor. But I would agree with Bill Huber's comment that it is heavily ASA members and ASA has predominantly US member." CreationDate="2012-07-27T18:04:42.487" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="2996" PostId="1311" Score="0" Text="Just as a point worth mentioning, I discovered this site because Bill huber publicized it on a ASA eGroup site. Actually although probably about 10,000 members attend the JSM on a regular basis far more members can be found on the ASA section eGroups.  So for members of the ASA chatting about us on the ASA eGroup site is probably an easy and effective way to recruit ASA members." CreationDate="2012-07-27T18:06:26.737" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3000" PostId="1311" Score="0" Text="@Michael The ASA consulting listserver has only 1500 subscribers and it is one of the few large and active ASA listservers.  (Only one has more than 2.1K members: &quot;Young Professionals,&quot; 4.8K.)  I have seen a few ASA members here--you probably recognize them too--but very few are active. That's too much to expect of busy people with many interests, but perhaps we can dream of growing the site to where many ASA members would see value in checking in once or a few times a week to see what's new and to answer interesting questions occasionally. Your thoughts about this would be most welcome." CreationDate="2012-07-27T18:26:21.463" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3001" PostId="1311" Score="2" Text="@whuber Am i the only one you recruited from the consulting list so far. My estimate of 10,000 at JSM probably includes all attendees. Many IMS members belong to both societies. Proably the total ASA membership at the meetings is closer to 7000. I am just guessing and I hope my memory is not way off. I probably could get accurate numbers from the ASA administration. I must be nuts. I am busy and have lots of interests yet somehow I got hooked on the reputation points and the way the site helps users of statistics." CreationDate="2012-07-27T19:38:49.103" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3002" PostId="1311" Score="0" Text="Going without missing a day for 88 days straight may be a little extreme but it got me to 10K rep points in less than three months and I am improving my answers a little (not to whuber's standards yet but enough to improve my points to answers ratio a lot I think).  Also I have been noticing some old answers with 0 upvotes are starting to get upvote activity." CreationDate="2012-07-27T19:43:58.163" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3003" PostId="1311" Score="3" Text="@Michael I understand the addiction :-). I am encouraged to see the improvement in answers (and in comments, which are frequently invaluable adjuncts): as you are noticing, answers stick around and useful answers occasionally get more upvotes. (Great answers continually get upvotes). We should talk about additional ways you can help the site (and your reputation). Consider chatting at some point when you have access to the chat facility. In the meantime, here's wishing you a productive and interesting time at the JSM." CreationDate="2012-07-27T20:04:54.850" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3007" PostId="1311" Score="1" Text="+1 @chl. Receiving props from peers about why your answer/comment is a good one, or sincere gratitude from someone who learned something from you is surely more rewarding than accumulating rep points. Besides, after you get 10k points, you've basically gotten all of the cool privileges on the site already." CreationDate="2012-07-27T21:16:37.830" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="3008" PostId="1311" Score="0" Text="@Michael - FYI: going 88 days straight is not that extreme. There is a gold badge ('Fanatic') awarded for visiting the site daily for 100 days - 41 people on this site have the badge!" CreationDate="2012-07-27T21:29:57.500" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="3009" PostId="1311" Score="0" Text="@whuber about your comment on getting ASA members to visit the site occasionally I think I can motivate that by a discussion on the eGroups.  I really think that the ASA should be interested in ASA because it enhances the practice of statistical methods by having experts in the field provide sound practical advice.  I guess the danger though is that some people could at least in theory get high reputation and be respected and still not have true credentials.  But the system has checks and balances if it is diligently monitored by accredited statisticians." CreationDate="2012-07-27T22:44:33.487" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3010" PostId="1311" Score="0" Text="Maybe we could get the ASA buy-in if we do something like that.  That could then maybe lead to an ASA initiative that would bring more members into CV and make it easier for us to convince our colleagues to participate at least when they can afford to volunteer some time." CreationDate="2012-07-27T22:47:30.410" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3011" PostId="1311" Score="0" Text="@Macro Only 41 with the badge means it doesn't happen very often.  I am just saying for a professional statistician like me who has responsiblities to head the statistical work for the entire Lankenau Institute for Medical Research and all the Main Line Helath physicians who need help with their clinical research designs setting the goal to login in every day is a burden and I find myself work late at night to make up for my addition to this site." CreationDate="2012-07-27T22:52:11.170" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3012" PostId="1311" Score="0" Text="@Macro But now that you have reminded me of the gold badge I have an incentive to stick in for the next 12 days.  At least for the required login.  I only have one gold badge so far and i earned it on the Mathematics site.  Also I think consecutive day are counted as long as you make a token appearance.  You don't have to do much and you don't have to be on for any minimum length of time." CreationDate="2012-07-27T22:56:14.660" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3013" PostId="1311" Score="2" Text="@Michael, yes you only have to do a token log-in to get the badge. Also, I'd venture to say that nearly all of the highly active users on this site have demanding full-time jobs - we choose (like you have) to contribute because it is rewarding and very entertaining, and least in my opinion." CreationDate="2012-07-27T22:58:49.247" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="3018" PostId="1313" Score="2" Text="What question are you referring to?  I looked at all your questions and did not find one that matches this description.  By the way, where do you say the answer is?  Is it in the question itself or in a comment?" CreationDate="2012-07-28T16:15:43.770" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3019" PostId="1313" Score="0" Text="Sorry I should have mentioned that it was on the main site. It has a 3 rating. In terms of the answer the data I provided in the question is enough to figure the answer out and the back and forth I have with someone in comments is enough to work the process through. I was just looking to close this off and wasn't sure as to how?" CreationDate="2012-07-28T16:27:20.520" UserId="8812" />
  <row Id="3020" PostId="1313" Score="3" Text="You can ask the person who posted the comment to post it as an answer so you can accept it. This notification can be done using a ping, e.g. @user8812." CreationDate="2012-07-28T16:55:11.990" UserDisplayName="user10525" />
  <row Id="3021" PostId="1313" Score="0" Text="@Procrastinator - thanks I have now done that in the question. I'd be happy to take this as an answer but I'm going to leave this open in case there is a more formal way of closing things out if that makes sense." CreationDate="2012-07-28T17:05:03.647" UserId="8812" />
  <row Id="3022" PostId="1314" Score="1" Text="This seems reasonable, but I would try @Procrastinator's strategy of pinging the individual first to see if they would repost the comment as an answer. If they do, I think that's ideal. If they don't for any reason, *then* I would post my own answer w/ (&amp; referencing) their comment." CreationDate="2012-07-28T19:48:41.523" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3023" PostId="1314" Score="0" Text="Thanks all - I can see both sides of this and will probably try @Procrastinators approach on this in future (as I have a couple of other questions that this can be applied to - where my background statistical knowledge isn't great I have a lot of answers already there that I didn't realise were right). I'd ideally prefer the commenter to answer as it seems wrong of me to answer, and accept my own answer to my own question (even when referencing their comment). The pinging idea seems the cleaner way forward. Thanks again." CreationDate="2012-07-28T20:31:33.873" UserId="8812" />
  <row Id="3746" PostId="1314" Score="0" Text="I think this is reasonable (and I just did the same thing on Stack Exchange.) In that case, the comment was a very good hint that sent me off down the right track, and then I did the work about implementing it. I figured that if the person had the time/inclination to work up an answer, then they might have done so, but perhaps in future I should ask them first if they'd like to do the full answer? [rhetorical question...]" CreationDate="2012-12-19T20:33:01.700" UserId="16974" />
  <row Id="3024" PostId="1315" Score="0" Text="Related: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/980/is-there-something-like-follow-this-question." CreationDate="2012-07-28T20:49:36.190" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3031" PostId="1319" Score="2" Text="+1 Many thanks for sharing these thoughts and opening this conversation, Michael." CreationDate="2012-07-31T12:30:42.820" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3032" PostId="1319" Score="11" Text="+1 These are interesting questions, although I, being European, think that &quot;ASA members&quot; could be replaced by &quot;statisticians&quot; ;)" CreationDate="2012-07-31T12:57:39.577" UserId="8507" />
  <row Id="3033" PostId="1319" Score="0" Text="@MansT Thanks.  I focussed on ASA members because I am at the JSM right now and can talk to some of these people.  I did see all the presidents of ASA at the awards committee meeting.  Nancy Geller past president led the session.  Robert Rodriguez the current president was in attendence. President elect Marie Davidian was there and was the incoming President Elect Nat Schenker.  They all know me now and appreciate my contribution as chair on the Dixon Award committee.  So I think I can have an influence on them.  We live in a global electronic world." CreationDate="2012-07-31T15:05:57.383" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3034" PostId="1319" Score="0" Text="Statistician everywhere can easily participate.  If European and Australian, Chinese, Japanese, Indian and statisticians from other countries in Europe, Asia, North and South America and Africa want to encourage colleagues to participate all the better!" CreationDate="2012-07-31T15:08:55.290" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3035" PostId="1319" Score="0" Text="I will be listening attently to the Presidential Address tonight and will inform you if I get into any discussions about StackExchange.  My guess is that most people I raise it to will have never heard of us." CreationDate="2012-07-31T15:11:07.473" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3036" PostId="1319" Score="3" Text="There was an article about CV in AmStat News a few months ago, but most ASA members probably don't read their own newsletter." CreationDate="2012-07-31T23:12:48.843" UserId="159" />
  <row Id="3037" PostId="1319" Score="0" Text="@RobHyndman.  The fact that there was an article on StackExchange in AmStat News is interesting.  It would be good to follow this with editorial and commentary. Bob Rodriguez's address was about creating a big tent and having ASA have open arms to bring the data scientists into the fold and having initiatives and volunteering to make a difference and help people and society. So I think the ASA adminstration is going to be receptive to the concept and goals with stackexchange.  But I have always had an uneasiness about the system." CreationDate="2012-08-01T06:47:00.590" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3038" PostId="1319" Score="0" Text="It has been my choice to participate. I like helping students and practitioners and I think that if this is done right it can meet everyone's goal to improve the practice of statistics.  Tonight I discussed the issue with a senior statistician who as I expected never heard of stackexchange,  We both agree about difficulties that would prevent any kind of ASA endorsement and without an endorsement I don't feel right about encouraging members to join.  I will list our reservations next." CreationDate="2012-08-01T06:56:07.257" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3039" PostId="1319" Score="0" Text="PROBLEMS WE AGREE ON ARE  1) No real quality control or consistency and 2) most members are anonymous we don't know who they are or any serious credentials about statistical credentials or work experience.  Most bios I have seen just tell about their personal area of interest." CreationDate="2012-08-01T07:06:06.120" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3040" PostId="1319" Score="0" Text="I have found that the only thing that holds things together is the dilligence and expertise of our two moderators.  I trust their judgement and appreciate their expertise. But the system needs structure and consistency it seems to me to lack.  A system that is based on reputation points assigned inconsistently by members who are novices and have no expertise to judge the correctness or incorrectness of answers.  I have seen correct answers that are counter to the OPs faulty intuition be downvoted and incorrect answers be upvoted because they agree with faulty intuition." CreationDate="2012-08-01T07:19:20.863" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3041" PostId="1319" Score="0" Text="Moderators have too much power in some instances and not enough in others.  Quality should not depend on the vigilance of the moderator and how can we always trust that the moderator is knowledgeable and makes the right decision." CreationDate="2012-08-01T07:25:00.747" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3042" PostId="1319" Score="0" Text="In addition to that voters are encouraged to downvote on the basis of style rather than substance." CreationDate="2012-08-01T07:27:49.120" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3043" PostId="1319" Score="0" Text="A system like ours has good intentions and sometimes work.  But I am not sure the the benefits outweigh the negatives," CreationDate="2012-08-01T07:31:26.543" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3044" PostId="1319" Score="6" Text="What you describe sounds an awful lot like the peer-review system, @Michael... ;)" CreationDate="2012-08-01T07:51:16.960" UserId="8507" />
  <row Id="3045" PostId="1319" Score="12" Text="@MichaelChernick As usual, with all the due respect, it seems like you are more worried about the credentials of the members than about the actual quality of the answers. Recall the famous saying &quot;Change Yourself First to Change the World&quot;. The moderators repeatedly promote elaborated answers and &quot;They lead by example&quot;." CreationDate="2012-08-01T09:19:08.520" UserDisplayName="user10525" />
  <row Id="3046" PostId="1319" Score="8" Text="*A system that is based on reputation points...*: rep points don't confer any real power and answers are deemed &quot;correct&quot; based on community opinion, not the pre-existing rep of the answerer. *voters are encouraged to downvote on the basis of style rather than substance.*: No one encourages that, at all. The point is that if the poor style obscures the true message of the answer and makes what is written is hard to understand, then one shouldn't be surprised at a poor response in terms of net upvotes. This is no different than poor writing in a paper or a textbook." CreationDate="2012-08-01T12:28:55.663" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="3048" PostId="1319" Score="12" Text="*I am not sure the the benefits outweigh the negatives*: any perceived negatives probably arise from expecting the site to be something it's not. Taken for what it is - an informal Q&amp;A site contributed to by volunteers - the site is quite good at helping a lot of people and providing helpful answers. From someone who uses the site and answers questions at a record breaking rate that far surpasses any of his predecessors, it's surprising to hear that you honestly think the site could possibly be a net loss for the statistical community." CreationDate="2012-08-01T12:41:28.423" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="3050" PostId="1319" Score="5" Text="A [link](http://magazine.amstat.org/blog/2011/12/01/qasitedec11/) to the article mentioned by @RobHyndman (Interesting info!)." CreationDate="2012-08-01T13:12:39.723" UserDisplayName="user10525" />
  <row Id="3051" PostId="1319" Score="0" Text="@Macro I think you are misinterpreting my point.  You don't have to defend the site.  I am addressing an issue that has to do with whether or not more professional statisticians should get involved with StackExchange in order to spread good statistical methodology to the widespread practice of data analysis.  Wikipedia is a great source of information.  I cite it her a lot as do many others.  But my son's high school teachers warned them not to rely on wikipedia in their school papers.  I think this is right." CreationDate="2012-08-01T14:18:17.520" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3053" PostId="1319" Score="0" Text="@Michael I think you are misinterpreting my point. I wasn't defending the site. My first comment was pointing out two things you said that I think are mischaracterizations of the site. The second comment was expressing confusion with your attitude, which does not seem to match that of someone who has become ubiquitous on the site, as you have." CreationDate="2012-08-01T14:24:58.470" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="3054" PostId="1319" Score="0" Text="The sources can be excellent but there is no &quot;Goodhousekeeping seal of approval&quot; to rely on.  So experts are needed  to vouch for the veracity of an article in Wikipedia just like with a post here.  Who are the experts here?  The ones with high rep points?  I don't know much about you and many others with high reps who post answers regularly.  I know you have a PhD in statistics from Michigan only because you told me in conversation.  Otherwise you are a mystery to me.  This site is useful.  To meet a higher purposes the judges of answers should be certified experts." CreationDate="2012-08-01T14:25:47.713" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3055" PostId="1319" Score="0" Text="ASA or RSS accreditation is a way to do it.  But would StackExchange CV change to do it?  Probably not and I am not asking it to. But for ASA to endorse and actively encourage its members to participate I think that would be necessary." CreationDate="2012-08-01T14:26:04.577" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3058" PostId="1319" Score="15" Text="Michael, I don't know what these &quot;higher purposes&quot; you refer to are but, as I said before, I suspect you're expecting the site to be something it isn't. It's not a peer-reviewed publication and it's not a PhDs-only (or consultants-only) club. People should judge the answers for what they are, using critical thought and possible additional research after receiving an answer, not based on whether someone with various titles and letters after their name &quot;certified&quot; them to be correct. **Giant +1** to @Procrastinator's comment above." CreationDate="2012-08-01T14:47:10.297" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="3063" PostId="1319" Score="0" Text="Let me say it load and clear. MY COMMENTS ARE NOT ADDRESSING THE SITE OR WHAT IT SHOULD BE.  THE SITE IS FINE FOR ITS PURPOSE.  My point is that I see a system where expert statisticans answer questions given by othe statisticians and data users can be a vehicle for helping to spread improved statistical practice.  Stackexchange cannot do that for the reasons I have mentioned." CreationDate="2012-08-01T18:11:49.093" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3065" PostId="1319" Score="0" Text="If individuals want to mention the site to colleague and encourage them to use it that is fine.  I was think more in terms of getting a significant professional society presense. That would for an objective of improving statistical practice.  I think the ASA could make something like the question /answer format available where responses could be trust.  ASA accreditation might be one way.  There could be others.  but the expertise of the individuals answering the question must be known so that the answer can be consistently trusted. Stackexchange wouldn't do that." CreationDate="2012-08-01T18:17:32.953" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3066" PostId="1319" Score="7" Text="The statement &quot;I am addressing an issue that has to do with whether or not more professional statisticians should get involved with StackExchange in order to spread good statistical methodology to the widespread practice of data analysis&quot; seems contradictory to &quot;MY COMMENTS ARE NOT ADDRESSING THE SITE OR WHAT IT SHOULD BE&quot;." CreationDate="2012-08-01T18:31:13.203" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="3067" PostId="1319" Score="11" Text="@Michael, As a moderator I'm investigating one of your more worrisome claims: &quot;I have seen correct answers that are counter to the OPs faulty intuition be downvoted and incorrect answers be upvoted because they agree with faulty intuition.&quot; Could you please provide links to a few examples so I can ascertain the extent of the problem and consider what might be done to improve things? Also, I'm unsure how to address the charge of &quot;no real quality control or consistency,&quot; because that goes directly to the activities of the community and its mods. Could you share some of the supporting evidence?" CreationDate="2012-08-01T21:43:56.363" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3077" PostId="1319" Score="0" Text="@whuber I appreciate your taking my comments seriously and your strong interest in improving the site.  People are misinterpreting and getting defensive.  You asked me to encourage ASA members to join the site to help improve the quality of questions and answers.  During the jSM I have listened to the Presidential Address and other invited lectures. Improving statistical practice is important to me and is a goal of the ASA.  They have even started an annual conference on it.  Presidient Robert Rodiguez would be very receptive to ideas that can have an impact on improving statistical practice." CreationDate="2012-08-02T15:31:17.260" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3078" PostId="1319" Score="0" Text="I would like to make the case that StackExchange CV is doing that.  But I am not sure that it is.  I think an ASA site similar to StackExchange CV could do that.  I discuss StackExchange with a colleague here and we agreed that there are features here that we probably cannot change like use of pseudonames.  We cannot clearly identify the authorities from the novices. Hence the problems I raise.  But I would not criticize Wikipedia and I would not criticize StackExchange.  They both serve good purposes." CreationDate="2012-08-02T15:39:09.170" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3079" PostId="1319" Score="1" Text="@Michael In thinking this over I saw merit in many of your points, but I'm not sure your somewhat negative prognosis is entirely warranted. As cases in point, check out the MathOverflow site (an SE-like forum for professional mathematicians) and SE's own theoretical computer science site (which addresses only research-level questions). I am not suggesting that SE or ASA set up a research stats site--that would miss the point of addressing practical questions--but seeing the good work done elsewhere might make you more sanguine about what we can achieve with the SE model." CreationDate="2012-08-02T15:44:31.847" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3080" PostId="1319" Score="0" Text="I will write to  Dr. Rodriguez and suggest that he go to the website and see the kinds of questions and answers that appear here.  The quality of most questions and most answers is high and I think he could see the value here.  I may even submit my own column on it and how this type vehicle can be used to improve statistical practice.  But to achieve that goal I would want to know upfront the credentials of the moderators and those answering questions." CreationDate="2012-08-02T15:45:11.113" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3082" PostId="1319" Score="0" Text="I cite wikipedia quite often because I only site statistical articles that I can judge the content on.  High school children are prohibited from doing that in their essays and research papers.  That is right because you should not site something implying accuracy to it when you don't know its correctness.  We do not know the authors of the articles and anyone can freely modify them.  Moderators and high rep members can edit and modify answers on CV also and if the source uses a pseudonym and provides no serious biography you can't be assured of credibility." CreationDate="2012-08-02T16:12:07.243" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3083" PostId="1319" Score="0" Text="@whuber The case that really bothered me lately was the question on Bayes methods generalizing frequentist methods.  The first answer was a yes.  It was upvoted and checked and even got positive comment and thank you from the OP.  I decided to write an answer explaining why that answer was wrong.  Mine got downvotes.  Your comment and procrastinators rescued me.  Can we always count on the moderators coming to the rescue?  Will we always have expert moderators who are dilligent?  I don't know.  It is certainly not guaranteed by the way they are picked." CreationDate="2012-08-02T16:19:03.257" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3084" PostId="1319" Score="0" Text="So in my mind I keep debating &quot;Can CV improve statistical practice?&quot; I don't think I can be confident that it always will even if it is having some positive impact now.  But it has features that I think could be very effective at doing just that." CreationDate="2012-08-02T16:21:46.653" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3085" PostId="1319" Score="0" Text="@MattParker my comments are not contradictory.  I am not critical of the site.  I believe its goals are to help people with statistical problems and perhaps teach a little.  That it can due reasonably well inspite of what I think are difficulties.  Getting it to be a vehicle for general improvement of statistical practice is a higher goal that I would have as well as the ASA.  That is something StackExchange cannpt do without major changes.  That may be better done by other sites. I am stuggling with a different issue which is whether to encouraging other statisticians to join StackExchange." CreationDate="2012-08-02T19:00:32.200" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3086" PostId="1319" Score="6" Text="Let's avoid some possible misconceptions, @Michael. (1) Moderators are permanent, as long as we remain active. The election process by which we are selected has tended to work well. (2) You fail to mention more prominent goals, as others have explained. Please re-read the site's &quot;About&quot; page. (3) The examples set within our best threads offer an extraordinary and unprecedented look at actual statistical practice. If you think there are *better* practices, then please encourage the best people you know to join us and show us how it's done. (4) Exactly what &quot;major changes&quot; would be needed?" CreationDate="2012-08-02T19:28:55.050" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3087" PostId="1319" Score="9" Text="As far as comparisons to Wikipedia go, I respectfully suggest you are laboring under outmoded misimpressions: the world has long [passed you by](http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2006/11/8296/). Now the onus is on you to establish that an openly debated freely editable platform--one of the four pillars of SE--is *not* less credible or trustworthy than an encyclopedia edited by experts. This is what has most astonished me about CV: anonymous people, laboring out of love, frequently provide *corrections to* and *better answers* than many of the recognized experts who have participated here." CreationDate="2012-08-02T19:37:42.433" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3088" PostId="1319" Score="0" Text="@whuber I can buy that in part.  I know that Procrastinator , Macro and others who remain anonymous are able to give expert answers.  Probably they are experts not looking to get credit for their unselfish work.  But novices ask questions and they can't judge answers.  Yet they will and sometimes they make poor judgements.  My desire for credential is that they know they can trust the answer.  Moderators are often anonymous too." CreationDate="2012-08-02T21:29:10.037" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3089" PostId="1319" Score="7" Text="All three (not two!) moderators, *on this site*, have a link to their homepage, as many users, although SE policy does not require to state private information or qualifications. But that's not really the issue here. Novices are welcome here, as are professional statisticians, because we all aim at providing users with a repository of knowledgeable and long-lasting answers to specific and well-thought questions, in the spirit of Stack Exchange community-driven sites. (...)" CreationDate="2012-08-02T22:04:30.210" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="3090" PostId="1319" Score="7" Text="(Con't) I believe the issue we should focus on, and the one which was stated in your opening question, is how professional statisticians might get involved in this site, what they can expect from this site (compared to ASA listserver, for example) and what benefit they can derive for themselves and for the community." CreationDate="2012-08-02T22:04:40.333" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="3091" PostId="1319" Score="0" Text="@chl  I have access to everyones homepage too.  What I have seen is mostly anonymous people with little or no biographical information. Again that is not critical of the site. Some of the discussion may seem to be off topic.  But I am trying to explain my thinking about asking ASA to help bring in members. 0y explanation is that my pitch would have been that StackExchange CV educates and improves statistical practice.  I just find that I can't make a convincing argument because everything is based on votes by novices and &quot;experts&quot;." CreationDate="2012-08-03T05:32:01.583" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3092" PostId="1319" Score="0" Text="I think that the old way of simply encouraging colleagues to check it out and decide for themselves is the best approach. I do think that of ASA would create a question and answer site with the CVs approach but with experts answering and judging.  That would raise the quality of answers and if it is done right it could improve statistical education and practice. It requires the kind of popularity that CV has." CreationDate="2012-08-03T05:38:58.347" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3093" PostId="1319" Score="0" Text="@whuber When you say the world has passed me by and that the burden is on me to show one way is better than the other is offbase and misses the point.  I can see that StackExchange CV works well usually. The problem is that novices judge and can be fooled.  Something can sound right and jive with their preconceived notion and they can easily vote for a wrong answer or downvote a correct one. The only check is the moderators.  We have three but at a given time any from 0 to 3 can be online.  Ihe analogy to wikipedia is good.  I am surprised by the quality of statistical items on wikipedia." CreationDate="2012-08-03T06:00:27.930" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3097" PostId="1319" Score="7" Text="*The problem is that novices judge and can be fooled*: A lot of the voting on this site is done by [a rather small group of people](http://stats.stackexchange.com/users?tab=voters&amp;filter=all). I've interacted with most of these people and I'd trust their votes. Novices don't vote much and so the influence of uninformed voting seems negligible - we're still patiently waiting for the apparently widespread examples of this &quot;problem&quot;. In any case, to (roughly) quote MansT: &quot;Reputation on the site, in the usual sense of the word, is determined the same way it is in the real world, not by upvotes&quot;." CreationDate="2012-08-03T12:42:06.957" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="3105" PostId="1319" Score="0" Text="@Macro You keep defending the site as though it is necessary to do so in response to my comments.  Why can't you see that I agree the site works well! My point is not whether or not it works well now or in the future.  I have no objection to it.  I think it has great value.  My point is that while I see it as a model for a website that could enhance statistical practice and educate non-statisticians in statistics in an informal incremental way there are no safeguards to ensure an absoulte standard.  Individual judgement decides and the moderators are the ones who provides the checks on misuse." CreationDate="2012-08-03T18:11:59.797" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3106" PostId="1319" Score="0" Text="But the moderators are selected by the community.  Experts become experts based on votes from the community.  What guarantees that the experts will continue to be experts.  We believe they are now based on our own subjective view of their knowledge from their questions and answers." CreationDate="2012-08-03T18:14:10.800" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3107" PostId="1319" Score="0" Text="Over the past few days my doubts about the site are growing because I am seeing too many questions closed and voted down.  Also since I started this question for discussion I have on the one hand gotten a lot of interest but on the other some resentment (misplaced in my opinion) that has led to an unsual rash of downvotes, unupvotes and unchecked votes that don't make sense.  In one case I would say Macro's uncheck of my answer was very much justified but only because his checkmark in the first place had no good justification." CreationDate="2012-08-03T18:19:03.963" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3108" PostId="1319" Score="0" Text="I would appreciate the site much more if people would vote in a serious fashion consistently." CreationDate="2012-08-03T18:20:06.410" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3109" PostId="1319" Score="13" Text="As someone who asks questions on this site and has gained a lot of benefit from those who are willing to take the time to respond to those questions - I think the idea of credentials and all this concern about being down voted is over blown. I can tell you that responses from those interested in listing all their publication or membership credentials are almost always the least helpful. Citing 10 scholarly journal articles has a place, but typically those that have real experience and passion for the topics they respond to - provide FANTASTIC value through well explained and crafted answers." CreationDate="2012-08-03T19:25:55.067" UserId="2040" />
  <row Id="3110" PostId="1319" Score="4" Text="con't... I think asking how to recruit practitioners, good teachers and how to clone the whubers, chi, macro, procrastinator,RobHyndman and similar is the best question to ask." CreationDate="2012-08-03T19:29:55.063" UserId="2040" />
  <row Id="3112" PostId="1319" Score="5" Text="@B_Miner: Thank you very much for providing your thoughtful perspective. The people *asking* the (good) questions are just as important, if not more so, to overall site health than those answering. Hopefully other &quot;questioners&quot; that may be lurking and reading this thread will be emboldened enough by your reply to provide their own thoughts. I hope this will occur." CreationDate="2012-08-03T20:14:18.060" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3113" PostId="1319" Score="0" Text="B_Miner and cardinal:  My mentioning of credentials is not a critique of the site.  I think everyone is entitled to put as much or as little into their bio as they choose.  I do think that sometimes I would like to know who I am talking to.  I know Huber and even met him in person once. I can completely trust the competence of Macro, procrastinator, jbowman, chl, mbq, Peter Flom, IrishStat, whuber, cardinal and many others.  We are fortunate to have whuber, chi and mbq as moderators." CreationDate="2012-08-03T20:35:36.430" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3114" PostId="1319" Score="0" Text="But I know this because I am a professional statistician and am in a position to be able to judge based on my own knowledge. Others who use statistics but have limited knowledge are welcome members of the community but are not always able to make good judgements.  As I mentioned before I have seen examples where they make bad judgements.  The voting system works well and most people don't abuse it.  But I have seen abuses and retaliation too. these are bad aspects of the voting system." CreationDate="2012-08-03T20:39:25.010" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3115" PostId="1319" Score="0" Text="When I comment on a different system it is only in the context of a way to construct an online vehicle in a question and answer format that will educate users on the statistics that is essential to their work and generally promote good statistical practice.  CV may be accomplishing that.  I am not sure.  But without assurance that our monitors and experts arer truly experts it is what my colleague described it &quot;a shell game&quot;." CreationDate="2012-08-03T20:44:13.757" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3059" PostId="1323" Score="4" Text="(+1) For the *old* books review suggestion. Maybe we can have a &quot;favorite books&quot; review where users can review some of their favorite (for whatever reason) statistical texts. That could be especially valuable if they're somewhat less well known than the really popular ones." CreationDate="2012-08-01T14:59:06.690" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3062" PostId="1323" Score="0" Text="Thanks for weighing in. Beggars can't be choosers, I think I would take whatever we can get (old-new-whatever)! I agree with your gauge of the audience though, but it might vary with the book as well." CreationDate="2012-08-01T17:00:52.050" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="3069" PostId="1324" Score="2" Text="I appreciate the fact that for some things, the Q/A format of the site isn't *too unreasonable* to bend its content to our whims (and this is one example). In general though, *I* would prefer the blog to be a place for items that don't really fit specifically within a question and answer. It is an imperfect solution, but I believe it has potential to add value to the site in ways that the Q/A format is self-limiting." CreationDate="2012-08-01T23:35:44.470" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="3070" PostId="1324" Score="1" Text="It is unfortunate that blog posts don't have some of the community input actions that questions and answers on the site do (such as community editing). If participation increases though in the blog it becomes more of a moot point." CreationDate="2012-08-01T23:38:03.983" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="3071" PostId="1324" Score="3" Text="I would still like to see the blog better integrated with the main site. That is the way it has a chance to reach its full potential. I agree with @Andy that the main advantage to the blog could be to provide content that doesn't fit the Q&amp;A paradigm. In my mind, I'd really like to see it used to provide high-quality content that is, e.g., simply too long to fit in an answer in a way that would keep people's attention. Short tutorials, more elaborate data visualizations, data-analysis case studies and other things might fit the bill. Andy (and others) already have some very nice examples! :-)" CreationDate="2012-08-02T00:09:40.340" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3073" PostId="1325" Score="1" Text="(+1) Great question. Both math.SE and MathOverflow have dealt with similar queries and the basic advice given transfers fairly readily to our site and its scope, I believe. You might try to dig those questions up and read through the responses." CreationDate="2012-08-02T00:42:31.673" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3074" PostId="1325" Score="0" Text="Thanks cardinal, I had a search around but didn't find anything particularly relevant. I did find this http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/3589/is-it-ok-to-ask-whether-my-proof-solution-is-correct-if-i-dont-have-any-particu but it isn't exactly applicable here I don't think. Sorry if I'm missing something more obvious." CreationDate="2012-08-02T00:47:07.533" UserId="10354" />
  <row Id="3075" PostId="1325" Score="0" Text="I'm looking around, too. I'll post some links when I find them. :-)" CreationDate="2012-08-02T00:53:14.123" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3147" PostId="1325" Score="1" Text="This question reminds me of the time [a biologist re-invented calculus and got a paper published on it](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2010/12/07/ncbi-rofl-clueless-doctor-sleeps-through-math-class-reinvents-calculus-and-names-it-after-herself/), with other biologists astounded at her amazing innovation. I remember at the time, mathematicians were laughing at her, and I was thinking, surely it's a failure of communication on their part too? If only there was some convenient place she could have asked if such a thing already existed...?" CreationDate="2012-08-09T09:47:27.613" UserId="8489" />
  <row Id="3100" PostId="1331" Score="6" Text="I think the &quot;risk&quot; outlined in your first paragraph is greatly mitigated by modern open-access archiving like the arXiv. These are timestamped making it, in some ways, *easier* to determine some degree of &quot;precedence&quot; for new ideas. Many, if not most, researchers openly publish their technical reports on their professional websites long before they would ever make it through a publication-review cycle." CreationDate="2012-08-03T14:28:20.043" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3099" PostId="1332" Score="0" Text="Thanks for chiming in. Personally, if you wanted to just re-write the same book reviews you did on Amazon for our blog here (just for more exposure), I would be perfectly fine with that." CreationDate="2012-08-03T13:38:40.333" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="3111" PostId="1332" Score="0" Text="I've been a big fan of your reviews on Amazon; they've been helpful for me for a long time. I think you'd be an ideal candidate for writing some book reviews for the blog. However, unlike @AndyW, I don't like the idea of just copying &amp; pasting them here from Amazon. I do share the view that it would be better if the blog were better utilized, but I think it should offer something unique." CreationDate="2012-08-03T19:38:05.693" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3103" PostId="1333" Score="7" Text="A user quit CV today (the one who offered the bounty), in these cases they are replaced by the user [Community](http://stats.stackexchange.com/users/-1/community) for some esoteric-programming reason. More information [here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/115503/destroying-a-user-can-leave-a-bounty-open-on-a-deleted-question) and many other discussions in [meta](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions), *e.g.* [this one](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/63873/why-was-this-bounty-awarded-by-community)." CreationDate="2012-08-03T17:07:06.590" UserDisplayName="user10525" />
  <row Id="3104" PostId="1333" Score="0" Text="I wonder how the bounty gets awarded now. I know that half of it goes to the highest upvoted answer (with 2+) **after** the bounty was opened but I wonder if it's at all possible to get the full amount. [This meta SO thread](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/99740/bounty-given-by-community-randomly) seems to indicate it is not possible, but it's not clear." CreationDate="2012-08-03T17:18:04.563" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="3127" PostId="1333" Score="1" Text="Thanks @Procrastinator. I was not sure this was this user who offered that bounty." CreationDate="2012-08-04T10:56:32.893" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="3116" PostId="1334" Score="5" Text="(+1) This is a fantastically well-composed, thoughtful answer. Thank you for taking what must have been a nontrivial amount of time out of your schedule to write such a nice answer!" CreationDate="2012-08-03T21:14:50.573" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3117" PostId="1334" Score="7" Text="Very nice.  I just want to emphasize a point that you touched upon.  Credentials shouldn't matter; good content matters.  An answer by &quot;John Smith, Ph.D.&quot; shouldn't be given more weight than a better answer by &quot;BaseballGuy42&quot; who posts anonymously and may or may not have the same credentials.  Good content should be able to speak for itself without merely appealing to authority.  To the extent the other stuff matters, it's to better inform your Bayesian prior estimate of the quality of the content :)" CreationDate="2012-08-03T21:50:16.223" UserId="2485" />
  <row Id="3118" PostId="1334" Score="0" Text="@chl +1 and Thanks chl: I think this is a very good argument for what the site stands for and why professional society members such as the ASA membership might want to join. Could you turn this into an invitation letter that any of us could use to invite colleagues?" CreationDate="2012-08-03T23:55:58.080" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3119" PostId="1334" Score="0" Text="On the certification issue you and others continue to take my comment out of context. I think that if there is to be a site not necessarily StackExchange that can be trusted as a source for novices to go to to have their questions answered confidence can only be obtained if there is some form of certification. Certification is not a big problem. The ASA has it, Statistical Society of Canada has it, and the Royal Statistical Society has it. I happen to have ASA PSTAT certification so I know how it works. ASA has a committee that reviews applications." CreationDate="2012-08-04T00:02:36.577" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3120" PostId="1334" Score="0" Text="Applications include CVs and three recommendations. There is a serivce fee to the ASA for processing certification and certified members remain certified for five years and can be renewed at these 5 year intervals. The judgement is based on experience and competency.  No specific level of education is required.  You do not have to have a masters degree or a PhD to be a certified professional statistician but you do need to satisfy the committee that you are competent and sufficiently trained." CreationDate="2012-08-04T00:04:33.283" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3121" PostId="1334" Score="0" Text="StackExchange will not make such changes and therefore I think as good as it may be it will attract some but others may be reluctant to participate. I am proposing that the ASA may want to move further to meet general goals it has that such a forum could produce." CreationDate="2012-08-04T00:10:00.237" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3122" PostId="1334" Score="0" Text="So please try to see that I am raising two separate issues.  1. Find a method to encourage ASA members and other professional statisticians to join StackExchange to continue to raise the quality of discussion and answers to questions on the CV site.  2. Try to convince ASA leadership that the question and answer approach of StackExchange could be taken up in an ASA website where the ASA could provide a similar service with the goal of improvement quantitative literacy and advancing the quality of statistic practice in society." CreationDate="2012-08-04T00:15:12.980" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3124" PostId="1334" Score="11" Text="@MichaelC: Regarding _&quot;...can be trusted as a source for novices to go to to have their questions answered confidence can only be obtained if there is some form of certification.&quot;_ I don't agree with this sentiment. First of all, good CV answers often contain links and references to other sources. Second, the voting system _usually_ works very well for pointing out bad answers. Third, that someone is a certified statisticians is no guarantee that they will write a correct answer. You yourself have had to edit mistakes in your answers a few times, _because the community pointed out mistakes_." CreationDate="2012-08-04T07:54:30.430" UserId="8507" />
  <row Id="3125" PostId="1334" Score="8" Text="I think that the fact that errors in answers by a very experienced ASA PSTAT certified statistican who has authored several books are caught by the community is evidence that our system can be trusted to result in trustworthy answers..." CreationDate="2012-08-04T08:07:18.980" UserId="8507" />
  <row Id="3126" PostId="1334" Score="3" Text="@MichaelChernick I understand the two issues, and I answered the first one because this was the original question: How to encourage ASA members to join given how this system works. The second issue sounds like a call to fork a site like this on ASA servers and open it to certified users only, because you see a need to change two major 'drawbacks' of our system: user anonymity and vote reliability, that credentials from external judges are supposed to correct. This is less relevant to CV itself, IMHO, and it has to be demonstrated that this won't turn into a &quot;shell game&quot; between experts." CreationDate="2012-08-04T09:36:22.883" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="3131" PostId="1334" Score="0" Text="@chl I really appreciate your thoughtful answers and comments.  PSTAT certification is just one possibility for the credential.  The site itself would not be restricted to experts.  That would defeat the purpose.  But judging questions and answers should be done by experts to ensure relevance and correctness." CreationDate="2012-08-04T16:11:48.460" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3132" PostId="1334" Score="0" Text="@MansT Everyone makes mistakes including experts and that is why many experts are needed to check and correct the answers of others. Right now I agree that the system works well.  But it is not the kind of system that I feel is guaranteed to work consistently.  I have seen individual examples where things go wrong." CreationDate="2012-08-04T16:16:02.230" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3151" PostId="1334" Score="2" Text="Very interesting thread. As somebody who only recently came across this site I have been very impressed with the quality of the answers (and moderatorship) and the obvious commitment and enthusiasm displayed by members. I would caution that any move towards credentials etc could be a move towards exclusivity which might discourage new users. I am not formally trained in statistics but hold a PhD in a related field, does this mean that my answers are therefore always less valuable than a qualified statistician?" CreationDate="2012-08-14T09:58:27.910" UserId="11030" />
  <row Id="3128" PostId="1335" Score="0" Text="Feel free to help with this thread, by providing samples of questions. Mark them CW so that anyone can contribute." CreationDate="2012-08-04T11:30:12.463" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="3129" PostId="1336" Score="1" Text="Maybe qualifying such question as &quot;not constructive&quot; would help to signify they are also off-topic on SO?" CreationDate="2012-08-04T11:34:47.043" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="3760" PostId="1336" Score="0" Text="I agree with chi.  The close reason listed here is completely wrong.  &quot;Not constructive&quot; or &quot;not a real question&quot; if the question asker fails to elaborate might be appropriate.  But, the question itself is on-topic." CreationDate="2013-01-20T15:49:24.610" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="4701" PostId="1336" Score="0" Text="I (now) disagree. Display of time series data has received attention from statisticians. The concept of banking for example where an aspect ratio is chosen such that small changes in slope are emphasised by being plotted at $45\degree$. In this case, the OP could be assisted to learn more than just get some figure of their data." CreationDate="2013-09-18T15:49:26.207" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4729" PostId="1336" Score="0" Text="@Gavin Sure. But how to know if the OP just wants the R code or is interested in getting such useful recommendations? Anyway, this ought to be an example of short &quot;how to do that in R.&quot; The SO R community often suggests to provide a reproductible example; depending on the data and the question at hand, we may provide helpful suggestions." CreationDate="2013-09-18T21:19:37.897" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="4734" PostId="1336" Score="1" Text="@ I agree it is a bad question as phrased. I guess this is where the approach of commenting to clarify the question, to tease out if there is a statistical aspect, would be useful. If nothing further forthcoming from the OP then we close. The fact that I up-voted this originally and now disagree with myself(!) is representative of the struggle being played out recently on Meta :-)" CreationDate="2013-09-18T21:30:48.987" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="3133" PostId="1338" Score="0" Text="Thank you Andy. I guess I am impatient - but I tend to find my other questions that got good answers attracted attention quite quickly. I have made a little progress - so I added the &quot;Update&quot; yesterday, but that's all. I will make the suggested changes." CreationDate="2012-08-05T12:24:41.287" UserId="11405" />
  <row Id="3135" PostId="1338" Score="4" Text="+1, this is the right advice: also change the title, &amp; keep the original content in the question but below the edit (you could use a *horizontal rule* to mark it off as well). He's further right that there are fewer CV contributors who can answer more complicated questions &amp; they might not notice before it leaves the main page. If you still don't get enough attention, a [bounty](http://stats.stackexchange.com/privileges/set-bounties) could be offered." CreationDate="2012-08-05T15:42:34.803" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3148" PostId="1338" Score="0" Text="@gung I have tried to implement your advice, including offering a bounty, but I still haven't got an acceptable answer, although comments from 2 users have been helpful. Is there anything else I can do ?" CreationDate="2012-08-10T21:04:23.483" UserId="11405" />
  <row Id="3149" PostId="1338" Score="0" Text="I'm afraid I don't know. Your question is beyond my expertise (you don't have to go too far to get past it). You could try updating *this* question w/ what's happened thus far to bump it up on the meta, &amp; someone else might have more advice. If a good portion of your question is really about R, you could also ask to have it migrated to SO, just to try your luck there. I'm sorry for your frustration." CreationDate="2012-08-10T22:21:48.853" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3138" PostId="1339" Score="2" Text="I agree that even with good intentions to help academic statisticians may find that they have very little time to contribute to a site like CV.  But I have notice large participation of statisticians ( mostly industrial consulting statisticians) on the ASA eGroups. It was on the consulting statisticians eGroup that I learned about CV from Bill Huber. I think there can be some gain here.  My idea of aN ASA site to do something like this may be a pipe dream but the goal of improving quantitative literacy and statistical practice is are clear goals consistently raised by ASA presidents." CreationDate="2012-08-05T19:03:09.213" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3140" PostId="1339" Score="0" Text="Michael, you are right, ASA groups and section mailing lists are quite active, although among these, the Section on Consulting is by far the most active -- again, see the reasons I outlined above. Other groups and sections may have lower activity levels; SRMS, the second or the third largest sections, has its own mailing list outside amstat.org, and it's kinda active with ~5-10 messages a week." CreationDate="2012-08-06T14:41:01.093" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="8902" PostId="1344" Score="0" Text="Hi @slhck! I am looking through the old tag-synonyms posts to see if something still remains to be done. Both [test] and [testing] are currently (and for quite some time already) synonyms of [hypothesis-testing], so consider accepting gung's answer to make this thread appear resolved." CreationDate="2015-12-15T14:41:45.037" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8906" PostId="1344" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Done, thanks for letting me know." CreationDate="2015-12-15T20:11:18.780" UserId="1205" />
  <row Id="3144" PostId="1345" Score="2" Text="The suggestion to create synonyms is a good one, but slow down! The first step is to look at the questions that have been tagged with &quot;test&quot; and &quot;testing.&quot; This reveals &quot;test&quot; is often used in a much less formal way than a hypothesis test and &quot;testing&quot; is sometimes used in a completely different way (as in clinical testing). Creating synonyms will lose those distinctions and, in a few cases, make the tags confusing or irrelevant.  Fixing all this requires first retagging the 72 or so questions, perhaps creating some new tags, and only then creating the synonyms." CreationDate="2012-08-07T14:26:53.570" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3145" PostId="1345" Score="3" Text="Let me tell you from experience that the synonym suggestion system doesn't even work well on sites in the scale of Super User. It's always better to just post a question on Meta, let users decide and moderators create the synonyms appropriately." CreationDate="2012-08-07T14:27:46.973" UserId="1205" />
  <row Id="3146" PostId="1345" Score="4" Text="@whuber, I'm perfectly happy to be wrong here (your comment is exactly why I posted this answer, rather than just going &amp; making the suggestions myself). But if they are being used in a meaningful, but distinct, way, we should create tag wiki excerpts to clarify that." CreationDate="2012-08-07T14:31:14.890" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3152" PostId="1347" Score="0" Text="When a question is a known duplicate on the target site and doesn't have any answers, there's no point migrating it: it should just be closed." CreationDate="2012-08-14T20:56:00.743" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3153" PostId="1347" Score="3" Text="With a comment that points to the answer (or duplicate question) on the target site, that seems reasonable. My point was that those migrating have no _obligation_ to determine if it is a duplicate, and, therefore, a migrated question being closed as a duplicate does not indicate a failure in the migration process." CreationDate="2012-08-14T22:16:21.000" UserId="5880" />
  <row Id="3761" PostId="1347" Score="0" Text="If it is a real question, and there are no answers on the target site, simply closing the question is patently ridiculous.  At worst the question should be migrated." CreationDate="2013-01-20T15:54:48.677" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="3767" PostId="1347" Score="0" Text="@drknexus I'm not sure what you read about this example that indicated that the recommendation here was to close on the original site (CV). The first statement of Outcome is &quot;Migrate to SO.&quot; This example was meant as a subtler example of http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/a/1342/5880 where, after migrating, the question was closed on SO as a duplicate. The point was that despite the question being closed on SO (after migrating), it was a proper migration. We seem to be in agreement." CreationDate="2013-01-21T04:21:35.173" UserId="5880" />
  <row Id="3774" PostId="1347" Score="0" Text="Brian, I am in agreement with you, but in disagreement with @whuber's comment that 'there is no point in migrating it: it should just be closed'.  Notably, the new question up for discussion below is an even subtler case.  Yet the action taken was 'closed' not migration.  So, although you an I seem to have some grounds for agreement, the actions at hand are not in line with the apparent consensus on meta." CreationDate="2013-01-21T06:30:23.547" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="3775" PostId="1347" Score="0" Text="Moreover, I am still waiting to see where the community discussion was had regarding the 'if it's about an algorithm, routine data processing, or details of the language, then please refer to the collection of links to resources we maintain' line in the FAQ and the contemporary interpretation of that line.  This entire meta post presupposes that line is a valid community decision and that it should guide the discussion we are having here." CreationDate="2013-01-21T06:33:18.063" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="3776" PostId="1347" Score="0" Text="Even if the FAQ line has been legitimately vetted... its interpreation has not.  Again, evidenced by the closure of the question I've introduced to this discussion, the judgement that questions such as the above should be migrated rather than closed appears to be less than unanimous." CreationDate="2013-01-21T06:34:03.973" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="3777" PostId="1347" Score="0" Text="As an aside, let me say that I appreciate all of the moderation and effort involved on the part of the community members here, including those who I happen to disagree with.  My goal here is to make sure we have this/these discussion/s.  In my opinion, closing and migrating questions has a potentially chilling effect on new users - it makes the community less inviting." CreationDate="2013-01-21T06:37:57.943" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="3778" PostId="1347" Score="0" Text="I imagine that this site has enjoyed some of the success it has had as a consequence of being inviting.  I am distressed by the changes in tone and policy that have taken place during my period of inactivity." CreationDate="2013-01-21T06:38:29.690" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="3155" PostId="1348" Score="2" Text="Our choice of CV was inspired by Google, that use SO for many of their products, including BigQuery: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10537591/google-bigquery&#xA;&#xA;Our ambition is to create an open knowledge repository on CV that will help scholars and practitioners interested in R, social sequence analysis, and TraMineR.&#xA;&#xA;If we were to use a mailing list, the knowledge we create during the course would be walled off, and we wanted to create access to knowledge about TraMineR to a wider audience." CreationDate="2012-08-15T13:10:06.050" UserId="10598" />
  <row Id="3158" PostId="1348" Score="1" Text="Hi @Aron, I'd be glad to create these tags but, from what I can tell, there aren't any questions that they would suit right now. I don't think a tag can exist if it doesn't have any questions associated with it. Have you noticed any questions that would be appropriate candidates for any of these tags? If so, can you edit your post with links to them? If not, as whuber alludes to, the tag could just be created when such questions do arise." CreationDate="2012-08-15T15:43:20.410" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="3160" PostId="1348" Score="0" Text="Aron, I would like to echo @Macro's helpful comment: if there already exist some questions that need such tags, we would be happy to create them retroactively.  I am still hoping, as per my reply, that this is something that you will be able to take care of yourself as new questions are asked and, more importantly, will be able to manage in a natural, meaningful way in the future." CreationDate="2012-08-15T16:56:50.293" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3162" PostId="1348" Score="0" Text="Since I don't have 300 in reputation, I can't create these tags. I'm referring to three questions: http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/29901/how-to-describe-multi-channel-sequence-objects-in-traminer/29915#29915 and http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11959811/displaying-traminer-r-dendrograms-in-text-table-format and http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11873279/pivoting-a-csv-file-using-r" CreationDate="2012-08-15T17:08:12.413" UserId="10598" />
  <row Id="3163" PostId="1348" Score="0" Text="@AronLindberg, re: the question you linked to that is on the stats stackexchange, there already is a tag called [tag:sequential-analysis]  and it has been used there. Doesn't that cover the same ground that would be covered by `sequence-analysis`? Regarding the questions on stackoverflow, you may request there that someone create a `TraMineR` tag but, as you may know, pure programming questions are off topic here. If `TraMineR` comes up in the context of a statistical question here then it may be relevant to create that tag here at that time." CreationDate="2012-08-15T17:22:54.170" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="3164" PostId="1348" Score="1" Text="Thanks Macro. However, sequential analysis and sequence analysis are very different. The former stems from quality control research and the latter stems from genetic sequencing. So these tags would definitely need to be different. Also, many of the questions seem to straddle the programming/statistics boundary, see fx: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11959811/displaying-traminer-r-dendrograms-in-text-table-format that was migrated" CreationDate="2012-08-15T17:28:32.710" UserId="10598" />
  <row Id="3165" PostId="1348" Score="0" Text="@Aron, thank you for making the distinction. But, looking at [this page](http://mephisto.unige.ch/traminer/) about `TraMineR`, the ambiguity persists, as it seems to describe sequential analysis but says 'sequence analysis' in the heading. Also, I'd say that the stats SE question you linked to is borderline migration-worthy as it seems like a pure programming question. But, I'll step aside now and let someone who knows more about sequence analysis continue the convo." CreationDate="2012-08-15T17:37:33.577" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="3166" PostId="1348" Score="0" Text="@Aron Two of the three threads you link to are on SO; we cannot help you create tags there.  Consider flagging one of those threads with a request to create a suitable tag.  You could link to this thread for support." CreationDate="2012-08-15T18:31:14.457" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3167" PostId="1348" Score="0" Text="Thanks! This is really helpful!" CreationDate="2012-08-15T21:18:02.287" UserId="10598" />
  <row Id="3157" PostId="1349" Score="0" Text="Hi @whuber - don't you need [300 rep](http://stats.stackexchange.com/privileges/create-tags) to create a tag? Or does this not apply when you originate the question?" CreationDate="2012-08-15T15:38:58.263" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="3159" PostId="1349" Score="0" Text="@Macro I'm not sure and I have no way of testing (short of posting some kind of throw-away message on another site, which I wasn't inclined to do: but I was able to get as far as typing in a title, question, and new tag on another site and it didn't complain)." CreationDate="2012-08-15T16:54:19.080" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3161" PostId="1349" Score="1" Text="Yes, you need 300 in order to create these tags. This is part of the reason I'm asking, since I can't create the tags myself." CreationDate="2012-08-15T17:06:58.453" UserId="10598" />
  <row Id="3168" PostId="1349" Score="1" Text="@whuber, you can find a list of CV's privileges &amp; associated rep requirements [here](http://stats.stackexchange.com/privileges). When you check, it won't seem very informative, b/c it will say that you already have them (the max is 20k), however if you mouseover, or click on them you will be able to see the rep requirement. On another note, I'd like to say thank you for creating a tag wiki excerpt when you created the tags. I think that's a big deal &amp; wish everyone would do so." CreationDate="2012-08-16T04:09:13.997" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3183" PostId="1349" Score="0" Text="Thanks, @gung. I indeed consulted that list (and some other lists) before answering. Unfortunately it is incomplete and, in the case of tag creation, it is vague (because it does not say whether or not the OP can create a tag regardless of their reputation). I also consulted with the SE team and other mods yesterday to find out whether there are straightforward ways to test the site out, but there are not. So we just have to muddle through..." CreationDate="2012-08-16T14:06:37.917" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3191" PostId="1350" Score="4" Text="Due to abuse of comments and the close similarity of this question to another, this thread has been closed." CreationDate="2012-08-16T18:06:37.710" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3192" PostId="1350" Score="0" Text="This is not a duplicate. I did not use any abusive language.  I apologize if others did. I am disappointed because I thought there could be some interesting discussion here about the site. What other question do you think it could be merged with?" CreationDate="2012-08-16T18:23:02.980" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3193" PostId="1350" Score="2" Text="Michael, I agree you did not use abusive language, but I think you misunderstand why the comments were deleted. For guidance on how comments are intended to be used, please read http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/118582/what-is-an-acceptable-answer/118694#118694. This has to be read somewhat metaphorically, because it is framed from the point of view of SO, which focuses on programming questions. Reading entirely through this guidance is helpful for how it exposes the reasoning and the underlying principles, all of which apply here." CreationDate="2012-08-16T18:29:02.840" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3195" PostId="1350" Score="0" Text="@whuber Okay but I still don't understand the real reason for closing the question." CreationDate="2012-08-16T22:49:26.370" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3197" PostId="1350" Score="0" Text="@whuber, I did not mean to suggest that this question needed to be closed. I only wanted to point out that there was also similar food for thought elsewhere." CreationDate="2012-08-17T02:33:48.390" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3198" PostId="1350" Score="4" Text="@gung I closed this question because (1) I warned that it had the potential to be argumentative yet subsequently (2) it collected unacceptable comment threads (which have been deleted, in case you're wondering).  If some aspect of this question is not already covered in the duplicate, then feel free to open a new thread: but please keep it focused and appropriate for this site." CreationDate="2012-08-17T12:46:18.943" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3174" PostId="1351" Score="2" Text="Why do you refer to some site members as leeches?  What do you mean by the &quot;real&quot; internet?  Are you suggesting that sites like statistics.com or Tutors.com are not real? There are now universities set up to teach online and many traditional academic institutions are offering courses on line for a fee.  What do you find objectionable about charging for services?" CreationDate="2012-08-16T11:44:00.437" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3194" PostId="1351" Score="7" Text="@Michael: For me, I find nothing objectionable about charging for services. If people prefer compensation, there are a number of offline (universities, consultants) and online (Tutors.com, online courses) options to choose. However, some prefer also to have a venue to exchange knowledge without monetary compensation. For them, StackExchange appears to be a good model, as is [MIT's Open Course Ware](http://ocw.mit.edu/about/), albeit for online courses. I like (occasionally) participating on CV without thoughts of money. To me, it's a fun and educating distraction from daily responsibilities." CreationDate="2012-08-16T22:38:15.900" UserId="2981" />
  <row Id="3196" PostId="1351" Score="2" Text="@jthetzel +1  I like that as an answer." CreationDate="2012-08-16T23:47:40.547" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3201" PostId="1351" Score="3" Text="@MichaelChernick I was referring to people asking *send me teh solution!* questions; by real internet I meant its roots, i.e. service-profit-only network for easy communication and publishing." CreationDate="2012-08-17T14:24:06.317" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="3213" PostId="1351" Score="1" Text="@mbq Maybe the internet has evolved with electronic course sites like statistics.com and univerisities putting course for credit online.  I think that those are good trends not bad." CreationDate="2012-08-17T15:44:22.707" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3223" PostId="1351" Score="2" Text="@MichaelChernick I'm not saying commercial way it is bad; only that SE follows the traditional way, and it... works." CreationDate="2012-08-17T18:28:31.237" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="3230" PostId="1355" Score="4" Text="I don't think this question was controversial. I *suspect* it was converted to CW simply because it solicits opinion and/or does not have a clearly definitive answer. To me, this is clearly within the scope for how such questions are treated. I'm glad you asked it and it got a +1 from me prior to the CW conversion. :)" CreationDate="2012-08-20T12:18:50.267" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3241" PostId="1355" Score="0" Text="Assuming that lack of an objecting answer on a CW thread indicates &quot;consensus&quot; is the [Duty Calls fallacy](http://xkcd.com/386/). We can't all respond to everything that comes up! But the accumulation of positive votes on those answers does tend to support your assessment... . Our [FAQ](http://stats.stackexchange.com/faq#bounty) contains some advice about how to encourage more and better answers." CreationDate="2012-08-20T21:28:17.790" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3244" PostId="1355" Score="0" Text="*Is* it a CW post?  How do I tell if it is CW?  (I don't see how to tell on this page: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts)" CreationDate="2012-08-21T19:24:39.540" UserId="13216" />
  <row Id="3249" PostId="1355" Score="0" Text="whuber: Well, I don't want to get into stats here ;-) but all knowledge is conjectural.  How else could I find out about consensus other than by making a guess and then being proved wrong?  Seeing those now-deleted answers is a way to be proved wrong.  That way is eliminated if answers are deleted systematically according to whether they align with a moderator's opionion (I don't know if that's what happened here, of course -- that's part of the problem).  Prior to this incident, I held the naive view that sensible answers were not deleted _en masse_, and in an apparently systematic fashion." CreationDate="2012-08-21T19:59:19.330" UserId="13216" />
  <row Id="3250" PostId="1355" Score="0" Text="FWIW: I didn't even know that SE sites _had_ a delete-without-history feature: a clear-cut misfeature IMO because it will tend to prevent mistakes from being corrected, which no doubt is the opposite of the intention." CreationDate="2012-08-21T20:00:00.297" UserId="13216" />
  <row Id="3258" PostId="1355" Score="1" Text="@CroadLangshan, in reading your comments and re-reading your question, I think I see where the misunderstanding is arising. It appears you are under the impression that the moderators deleted the answers. Those other answers were deleted by the person who posted them, not anyone else. In light of that, to address your comment (below) **&quot;but after all of the answers that are directly on topic are deleted, the question as a whole becomes worse than useless in my view&quot;**, I'd say that I don't think the viability of the question should depend on one user's decision to delete his/her answers." CreationDate="2012-08-22T00:21:00.357" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="3295" PostId="1355" Score="0" Text="Macro: The problem here is that, from regular users' point of view, there is nothing to misunderstand about what happened and who did what and why, because the system provides no information about those things." CreationDate="2012-08-25T12:46:19.360" UserId="13216" />
  <row Id="3231" PostId="1357" Score="1" Text="Perhaps it is best to bring up your complaints to the specific instance in the chat room? Mistakes happen, but complaining about it on this old post isn't the best course of action IMO." CreationDate="2012-08-20T12:26:12.577" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="3232" PostId="1357" Score="2" Text="@Andy Perhaps. But the post is about exactly this issue of policy. And a month doesn't strike me as particularly old given the low turnover here in Meta." CreationDate="2012-08-20T16:22:54.993" UserId="174" />
  <row Id="3242" PostId="1357" Score="1" Text="Hi @walkytalky - I'd tend to agree that approving such things isn't helpful to the community. From my experience, there are not a ton of suggested edits of this type although I will admit that I only see, maybe, 10-15% of the suggested edits (many get handled before I ever see them). Suggested edits for actual misspellings and math typesetting errors are more common, which seem to be somewhat different from what you're talking about - do you object to those too?" CreationDate="2012-08-21T12:28:18.900" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="3243" PostId="1357" Score="1" Text="@Macro Like the other answerers, I think it hinges on substance. A maths typesetting error is almost certainly worth fixing on grounds of correctness and clarity. A minor spelling mistake may not be. A *difference of opinion* on spelling clearly isn't, since there is no *right* answer. (Unless we do, in fact, wish to insist on US spelling throughout, which would be a whole different discussion.)" CreationDate="2012-08-21T13:30:09.433" UserId="174" />
  <row Id="3301" PostId="1357" Score="1" Text="I find myself mainly editing questions that are poor grammatically.  I don't need approval to edit.  So I am doing this when I am sure I understand the content.  But I think coorect english helps everyone when they are reading it.  When I do this I don;t give age of the post any consideration.  But this seems to happen most often before any answers have been given to tghe post." CreationDate="2012-08-25T21:55:09.183" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="4028" PostId="1357" Score="0" Text="@MichaelChernick: That last comment is deliciously ironic.    &quot;coorect &quot;? :)" CreationDate="2013-04-02T21:13:07.243" UserId="21072" />
  <row Id="3245" PostId="1359" Score="0" Text="I see your &quot;almost&quot;, but: It does not require legal expertise to answer it.  It requires legal expertise to know whether it should be answered, or something along those lines.  You could make your personal opinion useful by explaining *why* you think it shouldn't be deleted, perhaps by responding to the reasons that I put forward for deletion, or discussing what you consider to be the valid reasons for deletion." CreationDate="2012-08-21T19:28:50.393" UserId="13216" />
  <row Id="3255" PostId="1359" Score="1" Text="Hi @CroadLangshan - As I said, I don't think the question was controversial (that was the reason you put forward for deletion, right?). As for my reasons for saying &quot;Don't close&quot; - I think that some statistical expertise is required to give a &quot;good&quot; answer, making it at least debatable that the thread is on topic - in my opinion, the importance of the &quot;borderline&quot; on-topicness of the thread is reduced by the clear community support in the form of numerous upvotes (see e.g. the statistics jokes thread)." CreationDate="2012-08-22T00:09:35.757" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="3296" PostId="1359" Score="0" Text="&quot;that was the reason you put it forward for deletion, right&quot; -- Well, whether something is controversial is by definition something about other peoples' views, not ones own.  So while your opinion adds to that, I guess you can probably see that all of the answers that made an attempt to directly answer the question getting deleted, plus all of the remaining answers suggesting that the question in some sense should not be answered, might suggest controversy!" CreationDate="2012-08-25T12:55:47.750" UserId="13216" />
  <row Id="3299" PostId="1359" Score="2" Text="@CroadLangshan, re: &quot;all of the remaining answers suggesting that the question in some sense should not be answered, might suggest controversy!&quot; - FYI: the user who voluntarily deleted all of their answers made it clear in a now-deleted meta post that the reason for the deletion was because the question was converted to community wiki. That suggests the deletions had nothing to do with whether the question itself was controversial. If anything, the labeling as &quot;community wiki&quot; was controversial (at least to one person)." CreationDate="2012-08-25T14:48:53.227" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="3240" PostId="1360" Score="3" Text="You have done well in offering your own constructive reply on that thread: that's the best way to improve things, IMHO. Two additional ways to consider responding to &quot;quite shocking&quot; answers on our site are via comments and downvotes. Both can provide helpful signals to future readers. It's preferable to resort to these three mechanisms before complaining about answers here on meta. (FWIW, none of the answers that shock you have yet been downvoted.) In reviewing those answers, though, I'm having trouble interpreting them as negatively as you do." CreationDate="2012-08-20T21:24:51.400" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3247" PostId="1360" Score="0" Text="Though I think the answers that say you shouldn't study are incorrect, I can certainly understand where they're coming from, and were quite valid _in the context_ of the other answers." CreationDate="2012-08-21T19:44:54.500" UserId="13216" />
  <row Id="3248" PostId="1360" Score="0" Text="It's not the answers that remain that shock me, but the deletion of all the other answers. My judgement that those answers are poor is a relative one: relative to all of the answers that were deleted. Also, that judgement is about the suitability of the answers (see my question here). _In the context_ of the other (deleted) answers, I wouldn't even downvote them (and still haven't), but after all of the answers that are directly on topic are deleted, the question as a whole becomes worse than useless in my view." CreationDate="2012-08-21T19:46:30.987" UserId="13216" />
  <row Id="3251" PostId="1360" Score="0" Text="whuber: Ah, I now realise your comment was directed at cbeleites, not me.  Nevertheless, my previous comment stands." CreationDate="2012-08-21T20:08:30.057" UserId="13216" />
  <row Id="3264" PostId="1360" Score="0" Text="@whuber: I wouldn't have complained here. But as there was this discussion about whether the question should be deleted going on here, I thought I write down my opinion. I do not know the answers that were deleted. Meanwhile, I did comment them. I think the &quot;shocking&quot; was also that *only* these answers were left." CreationDate="2012-08-22T16:55:03.220" UserId="4598" />
  <row Id="3265" PostId="1360" Score="2" Text="Croad, the deletion of the other answers was done unilaterally by the person who posted them. This is an act that is a difficult to understand response to retroactively making the thread CW. I believe it unlikely anyone will persuade that person to undo their actions, regardless of the potential benefit to the thread and the community. Although moderators can undelete answers, I am reluctant to do so because I do not want to antagonize someone who has exhibited such a capacity to contribute great answers." CreationDate="2012-08-22T17:02:35.887" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3297" PostId="1360" Score="0" Text="whuber: Thanks: whether or not you judged motivations correctly in this case, that helps me understand how things work.  I cannot check, but I'm pretty sure there were multiple authors whose answers were deleted.  I'm still amazed that SE doesn't follow the wikipedia model more closely here (keeping a visible metadata audit trail - i.e. who did what when - even if not a full content audit trail - i.e. full record of how the text changed)." CreationDate="2012-08-25T13:01:53.157" UserId="13216" />
  <row Id="3300" PostId="1360" Score="0" Text="@CroadLangshan, just an a couple of FYIs: 1) all of the deleted answers were by the same author. 2) there is a fully visible audit trail. You can see the full history of all non-deleted posts. Regarding deleted posts - for whatever reason (I'd imagine there is _some_ rationale), Stackexchange only sees fit to make their history visible to moderators and users with over 10K rep." CreationDate="2012-08-25T14:50:44.130" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="3266" PostId="1361" Score="5" Text="Concerning the last thought, @Tal Galili has asked a [bunch of constructive teaching-related questions](http://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=user%3A253+%2B+[teaching]). Why not check out a few of them for inspiration?" CreationDate="2012-08-22T17:17:06.137" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3267" PostId="1361" Score="1" Text="Thanks for the link whuber. I wanted to follow the advice given in the responses to this post, and in doing so, the question ended up being fairly long! Much longer than @Tal's questions. If this is a major problem I can edit my question down to the tl;dr version or at least a modified and shorter version...!" CreationDate="2012-08-23T09:02:49.990" UserId="9249" />
  <row Id="3261" PostId="1363" Score="2" Text="&quot;Yay&quot; or &quot;yea&quot; ... or both? ;-)" CreationDate="2012-08-22T15:05:33.183" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3262" PostId="1363" Score="0" Text="@cardinal, whoops, I guess yea! When I wrote it I was more worried about whether &quot;pedagological&quot; was an actual word or not!" CreationDate="2012-08-22T15:07:16.657" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="3263" PostId="1363" Score="1" Text="&quot;Yay&quot; makes a good pun, so here I say yea to keeping it..." CreationDate="2012-08-22T15:09:16.983" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3268" PostId="1364" Score="0" Text="So is 'deleting' a less extreme option? How does deleting differ from blacklisting?" CreationDate="2012-08-23T13:34:01.627" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3269" PostId="1364" Score="0" Text="@gung, blacklisting prevents future use of the tag." CreationDate="2012-08-23T13:34:54.823" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3270" PostId="1364" Score="0" Text="&amp; deleting just removes the tag, but someone could re-create it in the future?" CreationDate="2012-08-23T13:36:54.167" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3271" PostId="1364" Score="0" Text="@gung Yes, that's correct. The only other option is to create a tag synonym, but I see no point to doing that when the tag is essentially useless in the first place." CreationDate="2012-08-23T13:38:02.197" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3272" PostId="1364" Score="0" Text="I don't see that the tag offers much value. It looks like it could be replaced by [tag:interpretation] in most cases, although making it a synonym wouldn't be a good idea, as you note. I'm guessing nothing happens to the questions themselves, just that tag drops off of them. I certainly don't have a problem with deleting it, blacklisting just seems awfully final." CreationDate="2012-08-23T14:33:01.860" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3273" PostId="1364" Score="0" Text="@gung I believe blacklisting is reversible, but it does prevent use of a tag while it is blacklisted. Thus the crux of the question is, are there any conceivable circumstances in which it would be useful to tag an on-topic question with &quot;output&quot;? If so, we'll keep &quot;output&quot; as a tag, modify its wiki to describe its intended application and scope, and (if needed) re-tag or un-tag existing questions to be consistent with that meaning." CreationDate="2012-08-23T14:44:50.810" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3274" PostId="1364" Score="0" Text="I agree. In all but one of the tagged questions, &quot;output&quot; is redundant as the question is already tagged with the relevant programming language. The &quot;r&quot; tag, for example, already generally implies that the question relates to the coding and output of the R programming language. That said, perhaps users would like to stress that their questions relate to the *interpretation* of the programming language's output, in which case @gung's suggestion of creating an &quot;interpretation&quot; synonym seems valid." CreationDate="2012-08-23T16:35:43.520" UserId="2981" />
  <row Id="3275" PostId="1364" Score="1" Text="Sorry, I may not have been clear. I **do not** think that it would be best to make *output* a synonym for *interpretation*. I understand that to be whuber's position as well. I'm in favor of straight deletion if that doesn't harm the questions (as I suspect). It's only the blacklisting that makes me nervous." CreationDate="2012-08-23T16:39:39.230" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3276" PostId="1364" Score="1" Text="@gung: Ah, I misread your comment. In some questions, the OP appears to be asking how to create output, in which case the programming language tag would suffice. In other questions, the OP appears to be asking how to interpret the output of a program, in which case &quot;interpretation&quot; may be a better tag. In either case, &quot;output&quot; is not appropriate and blacklisting it might encourage more proper tagging." CreationDate="2012-08-23T16:56:27.063" UserId="2981" />
  <row Id="3672" PostId="1364" Score="0" Text="There's only 8 questions in the category. There have been no reasons given for keeping it, and there are no downvotes on this suggestion, and it's been 3 months. What's the threshold for making a decision like this?" CreationDate="2012-11-23T07:48:53.167" UserId="9007" />
  <row Id="3676" PostId="1364" Score="0" Text="@naught Thank you for the reminder." CreationDate="2012-11-23T15:12:04.770" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3277" PostId="1365" Score="11" Text="The issues are very well put in this question. Because the same discussion is occurring on another site and I don't want to repeat myself--I would post essentially the same answers here as there--I would like to refer interested readers to http://meta.gis.stackexchange.com/questions/859/." CreationDate="2012-08-24T16:46:41.953" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3278" PostId="1365" Score="3" Text="Hi Katey - since receiving your email I've looked over this list and what strikes me is that many (maybe half?) of these questions are rather off topic for the statistics stackexchange. I see several that are essentially computing related (which we try to migrate). In any case, I'm not quite sure where this list comes from (high views maybe?) but to figure out why certain good questions/answers don't have higher vote counts, we need some examples that are &quot;objectively good&quot; that still have low vote counts, which will require the opinion of multiple objective statistician(s)." CreationDate="2012-08-24T17:11:56.910" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="3280" PostId="1365" Score="6" Text="We certainly need to find ways to encourage a little higher-volume (principled) voting. I find two things a bit surprising: (a) the large proportion of total reputation conferred by a very small number of voters and (b) the proportion of (otherwise) high-activity and high-reputation participants who vote comparatively very rarely." CreationDate="2012-08-24T17:51:50.497" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3281" PostId="1365" Score="3" Text="I have high rep and I do a lot of voting.  But my questions seem to often get very little attention even when the OP gives my answer a check.  On occasion I get checks and thank yous but zero votes. While there is too little upvoting, I think sometimes the downvoting is overdone." CreationDate="2012-08-24T18:30:14.363" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3282" PostId="1365" Score="7" Text="Votes are not the best gauge of &quot;attention,&quot; @Michael. A better indicator is to note the number of thread views when you post an answer and then see how many more views have occurred later. This presumes that everyone looking at a thread will have seen your answers, of course, but it's a not unreasonable assumption and the best we can do. By this measure I believe your answers have probably received more total attention than those of anyone else on this site. Downvoting is rare overall (less than 0.5% of all votes): the site analytics provide no support for the claim it is &quot;overdone.&quot;" CreationDate="2012-08-24T19:37:45.843" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3283" PostId="1365" Score="5" Text="Although I am enjoined from releasing detailed analytics data, I am pleased to be able to report a visible changepoint in the slope of the daily voting time series: an annualized increase of 20% from the site's inception changed in January (when it was averaging about 130 votes daily) and has averaged an annualized 100+% since then, reaching 220 votes/day recently. Thank you to all of you who are making that extra effort!" CreationDate="2012-08-24T19:53:46.443" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3284" PostId="1365" Score="1" Text="@whuber: How does that compare to the growth in number of posts (questions and answers) per day? And, growth in number of users over, say, 200 in reputation (to get over a modest threshold of site participation)?" CreationDate="2012-08-24T20:13:32.337" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3287" PostId="1365" Score="0" Text="@whuber I think it is a matter of opinion whether or not downvoting is overdone.  It is not the statistics on how often it is done that matters to me, but rather the reasons for doing it.  One thing I have notied recently is that i am starting to get votes here and there on old questions.  I guess that may mean that some people are starting to look at the old questions in more detail." CreationDate="2012-08-24T20:29:55.030" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3288" PostId="1365" Score="5" Text="@cardinal: *New* user growth is relatively steady, roughly doubling annually. (I can't filter by user reputation.) One might *imagine* a changepoint in total Q&amp;A in January '12, but it's not strong.  (There's a lot of noise even in the 28-day moving averages I'm inspecting.) So the voting increase persists after controlling for these other factors." CreationDate="2012-08-24T20:49:39.317" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3289" PostId="1365" Score="5" Text="@Michael (1) I won't argue about the meanings or interpretations of vague characterizations like &quot;overdone&quot;; I'm just trying to share the facts with you. (2) It is true that old questions continue to deliver votes for a long time, but the halflife is pretty short." CreationDate="2012-08-24T20:51:39.313" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3285" PostId="1367" Score="0" Text="My comment about &quot;some moderators feel&quot; had to do with emphasis on closing out questions. I recognize that StackExchange has directives but that doen't mean that they are not subject to interpretation. Somehow I feel that your last paragraph was directed at me. I tend to answer a lot of questions but only on subjects I think I have good knowledge. I try to give nice clean answers. I think most of my answers are high to very high quality with respect to content. Style and form is another issue. As I learn I improve the style of my answers." CreationDate="2012-08-24T20:16:42.633" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3286" PostId="1367" Score="0" Text="But I don't think it is fair to portray some of my answers that are not in the best format as poor answers. Also I don't like the fact that you say and others may agree, that you encourage downvoting answers that are not neatly presented.  I think that is wrong.  Maybe I don't completely understand the purpose of this site yet but my impression is that we serve a costumer who is the OP and the OP should take priority over other considerations. I can now appreciate why you want to keep the site neat looking and have existing solutions easy to access. I go along with most of what you say." CreationDate="2012-08-24T20:24:39.627" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3290" PostId="1367" Score="3" Text="@Michael As I tried to make explicit in the opening statement (which I admit stands a long distance from the closing paragraph :-), my answer is directed at our &quot;newer users.&quot; It's not a personal response: those have no place here on meta and they come via other channels, as you know. It's up to you, and everyone else who may be reading this answer, to decide to what extent it might apply in any situation." CreationDate="2012-08-24T20:55:39.557" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3291" PostId="1367" Score="8" Text="Seconding this well-thought reply, I think formatting and post quality--which often come together--play a particular role on this site, @Michael, and not only because of the [broken windows rule](http://bit.ly/OfrqgM) (shamelessly copied from [one of mbq's responses](http://bit.ly/PhtrX6)). The OP is surely your main interlocutor in the first instance, but thousands of users and visitors may read your reply soon or later: unlike listserv and the like, we have facilities for editing/updating our posts, that's what makes SE sites so great, among other things." CreationDate="2012-08-24T21:13:52.363" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="3292" PostId="1367" Score="2" Text="@whuber I am a relatively new user.  But I do think I have learned a lot about the site and have earned some respect.  I am learning a lot from you and chl and mbq and others and do take your comments seriously. I will continue to work to improve my answers for everyone's benefit." CreationDate="2012-08-24T22:01:17.673" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3293" PostId="1367" Score="8" Text="@Michael, this is a good question (and good answer, whuber) and I'm glad to hear your last comment. I want to add one remark regarding your comment: **&quot;my impression is that we serve a costumer who is the OP and the OP should take priority...&quot;** I think this may be the source of some past misunderstandings. I don't think the purpose of this site is to serve the OP and that should not take priority over other considerations (mods please correct me if I'm wrong). The purpose is to provide a repository of great questions with great answers that readers, including the OP, will find useful." CreationDate="2012-08-24T22:28:09.537" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="3294" PostId="1367" Score="2" Text="@Macro I know the site's goal is to produce a great repository but the process is questions and answers and as part of the process we are providing a service to the OP and I think most will agree  that doing that well is important.  We may not all agree that it is paramount." CreationDate="2012-08-24T23:13:48.350" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3302" PostId="1367" Score="3" Text="One thing to explore here is how exactly a question must match a previous question for it to merit being closed. &#xA;&#xA;I, for one, think that context is often critical in giving good answers (and all too often missing from questions) and this context can make answers different, even if questions are quite similar.&#xA;&#xA;I'd like there to be more emphasis on *good* questions; I wrote a post about [how to ask a statistics question](http://www.statisticalanalysisconsulting.com/how-to-ask-a-statistics-question/) that covers some of it." CreationDate="2012-08-26T22:12:42.963" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="3303" PostId="1367" Score="2" Text="Those are good points, @Peter. Typically we consider different-looking questions to be duplicates when the same answer will serve for both (which means the questions ask the same thing but perhaps with different terminology, or--quite often--they are asking trivial variations of the same homework problem), but similar-looking questions are *not* duplicates when they need different answers." CreationDate="2012-08-26T22:16:46.923" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3304" PostId="1367" Score="2" Text="Also, one problem with &quot;think before you post&quot; is that many of the questions are from newbies, both to statistics and to the site; many have no reputation or very little. &#xA;&#xA;Certainly *some* of us both ask and answer. In fact, I think most of the highest-reputation people have done both. But the majority of questions is from new people.&#xA;&#xA;Yet another issue is how the site gets cross-indexed and so on. This is hard in any field; it may be esp. hard in statistics, where different nomenclature is often used for the same thing." CreationDate="2012-08-26T22:27:04.037" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="3305" PostId="1367" Score="1" Text="@Peter Are you suggesting newbies can't (or shouldn't) think? :-) The cross-indexing indeed is challenging: one hope is that community involvement in tagging questions and maintaining tag synonyms will provide a powerful mechanism to associate similar questions with each other." CreationDate="2012-08-26T22:37:04.427" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3306" PostId="1367" Score="3" Text=":-).  Newbies can think, but they may not know about searching. Often they just don't know how to search well. Most of my clients are highly intelligent people who don't like statistics." CreationDate="2012-08-26T22:39:55.827" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="3307" PostId="1368" Score="1" Text="Well, I've never seen a CV answer come up on 1st page of a Google search for a statistical term. So, if that's the goal, something's not working." CreationDate="2012-08-27T18:42:10.783" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="3308" PostId="1368" Score="2" Text="@PeterFlom, try searching on [partial eta squared](https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&amp;biw=1280&amp;bih=841&amp;noj=1&amp;q=partial+eta+squared&amp;oq=partial+eta&amp;gs_l=serp.3.0.0l10.2811190.2814063.0.2816013.11.8.0.3.3.0.75.404.8.8.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.kD_xUxI64c0). But yes, this will happen infrequently, &amp; topping the Google results shouldn't be our main goal." CreationDate="2012-08-27T19:52:24.873" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3324" PostId="1368" Score="4" Text="@Peter, I did see the CV answers on the first page of the Google search. It actually happens at least a quarter of the time for me, especially on some tricky R implementation questions. (Google is not that smart though. There are some rather disappointing examples of when the Google search throws me off to my own web page -- dear Google, I want to find something new, not something I had already known three or five years ago!)" CreationDate="2012-08-31T16:07:26.623" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="13570" PostId="1368" Score="1" Text="Nowadays it happens quite often ..." CreationDate="2017-05-17T15:58:43.037" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="3310" PostId="1369" Score="1" Text="@Andy, the color scheme of meta hides it a bit (at least to my eyes), but note that smillig does link to your previous thread in this question. It might be worth making a little more prominent. :-)" CreationDate="2012-08-28T14:04:48.680" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3311" PostId="1369" Score="0" Text="yes I see now, thanks @cardinal, I should have read more carefully." CreationDate="2012-08-28T14:07:09.580" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="3312" PostId="1369" Score="0" Text="@Andy, I missed it the first time through, myself. I (+1)'d your comment so the link would be more easily seen." CreationDate="2012-08-28T14:08:14.760" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3313" PostId="1369" Score="2" Text="@cardinal: done! Also, I should point out that the first sentence in Suggestion 3 should be read in a kind of valley girl voice sort of way with rising intonation. It's more of a question than a suggestion...!" CreationDate="2012-08-28T14:22:31.780" UserId="9249" />
  <row Id="3314" PostId="1369" Score="1" Text="smillig, I will do my best to read it this way, though I am probably not very competent at achieving a faithful reproduction. (+1)." CreationDate="2012-08-28T14:37:52.067" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3315" PostId="1369" Score="0" Text="We may want to throw [tag:fixed-effects-model] into the mix for consideration as well." CreationDate="2012-08-28T20:11:50.073" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3328" PostId="1369" Score="1" Text="Here's an incorrectly placed `multilevel-analysis` tag: http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/22234/how-do-i-specify-priors-for-angle-parameters-in-bugs-jags. There should be `hierarchical-Bayesian` for questions like this, instead." CreationDate="2012-09-02T18:13:13.540" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="3362" PostId="1369" Score="1" Text="So do we have a closure on this? Otherwise, I will just go pruning and vandalizing some tags, if I understood whuber's proposition correclty :)" CreationDate="2012-09-19T04:13:00.587" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="3316" PostId="1370" Score="0" Text="+1 Thanks for your answer which is as detailed as always. I may be wrong about this, but I *think* that &quot;multilevel&quot; often implies hierarchical nesting while &quot;mixed&quot; can mean crossed or non-nested random effects which is why my suggestion was to maintain the distinction. But it's a slippery slope!" CreationDate="2012-08-28T21:32:05.537" UserId="9249" />
  <row Id="3317" PostId="1370" Score="2" Text="I like your comment &quot;I think that excerpts would best include ... a little guidance on the appropriate usage of the tag&quot;- I've never thought about this when editing but it would be good to mention, if needed, what distinguishes this from near-duplicate tags (e.g. `random-effect` vs. `random-effects-model`). Overall, I think there are _way_ too many near-duplicate tags. For example, I'm having trouble seeing what would be lost if the many tags mentioned in your 2nd paragraph were merged (with synonyms). If anything, this could help novices understand the _many_ ways of referring to such models." CreationDate="2012-08-28T22:11:26.027" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="3318" PostId="1370" Score="0" Text="@smillig, I'm certainly open to the possibility that I'm insufficiently nuanced here, &amp; willing to go along w/ what the larger community thinks best, of course. Using your definitions (which I think are reasonable), `multilevel` is a special case of `mixed` where there are no crossed effects, eg. An analogy could be to ANOVA vs. regression, a case where I definitely think the 2 tags should be preserved. The question is whether ML &amp; ME deserve the same deference as those." CreationDate="2012-08-28T22:18:13.773" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3319" PostId="1370" Score="0" Text="@Macro, here's another way of thinking about my point (I may even include this in my answer). Imagine we edited the tag wiki excerpts to have some basic info, &amp; then (eg) &quot;use this tag *but not `mixed-models`* when your Q centers on something specific to GLiMMs that is distinct from mixed modeling more generally, otherwise only use `MM`&quot; (or some such). Then, eg, a Q like: &quot;how are parameters estimated differently in GLiMM from GEE?&quot;, would fall under the `GLMM` tag, but not the `mixed-models` tag. OTOH, I can't think of an analogous condition / question that differentiates `ML` from `ME`." CreationDate="2012-08-28T22:29:08.887" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3320" PostId="1371" Score="0" Text="+1 Thank you for showing us how to navigate the terminology. Re the last paragraph: Are you volunteering? :-)" CreationDate="2012-08-30T17:34:23.867" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3321" PostId="1371" Score="0" Text="@whuber, I am not sure I have enough rep within these tags to do much: I tried editing something, but was not allowed to. (I did not know there were tag-specific reps, at all!)" CreationDate="2012-08-30T20:00:09.583" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="3322" PostId="1371" Score="0" Text="I believe you can propose edits (to the wikis) and synonyms, which could then be approved by people with such privileges.  Or just provide a few more great answers and bring your rep up to 10K and help us out :-)." CreationDate="2012-08-30T20:32:51.070" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3323" PostId="1371" Score="0" Text="At the current rate, it will probably take me 6-7 months to get that extra 3300 ;)." CreationDate="2012-08-30T23:27:58.393" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="11080" PostId="1371" Score="0" Text="A partial follow-up 4 years later: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/4391/. I think your input would be very important there." CreationDate="2016-10-11T13:30:19.560" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13612" PostId="1371" Score="0" Text="I posted an answer in my follow-up question with very specific suggestion: https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/4833. Let me know if you have thoughts. Thanks!" CreationDate="2017-05-24T13:45:15.143" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="3325" PostId="1372" Score="16" Text="+1. In the same vein, as a general rule, if I answer a question, then by that token it must have been an understandable and worthy question, so, almost without exception, I will automatically vote that question up. I'm surprised at the number of questions that get more answers than votes..." CreationDate="2012-09-01T22:12:44.160" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3327" PostId="1373" Score="2" Text="When you make synonyms, if you search for one tag the other &quot;main&quot; tag pops up in its place. Gung makes the point that the wiki excerpt, which comes up when you first put tags into the question, is an immediate guide about how to utilize the tags. We should encourage fidelity with how tags are assigned, as they are the predominate mechanism to find similar questions on the site. It does no one any good to have a bunch of redundant but disconnected tags." CreationDate="2012-09-02T12:26:22.373" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="3343" PostId="1375" Score="0" Text="I will follow the link to your question and cast my first vote to reopen. +1 Well done gung." CreationDate="2012-09-14T00:45:36.850" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3344" PostId="1375" Score="0" Text="It looks like the linked question is not closed.  If it was at CV it has been migrated to Mathematics is open there and is getting answers and comments." CreationDate="2012-09-14T00:48:20.903" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3347" PostId="1375" Score="0" Text="@MichaelChernick, it was closed. It was reopened / migrated to math shortly after my reopen vote (like 15 minutes later)." CreationDate="2012-09-14T03:59:32.703" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3678" PostId="1377" Score="0" Text="Andy, did you ever create the tag? There's another question now where it could be used: [pre-post-test-with-control-group](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/44480/)." CreationDate="2012-11-27T04:03:47.733" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3679" PostId="1377" Score="0" Text="@gung I did not (I'm pretty sure I've seen other questions since then as well that would qualify). When I get a chance I will work on a tag wiki for this and re-tag a few questions at a time on the site (since there doesn't seem to be any opposition)." CreationDate="2012-11-27T11:43:28.773" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="3331" PostId="1379" Score="2" Text="Your questions look good to me but it appears that one has to read those papers in order to provide a decent answer. This may limit the interest on the question. Maybe a more specific question would be more successful." CreationDate="2012-09-13T21:15:13.087" UserDisplayName="user10525" />
  <row Id="3332" PostId="1379" Score="1" Text="No answers doesn't always mean a bad question. Looking at your questions I wouldn't say there is anything you are doing wrong as such. They are high level questions that require a lengthy and considered response to adequately address and no one yet has been prepared to put in the time to formulate such a response. I'd echo Procrastinator in suggestion that tightly focused questions are more likely to be answered." CreationDate="2012-09-13T21:29:09.370" UserId="10354" />
  <row Id="3333" PostId="1379" Score="1" Text="I am familiar with propensity score matching in case control observational studies and have some experience with it but not when multiple imputation for missing data is involved.  I agree with Procrastinator.  Even though I would love to help you i am not familiar with those papers and without the proper background I cannot provide a good answer. It is perhaps an investment of too much time to read the papers and study your problem to answer your question. Perhaps it would help to know how the imputation was done and what covariates need to be balanced for proper analysis." CreationDate="2012-09-13T21:31:26.610" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3334" PostId="1379" Score="0" Text="To do multiple imputation on missing variables require knowledge of the conditional distribution for the missing covariate given the other covariate values.  It would seem that the matching in the propensity scoring could involve taking advantage of this knowledge of correlations between covariates to match as well as impute.  But that is just off the top of my head guessing." CreationDate="2012-09-13T21:35:16.670" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3335" PostId="1379" Score="0" Text="@MichaelChernick thank you kindly. I think I understand your point about the conditional distributions, but my impression is that, while it is important for the specification of the imputation model and the propensity score calculations, it is not related to the question of whether (after calculating propensity scores on all the imputed datasets) do you average them, or sample from them, before going on to use them ? I hope I am explaining myself - I am not familiar with some of the terminology." CreationDate="2012-09-13T21:45:11.813" UserId="11405" />
  <row Id="3338" PostId="1379" Score="3" Text="Dear Joe, I think you are asking *fantastic*, interesting, challenging questions. I think the lack of answers and comments is a reflection of the challenging nature of them and not a reflection of lack of interest. (Do notice that each of your questions gets well above the median vote count.) Personally, I wish I had more time to think about them and dig into them more. Please keep asking them! :-)" CreationDate="2012-09-13T23:20:45.640" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3340" PostId="1379" Score="0" Text="@cardinal thank you for your friendly comment, though as a beginner in statistics it surprises me that you and others think my question is challenging ! While it is frustrating that I sometimes don't get answers, on the other hand, writing it does make me think about the question more, so that's good :-) You mentioned the median vote count ? Where can I see that ?" CreationDate="2012-09-13T23:29:39.670" UserId="11405" />
  <row Id="3346" PostId="1379" Score="2" Text="Joe: http://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/75712/distribution-of-question-votes.  The median is 2." CreationDate="2012-09-14T01:45:19.243" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3348" PostId="1379" Score="0" Text="I don't understand what is hapenning. Yesterday there was an answer here from @MichaelChernick that had been migrated from CV, and now it is nowhere to be found, except for a &quot;migrated from stats.stackexchange.com 8 hours ago&quot; but nothing following..." CreationDate="2012-09-14T06:30:13.823" UserId="11405" />
  <row Id="3349" PostId="1379" Score="1" Text="That answer was not appropriate here, Joe: it addressed the question you reference, not the question here. Questions *about* the site are &quot;meta-questions&quot; and are posed and discussed here on our &quot;meta&quot; site. Questions about statistics and data analysis are posed and discussed on the main site. We don't mix them up. Also, @Michael had complained that he couldn't get any reputation points for his answer here on meta. I therefore deleted his answer and invited him to copy it into your thread on the main site. (Nobody has the power unilaterally to migrate answers from one thread to another.)" CreationDate="2012-09-14T16:09:42.593" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3350" PostId="1381" Score="3" Text="Of note, @JeromyAnglim also posted some recommendations: [How to Ask Me a Statistics Question](http://bit.ly/V596YP)." CreationDate="2012-09-17T19:54:15.367" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="3351" PostId="1381" Score="0" Text="I didn't know about that one. It looks good (no surprise there). Thanks, @chl." CreationDate="2012-09-17T19:59:23.710" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3357" PostId="1381" Score="0" Text="Re the preliminary question: Moderators can edit the FAQ *up to,* but not beyond, the first expandable header (&quot;What kind of questions should I not ask here?&quot;). From that point on it's boilerplate supplied by SE systemwide." CreationDate="2012-09-18T19:45:15.147" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3359" PostId="1381" Score="0" Text="@whuber, that makes it sound like we're pretty limited here. We could petition the SE team, or add a short note about answering questions (say, a couple of sentences), but that's it." CreationDate="2012-09-18T20:22:04.353" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3360" PostId="1381" Score="1" Text="Take a look at http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7656/how-do-i-write-a-good-answer-to-a-question.  We could link to this from the FAQ if it would help." CreationDate="2012-09-18T20:24:21.587" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3361" PostId="1381" Score="0" Text="@whuber, if that's the best we can do, I would be in favor of a couple of sentences of intro &amp; then linking to that post. There is good info there, especially in the first 2 answers, but it's more focused towards good SO answers than good CV answers, &amp; there's potentially good info that isn't there. It wouldn't be my ideal solution. Another possibility, is we could ask another meta-CV question to have our own discussion about good answers here, &amp; link to that." CreationDate="2012-09-19T02:13:54.187" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3371" PostId="1381" Score="0" Text="That's a great idea, gung.  Are you volunteering? :-)." CreationDate="2012-09-19T13:51:41.770" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3673" PostId="1381" Score="0" Text="See also http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1479 - Actually about how to *ask* questions, but still FAQ material, although it may be a little narrow in it's current form." CreationDate="2012-11-23T07:50:57.130" UserId="9007" />
  <row Id="4517" PostId="1381" Score="1" Text="@gung, now that we have the [help center](http://stats.stackexchange.com/help) which addresses your question, maybe it would be a good idea to you answer your own thread linking to the help center. Moreover, this thread can remain for further recommendations about answering (maybe, in the feature it might be tag as &quot;faq&quot;). Just an idea to keep advancing with this thread." CreationDate="2013-09-02T15:39:51.560" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="21903" PostId="1381" Score="1" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica Peter Flom's website has been retired, so the link to &quot;How to ask a statistics question&quot; doesn't work anymore, but an archive is available here: https://web.archive.org/web/20160407121308/http://www.statisticalanalysisconsulting.com/how-to-ask-a-statistics-question/comment-page-1/ (I couldn't suggest it as an edit, this is why I just leave a comment here)." CreationDate="2023-03-04T09:28:18.573" UserId="164936" />
  <row Id="3356" PostId="1382" Score="3" Text="Related: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/703 and http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1206" CreationDate="2012-09-18T19:43:50.080" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3358" PostId="1382" Score="0" Text="@whuber Thanks for the links." CreationDate="2012-09-18T20:09:21.777" UserId="12318" />
  <row Id="3354" PostId="1383" Score="3" Text="+1, it is a good model for answers to try to follow as well. Be concise up front but elaborate as needed afterwords." CreationDate="2012-09-18T12:58:32.060" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="3355" PostId="1383" Score="2" Text="In the American newspaper business, the first scheme is called the [inverted pyramid](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid)." CreationDate="2012-09-18T13:09:25.737" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3364" PostId="1385" Score="2" Text="I was afraid of that solution... :-(" CreationDate="2012-09-19T13:01:25.003" UserId="10849" />
  <row Id="3363" PostId="1386" Score="2" Text="For those who don't like the question and downvoted it maybe instead of remaining silent you can comment or explain what you don't like about the question or possibly give a reason why the rule should not be changed." CreationDate="2012-09-19T12:48:01.493" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3365" PostId="1386" Score="7" Text="This has been extensively discussed in meta stackoverflow: [&quot;Don't throw away all votes when a user is deleted&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/125740/186612), [&quot;What does “user was removed” mean and why did my reputation change because of it?&quot;](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/126470/186612). I think that little can be done from Cross Validatedmeta." CreationDate="2012-09-19T13:12:34.987" UserDisplayName="user10525" />
  <row Id="3366" PostId="1386" Score="2" Text="The meta system in SE works differently than the main sites. Here, if someone downvotes a question, it means they disagree w/ the suggestion, not that they think it's a bad Q (also no rep is rewarded / subtracted here). FWIW, I agree w/ both you &amp; @Procrastinator: ie, I think this is often a poor approach, but that discussing it here is unlikely to have any effect. You may want to go over to the SO-meta, &amp; provide some answers / comments / votes to the relevant threads; that *may* be more likely to have an effect." CreationDate="2012-09-19T13:36:37.943" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3375" PostId="1386" Score="0" Text="I put this here knowing that removing votes has been discussed before.  in fact i was involved in one of the discussions.  But my point here is that the impact of losing many votes from a long time valued user quitting puts more emphasis on a reason to change." CreationDate="2012-09-19T14:07:42.817" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3413" PostId="1386" Score="0" Text="@Macro Alright!  Macro returns to argue with me one more time even though he said he was taking a hiatus from this and was tired of arguing.  I agree that there is a lot more to this site than reputation.  After a few 1000 points people have earned respect.  At 20,000 I think you have all the full privileges that you are going to get so going higher has no big incentive unless you want the #1 ranking. I agree that teaching, learning and developing colleagial relationship with people all over the WWW is what this is all about.  I have been a member for nearly five months." CreationDate="2012-09-22T17:04:13.587" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3414" PostId="1386" Score="0" Text="It takes a long time to get use to this site and appreciate it.  I am getting there slowly. As to the remark about my lust for rep points, I think Macro feels that I make this a full time job because I have accrued over 16000 rep points and past him to get the #3 rank on the site.  I think I am starting to ask some pretty good questions and my answers are getting more toward the way the moderators like them.  My answers are starting to get more upvotes per question whereas I started out with a low rate.  Yes I do like getting upvotes.  They mean something." CreationDate="2012-09-22T17:16:06.393" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3415" PostId="1386" Score="0" Text="It says people appreciate you and your answers. Also I acknowledge that the community likes well constructed answers and downvotes poorly crafted answers even if the content is good. That is all well and good. This is not a full time job.  If I made it one I might get some satisfaction but I would go broke.  That is true for everyone." CreationDate="2012-09-22T17:23:42.243" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3416" PostId="1386" Score="0" Text="I want to say that I appreciate Macro and his contributions to the site and I would prefer it if he would stay." CreationDate="2012-09-22T17:25:31.043" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3417" PostId="1386" Score="1" Text="The point of this question is to be concerned when a retiring respected member drops out of the site and everyone loses a lot of well-deserved votes.  It is not just about me." CreationDate="2012-09-22T17:29:26.030" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3379" PostId="1389" Score="0" Text="Thanks @whuber for that information about this particular user. For this case I think the loss of votes is clearly justifiable,  But in the hypothetical scenario that a highly regarded community member decides to quit the site would all his votes be taken away?" CreationDate="2012-09-19T15:14:41.743" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3382" PostId="1389" Score="2" Text="Yes, you're correct about that hypothetical, Michael. And I totally agree with your concern: when a reputable user voluntarily terminates their account, there should be no effect on their votes or other people's reputations. But because these issues are thoroughly discussed on SO Meta--the links are in comments to your question--and your case is already made strongly there, I didn't even attempt to address them here." CreationDate="2012-09-19T17:36:15.773" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3409" PostId="1389" Score="0" Text="thanks. I was waiting to see what other answers would come across before I checked yours. But it seems others are not showing interest in answering or commenting. So I give you the check mark and am satisfied that the issue has been vented. Others are still welcome to comment or answer. Why do you thinnk that if the case has been made so convincingly the rule isn't changed?  Is it an issue of inconvenience programmatically as I think was discussed previously?" CreationDate="2012-09-20T20:57:02.390" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3378" PostId="1390" Score="0" Text="Note that some suggestions regarding possible answers can be found from links posted at my previous Q." CreationDate="2012-09-19T14:09:45.843" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3384" PostId="1390" Score="4" Text="Very nicely done (both the Q and the A).  As you proposed, I have linked to this thread from our [FAQ](http://stats.stackexchange.com/faq)." CreationDate="2012-09-19T17:55:31.430" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3756" PostId="1390" Score="1" Text="A parallel thread on [**asking** good questions](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1479/how-to-ask-a-good-question-on-crossvalidated) is a worthy complement to this one." CreationDate="2013-01-10T19:39:40.043" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3902" PostId="1390" Score="0" Text="A whole list of threads on meta-SO can be found [here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7931/faq-for-stack-exchange-sites) that may be relevant for readers." CreationDate="2013-02-19T13:43:54.427" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3380" PostId="1391" Score="1" Text="+1 @gung  Very nicely put.  I think we should vote you in as our next moderator when the opportunity comes up." CreationDate="2012-09-19T15:20:28.527" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3381" PostId="1391" Score="7" Text="Thanks, @MichaelChernick, but I'm very happy with our current moderators, and have little interest in becoming one. Actually, I have recently taken a new position and, unfortunately, have less time to dedicate to CV." CreationDate="2012-09-19T15:24:00.407" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3383" PostId="1391" Score="1" Text="Although I have proffered an answer to my own question, others should feel free to provide their own answers. Alternatively, if anyone disagrees w/ something here, or thinks something needs to be added, they should feel free to comment &amp; I can make the changes, or even edit this to make the changes themselves. The point here is to get something that reflects the community's consensus regarding good answers, so it shouldn't simply reflect my opinions." CreationDate="2012-09-19T17:47:21.590" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3548" PostId="1391" Score="2" Text="I especially like that 2nd bullet under &quot;answer the original poster's question&quot;." CreationDate="2012-10-09T00:30:13.207" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="3549" PostId="1391" Score="2" Text="One addition: In some cases, there may be no answer that is within the grasp of the person asking the question. If someone who is having trouble understanding what a t=test is asks a question that demands a multi-level model, what is the best thing to do?" CreationDate="2012-10-09T00:32:39.803" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="3551" PostId="1391" Score="2" Text="That's a good question, @PeterFlom. I don't necessarily have a good answer, but I wonder if you want to ask it as a new meta Q, it might make for some interesting &amp; lively conversation." CreationDate="2012-10-09T01:16:50.390" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3822" PostId="1391" Score="0" Text="&quot;Be sure your answer is edited thoroughly,&quot; ... except of course, if you [edit to improve it enough times](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/47997/unknown-p-value-calculation/47998#47998) it becomes community wiki." CreationDate="2013-01-29T03:20:29.520" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="15232" PostId="1391" Score="0" Text="@gung: seeing your diamond-studded name underneath [your comment on 2012-09-19](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1390/how-should-questions-be-answered-on-cross-validated#comment3381_1391) amuses me. &quot;The best-laid plans of mice and statisticians.&quot;" CreationDate="2018-02-05T21:52:12.197" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="3486" PostId="1392" Score="0" Text="See my response, too. There clearly must be an optimal length, but that optimal length may depend on other factors. &#xA;&#xA;Here's an example of a very short question I once saw on SAS-L:&#xA;&#xA;&quot;I have some data. Can I do a t-test?&quot;&#xA;&#xA;(Short, but hard to give non-flippant answers)" CreationDate="2012-09-29T20:02:31.460" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="3492" PostId="1392" Score="0" Text="I would just answer &quot;Yes&quot;. Stupid question =&gt; stupid answer. Actually, a shorter answer is &quot;No&quot;, it is one letter shorter." CreationDate="2012-09-30T03:09:22.213" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="3502" PostId="1392" Score="0" Text="Nice joke, but the math is flawed.  Your argument would apply to, say, the function $\exp(x)(1+\sin(x)^2)$ but this has no global maximum." CreationDate="2012-09-30T21:36:59.423" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3391" PostId="1393" Score="4" Text="Well, I admit I am trying to guess identity of cardinal from his answers, and I would not like to know the answer because of some policy. That would spoil the fun :) Yes userxxx names are a bit annoying, but the purpose of this site is to make internet a better place. So good questions and answers are much more important than people who give them." CreationDate="2012-09-20T13:59:31.173" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="3392" PostId="1393" Score="2" Text="If the pattern continues, then you will need to change the title of the question to something like &quot;Who is cardinal?&quot;" CreationDate="2012-09-20T14:51:04.543" UserDisplayName="user10525" />
  <row Id="3393" PostId="1393" Score="5" Text="Oh dear. I fear the answer to that question is *exceedingly* boring and, apparently, very likely to be highly disappointing. (I take the apparent interest as one of the more flattering compliments I have, or could have, received; though, it is rather bemusing, to be honest.)" CreationDate="2012-09-20T14:57:21.977" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3399" PostId="1393" Score="4" Text="@Macro (+1) Good one. Welcome back!, someone is going to be happy to see you did not *officially quit*." CreationDate="2012-09-20T16:08:26.410" UserDisplayName="user10525" />
  <row Id="3404" PostId="1393" Score="4" Text="I'm sorry my anonymous user name has caused you frustration, @StasK! If you're dying to match a face with an ID, the picture in my profile is a picture of me. With regard to this site, I don't long for any kind of personal recognition, so I don't have any compelling reason to use my real name. Those who know me will most likely recognize me from my alias (Macro is essentially my all-purpose internet name) and, similar to cardinal's remarks, those who don't know me will not find my real name particularly interesting :-)" CreationDate="2012-09-20T17:00:42.830" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="3405" PostId="1393" Score="1" Text="btw, @Procrastinator, you're one to chime in here about using an alias! Unless, of course, you're Bill Procrastinator of the Ann Arbor Procrastinators ;-) **[reposted these because apparently I don't know how to spell alias!!]**" CreationDate="2012-09-20T17:01:04.547" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="3422" PostId="1393" Score="1" Text="Thanks for everybody who responded. It looks like I put more weight on this than the rest of the community does, but the reasons I put more weight are being shared by other people. I don't think I will accept any of the answers though, as I really wanted to hear the different opinions, and that's exactly what the community delivered." CreationDate="2012-09-24T00:59:35.510" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="3509" PostId="1393" Score="6" Text="A pseudonym such as Procrastinator or cardinal is not a real name but it has a soul, whereas userxxx has no soul. As long as we're not overrun by zombies it doesn't bother me." CreationDate="2012-10-02T18:34:18.837" UserId="8402" />
  <row Id="3510" PostId="1393" Score="0" Text="That's exactly what I meant. I guess I will start replying to them, &quot;Dear Zombie687132, ...&quot;" CreationDate="2012-10-02T21:22:05.110" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="11709" PostId="1393" Score="0" Text="This is a fun question and I am sure it is partly tongue in cheek but I like knowing something about the colleagues I am talking with.  I thought my opinion might have changed since I gave the answer here  over four years ago but as I read it I find that my opinion has not changed much.  i really prefer it when members can be more open and tell about their accomplishments and experiences." CreationDate="2017-01-02T01:21:29.470" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3390" PostId="1394" Score="0" Text="(+1) [Another slightly related comic](http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1467)." CreationDate="2012-09-20T13:43:26.853" UserDisplayName="user10525" />
  <row Id="3394" PostId="1394" Score="2" Text="@Procrastinator awww come on. Trying to be professional in real life is enough ;)" CreationDate="2012-09-20T15:52:01.853" UserId="264" />
  <row Id="3401" PostId="1394" Score="6" Text="+1 because I too **never** recognize any of the user##### people, even if I'm spoken to them several times before. This can be a little annoying but I've also found that the user##### people usually aren't particularly active participants anyhow, so this isn't really a huge issue." CreationDate="2012-09-20T16:20:23.270" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="3395" PostId="1396" Score="3" Text="(+1) `doesn't it imply that the user is either lazy or is paranoid about revealing his identity` $+$ `perhaps the people who reveal their identity are show-offs` $=$ &quot;wrong if you do it, wrong if you don't&quot;" CreationDate="2012-09-20T16:02:16.970" UserDisplayName="user10525" />
  <row Id="3406" PostId="1396" Score="0" Text="@Procrastinator I didn't say it was wrong - in fact I said &quot;_nothing wrong with that of course_&quot;. If I had a PhD and/or years of experience I would definitely want to show it off :)" CreationDate="2012-09-20T17:27:34.357" UserId="11405" />
  <row Id="3407" PostId="1396" Score="7" Text="Dear Joe, I have absolutely no doubt that if you continue on the path you appear to be on and have any desire at all to obtain a PhD, then you will obtain one. I also suspect that you will then later find it is rather more comfortable and fun to not worry oneself with &quot;showing it off&quot;. :-)" CreationDate="2012-09-20T17:41:12.950" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3408" PostId="1396" Score="1" Text="@cardinal my dad has a PhD, my eldest brother has a DPhil (even better according to him, so that gives you an idea of _his_ showy-offy-ness). My elder brother is in his last year of undegrad and hopes to start one next year, funding permitting, and my younger brother is 6 and doing complex number arithmetic !!! So I'll probably end up doing one....." CreationDate="2012-09-20T17:57:17.720" UserId="11405" />
  <row Id="3411" PostId="1396" Score="1" Text="@Joe, thanks for chiming in. If you look at my profile and the ratio of the # of questions I asked / # of questions I answered, you will have little doubts whether I am a show-off or not :)" CreationDate="2012-09-21T03:50:41.283" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="3418" PostId="1398" Score="4" Text="You can use the data explorer to get a somewhat delayed progress report: http://data.stackexchange.com/stats/queries?q=badge (Disclaimer: I haven't tried any of these.) For the editor badges, just go to users and click on the editors tab and sort as desired to find yourself, I guess." CreationDate="2012-09-23T15:32:09.807" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3419" PostId="1398" Score="0" Text="Thanks, I'll do that" CreationDate="2012-09-23T19:13:18.473" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="3420" PostId="1398" Score="3" Text="There are several questions along this line in the SE meta, [here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/search?q=see+progress+towards+badges) is a list of returns from such a search, which one is appropriate will depend on what exactly you want to know." CreationDate="2012-09-23T20:54:59.153" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3421" PostId="1398" Score="0" Text="Thanks @gung.  Very useful threads there." CreationDate="2012-09-23T20:57:51.567" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="3425" PostId="1399" Score="0" Text="I think that some questions that are multiple choice can be easily handled without violating policy, but I had a particularly hard time with this one and am really asking about this one and questions similar to it." CreationDate="2012-09-25T12:38:55.763" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3429" PostId="1399" Score="3" Text="(+1) Three related threads: [What to do with homework questions posed as non-homework?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/725/10525), [How should we deal with obvious homework questions](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/12/10525), [Should we tag questions that smell like homework?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/1172/10525)." CreationDate="2012-09-25T15:01:48.337" UserDisplayName="user10525" />
  <row Id="3430" PostId="1399" Score="0" Text="While there have been discussions here about answering homework questions and the SE policy, this question is specifically addressing only multiple choice answers where I think the issue of giving a helpful answer could conflict with staying within the borders of the guideline. In the referenced question even Zen's short comment seems to me to be one that violates the guideline." CreationDate="2012-09-25T15:05:47.873" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3444" PostId="1399" Score="1" Text="On the main SO site, the [tag:homework] has now been [officially depreciated](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/147100/150510). Aside, I think this is a good thing." CreationDate="2012-09-26T10:51:31.993" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="3445" PostId="1399" Score="0" Text="@csgillespie It may still be relevant on sites like Cross Validated or math, IMO." CreationDate="2012-09-26T12:39:59.810" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="3447" PostId="1399" Score="0" Text="@chl It may, but why is learning statistics any different from learning Java (say)? Looking at the reasoning on Meta-SO, I tend to agree that Homework questions tend to be poorly written or localised. In that case, they should be closed." CreationDate="2012-09-26T14:30:10.760" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="3449" PostId="1399" Score="1" Text="@cs I agree with you. (In fact, I voted to close the question that inspired this thread.) But to address your (almost rhetorical) question: a huge difference between learning stats and learning Java is that in the latter case, most problems--even those often faced by programmers in the trenches--are well defined and clear. In stats, half the battle lies in recognizing what the problem is and being able to characterize it." CreationDate="2012-09-26T20:47:24.410" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3462" PostId="1399" Score="0" Text="@whuber However, with stats homework the problem is (usually) well characterized." CreationDate="2012-09-27T13:43:52.890" UserId="8" />
  <row Id="3439" PostId="1400" Score="0" Text="I understand your approach to the question and it seems that it would work to give the hint that the answer must be binomial or Poisson without pointing to the Poisson. But at that point I am not sure that he has enough information to figure out Poisson over binomial. I found myself that it is a little difficult to decide which model to apply. Maybe there are rational arguments that can be made for either case. In fact, if you take the parameters n and p and make p decrease as n increases for the binomial such that np stays fixed at a rate lambda the binomial approaches the Poisson." CreationDate="2012-09-25T20:16:56.880" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3440" PostId="1400" Score="0" Text="So maybe an argument could be made that both can approximate the solution. Perhaps it is most helpful in this case to provide all this information and it would not settle the issue of Poisson over binomial.  So this question has added complexity in that although I think Poisson is a better answer and a more appropriate model the binomial cannot be ruled out." CreationDate="2012-09-25T20:21:34.317" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3441" PostId="1400" Score="0" Text="But I do think in general it is harder to give good hints in a multiple choice question without pointing to the correct answer or at least explaining why certain choices can be eliminated. How far is going too far according to the guidelines?" CreationDate="2012-09-25T20:23:37.887" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3446" PostId="1400" Score="2" Text="@Michael Guidelines are simple: don't provide full answer, and try to provide as much useful hints as possible so that it is beneficial for the community in general, and the user, especially. I must admit this is not always an easy task. Comments may also be used to gauge user's level of knowledge. That may help going beyond simple MCQ." CreationDate="2012-09-26T12:45:47.607" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="3470" PostId="1400" Score="0" Text="Agreed @chl. It takes a little more effort but I am learning thatin the grand scheme of things it is best to follow the guidelines." CreationDate="2012-09-27T23:17:43.230" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="3443" PostId="1401" Score="4" Text="Moderators can create a tag synonym and merge `weighted-sampling` with `unequal-probability-sampling` (master tag) so that every new suggested tag will appear as `unequal-probability-sampling`. Is that ok with you? There are several tags about 'sampling' but probably some questions need to be tagged as `unequal-probability-sampling` and we could keep the most generic one (although it is very broad and sometimes misused, IMHO)." CreationDate="2012-09-26T07:39:28.697" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="3448" PostId="1401" Score="0" Text="@chl I like your solution here. :)" CreationDate="2012-09-26T16:09:07.227" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="3450" PostId="1401" Score="0" Text="I guess I just need to boost my own rating and get to the moderator level myself, so that I would not have to bother asking on Meta as to what to do on CV :)" CreationDate="2012-09-26T21:12:16.113" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="3451" PostId="1402" Score="3" Text="I agree w/ @chl here (+1). However, I have a request: if you make this (or any) new tag, please contribute (at least) a tag wiki excerpt to provide a hint re what it is &amp; how it should be used." CreationDate="2012-09-27T00:25:15.790" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16961" PostId="1402" Score="0" Text="What was decided/implemented here? Still looks a mess ..." CreationDate="2018-11-26T22:24:39.160" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="3454" PostId="1403" Score="2" Text="(+1) I think this is partly a reflection of the low-voting activity of the site. In addition, the amount of votes one gets depends on many things: the quality of the answer, how popular the question is, how popular you are, how popular the topic is ..." CreationDate="2012-09-27T10:43:26.900" UserDisplayName="user10525" />
  <row Id="3455" PostId="1403" Score="3" Text="I have noticed that. I wonder are people from academic background less likely to give an upvote than those from an industrial? I would be willing to bwt that is the case!" CreationDate="2012-09-27T11:07:56.160" UserId="11030" />
  <row Id="3457" PostId="1403" Score="10" Text="Actually the voting behaviour is very mysterious. Some people throw upvotes to the right, left and centre (I hit myself with this comment); others are very meticulous, giving upvotes only to very high-quality questions/answers; and some others believe that only Terence Tao could post an answer that deserves their upvote. The idea is trying to come up with good answers and not worring too much about reputation but I admit this is extremely difficult." CreationDate="2012-09-27T12:20:57.193" UserDisplayName="user10525" />
  <row Id="3458" PostId="1403" Score="6" Text="FYI [here is the average](http://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/81058/average-score-for-questions-and-answers?opt.textResults=true) &quot;score&quot; (upvotes - downvotes) for questions and answers on the site (PostTypeID 1 are questions and 2 are answers)." CreationDate="2012-09-27T12:22:16.050" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="3461" PostId="1403" Score="1" Text="Possibly of interest is [this thread](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1365/cross-validated-voting-improvement-and-community-development)." CreationDate="2012-09-27T13:19:51.180" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="3484" PostId="1403" Score="0" Text="Regarding @Procrastinator 's point and this question in general, the guidelines for rating questions up or down are not very specific and leave a good deal to the discretion of the voter." CreationDate="2012-09-29T19:25:10.867" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="3511" PostId="1403" Score="0" Text="I agree that there needs to be clearer guidance about when to give out up votes (I think downvotes are more self explanatory). I certainly don't upvote enough myself." CreationDate="2012-10-02T21:30:17.753" UserId="10354" />
  <row Id="3463" PostId="1404" Score="1" Text="Re: &quot;As their reputation grows bigger, people are more likely to assume this person knows what they are talking about&quot; - are you implying that people give upvotes to those with a high reputation on faith, even if they have no clue whether the answer was a good one? I can see this happening if the answer sounds good (in which case it probably deserves an upvote) but I'd hate to think people take one took at someone's reputation and upvote blindly..." CreationDate="2012-03-21T04:46:41.663" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="3464" PostId="1404" Score="1" Text="Yes, that's what I'm implying.  And, I'm not saying it happens all of the time, but it could happen sometimes.  In fact, I would say that's part of the reason why people try to cheat.&#xA;&#xA;In elections, don't some people vote for the person they think will win?" CreationDate="2012-03-21T05:39:14.647" UserId="6369" />
  <row Id="3465" PostId="1404" Score="2" Text="Of possible interest (as a discussion and for statistical ideas): http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/13858/930. As it stands, I would recommend migrating this question to Meta as it is not obvious to me how statistical analysis might be involved at this point." CreationDate="2012-03-21T07:07:02.050" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="3466" PostId="1404" Score="3" Text="I think there's more of a &quot;waterfall&quot; effect on individual questions than on users. That is, if a question/answer has a lot of votes, then I think it's more likely for someone to blindly upvote (or if a question/answer has a high negative rating, it's more likely to be blindly downvoted). On the user-level I'm not so sure. Sure, it is possible though, I guess, although I don't really understand it." CreationDate="2012-03-21T12:42:53.247" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="3467" PostId="1404" Score="2" Text="@Macro, FWIW, my impression of voting behavior is the opposite. Not that this has any scientific / substantive basis whatsoever, but I suspect there are many cases where someone thinks, 'this is a decent answer, but it has 11 upvotes already; I don't think it's worth 12'. My impression is almost all upvotes come at the beginning, such that the pace of upvotes in (say) the 1st 100 question views is much higher than in the QV's from 101 to 1k." CreationDate="2012-09-27T20:04:25.563" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3468" PostId="1404" Score="2" Text="My heuristic and purely empirical rule-of-thumb is that a very solid answer usually gathers about 3 upvotes per 100 views. My impression is that this ratio is surprisingly robust across the other sites on the network that I frequent." CreationDate="2012-09-27T21:58:14.567" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3471" PostId="1405" Score="2" Text="I see. Thanks for the input. I know at best a tiny bit about these areas (although of course I've spend many petaflops with my own simulation of various statistical estimators). I can see where it is misapplied in survey statistics applications. So probably a disambiguating wiki summary referring to better tags would be the best solution." CreationDate="2012-09-28T14:47:21.960" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="3472" PostId="1405" Score="1" Text="I also am not expert in all of these areas, but I can certainly say, as a matter of general CV philosophy, that I think good tag wiki excerpts are essential. If it turns out to be the case that this is a tag that can be correct in some settings, but may be misapplied in others, getting the tag wiki excerpt right is the ideal solution." CreationDate="2012-09-28T16:22:39.123" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3480" PostId="1405" Score="0" Text="Relying on tag synonyms should help to solve those problems, IMO: `unequal-probability-sampling` will be a master tag, but if people think of 'weighted sampling' they will be suggested to look at this tag first. If the wiki description doesn't fit the bill, they can choose another tag or create a new one if they have enough reputation." CreationDate="2012-09-29T10:32:15.110" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="3481" PostId="1409" Score="2" Text="Regarding your last bolded question, I rather like [this perspective](http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/a/4890/7003), though it was given in a somewhat different context. I agree, though, that a sizeable proportion of the older unanswered questions are unlikely to get good answers, and not because of lack of expertise on the part of site participants." CreationDate="2012-09-29T17:04:41.360" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3482" PostId="1409" Score="2" Text="Good point, @cardinal, I always enjoy your thoughts &amp; I don't follow math.SE. FTR, I don't think we should start closing &quot;*interesting* unanswered questions&quot;." CreationDate="2012-09-29T17:17:05.210" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3483" PostId="1409" Score="2" Text="I am not sure *why* we should (or should not) close old questions more readily than new ones. How could it fill up the close votes queue? And, if it does, couldn't that queue be increased?" CreationDate="2012-09-29T19:23:25.143" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="3485" PostId="1409" Score="1" Text="It wouldn't literally fill up the queue in the sense that the queue would run out of space, but that the queue would go from having a couple of posts for review to many. As to the reason why (potentially) we would close old Q's like those I'm describing, my thinking is that they seem unlikely to go anywhere / garner decent answers &amp; amount to clutter." CreationDate="2012-09-29T19:29:32.357" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3487" PostId="1409" Score="3" Text="OK, but what does clutter do? I guess it might harm the search function, at some point." CreationDate="2012-09-29T20:03:33.923" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="3488" PostId="1409" Score="4" Text="Beyond annoy me?" CreationDate="2012-09-29T20:05:10.833" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6292" PostId="1409" Score="2" Text="@gung: If I could, I would give a bounty to the &quot;Beyond annoy me?&quot; comment because I know the feeling *so well*." CreationDate="2014-12-03T16:09:57.510" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="3489" PostId="1410" Score="2" Text="Nice example, for this question I would also suggest the web map by  John Britton, [StackMaps](http://johndbritton.com/stackmaps/). The past few questions on meta here could use some queries of the data explorer to bring some data to the discussion." CreationDate="2012-09-29T21:54:13.570" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="3490" PostId="1410" Score="0" Text="@AndyW: Wow, that page is nice and deserves to be in an answer by itself. It's likely to be exactly what the OP is looking for. On my browser, some of the pins for users that list only their country seemed to be misplaced." CreationDate="2012-09-29T22:02:42.927" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3491" PostId="1410" Score="0" Text="Oh I spotted a few that are at ridiculous locations! My guess based on the balloon placemarks is that google is the one to direct complaints for the geocoding engine to. I will post an answer and point to some of the weird locations when I get a chance." CreationDate="2012-09-29T23:23:06.933" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="3493" PostId="1412" Score="0" Text="We have a tag for [tag:nonlinear-regression] already, are you talking about a pointer to that, or something else? What &quot;other forms&quot; do you have in mind?" CreationDate="2012-09-30T03:30:09.380" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3494" PostId="1412" Score="0" Text="I was talking about logistic regression, ordinal logistic, multinonial, Poisson and so on." CreationDate="2012-09-30T11:40:14.447" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="3495" PostId="1412" Score="0" Text="So it sounds like you're mostly talking about the generalized linear model. We do have a tag for that too, of course (as you well know). So do you just want to link to that tag wiki? Also, are you talking about amending regression's tag wiki excerpt, full wiki, or both?" CreationDate="2012-09-30T13:29:50.797" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3496" PostId="1412" Score="1" Text="I am not really sure - I am getting used to how the tags work (if you have a link to where this is discussed, I'd appreciate it). &#xA;&#xA;But when I think of &quot;regression&quot; I think of the whole panoply of regression methods; people also seem to be using the tag for regressions that are not OLS." CreationDate="2012-09-30T13:35:20.227" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="3497" PostId="1412" Score="1" Text="I don't really know of a good link for tag wikis. FWIW, the best I can think of are the privilege descriptions: [approve-tag-wiki-edits](http://stats.stackexchange.com/privileges/approve-tag-wiki-edits), &amp; [trusted-user](http://stats.stackexchange.com/privileges/trusted-user). My general way of thinking about the issue is that *tag wiki excerpts* are really important for the smooth functioning / organization of the site as these are displayed w/ the tags (NB not all of the characters you are allowed when editing will show up, though), but that probably few people ever read the *full wiki*." CreationDate="2012-09-30T15:42:58.453" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3500" PostId="1412" Score="0" Text="hmmm. OK. Those are helpful." CreationDate="2012-09-30T17:52:53.997" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="3498" PostId="1413" Score="2" Text="Bravo! It's a little known fact that the [Kingdom of Zhao](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhao_%28state%29#Fall_of_Zhao) is located near Utica in upstate NY, which is part of the reason we were able to hold off the aggression of the dastardly Qin for so long." CreationDate="2012-09-30T16:18:56.490" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3499" PostId="1413" Score="1" Text="In keeping w/ our [recent discussion](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1393/do-user57892-names-bother-you) on meta, where is &quot;not from around here&quot; located? I'm guessing [48°52.6′S 123°23.6′W](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pole_of_inaccessibility#Oceanic_pole_of_inaccessibility)." CreationDate="2012-09-30T16:50:44.483" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3501" PostId="1414" Score="1" Text="+1, nicely done! This is the most useful answer here." CreationDate="2012-09-30T19:58:22.210" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3503" PostId="1414" Score="4" Text="(+1) When you make almost any reasonable regression model of whether a question has any answer at all and include the question's *score* as a variable, then question length becomes highly significant and has a negative coefficient.  There are signs of a score-length interaction. In brief, when you focus on questions having a similar score, there usually is a significant negative association between question length and whether it received an answer. This could be the starting point for a good EDA, which would want to explore how linear these associations are, etc." CreationDate="2012-09-30T22:05:37.433" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="12748" PostId="1414" Score="0" Text="I wonder if this changes over time.  Is there a 2017-era change to this?" CreationDate="2017-03-08T20:11:40.170" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="3504" PostId="1415" Score="0" Text="All this would be fine with me.&#xA;&#xA;I didn't read this wiki, probably because I already know what regression is :-)." CreationDate="2012-09-30T22:30:01.970" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="3505" PostId="1415" Score="0" Text="That's what I figured. I didn't read it for a long time either." CreationDate="2012-09-30T22:32:22.560" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3506" PostId="1415" Score="2" Text="This definition seems to exclude the [machine learning interpretation of &quot;regression&quot;](http://stats.stackexchange.com/a/1433/2485)...basically a predictive model where the predictions are numbers rather than discrete classes." CreationDate="2012-10-01T21:46:47.383" UserId="2485" />
  <row Id="3507" PostId="1415" Score="0" Text="That's an interesting point, @MichaelMcGowan. I notice however that definition of 'regression' is an ex of doug's thesis that &quot;disciplines use the same term to refer to completely different concepts&quot;. Thus, to include it as well under the reg tag would lead to a tag that is conceptually incoherent. Perhaps we should add another tag: *ML-regression*, IDK. But I don't think we should try to resolve this here in these comments. If you like, you could ask about what to do re this issue in a new meta question." CreationDate="2012-10-01T21:59:10.033" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3512" PostId="1416" Score="0" Text="+1, especially for the sage advice in the last paragraph.  I have recently started doing some consulting and I have not yet felt like I had spent enough time making sure everyone was clear and on the same page at the outset." CreationDate="2012-10-03T18:29:38.973" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3513" PostId="1418" Score="3" Text="(+1) Some weekly voting statistics can be found [here](http://stats.stackexchange.com/users?tab=voters&amp;filter=week)." CreationDate="2012-10-05T10:20:53.913" UserDisplayName="user10525" />
  <row Id="3514" PostId="1418" Score="2" Text="It would be nice if we could get those statistics in some easily readable form.  But it does look like a bimodal distribution." CreationDate="2012-10-05T10:31:16.677" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="3517" PostId="1418" Score="2" Text="+1 The fact that 2 to 4 upvotes can be expected for an answer is very sad. Take the recent example with the great answer by David J Harris. Votes should go through the roof for the idea but a meager +5. This led me to reduce my answering activity. So unless I'm bored or there is a really enthralling question, I rather pass." CreationDate="2012-10-05T18:10:16.573" UserId="8413" />
  <row Id="3522" PostId="1418" Score="1" Text="I think that's very unfortunate, @Momo, I've noticed that your answers are typically very good, &amp; it sounds like we'll be getting less of them.  I do think StasK is right that much of this is due simply to the fact that this is a very small community.  Ironically, if you become less active, we'll just become even smaller." CreationDate="2012-10-05T20:22:07.393" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3537" PostId="1418" Score="0" Text="Thanks @gung, that's very nice of you to say. To be fair though I never been the most active answerer anyway and I doubt my answers would add any knowledge that guys like you wouldn't do much better. I still like it here, so I will remain part of this nice community if I can. I'll vote and comment more, that's all." CreationDate="2012-10-08T11:34:01.730" UserId="8413" />
  <row Id="3515" PostId="1419" Score="5" Text="Just FYI, you can also try: \$\text{Var}[X|Y]\$ (ie $\text{Var}[X|Y]$), if that's more convenient." CreationDate="2012-10-05T18:08:25.423" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3518" PostId="1419" Score="0" Text="gung's suggestion saves two keystrokes, which is good, but I was wondering if `\Var` would make life easier for us. I understand that it would not be universally used, since it is not plain $\LaTeX$." CreationDate="2012-10-05T18:13:29.693" UserId="9394" />
  <row Id="3519" PostId="1419" Score="15" Text="In my answers I often declare such a macro using `\newcommand` at the beginning and then use the macro in the rest of the answer. That's often helpful, especially if you need to use it many times." CreationDate="2012-10-05T18:46:07.830" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3520" PostId="1419" Score="5" Text="(+1) Can I use `\newcommand` in my answers?!?!?!?!? Whoooaaaa! Problem solved. I'll setup a txt with definitions I normally use. Thank you a lot, Prof.!" CreationDate="2012-10-05T19:03:54.753" UserId="9394" />
  <row Id="3521" PostId="1419" Score="2" Text="@cardinal, I'm not familiar w/ `\newcommand`, since it seems that is the answer to this Q, can you make it official, perhaps w/ a brief tutorial re how it would work?" CreationDate="2012-10-05T20:18:45.107" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3523" PostId="1420" Score="5" Text="A somewhat fancier solution is `$\newcommand{\Expect}{{\rm I\kern-.3em E}}$` that produces $\Expect[X]$. Unfortunately, you cannot easily extend it to the variance operator." CreationDate="2012-10-06T02:28:09.247" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="3524" PostId="1420" Score="13" Text="@Stas: That's an old hack for `\mathbb E`, i.e., $\mathbb E$. This does extend to variance $\mathbb V(X)$ or similar, as you like. The latter doesn't seem too popular though. :-)" CreationDate="2012-10-06T13:59:25.540" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3525" PostId="1420" Score="0" Text="Yay! Thanks, cardinal. I need to learn my $\LaTeX$ better, apparently :)" CreationDate="2012-10-06T15:08:54.870" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="3538" PostId="1420" Score="0" Text="Neat solution. :) But I for one would prefer if these commands were available out-of-the-box." CreationDate="2012-10-08T12:12:04.803" UserId="8507" />
  <row Id="3541" PostId="1420" Score="8" Text="(+1 a couple days ago) As a side note, if you want to avoid the empty space at the top of the answer caused by the macro definitions, you can just slip the `\newcommand` calls in at the beginning of the first math-mode block you use in your answer. :-)" CreationDate="2012-10-08T17:35:37.860" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3542" PostId="1420" Score="1" Text="(+1) Another great tip!" CreationDate="2012-10-08T20:15:12.807" UserId="9394" />
  <row Id="6639" PostId="1420" Score="0" Text="How do you use this? I have $\Var{\beta}$ but it misses those square brackets. How can you have them?" CreationDate="2015-02-28T21:21:26.483" UserId="3017" />
  <row Id="8377" PostId="1420" Score="5" Text="@Masi: `\newcommand{\Var}[1]{\operatorname{Var}\left[#1\right]}`" CreationDate="2015-09-30T11:52:41.217" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="10153" PostId="1420" Score="6" Text="**Beware**  Although `\newcommand` is elegant and convenient, *it appears to affect all $\TeX$ markup on the entire page*--not just your individual post!  This raises the prospect of bad interactions arising from conflicting commands in different posts (and even in comments). I suspect their processing might depend on the sequence in which the posts appear on the page. Thus, both *arbitrary* and *future* developments beyond your control could ruin your post!" CreationDate="2016-07-08T18:48:22.537" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3526" PostId="1421" Score="2" Text="I have a strong sense that I know what you're getting at here, but *technically* this isn't a question. Would you care to edit / clarify?" CreationDate="2012-10-08T03:40:17.060" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3535" PostId="1421" Score="0" Text="I didn't know feature requests had to be questions. :-) I've changed it" CreationDate="2012-10-08T11:04:34.373" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="3540" PostId="1421" Score="0" Text="They don't, always, but sometimes doing so helps clarify what one is asking for. :)" CreationDate="2012-10-08T17:25:55.240" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="3527" PostId="1422" Score="0" Text="ok just to move the meta so i can find out and improve the question" CreationDate="2012-10-08T00:16:49.340" UserId="13898" />
  <row Id="3529" PostId="1422" Score="1" Text="I don't think it's a meta question - it's not about the site." CreationDate="2012-10-08T00:19:37.080" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="3530" PostId="1422" Score="0" Text="@PeterFlom, see this quote from the [FAQ](http://stats.stackexchange.com/faq#dontask): &quot;If your question is about the site itself, please don't ask it here. Visit our meta-discussion site where you can talk about things **like what questions are appropriate**, what tags should be used, suggest a feature, point out a bug, or generally discuss how Cross Validated - Stack Exchange works.&quot;" CreationDate="2012-10-08T00:20:02.813" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="3531" PostId="1422" Score="0" Text="oh ok.. well i dont think anyone is in a rush, i mean that one mod sure wasnt, didnt even comment on and just quickly closed it -- i think we all have patience for a good answer to a necessary and important questions about stats, specially regression" CreationDate="2012-10-08T00:21:05.853" UserId="13898" />
  <row Id="3532" PostId="1422" Score="1" Text="@Macro Oh, my bad. You meant the current question, which is about why the other question was bad. Yeah, I guess that's a meta question. I thought you meant the original question" CreationDate="2012-10-08T00:23:46.060" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="3533" PostId="1422" Score="1" Text="@Peter, yes I meant the current question, although it may be closed (rightfully so, IMO) as *too localized* on meta :)" CreationDate="2012-10-08T00:25:08.657" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="3536" PostId="1423" Score="10" Text="@kittensatplay, it appears you're looking for the site to be something it's not. The established guidelines make sense for the purposes of this site - to form a repository of well thought out, **clearly formulated** questions and answers." CreationDate="2012-10-08T11:08:12.870" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="3539" PostId="1423" Score="6" Text="kittens, the site's moderators have received many flags today indicating that some of your comments have been rude and offensive. Personally, I believe I can see where you're coming from and I sympathize with your objectives: it appears you have some penetrating questions to ask and you seek cogent, simple, well-explained, thoughtful answers. Unfortunately your comments tend to be accusatory, like the one here: they attack people and suggest they are stupid or unlearned or worse. This is not constructive. The flagged comments will have to be removed and I trust you will change your tone." CreationDate="2012-10-08T15:29:18.843" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3543" PostId="1425" Score="11" Text="+1 I upvoted this question because it is thoughtful, well formulated, and well researched.  I am interested in hearing the community's opinions, because they can guide not only the ultimate status of the referenced question but also how all future questions about obtaining datasets are moderated." CreationDate="2012-10-08T20:51:05.543" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3544" PostId="1425" Score="7" Text="+1, I agree that this Q is thoughtful, well formulated, &amp; well researched. In addition, I've always thought the type of Q at issue here, &amp; those listed as &quot;precedent[s]&quot;, should be on-topic. I do agree w/ people that Q's just looking for specific datasets (eg, GDP data) should be off-topic, though." CreationDate="2012-10-08T21:45:28.613" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3556" PostId="1425" Score="5" Text="I think the block quote above is evidence that the question is off topic and the existence of precedent doesn't really change that. To quote @whuber's comment made in the [Statistics jokes](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1337/statistics-jokes) thread: ***&quot;Some rules benefit from being ... bent ... once in a while. However, please don't use the existence of this thread to justify creating new ones that fall outside our guidelines unless you think there is a very good reason to do so!&quot;***. I also don't quite see how the question is about data analysis, as you indicated. Just my 2¢..." CreationDate="2012-10-09T13:32:54.223" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="3566" PostId="1425" Score="1" Text="@Macro How is the question about data analysis?  Well, it's relevant to people developing new techniques for data analysis.  Validating the efficacy of new algorithms is an important part of data analysis, and that tends to require data.  Also, the question is useful across specific domains.  It's quite useful to people developing new predictive analytics algorithms." CreationDate="2012-10-17T20:35:17.860" UserId="2485" />
  <row Id="3574" PostId="1425" Score="2" Text="Ahh, the problem with voting on meta.  Downvoted because while the question is well-phrased, the idea that it's supporting (list type questions) is one I disagree with (and votes on meta are used to show dissent)." CreationDate="2012-10-21T18:18:14.447" UserId="740" />
  <row Id="3545" PostId="1426" Score="6" Text="Just to be complete, an upvote is defined as denoting that &quot;This questions shows research effort; it is useful and clear.&quot;" CreationDate="2012-10-08T23:31:58.313" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="3546" PostId="1426" Score="0" Text="Where is that written? I have tried to find a clear definition (i.e. in the FAQ) with no success." CreationDate="2012-10-08T23:34:03.117" UserId="10354" />
  <row Id="3547" PostId="1426" Score="4" Text="Hover over the upvote/downvote button. The hover text provides guidance on what +1/-1 really mean. :)" CreationDate="2012-10-08T23:35:14.567" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="3550" PostId="1426" Score="2" Text="Ah ha! Thanks for that. I guess tool tips probably end up getting read more than the FAQ anyway." CreationDate="2012-10-09T00:34:06.410" UserId="10354" />
  <row Id="3554" PostId="1426" Score="0" Text="Regardless of your question, in that particular case it sounds to me this question is just a duplicate of earlier questions asking for references on mastering ML techniques (e.g., http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/18973/930; http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/26044/930). As such, I would recommend looking for the best duplicate and let the community decide." CreationDate="2012-10-09T10:57:00.827" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="3552" PostId="1427" Score="1" Text="You know, this whole discussion reminds me of conversations I used to have with my old friend Plato, drinking wine and looking up at the stars..." CreationDate="2012-10-09T03:00:02.227" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3553" PostId="1427" Score="0" Text="That Plato guy was a smart dude. His mentor, Socrates, though? Kind of a kooky old man." CreationDate="2012-10-09T03:02:55.760" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="3559" PostId="1427" Score="4" Text="+1, especially for the &quot;...questions that afford good answers&quot; point.  I have upvoted and favorited a number of questions because the discussion it bred was interesting and informative." CreationDate="2012-10-11T00:31:23.757" UserDisplayName="user5594" />
  <row Id="3557" PostId="1428" Score="4" Text="Would you be so kind as to show *how* it's not working? That is, is it rendering incorrectly or just not at all?" CreationDate="2012-10-10T23:14:01.617" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="3558" PostId="1428" Score="0" Text="It's rendering incorrectly. I can't get multiple lines even when I use \\ to separate them." CreationDate="2012-10-10T23:18:10.320" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="3560" PostId="1429" Score="0" Text="Well, I don't know *what* I was doing wrong; clearly it does work. Thanks" CreationDate="2012-10-11T09:52:35.613" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="5507" PostId="1429" Score="3" Text="@PeterFlom see also http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/5020/mathjax-basic-tutorial-and-quick-reference which is full of goodies :)" CreationDate="2014-03-18T11:01:07.827" UserId="25936" />
  <row Id="3561" PostId="1431" Score="11" Text="Here's a thought experiment: if I walked into the local university's statistics department and asked the faculty and students for pointers to a good source for income distribution datasets, I think **someone** would have an answer. Conversely, if I asked for good datasets for evaluating classification/regression methods, I'd bet **almost everyone** would have an answer." CreationDate="2012-10-12T21:08:15.470" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="3565" PostId="1431" Score="2" Text="Why is this off-topic? I think some very hard-problems in statistics of the present day lie in the high-dimensional setting. It would be more useful-to have a collection maintained on threads like this. Stat exchange is the place! The discussion here  has Nothing about 'high-dimensional' datasets. its all empty on this direction and is more about regression/classification in the 'generic' setting and away from Tukey's EDA- view at data apart from his problem-solving view." CreationDate="2012-10-17T20:23:23.070" UserId="6897" />
  <row Id="3567" PostId="1431" Score="2" Text="Matt, I think if you walked in a Stat department, **nobody** will have a clue about income distribution data sets. **Someone in an economics department** could... but I'd be really surprised to find statisticians knowledgeable about it. Most statistical audiences I talked to do not know what Gini index of income inequality is, unless there's somebody who worked specifically in government/social statistics." CreationDate="2012-10-18T03:22:06.223" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="3568" PostId="1431" Score="1" Text="Conversely, I was asked by faculty at our local department, &quot;We have developed this cool methodology -- you work in this area [latent variable modeling], do you have a dataset we could apply this to?&quot; -- which is exactly the backwards way of developing new statistical methods. My deep belief is that statistics should be driven by applications, not by desire to publish a hollow scholastic paper in Annals or JASA or JSPI. (This belief did cost me a tenure-track job, so don't listen to me.)" CreationDate="2012-10-18T03:23:33.570" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="3569" PostId="1431" Score="1" Text="@StasK How then would you propose that developers of statistical software ensure that their algorithms are any good?" CreationDate="2012-10-18T16:17:06.163" UserId="2485" />
  <row Id="3571" PostId="1431" Score="1" Text="Michael, see http://stata-journal.com/article.html?article=pr0001. To ensure that your software does the right thing, you need to know the truth, and for none of the real data sets you do. So somebody looking for a data set is a red herring that somebody is after publishing a paper on a cute algorithm with no real applications." CreationDate="2012-10-18T18:40:48.507" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="3572" PostId="1431" Score="0" Text="This discussion is a good example of why I think the question should stand.  @whuber, any thoughts on re-opening?" CreationDate="2012-10-18T18:55:03.127" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="3723" PostId="1431" Score="0" Text="I might be more sympathetic to the argument that &quot;this belongs on subject matter expert&quot; sites if it wasn't extremely difficult to get those sites going - but that's somewhat orthogonal to the problem here. I've voted to reopen." CreationDate="2012-12-13T00:42:38.590" UserId="5836" />
  <row Id="3728" PostId="1431" Score="0" Text="I have to agree with @Stask's comment that, in order to really &quot;test&quot; your method, you need simulated data, since you know the &quot;truth&quot;." CreationDate="2012-12-14T16:59:27.710" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="3562" PostId="1434" Score="0" Text="What is your question?" CreationDate="2012-10-17T15:00:59.167" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3563" PostId="1434" Score="0" Text="No question.  Just feedback." CreationDate="2012-10-17T15:05:11.230" UserId="2775" />
  <row Id="3564" PostId="1434" Score="2" Text="It belongs in chat, then, or as a flag to moderators in case you want some kind of action.  The point differential will be due to many things; the most significant would be that many CV upvoters might not have SO accounts and therefore their votes would not be counted on SO." CreationDate="2012-10-17T15:09:04.507" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3570" PostId="1434" Score="0" Text="A possible question in this is whether the total point changes should be a wash. That is, if you lost 175 here, then you should gain 175 there, or if you gained 60 there, you should only lose 60 here." CreationDate="2012-10-18T16:25:19.883" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3575" PostId="1434" Score="0" Text="This is expected; reputation is not shared across sites.  When a question is migrated, you don't lose your reputation.  However, when a question is *deleted*, then you absolutely lose your rep (assuming it's not from something really old).  That said, I'm not sure why the migrated question was deleted, as the system cleans these up automatically after a month or so IIRC." CreationDate="2012-10-21T18:20:58.907" UserId="740" />
  <row Id="3577" PostId="1437" Score="0" Text="Note that I am not the author of the cited question; I merely authored the Meta question as someone interested in answers to that question." CreationDate="2012-10-21T22:50:54.967" UserId="2485" />
  <row Id="3580" PostId="1437" Score="0" Text="@MichaelMcGowan Tweaked to reflect that." CreationDate="2012-10-22T00:04:55.857" UserId="740" />
  <row Id="3581" PostId="1437" Score="1" Text="I think a couple of those concerns don't apply here.  Unlike hardware/software recommendations, datasets don't really become obsolete - especially not for this purpose. For example, the famous Anderson iris dataset is still brought up *all the time* - even though it's almost 80 years old." CreationDate="2012-10-22T20:30:36.070" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="3582" PostId="1437" Score="0" Text="I think link-rot may also be less of a problem, since the datasets suggested are likely to be government-issued, associated with a scholarly journal, or otherwise archived at a level beyond the usual blog post. The significance of votes in this context and answer maintenance are definitely pertinent concerns, though." CreationDate="2012-10-22T20:31:06.270" UserId="71" />
  <row Id="3583" PostId="1437" Score="0" Text="@MattParker I don't disagree, but consider: where is the best place to get that data set?  What about link rot, what if the site goes down?  Those are the things that lead to the Not Constructive nature of the post, not the quality of what's referenced." CreationDate="2012-10-22T20:32:25.687" UserId="740" />
  <row Id="3584" PostId="1437" Score="0" Text="@MattParker Regarding link-rot, I'd have to disagree, unless you're including the data *in* the post, it's a concern, no matter how reliable you think the link is.  On all sites, in Stack Exchange's eyes, a link to Google is just as volatile to some guy running his domain from his laptop." CreationDate="2012-10-22T20:33:53.483" UserId="740" />
  <row Id="3724" PostId="1437" Score="0" Text="In addition to the idea that they don't go obsolete, unlike hardware/software recommendations, there is inherently value in using a known quantity when developing new statistical software, self-learning, etc. Commonly used, known entities have widely known quirks, documented results, etc. To be frank, a data set shopping list is actually pretty useful." CreationDate="2012-12-13T00:45:44.577" UserId="5836" />
  <row Id="3576" PostId="1440" Score="3" Text="This pretty much covers it. The only thing I would add is that on the &quot;users&quot; page of a &quot;child meta,&quot; the users are listed in order of meta *activity* and not reputation." CreationDate="2012-10-21T20:12:41.347" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="3578" PostId="1441" Score="1" Text="Hi @gung. Thanks. But what I wanted was a filter that identified all the un-wikied tags." CreationDate="2012-10-21T23:37:04.157" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="3579" PostId="1441" Score="0" Text="I don't know of one. There may well be a way via the SE data site. I believe it uses MS SQL server, if you know that." CreationDate="2012-10-21T23:44:54.927" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3585" PostId="1445" Score="1" Text="The questions are clearly similar and clearly do not cover the **exact** same content.  That one is explicitly asking for book recommendations and the other does not mention books seems to be prima facie evidence that they are not **exact** duplicates." CreationDate="2012-10-23T14:56:12.540" UserId="2485" />
  <row Id="3586" PostId="1445" Score="0" Text="Yes, @Michael, that's one of my main points: the concept of &quot;duplicate&quot; on this site does *not* involve exactness. One question can duplicate another--and this often happens--when they ask substantially the same question but in different contexts or with different specific applications. We don't really want to see a thousand variations of &quot;how do I compute a Z-value for this statistic,&quot; after all! Thus, when the answers to an existing question can reasonably be construed as applying, without any special extra reasoning or knowledge, to a new question, then the new question usually is closed." CreationDate="2012-10-23T14:58:58.427" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3587" PostId="1445" Score="0" Text="&quot;I interpreted these two as broadly asking the same thing: references to resources for learning about ML for people without the requisite background.&quot; Except that the &quot;duplicate&quot; is explicitly asking for books.  Maybe both questions are duplicates of a hypothetical, generalized question, but that question has not been asked.  If someone writes that question then maybe both of these are duplicates of the abstract question.  Until then, they are certainly not exact duplicates of one another." CreationDate="2012-10-23T15:03:56.167" UserId="2485" />
  <row Id="3589" PostId="1445" Score="0" Text="@Michael I have already agreed they are not exact duplicates. Where we might differ is that I perceive a request for book references as being of little or no practical consequence in differentiating questions. I view &quot;what are some references to learn *X*&quot; and &quot;Could you recommend a book to learn *X*&quot; as being substantially the same. We might ask whether it is worthwhile maintaining pairs of such questions on our site. I say not, because a future seeker of information for references to *X* would then have to consult two threads instead of one." CreationDate="2012-10-23T15:11:56.710" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3590" PostId="1445" Score="0" Text="I suppose then I see an inconsistency since you agree that they are not exact duplicates but wish for them to be closed as exact duplicates.  This kind of renders that close reason meaningless to me then." CreationDate="2012-10-23T15:15:26.323" UserId="2485" />
  <row Id="3591" PostId="1445" Score="1" Text="@Michael I see your point, in that the site itself uses the phrase &quot;exact duplicate.&quot; These issues have (of course) been discussed on Meta SO. I found this one to be particularly relevant to our conversation: [Are duplicates creating broken windows?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/52530/)." CreationDate="2012-10-23T15:30:44.207" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3588" PostId="1447" Score="1" Text="(1) I just want to point out that although your answer suggests otherwise, closed questions come up in Web searches. right now, the first hit when Googling &quot;How to get an introductory understanding of Machine Learning&quot; is the (currently closed) question we are discussing. (2) Your point about how merges can sometimes make nonsense of existing answers is good. Many merges ultimately are compromises between retaining good existing answers (and putting them in an appropriate place) and possibly ruining some other answers. Some intermediate mechanism between merging and closing would be desirable." CreationDate="2012-10-23T15:05:19.980" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3592" PostId="1447" Score="1" Text="@whuber, you raise a good point re #1, although what I was getting at was the ability to find the *other* Q, not the closed 1; having more links pointing to it helps w/ Google-like search algorithms, &amp; it also means there are more paths that people can stumble across. (Again, I recognize that when it's closed as a duplicate, a link is given automatically &amp; that this attenuates the force of my point.) It's worth pointing out that if a thread does have some merits, it can still be found &amp; accessed when closed, but nb the fact of being closed may also serve to frame the thread in a poorer light." CreationDate="2012-10-23T16:05:40.747" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3593" PostId="1447" Score="2" Text="In response to a separate comment thread with @Michael McGowan, I am coming around to favoring an idea suggested on Meta SO, which is to *edit* near-duplicate questions by including a prominent link to related threads at the end of the question itself (not just in comments). It's a bit more work, and ought to be supplemented by inserting reciprocal back-links in the original questions, too, but might go some way towards addressing the concerns raised by Douglas Zare." CreationDate="2012-10-23T16:09:43.707" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3594" PostId="1447" Score="0" Text="That's a good idea. I've been doing essentially that, but only in comments. Doing it in the body of the Q will make it more salient &amp; allow you to add some context to the links that may not fit as well otherwise." CreationDate="2012-10-23T16:12:44.047" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3595" PostId="1447" Score="2" Text="The specific recommendation is to terminate the question with a third-level header (i.e., preceded by &quot;###&quot; in markup), such as &quot;###Related Questions&quot;, followed by links in the form &quot;[question title](URL)&quot;.  Low-rep users may continue to suggest such cross-references in comments (as many already do, quite helpfully) and higher-rep users can use these suggestions--as well as their own inclinations--to make such edits." CreationDate="2012-10-23T16:23:21.287" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3596" PostId="1447" Score="0" Text="As an example, I edited the question under discussion, voted to re-open it :-), and placed a back-link in the older related question." CreationDate="2012-10-23T16:25:34.793" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3597" PostId="1449" Score="0" Text="BTW, I had no problem deleting that comment: hovering the mouse in the area at the end of the comment revealed the 'edit' and 'delete' controls." CreationDate="2012-10-25T20:56:41.063" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3598" PostId="1449" Score="0" Text="It wouldn't work for me; it was shielded by one of the questions in the Related section.&#xA;Thanks for that!" CreationDate="2012-10-25T21:03:23.217" UserId="9171" />
  <row Id="3599" PostId="1449" Score="0" Text="@user9171 if it happens again, could you take a screencapture and post it as a bug here on meta? It sounds like you might be having your div container overflow." CreationDate="2012-10-26T15:08:03.597" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="3602" PostId="1449" Score="0" Text="@whuber Oh, it was TeX markup? Nevermind then. :)" CreationDate="2012-10-26T16:50:54.267" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="3603" PostId="1449" Score="0" Text="@Aarthi I have noticed in the last few days that $\TeX$ is not displaying correctly until the page is refreshed: it seems to spill over the right of its box, more so for longer and more complex expressions.  It is possible I succeeded in grabbing that comment's controls after first refreshing the page.  The offending comment still wrapped all over creation, but it didn't block the edit or delete controls." CreationDate="2012-10-26T17:18:05.880" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3604" PostId="1449" Score="0" Text="Note that for comments, the button / thing to click on to flag is invisible, but will show up if you mouseover the space to the left of the comment; it will look like a small flag." CreationDate="2012-10-26T18:32:23.757" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3616" PostId="1453" Score="0" Text="Unfortunately those arguments fall on deaf ears. We have since been moved to IE8, which is better, but not greatly so and this problem still persists." CreationDate="2012-10-27T11:02:34.450" UserId="229" />
  <row Id="3630" PostId="1454" Score="0" Text="Nice work, thanks!" CreationDate="2012-11-01T12:37:57.893" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="3608" PostId="1455" Score="0" Text="You are everywhere! :)  Thanks for confirming.  I had read the post in question earlier that day, and I think it was from a user with a fair amount of rep, so I was surprised that he quit the same day." CreationDate="2012-10-26T19:57:39.033" UserId="3826" />
  <row Id="3609" PostId="1455" Score="0" Text="@jonsca Haha yeah I'm tidying up the meta a little bit. Of course, in the course of tidying I might be mussing up the meta front page. Let me know if I'm being a bit extreme. At least this way some older stuff gets new eyes, right?" CreationDate="2012-10-26T19:59:31.760" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="3610" PostId="1455" Score="0" Text="@jonsca but yes, this is `[status-bydesign]` behavior for sure! Community is the anon user's best friend." CreationDate="2012-10-26T19:59:51.837" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="3612" PostId="1455" Score="0" Text="Nah, there's 9 whole question slots on there that haven't been edited by you (yet).  Go for the gusto." CreationDate="2012-10-26T20:01:37.280" UserId="3826" />
  <row Id="3614" PostId="1455" Score="0" Text="@jonsca OH NO It's been that bad, huh? Ah well, it's a one-time pain, and at least it's keeping Friday interesting, right? :D" CreationDate="2012-10-26T20:03:29.040" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="3617" PostId="1459" Score="3" Text="I think that questions requiring complex reasoning or involved analysis probably should not be tagged as &quot;homework.&quot; One of the chief uses of the homework tag is in identifying routine questions (which typically are not grounded in a real problem): I think that's the essence of it." CreationDate="2012-10-27T20:35:35.330" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3618" PostId="1459" Score="1" Text="@whuber, I agree that is &quot;one of the chief uses&quot;, but another aspect might be that if it *is* HW, even if it's advanced, we try to provide hints to help the OP figure out how to solve it by themself. It seems to me that aspect would be preserved in the hypothesized situation. I'm not sure the tag needs to be changed, though." CreationDate="2012-10-28T02:23:17.033" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3623" PostId="1459" Score="2" Text="@gung The motivation for changing it is the frequent misunderstanding by newcomers of the use of the tag. Some take it in a pejorative sense: &quot;*my* question is not homework--I'm studying this textbook myself!&quot;  So I agree that the *tag* needs little changing, but changing its *name* would be salutary." CreationDate="2012-10-28T14:53:52.310" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3624" PostId="1459" Score="0" Text="@whuber, so you want the same tag wiki excerpt, but a different tag name? Do you have something in mind?" CreationDate="2012-10-28T15:15:56.683" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3625" PostId="1459" Score="7" Text="@gung `study`, `review`, and `exercise` all seem apt to me. We could create them all and make them synonyms of each other (and of `homework`)." CreationDate="2012-10-28T15:22:04.257" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3626" PostId="1459" Score="0" Text="So the idea is that OPs would use those (b/c they felt like a better match for their situation), but then they would be re-mapped to `homework`? I think that's reasonable, if people want to do it." CreationDate="2012-10-28T15:32:53.043" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3627" PostId="1459" Score="0" Text="Sounds sensible to me" CreationDate="2012-10-28T15:49:55.003" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="11084" PostId="1459" Score="0" Text="-1 to this old question just because our current policy still is that [self-study]/[homework] marks &quot;routine questions&quot; or exercises and that's the whole point of this meta-tag." CreationDate="2016-10-11T16:23:39.220" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="3619" PostId="1460" Score="0" Text="Are you simply asking about $\LaTeX$ shortcuts? If so, this question may help: [latex-macros-for-expectation-variance-and-covariance](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1419/), also there is an SE site for [$\TeX$](http://tex.stackexchange.com/)." CreationDate="2012-10-28T02:26:18.497" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3620" PostId="1460" Score="1" Text="I meant in general, like writing. I want to know about a concise way of writing it." CreationDate="2012-10-28T02:47:36.257" UserId="1118" />
  <row Id="3621" PostId="1460" Score="0" Text="What would it mean to have a &quot;concise way of writing it&quot;, fewer characters in the line? There are [conventions](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_notation) w/i matrix algebra for writing things like $(X_1, X_2, \ldots, X_n)$, but I would guess you know them already." CreationDate="2012-10-28T02:53:15.640" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3622" PostId="1460" Score="0" Text="Yes, I do mean writing fewer characters in the line, but still retaining the clarity. I'm hesitant to use $\mathbf{X_n} \sim^{iid} F$, as it might be interpreted as a multivariate distribution on the vector." CreationDate="2012-10-28T03:44:09.167" UserId="1118" />
  <row Id="3628" PostId="1460" Score="5" Text="The expression in the question is already ambiguous: literally, it says the *vector* $(X_i)$ has the *multivariate* distribution $F$. If you mean that you have a *set* of iid variables, it would be more correct and less ambiguous to write something like $\left\{ X_i \right\}\stackrel{iid}{\sim}F$.  But in general, it's clearer to state what you mean (in English) the first time: then more readers are likely to understand your words correctly." CreationDate="2012-10-28T15:57:17.427" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3762" PostId="1461" Score="1" Text="To clarify, you mean that they seem to be on-topic?" CreationDate="2013-01-20T15:59:33.043" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="3629" PostId="1464" Score="0" Text="Fair enough. Yes I think I will on this question, maybe it is not as useful as I thought." CreationDate="2012-10-31T15:57:08.283" UserId="7883" />
  <row Id="3631" PostId="1467" Score="2" Text="Nice example, what do the colors symbolize?" CreationDate="2012-11-01T15:24:50.623" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="3632" PostId="1467" Score="0" Text="@AndyW Different communities, as detected by http://wiki.gephi.org/index.php/Modularity with Resolution=1.0." CreationDate="2012-11-01T15:28:30.537" UserId="6552" />
  <row Id="3633" PostId="1467" Score="0" Text="Nice! For myself, I'm so happy to see how you all have adopted and supported the `[machine-learning]` community on here. It's now one of your largest tags! But seriously, this is *super cool* I'm sharing it with the team." CreationDate="2012-11-01T16:17:03.043" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="3634" PostId="1467" Score="0" Text="@Aarthi Nice to hear it! :) And congratulations for the [tag:machine-learning] community building." CreationDate="2012-11-01T17:17:38.453" UserId="6552" />
  <row Id="3635" PostId="1467" Score="1" Text="This is fantastic! Nicely done!" CreationDate="2012-11-01T23:54:31.817" UserId="8580" />
  <row Id="3637" PostId="1467" Score="0" Text="I agree with Kyle. Great work !" CreationDate="2012-11-02T07:29:57.967" UserId="264" />
  <row Id="3638" PostId="1467" Score="0" Text="I expected R and regression tags to belong to the same group." CreationDate="2012-11-02T08:30:13.923" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="3639" PostId="1467" Score="3" Text="Hi Piotr, would you be interested in disseminating this info on the blog? I know it is a little late to help voting, but this would be wonderful material to talk alittle bit more about. Feel free to stop by the [Skewed Distribution](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/549/skewed-distribution) chat room if you are interested." CreationDate="2012-11-02T18:40:50.443" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="3640" PostId="1467" Score="0" Text="@AndyW Thanks for suggestion and invitation! Yeah, for the competition is a bit late, but anyway, it seems to be a nice idea (I'm planing to work on the tag graph stuff, as I have a few more ideas)." CreationDate="2012-11-02T22:55:29.667" UserId="6552" />
  <row Id="3714" PostId="1467" Score="0" Text="That [tag:homework] tag is awfully conspicuous =P" CreationDate="2012-12-09T06:24:55.360" UserId="740" />
  <row Id="4598" PostId="1467" Score="0" Text="@PiotrMigdal. Nice work. Do you intend to update this in the future (maybe when it complete 1 year old?)? That would be nice. Thanks" CreationDate="2013-09-15T18:42:06.523" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4600" PostId="1467" Score="1" Text="@AndreSilva Very likely. But this time I will try to do it interactive." CreationDate="2013-09-15T19:09:27.373" UserId="6552" />
  <row Id="6612" PostId="1467" Score="0" Text="@AndreSilva The interactive, and up to date, version is there: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2402/new-interesting-page-tagoverflow." CreationDate="2015-02-17T00:26:15.193" UserId="6552" />
  <row Id="6614" PostId="1467" Score="0" Text="Wonderful work! Congratulations and thank you." CreationDate="2015-02-17T12:57:16.650" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="3876" PostId="1468" Score="0" Text="I've seen this paper come up a few times, not just in Peter Flom's answers, and wanted to second this suggestion for the next journal club. In that vein, is one on the horizon?" CreationDate="2013-02-13T17:34:39.953" UserId="7250" />
  <row Id="3641" PostId="1470" Score="0" Text="Interesting question, but a bit open-ended (at least its second part). But I would like to know the answer too." CreationDate="2012-11-03T11:02:29.943" UserId="6552" />
  <row Id="3642" PostId="1470" Score="2" Text="The question of what kind of inferences can be drawn from such data strikes me as potentially limitless--I'm sure there are more possible inferences than one would care to count (most of them quite trivial). @PiotrMigdal has given you a good overview of how to get the data; you now need to develop a more focused set of questions. Note, however, that having data can help w/ that: you explore the data, especially (IMO) making plots, think about what it might mean, &amp; repeat. Be sure to retain a hold-out set, though, or you'll never know if your potential insights are worthwhile." CreationDate="2012-11-03T12:26:27.997" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3643" PostId="1470" Score="0" Text="@gung thanks for the advice." CreationDate="2012-11-03T14:33:38.297" UserId="13107" />
  <row Id="3660" PostId="1470" Score="1" Text="For a graphical example of reputation time series data (and the code to produce it) please see http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/13705." CreationDate="2012-11-06T17:46:57.593" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3644" PostId="1471" Score="0" Text="I will check the link you mentioned. So, you mean it's not possible to get the 'evolution' part, unless one extracts the info at regular intervals from today onwards?" CreationDate="2012-11-03T14:37:59.680" UserId="13107" />
  <row Id="3645" PostId="1471" Score="1" Text="@user13107 It is possible, but (AFAIK) not with Data Explorer. Either download consecutive data dumps (each 3 months) or use API - see https://api.stackexchange.com/docs/full-reputation-history." CreationDate="2012-11-03T15:23:13.343" UserId="6552" />
  <row Id="6196" PostId="1471" Score="0" Text="data dump link is not working anymore" CreationDate="2014-10-30T08:07:11.417" UserId="223" />
  <row Id="3713" PostId="1474" Score="0" Text="Generally though, CW is to be avoided. See: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/the-future-of-community-wiki/" CreationDate="2012-12-09T06:22:54.963" UserId="740" />
  <row Id="3646" PostId="1476" Score="0" Text="I agree. This is an excellent candidate for becoming a synonym. You can enter it [here](http://stats.stackexchange.com/tags/average/synonyms), &amp; we'll upvote the suggestion to make it a synonym." CreationDate="2012-11-05T14:41:28.850" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3647" PostId="1476" Score="0" Text="Thanks @gung. I don't have enough reputation to suggest a tag synonym though." CreationDate="2012-11-05T14:43:08.267" UserId="615" />
  <row Id="3712" PostId="1476" Score="0" Text="What are you doing here?!?!?" CreationDate="2012-12-09T06:22:00.377" UserId="740" />
  <row Id="3715" PostId="1476" Score="0" Text="@casperOne LOL! I have 67 accounts.  I am everywhere!  :)" CreationDate="2012-12-09T13:16:22.987" UserId="615" />
  <row Id="3716" PostId="1476" Score="0" Text="We should have a contest to see who can earn more rep here =P" CreationDate="2012-12-09T14:56:42.530" UserId="740" />
  <row Id="3717" PostId="1476" Score="0" Text="@casperOne Nerd Fight!  :)" CreationDate="2012-12-09T15:03:39.767" UserId="615" />
  <row Id="3648" PostId="1478" Score="2" Text="It appears to me that @chl is saying that it is not clear what is being asked in your post. Maybe you just need to edit your post and state the question clearly after giving some context. Typically people in this site introduce the problem and then write in bold **My question is: ...**" CreationDate="2012-11-05T16:37:06.977" UserDisplayName="user10525" />
  <row Id="3649" PostId="1478" Score="0" Text="I explained my position in my multiple comments beneath your question. I'll wait for other reactions/suggestions." CreationDate="2012-11-05T16:37:35.417" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="3650" PostId="1478" Score="1" Text="I agree with @chl: What question? Even if that thread can be reformulated as a question, I urge you to rethink the strategy of posting three separate answers: this leads to a fragmentation and lack of unity that make the thread of less potential use to readers." CreationDate="2012-11-05T17:25:32.003" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3654" PostId="1478" Score="0" Text="@whuber, chi, procrastinator. No problem, you've got it. Just give me one-two days. If I have any technical problems (like deleting answers which I already ceded to wiki) I'll turn to you." CreationDate="2012-11-05T19:40:57.257" UserId="10069" />
  <row Id="3661" PostId="1478" Score="0" Text="@chi I've made it into a question. Now, I already marked two answers as Wiki. Is there any way of undoing it?" CreationDate="2012-11-06T21:17:32.647" UserId="10069" />
  <row Id="3662" PostId="1478" Score="0" Text="Adam, what I proposed was to merge your three answers into a single reply. I don't think the fact they've been made CW really matters in this case. Just copy/paste and delete two of the three replies. A moderator will remove the CW status of the remaining one if you like." CreationDate="2012-11-06T22:31:31.247" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="3664" PostId="1478" Score="0" Text="@chi ok. Thanks." CreationDate="2012-11-07T06:48:33.790" UserId="10069" />
  <row Id="3666" PostId="1478" Score="1" Text="Ok, I have merged your three answers and removed CW status." CreationDate="2012-11-13T21:16:39.987" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="3667" PostId="1478" Score="0" Text="@chi Thank you. Eventually I forgot to do this... Thanks again." CreationDate="2012-11-14T06:44:34.373" UserId="10069" />
  <row Id="3711" PostId="1478" Score="0" Text="Related: [The Future of Community Wiki](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/08/the-future-of-community-wiki/)" CreationDate="2012-12-09T06:21:14.790" UserId="740" />
  <row Id="3652" PostId="1479" Score="17" Text="One pattern I see in your unanswered questions is that they tend to be abstract and not to reveal much (if anything) about the contexts and the problems you are really trying to solve. This causes them to lack information that might seem inessential to you as a mathematician but which is necessary for us to understand your *statistical* problem. Successful questions here usually avoid the mathematician's tendency toward abstraction and make little or no effort to use statistical terms. Instead they state the original problem in a language familiar to the proposer." CreationDate="2012-11-05T19:30:08.727" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3653" PostId="1479" Score="17" Text="In brief, consider asking your questions in the way *you* think about them rather than trying to phrase them in a way you believe *we* would like to read them. Then, if there is still any confusion, it will be entirely on our part, and not shared between you and us!" CreationDate="2012-11-05T19:32:10.520" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3656" PostId="1479" Score="5" Text="Of possible interest: [How to ask a statistics question](http://www.statisticalanalysisconsulting.com/how-to-ask-a-statistics-question/). I do not think your background is the problem here, there are many members with strong mathematical background. We have to consider that people here answer questions for fun (among other reasons) and for free! Then one has to try to elaborate questions as concise as possible." CreationDate="2012-11-05T19:57:01.553" UserDisplayName="user10525" />
  <row Id="3657" PostId="1479" Score="1" Text="@whuber I see what you mean with abstractions, but I always thought that generalizing my questions might make it more relevant for wider public than might precise case. I can/will try to make things more explicit and less abstract in the future, even if that might sounds too silly or simple in some cases. Of course there is also that annoying bit about not being able to say much due to &quot;novelty&quot; reasons in research.. :(" CreationDate="2012-11-06T12:09:26.353" UserId="3014" />
  <row Id="3658" PostId="1479" Score="4" Text="@Procrastinator for sure.. SE sites are fantastic resources for the anyone enthusiastic in learning and improving himself, that's why I am trying to overcome my frustration, and handle my issues in a mature way :)" CreationDate="2012-11-06T12:12:54.483" UserId="3014" />
  <row Id="3659" PostId="1479" Score="1" Text="RE the edit: the remarks that have been posted so far really are most appropriate as comments, rather than answers, because they do not answer the four questions you have explicitly stated (even though they may suggest some possible answers)." CreationDate="2012-11-06T15:24:45.230" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3663" PostId="1479" Score="3" Text="Regarding the issue of abstraction, my own view is that the title of the question should be abstract, but the body should be more specific (although it could also include an abstract view of the problem). In this way, it will be easier for people to find the question and apply it to their own scenario." CreationDate="2012-11-07T00:04:16.530" UserId="14434" />
  <row Id="3757" PostId="1479" Score="3" Text="Our [faq](http://stats.stackexchange.com/faq) now links to this thread." CreationDate="2013-01-10T19:43:58.910" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="9714" PostId="1479" Score="0" Text="@whuber: I don't see the link to this question at the FAQ, has it been removed? And: would it be possible to link to this question also from the [How do I ask a good question?](http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask) help page?" CreationDate="2016-04-05T09:22:57.723" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="3674" PostId="1483" Score="2" Text="+1: nice answer, which definitely helps on clarifying properties of good questions. Although I have to say there is very little that's new and more specific to this SE site. As mentioned I have been a member of SE sites for quite a while, I think it'd be fair to say that I do quite well in the Q&amp;A format, with the exception of CV (hence this question). Thanks a bunch, anyways. I appreciate the time you put into this answer" CreationDate="2012-11-23T11:04:49.800" UserId="3014" />
  <row Id="3675" PostId="1483" Score="1" Text="Well, I guess the key point where stats.SE is different from many other SE sites is that you **can** talk about statistics in general terms, so you have to take extra care to be specific (hard to generalise [how to fix a punctured tire](http://bicycles.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/puncture?sort=votes&amp;pagesize=15), for instance)." CreationDate="2012-11-23T14:45:24.590" UserId="9007" />
  <row Id="6406" PostId="1483" Score="1" Text="While proposing an excerpt and wiki to the tag `title`, I noticed this great answer is not mentioning anything about titles. Perhaps we could include a link to the Meta SE site post: [Writing a good title](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10647/writing-a-good-title). I did not step forward with this action because I'm unsure if just a link will suffice. Moreover, I missed guidance about tagging questions. Do you and @whuber agree we should add something about these topics?" CreationDate="2014-12-15T14:14:49.507" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="6510" PostId="1483" Score="2" Text="About Donald Rumsfeldt:  You forgor the fourth category, which is unknown knowns:  That is things you know, but do not know that you know.  In this context it might be things you know, but didnt think about as relevant, or it might be &quot;cultural knowledge# from your field, that for you is so obvious that you dont think to state it, but confuses us!" CreationDate="2015-01-19T12:03:36.900" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="6511" PostId="1483" Score="1" Text="@kjetilbhalvorsen: that was left as an exercise for the reader :P" CreationDate="2015-01-19T13:10:28.847" UserId="9007" />
  <row Id="6512" PostId="1483" Score="0" Text="@AndreSilva: I think your post stands well on its own, and I think both posts are already quite long. But feel free to edit a link into this one, or edit the whole thing in, if that seems appropriate to you." CreationDate="2015-01-19T13:12:30.383" UserId="9007" />
  <row Id="8814" PostId="1485" Score="2" Text="Consider accepting your answer so that the thread visually appears &quot;resolved&quot; (which it is). I am not sure that the [output] is good synonym to [interpretation] (I wouldn't mind if [output] were blacklisted), but it seems to work fine for 3 years already." CreationDate="2015-12-06T17:24:03.127" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="3677" PostId="1486" Score="8" Text="Two things to note: (1) Hats are ***ephemeral*** -- they will last only as long as the event runs. (2) Effectively, ***hats are badges you can wear***. They are earned by doing a certain amount of specific site actions. Also, and I can't emphasize this enough: ***individuals CAN opt out!*** Meaning, if you hate hats, you can choose not to see them. However, users who stumble across your site around New Year's Eve *will* see them. The choice is yours, CV community! I think it's harmless fun, but I also understand that this is a site for professionals." CreationDate="2012-11-26T23:23:09.573" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="3685" PostId="1486" Score="0" Text="Voting is now over. Happy hat hunting!" CreationDate="2012-11-30T17:17:58.300" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3729" PostId="1486" Score="0" Text="@mbq, according to this, the promo starts on 12/19. How come you already have a hat?" CreationDate="2012-12-15T16:06:11.483" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3730" PostId="1486" Score="0" Text="@gung This is my private hat; I just change the gravatar for xmas." CreationDate="2012-12-16T10:00:18.280" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="3731" PostId="1486" Score="0" Text="@mbq, Merry X-mas!" CreationDate="2012-12-16T14:39:31.163" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3748" PostId="1486" Score="0" Text="Ok...these hats are quite fun." CreationDate="2012-12-21T01:25:39.267" UserId="8580" />
  <row Id="8816" PostId="1487" Score="0" Text="Hi, @chl. Consider accepting this answer to make this thread appear resolved." CreationDate="2015-12-06T19:23:57.383" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8817" PostId="1487" Score="0" Text="Thanks, @amoeba! This is done now." CreationDate="2015-12-06T20:19:27.557" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="3680" PostId="1488" Score="11" Text="Note: It's only winter in half of the world." CreationDate="2012-11-28T21:29:50.520" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="3693" PostId="1488" Score="4" Text="@Glen_b Fortunately, not *all* of the hats are winter-themed. Some are, some are less seasonal. :) There's even a pair of sunglasses!" CreationDate="2012-12-03T16:10:12.950" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="3681" PostId="1489" Score="2" Text="You might check the MathJax website and forum. Out of purely idle curiosity: Is the motivation behind your question some aesthetic preference or is there a (statistical) communication issue at play here that you're seeking to resolve?" CreationDate="2012-11-30T13:21:37.537" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3682" PostId="1489" Score="1" Text="@cardinal Thanks. I will look up the MathJax website.&#xA;&#xA;The motivation is statistical communication. I follow slightly atypical notation (but found in some multivariate statistics textbooks) to denote parameter matrices by upright bold, parameter vectors by regular (italic) bold. &#xA;I distinguish deterministic and non-deterministic quantities using cases -- uppercase (greek or roman) for non-deterministic and lower case for deterministic." CreationDate="2012-11-30T14:04:14.270" UserId="8141" />
  <row Id="3698" PostId="1489" Score="3" Text="@cardinal, some scientific standards organizations (e.g. NIST, IUPAC) stipulate italic font for letters representing variables or functions, &amp; roman font for letters representing mathematical constants, descriptive terms, or SI prefixes.  So an upright pi for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, but an italic pi for the parameter of a binomial distribution." CreationDate="2012-12-05T15:07:44.390" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="3699" PostId="1489" Score="1" Text="@Scortchi: (+1) This is a very interesting observation. It seems to be of a different motivation than fg nu's, though. At any rate, these are manifestly *not* conventions in (the vast majority of) mathematical writing (nor, that I am aware, in its brethren in statistics, engineering, etc.)" CreationDate="2012-12-05T15:23:31.743" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3700" PostId="1489" Score="1" Text="@scortchi Thanks for the comments. As cardinal has noted, there are, regrettably, few common notational conventions in statistics, although in econometrics, [there has been some attempt at unification](http://www.bus.lsu.edu/hill/writing/abadir_magnus.pdf). The best thing to do appears to be to develop a reasonable personal system of notation, and stick to it." CreationDate="2012-12-05T15:39:39.993" UserId="8141" />
  <row Id="3703" PostId="1489" Score="0" Text="@cardinal, this convention seems to be rarely observed for mathematical constants represented by Greek letters, occasionally observed for mathematical constants represented by Latin letters (e.g. e for the base of natural logarithms), &amp; often observed for operators (e.g. d for the differential operator).  Geography as well as discipline may play a part - &amp; I'd bet what's easiest in $\LaTeX$ too." CreationDate="2012-12-05T17:35:54.600" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="3683" PostId="1491" Score="1" Text="I have edited my question to show what I I hope the end result looks like. I must admit, I am not a huge fan of mixing unicode with LaTeX." CreationDate="2012-11-30T14:44:02.007" UserId="8141" />
  <row Id="3684" PostId="1491" Score="1" Text="No, me neither! But I think with MathJax it's the only way to get the non-italic lower case Greek letters. I'd love to be proven wrong though!" CreationDate="2012-11-30T15:11:59.127" UserId="9249" />
  <row Id="3686" PostId="1492" Score="5" Text="I like this post a lot because (a) it gives really good, concrete suggestions of what individual users can do to help make the site 40% more awesome, and (b) none of these suggestions are particularly painful nor a massive undertaking by any single person. They all promote organic growth...just with a bit of an extra push. :)" CreationDate="2012-11-30T21:25:01.663" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="3691" PostId="1492" Score="10" Text="Could you clarify point 4 (&quot;quality of viewers&quot;), please? Is this about referrals, or what metrics is used to quantify &quot;experienced eyes&quot;? This is important for us because the fact that ASA members or well-known statisticians visit this site (even irregularly) may seem important to some users, including myself." CreationDate="2012-12-02T12:05:15.767" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="3732" PostId="1492" Score="8" Text="As a frequent questioner but infrequent answerer, my impression is that stats gets a lot of &quot;suggestion&quot; type answers given as comments. They are useful to me as a questioner, but aren't complete &quot;solutions&quot;. So my guess is more than 78% of questioners were helped by the site." CreationDate="2012-12-16T18:49:28.450" UserId="900" />
  <row Id="3687" PostId="1493" Score="4" Text="**Related**: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/1000/2970" CreationDate="2012-12-02T02:56:35.637" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3690" PostId="1494" Score="4" Text="(+1) It is important to emphasize that several chat options are available: our general [Ten fold](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/18/ten-fold) chat room, which is probably what Katey is referring to, and local chat rooms that are created on demand (when one-to-one discussion exceeds 20 comments on a thread)." CreationDate="2012-12-02T12:00:17.800" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="3694" PostId="1494" Score="8" Text="On the answering ratio, I agree with Peter Flom (although I fully support the original post).  Compared to - for example - the homebrew stackexchange site (not that I've checked, but I'm guessing), we get a lot of people who have a question relevant for the site but relatively little background and even interest in the techniques available.  This lends itself to questions that are difficult to answer well.  But having said that, it would need some analysis to determine if those are the sorts of questions that remain unanswered." CreationDate="2012-12-03T19:35:51.050" UserId="7972" />
  <row Id="3696" PostId="1494" Score="7" Text="@Peter, &amp; if someone doesn't seem to have background or interest - but just wants an answer to &quot;How should I analyse these data?&quot; - it might seem a little unprofessional to make general assumptions about what they ought to be doing (without the dialogue that usually accompanies consultancy) &amp; instruct them accordingly.  Rather as if there were a medical Stack Exchange &amp; some people described their symptoms &amp; asked for a diagnosis." CreationDate="2012-12-04T00:47:15.543" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="3701" PostId="1494" Score="9" Text="+1 (to this post and all comments so far). Although the medical analogy posed by @Scortchi may seem a little self-serving coming from a statistician, it is apt: if we do not truly understand the circumstances and objectives of a question, we risk giving advice that is worse than bad. Our mistakes are not likely to kill anyone, but that does not relieve us of the responsibility to check that our answers are at once *appropriate* and will be correctly understood by everyone, including the OP and any future interested readers." CreationDate="2012-12-05T17:09:00.337" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3702" PostId="1494" Score="4" Text="@whuber I sometimes say that answering a statistical question without context is like boxing while blindfold: You might knock your opponent out but you might bash your hand on the ring post." CreationDate="2012-12-05T17:27:24.147" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="3704" PostId="1494" Score="0" Text="@whuber, I didn't mean to imply that only statis" CreationDate="2012-12-05T20:41:44.520" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="3705" PostId="1494" Score="2" Text="-ticians should be using statistics, but rather (stretching the medical analogy) that we have questions from doctors, nurses, &amp; first-aiders, who know what they don't know, &amp; from patients, who don't know what they don't know &amp; just want a quick cure.  And I think that's why, often, people give a hesitant answer as a comment - they don't want to give a hasty diagnosis based on little information - &amp; the question goes technically unanswered.  Also it's perhaps why a lot of answers aren't accepted - the patient's cured &amp; no longer bothered about coming back to the surgery." CreationDate="2012-12-05T20:50:24.903" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="3688" PostId="1495" Score="4" Text="You can always put image on imgur (of something like this) and provide a link in the post; you can also flag it so some moderator could actually embed it." CreationDate="2012-12-02T10:19:51.870" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="3689" PostId="1495" Score="0" Text="Thanks for the info. i'll try doing that." CreationDate="2012-12-02T11:08:51.607" UserId="17376" />
  <row Id="3692" PostId="1495" Score="1" Text="It may just take a while. Some features of the site only seem to update once per day. Has it been more than 24 hours &amp; you still can't post images?" CreationDate="2012-12-03T04:09:29.747" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3695" PostId="1495" Score="3" Text="You don't need an image: $\TeX$ is better. I edited your question to insert the image in $\TeX$ format." CreationDate="2012-12-03T22:49:34.810" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3697" PostId="1495" Score="1" Text="Thanks whuber. Sincerely appreciate your effort!" CreationDate="2012-12-04T15:24:28.800" UserId="17376" />
  <row Id="3706" PostId="1497" Score="1" Text="I think once you have 100 rep, you can create a new account at other SE sites, &amp; start out w/ 100 rep there, too. (Or maybe it's a different threshold, I don't quite remember, &amp; I can't find it anywhere right now.) Unfortunately, I don't think your other accounts get a 'bump' when you cross that threshold here, given that your other accounts already exist, which does seem like a bit of a shame. You could request that as a new feature." CreationDate="2012-12-07T03:09:29.593" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3707" PostId="1497" Score="0" Text="@gung Thanks for the info! I'm getting close to 100 on CrossValidated -- so it's a shame I registered on StackOverflow first (for the reasons I gave above about giving rep where it was due!)" CreationDate="2012-12-07T03:25:05.643" UserId="16974" />
  <row Id="3708" PostId="1497" Score="5" Text="I believe [you need 200 rep](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/157197/150510) to earn the +100 bonus on other linked accounts." CreationDate="2012-12-07T13:46:48.297" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="3709" PostId="1497" Score="2" Text="@gung Your accounts do get &quot;bumped&quot;: that happened to me (long ago now!)." CreationDate="2012-12-07T14:33:56.437" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3718" PostId="1497" Score="0" Text="Thanks all, very useful to know." CreationDate="2012-12-09T21:46:35.840" UserId="16974" />
  <row Id="3759" PostId="1497" Score="0" Text="...and I just hit 200 rep today on CV [cue celebratory cascade of streamers]. I got a +100 &quot;Association bonus&quot; rep on Cross-Validated as well as on Stack Overflow, which was a surprise." CreationDate="2013-01-15T00:30:35.213" UserId="16974" />
  <row Id="3710" PostId="1498" Score="1" Text="+1, nice overview. As for the +2 for editing, I still get that @ ~13k for edits to things like tag wiki excerpts, but not for edits to posts. I think you get it for having an edit approved. You don't need approval for edits to CW posts after 100 rep, regular posts after 2k rep, and wikis after 20k rep (see [priviledges](http://stats.stackexchange.com/privileges)). If your edit goes straight through (due to sufficient rep), you don't get +2, but if it's approved, you do." CreationDate="2012-12-07T14:51:19.370" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3719" PostId="1498" Score="0" Text="Thanks AndyW. the comments listed under my original question were the kind of answer I was looking for, but these are nice suggestions for getting things up and running." CreationDate="2012-12-09T21:48:06.607" UserId="16974" />
  <row Id="3721" PostId="1498" Score="0" Text="@AndyW Lo and behold, it only took a couple of days until I had a question to ask on Stack Exchange, so I'm most of the way there to being able to upvote. [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13830474/using-survfit-objects-formula-in-survdiff-call]" CreationDate="2012-12-12T20:19:18.443" UserId="16974" />
  <row Id="3722" PostId="1498" Score="0" Text="@JamesStanley - good to know! I didn't think it was much of a challenge to ask a good question - I have questions about R all the time (just don't get around to sufficiently searching them or I move on to other things)" CreationDate="2012-12-12T20:27:48.990" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="3720" PostId="1501" Score="0" Text="This is a demonstration post to indicate how this should look when an ad is posted. It also doubles as your twitter ad, but it's up to you if you wish to promote it by voting." CreationDate="2012-12-10T13:22:35.510" UserId="5645" />
  <row Id="3734" PostId="1505" Score="1" Text="I would hope people aren't embarrassed to ask for help on CV--that defeats the purpose--but I know what you mean. As more &amp; more of people's lives becomes recorded &amp; searchable on-line, our standards (socially) will ultimately have to change." CreationDate="2012-12-17T03:57:12.260" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3735" PostId="1505" Score="0" Text="@gung Yeah. I still ask a tonne of questions on SE and CV related to my general learning &amp; development in statistics and econometrics. However I have been avoiding asking technical questions specific to the projects I'm currently working on, even if I'm in a bit of a rut, because I don't want to put the acknowledgement into the paper as I may regret it down the road. For example a footnote that says &quot;I would like to acknowledge [...] for helping me to understand this [....] with measurement error [...]&quot; would be quite embarrassing in 10 years when I become more experienced." CreationDate="2012-12-17T10:19:42.677" UserId="16811" />
  <row Id="3736" PostId="1505" Score="8" Text="(+1) Very good question. I think it depends on how much help you get in the answers. See for example [this question](http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/31679/10525). If you just clarified some ideas or concepts with the question, I think it is fine not to acknowledge SE-users. But if the question triggered or improved an idea that became a paper, then acknowledging the person(s) involved in the discussion may be more ethically correct. In addition, typically you just acknowledge &quot;helpful discussions&quot; and rarely specify what you discussed with the person unless there is a special reason for this." CreationDate="2012-12-17T11:15:06.153" UserDisplayName="user10525" />
  <row Id="3737" PostId="1505" Score="0" Text="@Procrastinator That sounds like an answer to me." CreationDate="2012-12-17T14:33:43.953" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="3749" PostId="1505" Score="1" Text="I don't see why acknowledging help need be embarrassing." CreationDate="2012-12-22T03:27:06.963" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="3750" PostId="1505" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b I don't have problem acknowledging &quot;helpful discussions&quot;. When I made the post I was thinking of things like &quot;I would like to thank StackExchange users for helping me to understand that YYY happens with ZZZ measurement error.&quot; &lt;-- Something simple like this will be embarrassing down the road." CreationDate="2012-12-22T04:06:45.577" UserId="16811" />
  <row Id="3751" PostId="1505" Score="3" Text="You could call that simply 'helpful discussion'. There's some degree of judgement involved, but I *have* been acknowledged for giving pointers on discussion groups before." CreationDate="2012-12-22T04:19:52.100" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="3738" PostId="1506" Score="5" Text="(+1). I'll just add that I've also seen the &quot;helpful discussions&quot; comment in the acknowledgments of a paper. It may sound a little odd to acknowledge, e.g. &quot;@Procrastinator from the stats SE&quot;, though, so if you really felt that you wanted make the acknowledgment, it may be good to ask for the poster's real name and do it that way - if they politely decline the offer then you're &quot;off the hook&quot;." CreationDate="2012-12-17T16:12:06.463" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="3741" PostId="1506" Score="0" Text="(+1). When you say &quot;do not think it is necessary to acknowledge the responders&quot;, do you mean that it's not necessary to acknowledge the actual individuals, or did you mean SE as a whole? (It is not really related to me because I will not even discuss this problem in the paper that it applies to. I figured out how to get the correct critical values from a recent econometrics paper that uses a simulation study)." CreationDate="2012-12-17T16:38:37.980" UserId="16811" />
  <row Id="3742" PostId="1506" Score="2" Text="@Jase I think that in this case it is not necessary to acknowledge neither the site, since this is not an authoritative source, nor the individuals, since the contribution seems to be tangential. Note that these citation or acknowledgement rules also apply in the opposite direction. This is, it is not ethical to ask to be included in a paper in which you are not deeply involved." CreationDate="2012-12-17T19:32:28.180" UserDisplayName="user10525" />
  <row Id="3744" PostId="1506" Score="3" Text="Good answer.  On general points of learning and understanding I certainly don't think you need to reference Cross-Validated, any more than we have to keep referencing that lecturer (or text book author) who finally helped us understand the concept of a (for example) difference between a distribution of a population and distribution of a statistic." CreationDate="2012-12-18T04:56:18.477" UserId="7972" />
  <row Id="3755" PostId="1508" Score="9" Text="*This makes me wonder: **should we actually care about these metrics?*** Regarding the upvotes, at least, I certainly don't (anymore). After answering about 200 questions, I find that my own assessment of the quality of my answers is only weakly correlated with the number of votes it receives. I also find that to be true for other users' answers. I think we should just continue to provide good answers and, through comments, etc., weed out bad/misleading questions/answers and if this continues to result in low votes totals/large unanswered %s, then that may just be a &quot;fact of life&quot; on CV." CreationDate="2013-01-09T15:28:56.577" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="3758" PostId="1508" Score="2" Text="I agree @macro . In particular, the number of upvotes an answer gets is highly dependent on how many people read the question and answer. This has nothing to do with how good an answer is." CreationDate="2013-01-12T22:35:18.263" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="4522" PostId="1508" Score="2" Text="+1. About the third paragraph under #1, I asked once on [MSO](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/189174/suggestion-to-include-crossvalidated-se-in-sos-off-topic-list) to include CV on the SO's off-topic list, but they denied arguing there was not enough room. And the subset on their list is not randomly chosen (at least nowadays), but according to the higher migration fluxes (according to them)." CreationDate="2013-09-03T11:54:51.157" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="3752" PostId="1510" Score="0" Text="Yes, I just read that, sorry for my sloppy reading of the page. I was just about to delete the question but I can't now that there's an answer. Please moderator-delete it (or not, if you think the question is useful). Thanks, @whuber." CreationDate="2013-01-07T14:48:12.107" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="3753" PostId="1510" Score="1" Text="I am glad you are interested in reviewing questions. I see no problem with keeping this thread open." CreationDate="2013-01-07T17:56:16.323" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3763" PostId="1511" Score="2" Text="I wasn't one of the people who voted to migrate, but I would have. I agree w/ @whuber's [comment](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/47736/#comment92837_47736) that standards have evolved. You are right that to answer this programming question deftly, the answerer would have to know what a DV is &amp; understand the data structure involved. However, you will find that the users on SO who answer R Q's are statistically savvy. Moreover, users who can answer purely R Q's here tend to also do so on SO (eg, caracal has an SO account)." CreationDate="2013-01-20T19:36:42.147" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3768" PostId="1511" Score="4" Text="I would agree with migrating this. There are two questions here, one of which is unasked. First (the unasked one), how to specify a model with two dependent variable, one between subjects variable, and two within subjects variables. That question would be appropriate for CV. Second (the one that was asked), how to transform the data to a format suitable for the aforementioned model. That is a purely programming question suitable for SO. You need to know the answer to the first to know what the second should do, but you only asked the second. The assumption is you have (but not said) the first." CreationDate="2013-01-21T04:36:30.400" UserId="5880" />
  <row Id="3769" PostId="1511" Score="0" Text="Even if I grant the argument that the example question is 'off-topic', the question remains whether it should be migrated or closed.  The question at issue here was not migrated. It was closed." CreationDate="2013-01-21T06:07:09.147" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="3770" PostId="1511" Score="1" Text="@gung: Moreover, see the above argument.  If standards have evolved, I ask for people to cite the relevant discussions on meta.  Otherwise, they have evolved silently and without community consensus." CreationDate="2013-01-21T06:08:05.633" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="3771" PostId="1511" Score="0" Text="@gung:  You seem to grant my premise that to answer this question deftly requires statistical understanding.  If you are granting that, then the question meets the criteria in the FAQ.  Therefore, you ought not vote to migrate much less close the question." CreationDate="2013-01-21T06:12:35.657" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="3772" PostId="1511" Score="0" Text="@BrianDiggs:  The question isn't about model specification despite reshape2 using formula notation.  The question is fundamentally about transforming data within a framework that is relevant to statistical analysis.  I don't know what line in the sand should be drawn between 'purely programming' and statistical analysis.  Statistical analysis is largely algorithmic.  One can easily reduce most statistical analyses to programming problems." CreationDate="2013-01-21T06:16:48.067" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="3773" PostId="1511" Score="0" Text="The only proposed standard I've seen in this discussion so far that would draw a line in the sand is @whuber's.  He now states back in the original question that &quot;one solid test (although not the only possible one) of whether a question has statistical interest would be if it could be asked in a software-independent way&quot;.  Is that really a reasonable test at all?  If so, what has happened is not an 'evolution' in the standards of CV so much as a qualitative change." CreationDate="2013-01-21T06:17:22.743" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="3780" PostId="1511" Score="0" Text="Along similar lines to the above question, consider: http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/14101/how-to-specify-labels-per-facet-in-ggplot2.  Is it now the community standard to migrate the above question?" CreationDate="2013-01-21T14:18:46.327" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="3781" PostId="1511" Score="0" Text="In fact, visualization as in the previous comment, is a great counter-example.  Per @chi in this discussion (http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1305/please-do-not-migrate-low-quality-questions): &quot;When the question has to do with statistical analysis or related techniques (including visualization when the purpose is to answer a statistical question)--as per our FAQ--it belongs here&quot;.  Is there a line somewhere between language specific data visualization and language specific data transformation that the community wants to draw?" CreationDate="2013-01-21T14:28:48.497" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="3782" PostId="1511" Score="0" Text="If you're looking for a meta discussion about the current standards for SO vs CV, it might be better to ask a new meta Q; comments are only so-so for hashing this out. Re: another of your points, I fully agree that this should have been migrated, not closed. If I had voted, it would have been to migrate." CreationDate="2013-01-21T15:59:28.060" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3783" PostId="1511" Score="1" Text="At any rate, I see a fairly clear distinction: Consider a question about how to compute a mean in C++, this requires an answerer to know what a mean is (a good [CV Q](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/23117/)), but is a *programming* Q. Your Q also requires an answerer to know some stats, but *only* to know what code to show / explain to you. The answerer doesn't need to explain what a DV or wide vs long data setups are--you don't need help w/ the statistical aspects of this issue. Moreover, most any R Q on SO will require answerers to know some stats, b/c that's what R is for." CreationDate="2013-01-21T15:59:51.647" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3784" PostId="1511" Score="0" Text="I have added http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1514/what-standard-should-be-applied-in-deciding-whether-a-question-requires-sufficie to further pursue the issue of hashing out the relevant criteria." CreationDate="2013-01-21T16:08:38.693" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="3785" PostId="1511" Score="0" Text="@gung:  I don't quite see the clear distinction you are making.  The answerer has to know some stats not only to know how to generate the answer, but also to understand the question in the first place." CreationDate="2013-01-21T16:12:10.137" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="3786" PostId="1511" Score="0" Text="I think the distinction you were trying to make was that the answer itself needs to involve statistical aspects.   One of whuber's earlier comments had a similar tone.  However, that criteria would eliminate questions like how to find specific values in given program's statistical output, e.g. 'how can I find the AIC in the output from lm in R'" CreationDate="2013-01-21T16:13:00.417" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="3787" PostId="1511" Score="0" Text="Notably @whuber's recent point (http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/48155/r-loop-for-anova-on-multiple-files#comment93626_48155) seems to be that it is more appropriate to judge a question based on the content of the question being asked rather than the nature of the possible (as yet ungenerated) answers." CreationDate="2013-01-21T16:28:58.823" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="3764" PostId="1512" Score="0" Text="Thank you for bringing this to our attention.  But what specifically is your question?" CreationDate="2013-01-20T20:18:09.517" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3765" PostId="1512" Score="0" Text="I'm mostly wondering what the story is. Based on your response, I'm guessing you didn't know about this, &amp; the SE team just decided to improve the about page. As side questions, I wonder if there should be links b/t about &amp; FAQ, b/c both will have useful info for newcomers. I'm also wondering if the old info still exists anywhere, or can be appended, just b/c I thought it was insightful about the nature of CV (albeit probably less useful for most users)." CreationDate="2013-01-20T20:41:29.520" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3766" PostId="1512" Score="0" Text="It's a system-wide change to all the &quot;About&quot; pages AFAIK.  I agree that links can help.  Mods can create links by modifying the first section of the [faq].  We can't do anything directly to change the &quot;About&quot; page." CreationDate="2013-01-20T22:14:51.433" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3790" PostId="1512" Score="0" Text="Mods can also alter the &quot;Get answers to practical, detailed questions&quot; section, @whuber." CreationDate="2013-01-21T20:30:35.960" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="3792" PostId="1512" Score="0" Text="@Aarthi I see the &quot;edit&quot; controls now: thank you for pointing this out." CreationDate="2013-01-21T21:03:07.800" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3836" PostId="1512" Score="0" Text="Another relevant post on meta: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/164778/what-should-we-put-on-our-about-page" CreationDate="2013-02-01T21:32:34.790" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3788" PostId="1514" Score="3" Text="Note that this question is related to [an answer](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1335/how-to-ask-question-related-to-the-use-of-r/1511#1511) posted to a previous question on meta, &amp; the subsequent discussion in the comments to that answer." CreationDate="2013-01-21T16:53:26.557" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4172" PostId="1515" Score="0" Text="I agree with all of the points you gathered together here.  I happen to have an SO account as well, and I it still seems insane to me that the second question I posted here was migrated to SO!  I chose to post my question *here* instead of on SO *for a reason*!  (original question http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/62866/how-can-rcmdr-r-commander-be-used-for-within-subject-aka-repeated-measures-e?noredirect=1 ; meta-question http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1640/why-was-this-question-migrated-to-stackoverflow-it-does-not-mention-programming )" CreationDate="2013-06-30T19:30:04.757" UserId="27142" />
  <row Id="4178" PostId="1515" Score="1" Text="See also: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1577/what-is-on-topic-on-cross-validated/1627#1627.  The only recourse to the continuing violation of community consensus on this point is to have members vote their conscience.  If enough people earn enough rep then they can return CV to the path that has been selected by community moderation in meta." CreationDate="2013-07-01T03:13:31.927" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="4181" PostId="1515" Score="0" Text="I had visited many questions on this issue, but I had missed the one at the link you posted.  It is great.  I am very confused, though, since &quot;On topic: Program specific questions (e.g. R, SAS, SPSS, Matlab, C++, python, etc) with any statistical content&quot; has 8 upvotes (including my +1 just now) *and* an up-voted supportive comment on that answer *by the person who moved my question*!" CreationDate="2013-07-01T16:42:42.690" UserId="27142" />
  <row Id="4192" PostId="1515" Score="1" Text="The people who are against 'programming' questions have a very nuanced position that they have not clearly articulated in a criterion by criterion breakdown where each criterion has been subjected to community review.  Part of the problem I suspect is that they don't want to be bound to any one of their criteria because they want to stay flexible... but it has lead to uncertainty regarding what is considered acceptable here with the community consensus being quite far away from the vote choices of those with enough rep to close/move/migrate questions." CreationDate="2013-07-01T23:58:40.207" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="4193" PostId="1515" Score="0" Text="Although I would say that although I find it objectionable @chi's criterion is the closest I've seen to anything clear.  I really wish it were submitted to the above referenced on/off-topic meta thread." CreationDate="2013-07-02T00:02:30.033" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="4201" PostId="1515" Score="0" Text="I am sure there is some great explanation, 'out there', about why having the same question in more than one place is such a terrible idea, but it sure would be nice if the default place to go when one has a question about *stats* is *stats.stackexchange.com*.  I think this opinion by Jeff Atwood is relevant (and possibly carries even more weight when considered inter-site instead of just intra-site):  http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/dr-strangedupe-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-duplication/" CreationDate="2013-07-02T01:51:00.300" UserId="27142" />
  <row Id="4215" PostId="1515" Score="0" Text="@A.M.: I think it is that generally people are already answering questions as a matter of their own good will and having multiple people answer it is a potential waste of time/energy/good-will.  Jeff's point is a good one, but it certainly points against the value of having the same exact question posted in multiple places." CreationDate="2013-07-03T02:57:48.227" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="4225" PostId="1515" Score="0" Text="I just want to point out that he is not just talking about variations of questions.  &quot;[...] people tend to ask and search using completely different words, and the better our coverage, the better odds people can find the answer they’re looking for. And isn’t that, really, the whole point of this exercise?&quot;  He is talking about questions differing *just by search terms* in some cases.  ...and when you throw in the use of different SE site search bars, an argument even appears, yes, for the same exact question on 2 sites.  (Different answerers being on different sites is yet another factor.)" CreationDate="2013-07-04T03:18:21.937" UserId="27142" />
  <row Id="4226" PostId="1515" Score="0" Text="I am not even advocating for that much duplication, but Jeff certainly seems to point a long way in that direction." CreationDate="2013-07-04T03:21:20.260" UserId="27142" />
  <row Id="4227" PostId="1515" Score="0" Text="It seems to suggest that rather than questions being marked as duplicate a wiki model of being marked to merge would be helpful.  Then presumably the top voted question would be the human readable version with all versions human readable if you decollapse them, but all would be machine readable and found by search engine." CreationDate="2013-07-04T12:07:32.417" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="3789" PostId="1516" Score="0" Text="Yes, mbq is completely correct -- you'll need to remove that log-in credential from your friend's account, then open up a different browser (or an &quot;incognito&quot; browser) and log in that way. As you saw, when you try to log in when someone else is already logged in, you'll end up sharing an account!" CreationDate="2013-01-21T19:53:48.360" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="3791" PostId="1517" Score="1" Text="Thanks for letting me know. Could you guys also add a link at the end to the FAQ? I saw your comment that the mods could do it to the &quot;Get answers... &quot; section, but that doesn't seem like the ideal place. Also, does the old info still exist anywhere? I suspect it may not have been very helpful for most people, but I did think it was insightful." CreationDate="2013-01-21T20:41:15.360" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3793" PostId="1517" Score="0" Text="@gung That's a conversation your community will need to have. :)" CreationDate="2013-01-21T21:31:27.320" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="3794" PostId="1517" Score="0" Text="@gung Apparently, we can also edit the foreword (&quot;Cross Validated is a question and answer site (...)&quot;). An alternative place would be the &quot;Browse new questions, or ask your own&quot; section, but this is beyond our mod privileges." CreationDate="2013-01-21T22:16:25.877" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="3795" PostId="1517" Score="0" Text="@chl, I would imagine the forward makes more sense as a place to have a brief note about the FAQ w/ a link." CreationDate="2013-01-22T14:01:42.137" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3980" PostId="1517" Score="0" Text="@gung Done (though a bit late, sorry)!" CreationDate="2013-03-11T13:03:31.007" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="3796" PostId="1518" Score="2" Text="If any of you are on the fence about attending, please consider applying for a Stack Exchange sponsorship! The procedure for doing so can be found here: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/132282/how-can-i-get-stack-exchange-to-send-me-to-a-conference/132283#132283" CreationDate="2013-01-24T22:01:10.743" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="3797" PostId="1518" Score="0" Text="@Aarthi, so does the post need to be on CV Meta or on SO Meta? I'd be happy to provide all the info you need." CreationDate="2013-01-25T02:27:05.760" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="3802" PostId="1518" Score="0" Text="Yes, in CV meta! :)" CreationDate="2013-01-25T16:05:12.997" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="3803" PostId="1518" Score="0" Text="@Aaarthi, done: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1521/jsm2013-sponsorship-proposal" CreationDate="2013-01-25T17:41:04.817" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="3821" PostId="1518" Score="0" Text="Guys, let's close this one. Or may be even delete it, since the other post I linked to is more appropriate." CreationDate="2013-01-29T00:45:21.813" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="3824" PostId="1518" Score="0" Text="Actually they have different purposes -- this one is to organize a meetup, that one is to garner support for SE to sponsor your attendance. Unless we've had a big misunderstanding?" CreationDate="2013-01-29T15:18:43.100" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="3825" PostId="1518" Score="0" Text="May be; nobody's responding to this one though." CreationDate="2013-01-29T15:20:45.637" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="3826" PostId="1518" Score="0" Text="Sometimes it just takes time -- plus, this is in August, and registration doesn't open until May. It might be that a lot of people aren't certain of their attendance yet." CreationDate="2013-01-29T15:22:16.447" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="3827" PostId="1518" Score="0" Text="Registration is open now for presenters. In fact, the presentation abstract needs to be submitted by the end of the week. So if anybody is contemplating going, they should make their minds in the next few days." CreationDate="2013-01-29T15:24:57.273" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="3804" PostId="1519" Score="0" Text="One could easily tag each of the questions under the &quot;only tag&quot; criteria with a relevant CV tag.  I suggest this is not a valid criterion." CreationDate="2013-01-27T00:28:18.790" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="3805" PostId="1519" Score="0" Text="Also, I'd note a silent creep in what has been written here.  You have written that &quot;I am not asserting that questions meeting any of these criteria automatically should be closed&quot;.  Under the discussions so far under NO CASE should any of those questions be closed.  The only appropriate response on the table for these types of questions is migration." CreationDate="2013-01-27T00:31:13.497" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="3806" PostId="1519" Score="0" Text="Questions I have asked that have received positive moderation from the community, could all have easily fun afoul for your negative criteria.  Please examine the following examples and explain how they meet or fail the second criteria you are proposing." CreationDate="2013-01-27T00:37:01.497" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="3807" PostId="1519" Score="0" Text="http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/608/how-can-one-empirically-demonstrate-in-r-which-cross-validation-methods-the-aic, &#xA;&#xA;http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/5007/how-can-i-change-the-title-of-a-legend-in-ggplot2, &#xA;&#xA;http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/4544/how-does-one-do-a-type-iii-ss-anova-in-r-with-contrast-codes, &#xA;&#xA;http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1256/how-can-one-speed-up-this-correlation-calculation-in-r-without-multicore, &#xA;&#xA;http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1256/how-can-one-speed-up-this-correlation-calculation-in-r-without-multicore" CreationDate="2013-01-27T00:37:29.233" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="3808" PostId="1519" Score="0" Text="Grammatical error on my part that I have now resolved.  I was asking for question answers which contained a single criterion.  That way each criterion could be assessed on its own merits to yield a set of criteria." CreationDate="2013-01-27T00:45:48.070" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="3810" PostId="1519" Score="0" Text="Feel free to break up your response into separate answers so they can be moderated separately." CreationDate="2013-01-27T00:52:45.890" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="3811" PostId="1519" Score="0" Text="Consider also this example: http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/48520/interpreting-result-of-k-means-clustering-in-r" CreationDate="2013-01-27T04:11:24.253" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="3964" PostId="1519" Score="0" Text="If you want to clarify your criteria by including the recent case http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/51443/spsswhile-performing-ancova-i-get-a-warning-large-number-of-columns-may-cause?noredirect=1#comment101034_51443 feel free.  In doing so, please square your response with your comment here http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/48155/r-loop-for-anova-on-multiple-files#comment93626_48155 that says that judgements must be made on the basis of the question itself, not the possible answers." CreationDate="2013-03-08T15:42:46.027" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="3965" PostId="1519" Score="0" Text="That comment is consistent with my answer, @Russell, and adds nothing new concerning these criteria: It was based on my understanding of the question and not on reading any answer." CreationDate="2013-03-08T15:59:05.950" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3798" PostId="1520" Score="0" Text="Related to: [Is it possible to give yourself reputation points?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/1294/930)" CreationDate="2013-01-25T09:58:32.357" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="3799" PostId="1520" Score="0" Text="@chl thanks for the link ... there does not seem to be a yes or a no - right?" CreationDate="2013-01-25T11:21:31.197" UserId="12147" />
  <row Id="3800" PostId="1520" Score="3" Text="Here is what I answered to a [related request](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/47692/analyse-unbalanced-repeated-measures-2x2x2x2-type-ii-anova-interactions#comment92985_47692)." CreationDate="2013-01-25T13:10:17.613" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="3801" PostId="1520" Score="1" Text="You're not the first [to do this](http://stats.stackexchange.com/a/46880)." CreationDate="2013-01-25T14:46:49.920" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3816" PostId="1521" Score="0" Text="Looks good! :) I'll let this &quot;simmer&quot; here for a few more days before I have you email the team for review." CreationDate="2013-01-28T15:55:24.720" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="3817" PostId="1521" Score="1" Text="Well, with the level of activity of our community, it has to be &quot;few more weeks&quot; or even &quot;few more months&quot; :). If I am the only one going, it won't make sense to set up a social gathering of one." CreationDate="2013-01-28T16:17:15.157" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="3854" PostId="1521" Score="0" Text="Why not, at least you'll have someone you like to talk to ;)" CreationDate="2013-02-06T00:08:07.100" UserId="8413" />
  <row Id="3848" PostId="1522" Score="0" Text="I hope to be able to attend, but I am not yet sure if my schedule will allow for it." CreationDate="2013-02-03T03:46:25.603" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3812" PostId="1524" Score="0" Text="Your first off-topic example is great.  I worry about the other two RTFM ones.  For example, http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/5007/how-can-i-change-the-title-of-a-legend-in-ggplot2 is RTFM but has been highly moderated.  Your example &quot;Boxplots using ggplot2&quot; is just a bad question.  Too many layers and too specific.  The &quot;is it possible&quot; one seems on-topic to me.  You are suggesting it is off-topic because it is RTFM?" CreationDate="2013-01-27T23:22:52.397" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="3813" PostId="1524" Score="2" Text="@drknexus The first example indeed is not really a problem. The Stata question is really bad: The OP hasn't specified which Stata command was used and I only see a technical question about Stata programming. Note that I am not using &quot;RTFM&quot; in a pejorative manner, but those are often questions that show little research effort from the asker. (...)" CreationDate="2013-01-28T11:37:12.070" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="3814" PostId="1524" Score="1" Text="(...) Questions about the use of legend parameter in a statistical package, or anything else which is about the tool itself (here, `ggplot`) but does not directly serve the purpose of data visualization to answer a specific statistical question (e.g., how to best represent variation of x and y conditional on z given that z is discrete and observed on a subset of cases for this particular statistical model?), are off-topic according to the above criterion. (...)" CreationDate="2013-01-28T11:41:30.067" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="3815" PostId="1524" Score="1" Text="(...) *Sidenote*: Your question on `ggplot` was posted at the beginning of CV life, and it was a model of a well-formulated question (as are most of your Qs, btw), although I personally found it was OT. You may remember that at that time we were also trying to define good standards for posting Q&amp;As." CreationDate="2013-01-28T11:42:09.317" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="3818" PostId="1524" Score="0" Text="I guess to even see how bad the Stata question is, one would have to know Stata (which I do not).  Maybe I'm not tracking something, but it seems like the real problem with the two RTFM examples that they showed insufficient research on the part of the question asker... not that they are inherently OT.  Although I see in the case of the ggplot example, I can see that you are saying that you think they are now OT for CV." CreationDate="2013-01-28T19:44:28.607" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="3819" PostId="1524" Score="0" Text="Can you explain the distinction between the ggplot question and http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/27400/logistic-regression-grouped-and-ungrouped-variables-using-r?  The later is being used as an example of on-topic, but seems to distill down to an RTFM issue.  The title of the question itself specifies 'in R' but the body of the question doesn't reiterate that point.  Is it on topic simply because it doesn't hit the reader over the head with the specificity of the domain of the question?" CreationDate="2013-01-28T19:53:20.380" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="3820" PostId="1524" Score="1" Text="@drknexus Re: RTFM questions -- no, the problem is not much the lack of research effort than the absence of any statistical perspective behind the question, in my view. Re: grouped vs. case-wise data -- I think it has some statistical interest (ML estimates are identical in both cases, but the analysis of residuals or assessment of goodness-of-fit can differ). Moreover, some software do not require to explicitly code negative (0) cases. I'm afraid I may have failed to highlight this distinction in my answer: in fact, there's no real need to transform the grouped data to individual level data." CreationDate="2013-01-28T22:12:32.397" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="3831" PostId="1524" Score="0" Text="Which takes us back to an earlier point.  The things you just listed are characteristics of possible answers, not inherent in the question itself." CreationDate="2013-01-29T20:02:20.817" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="3832" PostId="1524" Score="0" Text="@drknexus I'm not sure I follow your point. The criterion I proposed applies to question content and in my earlier replies to your request for clarification I think I discussed the why and how those questions do not require much than the use of a particular tool regardless of a background statistical question. The last example includes &quot;How could the same model be build using grouped data?&quot;. I feel that this is enough of a statistical question, but I may be wrong and I would be happy to hear about your thoughts on that point." CreationDate="2013-01-29T22:27:08.203" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="3833" PostId="1524" Score="0" Text="I've created a [chat room](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/7309/whether-a-question-requires-sufficient-statistical-expertise-or-not) for further discussion. If anybody want to join, let us know." CreationDate="2013-01-29T22:27:14.817" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="3823" PostId="1525" Score="1" Text="Sorry if this is a bad question, I asked it in good faith.  Could someone quickly comment to explain to me what I did wrong?  Is this explained somewhere else?" CreationDate="2013-01-29T15:03:06.487" UserId="19879" />
  <row Id="3828" PostId="1525" Score="0" Text="From the Meta FAQ: &quot;Voting here works a bit differently from the main site. On Meta, voting is often used to express agreement or disagreement, not to point out a lack of quality or helpfulness. Please don't be concerned if you receive downvotes – members of the community may simply disagree with your bug, feature request, support issue, or the nature of the discussion.&quot;" CreationDate="2013-01-29T16:33:47.327" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="3829" PostId="1525" Score="3" Text="I think it's a sensible idea in general.  After all if you're searching for topic X, answers about X could be just as useful to you as questions about X. But R in particular should be an exception or everything would end up getting tagged with 'R'." CreationDate="2013-01-29T16:47:08.503" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="3830" PostId="1525" Score="0" Text="Ok thanks @Scortchi, that makes me feel better! Yes I see the point about R, it would get silly. For more specific topics though, such as if someone has a problem, and the answer suggests using a GLM, then that could get tagged GLM, even though the initial question didn't mention this." CreationDate="2013-01-29T16:59:48.787" UserId="19879" />
  <row Id="3835" PostId="1525" Score="2" Text="Scortchi, nearly everything is tagged R. I am considered an R expert by the community, even though the last time I actually ran it was in November. I think the move often suggested in the comments on the main site is to tag the specific R package, such as `lmer` for `mixed-model`, for instance." CreationDate="2013-01-31T20:02:09.540" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="3949" PostId="1525" Score="0" Text="Since I asked this a while back, and now something has prompted me to want an answer, I've created three CW answers to see if we can get a poll going." CreationDate="2013-03-05T16:55:02.077" UserId="19879" />
  <row Id="3955" PostId="1525" Score="3" Text="I can't find it now, but I recall this was discussed a couple of years ago: the conclusion was that tags *should* reflect acceptable answers.  I don't think a vote is appropriate because questions about how tags function are primarily site-wide; for consistency, this should be addressed on meta rather than here." CreationDate="2013-03-06T22:03:17.187" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3959" PostId="1525" Score="0" Text="Ok, cool. Do you want to write that as an answer, then I'll flag it as accept and delete the other answers?" CreationDate="2013-03-07T06:45:45.887" UserId="19879" />
  <row Id="3960" PostId="1525" Score="0" Text="I assume when you say meta, you mean stack exchange meta. I'm not sure it obvious that all SE sites would use the same conventions for tags given the diversity of content." CreationDate="2013-03-07T06:48:12.903" UserId="19879" />
  <row Id="3966" PostId="1525" Score="0" Text="@whuber, sorry realised I didn't tag you in my comment reply, so you wouldn't have seen." CreationDate="2013-03-08T21:45:04.493" UserId="19879" />
  <row Id="13970" PostId="1525" Score="0" Text="https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2618/3277 is a similar question" CreationDate="2017-08-06T09:35:00.807" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="13971" PostId="1525" Score="0" Text="https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/4373/3277 is a similar question" CreationDate="2017-08-06T09:37:04.410" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="3834" PostId="1526" Score="0" Text="Thanks for the note, @chl." CreationDate="2013-01-30T04:07:52.873" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="3837" PostId="1527" Score="3" Text="I answered my own question simply to separate my opinion from the issue itself, hope that's ok.  I'd be really interested to see if people think differently (clearly some people MUST think type C questions should be tagged R - the people that asked them!)" CreationDate="2013-02-02T12:12:43.770" UserId="19879" />
  <row Id="3838" PostId="1530" Score="0" Text="Thanks, I understand what you are saying, but I don't think it's completely off-topic here as it may be a statistical problem to do with the data itself rather than a programming problem. I have tried emailing him before, but didn't get any response. He seems happy to comment on the problem in the comments on the unrelated question on CV. Is it a crazy idea to migrate it here and hope to get his input and later migrate it back to SO if it turns out to be a programming problem ? ;)" CreationDate="2013-02-02T15:36:27.293" UserId="7486" />
  <row Id="3839" PostId="1530" Score="0" Text="Robert, it all depends on what the question is. The one you reference very clearly is off topic here and on topic at SE, because it asks for `R` techniques to diagnose a crash. If you do have evidence that this is data-related and can introduce additional information about exactly how the data might be causing such a problem, you might be able to put the question in a statistical manner, which would make it on-topic here." CreationDate="2013-02-02T17:20:35.517" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3840" PostId="1530" Score="0" Text="@whuber I do have evidence that it is data related in the sense that it crashes with certain subsets of the data and not with others (I think I mentioned that in the post) and I am working on generating small enough anonymised datasets that can be posted [related question: is there a recommended way to host data which is too big to use dput() ?].  Also, I wasn't specifically asking for R techniques to diagnose the crash - just generally &quot;how can I diagnose the problem&quot;." CreationDate="2013-02-02T17:39:02.413" UserId="7486" />
  <row Id="3841" PostId="1530" Score="0" Text="In this case it is difficult to separate the `R` programming issues with diagnosis from any statistical issues. What statistical techniques of diagnosis might you have in mind?" CreationDate="2013-02-02T17:40:58.407" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3842" PostId="1530" Score="0" Text="@whuber possibly issues to do with small cluster sizes and/or specifying the predictor matrix (off the top of my head) but I was hoping Steph van Buuren would be able to weigh in. To be honest it doesn't seem to be a problem with R programming because it runs fine with exactly the same code (and data structure) on other subsets of the data." CreationDate="2013-02-02T17:46:04.317" UserId="7486" />
  <row Id="3843" PostId="1530" Score="0" Text="I see you're getting somewhere interesting, but how are we supposed to help with this if you don't make these concerns explicit in your question and unless you provide sample data?" CreationDate="2013-02-02T18:00:20.070" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3844" PostId="1530" Score="0" Text="@whuber I am going to attempt to provide sample data shortly in a major edit to the question. The problem is that it's far to big to use `dput()` - is it OK to host it externaly ? I fear that if I cut it down so far that I can use `dput()` (that is assuming it still crashes on such a small dataset) it won't be representative of the actual data. I have now managed to obtain a small-ish sample (~2800 obs on 17 vars) which still crashes and I just need to completely anonymise/jitter it." CreationDate="2013-02-02T18:18:56.793" UserId="7486" />
  <row Id="3845" PostId="1530" Score="0" Text="Yes, hosting externally is a good idea." CreationDate="2013-02-02T18:28:55.237" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3847" PostId="1530" Score="0" Text="@whuber OK - done... hope it's an improvement..." CreationDate="2013-02-02T19:37:49.100" UserId="7486" />
  <row Id="3849" PostId="1533" Score="1" Text="There is a site for questions about how SE behaves in general: its [meta](http://meta.stackoverflow.com) pages.  There, this question is asked and answered: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/66140/whats-the-justification-for-the-commenting-reputation-requirement.  (Finding this thread was not so easy; [Google](https://www.google.com/search?q=comment+reputation+site%3Ameta.stackoverflow.com) came to the rescue.)  In your case, please see [Anna Lear's solution](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/94389/166924) for increasing your reputation enough to comment." CreationDate="2013-02-03T16:58:50.907" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3850" PostId="1533" Score="0" Text="Thanks whuber.  I wasn't sure whether the policy was different at different SE sites, since I hadn't experienced this before now." CreationDate="2013-02-03T17:20:48.523" UserId="19960" />
  <row Id="3851" PostId="1533" Score="2" Text="That's a good point about the possibility of differing policies.  Reputation thresholds are not under the control of individual sites. If there are any differences--and I'm not aware of any at all--they must be rare and specific to the needs of particular sites: one would hope that these are documented in those sites' faq or &quot;about&quot; pages.  BTW, closing your question is in no way prejudicial: I hope the closing (with its references to the Meta site) has provided quick and useful answers for you, as well as a new resource for use when similar questions arise in the future." CreationDate="2013-02-03T17:41:52.567" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3852" PostId="1533" Score="3" Text="I can definitely empathize with your frustration. At least on this site, it leads to some of the most common need for moderator intervention (i.e., converting answers to comments). That said, one *very* good argument for the status quo is that any question or answer that's added causes the post to pop to the top of the *active* list. That puts eyeballs on it and makes it easy to catch counterproductive behavior and general site misuse. If new users could comment everywhere, nefarious ones could cause great damage that might go unnoticed for much longer." CreationDate="2013-02-03T21:21:10.860" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3853" PostId="1535" Score="0" Text="Thanks gung; I wouldn't mind the question being CW'd, so long as it has a chance of being answered." CreationDate="2013-02-05T03:43:13.647" UserId="20463" />
  <row Id="3855" PostId="1536" Score="0" Text="It would be better for you to edit. Have you tried [looking in chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/18/ten-fold) to see if anyone could help you improve your question?" CreationDate="2013-02-06T15:14:16.660" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="3856" PostId="1536" Score="1" Text="Don't delete your answer, and don't necessarily give up at that point. It looks like you already received some feedback on your question, which suggests that it probably has some interest." CreationDate="2013-02-06T15:50:33.547" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="3857" PostId="1536" Score="0" Text="I have an answer half-written.  The problem in completing it is that your question is indeed vague, so I have to spend a lot of time making and explaining assumptions." CreationDate="2013-02-06T16:37:14.890" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3858" PostId="1536" Score="0" Text="Thank you all just so much! I currently am in the suggested chat room, where I could hopefully answer questions to what I want - in layman's terms." CreationDate="2013-02-06T16:45:33.803" UserId="20267" />
  <row Id="3861" PostId="1537" Score="0" Text="My opinion: #2 is easier to read and answer. Plus it will force you to clarify the problem and possibly better understand it." CreationDate="2013-02-08T15:27:11.060" UserId="18578" />
  <row Id="3859" PostId="1538" Score="4" Text="**Related**: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1492/improvement-drive-cross-validated" CreationDate="2013-02-07T18:00:28.277" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3860" PostId="1538" Score="1" Text="**Also Related** http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1365/cross-validated-voting-improvement-and-community-development?lq=1" CreationDate="2013-02-08T08:57:49.900" UserId="19879" />
  <row Id="4232" PostId="1538" Score="9" Text="I thought I'd leave my 2 cents here as a relatively new CV user.  When I ask questions on CV, I try to be conscientious about doing my homework first.  However, I have had a pretty frustrating time with posting questions on CV -- of my 7 questions, 4 have received no answers or answers that are either not useful (no upvotes) or only tangentially useful (they are relevant to the general topic, but not the specific question).  Perhaps my questions are too specific to be easily answered, but I feel like I'm using CV as intended to a somewhat frustrating result." CreationDate="2013-07-04T15:50:57.153" UserId="11091" />
  <row Id="8298" PostId="1538" Score="0" Text="&quot;Has anyone else noticed that we are 5th from bottom with an answer rate of only 76%&quot; &lt;-- Where is the link to see that break down? ie Is this from a public page or based on personal analysis?  I'm not disputing it, I'm merely curious, and think it would greatly add to the question.  This is especially true if it was a public page that showed the break-down over time." CreationDate="2015-09-21T23:22:32.543" UserId="89026" />
  <row Id="8310" PostId="1538" Score="0" Text="If you click on [any site here](http://stackexchange.com/sites#) you can see their answer rate." CreationDate="2015-09-22T17:41:39.560" UserId="89026" />
  <row Id="8698" PostId="1538" Score="1" Text="Answer rate is 62%, this doesn't seem to be getting better..." CreationDate="2015-11-28T19:50:33.410" UserId="60822" />
  <row Id="9650" PostId="1538" Score="2" Text="I think we need to reward more the answers than the questions, eg by giving twice the reputation points to answers (or half the points to questions)." CreationDate="2016-03-30T14:37:39.647" UserId="107799" />
  <row Id="14326" PostId="1538" Score="4" Text="One of the issues I've noticed growing in all SE sites, CrossValidated especially, is that there is often a huge discrepancy between the technical proficiency the asker demonstrates and the level required to understand a proper, precise answer. It is pretty demoralizing to spend time on an answer then be indefensibly framed for &quot;overcomplicating things and using too much technical language&quot; There also seems to be a deficit of people willing to answer theoretical statistical questions versus questions about technique. I don't remember SE being like this 3 years ago. Maybe the platform is dying." CreationDate="2017-09-30T10:28:41.363" UserId="10461" />
  <row Id="3862" PostId="1540" Score="1" Text="+1 because you are probably right, but wow that's depressing!" CreationDate="2013-02-10T00:13:38.567" UserId="19879" />
  <row Id="3879" PostId="1540" Score="2" Text="Whether or not these speculations are true, they do not seem to distinguish CV from any other SE site and therefore do not explain the low answered question rate." CreationDate="2013-02-14T23:27:35.550" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3880" PostId="1540" Score="1" Text="@whuber: I think what distinguishes CV from other SE sites is the proportion of users like myself journeymen level understanding of the topic (like myself).  My impression of SO is that it is overrun by journeymen.  Here, there don't seem to be very many consistently active journeymen.  However, I haven't been active on the site myself consistently, so perhaps I am incorrect on this point." CreationDate="2013-02-15T01:37:38.087" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="3881" PostId="1540" Score="2" Text="More charitably, look at our nice/good/great answer/question ratio and compare it to SO.  Maybe what is really going on is that the best questions that are asked on this site have no good answer.  We are theoretical as much as we are practical.  Where as on SO the good questions tend to be practical with practical answers.  Perhaps our benchmark should not be SO... but one of the other SE sites in the Science subsection?" CreationDate="2013-02-15T09:27:55.577" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="3905" PostId="1540" Score="2" Text="Is there a way (for mods or similar) to see if there is a disproportionate number of new users, or once-off users, on CV compared to other SE sites?" CreationDate="2013-02-19T16:48:34.127" UserId="12446" />
  <row Id="11157" PostId="1540" Score="1" Text="Novices often ask questions in a novice way and experts just close them as &quot;not clear enough&quot; or something similar, although it's possible to guess what the novice is asking - even sometimes answered questions where the OP has accepted the answer (or at least said that that was what he asked) are closed. Answerable closed questions account just for an small part of unanswered questions, but they add to the number." CreationDate="2016-10-17T18:32:20.950" UserId="123561" />
  <row Id="3863" PostId="1541" Score="2" Text="But two thirds of that is solvable.  For duplicate questions, they should be flagged and closed.  For poorly worded questions, we should edit and improve.  That just leaves a set of seriously hard unanswered questions which makes us look awesome compared to SO :-)" CreationDate="2013-02-11T06:49:56.587" UserId="19879" />
  <row Id="3885" PostId="1541" Score="2" Text="@Corone: you are, technically, correct with your comment. But, the fact is, there is not much effort on this site placed on eliminating duplicates. A vast majority of closed questions are closed because they are off topic or not a real question but even some of our veteran members do not put effort into eliminating duplicates (or just have a very stringent definition of &quot;duplicate&quot; that almost no questions meet) and will either ignore them altogether or will, even worse (IMO), happily answer near-duplicates, giving, effectively, the exact same answer to several questions." CreationDate="2013-02-15T15:00:52.320" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="3886" PostId="1541" Score="2" Text="Analogously, there is relatively little effort put into cleaning up sloppy questions (e.g. poorly worded questions and/or questions with vague titles like &quot;A question about probability&quot;) and some veteran users of the site will, similarly, either ignore or answer such questions without seeking clarification. Handling these problems would require an overhaul of how askers AND answerers interact with the site which, unfortunately, seems like a pretty intractable problem that would require more than a few people's effort to solve and is, incidentally, why I've grown disenchanted with the site." CreationDate="2013-02-15T15:01:08.200" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="3887" PostId="1541" Score="0" Text="So I will take this then as a vote for being more ruthless with the suggesting questions are closed..." CreationDate="2013-02-15T15:32:49.497" UserId="19879" />
  <row Id="3888" PostId="1541" Score="2" Text="I prefer to think of it as sensible rather than ruthless. From your choice of words, I assume you disagree with me. I'll just suggest that you do a search of some of the more &quot;basic&quot; tags (like `logistic` or `anova`) and have a look at some of the non-closed questions that are there. E.g. [this question](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/49093/anova-results-do-not-match-post-hoc-tukey-test-how-to-proceed) and [this one](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/16665/how-can-i-get-a-significant-overall-anova-but-no-significant-pairwise-difference)." CreationDate="2013-02-15T15:52:19.443" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="3892" PostId="1541" Score="0" Text="No I totally agree with you @Macro. I'm trying to find the balance between trying ti save every question and binning every old question. Ruthless wasn't meant negatively, perhaps boldly would be better?" CreationDate="2013-02-17T16:37:26.367" UserId="19879" />
  <row Id="3894" PostId="1541" Score="3" Text="@Macro, I'm sorry to hear you've grown disenchanted with CV; I just figured you had graduated &amp; gotten a position. I certainly agree that there's more room for using comments to prompt readers towards existing high-quality answers to similar Q's--I do a bit of that &amp; perhaps I could do even more. On occasion, I directly ask if there is anything more to their Q beyond what's covered at the link (perhaps I could do more of that as well). However, I do think that there will always be a tension b/t our goal of being a Q &amp; A site that's helpful for people, &amp; a permanent store of stats info." CreationDate="2013-02-17T21:41:36.740" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3895" PostId="1541" Score="3" Text="EG, (just to pick out 1 issue) stats novices often can't seem to recognize that an existing answer isn't also the answer to their Q, w/o it being couched in the terms of their particular example, &amp; w/o some back &amp; forth in comments. This isn't particular to stats--it's difficult for novices in any field to differentiate the deeper logical structure of a situation from the superficial details in which it manifests. In cases like this, the inability of new users to comment also contributes to the dynamic." CreationDate="2013-02-17T21:47:23.850" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3896" PostId="1541" Score="3" Text="I have flagged a number of 'answers' that asked the same Q as posted w/ a minor change in detail. Each time, I left a comment directing them to ask a new Q. What do you think should be done? I think it will be unavoidable to end up with a site with a very skewed distribution (perhaps $\chi^2, df=1$ ;-) where most Q's have few votes &amp; views, but some emerge from the process to rise above &amp; the linking helps them. My analogy would be that there are huge #'s of papers published each year, most of which sink w/o creating a ripple, but from this level of research ferment, real progress is made." CreationDate="2013-02-17T21:53:58.930" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3864" PostId="1542" Score="4" Text="Related questions, http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/1303/1036 and http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/1190/1036. The answer is no, and pings are local to a particular comment thread (and chat room with recent participation from the user). I suspect it is more clearly laid out somewhere else (probably on SO.meta would be a good place to check)." CreationDate="2013-02-11T12:27:37.410" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="3865" PostId="1543" Score="2" Text="Succinctly stated and well-put." CreationDate="2013-02-11T19:36:47.067" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="3877" PostId="1543" Score="13" Text="Can I get myself's attention by doing @StephaneLaurent ?" CreationDate="2013-02-13T18:14:30.307" UserId="8402" />
  <row Id="3878" PostId="1543" Score="13" Text="Answer: no. :-)" CreationDate="2013-02-13T18:15:17.050" UserId="8402" />
  <row Id="3931" PostId="1543" Score="3" Text="@StéphaneLaurent: I think the *real* test is to try your first comment again, now that you've actually participated in the comment stream. Of course, it's all to satisfy idle curiosity. :-)" CreationDate="2013-03-01T15:01:23.203" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3943" PostId="1543" Score="5" Text="@StéphaneLaurent I am impressed by the success of your comment" CreationDate="2013-03-03T19:04:05.277" UserId="8402" />
  <row Id="3944" PostId="1543" Score="3" Text="@cardinal Same result: no notification :)" CreationDate="2013-03-03T19:09:18.673" UserId="8402" />
  <row Id="3866" PostId="1544" Score="0" Text="Totally agree with your point about packages." CreationDate="2013-02-11T23:23:33.543" UserId="19879" />
  <row Id="3867" PostId="1544" Score="2" Text="Given the current 'anti-R' sentiment associated with rampant migration of (what I consider to be) on-topic questions, it doesn't make sense to have package specific tags.  If sentiment changes as the number of 4k+ karma users increases, then it might be worth re-opening the discussion." CreationDate="2013-02-12T15:45:46.290" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="3868" PostId="1544" Score="0" Text="As a precursor to that (hopefully) future discussion, I'll say that if a package is required in the example, it makes sense to tag it even if the solution turns out to not be a problem with the package itself.  In short, tags should reflect the question, not the answer." CreationDate="2013-02-12T15:51:11.997" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="3869" PostId="1544" Score="0" Text="The misuse of &quot;survey&quot; versus &quot;survey-package&quot; can be sorted out by admins and experience.  Questions should be tagged with both R-relevant and statistical-technique relevant tags.  So I'm not worried about overly granular approaches.  I agree there are a lot of R packages, but quite a few are large enough to warrant their own tag." CreationDate="2013-02-12T15:51:27.660" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="3870" PostId="1546" Score="2" Text="What about the syntax highlighting that comes along with the R tag though?" CreationDate="2013-02-12T23:22:14.550" UserId="19879" />
  <row Id="3871" PostId="1546" Score="0" Text="Hm. I was not aware of syntax highlighting. Can you point to an example?" CreationDate="2013-02-13T00:01:59.873" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="3872" PostId="1546" Score="0" Text="See:  http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/33917/19879 compared to http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/10943/19879" CreationDate="2013-02-13T00:06:12.903" UserId="19879" />
  <row Id="3873" PostId="1546" Score="1" Text="Hm. Once again, was not aware. However, using a tag to achieve syntax highlighting is a bad smell, speaking in computer science terms: it uses a (poorly documented) backdoor functionality that a function produces for some other reason. Syntax highlighting should be a checkbox that the user could check when posting the question. Or define `r-syntax-highlight` tag for this purpose specifically if needed; `r` is too general. I imagine nobody bothered defining syntax highlighting for Stata or SAS." CreationDate="2013-02-13T00:10:13.003" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="3874" PostId="1546" Score="1" Text="I guess this is carried over from SO where most languages have their own highlighting schemes linked to tags. Probably makes a lot more sense on SO" CreationDate="2013-02-13T07:35:16.467" UserId="19879" />
  <row Id="3875" PostId="1546" Score="0" Text="+1 I agree (and to be frank who gives a crap about syntax highlighting here). The current `r` tag is used so indiscriminately it is near worthless. I think at this point I would personally prefer to ban all of the stat software tags here. You can just use the generic search to replace them if needed." CreationDate="2013-02-13T13:56:41.630" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="3889" PostId="1547" Score="2" Text="Is it so obvious to users that they should upvote good answers? I agree that maybe part of it is just not realizing that you should upvote an answer.  We could perhaps test this by looking at the &quot;homework&quot; tag to see if these are particularly likely not to be upvvoted, since these seem to be particuarly likely to come from new visitors to the site." CreationDate="2013-02-16T22:19:36.860" UserId="3919" />
  <row Id="3890" PostId="1547" Score="5" Text="@zbicyclist I'm not particularly concerned about up-votes from third parties.  I'd guess those are more a function of who else passes by looking for an answer to the question, and there are probably fewer passers by when the question is formulated in terms of a very specific research problem (however general the underlying issue).  Rather, it's when the person who asks the question doesn't comment or accept any answer. That's what indicates to me either a lack of site understanding or regrettable instrumentality." CreationDate="2013-02-17T11:06:57.583" UserId="1739" />
  <row Id="3891" PostId="1547" Score="0" Text="@zbicyclist btw I do agree that the desirability of thinking about up-voting an answer you like is not obvious." CreationDate="2013-02-17T11:12:08.747" UserId="1739" />
  <row Id="3903" PostId="1547" Score="2" Text="On most other SE sites, it's customary to leave a comment under the OP's question or one of the answers (if the OP has indicated it solves his problem) saying that they can mark the correct answer as accepted." CreationDate="2013-02-19T16:44:50.073" UserId="12446" />
  <row Id="3893" PostId="1549" Score="3" Text="I'm not convinced we want the mods to accept answers, but I do agree that old Q's w/o answers should probably be closed &amp; possibly even deleted (+1). I certainly appreciate that @Corone has taken that task upon himself." CreationDate="2013-02-17T21:30:32.070" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3898" PostId="1549" Score="7" Text="(1) Moderators do not have the ability to force acceptances on questions. Corone has recently been posting replies that reproduce apparent answers that appeared in comments: this is a good way to tidy up such threads and to force the issue.  (2) A good way to bring attention to bad questions, in order to clean them up, is to vote to close them." CreationDate="2013-02-18T00:19:28.213" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3900" PostId="1549" Score="3" Text="Actually i have given this some though. I really think that the problem is that there is a large number of instances were the OP ask his/her question and then disappears. Now some of these questions are really interesting and, over time, do elicit genuinely good answers. At some point, we should have a threshold of inattention beyond which we consider that an OP has simply relinquished his/her right on the question." CreationDate="2013-02-18T10:21:41.847" UserId="603" />
  <row Id="3901" PostId="1549" Score="4" Text="That's a reasonable position, but why should the 'right to the question' then be inherited by the *moderators*? (NB, none of this is meant to cast aspersions--I like our mods &amp; trust their judgment.) It's not clear that those Q's by right belong to anybody. Of course, the mods can upvote an existing (unvoted) answer, but they already have that right &amp; so does everyone else; accepting seems like a different issue. I'm fine with having a portion of Q's here that don't have accepted answers (nb in many cases, I have answers that seem to have been helpful, but aren't accepted)." CreationDate="2013-02-18T21:54:50.487" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3906" PostId="1549" Score="7" Text="Genuinely bad questions should be closed, but many are reasonable questions that have just been abandoned by the OP. Other users with the same problem will still appreciate the answers even if none of them have been accepted." CreationDate="2013-02-19T16:50:44.220" UserId="12446" />
  <row Id="3912" PostId="1549" Score="1" Text="@user603 I've taken that view in a couple of places with varying success.  This question: http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/13468/19879 I rewrote to make it answerable and then answered, which seemed to be met with approval.  This one was more controversial: http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/5268/19879 and remains unanswered :-(" CreationDate="2013-02-21T18:10:35.740" UserId="19879" />
  <row Id="3897" PostId="1550" Score="27" Text="+1 You have clearly articulated many aspects of CV that I suspect are familiar to any expert who has ever spent much time here." CreationDate="2013-02-18T00:16:30.817" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3899" PostId="1550" Score="1" Text="Awesome answer." CreationDate="2013-02-18T09:57:59.303" UserId="7972" />
  <row Id="3904" PostId="1550" Score="0" Text="So there are issues with how the question is asked as well as the voting pattern in general on the site. The problem then becomes how to address those issues, but that might be better addressed in separate meta questions." CreationDate="2013-02-19T16:46:43.130" UserId="12446" />
  <row Id="3908" PostId="1550" Score="2" Text="To some extent my point was that at least to some extent a lower rate is to be anticipated simply by the nature of the way the discipline of statistics arises - that even if we address any shortcomings we have (and no doubt there are some things we should address; there will always be things that could be done better, or at least different things to try that might help), we may still end up with a relatively low rate." CreationDate="2013-02-19T21:38:49.577" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6720" PostId="1550" Score="0" Text="You write: &quot;using a fairly demanding set of ideas with very little background in it&quot;. Can you elaborate on what you mean by &quot;very little background in it&quot;?" CreationDate="2015-03-24T20:10:47.173" UserId="7008" />
  <row Id="6722" PostId="1550" Score="3" Text="@Faheem I'm referring to people working in an area that requires them to use statistics but which at best may give them only a fairly cursory background in it - a semester or two - taught by people who themselves have only similar training, and using books written by people from the same area, sometimes themselves with only a littl more knowledge of stats - but where the issues they encounter require far better understandanding. We often have people come here and lament the lack of background they've been given for the task at hand, and my experience in person is similar. ... (ctd)" CreationDate="2015-03-24T20:50:02.223" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6723" PostId="1550" Score="2" Text="(ctd) ... For example, if I wanted to know something important about ecology or psychology or geology say, I usually wouldn't start with a book written by a statistician, in a subject taught by statisticians with only a small exposure to the subject they're teaching. That's not universally the case, of course -- many people working and teaching in these other areas *are* genuinely knowledgeable statisticians as well, and their books and courses are well taught and well organized. We see many examples of these exemplars here on site and I can name many more (and I use some of their books)...ctd" CreationDate="2015-03-24T20:53:00.623" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6724" PostId="1550" Score="1" Text="ctd ... however, those people are not where they problems I discuss originate. For every good text I've seen several weak or even bad ones and for every good set of out-of-subject-area course notes I've seen many very poor ones ... and I've helped very large numbers of people face to face and on-line who were not given the background they need for the work they're required to undertake." CreationDate="2015-03-24T20:57:15.413" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6726" PostId="1550" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b yes, statistical illiteracy is a major scientific and social problem. I haven't see that much of it myself, but I know it exists." CreationDate="2015-03-24T21:01:53.690" UserId="7008" />
  <row Id="6888" PostId="1550" Score="0" Text="&quot;it's especially keen to generate questions&quot;. Did you mean to use the word &quot;keen&quot; here? If so, I'm not sure what you mean by it." CreationDate="2015-04-20T00:00:13.177" UserId="7008" />
  <row Id="6889" PostId="1550" Score="0" Text="@FaheemMitha It was a deliberate metaphor, but possibly not a well-chosen one. I wondered whether it might trip anybody at the time, but since nobody seemed bothered, I left it (I'm imparting motive to something without motives; that could be misleading). I'll replace the word with another." CreationDate="2015-04-20T03:03:19.640" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10681" PostId="1550" Score="0" Text="&quot;an issue I address in another question&quot; - was there supposed to be a link here?" CreationDate="2016-09-07T00:03:38.970" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10682" PostId="1550" Score="0" Text="I was going to then thought meh... likely nobody cares. I added it now" CreationDate="2016-09-07T01:27:32.023" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10767" PostId="1550" Score="0" Text="To what extent does CV have input to how the Stack Exchange infrastructure works? For example, your idea that &quot;Yes, that's correct&quot; feels too trivial to do makes me want &quot;Yes&quot; and &quot;No&quot; buttons on a question that we can simply click on to upvote. Then somehow let an OP &quot;accept&quot; the Yes (or No) answer and count it as answered. Similarly, what about a mechanism that after two months automatically accepts the answer with the highest number of votes? (Mark it with a different color checkmark to distinguish this mechanism from an actual OP-accepted answer.)" CreationDate="2016-09-14T21:19:48.067" UserId="1764" />
  <row Id="10771" PostId="1550" Score="0" Text="@Wayne A question about the extent to which the sites (or the people using them) influence things might be a suitable question for meta. In short, StackExchange employees do read our meta (and not infrequently, briefly respond). As issues are raised that could potentially result in some change to our site (e.g. some cosmetic change), or all sites (e.g. finding a bug), they will add a suitable tag (such as `status-declined` for changes that won't be implemented). It's common to raise issues that would affect all sites on `meta.stackexchange.com`. ... I have raised a number of issues there" CreationDate="2016-09-14T23:49:15.350" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10772" PostId="1550" Score="0" Text="@Wayne however, search first, because any idea you're likely to come up with has probably been posted there already, not once but 4 or 5 times. [On the &quot;auto-accept answers with most upvotes&quot; issue -- that''s been raised here before (and on meta.SE many times). On the questions where &quot;Yes&quot; could be an answer issue I *suspect* that the consensus on meta.SE might tend to be that a question that doesn't admit a fuller response than &quot;Yes, that's right&quot; is not a real question and we should probably be closing them -- we tend to be more tolerant on a variety of fronts than many of the network sites]" CreationDate="2016-09-14T23:55:56.603" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="3909" PostId="1551" Score="1" Text="Here's a start: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/53585/how-do-favorite-questions-work." CreationDate="2013-02-19T21:40:16.533" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3910" PostId="1551" Score="4" Text="This is not a complete answer, but to see which favorited question had a change, sort your favorites tab by &quot;activity&quot; and that should prove helpful." CreationDate="2013-02-19T22:29:16.507" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="3911" PostId="1552" Score="4" Text="Thank you for your answer - I think a lot of SE sites have &quot;answerers&quot; and &quot;askers&quot;, so it is really good to hear an asker's opinion.  If you get a chance I think it would be really helpful to chat more in the Dig Site chat room - in particular get your opinion on some of the old questions I have posted up.  Also would be really nice if you could post some of your old questions that you felt you had difficulty getting good answers at the time." CreationDate="2013-02-21T18:01:16.643" UserId="19879" />
  <row Id="3913" PostId="1552" Score="6" Text="Of course I agree that being overly coarse or technical in an answer does not facilitate teaching. That being said, there are many times when it is difficult/impossible to answer a question without being technical. If the &quot;asker&quot; doesn't have the background to understand the answer, there's nothing the &quot;answerer&quot; can do about that. But, I do agree that, if the &quot;asker&quot; doesn't understand the answer then there's no basis for voting at all. P.S., I'd be curious what fields you've had good experiences with asking highly technical questions to experts without any communication problems at all...." CreationDate="2013-02-21T18:21:45.723" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="3914" PostId="1552" Score="9" Text="I appreciate these comments (especially the last paragraph, which is on the mark despite its psychological snarkiness). However, after a quick review of the questions you have asked on our site that do not have accepted answers, I would respectfully suggest you also look inwards a little and reflect on whether *your* use of terminology and mathematical abstractions, as well as some of your defensive reactions to requests for clarification, might be contributing to the communications difficulties you refer to." CreationDate="2013-02-21T18:42:12.987" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3916" PostId="1552" Score="0" Text="@Marco I agree with you to a certain degree, but I don't everyone here actually pays attention to how they express their ideas/thoughts. As for the fields; I'd like to claim that my understanding of math, programming and biology are all around the same level as statistics; just to name a few academic fields... Otherwise sports, graphics design, hardware, photography... well, even literature is a field I can easily discuss with people that have much more knowledge than what I have. Not statistics... :(" CreationDate="2013-02-22T11:02:05.797" UserId="3014" />
  <row Id="3917" PostId="1552" Score="8" Text="@whuber I apologize for being a bit too snarky, I wouldn't want to come across as I am antagonizing anyone. As for your remark, without a doubt I am also to blame. Miscommunication is a two-way issue, and I am working on that, trying to phrase myself better. I believe my latter questions are somewhat better phrased than earlier ones, and I hope to improve on that." CreationDate="2013-02-22T11:04:01.783" UserId="3014" />
  <row Id="3918" PostId="1552" Score="4" Text="I think it can sometimes be the case that people try too hard with statistics.  The easiest questions to answer well are often &quot;I have this data, I want to answer this research question, what do I do?&quot; then followed by their thoughts on what they should do.  Often times the first bit is missing and only the thoughts (often very detailed and deep) on what they should do are there - this leads to problems because statistics is crucially dependent on context." CreationDate="2013-02-22T11:34:05.657" UserId="19879" />
  <row Id="3919" PostId="1552" Score="0" Text="I do find myself doing the same with programming questions though - I sometime ask &quot;why doesn't this work&quot; rather than &quot;how do I do this&quot;, and get similar problems..." CreationDate="2013-02-22T11:35:55.997" UserId="19879" />
  <row Id="10768" PostId="1552" Score="2" Text="+1. At the same time I've increasingly wanted to answer certain questions with &quot;You really, really should not be doing any analysis/prediction at this point. It's obvious you haven't researched the basics of what you're attempting to do: you just installed R or found a function in Excel and are using it without the slightest comprehension of what you're actually doing. Please, please find a MOOC or something!&quot; Not meant as condescending, but being honest: I feel like if I answer their specific question, I'd be an accomplice in how their totally misunderstood analysis will be mis-used." CreationDate="2016-09-14T21:27:32.837" UserId="1764" />
  <row Id="3920" PostId="1553" Score="4" Text="Have you read the &quot;advanced search tips&quot; available from any search page? One option it provides is a search by minimum answer count, as in [answers:1](http://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=answers%3A1)." CreationDate="2013-02-22T15:05:42.030" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3923" PostId="1553" Score="4" Text="That's great - thanks. Just one thing: you only get to know that advanced search via tags is available when you search in the regular search box. Perhaps there should be a link next to the regular search box to info about the tags." CreationDate="2013-02-24T11:57:54.843" UserId="20639" />
  <row Id="3921" PostId="1555" Score="0" Text="Although I have proffered an answer to my own question, others should feel free to provide their own answers. Alternatively, if anyone disagrees w/ something here, or thinks something needs to be added, they should feel free to edit this to make the changes (or comment &amp; I can make the changes, if they're less comfortable editing directly). My point here is to get something that reflects some welcoming initial advice for new users that the community feels comfortable standing behind, so it shouldn't simply reflect my opinions." CreationDate="2013-02-22T18:57:59.283" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3922" PostId="1555" Score="9" Text="+1 Nice contribution, thank you! Tip: when I'm new to an SE site, I spend a few minutes looking through the first page of users (listed by all-time reputation). I am looking for high *reputation per answer* (factoring in the fact that some users have high rep because they're great question *askers*, which is independently of interest). These are the people I want to follow. *E.g.*, if you do that here on CV, @Cardinal will emerge as an astonishingly high outlier. This is a person who carefully chooses where to contribute, always has something valuable to add, and writes quality answers." CreationDate="2013-02-22T19:15:07.157" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3933" PostId="1555" Score="2" Text="We must also not forget that without very high-quality contributors able to answer questions in higher volume (like, you, gung, and many others), this site would not be as active or nearly as successful as it is. :-)" CreationDate="2013-03-01T15:12:05.377" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3934" PostId="1555" Score="0" Text="(+1) to the answer, and, @whuber, you are too kind. Your comment is also interesting to me in that I have made no conscious effort to &quot;optimize&quot; this quantity. We occasionally get fascinating questions (at all levels of sophistication); these are the ones I most enjoy reading and are, hence, the ones I'm most likely to answer in the limited time I have. The fact that these questions are (usually) easily recognized as interesting probably means that any answer I post ends up having somewhat higher average exposure." CreationDate="2013-03-01T15:21:18.967" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3924" PostId="1557" Score="1" Text="Just for the record, although I agree with you, the official stance of SE is that meta-tags are to be discouraged: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/" CreationDate="2013-02-24T15:51:08.230" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="3926" PostId="1557" Score="3" Text="@drknexus It wouldn't be the first time I've disagreed with official SE stances on things. And for CV, I think Homework is less a &quot;meta-tag&quot; and more a &quot;context-tag&quot;." CreationDate="2013-02-25T04:28:35.383" UserId="5836" />
  <row Id="3925" PostId="1558" Score="5" Text="I think your point about typical CV answers going beyond the minimum is a really good one. Certainly when answering I always feel like &quot;Yes&quot; or &quot;2.5&quot; are insufficient, &amp; I ought to try to provide the OP w/ some understanding as well as an answer ('teach them to fish... ' &amp; all that). I agree w/ @EpiGrad &amp; I'm for keeping the tag, but that's the 1st argument that I've seen that I find compelling for removing the tag." CreationDate="2013-02-25T04:19:31.860" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3935" PostId="1561" Score="2" Text="Mods have easy access to *daily* activity measurements. They exhibit strong weekly fluctuations, as you might expect, as well as large seasonal fluctuations clearly tied to major holidays and school schedules. Without digging into the API, though, I cannot readily tell you anything about diurnal fluctuations. In looking over these charts, one thing is striking: our site has experienced an unprecedented, sudden fourfold leap in &quot;feedback by low rep/anon users&quot; starting February 12. There has been no concomitant change in other metrics." CreationDate="2013-03-01T19:48:28.053" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3936" PostId="1561" Score="0" Text="What counts as &quot;feedback by low rep/anon users&quot;?" CreationDate="2013-03-01T19:49:52.833" UserId="19879" />
  <row Id="3937" PostId="1561" Score="1" Text="I don't know precisely.  I have noticed that when I log in anonymously from another computer, I have no privileges to vote, comment, etc., but there are tools beneath questions and answers inviting me to indicate whether or not I found them helpful.  I presume this metric is tallying such responses." CreationDate="2013-03-01T19:53:02.743" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3938" PostId="1561" Score="1" Text="Hmm.. interesting - I wonder what effect those tools have?  Strange that it started now - part way through academic year.  Maybe Stats courses get hard at this point :-)" CreationDate="2013-03-01T20:03:00.867" UserId="19879" />
  <row Id="3939" PostId="1561" Score="1" Text="There was no similar jump at this time last year. (Smaller jumps in overall activity when semesters begin and exams begin can indeed be detected year after year.) The sudden increase in low rep feedback--it's around an extra 60 per day--could be accounted for by a single large class somewhere or a single good Web link, I suppose." CreationDate="2013-03-01T21:25:32.170" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3940" PostId="1561" Score="1" Text="That in intriguing, @whuber. What happens w/ that information? Does it get incorporated into votes somehow? Do mods or the SE team do something w/ it?" CreationDate="2013-03-01T22:07:22.220" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3941" PostId="1561" Score="0" Text="@Gung I understand the SE team looks at these low-rep feedback stats, with the eventual aim of perhaps using them to improve the site.  The low-rep feedback is relatively new (about a year old or so).  The only indication mods have gotten so far is this ability to chart these statistics; they don't seem to show up anywhere else." CreationDate="2013-03-01T22:11:46.317" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3986" PostId="1561" Score="1" Text="@whuber &quot;Feedback from anonymous users&quot; is collected when an anonymous user votes on a question either up or down. Moderators and top users have access to that information [here](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/tools/post-feedback). This was NOT how this information used to be collected -- we changed it from the &quot;Did you find this useful YES NO&quot; collection style (see Google Support pages for an example) that we used to use. By changing the collection style, we found we were getting MORE feedback." CreationDate="2013-03-11T21:59:38.493" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="3987" PostId="1561" Score="0" Text="Corone: It might not just be students/pros -- there's a likely change it's also linked to geography. Perhaps European students are asking quesions mostly in the US &quot;morning&quot; while East Asian and/or Russian respondents are providing answers during *their* morning, which looks like &quot;evening&quot; from a US standpoint. As a global site, there are other potential causalities. (This is the part where I jokingly tell you to start adding dummy vars to your regression. :P )" CreationDate="2013-03-11T22:01:55.823" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="3990" PostId="1561" Score="0" Text="Thanks, @Aarthi. I still don't see any links there from the [moderator tools page](http://stats.stackexchange.com/tools).  Am I just overlooking them?  BTW, did you change your collection style about a month ago?  That's when the sites I moderate experienced a 3-4 fold jump in responses." CreationDate="2013-03-11T22:26:05.573" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3991" PostId="1561" Score="1" Text="@whuber Yes to the second question; to the first, it's not a mod tool link -- it's actually linked from /review! Click on `review` in the topnav, then click `tools` underneath the CV logo, then scroll to the bottom and you'll see a anon feedback link." CreationDate="2013-03-11T22:29:16.890" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="4003" PostId="1561" Score="0" Text="@Aarthi: How come anon users get to vote up and down? I had to wait ages to get that previlage! :)" CreationDate="2013-03-15T18:09:55.583" UserId="21072" />
  <row Id="4004" PostId="1561" Score="0" Text="@curious_cat Hahaha, it's just how we collect anon feedback! No scores affected, just to be clear. :D" CreationDate="2013-03-15T18:19:44.290" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="4005" PostId="1561" Score="0" Text="@Aarthi: Whew! Thanks. :)" CreationDate="2013-03-15T18:22:01.267" UserId="21072" />
  <row Id="3945" PostId="1562" Score="6" Text="+1 Nice suggestion." CreationDate="2013-03-03T22:01:37.503" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="8338" PostId="1562" Score="1" Text="+1 exactly my logic" CreationDate="2015-09-26T12:40:40.220" UserId="67799" />
  <row Id="3948" PostId="1564" Score="0" Text="I've retagged some of those, but in some the GMM part comes in the answer, not the question, and sometimes not the accepted answer.  I'm not sure what consensus is on this, I asked about it once before, but no answer was found: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/1525/19879" CreationDate="2013-03-05T16:45:29.987" UserId="19879" />
  <row Id="3954" PostId="1564" Score="0" Text="@gung makes an excellent point, but I don't really know enough about GMM to write a tag wiki.  Can you write it or give us a summary we can use?" CreationDate="2013-03-05T19:40:10.030" UserId="19879" />
  <row Id="3956" PostId="1564" Score="1" Text="I wrote the tag wiki and it is now placed in the queue for review." CreationDate="2013-03-07T02:17:41.910" UserId="10598" />
  <row Id="3946" PostId="1565" Score="0" Text="I added some examples to the original question" CreationDate="2013-03-05T16:38:14.063" UserId="10598" />
  <row Id="3947" PostId="1565" Score="1" Text="A growth-mixture-model would be a special case of a growth-model. The former tries to identify multiple latent populations in the data, whereas the latter assumes a single population that can be approximated by a single growth function." CreationDate="2013-03-05T16:39:11.473" UserId="10598" />
  <row Id="3950" PostId="1565" Score="3" Text="Yes GMM is a bit of a loaded acronym. It could also mean [generalized method of moments](http://stats.stackexchange.com/a/506/1036)." CreationDate="2013-03-05T19:11:42.637" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="3951" PostId="1565" Score="0" Text="I don't necessarily have a problem with your having added a new tag, but please create at least a tag wiki excerpt to guide users on its application." CreationDate="2013-03-05T19:30:45.990" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3976" PostId="1566" Score="0" Text="I've marked this as accepted based on @whuber 's comment above" CreationDate="2013-03-11T09:06:01.960" UserId="19879" />
  <row Id="3952" PostId="1567" Score="2" Text="I don't think the accepted answer should be considered the only answer that counts, in general. While I don't necessarily think that every two sentence answer should influence the tags used, there are often very good, notable answers in addition to the accepted 1. I think sometimes the accepted answer is middling, &amp; some of the other answers are much better &amp; should be give precedence in assessing the value of the thread &amp; how it should be tagged." CreationDate="2013-03-05T19:36:26.027" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3953" PostId="1568" Score="5" Text="There is certainly a limit to how much influence the answers should have, but I don't agree that only the question matters." CreationDate="2013-03-05T19:38:22.560" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="3957" PostId="1569" Score="6" Text="(+1) I think I am stealing this idea from someone else here on meta, but I can't seem to locate it at the moment: I think we should suggest remapping [tag:homework] to a &quot;friendlier&quot; synonym like &quot;self-study&quot; or &quot;exercise&quot; and editors should feel free to add it whenever it looks like it fits. I think the current tag wiki for [tag:homework] is great and personally see no problem with editors adding it without needing to comment. Remapping it so that it appears in the &quot;softer&quot; form also should reduce the instances of responses of the form &quot;but it's not *my* homework!&quot;." CreationDate="2013-03-07T02:31:06.293" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3958" PostId="1569" Score="0" Text="I believe that this retagging without commenting already happens on many occasions, that it should be encouraged, and I even mentioned it recently [here](http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/8608/proper-use-of-the-homework-tag-redux#comment29104_8614)." CreationDate="2013-03-07T02:31:30.707" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3961" PostId="1569" Score="0" Text="I'm more inclined to be helpful with a homework-level question if the person asking has taken the trouble to tag it as homework." CreationDate="2013-03-07T08:18:44.440" UserId="11981" />
  <row Id="3962" PostId="1569" Score="1" Text="@whuber: Oh! I [stole](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1459/the-homework-tag-and-homework-policy#comment3623_1459) it from **you**! Ah, the irony..." CreationDate="2013-03-07T14:30:06.103" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3972" PostId="1569" Score="1" Text="To be honest, I detest the change of making homework a synonym of self-study. Not only does it incorrectly describe what is under discussion, but the mapping of homework to self study has lost the useful description of how to avoid ruining the value of assigned homework. As an educator I find this quite disturbing and as a regular answerer I find it annoying. I think much of value has been lost. Questions that were plainly homework I could happily answer when tagged - if more briefly, while downvoting and ignoring homework not so tagged. I think untagged homework has no place here." CreationDate="2013-03-11T05:19:00.440" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="3975" PostId="1569" Score="0" Text="At the very least, please restore the bulk of the tag wiki information that has been lost. I'd do it myself if I could see how." CreationDate="2013-03-11T07:51:01.450" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="3977" PostId="1569" Score="2" Text="@Glen_b, you can actually still get to the homework tag wiki (albeit in a slightly fortuitous manner). If you type in a search for &quot;homework&quot; on the [tags page](http://stats.stackexchange.com/tags), and then hit edit for the tag you can [get to the previous wiki](http://stats.stackexchange.com/edit-tag-wiki/552). I would be ok with a copy-paste of it all, it only needs slight editing to make sense for the new self-study tag (e.g. `Don't edit a question to add the homework tag.`)." CreationDate="2013-03-11T12:36:49.003" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="3978" PostId="1569" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b: I don't quite understand your argument in the first comment. I think the intent of the tag, whether it is called *homework* or *self-study* is the same: To provide hints and guidance *without* ruining the value of assigned homework. In fact, that was the intent of the original *homework* tag and it was used much more broadly than a strict interpretation of homework. I found that a *good* thing! For one thing, it has insulated us from an outlandish amount of potential drama (see the math site if you want to see what can result) and also from being overrun by such questions." CreationDate="2013-03-11T13:02:41.007" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3979" PostId="1569" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b: I *completely* agree that the tag wiki for *homework* should be moved to *self-study* (sans the part about editing to the add the tag, as Andy mentions). I'm sure that was the intent; it was likely just an oversight. :)" CreationDate="2013-03-11T13:03:20.367" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3981" PostId="1569" Score="0" Text="@Glen I added the `self-study` tag provisionally and it currently is a synonym for `homework`.  Nothing has been lost.  I appreciate everyone's comments about the change. But please note Cardinal's response: he is correct in that the `homework` tag has *always* included self-study situations. But I have read a different intent behind it: it is not our duty, nor can it ever be, to distinguish homework problems assigned in courses from all other questions. The issue for us is that homework-like questions have a different *nature* than other questions and need different kinds of answers." CreationDate="2013-03-11T15:07:04.723" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3982" PostId="1569" Score="0" Text="@whuber: I think our interpretations of the intent of the tag are more similar than may have appeared in my comment, due to poor wording on my part. I intended something more along the lines of: *To provide hints and guidance on questions of this type without ruining the value of assigned homework for those questions that actually do come from such assignments.* That is still quite clunky wording; you've stated how I generally view this matter better than I've managed to myself. :-)" CreationDate="2013-03-11T16:42:52.877" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3983" PostId="1569" Score="0" Text="@whuber Perhaps I misinterpreted what was happening in discussing a question yesterday. I'll investigate to see whether it's my understanding that was the problem. Short version - I wanted to explain to someone why I wasn't just 'answering the question' they had (and was giving hints to try to lead them there instead) by putting the homework tag on their question (in part so they could read it; their discussion made it clear it was homework), but couldn't (because self-study was there). When I tried to just *find* the homework tag, I couldn't seem to do that either. Maybe I screwed up." CreationDate="2013-03-11T21:15:48.553" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="3984" PostId="1569" Score="0" Text="I don't think it's necessarily you, @Glen_b: the synonym mechanism does not work very well on SE, IMHO. But I just checked and had no problem finding the `homework` tag through the search control at http://stats.stackexchange.com/tags and (as a test) when I started to ask a new question on the site and started to type &quot;homew...&quot; in the Tags control, the `homework` tag popped right up." CreationDate="2013-03-11T21:18:40.423" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3985" PostId="1569" Score="0" Text="Yeah, I found it just now myself, and came back to say so - but something has definitely been 'lost', in a pretty obvious sense. If I post a homework question, I literally cannot add the tag even if I want to, and the `self-study` tag says *nothing*. Much of the exhortation and advice in the `homework` tag is especially useful guidance and I'd like to edit a lot of that in to the `self-study` tag. To what extent is that appropriate? Hang on, I'll post it as a question. edit - on second thought clearly several comments indicate that's the intent, so I will do it." CreationDate="2013-03-11T21:44:23.430" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="3988" PostId="1569" Score="2" Text="Okay, I've now adapted the `homework` tag information into the `self-study` tag, mostly by tweaking the wording (it won't show up until its approved). In a couple of places the word 'homework' remains, because those parts explicitly refer to it being okay to post homework. I took the opportunity to clean it up a little as well (it needed a couple of edits). Please check it's okay!" CreationDate="2013-03-11T22:05:31.173" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="3989" PostId="1569" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b Very nice work: thank you for your dedication and the quality of your effort!" CreationDate="2013-03-11T22:22:52.687" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="3963" PostId="1570" Score="0" Text="No worries - the growth-mixture-model tag has been added instead..." CreationDate="2013-03-07T15:49:59.030" UserId="10598" />
  <row Id="3967" PostId="1571" Score="7" Text="(+1) To a great question. I wouldn't normally suggest this, but you might consider posting a modified version of this question to the [academia.SE](http://academia.stackexchange.com) main site. You might make it slightly less SE-centric (though mentioning it as a special case). There are some very thoughtful CS researchers active on that site, so you might even get a more specialized response. If you do post such a question, please provide cross-links in both places." CreationDate="2013-03-09T18:42:22.760" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3992" PostId="1571" Score="0" Text="I have very little experience in reviewing papers. Would it be inappropriate to just say to the editor something like &quot;I have doubts about the validity of X, but my knowledge of statistics is insufficient to say for sure&quot;?" CreationDate="2013-03-13T08:31:27.893" UserId="3835" />
  <row Id="3993" PostId="1571" Score="0" Text="@mark999 I don't think it would be inappropriate, but I would be wary the concerns might just be brushed aside and, if they were justified, the paper be published with incorrect and misleading stats. Most stats in my area of CS are woefully inadequate, as neither authors, not reviewers, nor editors, seem to have the necessary statistical background to do them right. Therefore, unless you can back up your concerns with cold, hard facts, I wouldn't expect the editor to reject a paper because one reviewer thinks they might have gotten something wrong." CreationDate="2013-03-13T17:59:58.997" UserId="12446" />
  <row Id="3994" PostId="1571" Score="0" Text="@ThomasH Thanks for your reply." CreationDate="2013-03-13T19:30:32.097" UserId="3835" />
  <row Id="5589" PostId="1571" Score="0" Text="Here is a question that does what you propose: http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/14416/as-a-reviewer-can-i-justify-requesting-data-and-code-be-made-available-even-if" CreationDate="2014-04-08T21:53:13.670" UserId="1381" />
  <row Id="3971" PostId="1572" Score="2" Text="Thanks for your insights and suggestions. Confidentiality is my main concern in this. I was only thinking of posing a general question (e.g. &quot;I thought test X is inappropriate with a statistical design Y&quot;) but since I am trying to &quot;ask in the negative&quot;, so to speak, I wasn't sure if that type of question is ok on CV without giving some motivation as to why I'd be asking." CreationDate="2013-03-09T21:07:49.010" UserId="12446" />
  <row Id="3969" PostId="1573" Score="4" Text="(+1) I wholeheartedly agree that generally applicable questions like the one you give as an example are acceptable, on-topic and interesting. If it can be done in this manner, that's great. I suspect many such questions would be hard to abstract out appropriately without losing important context, though." CreationDate="2013-03-09T18:48:05.930" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="3970" PostId="1573" Score="1" Text="@Matt Your example is precisely the kind of question I had in mind - general applicability of statistical procedures in certain contexts. As it is, I had to already submit the review and noted my statistical concerns, which I had confirmed through general web searches. But, in this kind of situation in general, I would like to substantiate my review with a statistical reference as, in my area (general computer science), proper statistical knowledge is usually missing, even among reviewers, and I would rather point authors in the right direction than just telling them they're wrong." CreationDate="2013-03-09T21:02:19.837" UserId="12446" />
  <row Id="3974" PostId="1573" Score="0" Text="@Cardinal: Glad you agree! I'm not sure about the question quality. On the one hand, I'd hope that people far enough in their career to referee manuscripts could also put together a solid question (vs, say, a college freshman asking for help with Stats 101). On the other hand, the peer review process is so rarely full of pleasant surprises :-/" CreationDate="2013-03-11T06:57:22.217" UserId="7250" />
  <row Id="3996" PostId="1575" Score="1" Text="Migrated version: http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/52172/obtaining-distribution-of-numbers" CreationDate="2013-03-14T08:40:48.000" UserId="6226" />
  <row Id="3995" PostId="1576" Score="0" Text="Okay, since there doesn't seem to be another opinion (yet), I'll migrate it over and let you guys deal with it." CreationDate="2013-03-14T08:36:36.407" UserId="6226" />
  <row Id="3997" PostId="1576" Score="0" Text="Or per current trends they might be closed as off-topic if like OPs example they are entirely computationally platform specific without general interest." CreationDate="2013-03-14T16:04:38.633" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="3998" PostId="1576" Score="0" Text="They also should tend to be closed as being *too localized*." CreationDate="2013-03-14T16:04:54.467" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="3999" PostId="1576" Score="1" Text="@Russell (*et al.*) I think we would have a stronger case for closing most such questions if we could point to one or two exemplary threads in which general principles and methods of fitting distributions are discussed with reasonable thoroughness. Any nominations?" CreationDate="2013-03-14T16:45:39.290" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4000" PostId="1576" Score="0" Text="@whuber: I offer http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1577/what-is-on-topic-on-cross-validated as place where such evidence may be accumulated and discussed." CreationDate="2013-03-14T19:38:06.783" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="4001" PostId="1576" Score="0" Text="@Russell Thanks, but that does not address my question. I am not looking for a compendium of closing criteria; I am looking for a *resource* to which we may honorably point people when we claim their questions already have adequate answers." CreationDate="2013-03-14T19:50:29.093" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4002" PostId="1576" Score="0" Text="Could not the compendium of closing criterion easily contain such a resource?" CreationDate="2013-03-14T19:51:38.717" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="4006" PostId="1576" Score="1" Text="@Russell I suppose it could be co-opted for such a use. But I was thinking of it as being organized by *question* rather than be &quot;closing criteria&quot; and as being focused on offering solutions rather than excuses.  A thread about closing criteria does not, on the face of it, seem question-oriented." CreationDate="2013-03-15T18:51:12.067" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="14834" PostId="1577" Score="0" Text="@Stephan Do you think this list of Qs is helpful in this thread? One can as well link to the [meta-tag:on-topic] tag which by now has over 100 threads. If you think this thread should be maintained as a useful resource (I am not sure about that actually; it's a bit old), then maybe we could edit the Q to shorten/simplify it quite drastically." CreationDate="2017-11-22T12:11:54.483" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14835" PostId="1577" Score="0" Text="I think a central repository for what is and what isn't on-topic makes sense. 100 questions in the on-topic tag are a bit too many, especially since some of those questions are very specific. So yes, I think this question should be kept and maybe edited." CreationDate="2017-11-22T12:16:54.163" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="14836" PostId="1577" Score="0" Text="@StephanKolassa I did not mean listing all 119 threads in this question. I meant removing the list altogether and simply linking to the tag." CreationDate="2017-11-22T13:43:09.357" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14837" PostId="1577" Score="0" Text="@amoeba: that makes sense, if we keep the answers below that summarize &quot;general&quot; guidelines on what is on-topic." CreationDate="2017-11-22T14:39:34.637" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="14840" PostId="1577" Score="0" Text="@amoeba As the original author of the post I'd be pro shortening up the question.  In particular the examples were topical at the time, but are now dated.  I do think the thread should be maintained as a useful resource, unless there is another thread that does as good a job of expressing clear standards as voted for by the community.  In fact, unless there is a better candidate, it probably should be linked to from the 'on-topic tag'." CreationDate="2017-11-22T18:18:26.850" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="14841" PostId="1577" Score="0" Text="I'd also be pro clarifying that this question is only a form of community guidance and that official policy as crafted by the mods is in another location (and providing the link)." CreationDate="2017-11-22T18:22:20.020" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="4007" PostId="1579" Score="0" Text="(By the way, did you notice [the meta thread I posted](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1554/how-should-a-new-user-navigate-cross-validated-to-learn-more-about-statistics) that was inspired by your last meta-Q? That might help you to navigate CV. Enjoy!)" CreationDate="2013-03-18T03:21:54.573" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4010" PostId="1579" Score="0" Text="Yes, I did - very helpful in negotiating the highways and byways of CV!" CreationDate="2013-03-18T18:41:33.213" UserId="20639" />
  <row Id="4008" PostId="1580" Score="0" Text="Using _'+answers:1'_ in the search box works a treat - many thanks for that.&#xA;&#xA;However - when I open up the main Tags page and click on the Regression tag, I get the URL http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/regression - ie, a static URL. And there is no _advanced search options_ link showing.&#xA;&#xA;If enter _[regression]_ in any old search box, I get the same result.   &#xA;&#xA;Am I doing it wrong?" CreationDate="2013-03-18T18:33:40.677" UserId="20639" />
  <row Id="4009" PostId="1580" Score="0" Text="Oops - hadn't realised HTML doesn't work in comments... Fixed" CreationDate="2013-03-18T18:34:28.133" UserId="20639" />
  <row Id="4011" PostId="1580" Score="0" Text="Entering `[regression]` in a search field is fine; you're not doing anything wrong there." CreationDate="2013-03-18T18:47:59.390" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4012" PostId="1580" Score="0" Text="But - it brings up the page with the static URL and no 'advanced search options link'. So you can't filter for answered questions. The only way to do that (that I've found) is to add '+answers:1' to your other search terms in the initial search (as you suggested). Which is OK if you're 'in the know' or if you've read this page through, but not otherwise!" CreationDate="2013-03-19T13:30:02.203" UserId="20639" />
  <row Id="4013" PostId="1582" Score="4" Text="The editing facilities can be abused, which is the reason this is in place (by my understanding). After 10 edits by the first author, the post is automatically converted to CW. Other than flagging and requesting that the CW status be reverted, [here is an alternative approach](http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/q/4666/7003) if you think your edits are going to be copious and spread out over many sessions." CreationDate="2013-03-24T02:39:56.720" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="4014" PostId="1582" Score="14" Text="It's little trouble to respond to flags to &quot;please unwiki this&quot;--it doesn't take any thought and shouldn't be considered bothering the moderators.  I think I can speak for all moderators everywhere when I say we appreciate efforts like yours to enhance and improve answers." CreationDate="2013-03-24T02:47:45.613" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4015" PostId="1582" Score="1" Text="To answer the question posed in the title (and not all of the subsequent ones, which is why I'm only posting a comment) - my opinion is **Yes**. If each of the edits are constructive and are not obvious gimmicks to bump the question, then I see no value in having an automatic cap on the number of edits allowed before you stop earning reputation. If there is clear &quot;nuisance&quot; editing occurring, it should be flagged for moderator attention." CreationDate="2013-03-24T05:15:01.633" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4016" PostId="1582" Score="3" Text="I'm sympathetic to this; I certainly appreciate people's having put some time and effort into making answers on CV great. That is what will make CV a valuable resource. I didn't know it was possible to 'unwiki' an answer, but I vote that it should be done when answers were edited constructively. I will say that I find this a bit curious, though. I've put some effort into several of my answers, &amp; I don't think I've ever had an answer made CW except by me or b/c the thread is." CreationDate="2013-03-24T05:47:06.987" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4017" PostId="1582" Score="1" Text="@gung It takes quite a lot of edits. I've worked on making as few edits as I can, but on some questions, over a couple of days I still seem to be hitting it." CreationDate="2013-03-24T08:15:18.973" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4018" PostId="1582" Score="2" Text="By the way, this automatic conversion has never happened to me, but in several instances (on this site and others) I've flagged the answers of other users that have had their posts converted and have asked that the CW be removed. The moderators have always obliged (quickly)." CreationDate="2013-03-24T13:06:27.820" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="4019" PostId="1582" Score="2" Text="@cardinal I've never had anything but speedy responses from moderators on any issue. That is not among my worries, at least. Thanks for all your useful pointers and comments." CreationDate="2013-03-24T21:18:26.170" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="22694" PostId="1582" Score="0" Text="I was going to write a meta question about this, then found this thread. Is it still a good practice to flag answers that seem to be regular answers but have been made community wiki by their authors? I just came across another example and flagged it; but have wondered about this before. It doesn't happen very often." CreationDate="2024-01-21T16:33:26.013" UserId="237901" />
  <row Id="22696" PostId="1582" Score="1" Text="Much more rarely now than was once the case. I don't think it's happened to me in ages, and I take less care than I did at the time of this post to try to avoid small edits. This question may be effectively outdated by the changes to the way the site works." CreationDate="2024-01-21T23:56:22.193" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="22716" PostId="1582" Score="0" Text="Yes, the flag was declined. I just realized how to look up the moderator's feedback to the flags I raise. Here is the response about that particular flag: &quot;The OP chose to make it CW, which is always an option.&quot; Will keep it in mind." CreationDate="2024-01-25T07:19:03.497" UserId="237901" />
  <row Id="4020" PostId="1583" Score="4" Text="Try: i) purge the browsing history, ii) clean the cache and temporary file, and iii) clear form auto-fill data." CreationDate="2013-03-25T12:16:37.533" UserId="13047" />
  <row Id="4021" PostId="1583" Score="0" Text="Yes @Penguin_Knight this should be good enough to give as answer. Also see this question, not quite the same, but advice transfers, http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/1513/1036." CreationDate="2013-03-25T17:00:24.150" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="4022" PostId="1583" Score="2" Text="Have you signed *them* out of whatever service they use to log into SE? For example, if they log into SE with Google, have you logged them out of Google?" CreationDate="2013-03-25T21:38:46.043" UserId="5373" />
  <row Id="4029" PostId="1584" Score="3" Text="(+1 -- why the -1?!) I'll second @whuber's comment about CW flags: they do not bother me, and I always appreciate users concerned with the quality of their answers, and those who clearly demonstrate they are attentive to others' requests." CreationDate="2013-04-02T21:35:09.803" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="5513" PostId="1584" Score="1" Text="here is a [the answer to the question &quot;Is there a way to remove community wiki status?&quot; on meta.stackoverflow](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2974/is-there-a-way-to-remove-community-wiki-status/83373#83373)" CreationDate="2014-03-23T13:26:35.547" UserId="25936" />
  <row Id="8903" PostId="1589" Score="0" Text="Hi @ttnphns! I am looking through the old [tag-synonyms] threads on meta and I came across this old post of yours. The situation has changed since you posted this question and currently [classification-tree], [decision-trees], and [tree] -- **all of them are synonyms of [cart]** which is the master tag (with almost 500 questions). Do you think it's okay to leave it like that, or would you still suggest that some other tag should be the master tag? Which one then?" CreationDate="2015-12-15T14:49:07.487" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8904" PostId="1589" Score="1" Text="@amoeba, `cart` or `crt`  is OK for me _because_ it is `classification/regression tree`. I just wanted to say that the _abbrebiation_ `CART` historically stood for a specific algorithm only." CreationDate="2015-12-15T15:04:25.020" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="8905" PostId="1589" Score="0" Text="I see. Perhaps in this case consider accepting gung's answer to make this thread visually appear as resolved. I found it because I was looking through the meta [tag-synonyms] threads without an accepted answer..." CreationDate="2015-12-15T15:14:04.867" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="4042" PostId="1590" Score="0" Text="Well, perhaps you find it excessively broad. Then, maybe, create a senior tag 'classification-regression-tree'? Instead of 'cart'. It is that last _acronym_ that makes me frown, because historically it is associated with CART (or CRT) algorithm by _Breiman et al. 1984. Classification and Regression&#xA;Trees_. This algo is just a particular method. CHAID tree method by _Kass, G. 1980. An exploratory technique for investigating large quantities of categorical data_ appeared even earlier." CreationDate="2013-04-15T16:10:24.570" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="4043" PostId="1590" Score="1" Text="P.S. or, alternatively, recognize 'classification-tree' as the senior tag. After all, the tree is splitting into subgroups, i.e. it is always a (hierarchical) _classification_." CreationDate="2013-04-15T16:38:48.840" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="4044" PostId="1591" Score="0" Text="It is better to avoid arcronyms as tags altogether! And not to submit to &quot;salient category becoming generic label&quot; phenomenon when possible. I see you don't agree with me, but my opinion is there: &quot;classification-tree' (if not 'decision-tree') in place of 'cart'. [Also, 'principal-components' for 'pca', 'anaysis-of-variance' for 'anova']" CreationDate="2013-04-16T06:42:15.690" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="4048" PostId="1592" Score="4" Text="(+1) I am grateful that you contribute your expertise to our site." CreationDate="2013-04-19T17:44:57.590" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4045" PostId="1593" Score="6" Text="+1 Thanks for bringing this up and expressing it so thoughtfully.  Moderators do not manage to see every post--I don't recall seeing any of the three that are not CW--and so we have to rely on community flags to suggest that some posts ought to be CW. SE has sent out mixed signals about CW status; recently they have been discouraging its use." CreationDate="2013-04-17T21:49:43.390" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="13296" PostId="1593" Score="1" Text="Your examples of threads that were not CW were still not CW until yesterday - that's *four years later!* I flagged them all for mod attention suggesting to convert to CW, and they were all converted to CW with my flags being marked as &quot;helpful&quot;. So I believe this shows that the current (2017) guidelines are still that such threads should be CW." CreationDate="2017-04-18T19:56:59.360" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="4047" PostId="1594" Score="0" Text="@Robert, as the asker of one of these book recommendation questions http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/56385/good-resources-online-or-book-on-the-mathematical-foundations-of-statistics, was this an appropriate use of CV?  I tried to give as much detail about my specific situation as possible, but I admit that I may have been in error." CreationDate="2013-04-18T03:00:25.193" UserId="11091" />
  <row Id="17608" PostId="1598" Score="1" Text="+1 Also: on the topic of answering one's own question with an answer, while I have not (yet) shared the code, I did share my own answer of a new (?) kind of graph: https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/340460/44269" CreationDate="2019-04-26T16:56:05.200" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="4051" PostId="1599" Score="4" Text="In the meantime are you familiar with [RSeek](http://rseek.org/)?  With it you can quickly find [the mgcv manual](http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/mgcv/mgcv.pdf) where `gam` and `te` are documented." CreationDate="2013-04-25T19:04:31.533" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4052" PostId="1600" Score="0" Text="+1, this is the right response. However, I don't think the average answer on CV gets 5 upvotes, alas." CreationDate="2013-04-25T23:35:47.427" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4053" PostId="1600" Score="1" Text="@gung No, it's closer to 3.5, but that will exactly do the trick here :-)." CreationDate="2013-04-26T04:48:01.087" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4054" PostId="1602" Score="0" Text="I have a problem with some user names. For example for [this](http://stats.stackexchange.com/users/8402/stephane-laurent) user; the @-username doesn't work." CreationDate="2013-05-04T20:16:09.277" UserId="603" />
  <row Id="4055" PostId="1603" Score="2" Text="Google might be able to find them; I don't think SE's search feature will find them by design. If they're especially highly voted, you might be able to write a SQL query to return the highest voted comments on CV at the SE data site." CreationDate="2013-05-05T00:54:13.543" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4056" PostId="1603" Score="0" Text="@gung: no, unfortunately the ones I see are often made on questions that don't get any answer and aren't not close, so they tend not to get a lot of traffic." CreationDate="2013-05-05T04:48:37.370" UserId="603" />
  <row Id="4057" PostId="1603" Score="0" Text="It probably wouldn't work then. (Note, however, that I meant looking for *comments* that have been upvoted, not comments on *questions* that have been upvoted.)" CreationDate="2013-05-05T15:32:40.020" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4059" PostId="1603" Score="0" Text="yea these are simple comments on badly thought out questions. That's why these questions don't get answers/traffic/vote and this low traffic means the comments themselves don't get many upvotes." CreationDate="2013-05-05T21:13:58.933" UserId="603" />
  <row Id="4090" PostId="1603" Score="0" Text="It might be of your interest to follow this thread: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/183142/ability-to-search-comments-would-be-useful" CreationDate="2013-06-05T23:21:07.263" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="22047" PostId="1605" Score="1" Text="Today I learned the third bullet point!" CreationDate="2023-04-24T20:57:33.313" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="6694" PostId="1607" Score="1" Text="If they've ever used the Ten Fold chat room, you could ping them from there." CreationDate="2015-03-22T12:36:45.933" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6695" PostId="1607" Score="1" Text="Oh -- the simple expedient of accepting an answer on either of your two open questions should give you enough reputation to comment anywhere." CreationDate="2015-03-22T12:39:24.717" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6701" PostId="1607" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b of course I can make an answer and comment my own ones. But the problem is if I want to &quot;add a comment&quot; to another answer, then I get this message: &quot;You must have 50 reputation to comment&quot;. Therefore, sometimes is necessary to write direct to an specific user." CreationDate="2015-03-23T01:30:57.483" UserId="44724" />
  <row Id="6702" PostId="1607" Score="0" Text="@DarwinPC sorry but this is how this portal works. From our perspective nothing can be done with it. (You can write to the developers but I imagine they already got thousands of such e-mails.)" CreationDate="2015-03-23T08:46:12.317" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="6704" PostId="1607" Score="2" Text="DarwinPC I believe you misunderstand. If you [*accept* an answer](http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/accepted-answer) (see also [this](http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/someone-answers)), you will get 2 rep. points. That will take you from below 50 to above 50. Your response seems to suggest that you don't know what it means to accept an answer; if that's the case, you'll need to read the site help in detail, because it sounds like you're missing an important aspect of how the site works. If you have missed that, you'll likely have missed other important things." CreationDate="2015-03-23T11:56:04.140" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6706" PostId="1607" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b  I understand, thanks for your explanation :)  I accepted the answer and I didn't get the two points." CreationDate="2015-03-23T15:24:45.180" UserId="44724" />
  <row Id="6707" PostId="1607" Score="0" Text="Darwin, you need to accept one of the answers on the main site, not on meta, if you want to have +2 rep." CreationDate="2015-03-23T18:07:47.893" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6708" PostId="1607" Score="0" Text="@amoeba thanks for your suggestion, but I can't find the way to do that. I see only &quot; This question may already have an answer here:  How to contact other user? 2 answers&quot;  and this redirect me to another answer without options to accept it. Maybe, because yesterday I edited this question doing some specifications in the text." CreationDate="2015-03-23T18:24:15.437" UserId="44724" />
  <row Id="6709" PostId="1607" Score="0" Text="Darwin, there appears to be some huge misunderstanding here. There are two different forums: the main site and the meta site. You have asked only one question on the meta site (this one), and it already has an accepted answer. But you have asked three questions on the main site (see here: http://stats.stackexchange.com/users/44724/darwin-pc) and none of them has an accepted answer. One of them is closed as off-topic, but two others contain several answers each. You should be able to accept any of these answers at any time. Of course you should accept an answer only if it answers your question." CreationDate="2015-03-23T18:27:25.773" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6710" PostId="1607" Score="0" Text="@amoeba thanks very much for your clear explanation, I have got already two extra points necessary to add comments :)" CreationDate="2015-03-23T19:26:47.320" UserId="44724" />
  <row Id="4060" PostId="1608" Score="0" Text="+1 Good link--thanks." CreationDate="2013-05-09T18:56:57.630" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4061" PostId="1610" Score="4" Text="The proposal refers only to &quot;numerical weather prediction and climate modelling.&quot; In what sense is this &quot;data assimilation&quot;?  What do you mean by &quot;data assimilation&quot; anyway, and how exactly does it differ from science, computation, librarianship, or statistics?" CreationDate="2013-05-10T13:22:09.860" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4062" PostId="1610" Score="0" Text="I mean this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_assimilation. I know it's an overly general term for a relatively specific field, but people working in the area know the meaning of the term. I should improve the description though, as the term is not very self explanatory. Thanks for the input." CreationDate="2013-05-15T22:25:11.357" UserId="10354" />
  <row Id="4063" PostId="1610" Score="1" Text="It sounds like such a narrow subspecialty of statistical analysis that generating an active SE community will be difficult. Why not foster a subcommunity here, perhaps by encouraging appropriate questions, creating the necessary tags, and maybe contributing to our blog?" CreationDate="2013-05-15T22:32:28.520" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4064" PostId="1610" Score="0" Text="Data assimilation isn't a sub-specialty of statistics, it's more of an interdisciplinary field including computational science, physics and some things that could be classes broadly as statistics. It doesn't fit neatly within any existing SE site and arguably would be more at home within computational science, but still wouldn't be a great fit. I just did a shout out here as this is one place that data assimilation people might also frequent. I do agree that getting a critical mass of experts to form a site will not be easy." CreationDate="2013-05-15T23:02:32.873" UserId="10354" />
  <row Id="4065" PostId="1610" Score="0" Text="I was merely paraphrasing the Wikipedia article you linked to, particularly the section prominently titled &quot;Data assimilation as statistical estimation.&quot;" CreationDate="2013-05-16T04:13:41.820" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4067" PostId="1611" Score="4" Text="Doesn't the edit answer your questions?" CreationDate="2013-05-21T22:13:33.650" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4070" PostId="1611" Score="1" Text="I was expecting to read other opinions to see if there would be different perspectives (or no), considering our theme &quot;statistics&quot;." CreationDate="2013-05-21T22:38:10.267" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4183" PostId="1611" Score="2" Text="If anything, wouldn't CV users be even more likely to think including (posting) graphics is good than SO users would?  ...so if the position on (M)SO is already pro-picture-posting, it seems pretty likely that ours would be too.  If you posted this just to subtly remind people that posted pictures can be helpful and linked pictures can be less so, though, I agree.  :)" CreationDate="2013-07-01T19:58:54.087" UserId="27142" />
  <row Id="4187" PostId="1611" Score="1" Text="@A.M., IMO, yes (but it is my feeling) and I do not have any arguments to support my feeling, hence, the question. Thank's for sharing your perspective." CreationDate="2013-07-01T20:29:33.900" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4066" PostId="1613" Score="4" Text="It's amazing what some people will do to earn the equivalent of little gold stars..." CreationDate="2013-05-21T22:12:18.190" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4069" PostId="1613" Score="2" Text="Clearly, the stack-overflow people realize that some people will do a lot of work for gold stars." CreationDate="2013-05-21T22:29:34.897" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="4071" PostId="1613" Score="4" Text="There is even a name for all this: gamification" CreationDate="2013-05-22T17:08:09.310" UserId="6029" />
  <row Id="4073" PostId="1613" Score="4" Text="I think Napoleon had a few relevant quotes, but perhaps this one comes closest: &quot;*A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon.*&quot;" CreationDate="2013-05-29T04:36:57.593" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4133" PostId="1613" Score="0" Text="You guys have quite the vote cartel going. ;)" CreationDate="2013-06-24T22:27:16.867" UserId="22543" />
  <row Id="4074" PostId="1616" Score="4" Text="Could you provide an example of an `R`-specific question that would fit neither here nor on SO?" CreationDate="2013-05-30T19:46:58.180" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4075" PostId="1616" Score="1" Text="Questions on data visualization, for instance (bar plots, histograms, density plots)? That's not a statistics question if you're only wondering about some details on how to implement that in R, but I (maybe wrongly) don't consider that a _programming_ question either." CreationDate="2013-05-30T19:55:02.183" UserId="5501" />
  <row Id="4076" PostId="1616" Score="1" Text="But more to the point, I believe the mere _confusion_ as to where an R question best belongs is reason enough to consider a separate R site. (But the intent of my question here is only to probe the outcome of the previous debate)." CreationDate="2013-05-30T19:56:54.710" UserId="5501" />
  <row Id="4077" PostId="1616" Score="9" Text="Before going any further, please review our site's [faq](http://stats.stackexchange.com/faq). In particular, data visualization questions *are* on topic here--unless they are purely about the details of creating a particular visualization on a particular platform: that's a programming question. There was a lot of confusion in the first year or so, but hundreds of comments and helpful guidance provided by high-rep community members in the last year or so indicate there is a pretty clear consensus on what belongs here and what does not." CreationDate="2013-05-30T20:02:58.337" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4078" PostId="1616" Score="2" Text="The related thread at http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1/how-to-answer-r-questions also provides helpful guidance concerning this community's thoughts about `R`-related questions. I do not follow the logic to your recent comment: if there is confusion about where to direct `R` questions when there are *two* obvious places for them, how would having *three* sites that field such questions reduce that confusion? I think it would only increase it (exponentially). I do see some merit in having a site dedicated to `R` *programming*, basically ripping it out of SO." CreationDate="2013-05-30T21:31:09.557" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4082" PostId="1616" Score="3" Text="I was worried that asking this question would start another debate on R questions. But my question only addresses one thing: what was the outcome of the discussion that the comments and answers to the question I linked to said was being had offline? I couldn't find any information about that. I tried to restate that in my comment above (&quot;The intent of my question here is only ... &quot;). Could we please stay on-topic?" CreationDate="2013-05-31T11:44:32.337" UserId="5501" />
  <row Id="4116" PostId="1616" Score="1" Text="No clear consensus has been reached.  The FAQ was created by fiat and was not subject to community consensus.  Previously arrived at consensus provides pretty clear guidance *(meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1/).  A new consensus clearinghouse question was set up here:  http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1577/what-is-on-topic-on-cross-validated/1581. However, in reality, long term, the answer is - whatever active users want and do." CreationDate="2013-06-14T03:20:45.083" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="4220" PostId="1616" Score="1" Text="@whuber Although I do not like the idea of fracturing R support across even more SE sites, I think this might be the kind of example you asked for:  http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1640/why-was-this-question-migrated-to-stackoverflow-it-does-not-mention-programming" CreationDate="2013-07-03T03:19:52.633" UserId="27142" />
  <row Id="4084" PostId="1619" Score="1" Text="I really don't care whether it's closed or open, just wanted to state my opinion somewhere. I am an old user of different SE sites, so I know how to ask questions here and there. cross-posting is allowed if the one mention they've asked it before with a link to it. Thank you anyway!" CreationDate="2013-05-31T18:00:24.093" UserId="16949" />
  <row Id="4085" PostId="1619" Score="3" Text="(After much deliberation!) I guess you're right. I should of improved the question instead. I asked it again because people suggested it's better suited here. I apologize if I sounded churlish." CreationDate="2013-05-31T18:10:11.523" UserId="16949" />
  <row Id="4087" PostId="1619" Score="3" Text="No problem--as I said, mods are daily subjected to worse. You have distinguished yourself (in a positive way) by acknowledging our mutual responsibility for the fate of your question. I would be glad to continue to help you improve it into something that is on-topic at one of the SE sites." CreationDate="2013-05-31T20:10:20.733" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4086" PostId="1620" Score="2" Text="\* Please don't take anything in the comments or my answer personally, there is no implied criticism here." CreationDate="2013-05-31T18:32:59.830" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4094" PostId="1623" Score="0" Text="This happened on CV a few days ago. Personally, I like the old system a little bit better, but *C'est la vie*." CreationDate="2013-06-07T19:48:01.420" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4093" PostId="1625" Score="2" Text="Thanks for the pointer there; that information pretty much speaks to my concerns - and makes it clear that a lot of it *could* be a problem, and the reasons why - and explains what to do (which is talk about it first if I had plans to do a lot). I don't think it is likely to approach those levels of retagging, but it gives me a somewhat better idea of how much to do it. It seems to me that doing 5-10 tag-adds with pre-existing tags should almost never be an issue, but doing say 30 without notice or discussion could be." CreationDate="2013-06-07T12:38:32.333" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4095" PostId="1625" Score="1" Text="I fully agree w/ everything here. I also look for posts that I know are about `[such-and-such]` (often my own), can't find them, ultimately do, &amp; then re-tag them. I had read the linked meta thread long ago &amp; agree w/ what's there as well. It would be inappropriate to do 50 at once, even if it's not to get a badge, because it floods the main page. I do bump old threads by editing (tags or otherwise) occasionally, but try to do only 1 at a time, &amp; when traffic is slow (see also here: [feature-to-edit-without-bumping](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/755/))." CreationDate="2013-06-07T19:57:14.900" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4096" PostId="1625" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b, 5-10 may be a bit much, IMO. Most of the attention on this site goes to the main page (for indirect evidence of this, see AndyW's recent blog post: [Voting behavior &amp; accumulation of old votes on CV](http://stats.blogoverflow.com/2012/10/)). I suspect even most of that attention goes only to the top ~10 questions on the main page. I suspect it's best to do only a couple, unless activity is pretty dead." CreationDate="2013-06-07T20:04:37.140" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4097" PostId="1625" Score="0" Text="@gung I generally only do this only after I have dealt with *every single question* on the main page where I can make any contribution to at all - whether by answer, comment, edit, vote, flagging etc, that have appeared since the last time I read the main page - looking at old posts is something I do after everything else. ... And if old posts aren't regarded as something to spend time on why do several badges seem to encourage people to deal with old posts? (If I was after those badges, my approach would be different, but SO/SE plainly encourages working on old posts)." CreationDate="2013-06-08T00:11:57.777" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4098" PostId="1625" Score="0" Text="@gung I'm not sure I actually see the effect AndyW describes as a particular problem, among other things for the fairly obvious reason that - because of the way new questions that are very like existing questions are closed - the *most interesting questions* are always going to tend to be asked early. Old questions on average *should* get more votes  as new people join *because they're often the most interesting, relevant, best edited and often best answered*. It's not a problem in my mind, it's a feature." CreationDate="2013-06-08T00:16:34.373" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4099" PostId="1625" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b, I didn't mean to suggest that it was a problem. Re the blog post, what I was referring to is the fact that most of the votes come on the 1st day of a question, ie, when the thread is on the main page. My point was that bumping things off the main page can have a big effect. I don't have a problem w/ spending time on old posts--I do it myself. I just only deal w/ 1 or 2, or I do it when there's less overall activity. To put this clearly, I don't have a problem w/ your activities on the site." CreationDate="2013-06-08T02:04:48.003" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4100" PostId="1625" Score="0" Text="@gung Thanks for all your responses; each is useful. I definitely agree that there could be an issue if I were to bump a bunch of old posts in quick succession (though on the other hand 'Community' is constantly touching old posts to bring them back into the active queue, so I think the 'in quick succession' would be the main potential problem there if the overall volume isn't large). It's not something I'd really considered (the effect on the active queue that is)." CreationDate="2013-06-08T02:10:29.717" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4101" PostId="1625" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b, you're right, it's the &quot;in quick succession&quot; that is the potential problem. The 'community user' bumps 1 old post (&gt;1 month) w/o an upvoted answer per hour in the hopes that it will finally be answered." CreationDate="2013-06-08T02:16:07.647" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4102" PostId="1625" Score="3" Text="Retagging *en masse* can reflect abuse (although it is not necessarily so). For more about this, please review [our last experience with this problem](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/837/many-hours-of-work-on-tags-reverted-without-discussion-moderator-abusing-their)." CreationDate="2013-06-08T17:56:36.023" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4103" PostId="1625" Score="0" Text="Personal opinion I would say 5-10 is ok, much more than that it is IMO getting into *en masse* territory. Note the prior problem was both the user created a tag (that was not without dispute in and of itself) and the user did it on 30 some questions. If he just applied an already existing tag to historical questions I doubt the incident would have been so noteworthy." CreationDate="2013-06-09T18:19:20.740" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="4105" PostId="1625" Score="2" Text="IMO = in my opinion" CreationDate="2013-06-09T22:30:47.700" UserId="26677" />
  <row Id="4117" PostId="1627" Score="13" Text="+1. Even when a question has no *explicit* statistical content it may be on topic if you can determine that it requires statistical reasoning to be answered correctly! (An example would be someone asking for help in debugging code that obviously is the wrong solution to their actual problem.) Many such questions unfortunately are migrated away to SO before anyone points out their statistical nature.  Often, leaving a quick comment asking for clarification will help decide the matter." CreationDate="2013-06-14T17:48:19.840" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4208" PostId="1627" Score="2" Text="+1.  I think it is too easy, when looking at the numbers of program-specific questions on SO vs. CV, to underestimate the effects of (a) SO being far larger than CV, (b) SO being older, more established, and more well-known than CV, and (c) users of SO being biased toward wanting to do whatever they can on their &quot;main&quot; account.  Without all of those factors, I think it would be more clear that the better home for most of those questions is here at CV." CreationDate="2013-07-02T03:26:08.543" UserId="27142" />
  <row Id="4118" PostId="1628" Score="0" Text="I would have suspected that it was already a synonym for something else, but I just checked &amp; I didn't see it." CreationDate="2013-06-15T18:39:47.527" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4119" PostId="1629" Score="1" Text="+1, I think literature recommendations are fine." CreationDate="2013-06-16T00:18:55.470" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4120" PostId="1630" Score="1" Text="There now exists a [tag:sensitivity] tag, which I created when testing out this answer.  It is not yet attached to any questions because I don't know which question(s) you had in mind." CreationDate="2013-06-16T14:03:24.037" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4121" PostId="1630" Score="0" Text="Ah ha. Now I see. Thanks" CreationDate="2013-06-16T14:03:29.430" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="4124" PostId="1631" Score="0" Text="If you hover over tags it does say 100 upvotes for at least 20 answers in the tool tip (ambiguous still I know). I went through and upvoted a few of your zero answers (all deserve it!), so that should not be a problem. I thought this wasn't awarded immediately either, but I can't find any meta threads to confirm this. So maybe wait a few days and then see if you still haven't been awarded." CreationDate="2013-06-19T12:46:45.183" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="4125" PostId="1631" Score="2" Text="From your description, it seems like you may have gone through all of your answers 1 by 1. If so, there's an easier way: Go to your user page &amp; in the little tags section mouseover the number (`119`) to the left of the tag. A flag will pop up that says the # of non-cw questions w/ total score &amp; the # of non-cw answers w/ total score." CreationDate="2013-06-19T14:18:22.570" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4127" PostId="1631" Score="0" Text="@gung thanks for the pointer." CreationDate="2013-06-19T22:27:39.197" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4126" PostId="1632" Score="1" Text="+1, that answers something that puzzled me the other day. I often read down the badges on the main page to check out any nice questions / answers, etc., I may have missed, &amp; I noticed a couple of days ago that @chl got the badge for `psychometrics`. I thought that was weird, so I went to his page &amp; his score is 215 on 31 questions. I just checked &amp; it seems that we just went over 100 tagged threads." CreationDate="2013-06-19T14:22:34.623" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4128" PostId="1632" Score="0" Text="Thanks very much, puzzle solved. I'm content now; I am sure this question will arise again from others over time, and now I'll know what to say about it." CreationDate="2013-06-19T22:29:04.327" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4129" PostId="1632" Score="0" Text="@gung that's a neat idea; I hadn't thought of that as a strategy for finding good questions and answers." CreationDate="2013-06-19T22:35:10.740" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4130" PostId="1632" Score="3" Text="Embarrassingly, the meta post I linked to with the information on the bronze badge requirements *has* this information -- just not listed under the requirements for the bronze badge ... but it's right above the bit I referred to. How could I miss it? &lt;Insert sheepish grin&gt;" CreationDate="2013-06-19T22:39:01.067" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4209" PostId="1633" Score="1" Text="A good cue about whether a question requires statistical reasoning to be answered correctly can actually be found in the question itself:  Does the *questioner* think so?  Did the question get posted *on CV*, presumably with the goal of being seen by people with expertise in statistics?  Even questions that end up being answerable by a non-statistician might reasonably belong on CV if the questioner and others who search for the question and answers in the future *think* a statistician would best handle it." CreationDate="2013-07-02T03:33:11.877" UserId="27142" />
  <row Id="4218" PostId="1633" Score="1" Text="I don't agree with you here A.M.  The consequence of the criterion you are proposing seems to be *very* broad... I think perhaps unacceptably so.  The present criterion is meant to reflect some comments from @whuber that I think may be misguided (for reasons he himself had pointed out prior to suggesting the criterion).  Nevertheless, your comment does not reflect the spirit of this criterion.  So, I would ask that you delete your comment.  If you feel that the criterion you propose should be presented to the community, please do post it as a separate answer so that the community may decide." CreationDate="2013-07-03T03:12:19.820" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="4243" PostId="1633" Score="0" Text="+1. I sympathise with @A.M.'s concern here, but once the judgment of any OP is regarded as paramount, the whole idea of community judgment is moot. We are on a slippery slope to &quot;It's my question and I think it is OK, so there it is&quot;." CreationDate="2013-07-05T23:19:49.760" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4244" PostId="1633" Score="0" Text="@NickCox I just said it was a good cue, not that no rules apply to OPs.  By the way, the judgement of any OP is *already* regarded as paramount when it comes to choosing the best answer (unilateral decision on that big green checkmark), and I think looking at the reasoning behind giving the OP that much power would be informative here." CreationDate="2013-07-06T01:32:31.193" UserId="27142" />
  <row Id="4245" PostId="1633" Score="0" Text="I've added a chat room if we want to continue this conversation: http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/9537/ongoing-on-topic-chat" CreationDate="2013-07-06T02:26:49.980" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="4137" PostId="1635" Score="2" Text="Sounds like a bug to me... I'll work on finding someone to look into it on our side." CreationDate="2013-06-27T14:57:02.547" UserId="6123" />
  <row Id="4141" PostId="1638" Score="6" Text="There's already some good discussion on this topic [on MSO](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/74430/why-are-trivial-edits-discouraged). (Personally, I think it's important to keep question titles specifically as clean and professional-looking as possible.)" CreationDate="2013-06-28T20:30:50.030" UserId="6123" />
  <row Id="4144" PostId="1638" Score="0" Text="IIRC, small edits to the body of a post are blocked for low rep users but titles can always be edited, even to change the case of a single character so it seems that small edits to the title were always meant to be encouraged." CreationDate="2013-06-29T12:13:59.667" UserId="6029" />
  <row Id="4163" PostId="1638" Score="3" Text="Of possible interest (on this Meta): [Is there a style guide that provides guidelines for question title and question content?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/575/930) and [Handling “suggested edits” to posts](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/1284/930)." CreationDate="2013-06-30T09:47:42.630" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="4221" PostId="1638" Score="1" Text="Worth noting that [neither American or British english are wrong](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/23869/what-should-the-standard-spelling-be-british-or-us/23872#23872) as far as stackexchange is concerned." CreationDate="2013-07-03T04:29:08.760" UserId="9007" />
  <row Id="4142" PostId="1640" Score="6" Text="The CV question is [here](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/62866/how-can-rcmdr-r-commander-be-used-for-within-subject-aka-repeated-measures-e?noredirect=1). If a question is of the type &quot;which buttons do I press to achieve X&quot; rather than &quot;what are the statistical issues with X&quot;, then it's arguably programming-related even if it doesn't generate code as such. Sometimes the boundary is very hard to discern and on occasion posts I think would be okay to stay are migrated. On the whole I think it's mostly working fairly well." CreationDate="2013-06-29T03:40:25.773" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4143" PostId="1640" Score="0" Text="I understand to a point.  By that logic I could *almost* understand a migration...but to SuperUser, definitely not StackOverflow (again...programming not involved *at all*)." CreationDate="2013-06-29T05:07:53.347" UserId="27142" />
  <row Id="4173" PostId="1640" Score="0" Text="Note, for comparison, this similar CrossValidated question:  http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/13784/repeated-measures-anova-with-lme-in-r-for-two-within-subject-factors  It is essentially the same as my question, except that it *does* involve programming!" CreationDate="2013-06-30T19:55:24.287" UserId="27142" />
  <row Id="4174" PostId="1640" Score="0" Text="Note, for comparison, this similar StackOverflow question where the users there *recommended the questioner post it on CrossValidated instead*:  http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5694664/repeated-measures-within-subjects-anova-in-r" CreationDate="2013-06-30T19:56:17.290" UserId="27142" />
  <row Id="4180" PostId="1640" Score="1" Text="Except yet again here it clearly is not working well.  As the question remains fallow on Stackoverflow.  The correct close reason if any was of a &quot;poor quality&quot;/&quot;insufficient research&quot; type - not an off-topic type." CreationDate="2013-07-01T03:24:32.130" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="4182" PostId="1640" Score="0" Text="Yes, I think the lack of any attention to my question on StackOverflow  in days should be taken as a clue that it is in the wrong place.  ...and I hate to hammer on this point again, but maybe it's because it's a *non-programming question forced over to a programming site*!" CreationDate="2013-07-01T18:06:46.137" UserId="27142" />
  <row Id="4188" PostId="1640" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b At first I did not want to argue too forcefully that my question is unfit for SO (since then it might be moved to SU instead of CV!), but I have to point out that I find the viewpoint &quot;If a question is of the type 'which buttons do I press to achieve X' rather than 'what are the statistical issues with X', then it's arguably programming-related&quot; impossible to understand.  I don't want to be too harsh, but *by that logic ringing a doorbell would also be &quot;programming-related&quot;*." CreationDate="2013-07-01T20:34:57.797" UserId="27142" />
  <row Id="4189" PostId="1640" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b There seems to be a false dichotomy entrenched here:  that a question must be fit for either CV or SO.  Even so, wouldn't you agree that the argument for the question *not* being fit for SO is stronger than the argument for it *not* being fit for CV." CreationDate="2013-07-01T21:27:40.763" UserId="27142" />
  <row Id="4195" PostId="1640" Score="0" Text="@A.M. Compare these two: Let's say I am using Excel. I record a macro and use it regularly. By recording and using a sequences of steps, I have quite literally written a program - I can examine and manipulate its code! ... Your argument seems to be that if I instead *write that macro down on paper* and follow its steps on the computer, it is *off topic on SO*, but if I type it in, it would be *on topic on SO*. And if that *isn't* where you draw the line, how does &quot;what sequence of buttons do I press to do X&quot; differ from &quot;what macro do I write down to follow?&quot;" CreationDate="2013-07-02T00:13:06.643" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4196" PostId="1640" Score="0" Text="@A.M. In particular, the definition (and I agree it's not the only one possible, but bear with me a moment) given in the first sentence at Wikipedia [Computer program](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_program) is: *A computer program, or just a program, is a sequence of instructions, written to perform a specified task with a computer* ... seems to quite directly include answers to 'What buttons do I press?' but excludes 'ringing a doorbell'. I find that quite a reasonable definition and indeed it corresponds directly to my understanding of the term." CreationDate="2013-07-02T00:43:15.770" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4197" PostId="1640" Score="1" Text="@A.M.  	&#xA;I don't think anyone here actually thinks those (CV and SO) are the only two possibilities; I know I have recommended movement to other places than SO many times (most frequently, math.SE, occasionally to one of a couple of others)." CreationDate="2013-07-02T00:45:00.107" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4202" PostId="1640" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b This really seems to be a game of &quot;How low can you go?&quot; with respect to calling different things 'programming'.  I suspect that more than half of SuperUser (and a large chunk of AskUbuntu etc.) would fall under the definition you suggest.  I think you have my position right on with &quot;write that macro down on paper and follow its steps on the computer, it is off topic on SO&quot;.  I think that is a *great* place to draw the line (and I still don't quite understand where you would draw it).  Typing values into a few cells in Excel is not programming just because it could be done with a macro." CreationDate="2013-07-02T02:00:21.580" UserId="27142" />
  <row Id="4203" PostId="1640" Score="0" Text="As already explained, the set of instructions about *exactly which things you do in which order* to achieve an outcome on the computer both fits with the definition I pointed to *and* with the intuition I hold. But as to precisely where the line is drawn, what matters for the current question is where they draw that line on SO, and that's up to the community *there*. They don't usually seem to draw it in the same place you do. What matters for us is where we draw the line on what's a stats question, and if we think it fits better elsewhere, we move it rather than just close it. ... (ctd)" CreationDate="2013-07-02T02:35:02.383" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4204" PostId="1640" Score="0" Text="(ctd) ... it's then up to the community there to decide if it really does fit with their own standard about where to draw the line and then close it or do whatever else if it's not really a programming question. The mods of SO and CV can communicate if they feel we're often getting it wrong. I don't get the impression there's a strong feeling we're foisting what they think are obviously not-programming questions on them as a matter of course." CreationDate="2013-07-02T02:36:56.907" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4205" PostId="1640" Score="0" Text="That's reasonable, and I am not saying there is necessarily anything is wrong &quot;often&quot; or &quot;as a matter of course&quot;.  ...but unlike most questions that are thrown over the wall to SO, *this* one specifically I would say does not meet their about-programming test (and they just have not noticed it yet).  I would also echo the comment by @RussellS.Pierce below about this side of that wall:  &quot;Neither of the standards applied in this case have been vetted by the community (meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1514/…)&quot;...especially with regard to what kinds of questions are about statistical issues." CreationDate="2013-07-02T02:59:37.037" UserId="27142" />
  <row Id="4206" PostId="1640" Score="0" Text="One more point:  Rcmdr doesn't even have the macro capability Excel has, and, crucially, what you can do with the programming language R you cannot necessarily do (not by a long shot) with Rcmdr.  That very much undermines the use of 'programming' to describe use of Rcmdr, which is entirely menu-driven." CreationDate="2013-07-02T03:02:14.127" UserId="27142" />
  <row Id="4158" PostId="1641" Score="0" Text="@AndreSilva It looks like gung fixed it in a sensible way, so that problem is resolved." CreationDate="2013-06-30T03:10:05.243" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4161" PostId="1641" Score="0" Text="Regarding the post in **Edit2**, I voted to close. The post doesn't make a whole lot of sense; the comments ask for clarification &amp; point out some obvious issues, to which the OP responds that the question is resolved. I think it's a prime candidate for *too localized*, which is no longer an option for closing, but I still think it should be closed." CreationDate="2013-06-30T03:34:03.100" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4162" PostId="1641" Score="0" Text="Thanks guys for taking care of that!" CreationDate="2013-06-30T09:44:36.040" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="4164" PostId="1641" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b, I update the answer to address your solution to the question. Feel free to edit the answer or post a new one according you think it is the best approach. Thank's." CreationDate="2013-06-30T11:30:30.357" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4146" PostId="1642" Score="0" Text="+1. However, I do think that editing a large number of questions @ 1 time can be disruptive, so the fact that it's only 11, &amp; traffic is slow *are* arguments in favor. I also think that questions about pivot tables are close enough to data analysis to be on-topic for CV &amp; so should have a dedicated tag." CreationDate="2013-06-29T15:45:03.140" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4151" PostId="1642" Score="0" Text="@gung I agree that pivot tables are on topic and should have a tag of their own - it's a particular kind of data summary (I'm not a particular fan of the term, but it's certainly widely used)." CreationDate="2013-06-29T23:44:12.187" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4152" PostId="1642" Score="0" Text="@gung I have made a list at the end of my question with a plan of how to do it that should halve the disruption by doing it in two stages, each of which leaves things stable. Stage one (which I am doing now) involves only retagging the 5 or 6 items which discuss pivot-tables. Stage 2 is simply a proposal for what to do later and suggestions on it are welcome." CreationDate="2013-06-30T00:14:06.700" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4155" PostId="1642" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b, given the slow traffic rate on the main site right now, I think 5-6 retaggings is perfectly fine. I would just delete the old tag &amp; add the appropriate tag in its place." CreationDate="2013-06-30T01:45:24.613" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4156" PostId="1642" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b, re: what to do later, if you are thinking of 3 distinct `pivot` concepts, your plan seems right. @ 1st, I thought you were thinking of just 2, in which case, `pivot-table` &amp; `pivot` for *pivotal-quantity* seems best." CreationDate="2013-06-30T02:07:08.943" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4157" PostId="1642" Score="0" Text="@gung Yes, my apologies; I realized after my first post there was at least a third possibility and modified things. I am not sure if it's necessary though. In any case there doesn't seem to be a rush on that part." CreationDate="2013-06-30T02:10:16.493" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4159" PostId="1642" Score="3" Text="@gung so as things stand right at this moment, `pivot-table` and `pivot` exist, and at this point I'll probably leave it as it stands until we have a need for a third (which I expect will happen). If `pivot` gets a lot of pivotal quantity posts by then, the new term could be `pivot-element`; if it's still sitting around 5 or 6, then the scheme in my question could be implemented." CreationDate="2013-06-30T03:14:54.827" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4160" PostId="1642" Score="1" Text="@gung I have modified my post to update it with that alternative" CreationDate="2013-06-30T03:20:31.113" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4212" PostId="1643" Score="0" Text="@AndreSilva, I think it does make sense to edit the tags for questions that are about IVs, but use [independence] instead of [predictor]. I would only say that it's best not to do all of them at once." CreationDate="2013-07-02T14:05:21.703" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4214" PostId="1643" Score="1" Text="@AndreSilva, what I mean is: if *they* use `[independence]` instead of `[predictor]`." CreationDate="2013-07-02T14:49:54.777" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4336" PostId="1643" Score="1" Text="@Peter, Do you think the tag [tag:dependence] (10 uses) is a synonym of [tag:non-independent] (55 uses)? I was trying to check this out and I remembered this thread of yours (maybe you have come across with this too). Thanks." CreationDate="2013-08-04T14:46:21.097" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4338" PostId="1643" Score="1" Text="They do seem alike.  &quot;non-independence&quot; seems awkward." CreationDate="2013-08-04T21:08:34.863" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="4147" PostId="1644" Score="1" Text="Should I create a independent variables tag?" CreationDate="2013-06-29T19:25:16.627" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="4148" PostId="1644" Score="2" Text="@PeterFlom, I would say no, unless you just wanted to make it a synonym. We have a [tag:predictor] tag, which is intended to include IV." CreationDate="2013-06-29T19:44:48.710" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4150" PostId="1644" Score="2" Text="@gung Good addition to that tag" CreationDate="2013-06-29T23:41:31.427" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4247" PostId="1644" Score="3" Text="@Peter Good idea.  I created [tag:independent-variables] as a synonym of [tag:predictor]." CreationDate="2013-07-10T14:25:46.403" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4165" PostId="1646" Score="6" Text="+1 One test I apply to such questions is &quot;would this question, or at least its answers, be of interest to anyone who is using a *different* computing platform?&quot; If the answer is no, the question is likely off topic. The next test is &quot;might there be a community on SO that is interested in this particular platform and would likely give a good, quick answer?&quot; If yes, I vote to migrate. If no, I write a comment referring to our [resource links](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/793/internet-support-for-statistics-software). In the present case, the answers were clearly &quot;no&quot; and &quot;yes.&quot;" CreationDate="2013-06-30T13:06:19.887" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4166" PostId="1646" Score="1" Text="On CrossValidated there are thousands of questions tagged 'r', 'spss', 'sas', etc., so clearly questions are not independent of computing-platform." CreationDate="2013-06-30T14:26:15.520" UserId="27142" />
  <row Id="4167" PostId="1646" Score="0" Text="There are also not very many statistics programs, and people working on statistics (besides people doing homework) generally do use one of these programs rather than implementing the theoretical solutions on this site from scratch (which actually would require programming, or superuse of Excel, or much pencil and paper).  I don't think CrossValidated would suffer from having similar questions about implementation on in different programs.  We just need continue to use the tags already there.  ...and if some people *really* want to see theory-only questions, there can be a tag for that." CreationDate="2013-06-30T14:35:04.840" UserId="27142" />
  <row Id="4168" PostId="1646" Score="0" Text="I actually appreciate you trying to put this question in front of more people who might be able to answer it, but I really think CrossValidated members are more likely to (A) see it, (B) be able to answer it, and (C) benefit from seeing the answer in the future.  ...the point of StackExchange sites.  Also, what is wrong with this reasoning:  http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1/how-to-answer-r-questions" CreationDate="2013-06-30T14:42:50.420" UserId="27142" />
  <row Id="4169" PostId="1646" Score="0" Text="One more point:  If the question asker assumes there is an answer that does not involve programming, even if you assume it does should it really go to the programming SE site (should it be migrated *anywhere* based only on what the answers are likely to look like)?  This is a tough case, and similar to the Meta-SO discussion of whether add tags questions when they relate to good answers but not the question itself.  I think the concensus there was that classification of the question should be based on the question alone." CreationDate="2013-06-30T14:49:50.777" UserId="27142" />
  <row Id="4170" PostId="1646" Score="0" Text="OK...one more:  You say &quot;there's nothing in your question that would look like a statistical issue&quot;.  That is just not the case.  The statistical issue is that I have a within-subject design and am trying to use a program which defaults to assuming between-subject design.  The solution could be program-specific, such as finding a menu selection or restructuring the data, or it could be **pure theory**, such as calculating the appropriate sums of squares etc. and having *any* program meant for between-subjects data yield the right output for a within-subjects experiment design." CreationDate="2013-06-30T14:56:16.663" UserId="27142" />
  <row Id="4171" PostId="1646" Score="2" Text="@A.M. Re: &quot;there's nothing in your question that would look like a statistical issue&quot;. Where do you see any statistical issue in your question? Obviously you know what you are after (within- vs. between-subject design). However, you are asking about a [*graphical interface* for R](http://www.rcommander.com/) (emphasis is mine), where several plugins are available to extend its *basic functionalities* (there doesn't seem to exist one for RM ANOVA, though). Also, you might be interested in [this Meta thread](http://bit.ly/17MjPSe) which is somewhat related to the older thread you cited." CreationDate="2013-06-30T16:49:20.350" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="4179" PostId="1646" Score="1" Text="The accepted community standard is &quot;with any statistical content&quot;.  Neither of the standards applied in this case have been vetted by the community (http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1514/what-standard-should-be-applied-in-deciding-whether-a-question-requires-sufficie).  If you want to keep adding those standards, add them in and let the vote take place.  You'll likely win as you have elsewhere, but at least this time it won't be for lack of prominence." CreationDate="2013-07-01T03:22:21.060" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="4184" PostId="1646" Score="0" Text="@chl I just plain fail to see how you fail to see any statistical content in my question.  I have provided links to CV questions with similar levels of attachment to a specific platform but similar levels of statistical content, and I have even mentioned how an answer to my question could be *entirely theoretic* (i.e. What calculations, if any, could I make manually to a within-subject data set that would make injecting it into a between-subject tool yield the proper within-subject output.  If the answer is &quot;None.  It's impossible.&quot;, fine, but it would still be a (platform-independent) answer." CreationDate="2013-07-01T20:16:54.747" UserId="27142" />
  <row Id="4185" PostId="1646" Score="0" Text="@chi I think the discussion of the suitability of my question for CV is important, but it (and your answer) misses the point of my question.  I argue as to why my question is fit for CV as background, but the main question is:  **Is the question fit for SO?**  ...and that has a clearer answer IMHO, since it does not involve programming at all (despite the comment by @Glen_b)." CreationDate="2013-07-01T20:27:35.550" UserId="27142" />
  <row Id="4186" PostId="1646" Score="0" Text="@RussellS.Pierce On top of your (very good) point, there is also obviously a lack of clarity on what constitutes &quot;any statistical content&quot;." CreationDate="2013-07-01T20:28:21.397" UserId="27142" />
  <row Id="4190" PostId="1646" Score="0" Text="@chl Regardless of everything else here, thank you for your comment on Rcmdr plug-ins (even though you are saying there seem to be none for this use :( ).  That is exactly the type of non-programming (non-SO, and actually very SU) answer I would have voted up.  ;)" CreationDate="2013-07-01T21:31:20.307" UserId="27142" />
  <row Id="4177" PostId="1647" Score="1" Text="+1, this is all sound advice. For the sake of clarity, nothing bad could happen if you edit *the same* thread over &amp; over; it will stay at the top, but not really displace anything. OTOH, on my browser I can see 7 threads / titles on the main page w/o scrolling down, so editing 6-7 threads when there's other activity will push otherwise active threads out of site for those too lazy to scroll O:-). Of course, when traffic is slow &amp; has been for a while, this doesn't make as much difference." CreationDate="2013-07-01T02:31:03.217" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4319" PostId="1647" Score="1" Text="+1. This is very close to my own editing attitudes. The long-term goal of getting well-written, (nearly) error-free and thus readable questions as a source for searching and study still seems underestimated by many CV users. A taste and talent for editing is not universal, but what is? But, seriously, what is not a busy time with activity from around the world? I am British, so when I get up, Europe is busy and when I got to bed, America is busy, and there is everywhere else too." CreationDate="2013-08-01T10:55:24.027" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4198" PostId="1648" Score="6" Text="+1, I think your non-moderator status is irrelevant. As an active member, your opinions should count as much as anyone else's. As for the content, I think this is quite reasonable." CreationDate="2013-07-02T00:52:22.390" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4191" PostId="1650" Score="0" Text="+1 This is sound advice." CreationDate="2013-07-01T23:09:57.467" UserId="24617" />
  <row Id="4224" PostId="1650" Score="0" Text="... and then encourage edits to square the two..." CreationDate="2013-07-03T23:21:15.303" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="4199" PostId="1651" Score="3" Text="&quot;I think sometimes people's understanding of what they want to ask evolves as they ask it&quot; - I was thinking the same thing just moments ago!" CreationDate="2013-07-02T00:56:02.713" UserId="24617" />
  <row Id="4200" PostId="1651" Score="0" Text="@GraemeWalsh I often find something similar happens as I construct an answer." CreationDate="2013-07-02T00:57:34.957" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4211" PostId="1651" Score="0" Text="+1, especially regarding edits, solving broader problems and evolving understanding. Past answers are also useful for other readers (I am constantly learning from them) so if someone can make something useful out of a question, even if the OP is not there anymore or is only interested in one aspect of the answer, I would say go for it anyway!" CreationDate="2013-07-02T14:04:53.457" UserId="6029" />
  <row Id="4223" PostId="1651" Score="3" Text="+1. Trying to answer the OP's underlying question is clearly key, but pulling the question towards something likely to be more interesting or more useful to others is not too subversive. Often a mediocre question will be lifted by excellent answers. Similarly, explaining why there is an underlying presumption or misconception can be the best answer, even if the OP wasn't seeking that." CreationDate="2013-07-03T18:23:39.853" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4233" PostId="1653" Score="0" Text="@gung. Thank's for your always helpful editions." CreationDate="2013-07-04T22:33:46.570" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4234" PostId="1653" Score="0" Text="You're welcome, @AndreSilva. +1" CreationDate="2013-07-04T22:35:30.363" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4265" PostId="1653" Score="1" Text="A [tag:error-message] tag was just added to the list." CreationDate="2013-07-15T13:31:43.733" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="13448" PostId="1653" Score="0" Text="I don't like [error-message] tag. Currently its wiki excerpt says to always use another tag in addition, which is a good sign of tag that should not exist at all. However, I am afraid that if we eliminate/burninate it, people will start using [error] tag whenever they have a problem with an error-message. What to do?" CreationDate="2017-05-05T10:21:32.127" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13449" PostId="1653" Score="0" Text="@amoeba; so far, [error-message] has been useful to reduce pollution in the [error] tag and it's been a trap to easily detect off-topic questions, which can be closed and deleted. But we can try burninating it now this is more consolidated issue. But something should also be done in respect to [error]'s name, so not to come back as it was before." CreationDate="2017-05-05T10:59:40.733" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4235" PostId="1654" Score="2" Text="`[error]` (in the statistical sense) &amp; `[residuals]` are close enough that one tag (ie `[residuals]`) could cover both &amp; the excerpt could inform people of this." CreationDate="2013-07-04T22:47:23.900" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4236" PostId="1654" Score="2" Text="Questions about `[error]`, in the sense of error-messages, probably don't belong here, but should be on SO instead; although we could make an `[error-message]` tag, if people want." CreationDate="2013-07-04T22:48:28.700" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4237" PostId="1654" Score="1" Text="I'm fine w/ `[deviation]`, `[standard-deviation]`, &amp; `[bias]`, as they are." CreationDate="2013-07-04T22:49:30.533" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4242" PostId="1655" Score="0" Text="Thank's for the answer. +1 for the reminder that error questions for software error will probably be tagged with software tags (like R). That will help fixing (if it's going to be fixed), looking backwards." CreationDate="2013-07-05T12:46:37.030" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4241" PostId="1656" Score="1" Text="That makes sense to me" CreationDate="2013-07-05T10:58:50.430" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="4238" PostId="1657" Score="4" Text="The term 'data frame' is used in R help, while `data.frame` is the name of a command, so I would go for the first option which is probably more meaningful in terms of data structure." CreationDate="2013-07-05T09:11:24.723" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="4239" PostId="1657" Score="1" Text="@chi Okay, easy. I will go with the first option, thanks. ... edit: actually, I won't, as I just realized I don't have enough reputation in that tag to try." CreationDate="2013-07-05T09:14:02.310" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4276" PostId="1657" Score="3" Text="[tag:dataframe] is irrelevant on this site because it appears intended to refer a *software-specific* construct, not to a general concept of statistics or data analysis. Arguably, *any* question for which this is an essential tag needs to be migrated away.  (If you think otherwise, how would you feel about having, say, a tag &quot;struct&quot; for people with C-oriented questions or a tag &quot;common&quot; for those with Fortran-oriented questions? These would seem to function in comparable roles; only the programming environment has changed.)" CreationDate="2013-07-17T15:58:13.403" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4240" PostId="1658" Score="0" Text="Thanks very much chi" CreationDate="2013-07-05T09:28:59.703" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4279" PostId="1659" Score="1" Text="-1 / +1; I think the excerpt for `[validity]` is fine &amp; shouldn't be changed. Your suggestion for the excerpt for `[validation]` seems fine; I'd say you should go ahead &amp; edit." CreationDate="2013-07-18T15:28:12.673" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4280" PostId="1659" Score="0" Text="@gung. Thank's for replying. And what about the part of &quot;do not use this tag for `validation` model purposes&quot;. Do you think it would be useful to aware askers about &quot;validation&quot; tag?" CreationDate="2013-07-18T15:49:24.237" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4281" PostId="1659" Score="1" Text="I think your proposal for the `[validation]` tag is fine; you could include that part as well." CreationDate="2013-07-18T15:54:10.263" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4282" PostId="1659" Score="0" Text="+1 as it stands, however I think the later part of the final sentence of `validation` &quot;*for asking if it is valid (&quot;validity&quot;) to use a certain test, measurement or analysis.*&quot; doesn't quite relate to the sense of 'validity' being conveyed in the first tag, which is about the relationship between tests or instruments (like a particular IQ test) and the real world (i.e. 'How can we be confident this IQ test actually tells us about something real?' is a question relating to validity). The sentence gives the impression the `validity` tag is about when it's okay to do t-tests. ... (ctd)" CreationDate="2013-07-19T02:18:22.910" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4283" PostId="1659" Score="1" Text="(ctd) ... I suggest that the wording be altered to &quot;*for discussing validity of a measurement or instrument -- such as that it measures what it purports to.*&quot; or something similar." CreationDate="2013-07-19T02:20:11.433" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4246" PostId="1660" Score="0" Text="I agree with this - they shouldn't be synonyms, and if they're being used as such, they're being misused." CreationDate="2013-07-09T21:45:48.110" UserId="5836" />
  <row Id="4248" PostId="1663" Score="0" Text="possible duplicate of [Limits for self-promotion in answers](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/57497/limits-for-self-promotion-in-answers)" CreationDate="2013-07-10T22:54:34.027" UserDisplayName="ben is uǝq backwards" />
  <row Id="4249" PostId="1663" Score="1" Text="What do the people of CV Meta site think about it? That's probably a more apt place to ask." CreationDate="2013-07-10T22:55:53.037" UserDisplayName="JonW" />
  <row Id="4250" PostId="1663" Score="3" Text="I don't know the CV-rules, so I'll keep this as a comment - but IMO his answer needs a little cleaning up, but is otherwise extensive and seems as if he has put quite a lot of effort into it. If he feels like mentioning that his business is in the same area I'd say he earned it. It falls into the &quot;Post good, relevant answers, and if they happen to be about your product, so be it.&quot; that is linked in @benisuǝqbackwards comment, I think." CreationDate="2013-07-10T22:55:54.140" UserDisplayName="Anders UP" />
  <row Id="4251" PostId="1664" Score="4" Text="+1 Indeed, he's not the only regular contributor here with an intimate connection to that particular software; generally speaking, I value their expertise and level of contribution very highly -- probably even more so than some of the recipients of their wisdom (sometimes it's not obvious to a novice how good the help is). Basically, they're giving away a large amount of high-level help on particular topics (as are many here). Perhaps there's occasional straying close to various lines here and there, but the mods have been proactive at suggesting ways to bring responses into conformity..." CreationDate="2013-07-11T06:09:22.527" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4252" PostId="1664" Score="0" Text="ctd ... I'm very glad they're here, and contributing." CreationDate="2013-07-11T06:09:51.263" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4255" PostId="1665" Score="13" Text="I vote on the merits of the questions, regardless of their originator, but I selectively ignore threads based on my annoyance level with the OPs.  People who ask a very long string of very closely related questions are particularly aggravating to moderators, who are obliged to search for possible duplicates. The community can be extremely helpful in this regard by identifying the duplicates and voting accordingly." CreationDate="2013-07-11T16:56:31.217" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4257" PostId="1665" Score="2" Text="@whuber Thanks for your comment; please see the additional note under Edit2" CreationDate="2013-07-12T00:52:28.690" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4270" PostId="1666" Score="0" Text="Although I agree with much of what is stated or implied here, not answering other questions, not contributing in other ways and not voting much are all personal choices. None is out of order on this site." CreationDate="2013-07-15T19:07:06.960" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4273" PostId="1666" Score="0" Text="OK to roll it back, naturally, but I don't think what you mean in your second paragraph is at all clear." CreationDate="2013-07-15T20:43:57.227" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4302" PostId="1666" Score="0" Text="@NickCox, it was not clear indeed. Sometimes, my English still betrays me to make a point or to get a point. I edited my question, expressing I've changed my mind, and I hope to have clarified that paragraph. Thank's for the help, again." CreationDate="2013-07-22T17:22:26.627" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4303" PostId="1666" Score="0" Text="There's no need to apologize, @AndreSilva; once you've edited, everyone who upvoted has the opportunity to change their vote. However, I doubt any will. I, at least, see no problem w/ your thinking on this topic evolving in the way it has. (I had upvoted originally, &amp; am content to leave my vote as is.)" CreationDate="2013-07-22T20:34:31.443" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4304" PostId="1666" Score="0" Text="On a different topic, I did a little editing for standard English on this post. I hope you don't mind; feel free to roll the edits back if you don't like them. 1 example: it's not common in English to start each sentence w/ a newline, so I grouped some of your sentences into paragraphs." CreationDate="2013-07-22T20:36:43.800" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4254" PostId="1667" Score="3" Text="+1 I think you make good points. You've also at least once done me the courtesy of explaining a downvote (making it not anonymous) - which explanation I found both helpful and fair (and have tried, if not always successfully, to keep in mind)." CreationDate="2013-07-11T14:29:29.600" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4256" PostId="1668" Score="0" Text="+1 Your suggestion is good advice, specifically when questions (not answers) are the problem." CreationDate="2013-07-11T17:35:56.913" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4258" PostId="1668" Score="0" Text="Thanks for your response. On this -- &quot;*If the OP asks a question that you have answered in your answer to the OP's previous question*&quot;. To clarify, these questions are often in comments; I can't vote to close as duplicate a followup comment. And even when it does occur in a formally posted question, it's not that they necessarily asked the *question* twice, it's that I anticipated the issue and already answered it. I can, in exasperation, point out that it's previously been answered, and they should try reading the answers rather than just responding every few seconds with further questions..." CreationDate="2013-07-12T01:08:32.923" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4259" PostId="1668" Score="0" Text="ctd...  but I'd really like to encourage them to *just stop and think* about what information they're receiving. Repeatedly *asking* the user to do so has had no discernable effect." CreationDate="2013-07-12T01:17:03.203" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4260" PostId="1668" Score="2" Text="If it's a comment, I'm not sure what to say--you can't downvote comments, eg. Nonetheless, for those formally posted questions, I say you are in your rights to vote to close, &amp; that it might prove more helpful in changing the behavior in the long run." CreationDate="2013-07-12T01:30:05.287" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4262" PostId="1671" Score="0" Text="Wouldn't this proposal overlap with Mathematics SE?" CreationDate="2013-07-14T22:22:26.983" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4264" PostId="1671" Score="0" Text="Other sources of comments: http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/q/10194." CreationDate="2013-07-15T09:36:29.857" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="4263" PostId="1672" Score="0" Text="Your suggestions seem reasonable to me." CreationDate="2013-07-15T09:23:00.823" UserId="6029" />
  <row Id="4267" PostId="1672" Score="1" Text="It seems that, even without the sample size tag, there's a lot of overlap among the others you listed. In practical situations, power is rarely discussed without considering sample size (except in math. stat. homework problems perhaps). I wouldn't be opposed to deleting one or more of these tags but that's probably more work than it's worth just to prevent a little content overlap. In any case, I don't think that's a good tag wiki excerpt since it doesn't actually tell you anything about the tag. If there's going to be an excerpt that basically says &quot;this tag sucks&quot; then just delete the tag." CreationDate="2013-07-15T15:53:38.630" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4268" PostId="1672" Score="1" Text="That's a good point, @Macro. My actual position is only 2/3rds of the way to &quot;this tag sucks&quot;, though, &amp; deleting the tag is outside of my purview. Perhaps you have a suggestion for a reasonable excerpt? FWIW, there is some precedent for an excerpt like this (see [table](http://stackoverflow.com/tags/table/info) on SO)." CreationDate="2013-07-15T16:05:34.327" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4269" PostId="1672" Score="1" Text="I'm not really sure. I think a mix between the current excerpt and what you've written is on the right track. If I had to write something, I might say: *&quot;Use this tag when the substantive part of the question is inherently related to sample size. For example, questions about power as it relates to the sample size or about methods used for small sample sizes would be appropriate. Please use only if one of the following more specific tags is not better suited: ....&quot;*." CreationDate="2013-07-15T17:27:41.873" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4318" PostId="1672" Score="2" Text="@gung, I saw due to the approval of this thread you suggested a new tag excerpt and it was accepted. So, maybe you could answer your own question or add and edit to it, saying the issue was handled. It is just a detail, but here stays the suggestion/idea. Thank's." CreationDate="2013-07-29T16:53:45.607" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4852" PostId="1673" Score="2" Text="This is an excellent answer." CreationDate="2013-09-25T21:07:52.970" UserId="5836" />
  <row Id="4277" PostId="1674" Score="1" Text="+1; This is the right argument and right way to build a consensus." CreationDate="2013-07-18T10:15:53.133" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="4284" PostId="1676" Score="2" Text="John could you correct the name of the site in the title and body of your post here (you're missing a &quot;d&quot;) and *also* in your paper (replace the terminal &quot;s&quot; with a &quot;d&quot;)?" CreationDate="2013-07-19T02:49:14.110" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4294" PostId="1676" Score="0" Text="Thank you. I edited this post. Could you be more specific about the changes needed in the paper?" CreationDate="2013-07-20T12:37:47.620" UserId="6961" />
  <row Id="4295" PostId="1676" Score="0" Text="In the abstract, fix the name of the site - i.e. the same word as you corrected here. That is, taking the abstract from [here](http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.4920): &quot;*in the statistics Questions &amp; Answers web site Cross Validates*&quot;, replace the terminal *s* with a *d*. You could just search for 'cross'." CreationDate="2013-07-21T00:01:10.087" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="20082" PostId="1676" Score="2" Text="This issue (that the summary at the link refers to our site as &quot;Cross Validates&quot;) remains." CreationDate="2020-09-20T06:57:51.773" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4285" PostId="1679" Score="0" Text="Good answer as always. `fungible` = http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/fungible?q=fungible." CreationDate="2013-07-19T17:39:02.913" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4286" PostId="1679" Score="1" Text="@Andre That word is related to, and derived from the same Latin root, as the Spanish *fungir como,* the Portuguese [*fungível,*](http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fungibilidade) and the French *fongible.*" CreationDate="2013-07-19T17:43:56.763" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4287" PostId="1679" Score="0" Text="But reputation hardly makes an expert. There are a lot of people gaining lots of reputation solely by asking (not always smart) questions. You're not confusing those for expert statisticians." CreationDate="2013-07-19T17:47:47.710" UserId="22543" />
  <row Id="4288" PostId="1679" Score="1" Text="I haven't claimed the reputation system is perfect, not by any means. Your proposal unfortunately would render it practically useless except as an indicator of overall activity on SE generally. Incidentally, reputation totaled over all sites (including meta pages) *is* shown and used in places where it might be meaningful, most notably on [Area 51](http://area51.stackexchange.com/) and certain site-wide chat rooms." CreationDate="2013-07-19T17:51:28.350" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4289" PostId="1679" Score="0" Text="Nameless, I think you pushed a little bit when you used the word `hardly`. Answers' votes gain the double of rep than questions, and for sure the high rep users always are the ones who answers questions (the experts). Regarding the bounties, all you need is to gather 75 points (through editing or asking), which is not `hard`." CreationDate="2013-07-19T18:02:54.537" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4290" PostId="1679" Score="5" Text="@Andre That's a bit of a sore point: the subject of http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1665, who has gained *all* his reputation through questions, is well within the top 1% of reputation on this site (and still within the top 40% or so of the most active users). Moreover, at least one person in the top 0.1% has made it there essentially by answering a huge number of questions badly or indifferently (a majority with net votes of 1 or less and extremely few with 10 or more). Other sites have similar kinds of participants. So I think Nameless is on solid ground with that statement." CreationDate="2013-07-19T18:11:50.890" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4297" PostId="1679" Score="3" Text="I am queasy when threads allude to individuals without naming them. If they appear out of order they should be challenged or charged directly with a chance to defend what they did (or to behave better). Otherwise people are just behaving differently and it is immaterial whether they are wildly anomalous with respect to other people with the same kind of reputation. Some posters appear odd to me too but oddity is not a fault. Anyone who looks at reputation without also assessing the content of people's contributions is missing something very simple and important." CreationDate="2013-07-21T09:40:47.033" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4292" PostId="1681" Score="1" Text="+1. Just added another answer, as I was recently involved in the `software` tag excerpt update, and thought it would be a good repository, putting the same in another way." CreationDate="2013-07-19T19:33:37.157" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4306" PostId="1681" Score="0" Text="Nothing is to stop you from answering the general interesting question and leaving it to somebody else to answer the nuts and bolts question.  For the record, StackOverflow gets it wrong (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17368223/ggplot2-multi-group-histogram-with-in-group-proportions-rather-than-frequency/17368422?noredirect=1#comment25934980_17368422) on occasion (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10064080/plot-relative-frequencies-with-dodged-bar-plots-in-ggplot2/10171682#10171682)." CreationDate="2013-07-23T01:59:06.900" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="4293" PostId="1682" Score="2" Text="+1, I think this is right. The key here is: &quot;your question is related to STATISTICS... not solely about programming, support, or bugs&quot;. The question, as stated, meets those criteria." CreationDate="2013-07-20T02:31:44.790" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4296" PostId="1682" Score="4" Text="The way I see it, this statement serves one main purpose: Avoiding pure programming questions like “How do I reformat a data frame in such and such a way?” that are perfectly acceptable on SE and would overwhelm statistics questions on this site. Software recommendations do not seem appropriate there and there is not going to be many of them anyway so I think we can just consider them on-topic." CreationDate="2013-07-21T08:29:26.170" UserId="6029" />
  <row Id="4301" PostId="1682" Score="0" Text="@GaëlLaurans, it makes sense for me. Thank's for the comment." CreationDate="2013-07-22T16:18:37.353" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4307" PostId="1682" Score="1" Text="Even here software questions are likely to be a matter of opinion and probably should be tagged as community wiki." CreationDate="2013-07-23T02:00:33.203" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="4298" PostId="1684" Score="0" Text="Thank's a lot.!" CreationDate="2013-07-21T11:42:43.463" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="10606" PostId="1689" Score="0" Text="Are you still interested in getting an answer for this Q?" CreationDate="2016-08-30T16:12:54.440" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10607" PostId="1689" Score="0" Text="I'd say that an answer to &quot;What can be done when the tag name represents both a function of a statistical software, but its name also suggests a broader concept of usage?&quot; is -- one should try to re-organize this tag and perhaps split it into two, or deprecate." CreationDate="2016-08-30T16:13:31.877" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10609" PostId="1689" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, yes, definitely; an answer would be very welcome. I read the current excerpt from 'lme' and agreed to what the guidance there, is." CreationDate="2016-08-30T17:02:43.327" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4310" PostId="1690" Score="4" Text="A synonym has been created and the tags have been merged." CreationDate="2013-07-24T02:11:19.290" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4311" PostId="1690" Score="0" Text="Thanks, @whuber, would you mind doing the `[tag]` tag on meta, too? I submitted it as a synonym when I answered this." CreationDate="2013-07-24T02:16:10.267" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4312" PostId="1690" Score="0" Text="@gung Thanks, done." CreationDate="2013-07-24T02:18:54.473" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="8891" PostId="1690" Score="1" Text="As this suggestion has been implemented long ago, consider accepting gung's answer to make this thread appear &quot;resolved&quot;." CreationDate="2015-12-11T11:32:50.457" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="4308" PostId="1691" Score="0" Text="I didn't know there was a preference for shorter.  I suspect that 'kolmogorov-smirnov' gets more because that tag comes up first.  But note that it is &quot;mann-whitney-u-test&quot;.  I'm sure there are counter examples.  One interesting case is spearman and spearman-rho where the former is described as being about the person and the later about the statistic." CreationDate="2013-07-24T01:56:56.847" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="4309" PostId="1691" Score="1" Text="I'm sure there are counter examples. I also think this is a sufficiently weak preference that it could be over-ridden, if there were some reason. In this case, however, I don't see such a reason (but I'm always open to a persuasive argument)." CreationDate="2013-07-24T02:00:15.603" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4321" PostId="1691" Score="0" Text="That spearman one is at least partly my fault; I sought to distinguish spearman from spearman-rho, because Spearman was responsible for more things relevant to CV than just the nonparametric correlation; it seemed to make sense to make the two tags refer to different things. The alternative (which may well be preferable) would be to simply make spearman a synonym of spearman-rho and leave the (small number of) other references untagged." CreationDate="2013-08-02T07:50:52.943" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4322" PostId="1691" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b, I don't follow you. What does *spearman* have to do with this?" CreationDate="2013-08-02T12:22:49.657" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4325" PostId="1691" Score="0" Text="That was in response to rpierce's comment immediately under your answer, which raises `spearman` vs `spearman-rho`." CreationDate="2013-08-03T01:34:41.767" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4326" PostId="1691" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b, oh. That seems like a reasonable case, though. It's not like your tag was `charles-edward-spearman`. The man &amp; the statistic are different &amp; could legitimately have 2 tags." CreationDate="2013-08-03T01:47:57.387" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4320" PostId="1697" Score="3" Text="+1 So much is clear, indeed. I agree it sucks, and to EMS I say good luck with trying to convince the PtB otherwise. I think more bounties should be encouraged, and I fail to see how returning your bounty would invite gaming the system (or at least returning most of it - why not give 80% back if there are no answers between the issuing of the bounty and the deadline?). You'd still have to supply even more reputation to re-bounty it, so I don't understand the problem." CreationDate="2013-08-02T07:31:18.420" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4323" PostId="1697" Score="1" Text="I agree it is clearly stated, just hoping to start a dialogue about possibly changing it. I will post on meta.SE." CreationDate="2013-08-02T14:45:37.033" UserId="8927" />
  <row Id="4324" PostId="1697" Score="2" Text="There's much point to this in so far as no interest shown by others is a zero, not a negative. But some reading e.g. http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/76137/bounty-with-no-answer suggests that change is extraordinarily unlikely." CreationDate="2013-08-02T22:57:54.350" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4329" PostId="1698" Score="1" Text="I feel obliged to point out here that [covariance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covariance) is not remotely the same thing as a [covariate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covariate). That they are different concepts has nothing to do w/ whether any given IV is or is not in a model." CreationDate="2013-08-04T00:15:27.967" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4330" PostId="1698" Score="1" Text="@gung I completely agree.  That's exactly why I did not want to use &quot;covariance&quot;, the closest tag that appeared when I started to type &quot;covariate&quot;." CreationDate="2013-08-04T00:34:25.380" UserId="27142" />
  <row Id="4331" PostId="1699" Score="0" Text="The name &quot;R&quot; really isn't an issue for this forum." CreationDate="2013-08-04T07:52:58.050" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4332" PostId="1699" Score="0" Text="My entire point was that problems with the name &quot;R&quot; are not really an issue for this *site*.  The question above brought it up in this *forum*.  I was actually just trying to make the same point you made." CreationDate="2013-08-04T13:40:13.137" UserId="27142" />
  <row Id="4333" PostId="1699" Score="0" Text="OK, but it didn't seem that anyone was arguing or implying otherwise. Equally, raising the question of what R should be called might have puzzled others apart from myself." CreationDate="2013-08-04T13:43:39.533" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4334" PostId="1699" Score="0" Text="The question itself implicitly brings up that issue, being an outgrowth of it, and does argue for problems with the name &quot;R&quot; being dealt with in this forum (and by CV/SE).  I imagined that others might not see that (a guess backed up by your view that it didn't seem that anyone was arguing it), which is why I wanted to highlight it.  The talk of alternative names was to better explain the point and to demonstrate that any solution to the root problem really lies outside SE." CreationDate="2013-08-04T14:01:31.093" UserId="27142" />
  <row Id="4335" PostId="1699" Score="0" Text="I didn't see any issue here beyond use of lower case when upper case is standard." CreationDate="2013-08-04T14:04:48.237" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4337" PostId="1700" Score="5" Text="We also have [tag:best-practices] and [tag:rule-of-thumb] (and even [tag:expertise], which was used only once!). Since the purpose of this site is to provide guidance, expert opinion and thoughful recommendations, I don't see any interest in keeping the [tag:recommendations] tag alive." CreationDate="2013-08-04T18:41:28.267" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="4339" PostId="1700" Score="4" Text="+1. I don't think &quot;recommendations&quot; evokes the idea of &quot;recommender-system&quot; at all. The first is just an ordinary English word, while the second does now have a precise technical meaning." CreationDate="2013-08-04T22:12:42.760" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4341" PostId="1701" Score="0" Text="Is it possible to [burninate](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/120640/what-does-it-mean-to-burninate-a-tag) the tag, and then, blacklist it? This would decrease the necessity of retags, and would avoid it to be used again. If it helps, just let me know after some action is taken on the tag (remove,burninate,blacklist) and I volunteer to retag the above threads (maximum of 2 retags per day). Thanks once more." CreationDate="2013-08-05T16:51:36.790" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4386" PostId="1701" Score="1" Text="Sorry for my late reply, @Andre. We will take care of the [tag:recommendations] tag, and I appreciate your help in the retagging process." CreationDate="2013-08-09T21:07:50.817" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="4537" PostId="1701" Score="1" Text="thank you very much for your help. I edited the question to clean it up and to emphasize the actions accomplished." CreationDate="2013-09-06T12:08:46.463" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="8320" PostId="1702" Score="3" Text="This is a great work around, but alas it is just a work around.  It would be nice if a more general solution was made by the design team.  Given this question has been open since '12, you provided the work around in '13, and 2+ years later nothing has been changed, I don't have much hope it will be addressed...." CreationDate="2015-09-23T23:09:26.360" UserId="89026" />
  <row Id="4347" PostId="1703" Score="2" Text="We cannot actually change tags, nor can we delete them altogether.  However, because `transfromation` is not associated with any threads, it should automatically disappear within six months." CreationDate="2013-08-06T02:23:53.573" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4348" PostId="1703" Score="0" Text="Thanks for that crucial information. It comes as a surprise." CreationDate="2013-08-06T07:08:31.303" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4343" PostId="1704" Score="0" Text="I don't think you have grasped my point. &quot;transfromation&quot; is a typo (and not even a common one in English). I can't believe it was intended as a tag. Do we maintain misspellings of any other words as tags? Meanwhile the lack of &quot;transformation&quot; is an obvious gap." CreationDate="2013-08-06T01:29:18.733" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4344" PostId="1704" Score="0" Text="I've missed points before, but I think there is no gap. There isn't supposed to be a `[transformation]` tag. If there were one, it would be a synonym of `[data-transformation]`. The fact that there was a typo in `[transformation]` before it was made into a synonym doesn't matter." CreationDate="2013-08-06T01:32:33.243" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4345" PostId="1704" Score="0" Text="Sorry, but I don't understand at all. We fix typos in posts, especially in their titles; aren't typos in tags even more fundamental? What's the objection to deleting it and substituting the correct spelling?" CreationDate="2013-08-06T01:34:51.197" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4346" PostId="1704" Score="4" Text="It's not a typo in a *tag* it's a typo in a *tag synonym*. It can't be &quot;fixed&quot; except by a moderator. I don't object to that if the mods feel like doing it, but note that [typos are part of the point of tag synonyms](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/70710/what-are-tag-synonyms-how-do-they-work)." CreationDate="2013-08-06T01:45:34.410" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4349" PostId="1704" Score="0" Text="Thanks for the explanation." CreationDate="2013-08-06T07:10:26.127" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4353" PostId="1705" Score="4" Text="If I leave a partly written post, I have taken to pasting it into notepad on my laptop (often later editing off-line), and then pasting back into CV when I am ready. It's perhaps not the best solution for the casual question-asker though." CreationDate="2013-08-06T23:01:53.857" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="15795" PostId="1705" Score="0" Text="+1 should apply to answers as well." CreationDate="2018-05-24T19:40:51.360" UserId="67042" />
  <row Id="4351" PostId="1706" Score="3" Text="Re your impressions of long questions, that was asked [here on meta](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/1382/1036)." CreationDate="2013-08-06T13:54:19.797" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="4352" PostId="1706" Score="1" Text="Good cross-reference. That thread supports my prejudice: that very short questions are more likely to be too cryptic or too general to answer, very long questions are less read and the best length is in between. But, naturally, there is enormous scatter too in response to other influences and sources of variability." CreationDate="2013-08-06T14:02:01.230" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4354" PostId="1706" Score="2" Text="The motivation to save drafts is not the length of questions, but rather the fact that asking good questions requires effort, which might not always be carried out in one single session. Usually, when I've completed the writing-up of a piece, I tend to leave it for a while and rework it afterwards; this helps (me) improve clarity and conciseness. Also, there are often existing questions on CV that are linked to the question being asked. So, it might be needed to include reference to existing questions and mention why they don't address the question being asked." CreationDate="2013-08-07T06:31:02.287" UserId="27403" />
  <row Id="4355" PostId="1706" Score="0" Text="(cont'd) This might also require multiple sessions on CV.&#xA;The ability to save question drafts on the CV site would be a tool to help ask good questions whilst lack of it provides an incentive to post question immediately. The obvious option of saving drafts locally in text files is a burden for the casual question-asker." CreationDate="2013-08-07T06:31:31.133" UserId="27403" />
  <row Id="4356" PostId="1706" Score="0" Text="Thanks for the extra comments. But would this be public or private to the poster?" CreationDate="2013-08-07T07:17:58.517" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4358" PostId="1706" Score="0" Text="Drafts would be private to the poster. They would be accessible in the questions tab of the user's page, possibly with an expiry date to avoid accumulation of drafted questions." CreationDate="2013-08-07T09:15:15.743" UserId="27403" />
  <row Id="4359" PostId="1706" Score="0" Text="I see. I imagine your proposal would need to be forwarded to the powers that are above us." CreationDate="2013-08-07T09:24:47.660" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4357" PostId="1707" Score="4" Text="This arises frequently. I have noticed the LDA ambiguity several times. It is part of the permanent issue that too many assume that terminology known locally is also known globally. Another example is IV, which is independent or instrumental variable, requiring effort to work out the intended meaning. I support the idea of spelling out that you should spell things out, although how much difference it would make in practice is moot. (Precisely when an abbreviation becomes an acronym would need to be considered in drafting something.)" CreationDate="2013-08-07T07:39:00.263" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4361" PostId="1707" Score="2" Text="DV I just seen used to mean data visualization: http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/66733/what-is-difference-between-visualization-and-bi-visualization If you thought it definitely meant &quot;dependent variable&quot;..." CreationDate="2013-08-07T13:37:15.167" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4370" PostId="1707" Score="2" Text="Here's a fun one: Does GLM stand for *general linear model* or *generalized linear model*?" CreationDate="2013-08-07T15:06:12.020" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4381" PostId="1707" Score="1" Text="@Macro In respect of GLMs ... I wish it were so, but unfortunately, I have seen the general linear model written as &quot;GLM&quot; in course notes --- and [it is even in Wikpedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_linear_model)(!); I recall asking a poster of a stats question (probably here on CV) to change a question that did the same. So even with GLM it might be better for posters to consider the possibility that it might be ambiguous." CreationDate="2013-08-08T23:08:29.180" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4384" PostId="1707" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b, I thought it was clear from the parenthetical that, while I always use &quot;GLM&quot; to mean generalized linear model, my rebuke of gung was 100% a joke and not meant to inspire a debate. I'm not surprised it has been referred to as a GLM before but I'd never seen it. In my experience these are just called linear models. Yes, I saw the wikipedia page but frankly the page (at a glance) looks a bit sketchy so I didn't consider it authoritative. I've deleted the previous comment and am conceding this debate I never meant to start. Cheers." CreationDate="2013-08-09T17:25:10.777" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4387" PostId="1707" Score="0" Text="My apologies, Macro, I missed that it was a joke." CreationDate="2013-08-09T21:45:29.073" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4388" PostId="1707" Score="2" Text="I agree that it is an issue.  Possibly even better than &quot;try to avoid acronyms&quot;, though would be &quot;spell out all acronyms on first use&quot;.  (A) There is likely some subset of people that will only recognize (or more readily recognize) the acronym (and maybe learn something by seeing the long form and the short form together).  (B)(i) Someone reading through multiple questions will be learning terms and their acronyms along the way.  (B)(ii) Learning in this way while reading through multiple questions could help with understanding older questions with unexplained acronyms." CreationDate="2013-08-10T02:39:34.533" UserId="27142" />
  <row Id="4413" PostId="1707" Score="1" Text="I've a number of times seen SPSS users use GLM to mean General Linear Model (with a Gaussian response but combinations of categorical and continuous explanatory variables), reflecting the unhelpful way the menus describe things in that application (and that, astonishingly, a generalized linear model doesn't seem to be part of the base package and hence many users have no idea of its existence)." CreationDate="2013-08-15T01:57:15.987" UserId="7972" />
  <row Id="4360" PostId="1709" Score="2" Text="+1. I have suggested edits to remove acronyms the first time they are cited, and I think Glen_b's suggestion of including this hint on the help center page would help to support this idea. Is this possible?" CreationDate="2013-08-07T13:34:23.760" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4362" PostId="1709" Score="2" Text="I'd divide this into two. Ambiguous abbreviations within titles are the biggest nuisance. Defining and then using abbreviations within questions is part of what most people do it most of the time and very hard to police any way." CreationDate="2013-08-07T13:39:47.883" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4363" PostId="1709" Score="2" Text="@Nick Might I suggest that (1) editing the titles (where the meaning is spelled out in the question) and (2) asking for clarification (where the meaning is not spelled out anywhere) may be effective, easy actions to take?" CreationDate="2013-08-07T13:43:18.777" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4364" PostId="1709" Score="0" Text="One may argue that titles will become too long. For that, it helps to emphasize that in many situations words which meaning are carried by tags do not need to appear in title. Example: How to do something using R (&quot;using R&quot; can be replaced by R tag). Is that right?" CreationDate="2013-08-07T13:48:40.053" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4365" PostId="1709" Score="0" Text="Naturally I agree that these are things to do, and I have done both. I am not clear whether and why you might think I disagree. The action point being suggested by @Glen_b is, I think, strengthening the help rather than changing editing attitudes or practices." CreationDate="2013-08-07T13:51:43.520" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4366" PostId="1709" Score="1" Text="@Andre Silva Yes and no. &quot;Using R&quot; could be central to the question. If it is, then it belongs in the title. (I assume here that the question is still on-topic for CV.)" CreationDate="2013-08-07T13:53:25.560" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4367" PostId="1709" Score="2" Text="@Andre That's a good question that I cannot answer briefly or unambiguously. People use titles to decide whether to read a question. In some cases the question may be so R-centric, for instance, that perhaps signaling that in the title would be wise, even though ordinarily it would be an unnecessary duplication of information in a tag. Titles can also be targets of searches (see the &quot;advanced search tips&quot;), so in some ways they ought to be thought of as syntactically meaningful sequences of keywords." CreationDate="2013-08-07T13:54:14.363" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4368" PostId="1709" Score="0" Text="@NickCox, agree. There are situations the tag cannot replace a word in title." CreationDate="2013-08-07T13:54:28.847" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4369" PostId="1709" Score="0" Text="So, maybe the best thing to do would be to require abbreviations and acronyms to be spelled out (first time cited) on question body. If correction is needed, then, question can be edited in title and body. The title would fit more for calling attention (i.e. acronyms would be ok)." CreationDate="2013-08-07T13:58:39.150" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4372" PostId="1709" Score="1" Text="@Andre It is possible to edit the [topics help page](http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), but [the page relevant to asking good questions](http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask)--which is where such a requirement ought to appear--is not editable (by your mods, anyway)." CreationDate="2013-08-07T20:57:22.473" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4374" PostId="1709" Score="1" Text="@whuber I agree about TLA's but in phrasing my question I was specifically thinking of a longer abbreviation as an example of being a 'standard' one I wouldn't want to interfere with -- &quot;ANOVA&quot;." CreationDate="2013-08-07T22:47:13.203" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4376" PostId="1709" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b I was trying hard to think of standard acronyms; thanks for that example. In some sense, &quot;ANOVA&quot; no longer is an acronym, just as &quot;snafu&quot; is not.  (We might call these &quot;paronyms&quot;, $\pi\alpha\rho o\sigma$ &quot;former&quot; + $o\nu o\mu\alpha$ &quot;name&quot;.)  Moreover, the longer the acronym (or abbreviation), the less likely it is to be ambiguous, whence the focus on TLAs (&quot;two/three-letter acronyms&quot;)." CreationDate="2013-08-08T16:41:14.400" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4377" PostId="1709" Score="1" Text="@Andre Thanks.  As a start I have added a new section to [that post](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/a/1483), headed &quot;Style&quot;.  Everyone is (of course) free to improve it." CreationDate="2013-08-08T16:56:46.480" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4378" PostId="1709" Score="2" Text="@whuber I agree that ANOVA is now a word in its own right despite its formation as an acronym; the difficulty is not whether or not it's really an acronym now, it's that I don't know how to suggest to a new user, especially one with limited statistical background, how to tell that ANOVA wil be understood, but ANOSIM probably won't." CreationDate="2013-08-08T21:14:29.487" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4379" PostId="1709" Score="3" Text="@Glen_b That's a great point. Here's a proposal that is only partly in jest: if a word is clearly an acronym or you have to write it out in all caps, please expand it on the first use.  That lets users of &quot;Anova&quot; off the hook but obliges users of &quot;ANOVA&quot; to learn what it stands for :-)." CreationDate="2013-08-08T21:26:09.390" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4380" PostId="1709" Score="1" Text="@whuber well it certainly works as a jest, because I laughed. As an actual suggestion ... I don't seem to have a better one right now. The new section of that meta post is good." CreationDate="2013-08-08T23:03:50.507" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4400" PostId="1709" Score="0" Text="Would 'Define letters representing quantities, functions, and operators in mathematical expressions' be worth putting in too?" CreationDate="2013-08-12T13:45:53.607" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="4401" PostId="1709" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi I have made an edit to that effect; please feel free to improve it if you like." CreationDate="2013-08-12T14:09:12.917" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4403" PostId="1709" Score="1" Text="@whuber Thanks; &amp; I think the wording's perfect." CreationDate="2013-08-12T14:19:42.017" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="4391" PostId="1711" Score="0" Text="+1 I agree that the retagging needs to happen first." CreationDate="2013-08-11T23:43:16.803" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4389" PostId="1712" Score="0" Text="What is it you were trying to display? (I can edit it for you, if I can tell what you want.) You can display text in a code block &amp; it will show up as you type it. You can also use mathjax to display information formatted as $\LaTeX$ (see here: [reviewing-questions-and-applying-latex-format](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1604//1605#1605)). Lastly you can use HTML. The editing features CV supports are discussed (briefly) here: [editing-help](http://stats.stackexchange.com/editing-help)." CreationDate="2013-08-11T22:12:36.740" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4390" PostId="1712" Score="0" Text="@gung i was trying to show 3 rows and 3 columns of data for 3 different comparisions" CreationDate="2013-08-11T23:23:02.040" UserDisplayName="user11279" />
  <row Id="4393" PostId="1712" Score="0" Text="@AndreSilva i found that the tag function could be abused to provide something that looks like a table" CreationDate="2013-08-12T01:32:42.223" UserDisplayName="user11279" />
  <row Id="4394" PostId="1712" Score="0" Text="Please do not &quot;abuse&quot; the tag function in this way, @caseyr547. I have tried to edit your question for you. Try to follow my lead &amp; edit it further." CreationDate="2013-08-12T01:45:23.050" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4396" PostId="1712" Score="0" Text="@gung thanks for the correction i looked on metaoverflow and that seemed to be one of the ways which was suggested." CreationDate="2013-08-12T03:10:54.423" UserDisplayName="user11279" />
  <row Id="4397" PostId="1712" Score="0" Text="That's a poor suggestion. Would you mind posting a link to where it said that? I'd like to address it." CreationDate="2013-08-12T03:12:13.063" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4398" PostId="1712" Score="0" Text="@gung let me fetch it for you" CreationDate="2013-08-12T03:16:32.927" UserDisplayName="user11279" />
  <row Id="4399" PostId="1712" Score="1" Text="http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/73566/is-there-any-markdown-to-create-tables" CreationDate="2013-08-12T03:17:08.337" UserDisplayName="user11279" />
  <row Id="4402" PostId="1712" Score="0" Text="Did you see the comments beneath that Meta SO question, casey?  &quot;I'm only serious about the first one.&quot;  *The use of tags to present data is an overt joke.* If you were to try this, we would become rather upset at you due to the work required to remove all those tags!" CreationDate="2013-08-12T14:11:25.847" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4404" PostId="1712" Score="0" Text="@whuber i thought it was a kind of invert statmenet when i looked at the code for the first one it was a mess so i thought to myself no way could someone use or suggest all those breaks but as you can tell i was wrong it wont happen again :)" CreationDate="2013-08-12T14:26:17.193" UserDisplayName="user11279" />
  <row Id="4405" PostId="1714" Score="9" Text="I am one of those two, but have absolutely no objection. That members can disagree in public on where to draw a line in interpreting even site policy is at most very slightly embarrassing; it should never stop a member using their own judgment." CreationDate="2013-08-12T15:26:03.290" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4411" PostId="1714" Score="3" Text="@NickCox +1 I find public disagreement over such grey areas useful. ... as for the question, I think that after a short delay (I think a few days at least), much more fully answering such questions is not only okay but perhaps to be encouraged. The pedagogical value in them doing some of it for themselves has likely either been achieved or won't be with further delay." CreationDate="2013-08-14T21:42:55.647" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4412" PostId="1714" Score="3" Text="@Glen_b Arguably it's only by seeing views on marginal cases that we learn where to draw the line, or least to get some sense of whether each of us is hawk or dove." CreationDate="2013-08-14T21:45:01.740" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4432" PostId="1714" Score="0" Text="@NickCox, your comments were very helpful (several upvotes). I'd suggest you to post them as one answer seeking to consolidate this thread." CreationDate="2013-08-23T01:54:07.783" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4406" PostId="1715" Score="6" Text="(+1) A quick glance at the output suggests you might also want to filter out [cartoons](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/423) and [famous statisticians](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/5115). Please consider, too, that to some extent votes are a measure of popularity and visibility more than &quot;interest.&quot; Depending on what you like, you might prefer to highlight answers (even with moderate upvoting) that have a lot of $\TeX$ and figures within them--but finding them with a SQL statement might not be easy! Consider perhaps looking at *question* upvotes too." CreationDate="2013-08-13T21:05:23.510" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4407" PostId="1715" Score="0" Text="filters added, thanks. I'll think about what I can do with the tex/figures idea." CreationDate="2013-08-13T21:08:31.620" UserId="8451" />
  <row Id="4408" PostId="1715" Score="6" Text="I should also add that *age* of answer is an important covariate: older answers (especially those posted during the first two weeks or so) tend to have accrued many votes purely from more exposure. Although we could quickly get into murky details of how to model and measure &quot;interest,&quot; I believe that controlling for exposure (as measured by time elapsed and maybe page views) may be relatively simple and useful for identifying well-crafted newer posts that haven't yet risen near the top and help promote the efforts of newer members of our community." CreationDate="2013-08-13T21:12:18.060" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4409" PostId="1715" Score="3" Text="@whuber added some modified queries based on your suggestions regarding the &quot;age&quot; component." CreationDate="2013-08-14T04:12:54.693" UserId="8451" />
  <row Id="4410" PostId="1715" Score="1" Text="Filtering out 'community wiki' questions altogether might give a very different profile, and a much higher proportion of answers that are statistically helpful, since a lot of cw questions are  opinion based (about preferences rather than statistical concepts)" CreationDate="2013-08-14T21:36:59.763" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4415" PostId="1715" Score="1" Text="If you're looking for the most consistently insightful user on CV, you don't need a SQL query, it's cardinal. See whuber's comment here: [How should a new user navigate cross validated to learn more about statistics?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1554/) The second most consistently insightful user would be whuber. If you want to develop a measurement, you might be interested in my answer here: [How should performance answering questions best be evaluated?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1218//1244#1244)" CreationDate="2013-08-15T02:18:48.727" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4416" PostId="1715" Score="0" Text="I don't know if SE's data site will let you access the views associated w/ a question at different points, but if you could, I think the best SQL query would return the # of answers above a threshold (8 net upvotes seems fine) w/i a certain # of *views* (say 200). That is, is the number of views when +8 is reached minus the # of views when the answer was posted &lt; 200? This count would be divided by the # of answers that have been posted for &gt;200 views to yield a percentage. That % may be the best that can be done, but note @chl's comments to my answer about how to evaluate performance." CreationDate="2013-08-15T02:21:06.283" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4418" PostId="1715" Score="0" Text="@gung, assuming it's not possible to look at vote count over time (Maybe it is. Idk.), it would be almost as good to use (# of +8 answers w/i 2 weeks)/(# of answers to questions with &gt;200 views). As you know, most of the &quot;action&quot;, in terms of views/answers/votes usually happens near the beginning. This would mainly miss anyone who gamed the 'Necromancer&quot; badge and a relatively small handful of other answers. Of course, there's no simple way to correct the time-varying voting rates whuber refers to. BTW, thanks for the official gung Top 2. Why not create and release the full gung Rankings? ;-)" CreationDate="2013-08-15T14:55:50.333" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4419" PostId="1715" Score="1" Text="@Macro, you're honorary #3. I just didn't want to inflate your ego." CreationDate="2013-08-15T14:58:16.170" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4420" PostId="1715" Score="2" Text="Thanks @gung! You're #3 in my official rankings too. Of course, I'm #1 and #2 (there's my ego :-/) but #3 still isn't bad! #4 is that kid who used to post unintelligible questions (kittens at play) and then get very indignant about it when asked for clarification. The rest of the top 10 is rounded out by people with `user#######` names. Cardinal and whuber are tied for 11th. My rankings are strange." CreationDate="2013-08-15T19:34:47.727" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4421" PostId="1715" Score="3" Text="I'm glad I was able to disseminate my tool without encouraging a competitive environment ;)" CreationDate="2013-08-15T20:51:18.130" UserId="8451" />
  <row Id="4796" PostId="1715" Score="0" Text="@DavidMarx is it possible to query something along the lines of specifying a value of reputation and then seeing who was fastest to reach that value in terms of days?" CreationDate="2013-09-20T00:12:38.367" UserDisplayName="user25658" />
  <row Id="4811" PostId="1715" Score="1" Text="@BabakP, I can't answer your question about querying but I can say you're way up there. I can also say with certainty that, without some restriction on the number of questions answered, it would be nearly impossible to outpace Michael Chernick, who quit visiting the site quite a while ago. Just look at [his first four weeks](http://stats.stackexchange.com/users/11032/michael-chernick?tab=reputation&amp;sort=post&amp;page=11). He kept up this astonishing pace for months." CreationDate="2013-09-20T18:49:53.197" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4422" PostId="1716" Score="0" Text="+1, these are good suggestions." CreationDate="2013-08-19T01:44:35.193" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4423" PostId="1717" Score="1" Text="Thank you very much!" CreationDate="2013-08-19T14:16:19.017" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4424" PostId="1718" Score="3" Text="I have no objection to any particular source being used so long as the definition itself appears clear, correct and suitable for our purposes. I find Wikipedia to be uneven in style and accuracy, but I doubt I am alone in that, yet it's not an objection in principle." CreationDate="2013-08-20T17:16:05.943" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4428" PostId="1718" Score="3" Text="I have accepted edits like this before but I'll admit I've never thought about this issue before. Now that I do, I understand the practical benefit of accepting these kinds of edits, but prefer to think that the tag wiki writers are experts in the subject - not in searching wikipedia. If you know what you're talking about, it doesn't take much time to write a decent tag wiki excerpt. If one can't be bothered to take that amount of time, I guess I'd ask why they're editing tag wikis at all. Overall, this behavior seems to be more about gaming the edit badges than anything, so I'd discourage it." CreationDate="2013-08-20T18:43:32.773" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4429" PostId="1718" Score="3" Text="I brought this up in chat awhile ago, see http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/10445808#10445808, in which whuber has an applicable response (to this question)." CreationDate="2013-08-20T19:04:39.660" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="4430" PostId="1718" Score="2" Text="+1 to @Macro. I like the principle that you shouldn't be writing tag wikis if you couldn't do a good job yourself. But best to reject a poor definition rather than imply that someone is not quite competent enough. An extra detail is that Wikipedia or any other external source can change." CreationDate="2013-08-20T19:16:27.423" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4431" PostId="1718" Score="0" Text="+1 to @AndyW; the comments there get at one of my concerns w/ this issue. Namely, it seems to me that the info (*especially* for the excerpts) should be more specific to CV. Perhaps whuber will contribute his thoughts on the topic as an answer here as well." CreationDate="2013-08-20T19:24:41.750" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4434" PostId="1718" Score="6" Text="My own feeling is that where possible we should write the best wiki and excerpt we can. I don't mind a certain amount of wikipedia, but whenever possible prefer to use several sources or write one from scratch (we're supposed to know what we're talking about!). I have some some wikipedia extracts pop up that were either not especially relevant or even bordering on wrong. I tend to let them through if there's no good reason to knock them back, even if I don't especially like the explanation (though I sometimes go back and edit). For excerpts I think they should almost always be custom-made." CreationDate="2013-08-23T03:25:09.147" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4529" PostId="1718" Score="2" Text="Has this Wikipedia issue led to a stricter reviewing process of tag wiki edits? I got most of them accepted so far but it seems that the entry for the geo-information system (gis) tag has gone missing. As concerns the topic: I started editing such tags recently because before I wasn't aware of this feature. I admit, I'm not an expert on all topics but I spend a good amount of time to read up on them and to write decent wikis and excerpts. Therefore I'm somewhat negative towards wikis that were just copy/pasted because it's just effortless." CreationDate="2013-09-03T21:14:54.433" UserId="26338" />
  <row Id="4433" PostId="1719" Score="3" Text="You should note that high reputation users (&gt;3000 rep) review these and cast close votes on duplicates, a lot of what goes on here is down to us, not the moderators. Frequently these things can be a bit of a grey area; I often find myself in two minds. Hopefully there's some wisdom of crowds effect going on." CreationDate="2013-08-23T03:19:27.827" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4435" PostId="1721" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b Just to flag that the above uses some of your wording, so feel even freer than usual to edit, comment or disagree." CreationDate="2013-08-23T09:04:33.507" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4436" PostId="1721" Score="3" Text="I have no problem with your incorporating or summarizing comments in this fashion. Indeed, my understanding is that's how it's supposed to work." CreationDate="2013-08-23T17:37:10.783" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4446" PostId="1723" Score="3" Text="It seems like I would call it 'cross-posting' rather than a 'duplicate', but that's just a matter of terminology. Also, you couldn't *close as a duplicate* in the way you can when they're on the same site. I do think that one should be closed, however." CreationDate="2013-08-25T14:00:24.277" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4447" PostId="1723" Score="0" Text="Thanks @gung so, what should I do? Flag it?" CreationDate="2013-08-25T14:13:59.773" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="4448" PostId="1723" Score="1" Text="Are you asking about a specific question? Can you link to it?" CreationDate="2013-08-25T14:16:33.113" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4449" PostId="1723" Score="1" Text="Oops sorry.... http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/68280/probability-that-n-random-points-lie-on-semicircle is on CV and in my answer I give a link to the answer on math site" CreationDate="2013-08-25T14:17:51.633" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="4450" PostId="1723" Score="4" Text="That's a trickier issue, I think. It's not that the same poster asked an identical question on 2 sites (which is what I thought you were asking about here). I'm not sure what SE's policy on cross-site duplicates in that sense. I think you answering the question &amp; providing a link to the other site is the right strategy in this case." CreationDate="2013-08-25T14:23:34.397" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4451" PostId="1723" Score="5" Text="Not the same OP, not exactly the same question, so it's neither a cross-post nor a system-wide duplicate. Usually, in either case moderators would decide to keep only one thread alive (on the most relevant site). There's nothing wrong in linking answers from different sites, IMO." CreationDate="2013-08-26T08:25:03.890" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="4452" PostId="1725" Score="2" Text="It is not the community's responsibility to attach the [tag:status-declined] tag to threads: that is done by SE developers." CreationDate="2013-08-27T13:15:32.950" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4453" PostId="1725" Score="0" Text="@whuber. Yes. I mean (in my understanding), a dev tags a question status-declined if community makes a consensus (through updated answers, for example) or they just give a feedback for their own to explain why it was declined. So I am asking for support to understand if it is normal to have status-declined questions without feedbacks. Did I miss something in your comment (sorry I did not understand the link you posted)? May you help me to edit the unclear parts of the question (I did not like the title, but could not come up with a better one). Thanks." CreationDate="2013-08-27T13:23:23.613" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4454" PostId="1725" Score="0" Text="I have edited the second paragraph in an attempt to address whuber's comment." CreationDate="2013-08-27T13:41:03.613" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4455" PostId="1725" Score="5" Text="In principle everyone wants good feedback, which is as desirable as the proverbial motherhood and apple pie. In practice the person making the tag edit is usually the messenger rather than a developer, I guess. It is up to the developers to explain why they don't explain themselves, but in practice (a) many ideas are very good ideas but would no doubt be a lot of work (b) the developers don't want to start little arguments of the form &quot;We don't think that important enough to implement&quot; &quot;But it is important; lots of people would use it&quot;. Again, I guess. How many developers for how many ideas?" CreationDate="2013-08-27T17:53:11.870" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4456" PostId="1725" Score="2" Text="I imagine that &quot;desirable&quot; rather than &quot;necessary&quot; is the key word here." CreationDate="2013-08-27T17:55:07.923" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4457" PostId="1725" Score="0" Text="@NickCox, agree (let's say 90%). I would just say differently about the messenger part (but I am guessing too). I thought maybe I could receive one answer (support) from a developer (or from someone who knows the answer, if it exists)." CreationDate="2013-08-27T18:07:47.327" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4458" PostId="1725" Score="3" Text="I should perhaps emphasise that I am just trying to analyse what is happening, not judge on good or bad behaviour. But in other contexts I have seen that developers keeping quiet is, in practice, the way they have to behave." CreationDate="2013-08-27T18:13:28.070" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4461" PostId="1726" Score="4" Text="I think developers and moderators have done a great job. If it is not possible to cover all threads (regarding feedbacks) at least I think you are handling the majority (e.g. here 10 out of 13). Thanks a lot for your time and for clarifying this." CreationDate="2013-08-27T18:36:54.753" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4462" PostId="1726" Score="3" Text="@Andre We're at 12 out of 13 now - I just have no idea what to do with [this one](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/708/clustering-picture-gallery)..." CreationDate="2013-08-27T18:39:09.580" UserId="6123" />
  <row Id="4463" PostId="1726" Score="0" Text="Maybe it should just be closed / deleted? It seems off-topic for meta.CV, if that's possible." CreationDate="2013-08-27T23:12:36.160" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4464" PostId="1726" Score="2" Text="I don't see a stronger case for a cluster picture gallery than for any other collection of examples, graphical or otherwise." CreationDate="2013-08-27T23:26:10.527" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4466" PostId="1727" Score="6" Text="My advice would be to you always track the feedback received to have raised the flag. If they have been marked &quot;helpful&quot; by many users then, you are ok. If some of them have been declined try to understand why. + 1 for asking." CreationDate="2013-08-28T11:22:45.283" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4467" PostId="1727" Score="3" Text="Thanks, yes. So far I'm mostly being helpful apparently. It just seems like good hygiene to try to close old, unanswered, low quality questions so the good ones are easier to find." CreationDate="2013-08-28T11:30:10.543" UserId="7883" />
  <row Id="4468" PostId="1727" Score="6" Text="This is a good question, &amp; @AndreSilva has some good advice here. One note: I believe the &quot;helpful&quot; pretty much only comes from the moderators. Personally, it seems reasonable to me to clean up old, low quality threads that don't have any answers &amp; aren't likely to get any." CreationDate="2013-08-28T13:10:01.210" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4475" PostId="1727" Score="5" Text="Agreed - it never hurts to clean out old, low quality stuff that isn't helping anyone." CreationDate="2013-08-28T18:08:41.417" UserId="6123" />
  <row Id="4512" PostId="1727" Score="1" Text="I'm also trying to move very good quality comments to answers using the community wiki tag. This was suggested on the Math.SE &quot;Great Unanswered Questions Crusade&quot; as a course of action (if I recall correctly)." CreationDate="2013-08-29T15:51:42.867" UserId="7883" />
  <row Id="4471" PostId="1729" Score="1" Text="It is unfortunate that the tag name cannot be changed, but I think your proposed solution is good. The only doubt I have is that if people do use the &quot;beta&quot; tag incorrectly, it will be automatically changed to &quot;beta-distribution&quot;; is that correct?" CreationDate="2013-08-28T14:48:25.350" UserId="27581" />
  <row Id="4472" PostId="1729" Score="1" Text="That's right. You'd want to be sure you've re-tagged all the improperly tagged threads first." CreationDate="2013-08-28T14:51:51.283" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4473" PostId="1729" Score="1" Text="I have made sure of that by looking through all questions. After the synonym is approved, will people be able to use &quot;beta&quot; any more?" CreationDate="2013-08-28T14:55:10.583" UserId="27581" />
  <row Id="4474" PostId="1729" Score="7" Text="I found (and changed) one question using [tag:beta] to refer to standardized regression coefficients. I created the [tag:beta-distribution] and made it the target of [tag:beta]. Now, anyone attempting to tag a thread with [tag:beta] will automatically see [tag:beta-distribution] appear (and all the links I placed here will be directed *solely* to the beta distribution tag)." CreationDate="2013-08-28T14:58:47.887" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4477" PostId="1730" Score="10" Text="Agree on the problem. It's one of several posed by new users who don't read the help carefully or haven't experience of the system. Equally bizarre: accepted answers not upvoted by the OP; poor answers accepted capriciously; questions abandoned when a little more information would make them much easier to answer. All that said, I think this would require SE-wide action and it would complicate (slowly moving OPs puzzled that someone else accepted the answer). The main point is to upvote a good answer vigorously, making it evident that several people liked it, regardless of what the OP thinks." CreationDate="2013-08-29T09:16:42.943" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4494" PostId="1730" Score="4" Text="+1 to @NickCox; this is the right analysis. These are simply intrinsic to the SE model. I think the cure would be worse than the disease. It is unfortunate that many answers go unaccepted, but I don't think a future user, who stumbles across a highly-voted, but unaccepted, answer will think it's no good. (1 note, re Nick's comment: new users w/ rep &lt;15 can accept answers but cannot upvote them, so &quot;accepted answers not upvoted by the OP&quot; is a feature of the system, not necessarily poor utilization by the OP.)" CreationDate="2013-08-29T13:48:23.647" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4495" PostId="1730" Score="0" Text="@Gung Good point on &lt;15. I'd forgotten that or never noticed. But I've often noticed this behaviour with &quot;new&quot; and rep &gt;= 15 so my remark still stands." CreationDate="2013-08-29T13:52:44.537" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4511" PostId="1730" Score="4" Text="To advance the conversation and not go over old ground, please review the extensive discussion on MetaSO, including *inter alia* http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10672, http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/41410, http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/68404, and http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/149814. A useful search includes keywords [unanswered unaccept](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/search?q=unanswered+unaccept)." CreationDate="2013-08-29T15:48:08.903" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4478" PostId="1731" Score="0" Text="I support this. In fact in conversation with @Andre Silva, now deleted, I made the point that Amr was seeking a rigorous book, at the opposite end from e.g. Andy Field's books." CreationDate="2013-08-29T10:09:06.533" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4479" PostId="1731" Score="0" Text="@NnickCox Thanks a lot. If you have any suggestions on an appropriate book for me, I would like to hear them as well." CreationDate="2013-08-29T11:22:42.053" UserId="29653" />
  <row Id="4480" PostId="1731" Score="1" Text="Sorry, but my personal view is that starting from scratch and being rigorous don't mix. I think you need to know what you can do before you learn how to be rigorous about it, to paraphrase something John Tukey once said. But I am very happy to let your question be posed to consenting adults." CreationDate="2013-08-29T11:41:36.090" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4482" PostId="1731" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Why not? For example any undergrad analysis books start by stating the field axioms or by constructing the real numbers (this means starting from scratch for me) yet they are rigorous." CreationDate="2013-08-29T12:43:09.150" UserId="29653" />
  <row Id="4483" PostId="1731" Score="5" Text="I should have said _in statistics_, but I still stand by what I said. Your analogy doesn't convince: a first book in more rigorous analysis is still building on years of elementary and high/secondary school education and experience with algebra (and usually calculus). What can be difficult for mathematical types to understand is that statistics is an art in approximation with real data, with tricks and devices, and not just a deductively-derived branch of mathematics. (A more direct answer is simply that I don't know that anyone has tried to do exactly what you want.)" CreationDate="2013-08-29T12:53:31.797" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4484" PostId="1731" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Thanks for your help. I just have a few remarks: I was not making an analogy, but instead I wanted to disprove the statement:&quot;All math books that are rigorous do not start from scratch&quot; by giving a counterexample. Another thing, I think it would have been fine with me if I only studied analysis without calculus, in that sense I think calculus was a waste of time for me." CreationDate="2013-08-29T13:12:27.093" UserId="29653" />
  <row Id="4485" PostId="1731" Score="0" Text="@NickCox So if you have a stat book that starts from scratch (in the sense that it puts all axioms and definitions from the beginning just like analysis book would do), I would like to know it. I think it would be a good book for me to study even if I have not learnt the &quot;Calculus equivalent&quot; of statistics first. I think (hopefully) that  I am mathematically-mature enough to handle it." CreationDate="2013-08-29T13:12:58.157" UserId="29653" />
  <row Id="4486" PostId="1731" Score="0" Text="@NickCox The most important part of your comment in my opinion is when you said: &quot;and not just a deductively-derived branch of mathematics&quot;. Do you mean that mathematical statistics has some sort of an abductive character. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abductive_reasoning" CreationDate="2013-08-29T13:13:28.083" UserId="29653" />
  <row Id="4487" PostId="1731" Score="0" Text="OK. This is an enjoyable conversation for me, but better truncated. My first introduction to calculus was inspirational, and I enjoyed Latin too, so there you go." CreationDate="2013-08-29T13:14:59.510" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4488" PostId="1731" Score="2" Text="It might help to narrow the scope of your question a bit - a mathematically rigorous approach to hypothesis testing, generalized linear models, optimal experimental designs, robust non-parametric methods... ? - I can think of books that treat any one of these rigorously, but not a single book that does so for all of Statistics. (And I second Nick's point: even if you weren't trying to learn to apply statistics, it's usual to have covered many topics in a shallower, more heuristic, fashion before studying a few of them deeply.)" CreationDate="2013-08-29T13:20:10.597" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="4489" PostId="1731" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi I was thinking of this book :  http://www.amazon.com/dp/0387945466/?tag=stackoverfl08-20 I am not sure if it starts from scratch though as I am not able to look inside it. Do you have any idea if it starts from scratch" CreationDate="2013-08-29T13:31:55.633" UserId="29653" />
  <row Id="4490" PostId="1731" Score="0" Text="On Schervish's book: Look at the Springer website. It often shows much more about their books than does Amazon." CreationDate="2013-08-29T13:38:50.783" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4491" PostId="1731" Score="1" Text="Then perhaps this [question](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2423/standard-reference-for-classical-mathematical-statistics) is closer to yours. IMO all the answers might suit you except Wasserman (though I've not read Schervish)." CreationDate="2013-08-29T13:39:43.477" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="4492" PostId="1731" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Thanks they have free previews." CreationDate="2013-08-29T13:42:13.127" UserId="29653" />
  <row Id="4493" PostId="1731" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi Yes this would work, provided that it starts from scratch. It should not assume previous knowledge of prob/stat" CreationDate="2013-08-29T13:44:25.933" UserId="29653" />
  <row Id="4496" PostId="1731" Score="1" Text="I think most of these could be said to start from scratch in a sense, but I wouldn't have understood a single page of any before I'd spent a few years studying/applying more elementary statistics. Everyone's different - just warning you." CreationDate="2013-08-29T13:53:43.727" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="4500" PostId="1731" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi I realize that I you all might be right at the end about the need for heuristic work before rigour. But I want to give it a try, as I felt that I lost time when I studied calculus before analysis." CreationDate="2013-08-29T14:21:25.517" UserId="29653" />
  <row Id="4501" PostId="1731" Score="1" Text="I like [this book](http://www.amazon.com/Theoretical-Statistics-Topics-Course-Springer/dp/0387938389). We used a pre-print version of this for my theoretical statistics sequence in grad school. It is self contained but does pre-suppose basic knowledge of linear algebra and calculus. It reviews the key pieces of measure theory needed for the subsequent chapters. I like this book because it covers everything you need to know but still leaves room for ingenuity on the part of the reader. If you work through this book you will come away with a strong foundation in theoretical statistics." CreationDate="2013-08-29T14:41:32.353" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4510" PostId="1731" Score="2" Text="I have edited the original question to reflect my understanding that it seeks *theoretical, mathematical* texts. My current belief is that this does not duplicate existing threads and so I have reopened it.  (If a duplicate does come to light, one of them would likely be closed or merged.)" CreationDate="2013-08-29T15:21:33.443" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4497" PostId="1732" Score="2" Text="I totally agree with 1 (especially compared to email list-serves), but I would note 2 and 3 are more about the people using chat than the actual design of the system. Normative behavior on the site can only be encouraged through experience, so newcomers will always have similar digressions (regardless of the medium)." CreationDate="2013-08-29T14:00:08.430" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="4498" PostId="1732" Score="2" Text="Very fair points. Chat is not discredited by those who misuse it.  In principle, the tone of chat might be raised by providing better role models; in practice, that is not something that appeals to me." CreationDate="2013-08-29T14:17:45.523" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="8501" PostId="1732" Score="2" Text="Two years on, I find I use chat more, to chat, very simply because I now feel I &quot;know&quot; some people, or at least know much more about their work and style and admire both. But the purpose of chat is not well understood: there are frequent posting of technical questions that should be on CV itself and there are frequent prompts to &quot;Look at my question on CV&quot;. Those aren't out of order or obnoxious, and almost always they are perfectly polite, but they aren't what chat is for at all, in my view." CreationDate="2015-10-16T07:57:02.087" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4502" PostId="1734" Score="0" Text="Only with time we can get experience in the community. @amr is a experienced 10k user on mathematics.se and I am risking to say he had bad luck posting his first thread here on a (let's say) polemic issue and maybe got a little disapointement to have a question closed. It is not easy to be a moderator because of these kind of difficult situations, and I am supporting your answer because of that and because of the answer's main message (above &quot;background&quot;). +1" CreationDate="2013-08-29T14:49:49.883" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4503" PostId="1734" Score="0" Text="I do not agree at all  that I used that an ad hominem attack. Some of my comments to you include triple question marks &quot;???&quot; another comment includes stating the same thing for three times (the one about axiom--&gt;theorem--&gt;proof). Probably these annoyed you, and for these I apologize please accept my apology. I will put other comments in a while." CreationDate="2013-08-29T14:50:33.490" UserId="29653" />
  <row Id="4504" PostId="1734" Score="5" Text="Disclosure: I didn't read the conversation between whuber and @amr before posting my comment of support. Two extra points: We should support whuber's thoroughly reasonable expectation of maintaining a civil tone in discussion. http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2423/standard-reference-for-classical-mathematical-statistics is in fact more nearly a duplicate than the thread previously mentioned." CreationDate="2013-08-29T14:51:17.490" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4505" PostId="1734" Score="0" Text="Regarding complaining about duplicates in meta, I saw it happening before in other SE sites. Thus, I did it here. If it is inappropriate,  I did not know it was. Thus, I want to clarify that I did not put this meta post for the purpose of being rude." CreationDate="2013-08-29T15:08:56.197" UserId="29653" />
  <row Id="4506" PostId="1734" Score="3" Text="Amr I appreciate and accept your apology. The criterion to identify *ad hominem* comments is clear and simple: any negative assertion, explicit or implied, about another *person* involved in a discussion is *ad hominem.* (Sometimes it is legitimate to make *polite* inquiries about what someone knows or their state of mind, especially when asking for clarification from a poster who appears confused, because you are seeking common ground in order to help them.) As a newcomer to any site if there is any dispute your default assumption should be that perhaps *you* may be misunderstanding something" CreationDate="2013-08-29T15:10:56.450" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4507" PostId="1734" Score="1" Text="There is one more thing that I want to mention and I hope you do not consider it rude: I don't mind my question being closed as a duplicate. However, I mind it when the duplicate does not contain answers for my original question. It is very &quot;frustrating&quot; and &quot;annoying&quot; for me to see my question being closed as a duplicate when the duplicate does not answer my question. This is like making me mute when I need help. Finally, I agree with you that that it is not good to have tensed/stressed conversations and for this reason I apologized." CreationDate="2013-08-29T15:11:00.833" UserId="29653" />
  <row Id="4508" PostId="1734" Score="4" Text="@whuber OK. I agree with you about the ad hominem point especially when you said: &quot;explicit or implied&quot;" CreationDate="2013-08-29T15:15:01.017" UserId="29653" />
  <row Id="4509" PostId="1734" Score="4" Text="Closure is not permanent. A closed question is *in suspense,* awaiting a resolution of expressed concerns. As a poster, all you need to do on SE is provide that resolution by means of an edit or a clarifying comment explaining why the question ought to be opened. As moderator I was making an effort to help you provide that resolution by asking for an explanation of how your needs were not met elsewhere here. I anticipated that either you would demonstrate your question should be reopened or else that you would find the answers in the other question. That's how this site is supposed to work!" CreationDate="2013-08-29T15:15:07.003" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4513" PostId="1734" Score="4" Text="Two comments to the OP in respect of the answer and comments here): (i) I regularly vote to reopen, as well as to close questions, and I will sometimes make a small edit or comment when I think a post might nearly make it, if I think it will tip it into acceptability without changing the intent. We want to help users with questions where possible (it's not like anyone's getting paid here; you might like to consider what our motives could be); and (ii) if you find yourself suspecting @whuber didn't understand something, bet the other way; that's nearly always how it turns out" CreationDate="2013-08-30T00:18:09.910" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4516" PostId="1734" Score="0" Text="&quot;it is inappropriate anywhere on StackExchange (and anywhere else civil discourse is valued)&quot; +1 and accept. I am sorry again for what happened yesterday." CreationDate="2013-08-30T13:18:08.673" UserId="29653" />
  <row Id="4514" PostId="1735" Score="1" Text="I have no idea if it *should*, however, I do it sometimes; it makes it more distinct. I don't necessarily advocate that anyone else do it, &amp; I just as often don't myself. It's just random." CreationDate="2013-08-30T00:45:46.217" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4515" PostId="1735" Score="5" Text="I think it's basically pointless (though it does serve to highlight the package which may sometimes be slightly useful), but in any case not necessarily 'wrong'; to me it's more a matter of taste in formatting. I have seen a lot of proposed edits that do this, but I don't think it's an acceptable reason to suggest an edit (though if enough other good changes are made in the edit I'd generally let it go)." CreationDate="2013-08-30T01:11:14.160" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4650" PostId="1736" Score="1" Text="Picking R or S for the software name could only happen in pre-Internet-search-engines age." CreationDate="2013-09-17T18:46:26.840" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="4833" PostId="1736" Score="0" Text="@StasK Yet still happens. Awhile ago I found myself searching &quot;Anaconda Python&quot; and got utterly useless results. Fortunately, that one at least seems to be fixed." CreationDate="2013-09-24T19:57:37.280" UserId="5836" />
  <row Id="4520" PostId="1737" Score="3" Text="I think this gets to much of what seems to be going on, and I think the view expressed here is sensible. (Incidentally, since posting this question I've mostly avoided responding to the user at all; I think it's more productive all around if I avoid getting annoyed, though the volume also seems to be way down recently.)" CreationDate="2013-09-02T21:04:14.337" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4527" PostId="1739" Score="1" Text="I added a comment to the OP." CreationDate="2013-09-03T17:32:36.220" UserId="29865" />
  <row Id="4528" PostId="1739" Score="0" Text="@PeterKrautzberger, thank you for your support here." CreationDate="2013-09-03T17:39:09.320" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4523" PostId="1740" Score="1" Text="Just FYI: SE convention is not to include things like 'thanks', 'hope that helps', signature, etc. (although we still do it from time to time)." CreationDate="2013-09-03T14:20:00.947" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4524" PostId="1740" Score="0" Text="@gung. I usually remove greetings and signatures, but feel uncomfortable to not add a simple &quot;thanks&quot;. However, you are right. I appreciate the hint." CreationDate="2013-09-03T15:17:13.557" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4525" PostId="1740" Score="3" Text="I recognize the sentiment. I also feel obliged to add &quot;thanks&quot; when I ask a question here or on SO (the long reach of my Mother, no doubt). Really, it's nice that people have that instinct. Nonetheless SE discourages it: The idea is that the immediate Q &amp; A interaction is just a vehicle for the true purpose of generating permanent, high-quality, factual information for future use by others." CreationDate="2013-09-03T15:25:55.010" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11952" PostId="1741" Score="3" Text="Although there are many thoughtful discussions here, no one seems to flag a simple central point of polite behaviour: anything that smacks of **asking** publicly for praise or reward is at best a little undignified, and if repeated tiresome or even obnoxious. We should all have learned this at an early age. The main qualification is that it's in order to remind or inform people new to the site that question acceptance is a good thing, for them too. That's often best done by someone who didn't write an answer." CreationDate="2017-01-19T16:07:25.280" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12639" PostId="1741" Score="1" Text="+1 to @NickCox. I often ask inexperienced question askers to consider accepting other people's answers. But I usually hesitate to ask to accept my own ones. (Whenever I feel I have to, my formula is to ask to edit the question to clarify what remains unclear, hinting that if everything *is* clear then accepting one of the answers is the way to show it.)" CreationDate="2017-03-01T12:31:50.993" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12642" PostId="1741" Score="1" Text="Yesterday elsewhere I suggested to someone that  as they had expressed satisfaction with my answer (the only answer in a thread) they could accept it and we would both gain reputation. The transaction was generous: they tripled their reputation and I didn't. But it's a fine line. If it's someone with reputation in hundreds or thousands or millions, they surely know the game by now and I wouldn't prompt them for acceptance. (This was a niche speciality for which I sometimes appear to be the only really active person answering.)" CreationDate="2017-03-01T12:52:13.490" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4531" PostId="1742" Score="3" Text="You're right: there's not much such bad behavior on CV.  What little there is tends to come from people who frequent other SE sites or is associated with one or two high-rep users who no longer participate.  (My theory is that when your principal motivation for participation is to accrue reputation, you won't last long here: the pursuit of reputation for its own sake is barren and ultimately comes to be perceived as such by almost everybody; you have to find rewards from the less-quantifiable effects of participation, such as seeing the community grow or watching the threads improve.)" CreationDate="2013-09-05T15:57:54.023" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4532" PostId="1742" Score="2" Text="I think it's a little presumptuous - without any input yet from the OP - to ask the OP to either accept the answer or explain why they don't want to. Who's the judge of whether the answer is so great that the OP must be crazy or just plain rude not to accept it? I think when the OP explicitly expresses gratitude for the answer, indicating it was exactly what they needed, the ambiguity is gone and it becomes purely a matter of etiquette (and not whether the answer &quot;should&quot; be accepted) for them to click the check mark. One exception may be for the much-loved &quot;0% accept rate&quot; folks..." CreationDate="2013-09-05T16:22:25.867" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4533" PostId="1742" Score="0" Text="@Macro: Well, given that enough time's passed, it's phrased as a polite request &amp; not a demand, &amp;c., it could be useful for the OP to say why the current answers are inadequate: perhaps he's found the answer elsewhere &amp; will thus be encouraged to post it himself; perhaps he will explain something that was wrong with the answers &amp; someone else will answer better; perhaps he's embarrassed to say he didn't understand. To my mind it's not an unfriendly thing after giving someone advice to follow up later with &quot;So did that work all right for you?&quot; - it shows a willingness to continue helping." CreationDate="2013-09-05T16:56:02.577" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="4539" PostId="1742" Score="0" Text="@Macro I think that in the context of the question here, which indicates a situation where the OP has praised the answer, that it's quite possible to judge that even the OP thinks it's good." CreationDate="2013-09-06T22:35:22.957" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4541" PostId="1742" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b, yes I agree. When the OP praises the answer, I think reminding them of site etiquette re: accepting answers is perfectly appropriate (and I've done it before). I was mainly responding to Scortchi's statement &quot;....even if they don't comment&quot;." CreationDate="2013-09-07T17:16:15.163" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4542" PostId="1742" Score="0" Text="@Macro I see. Sorry." CreationDate="2013-09-07T23:50:02.160" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4530" PostId="1743" Score="9" Text="It will look like self-promotion if the user who answered the question will ask for an acceptance. It will look like an appropriate moderatorial activity when a heavyweight like whuber asks the OP the same. @Avraham, don't worry, such negligent behavior bugs others as much as yourself; everybody wants to see the answers accepted, so that a discussion comes to a reasonable closure." CreationDate="2013-09-05T15:26:45.377" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="4544" PostId="1743" Score="0" Text="Is it happening on this site? I haven't seen a large number of request to accept an answer, let alone questionable requests to accept one's own answer." CreationDate="2013-09-08T07:13:50.167" UserId="6029" />
  <row Id="4545" PostId="1743" Score="0" Text="@Gaël Laurans Currently this happens rarely.  There are intervals where we see more such requests, but it hasn't been a problem." CreationDate="2013-09-08T15:34:05.110" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4797" PostId="1744" Score="0" Text="&quot;*getting on for 5,000 R packages*&quot; -- this is surely an underestimate, and I think by a substantial factor. There's nearly 5000 on *CRAN*, but CRAN is far from the only repository of R packages." CreationDate="2013-09-20T00:15:05.960" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4608" PostId="1745" Score="1" Text="Your first quote is **specifically** under the topic heading **Programming**. I.e. the way the advice is currently phrased, the entire quote *only applies* to question about programming. Using R to do statistical analysis *is not programming*, hence questions about that are *not programming*, would certainly be OT for [so], and the clause would not apply. Now, if such questions aren't on topic here, fine, but the advice needs to be changed to reflect this. My personal opinion is that Q's of a statistical nature, including the use of software to implement an analysis, *are* suitable on CV." CreationDate="2013-09-16T23:15:36.563" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4536" PostId="1746" Score="8" Text="An opinion about the second paragraph. I believe the best approach would be to upvote, award bounties and leaving comments emphasizing the good aspects of the answer, but not accept if it does not answer the question (at least if it does not answer any part of it; if it does 'ok'). It might mislead future readers and also discourage a new better answer to be posted. Agree in all other aspects. +1." CreationDate="2013-09-06T11:56:10.433" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4538" PostId="1746" Score="1" Text="@AndreSliva I understand that note of caution. By the time the tick was awarded it addressed enough that it wasn't really misleading to award it (it was okay as an answer, and in some ways a good answer to some of what I saw as side issues I raised, even though it failed to really answer the specific issue that caused the original post). I had an extended discussion in comments and the answerer responded multiple times with edits. It ended up as an answer of value to others that was worth more than +1, even though it left me unsatisfied in respect of my problem." CreationDate="2013-09-06T22:27:13.870" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4644" PostId="1746" Score="0" Text="-1 It may be annoying, but that is just tough. Also accepting an Answer that doesn't Answer the question is just *wrong*; who does that help? You can still award a bounty for effort, but not award the tick so people viewing the Q&amp;A know the problem is not resolved. You never know who will stumble across the Q&amp;A at a later date and provide then Answer you were looking for but may be put off contributing further by seeing the accept." CreationDate="2013-09-17T18:04:24.353" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4672" PostId="1746" Score="0" Text="@GavinSimpson Looking at the [help](http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/someone-answers), it comes down to how you interpret the sentences &quot;Choose one answer that you believe is the best solution to your problem&quot; and &quot;Wait until you receive an answer that answers your question well.&quot; - in particular, what constitutes the undefined 'well'. I feel that's a somewhat lower standard than the one for a bounty (the answer is 'exemplary'); the large discrepancy in reputation value seems to support that feeling." CreationDate="2013-09-17T23:41:21.983" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4673" PostId="1746" Score="1" Text="@GavinSimpson As for the annoyingness, what's annoying in particular is when the OP clearly indicates that *they* think an answer is good, and that it solves their problem ... but still doesn't choose it... and then simply disappears, since their problem is solved. I don't see the issue with reminding people of how SE works; it's not like we fear to remind people at other times." CreationDate="2013-09-17T23:46:32.740" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4675" PostId="1746" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b Re levels for bounty - there are several options available aren't there? You can award effort for example. The key word in the text you quote is &quot;answers&quot;; you shouldn't be ticking an Answer if it doesn't actually answer your question. Re annoyingness, yes, I agree in the circumstance you quote. That would be a good time for a timely reminder of how the site operates. Still, if the [so] experience is anything to go by I think it is better *in general* not to try to get users to accept beyond reminding them of the way the site works." CreationDate="2013-09-18T02:04:55.927" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4676" PostId="1746" Score="0" Text="@GavinSimpson My discussion of the bounty reasons is based on [this](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/09/bounty-reasons-and-post-notices/) - which is what the [help](http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/bounty) links to (under the subheading 'How do I start a bounty?'). There's only one 'good answer' reason, and the text given at the link above includes the word '*exemplary*'. It's been a few weeks since I last did it, but my recollection is that the dialog-box when you offer a bounty to an existing answer is as suggested at the above link." CreationDate="2013-09-18T02:18:01.593" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4677" PostId="1746" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b Thanks, I think I was misremembering, but note the optional or additional custom text option. You could add it under the *Exemplary* option but add some custom text to explain the reward." CreationDate="2013-09-18T02:46:10.103" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4678" PostId="1746" Score="0" Text="@GavinSimpson Yes I agree, that's certainly a possible action, but I think it's not actually any better justified than what I did. In the case in question, the custom text explaining the reasoning for me doing so would - were I to be truthful - pretty much have to be along the lines of &quot;Even though I do think this has in one fairly clear sense been 'well-answered', and so by the official criteria could get the tick until a better one comes along, and even though I don't actually think it is 'exemplary', and so apparently excluded from this category of award, I'm doing it anyway.&quot;" CreationDate="2013-09-18T03:06:54.553" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4534" PostId="1747" Score="0" Text="I take this answer to be consistent with mine. Two thoughts spring to mind. First, the number of questions that we end up migrating is rather large for comfort. Is it only because people don't read the help about what is on-topic carefully enough? If questions about using statistical software (rather than writing it) too often fall between SO and CV, then  there may be a case for new area(s) of SE, failing which there should be stronger redirection to other forums (such as r-help)." CreationDate="2013-09-06T07:41:08.887" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4535" PostId="1747" Score="2" Text="I also underline the point made in discussion in the thread that @gung cited: if choosing between two areas of SE is too confusing for some, choosing between three is unlikely to be less confusing." CreationDate="2013-09-06T09:26:45.107" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4618" PostId="1747" Score="2" Text="-1 I (as you know) disagree strongly. The &quot;about how **R** works / how to work with **R**&quot; issue is more nuanced. R is software for doing statistical analysis, not just a programming language. Questions about doing or interpreting output from a particular statistical analysis in (insert your favourite stats software) would seem to be relevant &amp; useful under a broad [stats.se] site. &quot;How do I use R?&quot; for non-statistics (or not substantively statistical) questions should remain off-topic. [and -1 only because on meta that indicates dissagrement - nothing wrong with your Answer]" CreationDate="2013-09-17T03:27:35.127" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4543" PostId="1749" Score="1" Text="I had no idea. Thanks for raising it and thereby leading to things working in a better way." CreationDate="2013-09-08T04:02:05.807" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4540" PostId="1750" Score="1" Text="I think that will resolve the issue, thanks. (&amp; thanks for migrating)" CreationDate="2013-09-07T15:02:21.843" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4559" PostId="1751" Score="2" Text="+1. As an aside opinion about the 1st part on 2nd sentence's 3rd paragraph (very specific :). If the OP explicitly says one answered his/her question I think it is very ok to ask for self-acceptance, but if he/she does not, then, I think this practice could backfire pushing the OP to accept answers when they do not want to (1 reason SE removed the former accepted rate displayed on users profiles). On the other hand, when users ask for acceptance on someone else's answer, IMO not only the answer was peer reviewed but it is also softer in the sense of putting some pressure on the OP..." CreationDate="2013-09-09T13:14:54.880" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4560" PostId="1751" Score="1" Text="...Totally agree about all other arguments used in favor of  &quot;good record keeping&quot; and I think it was very positive to have brought this issue on the answer." CreationDate="2013-09-09T13:15:12.990" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4546" PostId="1752" Score="4" Text="“How can I run a factor analysis in R?” qualifies for me as asking about the details of the language, i.e. which function(s) to use, in which libraries, etc. I can't see that as &quot;clearly&quot; untrue. So, I think this is excluded by present policy. You are arguing for a policy change as I see it, and this is the place for that. There being no place for this on SE is a weak argument, as @Gung has already discussed. Most questions of this kind would be poor questions for us if only on the grounds that they show little or no research effort, in terms of (not) trying to read the fine documentation." CreationDate="2013-09-09T09:56:15.287" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4547" PostId="1752" Score="0" Text="A programming language includes a syntax (specified in a formal grammar), basic constructs (loops, branching instructions like “if”), a type system, etc. but a function written in a language (whether it is part of an API or package or not) is clearly not part of the language. While I don't necessarily want to give too much weight to the specific wording of the policy, I do therefore stand by my interpretation that it does not, as presently formulated, forbid this question." CreationDate="2013-09-09T10:04:11.600" UserId="6029" />
  <row Id="4548" PostId="1752" Score="0" Text="Also, to find the documentation, you need to know where to look, i.e. the name of the relevant package/function. I therefore don't think this question is trivial or shows an evident lack of research. Most importantly, all this would still not amount to a positive reason to close any question. Concretely, what's problem?" CreationDate="2013-09-09T10:10:50.490" UserId="6029" />
  <row Id="4549" PostId="1752" Score="0" Text="PS: I was just editing my answer, I removed the “clearly” you alluded to for purely stylistic reasons (just clarifying if someone else is wondering)." CreationDate="2013-09-09T10:12:44.187" UserId="6029" />
  <row Id="4550" PostId="1752" Score="0" Text="On what is the &quot;language&quot;, there can be different views and yours is much more restrictive than mine. People asking how to do factor analysis in R are, on my wild guess, likely to regard any function included in whatever they download as part of the language. What's to stop someone saying the language underlying R is really C? But the fact that we are disagreeing suggests that the policy is not clear enough on what is excluded and what is not." CreationDate="2013-09-09T10:21:42.923" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4551" PostId="1752" Score="0" Text="I don't use R routinely but a quick Google provides answers to that factor analysis question. The reasons for closing questions are all negative, so I am not clear what point you are making there. Would you allow questions on how to calculate a mean in Excel?" CreationDate="2013-09-09T10:32:41.337" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4552" PostId="1752" Score="1" Text="Would you allow questions on “how to compute a mean” without reference to any software? If no, would you then reject any question that does not make any reference to a specific software package? If yes, why is it somehow problematic if Excel is involved?" CreationDate="2013-09-09T11:04:59.883" UserId="6029" />
  <row Id="4553" PostId="1752" Score="1" Text="I am just trying to focus on specific cases as trying to understand the policy statement is not working (for you). But to answer this: &quot;how to compute a mean&quot; is a poor question as showing no research effort. Actually, it is immensely more trivial than &quot;how to compute a mean in Excel&quot; as one could easily understand in principle how to calculate a mean, but still not know a software instruction. (If people don't know the former, CV is not the place for them.) The problem for me is opening the gate to a large number of lazy questions on software. Our present criterion is difficult enough...." CreationDate="2013-09-09T11:11:16.017" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4554" PostId="1752" Score="0" Text="I am not sure what you mean by “negative reasons” (and apparently I wasn't clear when talking of “positive reasons”) but what I mean is that questions posted on the wrong site, questions that are not understandable, entirely opinion-based, too broad, too specialized or completely unrelated to the interest/expertise of contributors are likely to remain unanswered and just add clutter. That's a good reason to close them as opposed to doing nothing (and I think this list covers most reasons for closing questions)." CreationDate="2013-09-09T11:14:45.177" UserId="6029" />
  <row Id="4556" PostId="1752" Score="1" Text="I don't see any similar practical obstacle to a handful of extra software-related questions. Are they likely to remain unanswered? Unlikely to be useful to future visitors? So numerous that no other statistical questions get asked and answered anymore? I speculate that there wouldn't be that many of them and the site/community can easily digest them (including by ignoring them if you find them personally boring) so that I don't see any reason to actively discourage anybody from asking them." CreationDate="2013-09-09T11:21:20.287" UserId="6029" />
  <row Id="4557" PostId="1752" Score="1" Text="OK; my speculation is quite different, but I will stop there. What's important clearly is the consensus view." CreationDate="2013-09-09T11:31:07.227" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4558" PostId="1752" Score="0" Text="I upvoted the other good answers, but I sympathize with your idea too. These questions are very likely to attract new users to our community, as they provide quick solutions in a world we are always on a rush (I say this in a sense of having a broader scope place to ask, but not incentivizing questions with lack of effort). In fact, I think we are already having questions like that nowadays and not being closed. +1." CreationDate="2013-09-09T12:45:00.573" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4563" PostId="1753" Score="0" Text="@AndreSilva Yes, I saw those before - but thanks, those are relevant too, or could be refined to be, if I learned how to do it.." CreationDate="2013-09-10T10:59:29.010" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4564" PostId="1753" Score="1" Text="I overlooked the queries. They did not provide filter for date (so, they do not answer your question). I do not know how moderation tools look like, but it is probably something like search for: is:answer [score](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/188781/give-us-better-search-by-score-syntax):5 (for answers with score &gt;= than 5), and filter by newest, right?." CreationDate="2013-09-10T11:14:54.503" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4567" PostId="1753" Score="1" Text="FYI the data explorer is only updated on [a weekly basis](http://data.stackexchange.com/help), so depending on your definition of recent this may or may not be sufficient." CreationDate="2013-09-10T12:52:39.607" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="4568" PostId="1753" Score="3" Text="You can search using the terms: `is:answer score:__` (using whatever threshold score appealed to you), &amp; then sort by `newest`." CreationDate="2013-09-10T13:44:15.863" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4569" PostId="1753" Score="0" Text="Andre, @gung thanks. I clearly have many things to learn." CreationDate="2013-09-10T13:55:39.700" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4570" PostId="1753" Score="2" Text="Upvotes by whuber are likely to be informative ones :). Generally, though, your approach, whatever it will be, will suffer from the problem of the lack of external validity. CV is a self-contained community, and by using queries to it, you can only improve the fit to the existing data. What would be more interesting is to see whether the external world (Wikipedia, Google, PNAS, etc.) gives references to CV, and that is arguably **much** harder to figure out." CreationDate="2013-09-10T14:06:16.210" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="4571" PostId="1753" Score="1" Text="And by StasK, no doubt. However, I don't believe there is any way to determine who upvoted a post, or what posts a user has upvoted, unless they leave a `+1` comment. For more strategies along the lines of my comment above, it may help to read my answer here: [How should a new user navigate Cross Validated to learn more about statistics?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1554//1555#1555)" CreationDate="2013-09-10T14:16:04.403" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4573" PostId="1753" Score="3" Text="Could you clarify what you mean by &quot;good&quot;? I think many of us are familiar with the experience of working hard and creatively to solve a difficult question and posting an answer we are proud of, only to find that it is neglected: little upvoted, perhaps not even accepted, and with few pageviews. You won't find such answers through the search engine, although arguably these may be among the very best. If this is the kind of hidden gem you're looking for, about all I can suggest is to ask community members to volunteer links to answers they think are good: in short, conduct a poll!" CreationDate="2013-09-10T19:17:05.270" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4574" PostId="1753" Score="0" Text="BTW, nobody in this community has access to detailed voting records. You, and only you, can see your personal record.  Moderators can obtain some summary statistics, but because the purpose is to identify certain sneaky forms of site abuse, I may not reveal more than that. That's it." CreationDate="2013-09-10T19:27:06.013" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4575" PostId="1753" Score="4" Text="@whuber thanks for clarifying that point on seeing votes... As for what I mean by &quot;good&quot; - at bottom it is unfortunately the rather impossible-to-convey standard of 'what I think is good', but that seems to be highly correlated with what other expert users think is good. I'm especially interested in finding more underappreciated 'good' answers but at a loss as for suitable ways to identify them aside from happening on them almost at random." CreationDate="2013-09-10T23:01:30.507" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4579" PostId="1753" Score="2" Text="One insight I can share from viewing the voting summary statistics is that even experts are not entirely in agreement or consistent: each has a particular set of interests that likely constrains the scope of the questions and answers they read. Thus, if you are interested in a less than popular subject, many of the good answers you seek may be undervoted. (There may be some statistical ways to ferret these out by controlling for the pageviews or voting rates associated with each tag.)" CreationDate="2013-09-11T14:11:49.930" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4583" PostId="1753" Score="0" Text="@whuber - yes, thanks. I was certainly aware of the fact that the range of my own interests reduce the scope of what I vote on; I assumed this was typical. While I cover a fairly broad range of tags (perhaps not quite as many as you, but up in that region), I know there are a number of quite popular topics I barely touch. That recognition was part of my motivation for asking in the first place." CreationDate="2013-09-11T22:04:36.710" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4602" PostId="1754" Score="2" Text="Although I haven't done a study, I am reasonably certain that more questions on CV use `R` than any other language and that this is also true of answers. I often include mention of both `R` and `SAS`. But statistics, in any practical sense, requires *some* package. Yes, factor analysis can be done by hand - but it would take a lot of hands!" CreationDate="2013-09-16T21:36:15.050" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="4604" PostId="1754" Score="2" Text="@Peter Presently 4527 questions have been tagged with `R` (and perhaps another thousand untagged threads may see `R` used in an answer).  That means that approximately 80 percent of the 25,000+ questions do *not* have an `R` tag.  The only *lingua franca* in statistics is (a small subset) of mathematical notation.  We write our models using the language of Calculus and Linear algebra, not `R` or whatever, and if we want to talk to the rest of the world--including the majority of statisticians--we would not consider doing otherwise." CreationDate="2013-09-16T21:44:09.097" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4605" PostId="1754" Score="2" Text="Hi @whuber . I didn't mean to say that *most* posts here use `R`; I never thought they did, and your post has the numbers to show that they don't. However, while 4527 have the `R` tag, only 233 have the `SAS` tag. Further, many people use `R` code in their answers ... I'd say more than 1,000. While calculus and linear algebra are the lingua franca of statistics; `R` may be on the way to becoming the lingua franca of data analysis (I don't think I've used any calculus in any of my answers)." CreationDate="2013-09-16T21:49:22.727" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="4606" PostId="1754" Score="3" Text="@Peter That's a reasonable anticipation. But it brings to mind the large library of books written in SAS over the last 30-40 years, no doubt by people who expected it to become the standard statistical language. I think it's a safe bet that within a few decades `R` will still not be the language of data analysis (it has too many flaws) and it's a pretty good bet some other language will have superseded it in popularity. Oh--Calculus is so familiar [you don't even notice when you're using it](http://stats.stackexchange.com/a/63682)." CreationDate="2013-09-16T21:57:32.933" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4577" PostId="1757" Score="1" Text="This is a good point. I had not considered the point where the OP mentioned being able to program it but wished to avoid it." CreationDate="2013-09-11T13:57:38.917" UserId="8927" />
  <row Id="4576" PostId="1758" Score="1" Text="(+1) I also voted to migrate the question using similar logic." CreationDate="2013-09-10T23:49:01.870" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4578" PostId="1758" Score="2" Text="I appreciate this perspective, but I'm of the opinion that an answer along the lines of &quot;Yes, that's easy to do. You set argument=value.&quot; would specifically *not* be a useful or adequate answer to the question. But I agree the OP seems confused about that (based on whuber's observation above) and so based on the OP's intention, I suppose migrating it is fine." CreationDate="2013-09-11T14:00:35.493" UserId="8927" />
  <row Id="4580" PostId="1759" Score="1" Text="I have noticed that several per-site-metas use the tag ([meta-tag:area51]) for questions about site proposals. For example, [french](http://meta.french.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/area51), [academia](http://meta.academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/area51), [electronics](http://meta.electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/area51), [math](http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/area51). Such questions [have been asked here before](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=area51), so maybe such tag might be useful here, too. By I cannot create tags on meta." CreationDate="2013-09-11T18:29:04.487" UserId="30155" />
  <row Id="4581" PostId="1759" Score="0" Text="We have some questions related to odds in sports under the tag [games](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/games), but I believe most of Sport Betting's scope does not fit here. See if it helps." CreationDate="2013-09-11T19:38:14.307" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4582" PostId="1759" Score="2" Text="Surely some questions could fit here; they need to be statistical in nature, though. Some questions (eg, websites, where to get data, etc) would be off topic. You might also try on math.SE &amp; finance.SE for some pure how-to calculations &amp; Qs about the nature of arbitrage." CreationDate="2013-09-11T21:13:07.187" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4584" PostId="1759" Score="0" Text="@gung If you mean Quantitative Finance (quant.SE), then some of the questions can be on topic there according to a [discussion on their meta](http://meta.quant.stackexchange.com/questions/36/is-sports-betting-on-topic). Personal Finance &amp; Money (money.SE) state explicitly in their [help center](http://money.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) that questions about gambling or wagering are off-topic there." CreationDate="2013-09-12T06:39:11.800" UserId="30155" />
  <row Id="4588" PostId="1759" Score="2" Text="Are you asking if some of the Sports Betting questions will be on topic here, or if the proposal should be merged into this site? If the former, I think the answer is &quot;yes, probably&quot;. If the latter, I think the answer is &quot;no, probably not&quot;." CreationDate="2013-09-13T14:57:33.810" UserId="6123" />
  <row Id="4590" PostId="1759" Score="2" Text="Thanks for your comment @AbbyT.Miller. My intention was to ask both these questions. (And I've expected the answers you wrote in your comment.) And, by posting this, I also wanted make users of this site aware of the proposal, in case some of them are interested in it." CreationDate="2013-09-13T15:21:17.990" UserId="30155" />
  <row Id="4591" PostId="1759" Score="0" Text="@Martin Good idea - relevant site metas are a great way to drum up participation on A51 proposals." CreationDate="2013-09-13T15:22:39.030" UserId="6123" />
  <row Id="4742" PostId="1759" Score="1" Text="I'd say q's 2 and 7 are on topic here, while 1,3,5,6 would quickly be closed as off topic. 4 is possibly on topic; with a bit of editing it would probably stay open." CreationDate="2013-09-19T02:41:28.857" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4601" PostId="1761" Score="2" Text="Good luck to everyone!" CreationDate="2013-09-16T20:45:39.493" UserDisplayName="user25658" />
  <row Id="4607" PostId="1761" Score="4" Text="Can someone elaborate on why there is an election scheduled, especially for *two* vacancies? Are any of our (highly esteemed!) moderators stepping down? Do any of them feel stretched thin? I have not had as much time to visit the site lately; has the traffic increased substantially?" CreationDate="2013-09-16T23:10:42.627" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="4610" PostId="1761" Score="0" Text="I second @cardinal's questions. If the workload is beginning to overwhelm the moderators (&amp; I suspect it would eventually, I imagine it's *a lot* of work), that implies we need *more* moderators, not fewer. Physics.SE seems to be a reasonable model--it's about the same size--&amp; it has $5$ moderators, not 3 going on 2." CreationDate="2013-09-16T23:44:00.913" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4611" PostId="1761" Score="2" Text="@gung: The current moderators stay as long as they want to. Like U.S. Supreme Court Justices, they have lifetime appointments (if not quite as much power). ;-) So, if no one is stepping down, we'll have five. Five seems, perhaps, a little on the high end for this site, unless there are new developments that I've missed." CreationDate="2013-09-16T23:56:36.843" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="4612" PostId="1761" Score="5" Text="@cardinal, gung. I've understood according to [whuber chat messages](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/18/ten-fold) that CV is adding two additional vacancies due to community growth. It also happened the same in GIS.se." CreationDate="2013-09-17T00:25:52.407" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4613" PostId="1761" Score="1" Text="@Andre: Thank you! That is very helpful." CreationDate="2013-09-17T00:31:31.033" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="4622" PostId="1761" Score="0" Text="Andre is correct. The moderator team on CV is expanding as the workload increases. We are adding two more moderators to supplement the existing moderator staff." CreationDate="2013-09-17T14:38:11.093" UserId="6123" />
  <row Id="4627" PostId="1761" Score="4" Text="Dear @Abby: May I suggest that for future elections (not just on this site), it would be helpful for the SE team to be a little more proactive about their communication. For example, it would seem prudent (and informative!) to see something akin to your most recent comment in the original community-election announcement. Cheers." CreationDate="2013-09-17T16:21:31.647" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="4629" PostId="1761" Score="2" Text="@cardinal, you're absolutely right - I've added some language to this announcement and I'll add a note to our election protocol." CreationDate="2013-09-17T16:25:22.207" UserId="6123" />
  <row Id="4667" PostId="1761" Score="2" Text="@Cardinal I appreciate your concern. Abby's edit is on the mark: this election process was initiated by request. Nothing more should be read into it than what you see here. This year I have observed both a growth in site Q&amp;A activity and the arrival of a much-awaited threshold in community interaction: no longer is it the case that a mod is needed to close or migrate a question--we have a critical mass of active high-rep users. I felt that giving one or two of these users full mod powers would help us all and alleviate the growing burden of keeping up with everything." CreationDate="2013-09-17T21:31:11.900" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4609" PostId="1762" Score="2" Text="I'm sorry to hear you are frustrated. I wonder if you might start a new meta.CV thread to air out the issues you have. Of course, you don't want to get your hopes up &amp; end up being even more upset, b/c there is no guarantee that the consensus will change. Nonetheless, it is possible to revisit the issue, &amp; it might help the site's policies evolve further &amp; in a positive direction (especially if you can clearly outline your vision &amp; link to specific examples, etc.)." CreationDate="2013-09-16T23:39:59.070" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4614" PostId="1762" Score="1" Text="Here is one test for whether an `R` question is on-topic here: if it would interest you at least as much if every occurrence of &quot;R&quot; in the question were replaced by &quot;BMDP,&quot; then it's on-topic." CreationDate="2013-09-17T01:54:24.790" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4615" PostId="1762" Score="0" Text="@whuber Yes it would interest me *if* the statistical aspects were of interest given my background and interests. If the [tag:r] tag is on a question I will look even if the statistical aspects aren't to my taste because I know that software and may be able to help regardless. I'm not suggesting that all R questions are suitable for [stats.se], but I don't think questions using R for statistical insight are programming and *should* be on-topic here. Otherwise, where do you draw the line; do we not mention *any* stats package here?" CreationDate="2013-09-17T02:45:38.607" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4616" PostId="1762" Score="0" Text="@gung I meant &quot;frustrated&quot; more in the sense of not being sure what is and isn't acceptable here than expressing some dissatisfaction with [stats.se] in general. Personally, as a user of statistics I would find a [stats.se] devoid of software-related statistical questions a much less enticing &amp; interesting place." CreationDate="2013-09-17T02:48:34.663" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4617" PostId="1762" Score="1" Text="Thanks for your response, @Gavin. I certainly *don't* think that we should &quot;not mention any stats package here&quot;. If you were to read through my answers (&amp; stay awake), you'd see that I often illustrate points w/ R code. The point is the R aspect is instrumental. I *could* have used SAS or Python, etc. If someone understands the statistical issues &amp; only wants to know about how R works or how to get something done in R, then it's off-topic, IMPO. If you want, these issues might be best worked out in their own thread, but I'm also happy to discuss here via comments, whichever works best for you." CreationDate="2013-09-17T03:23:15.793" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4619" PostId="1765" Score="0" Text="Apologies; it is now late where I am &amp; I post the above just as I am off to bed. I will respond to any questions/comments etc in (hopefully, kids allowing) 7 or 8 hours!" CreationDate="2013-09-17T05:07:18.700" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4620" PostId="1765" Score="9" Text="I agree with you. But it seems that we are a minority. Right now, all `R` or `SAS` or `SPSS` etc questions (however tangentially related to those *as languages*) are being sent to CV. Data analysis is done by packages like this; not all statistics is theory." CreationDate="2013-09-17T09:03:41.723" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="4645" PostId="1765" Score="4" Text="To borrow from a [recent post gung made](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1756/question-incorrectly-migrated/1758#1758), the basic logic re: this type of OT for me is to ask myself: Can this question be reasonably answered by saying something analogous to &quot;type ______&quot;? If the answer is yes, I close vote. If not, I don't. I strongly disagree with any suggestion that all questions that relate to software, no matter how tangentially are being sent to SO (this is how I parsed Peter's comment, assuming 'CV' was a typo. I could be wrong). Look no further than our most popular tag: `R`." CreationDate="2013-09-17T18:07:53.950" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4679" PostId="1765" Score="0" Text="By way of follow-up, I have posted a [new Meta question](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/1780/1390) to curate clearer or more explicit house rules on what is on/off topic for CV. This text could replace the user-visible [What topics can I ask about here?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/1780/1390) page in the [Help Centre](http://stats.stackexchange.com/help)." CreationDate="2013-09-18T04:47:59.040" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4795" PostId="1765" Score="1" Text="One worthwhile thing to note is the kinds of questions that SO fields and those it migrates here. What we see migrated to here is almost always far more statistical than what tends to be migrated to there from here (with almost no overlap), and the kind of question we'd be debating over being on topic here is - if posted there instead, almost always simply answered there. That is, in *practice* SO appears on average to be drawing its line about what's on topic there (at least for things initially posted there) quite a bit further into the statistical side than we're discussing here." CreationDate="2013-09-19T23:51:14.613" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5697" PostId="1765" Score="0" Text="possible duplicate of [What is on topic on Cross Validated?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1577/what-is-on-topic-on-cross-validated)" CreationDate="2014-05-20T16:20:35.310" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="4666" PostId="1766" Score="1" Text="That's an excellent point about semantic markup. Like (almost) everyone else on SE, I have learned by watching and emulating. It quickly became clear that a single quote is not just code markup: it is frequently applied to certain software names like &quot;`R`&quot;, to names of database fields, to code snippets, to pseudocode, and to code itself. On sites that do not support $\TeX$ it's necessary to co-opt code markup for writing more readable mathematical formulas. I have therefore inferred that a quote has, at best, only a vague semantic meaning. I may be wrong, but the damage is widespread." CreationDate="2013-09-17T21:21:19.047" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4623" PostId="1769" Score="0" Text="@Andre Grace Note is part of the SE team. This thread and the &quot;possible duplicate&quot; you reference are a standard format for beginning the election process on all SE sites. If you are trying to suggest you think there's a better way (and surely there is--the process has been undergoing constant improvement) then there's no need to be elliptical about it: please tell us what you think ought to change the next time." CreationDate="2013-09-17T15:57:12.593" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4630" PostId="1769" Score="0" Text="@Andre I think that'd be mixing things too much. This thread, and the later thread I'll post, have a very specific purpose that is only one portion of the election process. The main thread you linked, that just serves to announce that the election is happening. The original post is better to house things like the general election discussion in the comments already there - mixing in a specific purpose like Q&amp;A collection would dilute the ability to hold such conversation." CreationDate="2013-09-17T16:29:10.437" UserId="5645" />
  <row Id="4631" PostId="1769" Score="0" Text="@Grace, ok. Tks." CreationDate="2013-09-17T16:34:00.583" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4633" PostId="1769" Score="1" Text="There has been little/no indication about the workload required for this position and it would be unfortunate if an elected person were unpleasantly surprised at the amount of work and was forced to resign, restarting this whole process. Should this be the subject of a question for a candidate or, perhaps you can enlighten potential candidates, @whuber?" CreationDate="2013-09-17T17:14:36.880" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4634" PostId="1769" Score="2" Text="@Macro That's a great question. Because what matters most is the *change* in workload that occurs when one becomes moderator, YMMV. For some of our most active high-rep members, there will be little difference at all. These people daily (1) go through the Review menu, making about a dozen close/migrate decisions; (2) read through many new posts (as many as 50/day), editing several of them; (3) place about a dozen comments encouraging people to improve Q's and A's; (4) quickly review meta and chat for new developments; (5) follow up on responses; and (6) continue to answer questions." CreationDate="2013-09-17T17:19:47.373" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4635" PostId="1769" Score="3" Text="@Macro It would be weird to ask new candidates this as a question, since they'd most likely be unfamiliar with what the workload would be. This is a valuable question to ask though - whuber's mostly handled this but if you want this to be easier to see or broader asked, a separate meta question (or perhaps a response to the original moderator election announcement, which does note that this election is due to workload build) would be appropriate." CreationDate="2013-09-17T17:23:34.390" UserId="5645" />
  <row Id="4637" PostId="1769" Score="0" Text="@Grace, My thinking was to ask a question like &quot;what is your expectation of the workload and can you be flexible if your expectations are wrong? Is there any chance of your resigning in the near future for this reason?&quot; or similar. I doubt that question would get the upvotes required to make the cut but it did occur to me. I agree that whuber has clarified this to a large extent." CreationDate="2013-09-17T17:27:03.903" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4741" PostId="1769" Score="0" Text="@whuber In your comment above, you list what an active high rep member might do on a daily basis and suggest there would be little difference for a moderator... but it's not clear from your comment what additional things would be involved. What is actually in that 'little difference'? I see things like migrations, post deletion, occasional merging of accounts ... but no doubt there's plenty I don't see, and it's not always clear how much effort is involved on a daily basis for the mods. With how quickly things happen and how *clean* CV is, it feels like the mods are quite dedicated" CreationDate="2013-09-19T02:25:28.237" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4744" PostId="1769" Score="4" Text="@Glen_b From my point of view, the biggest difference is dedication: as a high-rep user you can come and go as you please. As a moderator the thought will surely occur to you that you *ought* to visit daily, probably several times, to make sure nothing unexpected has happened, that there aren't lots of flags suddenly being raised, and so on. You might take extra pains to be thorough: get through the whole review list, take a quick look at every question if you can, drop briefly into chat and meta. It doesn't have to amount to more work but it does add to one's sense of responsibility." CreationDate="2013-09-19T06:31:53.483" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4745" PostId="1769" Score="0" Text="@whuber Thanks. Yes, that difference is clearly understood." CreationDate="2013-09-19T07:19:08.627" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4640" PostId="1770" Score="5" Text="I would just like to mention that the first two issues are not hypothetical; they *have* come up here. Without meaning to anticipate or head off answers to the second (differences with another mod) I also would like it known that relationships among the mods on this site are collegial, effective, and open, so there has never been any problem resolving the rare differences of opinion, and we would expect to maintain similarly good relationships with the new mods." CreationDate="2013-09-17T17:35:42.953" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4625" PostId="1771" Score="1" Text="No, that is **not** what [so] is for. As a mod here with the power to migrate to [so] statements such as this are very annoying. Using R is **not** programming. Such questions will get closed immediately on [so] and just clutter up that site. If you don't want those questions here, please don't pass your trash on to someone else. We on [so] could probably do better about sending things here, but only if I knew what was allowed here? Hence my posting." CreationDate="2013-09-17T16:16:05.423" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4626" PostId="1771" Score="3" Text="Apart from that, I agree with most if not all of the remainder of your answer. That I was motivated to post my semi-rant is evidence that this common sense approach *is not* being followed. Your analysis of recent migrations bears this out too. There is something wrong with the site's advice on what *is* on-topic if several prominent CV people can use it to argue their own, opposite sides in discussions about what is &amp; is not on topic. Also, there doesn't seem to be consistency in this regard from our moderators." CreationDate="2013-09-17T16:20:48.110" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4628" PostId="1771" Score="3" Text="Finally, I think we need to send a *very clear* signal that comments along the lines of &quot;this is about R, this if OT, post on [so]&quot; are not welcome as the sole, substantive point of the comment. Pointing out how to improve the Q should be at the very least required by the commenter. In general though we (the CV community) just need to be far more consistent &amp; stop requiring that every question be software agnostic or supported by statistical theory in order for it to be on topic." CreationDate="2013-09-17T16:24:33.843" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4632" PostId="1771" Score="3" Text="The first one should maybe just have been marked as a duplicate. [Here's one](http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/26722/2970), but I'm virtually certain there are others as well. Especially for questions like this, the active community could probably do more to help locate duplicates." CreationDate="2013-09-17T16:35:04.210" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="4641" PostId="1771" Score="2" Text="Gavin, I think you have gone so far in stretching a point that you exaggerate my response beyond recognition. I have never advocated sending &quot;trash&quot; to SO nor have I ever knowingly done such an act. I have strongly agreed that using `R` is not necessarily &quot;programming,&quot; but I am still advocating a more nuanced characterization that allows for *some* questions about `R` to be more appropriate for SO than they are here and others to be more appropriate here. It's never a matter of whether I want a question here, but on which site is the better fit (for the OP *and* the SO &amp; CV communities)." CreationDate="2013-09-17T17:41:11.083" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4642" PostId="1771" Score="4" Text="I detect no inconsistency among moderators, BTW, although occasionally we have differences of opinion--and each one of those helps us refine our subsequent actions. Your main point seems to be that you feel confused by our statements about what this site is about. I would like to invite you, then, to turn from ranting--which is useful and appreciated but will soon run its natural course--and instead suggest constructive changes that will clarify for you and others what is considered on topic here. What *should* our FAQ say?" CreationDate="2013-09-17T17:43:38.000" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4646" PostId="1771" Score="1" Text="@whuber My comment on [so] comes from the other side, where things that are OT are regularly pushed to [so]. I would certainly help to rewrite the FAQ or other info. The problem is that needs to be curated and represent the views of the community. Just as I disagree with some users views and find the FAQ inconsistent, what I might propose as the new FAQ would be viewed as inconsistent or disagreeable to others. What is the way to approach this on meta? Should I rewrite something that I disagree with and post that to Meta as a suggested improvement?" CreationDate="2013-09-17T18:17:26.247" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4648" PostId="1771" Score="3" Text="@Gavin I appreciate your engaging with this in such a considerate and thoughtful manner. My belief is that almost any approach you use that (a) gets the ball rolling with a specific suggestion and (b) allows for community discussion is going to be fine. A Meta post would work. I will plead ignorance concerning the concerns within the SO community and therefore wish to thank you in advance for anything you can write that will help me--and perhaps many others here--understand what the issues are on that side, so that we can evolve our policy in a way that respects the needs of CV *and* SO." CreationDate="2013-09-17T18:23:32.530" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4649" PostId="1771" Score="4" Text="(+1) After having read this, I'm afraid of being guilty of often migrating software-related questions too quickly. I will definitely pay more attention in the future and try to improve the question rather than migrating it immediately." CreationDate="2013-09-17T18:31:19.457" UserId="21054" />
  <row Id="4659" PostId="1771" Score="0" Text="I suspect that some disagreements here are less than they seem. But what does it mean that some people are &quot;voting far too often for closure&quot; (quotation from @whuber, usually a model of sagacity)? Aside from any idea that people are voting out of insincerity or idiocy, it seems to me that many votes for closure are based on honest attempts by users with enough reputation to play their part in implementing CV policy! All of a sudden, that is wrong? Naturally I have no problem with people trying to change a policy they think is misguided, but please don't impugn honest differences in view." CreationDate="2013-09-17T20:37:36.940" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4660" PostId="1771" Score="0" Text="@Nick I thought I would be taken to task for that comment :-), so I appreciate an opportunity to clarify. It is a personal statement expressing my experience of voting *not* to close many questions, inspecting the other votes on the same issues, and finding certain individuals often disagreeing (and in the minority) with the other voters. It also includes inspecting monthly review statistics showing (among other things) how often people vote, how frequently they vote to close, and how much time they spend in their considerations(!). Take it with a grain of salt, but it's still suggestive." CreationDate="2013-09-17T20:43:56.587" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4661" PostId="1771" Score="5" Text="And no, I am not attempting to impugn honest differences. I just happen to believe that some voters may be rather too eager to close many questions that the community and its moderators find acceptable. It's rather a matter of suggesting that we all need to calibrate our voting and take a little time with our considerations. **To all:** please consider the (oft neglected) options of *editing* to improve questions and *posting comments* encouraging the OPs to improve them." CreationDate="2013-09-17T20:45:31.030" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4662" PostId="1771" Score="0" Text="In addition, surprisingly or not, I agree with much that @Gavin Simpson says. There are many low-level questions on SO and CV about software that are not, in my view, especially welcome on either site. Gavin said &quot;trash&quot;, not a word I would use, but questions that show no discernible research effort are, as I understand it, discouraged on either site. That doesn't imply instant deletion or criticism of the poster, but such posts remain problematic for all with serious commitment to either or both sites." CreationDate="2013-09-17T20:54:11.337" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4663" PostId="1771" Score="0" Text="@whuber Thanks for the extra comment. FWIW, I don't take the comment personally, but I do edit frequently and extensively and do post frequent comments on why posts appear OT, not that more constructive comments yet are not better still. And if something appears OT, the decision can be very quick (and we are all busy people)." CreationDate="2013-09-17T21:02:54.507" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4665" PostId="1771" Score="0" Text="@Nick Yep, I'm among the fastest deciders :-). But there are outliers (in both directions). The low outliers--those who take just a few seconds per decision and make hundreds of decisions, almost all to close--give me pause. I'm not saying anybody is *wrong*; I'm just urging a little self-reflection on us all (myself included). I think any potential problems are being alleviated as more people acquire the reputation and the interest to help out with these tasks, because then nobody need feel that they have to do all the work and we can all trust that others will do it just as well." CreationDate="2013-09-17T21:09:40.890" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4668" PostId="1771" Score="5" Text="@whuber, I don't know who you're talking about but suspect I may be implicated. I can think of several instances where I've been on the &quot;close&quot; side of a split vote and am not embarrassed to own up to it. The simple fact is: I think this site has a lot of low-quality questions that should be closed/on hold. When I was more active on the site, I tried as much as anyone to encourage the OP to improve the post rather than voting to close but grew discouraged after other high rep users would undermine this effort either by answering the low-quality post or giving it their &quot;OK&quot; in the review queue" CreationDate="2013-09-17T22:16:30.343" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4669" PostId="1771" Score="3" Text="(cont.) as a result, when I do review, I tend to err on the side of closure because I think answering &quot;bad questions&quot; is should be discouraged and putting them on hold is one way to make that happen. During the &quot;hold time&quot; the issues can be sorted out (e.g. by questioning the OP, etc.). BTW, I'm curious how you could &quot;time&quot; the reviews. I often close vote on questions that are not in the review queue, or see a question, think about voting to close, then see it later in the review queue. If your calculation accounts for this then moderators have way more power than I thought :-)" CreationDate="2013-09-17T22:20:29.047" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4670" PostId="1771" Score="0" Text="@Macro Personally, I don't see a problem with answering a poor question - there's even a badge for that if you get sufficient turnaround in voting (or at least there is on [so]) - but I agree with you that using the review tools to pass a poor Q on without comment or improvement defeats the purpose of those privileges." CreationDate="2013-09-17T22:22:11.993" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4671" PostId="1771" Score="8" Text="@Gavin, if you see the purpose of the site as creating a repository of good questions and answers that will be useful to future visitors (and *not* a site where you serve the OP as though they are a customer) then maybe you can see why I think this behavior defeats the purpose of the site (and why I'm on record railing against it). The main thing is that &quot;bad&quot; questions are often unclear. An exchange involving an unclear question and someone's random guess at what the question was asking is unlikely to be useful to future readers. What's the rush? Why not clarify the question before answering?" CreationDate="2013-09-17T22:26:47.570" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4680" PostId="1771" Score="1" Text="@Macro, I sympathise with this point of view. However, people reach for close far too soon, without opportunity for the OP to modify the question. Random guessing the OPs problem is silly, but what you consider unclear another user may be able to see through the fog because they have specific knowledge. In such cases, the act of answering may clarify the situation allowing others, not just the OP, to update the question. Your approach seems contrary to the SE ethos (unless a Q is irretrievable), regardless of what other CV users think (your comment is currently +3!) :-)" CreationDate="2013-09-18T04:53:42.390" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4681" PostId="1771" Score="0" Text="@whuber I have added a [new Meta Q](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/1780/1390) as discussed above." CreationDate="2013-09-18T04:54:46.147" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4686" PostId="1771" Score="0" Text="Some comments in http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1744/r-questions-on-topic-for-cv come pretty close to claiming that &quot;using R is an act of programming.&quot; Not sure how much it matters in the end but there seem to be some disagreement there." CreationDate="2013-09-18T06:46:58.150" UserId="6029" />
  <row Id="4687" PostId="1771" Score="2" Text="To get back to the original issue, here is a good example of what I think belongs to SO: http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/70315/converting-string-ids-into-numbers-in-a-multilevel-analysis-using-r Although the context of the question was statistical, the question itself is not. I have no strong feelings one way or the other, but from what I can tell questions like these get better answers at SO. On the other hand, questions asking for the usage of statistical software I find on topic, see Gael's posts." CreationDate="2013-09-18T08:02:33.340" UserId="8413" />
  <row Id="4688" PostId="1771" Score="2" Text="@gavin, I think we're talking passed each other here so I'm going to stop. I'll just point out a) that putting a question on hold is temporary and does not preclude anything you're saying, b) II never vote to close a question that doesn't clearly go against site policy, and c) pondering how something can be &quot;against SE ethos regardless of what other community members think&quot; makes my head hurt. Also, please call me Macro. I have no idea who Marco is." CreationDate="2013-09-18T12:08:13.227" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4711" PostId="1771" Score="1" Text="@Macro I'm very, *very* sorry about calling you Marco. I would claim that it was because it was late, but I've had a good nights sleep and still just done it (in a different comment thread)." CreationDate="2013-09-18T16:52:35.710" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4731" PostId="1771" Score="2" Text="I have corrected mispellings. No worries, I'm working on a Mac that offers spelling auto-correction and that's often funny!" CreationDate="2013-09-18T21:22:35.843" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="4766" PostId="1771" Score="4" Text="@GavinSimpson, I want to 2nd Macro's points here. In several comments it seems to me you believe putting a question [on-hold] *prevents* the OP from clarifying their Q &amp; users from commenting to get more info. If so, these are not true. Users can comment &amp; OPs can edit their Q after having been put [on-hold]. My impression is that OPs are more likely to edit &amp; provide necessary info when their Q was put [on-hold] than when only a comment requesting such info was made. Moreover, the change from [closed] to [on-hold] was intended to encourage this &amp; make it seem friendlier." CreationDate="2013-09-19T16:29:01.993" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4769" PostId="1771" Score="1" Text="@gung no, I'm familiar with the on-hold thing. I wasn't in agreement with the who on-hold things when it was being discussed on [so] meta. However it *is* better than what was there before - the questions just got closed. My issue with this is that it still looks like you are voting to close, so what signal does that send? You should leave a comment to explain why, but many people don't. So all we see are close votes. This isn't good for the new user here. I prefer an earlier intervention, especially if a new user, to simply just comment on what is wrong with the Q. I come back..." CreationDate="2013-09-19T17:15:44.213" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4770" PostId="1771" Score="0" Text="(cont) later to close if the OP doesn't improve the Q. (Unless of course there are other reasons to close or other problems with the Q). My issue is that people are voting to close ^ putting Qs on hold inconsistently. You &amp; I seem to have very different opinions about what is on or off topic here regarding software-related Qs. That's fine &amp; it is good to have this debate here on Meta, but it is really bad if users are inconsistently closing Qs whilst others remain open. A new user would be rightfully annoyed if their Q was randomly closed when it was similar to another that escaped scrutiny." CreationDate="2013-09-19T17:19:25.257" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4771" PostId="1771" Score="2" Text="@Gavin The act of closing produces an automatic message. IMHO this suffices in obvious circumstances such as frankly bad questions or clearly off-topic ones. Closures to migrate and as duplicates are self-evident. In almost all other cases, [a quick search](http://stats.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=is%3aquestion%20closed%3ayes) indicates our community *does* leave comments. However, I agree that some of those comments have recently been inconsistent and confusing; some users--particularly some newer ones--have been suggesting many on-topic questions are not." CreationDate="2013-09-19T17:22:52.200" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4774" PostId="1771" Score="0" Text="@whuber *some* people leave comments, some people do the right thing. But as I was preparing the proposal I came across posts with close votes that either had no comments, or just one comment but which indicated an inconsistent approach to closing. I didn't mean to give the impression that [stats.se] users weren't commenting in general. This is the trouble with these short comment boxes; there I I was speaking to the *general* issue of the On Hold/Close vote thing on all SE sites. The inconsistency point *was* directed at [stats.se]." CreationDate="2013-09-19T17:44:59.337" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4775" PostId="1771" Score="0" Text="I'll suggest one reason why rushing to close (put on hold), especially in the controversial area of *software-related* questions, is problematic. It precludes anyone with the insight (that could be brought to the table to clarify or draw out the stats issues) from *answering* the Q. They either have to comment and hope the op responds, or edit the question, which takes more time (though perhaps in an ideal world we should expect that they *should* edit the Q), before they can answer. This does happen, esp on [so] where we use chat to organise reopening. Chat isn't used here much though." CreationDate="2013-09-19T17:49:51.680" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4776" PostId="1771" Score="0" Text="I'd far rather see a good *answer* (one that doesn't speculate as to what the Q is) address both the coding *and* the statistical issues than have no answer. I appreciate that some users will speculate and leave a premature Answer, but that is what voting is for. If the answer is bad or speculative, then it should be downvoted. @macro from your comments for example it seems you prefer to close/put on hold as a means to stop bad answers. I don't see that as a great way to use that power. Use downvotes for bad answers, but rush to on-hold isn't without it's own issues (See prev comment from me)." CreationDate="2013-09-19T17:53:19.223" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4778" PostId="1771" Score="2" Text="Here I disagree somewhat: our community is neither large enough nor active enough for voting to be dispositive in most cases. (I know of many answers that are plainly bad but have several upvotes and mine is the only downvote--but what else can I do without abusing mod powers?) I feel it is far worse to offer even a great answer to your personal (but not explicitly expressed) interpretation of a vague question than to ask for clarification and wait so you can answer a well-formulated question. The reason it can be so bad lies with the high likelihood of misinterpretation of the entire thread." CreationDate="2013-09-19T17:58:32.020" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4784" PostId="1771" Score="3" Text="@Gavin, I'd like to co-sign whuber's most recent comment but I should clarify: No, I don't prefer to use closure to stop bad answers. After making countless good faith attempts to remedy behavior that I perceive as - to use your words - &quot;against the ethos of SE&quot; by using comments, I see close voting as my only recourse. This is not specific to software related questions; it also refers to users answering blatant duplicates of questions they themselves have answered before (possibly multiple times) and answering questions where no one, including the answerer, knows exactly what's being asked." CreationDate="2013-09-19T21:24:42.227" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4785" PostId="1771" Score="1" Text="Of course, I accept that this site isn't exactly what I'd like it to be and that's fine. But, it can be irritating to see behavior that appears antithetical to the purpose of SE displayed by high rep users who are then rewarded for it. It's cases like this where healthy detachment from the site is helpful :-) Good luck in the election. Cheers." CreationDate="2013-09-19T21:29:15.953" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4787" PostId="1771" Score="0" Text="@Whuber your view isn't any different from mine (other than the point about the risk of people closing too quickly). I specifically said that answers making gross assumptions were Bad(TM). I'm well aware of voting, shall we say, idiosyncrasies though more so on [so]. What are you going to do? I always attempt to leave a comment when I downvote so there is a public notice of my disagreement. Beyond that... And, your comment precludes the situation where a Q is unclear to the majority, but may be clear to someone with particular knowledge - that was my case point. Too picky? Probably... :-)" CreationDate="2013-09-19T21:34:40.517" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4788" PostId="1771" Score="0" Text="I think we've gone a bit OT ourselves here. The last round of comments about closing seems stimulated because someone assumed I didn't know what On Hold was and then my comments have been taken out of context. We should probably stop as I think we are far closer in agreement than this comment thread suggests! Thanks for all the input, here and in other Q&amp;As." CreationDate="2013-09-19T21:37:05.010" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4789" PostId="1771" Score="1" Text="@Gavin (Thanks for helping us better understand your thinking.) No, not too picky at all IMHO.  It is a genuine act of creativity to imagine alternative interpretations of a question and it's too much to suppose that any one of us could possibly imagine all valid interpretations that might come up. I therefore tend to favor actions that help make questions as clear and unambiguous as possible. (This is reflected in the number of comments I have left on this site, almost all of which are efforts to help people improve their questions.)" CreationDate="2013-09-19T21:38:19.337" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4790" PostId="1771" Score="1" Text="Sorry, I said I would stop, but reading back through the comment thread I realised I intended to reply to @whuber pulling me up on my use of &quot;trash&quot;. Perhaps it is that I now reside in Canada, or because my partner/wife of 15 years was educated in an American School &amp; has retained many such Americanisms, but all I meant by &quot;trash&quot; was &quot;something not or no longer wanted&quot;. I didn't mean anything derogatory about the standard of questions being migrated or to suggest that mods were sending poor questions to [so], only that some things migrated were OT on [so] &amp; quickly deleted there too." CreationDate="2013-09-19T21:44:39.670" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4791" PostId="1771" Score="1" Text="I don't think that's picky @Gavin. Statistics is an incredibly broad field so I'd never assume that, because it's unclear to me, it's unclear to all. I was restricting focus to cases where the answerer admits they're unsure what the question is asking, e.g. answers like &quot;Well, I'm not sure what you're asking but..&quot; followed by a few very general statements. By the time I read it and consider flagging as &quot;not an answer&quot; it's already upvoted :-) I agree with you that this convo has veered into OT territory and that perhaps we should stop, but this discussion has been entertaining." CreationDate="2013-09-19T21:48:01.723" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4792" PostId="1771" Score="1" Text="I do see close votes I don't agree with come up fairly often (and I've become less likely to vote to close as I've come to understand the site better). I've found that simply voting against is often much less effective than (i) suggesting to the OP a minor rewording that makes the question more plainly on topic (or even making such a change myself since migration often occurs before the OP has responded) and (ii) discussing why I think it's on-topic (or likely on-topic after clarification) in comments. Sometimes there's disagreement, and I don't think that's a bad thing - we see the reasoning." CreationDate="2013-09-19T22:44:25.023" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4793" PostId="1771" Score="1" Text="... people are using. Sometimes something as simple as a re-ordering of paragraphs to place the statistical part first and the language-specific part second appears to be sufficient to prevent some people voting to close." CreationDate="2013-09-19T22:51:39.633" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4664" PostId="1774" Score="3" Text="As moderators *on this site* never acted unilaterally on sensitive issues, I would suggest to offer the possibility of including a collegial discussion between mods (e.g., &quot;Would you consult other mods before enforcing your personal decision?&quot;)." CreationDate="2013-09-17T21:05:56.500" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="4638" PostId="1775" Score="5" Text="(+1) Mods can see data on who votes to close or leave open various questions; based on that, I can attest to the heterogeneity you have noted. The biggest effect a new moderator can have on this community would occur when their votes tend to differ from the rest of the community. That potentially can change the character of this site. This is such a big deal that I encourage nominations among members who have extensive experience with community activities and with good track records in posting many great answers and few bad ones (showing they can &quot;walk the walk&quot; and understand this site)." CreationDate="2013-09-17T17:29:08.580" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4647" PostId="1775" Score="0" Text="@Macro This is a great question, both for candidates and for the whole group of moderators. I think there should be a consensus statement that is as clear as possible. More if I get asked this question in a later phase!" CreationDate="2013-09-17T18:20:11.417" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="4651" PostId="1775" Score="0" Text="+1 @whuber makes some very good points. In regard to the particular question you pose, I would hope that, regardless of who our moderators are now and in the future, it is the interested members of the community that determine what is acceptable or on topic here, and that those same people &quot;police&quot; those rules. I'm not a moderator on [so] but have similar &quot;powers&quot; there (given rep) and the R community has organised itself in a similar way. Key for me is that as a community, we have an agreed, clear set of guidelines that users and mods can work to." CreationDate="2013-09-17T19:15:54.157" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4652" PostId="1775" Score="0" Text="@Gavin Could you share a link to those SO/R Community guidelines so that we on CV could inform ourselves about them? That could help improve our migration decisions." CreationDate="2013-09-17T19:19:33.973" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4654" PostId="1775" Score="0" Text="@whuber I don't think there are any; the R chat room is used to curate Q&amp;As (flagging, close/reopen votes, deletion etc). How that community now operates has coalesced from discussions in chat, not a set of guidelines written down anywhere. However, that may be more due to that group working within the larger [so] site. We have to follow [so] guidelines on what is/is not on topic, constructive etc. With CV we could have site wide goals, clearly stated, just as [so] does. I know we already have some guidance, but it could be improved. I hope to help with that by writing something this evening." CreationDate="2013-09-17T19:24:28.030" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4655" PostId="1775" Score="4" Text="@Gavin Thank you. Some statement covering what's considered on-topic on SO concerning `R` questions, preferably endorsed by the SO `R` Community (or at least not negatively criticized by them), could go a long way towards clearing things up. It's even possible to devote space in our FAQ to stating the aims of the SO `R` Community because that would help people determine where to post their questions in the first place." CreationDate="2013-09-17T19:29:31.017" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4658" PostId="1775" Score="3" Text="@whuber OK, let me check with the R tag wiki over on [so] &amp; when I post to Meta later, I'll post a link in R Chat to get their inputs too." CreationDate="2013-09-17T19:39:01.613" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4653" PostId="1778" Score="2" Text="You can also use the tag markup `[tag:r]` for example which would render as [tag:r] (yuck, it renders differently in comments to posts - there it looks like the tags under the Qs). That may be better in instances when there is a reasonable number of pre-existing Q's here as it would link to a page showing Qs filtered by the tag. Better too if there is an appropriate tag-wiki entry. As I mentioned in my Answer, marking something up as code when it isn't code breaks the semantic web..." CreationDate="2013-09-17T19:20:23.707" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4674" PostId="1779" Score="2" Text="To be clear, this is an attempt to identify &quot;what type of user&quot; you are and what model you would put forward when you &quot;lead by example&quot; as a moderator. I've made this a community wiki so please edit freely if you feel this question doesn't get at this precisely in its current form." CreationDate="2013-09-18T01:41:08.043" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4700" PostId="1780" Score="2" Text="I wanted to reference a previous discussion which included the CV/SO division and migration: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/1335/5880" CreationDate="2013-09-18T15:15:32.883" UserId="5880" />
  <row Id="4851" PostId="1780" Score="0" Text="While this is a frequent topic of meta-discussion, how large of a problem is this generally? Read: Is the time spent rewriting the FAQ and essentially suggesting an algorithm to consider for each new post &lt;= the time spent on the couple clicks it takes to migrate a question to SO? This feels like a leading question, but it's genuine, I don't have a good feel for the volume of &quot;pure programming&quot; questions here." CreationDate="2013-09-25T21:05:58.773" UserId="5836" />
  <row Id="4682" PostId="1781" Score="1" Text="The above is my view on what the house rules should be. I have however tried to incorporate the thoughts of other prominent [stats.se] users as expressed in other related threads. I appreciate that not everyone will agree with the viewpoint stated above. Rather than edit-war this Answer, let's discuss this via other Answers &amp; comment threads and hopefully come to a consensus that is edited into this Wiki answer." CreationDate="2013-09-18T05:07:39.043" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4683" PostId="1781" Score="1" Text="A few concrete examples might help explain the software-related sections. For example, CV won't explain how to read your data into R or SPSS, but will explain why the dendrograms produced by each package have a different axes (or wherever the line ends up being drawn)" CreationDate="2013-09-18T05:22:47.633" UserId="7250" />
  <row Id="4684" PostId="1781" Score="4" Text="I am afraid the part on software-related questions just adds more confusion. We have “Questions about using higher-level statistical functions or add-on packages in such languages are not considered programming” but then “General questions about using statistical functions, software or add-on packages for languages such as R, especially those concerning basic usage, are off topic.” It seems to suggest that we want to continue current practice, merely acknowledging that questions about usage aren't about programming." CreationDate="2013-09-18T06:28:24.423" UserId="6029" />
  <row Id="4685" PostId="1781" Score="4" Text="If that's what it is, it would be better to specify that those questions are off topic in the first paragraph as well and leave it at that. (I am not convinced the language about “general” or “basic” usage is very helpful either. A function is only “basic” once you know it and use it regularly, you wouldn't ask about it if it was easy for you.)" CreationDate="2013-09-18T06:32:54.210" UserId="6029" />
  <row Id="4690" PostId="1781" Score="2" Text="**Readers should be clear** that the above is not *exactly* what is on the on-topic page of the help center. The &quot;**Note**&quot; under the &quot;**Programming**&quot; bullet point and the final bullet pointed section &quot;**Software-related questions**&quot; are *suggested changes* to CV's policy. I think it would be better to have the current text reproduced &amp; then have the suggested changes as a distinct answer to make it easier for people to evaluate the status quo &amp; possible changes." CreationDate="2013-09-18T13:23:42.540" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4692" PostId="1781" Score="0" Text="I agree with @gung: What we really need to know are what *changes* are being proposed to our FAQ. We can all read the FAQ as it stands now. Producing the entire new text asks us to work much harder than necessary to identify and react to the proposed changes." CreationDate="2013-09-18T13:38:39.347" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4693" PostId="1781" Score="0" Text="@gung Yes, I see that what is above could cause confusion. I genuinely wasn't sure how to best approach this - the Q&amp;A format isn't a great fit for collaborative editing a document. I thought having an entire whole proposed text would be useful with other Answers curating specific elements that could be edit in. I have to mend a puncture just now but will edit the above to indicate where changes have been made." CreationDate="2013-09-18T13:43:44.400" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4694" PostId="1781" Score="0" Text="Be well, @GavinSimpson. When you're ready, here is what I would suggest: in the *question*, add a horizontal line &amp; then reproduce the text under the status quo. For your *answer*, place the changes you would like to see, possibly with a couple of notes about where they would fit. Then add a horizontal line &amp; you can provide discussion / arguments in favor of your suggested changes." CreationDate="2013-09-18T13:47:37.603" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4695" PostId="1781" Score="0" Text="I agree with the sub-bullet points under &quot;software-related questions&quot; but fear that &quot;potentially related to the practice of statistics&quot; is so general that it's almost meaningless. Maybe a clause along the lines of &quot;in an obvious way&quot; should be added. But, at that point, I think it completely overlaps in content with the third sub-bullet point, which I think gets at the heart of it: if it requires statistical reasoning, then it's on-topic. The problem is that I think this is the criteria that most close-reviewers already use, which is inherently subjective and has lead us to where we are now." CreationDate="2013-09-18T13:59:14.707" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4702" PostId="1781" Score="0" Text="@gung I decide against importing the existing text - it is useless to scroll back an forth to compare and anyone can read the proposed version here side by side with the [original](http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) using their window manager and browser tabs. I will make it clear that this is a *proposed change* though." CreationDate="2013-09-18T16:15:27.750" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4703" PostId="1781" Score="0" Text="That seem clear enough, @GavinSimpson." CreationDate="2013-09-18T16:16:51.277" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4704" PostId="1781" Score="0" Text="@GaëlLaurans I have now edited the proposed text to include all software-related items under a single top-level bullet. I have pulled *Programming* into that section as it fits better there. I see this now after reading your comment; **Thanks** I also added a sentence to clarify the point of the Note; it is to help with guidelines on migrating questions to [so] as there is a lot of confusion on what should be migrated." CreationDate="2013-09-18T16:24:07.783" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4705" PostId="1781" Score="0" Text="@Marco Thanks. I think that adding an &quot;*in an obvious way*&quot; clarifier misses the point that a number of users have made in comments under various Meta Qs, that the OP may not appreciate the statistical issues. These may not be obvious to all, but a knowledgeable user could draw out those issues in a comment or answer. That would be a net win. I am wary of adding what you suggest as that gives an easy route to flagging or close-voting." CreationDate="2013-09-18T16:26:59.183" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4708" PostId="1781" Score="0" Text="@GaëlLaurans As regards the use of &quot;basic&quot;, I don't equate that term exclusively with &quot;easy&quot;, it is more nuanced than that. Perhaps &quot;introductory&quot; is what I meant?" CreationDate="2013-09-18T16:36:13.527" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4794" PostId="1781" Score="1" Text="I would note that the line between 'programming' and 'using functions' is rather blurred. Take this from wikipedia: &quot;*A computer program ... is a sequence of instructions, written to perform a specified task with a computer.*&quot;. If someone wants to combine a couple of R (say) function-calls, by that definition, they have a program, and are thereby programming. If we're just going to shift the argument to 'what really constitutes programming' I don't think we've made things clearer, but perhaps even more murky." CreationDate="2013-09-19T23:44:10.300" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4691" PostId="1782" Score="7" Text="+1: &quot;Not questions a programmer could [be expected to] answer&quot; sounds like a useful criterion to help us decide about migrations." CreationDate="2013-09-18T13:29:29.627" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4747" PostId="1782" Score="2" Text="There's a lot of good ideas here. However, I've heard versions of this argument before &amp; I don't really find it compelling. Take a look at some of the [people](http://stackoverflow.com/tags/r/topusers) who are answering R questions on SO; I don't think they'd be incapable of understanding the statistical content of these questions &amp; answering appropriately. Moreover, although R is a programming language, other languages are typically more appropriate for most programming tasks. The reason people use R is for statistics. Anyone who knows enough R to answer Q's on SO probably knows stats." CreationDate="2013-09-19T13:09:09.050" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4752" PostId="1782" Score="3" Text="@gung A few of these users are clearly experts in statistics and could certainly understand the questions I listed but it's because they are statisticians or users of statistics, not programmers. Some SO users could perhaps also answer most questions asked here on CV if they chose to but that's not a good reason to ask statistics question there." CreationDate="2013-09-19T14:18:21.527" UserId="6029" />
  <row Id="4753" PostId="1782" Score="2" Text="You're right. I don't suggest people should ask *statistics* questions there, but I do think it's fine to ask R *programming* questions there that require &quot;statistical reasoning&quot; to understand." CreationDate="2013-09-19T14:20:55.983" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4755" PostId="1782" Score="1" Text="For the type of questions I have in mind, there is no algorithm to speak of, no branching, no loops, just a function call. In SPSS the solution could also be to use a specific menu item or change some parameters in a dialog box. In this case, nobody would suggest it's appropriate to ask on SO. But it seems that because R's user interface is primarily text-based, it somehow becomes a “programming” question. As someone who studied computer science before becoming interested in statistics, I still don't see it." CreationDate="2013-09-19T14:23:48.583" UserId="6029" />
  <row Id="4756" PostId="1782" Score="0" Text="OK, but then what's the point of moving such questions to a website intended for programmers since answers only require statistics expertise?" CreationDate="2013-09-19T14:28:18.680" UserId="6029" />
  <row Id="4759" PostId="1782" Score="2" Text="@gung Perhaps if this were phrased &quot;Not questions *the average* programmer could [be expected to] answer&quot;, or something to that effect, would that be more suitable? I agree that there are many people on [so] who could answer statistical questions. I see this point as more about making the person asking the question think about the *best* venue for that question." CreationDate="2013-09-19T15:03:17.330" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4761" PostId="1782" Score="0" Text="What would you think of amending that to &quot;Not questions *the average* `R` programmer could [be expected to] answer&quot;, @GavinSimpson? (Are there R-based statistical questions R programmers can't understand?) There is a fundamental ambiguity here which is part &amp; parcel to the trouble we're having defining where the line should be drawn." CreationDate="2013-09-19T15:09:25.607" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4762" PostId="1782" Score="0" Text="@gung If you question is &quot;Are there *any* R-based statistical questions *some* R programmers can't understand?&quot; the answer to that is clearly yes (I would be a good case in point). (I would `s\understand\answer\ ` tho.) I'm not sure why this is being pulled back to **R** and not stats software *in general*? I take your point that we don't want to suggest [so] users don't know statistical or aren't capable of answering statistical question. My suggestion was to clarify that if you don't think the *average* programmer would be able to answer your question [stats.se] is probably the better venue." CreationDate="2013-09-19T15:23:37.930" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4763" PostId="1782" Score="1" Text="By &quot;**R**&quot;, I mean any such statistical software (eg, Stata, SAS, etc) @GavinSimpson. I am not singling out R for discrimination. I am very fond of R, &amp; use it daily as my software of choice. I am familiar w/ SAS &amp; SPSS, but have mixed feelings about them; I've never used Stata. My point about your version of the quote is that the &quot;average programmer&quot; probably develops software in C++ for commercial clients w/o any knowledge of even what a t-test is. But if you think of the *average `R &lt;Stata, possibly SAS, etc&gt;` programmer* understands about stats it's a whole different ball game." CreationDate="2013-09-19T15:36:29.707" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4764" PostId="1782" Score="1" Text="@GaëlLaurans, you are raising a good point. I am becoming much clearer, as a result of the ongoing discussion, that just because a question is only about how to use statistical software doesn't mean it's a *programming* question, &amp; that such questions are off-topic on SO under a fairly strict definition of &quot;programming&quot; (that essentially mirrors my somewhat strict definition of &quot;stats&quot;). The result of this is that such questions would be off-topic for *both* CV &amp; SO. Those questions are essentially *tech support* for software &amp; probably belong on the r-help listserve (statalist, etc)." CreationDate="2013-09-19T15:41:13.567" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4767" PostId="1782" Score="1" Text="@gung Good point, but [so] primarily *is* filled with C, C++, JAVA, etc programmers - the R tag is relative small there. Hence my point was that [stats.se] would probably be a better place if the *average* programmer might not understand or be able to answer the Q. There may well be R programmers on [so] who could answer, but when deciding on where to post, [stats.se] may be better as you might get different eyes on the problem that you wouldn't get if you just focus on the **R** programming side of one's question." CreationDate="2013-09-19T17:10:43.870" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4768" PostId="1782" Score="1" Text="Do the C++ programmers on SO answer the R questions, @GavinSimpson? When I'm on SO (which is relatively little), my impression is that SO is an archipelago of relatively isolated islands. Ie, the C++ programmers *never* answer the R questions &amp; R users (or at least I) never read the C++ Qs." CreationDate="2013-09-19T17:15:15.480" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4772" PostId="1782" Score="0" Text="Sometimes @gung [\*]. But you are missing the point! Just because *some* programmers, **R** or otherwise, *could* answer the question, doesn't make that question on-topic for [so] or off-topic for [stats.se]. ([*] in fact, sometimes some very good answers or comments or insights come from people outside the R tag, who happen to see a question because of other tags were added to the Q.)" CreationDate="2013-09-19T17:40:04.320" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4773" PostId="1782" Score="2" Text="Just to throw in some numbers: The easiest things to count are tags. For R, CV tags are 4556, SO are 37354; for SAS, CV tags are 234, SO are 1550; for Stata, CV tags are 283 and SO tags are 466; for SPSS, CV tags are 557 and SO tags are 296. Clearly these numbers say nothing about (0) the detail of any posts (1) which site was more appropriate for posts (2) fraction of any or good answers (3) anything else, but the variation in ratio is quite striking." CreationDate="2013-09-19T17:43:41.890" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4777" PostId="1782" Score="0" Text="I miss lots of points, @GavinSimpson, it's one of my hobbies. I think you're right that just b/c the typical R programmer could answer a Q doesn't mean it's on-topic for SO (cf, my response to Gael above)." CreationDate="2013-09-19T17:53:19.487" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4779" PostId="1782" Score="2" Text="@gung Well, I think we could, to some extent, accommodate these usage questions here but I understand I am probably more lenient than most in this respect. In any case, some are indeed essentially tech support questions (didn't think of that term before but that's really what it is). We should decide for ourselves whether we want to close, welcome or improve them but not believe they should be asked on SO merely because software or code is involved." CreationDate="2013-09-19T18:00:19.660" UserId="6029" />
  <row Id="4780" PostId="1782" Score="0" Text="@gung In your response to Gaël, can I clarify what you mean by &quot;questions [that] are essentially tech support for software&quot;? In the [proposed](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/a/1781/1390) On Topic text I specifically mention a point about *General stats software use*. I need to tidy the language there, but are you referring to those questions in you comment or *all* questions on the use of statistical software? Just trying to clarify where you stand in relation to the proposed text and my viewpoint." CreationDate="2013-09-19T18:01:03.657" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4781" PostId="1782" Score="0" Text="That's difficult in comments, @GavinSimpson. Ultimately, I'm going to need to proffer an answer there, but I've been dragging my feet. However, your distinction b/t what would constitute off-T &quot;general stats software use&quot; &amp; other &quot;software-related&quot; questions that would be on-T, isn't clear for me. I can say (cf above) that I do not think the idea that a Q requires &quot;statistical reasoning&quot; to answer makes it on-topic. My basic criterion is *What does the OP need explained*? If it's a statistical concept, it's on-T, if it's something about software &amp; they understand the stats issue, it's off-T." CreationDate="2013-09-19T19:16:49.583" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4798" PostId="1782" Score="0" Text="Another data point: [the top-voted R questions on StackOverflow](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/r?sort=votes&amp;pageSize=15) do not require *any* statistical knowledge whatsoever (save for one or two that were closed!). They are all questions about core language constructs, sorting and processing data, etc. that could just as well be asked about Python or SQL." CreationDate="2013-09-20T05:57:21.327" UserId="6029" />
  <row Id="4760" PostId="1783" Score="2" Text="+1 (but only now having a chance to comment). I tried to work @whuber's point into the proposal I posted in the other Meta thread. I could add another example from your Answer here too. Thanks." CreationDate="2013-09-19T15:04:58.633" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4689" PostId="1784" Score="1" Text="(I have never had this problem.) This seems like an issue for the developers, did they say anything about trying to fix it for you?" CreationDate="2013-09-18T13:13:11.353" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4754" PostId="1784" Score="2" Text="Sounds like some of the comment JavaScript wasn't loaded properly off the site, or that the cached version on your browser is corrupt. Can you clear your browser cache and try again?" CreationDate="2013-09-19T14:21:46.697" UserId="24254" />
  <row Id="4696" PostId="1785" Score="3" Text="In principle I agree with this but am not sure this helps the situation in terms of &quot;defining clearer house rules on software related questions&quot;. As I said in another comment, I think that some form of this reasoning is used by most (probably all) close reviewers. The problem is that this reasoning obviously leads to different conclusions for different people since it is inherently subjective." CreationDate="2013-09-18T14:02:09.117" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4697" PostId="1785" Score="3" Text="@Macro I don't think that we will ever come up with a really objective way to do this, but I think my wording may be clearer in the mind of the people *asking* the questions. Then we can get more questions being asked in the right place to start with. I also think it may make it easier for people who want to answer questions to know where to go. Not perfect, of course, but maybe better than now." CreationDate="2013-09-18T14:08:30.700" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="4698" PostId="1785" Score="3" Text="I see. That's a different way of looking at it. I agree that if higher quality questions were asked to start with, any arguments over closure reasons, etc., would be unnecessary and this problem would sort itself out. In light of your comment - and I have no idea whether or not this is practicable - maybe the site's functionality should be changed so that new users are *required* (and not just offered a badge, etc.) to read the &quot;How to ask&quot; section before asking. At this point, I'm pretty sure a vast majority do not :-)" CreationDate="2013-09-18T14:12:12.150" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4709" PostId="1785" Score="0" Text="The issue with such simple wording is i) it precludes the fact that the asker may not appreciate the statistical issues, and ii) it grossly over-simplifies what would be acceptable on [so]. Part of my aims with this Q&amp;A is to put in place better guidelines for users that leave comments about Qs being OT &amp; should be on [so], who vote to close in the same manner, who flag questions etc." CreationDate="2013-09-18T16:39:07.850" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4710" PostId="1785" Score="0" Text="@Macro Good point; having better, clearer, more specific(?) guidelines in the How to ask page helps even if people don't read it. Askers of poor questions should be pointed to that resource *and* given time to respond before being totally dumped on." CreationDate="2013-09-18T16:40:51.153" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4713" PostId="1785" Score="3" Text="@Gavin, your main point that I find persuasive is about &quot;giving them time to respond&quot;. Just a couple comments: i) As I said in the other thread, there was a time where I would press the OP for relevant details for a low quality question. After being undermined by other high reps users who &quot;took a stab at it&quot; as is (often admitting in their answer that they're unsure what the question is asking), this gets very discouraging so, for the most part, I stopped. I'd be surprised if I'm the first or last to feel this way." CreationDate="2013-09-18T17:39:26.593" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4714" PostId="1785" Score="4" Text="(cont.) ii) In my experience, you only get a response from the OP, say, 30% of the time. Perhaps they learn from the other users who will answer &quot;bad&quot; questions and figure they can just wait rather than putting some effort in and iii) With the review queue the way it is, and the relevant badges which can be irresistible for some to &quot;game&quot;, you have to make a decision. If you &quot;skip&quot; it, it's gone forever and you get no credit for the review. This dynamic will be hard to overcome (there will always be some users, usually newer ones, who are &quot;gamers&quot;), no matter what policy you try to install." CreationDate="2013-09-18T17:42:03.807" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4718" PostId="1785" Score="1" Text="@Macro: Indeed, I can assure you, you are neither the first nor the last. :-)" CreationDate="2013-09-18T18:56:59.493" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="4706" PostId="1786" Score="0" Text="Being likened to a bureaucrat is like a nice to my heart ;-) Point taken; I would liken it to herding cats! As for having a better resolution mechanism is excellent and is needed as we can add a note to that effect in the proposed text. What you envisage is **exactly** how we curate Qs under the R tag on [so]. A link to the Q is posted in chat and an explanation as to why a close or migrate vote/flag is justified is given. That helps get eyes on a question thus expediting the Review process, but it also allows discussion if there is disagreement." CreationDate="2013-09-18T16:32:17.437" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4707" PostId="1786" Score="1" Text="Some further background for interested readers: On [so] the R chat room has been made private (you need a certain rep to contribute or by invitation for valuable members of the community). This has helped weed out people using chat to ask questions. There is another public R chat room for general chat. Whether we need to follow this model for [stats.se] I'm not sure, but using chat to resolve issues and disagreement in a great suggestion and well made!" CreationDate="2013-09-18T16:34:40.337" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4723" PostId="1789" Score="0" Text="Because you can set your profile picture to any image of the proper dimensions, I suppose you could grab any identicon you like and use that. That seems like an abuse of the identicon idea, though, kind of like adopting someone else's name or national identity number: although nobody on the Internet can stop you, what's the point?" CreationDate="2013-09-18T20:49:15.437" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4724" PostId="1789" Score="0" Text="Oh but I guess at the heart of my question is whether or not you can generate a new one randomly by using the options given to you by Cross validated?" CreationDate="2013-09-18T20:50:41.743" UserDisplayName="user25658" />
  <row Id="4725" PostId="1789" Score="0" Text="My impression was that this randomly generated image was a function of your email address (no idea where I got that impression but I might have heard it somewhere). You could try changing your email address (if that's possible) and see what happens. Or, you could hack it like whuber says (I'd also wonder why...)." CreationDate="2013-09-18T20:51:17.960" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4726" PostId="1789" Score="2" Text="BabakP (cc @Macro) I don't understand: the [identicon](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identicon) is neither a CV nor an SE service." CreationDate="2013-09-18T20:51:30.243" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4727" PostId="1789" Score="0" Text="@whuber, It was just a question of curiosity.  I don't particularly like my identicon and was wondering what the options were to change it in a &quot;random&quot; fashion through the site.  I had assumed the site was the one that created my identicon (which I was wrong about) since the site was the one that gave it to me." CreationDate="2013-09-18T20:56:13.753" UserDisplayName="user25658" />
  <row Id="4728" PostId="1789" Score="0" Text="What's to like about an identicon? You can have mine if you want. Seriously though, if whuber's comment answers your question, you might consider re-posting it as an answer or deleting the question." CreationDate="2013-09-18T21:18:41.600" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4730" PostId="1789" Score="1" Text="@Macro (cc @Whuber) So am I not allowed to ask a question or have an opinion on whether or not I like my identicon?  not quite sure why this question is being so aggressively answered, all that i asked was whether or not there was a feature on CV that would allow me to generate a &quot;random&quot; identicon.  I thought the point of the support tag was to ask questions about support for CV that you could not reasonably find through the site itself." CreationDate="2013-09-18T21:22:17.163" UserDisplayName="user25658" />
  <row Id="4732" PostId="1789" Score="1" Text="I don't think anyone said you weren't allowed to have an opinion about, or ask questions about, identicons. My comment should be parsed as *&quot;It seems like whuber's comment answered your question. If not, what did he miss? If so, maybe you could mark the question as answered. Since it turns out the answer was pretty trivial, I'd understand if you want to delete the question.&quot;* I don't know what I've said that would be interpreted as aggressive but please accept my blanket apology for inadvertently offending you." CreationDate="2013-09-18T21:27:09.567" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4733" PostId="1789" Score="0" Text="@Macro I guess I took &quot;What's to like about an identicon?&quot; as condescending and sarcastic...." CreationDate="2013-09-18T21:30:06.340" UserDisplayName="user25658" />
  <row Id="4735" PostId="1789" Score="1" Text="Yes it was sarcastic (what is why I said &quot;Seriously though, ...&quot; afterwards). It was an attempt at humor. No one ever said I was funny :-)" CreationDate="2013-09-18T21:32:18.367" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4736" PostId="1789" Score="0" Text="@BabakP Are you assuming that the identicon is generated from a hash of a random value? Gravatar doesn't work that way and the Wikipedia entry for identicon indicates it is a means to generate an image from a has of something that identifies a user, such as an IP address. As such, perhaps there isn't a way to generate this randomly - that you only get one choice may be because it is generated from the username (Gravatar) or an IP address (or username, I don't know) for Identicon." CreationDate="2013-09-18T21:41:09.690" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4737" PostId="1789" Score="0" Text="No worries, I am done with this site.  Enjoy everybody!" CreationDate="2013-09-18T21:43:23.577" UserDisplayName="user25658" />
  <row Id="4738" PostId="1789" Score="7" Text="Well that's a shame. To speak from experience, I didn't sign on this site for several months after a few particularly irritating encounters and, upon returning, I've found that the site is **a lot** more enjoyable (albeit, maybe a little less &quot;exciting&quot;) when you're less emotionally invested. I hope, as an active contributor, you'll reconsider after cooling off. Cheers." CreationDate="2013-09-18T21:51:45.933" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4739" PostId="1789" Score="6" Text="@Gavin I believe you can get a different identicon by signing on as an anonymous user (which you might have to do from another computer). BabakP, please take a moment to re-read these comments: I see only friendly conversation. It is good to remember that the nuances of live interpersonal communication are lost in text, so even the politest statements can sometimes be misinterpreted. If this interchange offends you, then I wish you luck with *any* text communication on the Internet, because you will experience the same problems anywhere. Have some trust in us and our goodwill towards you!" CreationDate="2013-09-18T22:24:31.783" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4740" PostId="1789" Score="4" Text="I want to 2nd whuber &amp; @Macro's comments here, BabakP. I'm not sure if you meant you're done w/ this question / thread, or w/ CV altogether, but I hope it's not the latter. I've upvoted many of your posts &amp; I hope you'll stay. Having known these people for a while, I have some sense of how to interpret their comments, &amp; I don't think they were meant as aggressive. What you have asked strikes me as an unusual, but perfectly acceptable,  request. There's been some fumbling attempting to understand the motivation behind it, but I'm sure no offense was intended; no one ever said Macro was funny." CreationDate="2013-09-19T02:08:50.413" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4743" PostId="1789" Score="2" Text="@Gung, I think you have been one of the nicest and most supportive people I have had the pleasure of trading comments with.  I really respect your commitment to this site and your kind words." CreationDate="2013-09-19T05:22:44.720" UserDisplayName="user25658" />
  <row Id="4749" PostId="1789" Score="1" Text="@BabakP Lastly, you are not alone in getting annoyed with SE sometimes (I think it happens with everybody for many reasons). I also second whuber. Other places on internet are not so different. I hope you come back one day. Success." CreationDate="2013-09-19T14:01:32.283" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4757" PostId="1789" Score="0" Text="@whuber right, that is the other side of what I said. If BabakP was logged in to the site it was my understanding that the avatars generated were entirely deterministic. So from the [stats.se] side of things there isn't a way to randomly generate an identicon and automagically use it as your avatar. You'd have to generate the image by some other means, copy it, then upload it to your profile. That to me didn't seem like what was expected. I fully concur with the sentiments in the remainder of comment." CreationDate="2013-09-19T14:52:11.840" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4758" PostId="1789" Score="2" Text="@BabakP I'll also second the comments of gung, whuber, macro et al here &amp; state that I am sorry that you feel compelled to leave the [stats.se] community. Your contributions here have been appreciated by many. I'm not sure if it is just this comment thread, or others, but do heed whuber's point about the brevity of commenting &amp; online conversations, which take place without the visual &amp; body language cues that we take for granted in the real world. I'm sure, here at least, no ill will was meant. If I've said anything to contribute to your decision, I am sorry; it certainly was not intentional!" CreationDate="2013-09-19T14:58:11.343" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4786" PostId="1789" Score="1" Text="I'd like to add my wishes that you take some time to reconsider. You've made some very valuable contributions and it would be a loss to the people seeking help on CV if you weren't to come back. I don't think anyone who participated in this thread had any bad intent toward you at all; it's very easy to gain a mistaken impression in on-line discussions (I have done so many times myself)." CreationDate="2013-09-19T21:33:22.600" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4800" PostId="1791" Score="0" Text="This comment is a test to see whether this worked or not :)" CreationDate="2013-09-20T09:51:23.460" UserId="28940" />
  <row Id="4801" PostId="1791" Score="0" Text="Perfect, Thanks buddy :)" CreationDate="2013-09-20T09:51:41.573" UserId="28940" />
  <row Id="4802" PostId="1792" Score="0" Text="@smillig *sigh*, I thought I'd done my due diligence and checked related Qs. Thanks for doing that job properly for me and pointing out the original. I've voted to close. (+1)" CreationDate="2013-09-20T14:57:15.410" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4803" PostId="1792" Score="1" Text="... and I actually answered that duplicate and had forgotten it existed." CreationDate="2013-09-20T16:09:46.827" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4782" PostId="1793" Score="1" Text="Thanks; I supposed one could also render using `&lt;pre&gt;`, as I did above, but that begs the question why this fails for the rendered code blocks and not for code added in `&lt;pre&gt;` tags. This seems to be something specific to code blocks and how they are rendered from the MD into HTML." CreationDate="2013-09-19T19:59:21.147" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4783" PostId="1793" Score="2" Text="Thanks for this workaround. I've run into this problem many times and sometimes managed to get it to go away, but this is a better solution than any I managed." CreationDate="2013-09-19T21:23:16.017" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4804" PostId="1797" Score="0" Text="I wrote this in the chat but, for those who don't read the chat, [here is a relevant Meta SO thread](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/135778/why-is-150-reputation-needed-to-vote-in-elections) that says you need 150 rep. I haven't been able to find documentation of this anywhere but there." CreationDate="2013-09-20T17:22:05.240" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4805" PostId="1797" Score="2" Text="Be careful! The requirements appear to vary among elections and among sites.  See http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/141099/eligibility-requirements-for-stack-overflow-moderator-elections for an example (which I am pretty sure does *not* apply to us).  For more on meta SO about this, here's a good search: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/search?q=election+requirements+minimum." CreationDate="2013-09-20T17:29:39.337" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4806" PostId="1797" Score="2" Text="@whuber, given the heterogeneity you've pointed out across sites in the voting rules, what can we learn from that meta search? It's seeming like only an SE employee can answer this question." CreationDate="2013-09-20T17:44:03.620" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4807" PostId="1797" Score="1" Text="@Macro I offered the link for anyone interested in learning more about elections on SE. Meta SO often includes information applicable across the board and not just to SO itself. I haven't found anything there that is sufficiently clear or recent to apply to our current election, but maybe a better or more persistent searcher will." CreationDate="2013-09-20T17:48:01.923" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4808" PostId="1798" Score="1" Text="+1. You couldn't have just told us you need 150 rep? You really wanted us to go to that link, I guess? ;)" CreationDate="2013-09-20T18:01:38.813" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4809" PostId="1798" Score="2" Text="@Macro [... teach a man to fish...](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/give_a_man_a_fish_and_you_feed_him_for_a_day._Teach_a_man_to_fish_and_you_feed_him_for_a_lifetime).  Sorry about making you waste a click :-)." CreationDate="2013-09-20T18:03:21.130" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4810" PostId="1798" Score="0" Text="+1 Thanks - revelation dawns as this is how I'd seen details of the process in other SE site elections. I guess the colour scheme here (grey on grey) makes the tabs not stand out as much as on other sites (grey on white for example on [so]. Much appreciate you asking about this for us!" CreationDate="2013-09-20T18:05:37.160" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4812" PostId="1798" Score="0" Text="This information (that it requires 150 reputation) makes me wonder how many people have that much reputation. Oh, wait, I know how to find out... it's 1567 people. Of course, only a small fraction are active enough to even notice there's a vote. At typical response rates we might get 75 - 100 voters I guess." CreationDate="2013-09-23T02:50:03.960" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4813" PostId="1798" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b The [elections page](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1761) has seen 232 visits, so I am hopeful we will see greater involvement than that." CreationDate="2013-09-23T14:49:02.077" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4878" PostId="1798" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b As of right now, approximately 190 people have voted. ;-)" CreationDate="2013-09-27T16:16:35.093" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4880" PostId="1798" Score="0" Text="@whuber Thanks; actually I'd been watching the relevant badge, so I had a pretty good idea that the number was fairly close to that a couple of days ago. I am glad to be wrong." CreationDate="2013-09-27T23:53:59.230" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4830" PostId="1800" Score="3" Text="Just a suggestion to the candidates (please feel free to ignore): I think it would enhance readability if you would give some indication of what the question is above your answer, similar to what cardinal has done. This makes it so we don't have to go split screen or scroll up and down repeatedly to clarify, e.g. what **Q4** is." CreationDate="2013-09-24T14:54:07.530" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4831" PostId="1800" Score="0" Text="@Macro To wit, the entire point of the block I put in the body, with a link to the source of the post, is for an easy-input means that gives you spaces to write responses, which results in an answer with quotes of each question followed by normal text for each response to the question. A summary pointer will work, too, though, rather than manually tossing in the whole quote block in the existing answerers, but future answerers should perhaps consider that direction." CreationDate="2013-09-24T14:59:44.433" UserId="5645" />
  <row Id="4839" PostId="1800" Score="0" Text="@Macro Good point; now done for mine." CreationDate="2013-09-25T01:18:58.850" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4840" PostId="1800" Score="1" Text="@GraceNote I decided against copying the entire question block as it would have led to an already lengthy Answer and if each user did it it would be highly repetitive. I was remiss in not summarising the Q in my post though." CreationDate="2013-09-25T01:20:27.857" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4841" PostId="1800" Score="0" Text="Are my answers that tame that I am not spurring any commentary :)?" CreationDate="2013-09-25T04:00:29.357" UserDisplayName="user25658" />
  <row Id="4874" PostId="1800" Score="0" Text="What happened to the last candidate?" CreationDate="2013-09-27T05:29:31.047" UserDisplayName="user30490" />
  <row Id="4875" PostId="1800" Score="1" Text="@StatMan He asked that his account be deleted." CreationDate="2013-09-27T09:15:05.083" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="4896" PostId="1803" Score="0" Text="It's almost over! Who will win?  When will winners be notified?" CreationDate="2013-10-01T19:55:10.693" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="4823" PostId="1804" Score="1" Text="The plot of the evolution of the votes over time was super cool :)" CreationDate="2013-09-24T05:34:54.100" UserDisplayName="user25658" />
  <row Id="4897" PostId="1804" Score="1" Text="I have just learned this code doesn't process the missing votes in the way intended by the STV software.  The code here takes them as-is; for instance, if someone voted for a second and third place, that's what it uses. Apparently the official method first promotes those votes into votes for a first and second place before it proceeds. I'm not going to bother fixing this because the point was to document the raw results, never to reproduce the Meek STV calculation: but just be aware that there will likely be minor discrepancies in tallies compared to other vote summaries." CreationDate="2013-10-01T20:38:57.160" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4818" PostId="1805" Score="7" Text="@Glen_b's caution seems very well-founded here. In general, I suggest that **only** candidates edit their own answers here. How clearly, how correctly and precisely how candidates express themselves is part of what voters may want to assess, it seems to me, so the rest of us should refrain from even trivial edits." CreationDate="2013-09-24T01:34:41.137" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4821" PostId="1805" Score="1" Text="@NickCox Indeed, that's why I chose to raise it as a comment (now deleted, since it's not relevant any longer); these are not normal circumstances and I think the only people who should touch the candidates' words are the candidates themselves (or in special situations, a moderator). On the other hand, I though it reasonable to mention an error so the candidate had the chance to make their intent quite clear." CreationDate="2013-09-24T02:59:34.237" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4842" PostId="1805" Score="0" Text="Hi @Gavin, You say *&quot;if a question is obviously simply about the use of a particular application of piece of software then it is off topic. Questions that enquire about how to fit particular statistical models in software or how to interpret output are on topic.&quot;* - I think two different people could choose either one of those two sentences to justify closing(or not) most of the &quot;software questions&quot;. For example: &quot;I have one predictor `x` and one response `y` - how do I fit an OLS model using R?&quot; It seems that this could be on or off-topic under your rubric. Can you clarify?" CreationDate="2013-09-25T13:10:26.627" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4843" PostId="1805" Score="0" Text="@Macro That Q is difficult to clearly articulate an Answer to, especially as a summary, which is attested to by the vigorous but constructive debate on Meta and the fact that there is inconsistency between users as to what constitutes on and off topic questions for CV. I see how my summary wasn't clear, but I would argue that, on face value, *How to fit OLS to dependent variable `y` with independent variable `x` in **R**?* *is* on topic (but I suspect this has been answered here in several forms already!)." CreationDate="2013-09-25T14:53:31.897" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4844" PostId="1805" Score="0" Text="@Macro The example you give has a clear statistical element, no matter how elementary it may be. Given the maturity of CV I don't think I would keep that Q open, but instead look for similar questions already asked and use them to mark the latest question as a Duplicate. Fitting statistical models, even simple linear ones, in R requires more than just an appreciation for the language's syntax. For example, if `x` were categorical, the OP would need to know to code the data as a `factor` variable, possibly ordered, or how to chose particular contrasts." CreationDate="2013-09-25T14:58:19.383" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4845" PostId="1805" Score="2" Text="@GavinSimpson, thanks for clarifying. You're right that this toy example certainly would be a duplicate at this point. I only fear that entertaining analogous questions could make this site a surrogate for, e.g. R help files and the R help message board, which I don't think is desirable. If it were something more like *&quot;How do I model the relationship between `x` and `y` using R?&quot;* we'd be on the same page. Despite our subtle difference of opinion on this, your history on this site assures me you'd be a shrewd and fair moderator whose judgment I'd have no problem trusting. Best of luck!" CreationDate="2013-09-25T15:31:17.100" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4848" PostId="1805" Score="0" Text="@Macro Indeed &amp; going from the title of the Q you suggested I was taking a broad interpretation. If the answer to the Q, as articulated in the body text, was read `?lm` then I'd also be inclined to close; such a Q could also be closed for other reasons (poor Q, no research effort, etc). We're probably closer in opinion than some of our discussions might suggest. If the discussion on meta about this has taught me anything its that the nuance of how the Q is phrased will be critical on deciding if it is OT. Helping the OP phrase a better, more on-topic Q, will be a useful contribution. &amp; Thanks!" CreationDate="2013-09-25T16:46:57.583" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4849" PostId="1805" Score="3" Text="Although I have recently disagreed on these meta pages and in comments with some of Gavin Simpson's proposals and criticism, not only are they principled, but they reflect a point of view that would be a valuable complement to that of the current moderators. Therefore I want to make it clear that any apparent differences of opinion should *not* be taken as a negative in this case, but rather should be viewed as a *positive asset.*" CreationDate="2013-09-25T19:20:48.203" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4871" PostId="1805" Score="0" Text="@GavinSimpson Not that it's very important, but of the five candidates, I think you've done the best job of formatting and abbreviating the questions in your answer." CreationDate="2013-09-26T20:59:14.913" UserId="3835" />
  <row Id="4872" PostId="1805" Score="1" Text="Thanks @mark999 If I am ultimately unsuccessful in the moderator election I can console myself with having the prettiest Town Hall Answer (IYHO) ;-)" CreationDate="2013-09-26T21:06:24.837" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4820" PostId="1806" Score="8" Text="+1, I can tell you would be a great moderator." CreationDate="2013-09-24T02:51:24.210" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4822" PostId="1806" Score="3" Text="On Q9 ... when I became more active, for some time (a couple of months at least), my brain attached the diamond beside your name anyway. It was quite a while before I realized you weren't already a moderator." CreationDate="2013-09-24T03:08:36.657" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4900" PostId="1806" Score="1" Text="Congratulations, cardinal!" CreationDate="2013-10-01T20:40:35.677" UserId="21054" />
  <row Id="4824" PostId="1807" Score="6" Text="I think this is a duplicate of [Can I suggest that a question be migrated to another stack exchange site?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/884/930)" CreationDate="2013-09-24T08:27:49.810" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="4827" PostId="1807" Score="1" Text="Re: *&quot;or marking it as generally off-topic&quot;* - In the closing options, you can close as off topic without specifying a different site for it to go to. The option is called 'Other' and it requires you to write a comment about why it's off topic. I'm not sure if this exists in the flagging box before you have the rep to close." CreationDate="2013-09-24T13:07:10.657" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4829" PostId="1807" Score="0" Text="Thanks @Macro. I don't see that option, so it must not be available to lowly users! I think it would be nice if &quot;Other&quot; was one of the options in the box above. Ie, if the options were meta, math, so, or other." CreationDate="2013-09-24T14:44:44.837" UserId="9249" />
  <row Id="4873" PostId="1807" Score="2" Text="I'm not sure I understand the problem -- I can see the response box for sending it to tex.se.com just fine in your screenshot :-)" CreationDate="2013-09-27T00:07:45.123" UserId="16974" />
  <row Id="4825" PostId="1808" Score="0" Text="Thanks. So in a case like this, we should use the general flag for moderator attention and describe that it should be migrated to another site rather than flag as off topic?" CreationDate="2013-09-24T08:33:09.390" UserId="9249" />
  <row Id="4826" PostId="1808" Score="0" Text="@smillig You can flag and leave a comment to suggest a better place. High-rep users are also part of the [moderation](http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/moderator-tools) process." CreationDate="2013-09-24T09:53:14.390" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="4828" PostId="1808" Score="0" Text="+1 especially for the point about not cross-posting." CreationDate="2013-09-24T14:40:11.660" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4832" PostId="1809" Score="4" Text="re (A4): You don't come even *remotely* close to the kind of behavior we are concerned about.  (Moderators can see records of how many flags each user has received. The most memorable user has almost as many posts flagged as you have answers.)  It's worth considering, too, that some of the most valuable and reputable members in a community (not just ours) have the most flagged posts: flags can indicate *interest* and *controversy* as well as bad things happening." CreationDate="2013-09-24T17:23:02.633" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4847" PostId="1809" Score="3" Text="Given you expressly call out self-study type questions, and we (understandably) don't have many meta answers of yours to go on, I'd be interested in your stance on a few of the self-study/homework related threads we have had. For example, http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1556/should-the-homework-tag-be-deprecated/1557#1557 , which generated a fair amount of activity." CreationDate="2013-09-25T16:43:38.857" UserId="5836" />
  <row Id="4834" PostId="1810" Score="0" Text="Hi EpiGrad, I wonder if you can clarify *&quot;...I would make a really active effort toward improving are encouraging users to accept answers when possible&quot;*, which relates to [a recent meta thread](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1741/is-it-wrong-to-ask-a-user-to-accept-an-answer). What would you do to try to enact this change in the culture? I think many of us have asked an OP to accept an answer under various circumstances but, in that meta thread, there's a bit of variability in what active members consider acceptable (and, as @Gavin mentioned there, it's been outlawed on SO)." CreationDate="2013-09-24T22:42:36.500" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4835" PostId="1810" Score="1" Text="@Macro See my edit." CreationDate="2013-09-24T22:56:52.300" UserId="5836" />
  <row Id="4836" PostId="1810" Score="2" Text="Hi EpiGrad, your response to **Q6** brought to light a nuance in the wording of the question that I hadn't noticed before. I wanted to make sure we (all) were interpreting the question as in the same way. Since a moderator's vote to open/close/migrate is always *immediately* binding (e.g., suppose only one person has voted to close a question and you agree, your vote--as moderator--would then immediately cause the question to be closed), is your response saying that you would continue to vote as you do now in spite of this additional &quot;power&quot; or would your voting pattern change because of it?" CreationDate="2013-09-25T00:24:22.700" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="4837" PostId="1810" Score="3" Text="@cardinal Probably good to clarify - I've always acted as if my close vote was immediately binding, even though it's not, so that behavior wouldn't change. I try not to weigh what other people have voted to close or open, because its a really coarse and opaque way to do that. If its a borderline case, I'd vote what I thought then hash it out in meta." CreationDate="2013-09-25T00:59:50.807" UserId="5836" />
  <row Id="4838" PostId="1810" Score="0" Text="Thanks, Epi! That's very helpful. As I reread the question yet again, the nuance/ambiguity I thought was maybe there really isn't. Sorry to cause you undue extra effort, but thanks again for the nice response." CreationDate="2013-09-25T01:15:40.133" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="4846" PostId="1810" Score="0" Text="@cardinal My pleasure - clarity is never a bad thing." CreationDate="2013-09-25T16:36:09.593" UserId="5836" />
  <row Id="4850" PostId="1811" Score="2" Text="I like your brevity." CreationDate="2013-09-25T19:27:18.597" UserId="3835" />
  <row Id="4853" PostId="1811" Score="2" Text="The idea expressed at (2) is a great one. Why don't you propose it on the SE meta site, or at least here on our meta site, to get the attention of the SE team?" CreationDate="2013-09-25T22:00:58.627" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4854" PostId="1811" Score="0" Text="Thanks @whuber, I will do that." CreationDate="2013-09-25T22:02:42.277" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="4899" PostId="1811" Score="0" Text="Congratulations, Peter!" CreationDate="2013-10-01T20:39:36.960" UserId="21054" />
  <row Id="4855" PostId="1813" Score="2" Text="+1 I think this is a great idea: at the very least, it will pre-empt a lot of comments we post asking new people to look at the FAQ. Any thing we can automate in order to help people write good questions deserves serious consideration." CreationDate="2013-09-25T22:14:22.200" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4856" PostId="1813" Score="1" Text="+1, I agree that this is a great idea. However, I suspect it's out of our hands. I suspect the developers have to decide to do this &amp; you may need to raise the idea on meta.SO." CreationDate="2013-09-25T22:23:37.130" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4857" PostId="1813" Score="0" Text="I can raise it there, too @gung. But do they read the meta on the individual sites?" CreationDate="2013-09-25T22:27:33.460" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="4858" PostId="1813" Score="0" Text="I think there are some people designated to lurk in the background on all the site-specific metas. But this would require major changes in the code underlying the site, &amp; if done, would probably be done for all sites together. At least, that's my hunch." CreationDate="2013-09-25T23:29:54.357" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4859" PostId="1813" Score="2" Text="(cc @whuber, @gung) I think some of this type of functionality has been added since we all joined. For example, if you try to answer a question when you're logged out, a little pop-up occurs that gives you a few tips for answering along with a link to [how to answer](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/how-to-answer). Similar tips come up when you try to ask questions, with some links for help with asking questions. So, it seems that the SE network has already made some strides in this direction. Are you proposing something more?" CreationDate="2013-09-25T23:35:21.890" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4860" PostId="1813" Score="0" Text="@macro I have noticed that for comments. But I am proposing a link to the full FAQ, and only for first timers. And I just got one when I tried to cc whuber and gung...How did you do that?" CreationDate="2013-09-26T10:11:17.830" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="4861" PostId="1813" Score="0" Text="I'm not sure how I did the double cc :-) Anyway, I was just thinking that whatever comes up when you're logged out is probably the same info that comes up when you're a new user. It seems the most crucial information to convey to new users is how to ask/answer but other info could also be useful." CreationDate="2013-09-26T13:53:06.230" UserId="4856" />
  <row Id="4869" PostId="1813" Score="1" Text="Peter, I believe that this was possible because @whuber is a moderator. See this [Meta SO thread](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/43020/150510) for more information. (/cc @Macro)" CreationDate="2013-09-26T19:18:21.393" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="4862" PostId="1814" Score="4" Text="Also a great idea.  It would be nice to see this *automated,* though, rather than relying on the community to notice every new member. We are now getting around 50 questions per day and most of them from new people, plus answers from new people. Those numbers will surely grow and when they do, our ability to serve these people quickly and consistently will diminish." CreationDate="2013-09-26T14:35:05.237" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4863" PostId="1814" Score="1" Text="@whuber Agree. Post notices (like we have for answers) would be great. Different comments could be added automatically by the system, depending on content length, other SE activity (i.e., no other SE accounts means this is a totally new user on the network), etc." CreationDate="2013-09-26T14:56:24.957" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="4864" PostId="1815" Score="2" Text="Hi Penguin. There is support for a &quot;spoiler&quot; box using the markdown facilities. I don't recall the exact syntax offhand, but it's given in the FAQ." CreationDate="2013-09-26T17:10:05.947" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="4865" PostId="1815" Score="0" Text="This strikes me as a *new question* (albeit an important one), rather than an *answer* to the OP's question. Would you mind turning this into a new meta.CV Q?" CreationDate="2013-09-26T17:57:51.390" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4866" PostId="1815" Score="0" Text="@cardinal Thanks!" CreationDate="2013-09-26T18:31:30.023" UserId="13047" />
  <row Id="4868" PostId="1815" Score="0" Text="@gung, I revised my post to make it more relevant. Thanks." CreationDate="2013-09-26T18:48:29.207" UserId="13047" />
  <row Id="4876" PostId="1815" Score="4" Text="Nice example - for those interested $\LaTeX$ works in the hidden blocks as well. I'd still probably prefer people did not give answers right away like this for homework questions, but after awhile this is a splendid solution." CreationDate="2013-09-27T12:22:14.100" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="4877" PostId="1815" Score="1" Text="Thank you @Andy, I added another example to show that." CreationDate="2013-09-27T12:26:41.243" UserId="13047" />
  <row Id="4883" PostId="1816" Score="1" Text="+1, theses are good suggestions. However, I believe the moderators are not capable of creating a new section to the help center, only editing a couple of the existing sections, such as where you see the existing link (cf., @whuber's comment [here](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1381/should-our-faq-include-information-about-answering-questions#comment3357_1381))." CreationDate="2013-09-28T16:05:01.197" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4884" PostId="1816" Score="0" Text="Indeed, we can't; but the SE team can." CreationDate="2013-09-28T19:26:02.337" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="4885" PostId="1816" Score="1" Text="The reason why we maintain that link to our meta thread, [How to ask a “good” question on CrossValidated](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1479), is because we cannot do as suggested. That meta thread constitutes our guidelines." CreationDate="2013-09-28T21:58:16.797" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4887" PostId="1816" Score="0" Text="I think you did an excellent job with the wording. Maybe if changing the FAQ isn't possible we can hack it by placing these suggestions within the **On-Hold** pinned question. (Whether or not it makes a difference I don't know.)" CreationDate="2013-09-29T12:27:47.827" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="4888" PostId="1817" Score="6" Text="They seem close to me too, &amp; I'd be OK w/ it if they were merged. However, I do see them as being potentially distinct; **power** is a *property* of a test, whereas **power-analysis** is an *activity*. Eg, the distinction might be clearer in this thread: [Power of the t-test under unequal sample sizes](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/63856/), which is tagged `[power-analysis]`, but should probably be tagged `[power]` instead under my way of thinking (I deferred to the OP, however)." CreationDate="2013-09-29T15:06:03.023" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4889" PostId="1817" Score="2" Text="Power could be the master. That would include the property and the activity (i.e. the analysis aspect would be implied in question body)" CreationDate="2013-09-29T16:34:23.217" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4890" PostId="1819" Score="0" Text="You might be interested in my answer here: [If a question is good enough for you to answer should you upvote it?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1426//1427#1427)" CreationDate="2013-09-30T01:32:57.947" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4891" PostId="1819" Score="2" Text="As for editing (I do a [good deal](http://stats.stackexchange.com/users?tab=Editors&amp;filter=all) of that), I don't mind: The point is to make the thread more useful for posterity, not so much for the OP. But FWIW, if the OP doesn't care about the site, the extra rep won't mean anything; if they do care, the investment may help nudge them in a better direction. I've seen a couple of times where users said thanks &amp; started doing better copy-editing on their own. Note also, that I don't think the spell check works for people in a non-English environment." CreationDate="2013-09-30T01:33:34.247" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4892" PostId="1819" Score="0" Text="@gung Thanks. I actually looked at that question on my way to composing this one, and your answer there has relevance. I believe it's still *possible* to get your English text spell-checked if you're a German working in Doha, it just may be slightly less convenient than what I mentioned." CreationDate="2013-09-30T02:11:47.337" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4893" PostId="1820" Score="0" Text="Thanks, I think this is broadly speaking sensible (though much of it I do already). I was a bit concerned about the first item, since I don't see how it follows that an answerable question is necessarily - in any obvious sense - a good question (not being so terrible as to be unanswerable would seem to be too low a hurdle), and the post that @gung points to contains at least some answers that also make a similar point. However, on examining my own record over the last month, I have answered about 24 questions; of the 20 I checked, I had only upvoted about 10, and that is too low ... (ctd)" CreationDate="2013-10-01T00:31:42.293" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4894" PostId="1820" Score="0" Text="(ctd) easily half the remaining ones could be upvoted, so while as a criterion I have reservations about it, this is in fact a useful way for me to find more posts to upvote; I don't upvote enough of the ones I answer. Having checked the numbers, over the last month it turns out that I answer fewer questions than I thought (fewer than one a day on average), and upvote more questions than I thought (more than two a day on average, but not evenly spread). In any case, it's still fewer than I'd like, so this has been a very useful answer." CreationDate="2013-10-01T00:35:23.373" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4895" PostId="1820" Score="0" Text="I've now upvoted many of the half I had answered but not upvoted this month. When I don't see a question as worth an upvote, it looks like I need to give myself some distance from a question - maybe wait a day and check again whether I should upvote." CreationDate="2013-10-01T00:51:16.627" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4898" PostId="1821" Score="13" Text="Congratulations to Peter and @cardinal; well-deserved moderator-elects!" CreationDate="2013-10-01T20:39:36.687" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="4902" PostId="1821" Score="2" Text="Welcome on board!" CreationDate="2013-10-01T20:43:26.650" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="4905" PostId="1821" Score="9" Text="Congratulations are well deserved all around. I do want to thank *everyone* who participated and stuck through to the end--especially @Gavin Simpson and EpiGrad--for making this a real election, giving people a choice, and by using it as a constructive opportunity to suggest how our site can be improved and strengthened.  I hope and trust all four of you, regardless of this election's outcome, will continue to interact with our community as thoughtfully, positively, and actively as you have in the past." CreationDate="2013-10-01T23:21:37.377" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4906" PostId="1821" Score="5" Text="Congrats guys! Well done, and looking forward to seeing diamonds after you names." CreationDate="2013-10-02T05:30:04.620" UserId="5836" />
  <row Id="4907" PostId="1821" Score="6" Text="Thank you to @Gavin and @EpiGrad for all that you contributed to the election and your very thoughtful comments and viewpoints. I can sincerely say that I would have not been the least bit disappointed if the election results had been inverted! I hope you will continue to contribute to improving our site. Thank you to everyone who participated, too: proposing questions, requesting clarifications and voting. Without you there would not have been a proper election and there would be no site! Cheers.`" CreationDate="2013-10-02T09:55:47.377" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="4908" PostId="1821" Score="1" Text="Congratulations and good luck to both. Peter and cardinal look perfect and balanced _complementarity_. I perceive Peter as an extremely experienced data analyst (mostly) and cardinal as a strong austere math statistician (mostly). But the other two guys are worthy too." CreationDate="2013-10-02T14:32:25.203" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="4901" PostId="1822" Score="5" Text="Congratulations to Peter and cardinal." CreationDate="2013-10-01T20:42:40.913" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="4903" PostId="1822" Score="1" Text="Congratulations!" CreationDate="2013-10-01T20:45:49.433" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="4938" PostId="1822" Score="0" Text="Congratulations and all the best!" CreationDate="2013-10-09T07:00:25.470" UserId="11588" />
  <row Id="4976" PostId="1822" Score="1" Text="Besides congratulations, thank you for spending some time for the good functioning of CV." CreationDate="2013-10-20T09:13:09.813" UserId="8402" />
  <row Id="4909" PostId="1823" Score="0" Text="Give me a couple minutes and I'll take care of the immediate issue then come back around to the more general question. :-)" CreationDate="2013-10-04T11:37:33.527" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="4910" PostId="1823" Score="1" Text="I already deleted this one. But you raise a good question. I don't know the answer though" CreationDate="2013-10-04T11:38:37.880" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="4911" PostId="1823" Score="1" Text="Thanks, @Peter. You're quick! Glen, at the very least, I see no problem at all with posting a comment saying something to the effect of &quot;This is spam. Please downvote so that it gets hidden on the main page.&quot; I'm a little leery of &quot;defacing&quot; *any* post for several reasons, but it's worth giving some extra thought to what to do in these instances. Thanks for posting this question!" CreationDate="2013-10-04T11:47:28.597" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="4912" PostId="1823" Score="0" Text="I see the post now. Unfortunately, spam *answers* can't be downvoted into invisibility the way spam *questions* can. They will get greyed out after three downvotes, though, which is not quite as handy." CreationDate="2013-10-04T11:56:14.830" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="4913" PostId="1823" Score="0" Text="Wow, that was quick. Thanks for the suggestion @cardinal; a good one." CreationDate="2013-10-04T12:08:27.963" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4914" PostId="1823" Score="0" Text="I say it's a great idea. It's hardly permanent. You've flagged it, so the moderators will see it soon enough. If they disagree w/ you / or think you are being abusive (I'm not worried about this, I'm only discussing it for completeness), they could undo the action very quickly &amp; easily by rolling back the edits. Moreover, any other CV user w/ editing privileges could also. I say, hack the spam." CreationDate="2013-10-04T12:15:58.870" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4915" PostId="1823" Score="0" Text="@gung: In spirit, I tend to lean your way, but I want to put in a word of caution. There *can* be grey areas. For example, I have witnessed instances where posters have answered with essentially commercial links to products/books/etc. vaguely related to the question at hand. Some users view this as spam and want to edit/downvote/delete/flag/etc. Other users view it as potentially valuable. And the posters themselves are sometimes prospective positive contributors to the site, but just need to be shown the way a little." CreationDate="2013-10-04T12:26:49.140" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="4916" PostId="1823" Score="0" Text="None of that applies *here*, of course, but the point is any particular post may not be uniformly classified as spam by all users." CreationDate="2013-10-04T12:26:55.423" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="4917" PostId="1823" Score="0" Text="Those are fair points, @cardinal. I'll say we should reserve this strategy for out-and-out spam that anyone would recognize as such." CreationDate="2013-10-04T12:31:52.970" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4918" PostId="1823" Score="1" Text="A good reason not to edit is given in the meta.SO post I linked, which is effectively a duplicate, I fear. What's the right category for closure? It's not an actual duplicate." CreationDate="2013-10-04T13:02:00.280" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4919" PostId="1823" Score="3" Text="Glen, I'm glad you found that meta.SO post, though I think you're advocating something different regarding edits, and an approach that would avoid many of the problems noted in the question and answers there. We also currently have a smaller community where accumulating six spam flags is still quite difficult, especially on certain days and at certain hours. I'm tempted to leave this open at the moment as there might be some useful approaches particular to our circumstances that wouldn't be as relevant on a bigger site like SO or math." CreationDate="2013-10-04T13:11:32.617" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="7123" PostId="1823" Score="1" Text="@gung Okay, thanks, I hadn't seen that. On the other hand &quot;answer my survey about popcorn&quot; is hardly going to offend. I'll leave it, it's not like one post will make much difference either way" CreationDate="2015-07-31T02:19:07.410" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4920" PostId="1824" Score="0" Text="Just to be clear on your position - by 'this text editing' were you referring to the kind of edit suggested in my post or to the stronger form of editing you practice as a moderator that is discussed in your post? I get the sense you meant the first, but I figure its best to be clear on your thoughts." CreationDate="2013-10-04T23:14:56.570" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4921" PostId="1824" Score="3" Text="Glen, I meant the stronger form.  I don't see much value in using strike-through text, because it's still there and it's still sending the spammer's message or displaying the offensive material.  Don't give them any joy." CreationDate="2013-10-05T00:10:51.617" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4935" PostId="1824" Score="0" Text="What is &quot;anodyne text&quot;? Sounds neat." CreationDate="2013-10-08T16:01:14.817" UserId="31187" />
  <row Id="4936" PostId="1824" Score="1" Text="@Ahmed You can easily look up the definition.  More memorable, though, is its [etymology](https://www.google.com/search?q=anodyne+etymology), grounded in ancient Greek: &quot;an&quot; = without, &quot;odyne&quot; = pain.  (I'm also tempted to misread it as &quot;an&quot; + a meaningless vowel + &quot;dyne&quot; = power or import.)  Thus: &quot;anodyne text&quot; = something that won't bother anybody and doesn't say much of anything, either." CreationDate="2013-10-08T16:18:51.657" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4942" PostId="1824" Score="3" Text="a bunch of &amp;nbsp; will work as anodyne text, and they are fat enough to satisfy the length requirement rather quickly." CreationDate="2013-10-09T13:59:19.753" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="6913" PostId="1824" Score="1" Text="If it's offensive, flag it as *offensive*, not as *spam*. Offensive material is hidden by default, even from 10k users (though they can choose to view it, should they wish to)." CreationDate="2015-04-28T10:57:58.980" UserId="13966" />
  <row Id="7124" PostId="1824" Score="0" Text="Just saw your edit. In principle, I'd have thought so too, but apparently they're not yet that sophisticated" CreationDate="2015-07-31T02:19:53.417" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4922" PostId="1825" Score="1" Text="I don't perceive you as cynically pursuing reputation. However, I'm not sure this discussion belongs on meta.CV. I think you could 'create a new room' in [chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/), &amp; it could profitably be discussed there." CreationDate="2013-10-07T19:30:40.140" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4923" PostId="1825" Score="0" Text="What question is it that you want to ask?" CreationDate="2013-10-07T19:47:47.563" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4924" PostId="1825" Score="0" Text="@whuber, I wanted to *discuss* about the statistics teaching at secondary school. CV members are the better persons I know for sharing such a discussion, but I say (here, on meta.CV) that I think that CV is not a good place for such a discussion. So I ask (here, on meta.CV) what should I do ?" CreationDate="2013-10-07T20:03:29.800" UserId="8402" />
  <row Id="4925" PostId="1825" Score="0" Text="So @gung has given an answer to my question. I never think about the chat, and I have almost never used it. So I will try to use it more often." CreationDate="2013-10-07T20:04:47.180" UserId="8402" />
  <row Id="4926" PostId="1825" Score="0" Text="Another possible answer to my question is to propose me to open a reference request about some texts about the status of statistics teaching in different countries. But is there a tag about statistical education, or something like that ?" CreationDate="2013-10-07T20:07:37.180" UserId="8402" />
  <row Id="4929" PostId="1825" Score="0" Text="You are free to create tags as they are needed." CreationDate="2013-10-07T21:26:47.597" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4934" PostId="1825" Score="1" Text="I think this is a very engaging question. Being educated in a country (Greece) were we effectively had only Maths in secondary school (OK, we were shown a bell curve just before graduating but pretty much just that) it is really interesting for me to see other people's thoughts and experiences on the matter. A chat room sounds like a good idea." CreationDate="2013-10-08T14:04:32.563" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="4937" PostId="1825" Score="0" Text="@gung, I didn't mean cynical in regards to reputation points: I said I was afraid to be perceived as cynical because of my negative opinion on the statistics teaching, in case if I opened such a discussion." CreationDate="2013-10-08T20:48:16.483" UserId="8402" />
  <row Id="5033" PostId="1825" Score="1" Text="a good teaching resource is [Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education](https://www.causeweb.org/). I don't know if they have any discussion forums though. There are two journals on statistics education, so I imagine you can try to create a stir through a publication in these." CreationDate="2013-11-04T02:14:23.400" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="4928" PostId="1826" Score="0" Text="I didn't know Academia, thanks. Though I'm not sure many mathematicians participate to Academia. Your remark about the subactivity of the chat confirms my impression about the chat." CreationDate="2013-10-07T21:24:49.780" UserId="8402" />
  <row Id="4930" PostId="1826" Score="1" Text="It is true that few people participate, but maybe more people might discuss a particular topic if it were announced here, perhaps like the 'CV journal club'. Ie, this meta post could alert people who might be interested, especially if it were edited w/ an announcement &amp; a link to the new chat room. @StéphaneLaurent, you may also note there are other stats forums online (cf, my comment [here](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/72175/is-there-a-semi-professional-online-forum-with-the-focus-on-data-science#comment140059_72175))." CreationDate="2013-10-07T22:25:19.563" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4931" PostId="1826" Score="1" Text="@gung That is a good idea. High-rep users can create a dedicated chat room and mods can issue &quot;community messages&quot; (just like the recent CV elections notification) that will automatically stay for a couple of days.  Perhaps we could establish a mechanism whereby special chats are proposed here in meta and, if they receive enough upvotes, a mod would then create the room and publish a notice of it. The rest would be up to the community. :-)" CreationDate="2013-10-07T22:44:55.337" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4932" PostId="1826" Score="0" Text="I believe @StéphaneLaurent can create a chat room already. I don't know if you are referring to something different, but the standard 'create chat room' privilege is listed as rep&gt;100." CreationDate="2013-10-07T22:55:33.887" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4933" PostId="1826" Score="0" Text="@gung But neither our O.P. nor any non-moderator can create a community message." CreationDate="2013-10-08T03:13:57.367" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5032" PostId="1826" Score="0" Text="There's a fair number of active, high-rep mathematicians on Academia.SE. But I would expect that this would be a very narrow topic for their site." CreationDate="2013-11-04T02:11:11.573" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="4939" PostId="1827" Score="1" Text="In the interest of fulll disclosure: the same happened to this question." CreationDate="2013-10-09T12:25:53.370" UserId="30510" />
  <row Id="4940" PostId="1827" Score="9" Text="Yes: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/93989/150510." CreationDate="2013-10-09T12:29:12.653" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="4941" PostId="1827" Score="2" Text="Salutations and closings are not needed and are often edited out by users; I don't know that this happens automatically. In this post, you signed &quot;regards, Vincent&quot;. That would usually be edited out. Your name is automatically attached." CreationDate="2013-10-09T12:29:13.060" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="4944" PostId="1827" Score="1" Text="Glen_b, of course I was referring to the one that never did, since from where I sit it is not really true that it never did, it only never did after being visible to others... The link by chl explains it all" CreationDate="2013-10-10T10:30:55.230" UserId="30510" />
  <row Id="4945" PostId="1827" Score="0" Text="Thanks for the clarification." CreationDate="2013-10-10T14:27:50.397" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4947" PostId="1828" Score="7" Text="In addition to the replies you receive here, consider an empirical evaluation: take a look at the [highest-rated answers on our site](http://stats.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&amp;q=is%3aanswer%20score%3a40%20wiki%3ano) and study their characteristics.  (You will find some *extremely* long answers in this collection, by the way.)" CreationDate="2013-10-13T13:22:52.190" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4948" PostId="1828" Score="0" Text="@whuber I like this totally scientific approach, thanks Whuber, I certainly will." CreationDate="2013-10-13T13:27:19.270" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="4946" PostId="1829" Score="0" Text="Give the answer, give the proof/argument that supports the answer, expand on the question... a useful suggestion, thanks!" CreationDate="2013-10-13T11:43:03.267" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="4949" PostId="1831" Score="1" Text="Thanks chl. I think your answer converges to @mbq 's one. Both seem to consider expanded answers worthwhile, as long as they are structured in such a way that they can be useful to a variety of readers - to the grabber in a rush, to the careful taker, to the patient digger." CreationDate="2013-10-13T13:32:09.843" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="4950" PostId="1833" Score="1" Text="+1 for point 2. It is exactly how I think about Q&amp;A activity." CreationDate="2013-10-14T11:51:07.183" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="4953" PostId="1833" Score="3" Text="+1. Perhaps too obvious to mention, but short answers are sometimes the best busy people can do, especially if a question doesn't appear to allow (or deserve) a long answer. The best questions and the best answers here are questions of some generality and challenge, answered in detail and depth. But there is a long tail of less interesting questions, e.g. those too closely tied to someone's particular data, otherwise too specific, too cryptic, etc. We often ignore them, but a short answer may be posted as, one hopes, of some help, or at least as indicating where misconceptions may lie." CreationDate="2013-10-15T15:13:41.670" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4969" PostId="1834" Score="5" Text="In other words, yes :-)" CreationDate="2013-10-16T22:21:13.170" UserId="7250" />
  <row Id="4951" PostId="1835" Score="1" Text="That's a sensible self-discipline check. Indeed an answerer should always be asking him or herself &quot;Am I going into quasi-textbook mode&quot;?" CreationDate="2013-10-14T21:14:04.713" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="4952" PostId="1835" Score="1" Text="@Alecos At which point outline plus reference is probably better. But, again, I don't see that problem with your answers." CreationDate="2013-10-14T21:27:19.317" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="5945" PostId="1835" Score="0" Text="And we don't usually see this problem in general. Even the occasional gigantic walls of text don't look as bad after they've been formatted properly – that's where really long answers usually go wrong. BTW, there's even a character limit on answers. It's huge, something like 60,000, but I hit it once on CogSci. In retrospect, I was probably exceeding fair use of an article, even though it was public domain!" CreationDate="2014-07-31T17:18:14.430" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="4954" PostId="1836" Score="0" Text="How is this different than, say, two statisticians with the same name that publish in an archival journal? Or, worse yet, the same family name but simply sharing the first initial? (Some journals still regularly don't print the full first name of authors and that almost *never* happens in bibliographies/references.)" CreationDate="2013-10-15T20:14:38.373" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="4955" PostId="1836" Score="0" Text="It's different because it's easy to stop :-).  Your name is hard to change, but making people use, say Michael2 instead of Michael wouldn't be hard." CreationDate="2013-10-15T20:16:09.827" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="4956" PostId="1836" Score="1" Text="@Peter: In that case, I will wait for [StasK](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/users/5739/stask) to chime in with the suggestion that we all be [forced to bear our user12345 identifier](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/1393/2970). (Problem solved?) ;-)" CreationDate="2013-10-15T20:18:20.643" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="4957" PostId="1836" Score="0" Text="@cardinal It is not -but you are referring to non-electronic data bases. My puzzlement comes from the fact that in _any and all_ _electronic data base systems I have come in contact so far in my life, such a possibility was not allowed. And it is potentially problematic (as is to have publications of different people under same names) -so, is there an upside to that? (since, technically speaking, it can certainly be changed)." CreationDate="2013-10-15T20:19:33.677" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="4958" PostId="1836" Score="0" Text="@cardinal :-).  It seems to me relatively simple to not allow two people to have the same user name here. I don't see any disadvantage. It needn't be user12345." CreationDate="2013-10-15T20:23:06.140" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="4965" PostId="1836" Score="1" Text="It is possible for 2 different users can have accounts w/ the same username, I assume, b/c the username isn't (an analog of) a primary key in SE's software. If you were hoping to change that policy, you would need to raise it on the SE-system-wide meta (ie meta.SO), not here." CreationDate="2013-10-16T00:46:41.967" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4966" PostId="1836" Score="4" Text="@Gung has a key point. Presumably this was discussed long ago as a SE policy point and it was decided that insisting on different names was not needed, if not undesirable. Chance of reversing that: zero, I imagine. I found 29 &quot;John&quot; or &quot;john&quot; on CV alone, which is not nearly as big on some other sites. So, system-wide insisting on different names would mean either everyone becoming user&lt;something&gt; (very unpopular) or insisting on thousands of changes (very unpopular) or arbitrarily adding prefixes, suffixes whatever (unpopular)." CreationDate="2013-10-16T01:23:51.713" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="4967" PostId="1836" Score="0" Text="@ gung @ Nick Cox Nah, my initial tag was &quot;bug&quot; but I think Cardinal kindly changed it to &quot;feature-request&quot;. But my primary goal was to gather info and of course, opinions. I still consider it a possible source of useless misunderstandings, but from my experience, changing such a thing in a system as .SE is not even an event with probability zero -it's even less. So we'll get by, I guess, remembering to double-check profiles." CreationDate="2013-10-16T01:29:05.277" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="4968" PostId="1836" Score="0" Text="@Nick: I like your pun. (+1)" CreationDate="2013-10-16T16:58:58.060" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="4970" PostId="1836" Score="1" Text="I'm not sure I see much of an issue. When I see two users called 'Tim' (and I have), not only do they have different identicons, but when I hover over their name I see their id number, also unique. The initial confusion was brief. If I am still not 100% sure who's who, I can look at the user's home page. If they were say Tim6 and Tim9 instead, ... I'm not sure I'd be better off." CreationDate="2013-10-18T05:48:45.663" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5602" PostId="1836" Score="0" Text="Incidentally, when I first joined SO, I wish I had realized this; I chose Glen_b because there was already a Glen and I figured it was 'taken'. It was probably a couple of years before I figured out that I could have had Glen. In retrospect I don't mind that I did (here on stats.SE there are several 'Glen's but only one Glen_b, so it's more obvious who is to blame)." CreationDate="2014-04-15T06:04:37.980" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5603" PostId="1836" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b I fully agree, there is only one Glen_b here!" CreationDate="2014-04-15T07:40:21.797" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="4959" PostId="1837" Score="1" Text="Aside: I suppose one could also surreptitiously &quot;steal&quot; a doppleganger's avatar, if they were feeling particularly devious. (*Please don't consider that a suggestion!*)" CreationDate="2013-10-15T20:24:14.993" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="4960" PostId="1837" Score="1" Text="I tend to disagree. When people share the same name and _operate in the same environment_, then I can assure you, the environment will force on them to accept being called or addressed a bit differently. Say there are two Alexander Papadopoulos in the same company. Then one will be called Alex the other Alecos , and they will have to write their name in this manner in any written communication and in their e-mail signatures." CreationDate="2013-10-15T20:24:25.540" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="4961" PostId="1837" Score="1" Text="@cardinal Intentionally impersonating another user is against the rules, and the moderators will usually change the impersonator's profile. This happens very rarely, though." CreationDate="2013-10-15T20:26:03.963" UserDisplayName="user12068" />
  <row Id="4962" PostId="1837" Score="0" Text="@AlecosPapadopoulos And exactly the same thing happens on SE sites if two users with the same user name are active in the same area. It is especially obvious in chat (where you get the pings for the other user if you share the name), but I've seen a few cases on other SE sites where users changed their names to avoid the confusion" CreationDate="2013-10-15T20:27:08.640" UserDisplayName="user12068" />
  <row Id="4963" PostId="1837" Score="0" Text="Yes, this was the spirit of my flippant remark: There are multiple means of disambiguation visible to all users, so even someone acting devious can be quickly unmasked by anyone - not just moderators. This greatly mitigates the concerns expressed by the OP, at least in my view. (+1)" CreationDate="2013-10-15T20:30:13.720" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="4964" PostId="1837" Score="0" Text="To Mad Scientist I didn't see it happening here (both Michaels are active in CV)-and (to @Cardinal) my worry is not so much about devious behavior but useless misunderstanding -although it can seem rather amusing afterwards! (I added in the question how I came about finding this two)." CreationDate="2013-10-15T20:40:00.373" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="4971" PostId="1838" Score="1" Text="Peter, you are not alone on this (+1). http://meta.gis.stackexchange.com/questions/3292/see-who-else-is-reviewing-a-question/3303#3303" CreationDate="2013-10-19T16:09:43.857" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4972" PostId="1838" Score="0" Text="It wasn't really answered there, though... Should I ask on the general site?" CreationDate="2013-10-19T17:35:45.023" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="4973" PostId="1838" Score="1" Text="Peter, I found [this one](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/174976/is-having-a-blocking-edit-an-option/174986#174986) on MSO. I think we are fine with this thread here (we know it is not a [dupe](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1723/do-duplicates-count-across-se-sites/1724#1724),right?). Maybe you could add the M.GIS and the M.SO thread links to the question body. The subject will get more visibility/support around SE." CreationDate="2013-10-19T18:03:50.883" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4974" PostId="1838" Score="0" Text="Sorry about that, Peter. It's frustrating; it's happened to me a number of times. As for where to raise this issue, if you just want to discuss it, here seems fine, but to get the SE developers to add this feature, it probably needs to be discussed on meta.SO, I would think. (On the other hand, a new question--beyond the one @AndreSilva lists--would probably be closed as a duplicate; I'm not sure there's a good solution.)" CreationDate="2013-10-20T00:09:43.667" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4975" PostId="1838" Score="0" Text="Yeah, it's not your fault, @gung. There's no way to know that it is going on." CreationDate="2013-10-20T00:43:36.993" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="4977" PostId="1838" Score="3" Text="I believe it would be a very easy programming task for the developers to create a pop like &quot;This post is being edited! Be patient!&quot;. This would be more generally useful: say an answerer edits his or her answer to correct some serious mistake, or the OP adds critical information. Although the post should not be embargoed, still the visitors should now that what they read is bound to change in some way. So I believe moderators should raise the issue with the guys holding the virtual screwdrivers." CreationDate="2013-10-20T12:02:35.193" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="4979" PostId="1838" Score="1" Text="A problem I've encountered a few times. Most recently, I repeatedly couldn't make the necessary extensive edits because the OP kept coming in and making relatively trivial changes. It would say I couldn't save unless my changes were more extensive (which they easily were by my own reckoning) but still couldn't save them. I'd wait and come back later ... and the same thing would happen - the OP would make a few small additions during my extensive edit session ... and I couldn't save. ..." CreationDate="2013-10-22T03:44:46.817" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4980" PostId="1838" Score="0" Text="(ctd)... I ended up re-writing the whole thing off line, pasting it in and then going back and editing in the OPs changes that came while I was doing that. About the only thing more annoying (wrt editing posts at least) is to spend 10 minutes editing a post that the OP spent maybe two minutes on... only to have them delete the post while I'm fixing it enough to be a reasonable question. The hazards of editing I guess. I reckon there should be a 'horse shot out from under you' badge for that." CreationDate="2013-10-22T03:45:37.303" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4981" PostId="1838" Score="1" Text="One feature I've sometimes thought would be worth having is a 'work in progress' flag that you could turn on for a post (for say up to an hour), so you can save your work as you go, but people realize you're still working on it; answers and edits should hold off -- or perhaps, while the flag is there, the post doesn't even hit the new and active queues (/is there but maybe greyed out), which means people aren't jumping on it right away." CreationDate="2013-10-22T03:53:49.217" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5019" PostId="1838" Score="1" Text="What about saving an initial edit at the top of the question saying *(currently editing)*? This is a practice I am going to try and adopt for myself from now on. I believe I have spent about 10 hours on my Mast.SE post &quot;under edit&quot;. :P" CreationDate="2013-10-31T20:33:49.063" UserId="32124" />
  <row Id="5123" PostId="1838" Score="0" Text="We could make use of Google's Etherpad" CreationDate="2013-12-20T04:14:44.403" UserId="34588" />
  <row Id="4978" PostId="1839" Score="1" Text="Maybe you can give a start by: i) creating a different tag from gmm, and ii) editing the excerpt and tag wiki in both tags to remove ambiguity. This would help with the future." CreationDate="2013-10-22T02:56:04.667" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="4982" PostId="1839" Score="1" Text="For a more general version of this topic, see [here](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1707/is-it-reasonable-to-put-try-to-avoid-acronyms-in-the-help-on-asking-questions)" CreationDate="2013-10-22T04:03:57.250" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4983" PostId="1839" Score="0" Text="I created a new tag for gmm. It also looks like there's an older [generalized moments tag](http://stats.stackexchange.com/tags/generalized-moments/synonyms), but I can't add gmm as synonym since I don't have enough points on that tag." CreationDate="2013-10-22T07:51:12.123" UserId="7071" />
  <row Id="4984" PostId="1839" Score="0" Text="I also think that usage is [rare](https://books.google.com/ngrams/interactive_chart?content=generalized+moments%2Cgeneralized+method+of+moments%2Cgaussian+mixture+model&amp;year_start=1900&amp;year_end=2001&amp;corpus=15&amp;smoothing=3&amp;share=&amp;direct_url=t1%3B%2Cgeneralized%20moments%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cgeneralized%20method%20of%20moments%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cgaussian%20mixture%20model%3B%2Cc0), so perhaps the generalized moments tag should be retired." CreationDate="2013-10-22T07:56:01.023" UserId="7071" />
  <row Id="4985" PostId="1839" Score="0" Text="I've suggested gmm as synonym for generalized moments. I think both of the tags should be synonyms. Questions about GMM are rare, but so are question on econometrics. I wonder maybe generalized-moments tag came from economics.SE, when it was merged to crossvalidated.com?" CreationDate="2013-10-22T11:25:03.113" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="4986" PostId="1839" Score="1" Text="See here for previous discusion, [Should the gmm tag be added?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/1564/1036)" CreationDate="2013-10-22T15:08:43.257" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="4987" PostId="1840" Score="0" Text="The tag can be banned forever, but it would be best if it is simply turned into a synonym." CreationDate="2013-10-22T16:08:54.390" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4988" PostId="1840" Score="3" Text="The problem with turning it into a synonym @gung is that the GMM acronym can't be differentiated between several different types of statistical analysis. I'd prefer *not* to (by default) choose one of those options as a synonym given the ambiguity." CreationDate="2013-10-22T17:41:58.790" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="4989" PostId="1840" Score="3" Text="@gung, there has to be a disambiguation, something along the lines of &quot;Please do not use `gmm` tag. Instead, use the `generalized-moments` for GMM in econometrics; `gaussian-mixutre` for GMM in machine learning and classification; and `growth-mixture-model` for GMM in psychology.&quot;" CreationDate="2013-10-22T18:41:31.577" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="5004" PostId="1840" Score="0" Text="I would suggest to clear the [tag:gmm] tag and refer in the About section to the three other tags, as suggested by Stas. Also, 'generalized-method-of-moments' cannot be recorded as a synonym for [tag:generalized-moments] (too many characters), but a moderator can easily discard the 'gmm' &lt;-&gt; 'generalized-moments' association that was suggested recently." CreationDate="2013-10-24T17:54:35.913" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="5008" PostId="1840" Score="0" Text="I've folded in the description of GMM that Dimitriy provided into `generalized-moments` tag, and wrote a strong language in `gmm` tag to discourage users from actually using it." CreationDate="2013-10-25T16:34:12.813" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="5009" PostId="1840" Score="0" Text="Thanks, Stas! I think it should be clear now." CreationDate="2013-10-25T17:08:38.083" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="4991" PostId="1841" Score="2" Text="I think the answer is #1, &amp; I think this is simply consistent w/ a lot of other pages in the SE system, rather than having been coded up separately (&amp; deliberately) to have that behavior." CreationDate="2013-10-23T15:12:42.873" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4997" PostId="1841" Score="1" Text="@gung Actually, that makes sense - that it would not be a behavior by design but as an inherited default from elsewhere." CreationDate="2013-10-23T22:28:31.800" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5005" PostId="1841" Score="4" Text="You guys nailed it - it's not really a bug, not really by-design. It's just an inherited behavior from other pages that are just lists of questions. If you think there's a better way to do it, consider a [feature-request] on MSO." CreationDate="2013-10-24T18:42:03.000" UserId="6123" />
  <row Id="5006" PostId="1841" Score="0" Text="Thanks for the confirmation, Abby." CreationDate="2013-10-24T22:31:11.770" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="4990" PostId="1842" Score="0" Text="Could you please tell us what you mean by &quot;recommend&quot;? (I am not familiar with any SE mechanisms that offer or present questions apart from the usual options to sort and search.)" CreationDate="2013-10-23T13:51:00.203" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="4992" PostId="1842" Score="0" Text="I believe the OP is asking where the list of &quot;Related&quot; questions (seen to the right $\rightarrow$) comes from, &amp; probably even more specifically where the list of possible related threads that appears between your title &amp; the body of your Q when you are typing your question in the first place (ie, the &quot;Questions that may already have your answer&quot;) comes from." CreationDate="2013-10-23T15:15:49.483" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4993" PostId="1842" Score="1" Text="Here's a possible meta.SO thread to explore: [What does SO use to find &quot;Questions that may already have your answer&quot;?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/167281/) I believe there is another thread somewhere I've seen that explicitly explains the search algorithm used (IIRC, it's something like a simple search on the keywords in your title), but I can't find it right now." CreationDate="2013-10-23T15:23:43.480" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4994" PostId="1842" Score="0" Text="Sorry, I mean the question list appearing when you enter stackoverflow.com in the browser." CreationDate="2013-10-23T16:31:07.477" UserId="7259" />
  <row Id="4995" PostId="1842" Score="2" Text="It's a bit weird that they call them &quot;interesting&quot; on SO. Here on CV, they're called &quot;active&quot;, which provides a more accurate connotation. These are just the questions that were most recently asked or answered ( / edited, etc)." CreationDate="2013-10-23T17:11:58.673" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4996" PostId="1842" Score="0" Text="But actually, they are recommended (at least for SO)in the sense that questions are being filtered according to my favourite tags. Also what I have asked/answered/upvoted have some influence on what is being recommended." CreationDate="2013-10-23T18:00:43.300" UserId="7259" />
  <row Id="4998" PostId="1842" Score="0" Text="OK, maybe I'm getting closer to your question. You want to know about how some of the questions are highlighted in a different color. This is based on the tags those questions have. You can select tags to be highlighted by clicking on `edit` next to &quot;Favorite Tags&quot; &amp; likewise you can select tags to be ignored. If you don't want any tags highlighted, edit your favorite tags &amp; add something that isn't a tag name (on CV I have `[jkjkjkjkjk]` so that nothing is highlighted, but on SO, I only look at R Q's so the highlighting is helpful to me)." CreationDate="2013-10-23T22:46:36.233" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="4999" PostId="1842" Score="0" Text="I didn't find any info on the algorithm used to determine what your 'favorite' tags probably would be if you had entered them yourself, but there is some more info on these topics here: [what-do-favorite-tags-and-ignored-tags-do](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/19173/), here: [please-let-users-opt-out-of-the-frequented-tag-system](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/88345/), &amp; [here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/help/interesting-topics)." CreationDate="2013-10-23T23:10:44.223" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5000" PostId="1842" Score="0" Text="No, I mean something else. Actually, there *might* be some advanced mechanism driving the question recommendation. Questions you asked, answers you provided, even Q&amp;A you voted might be considered when building a &quot;interested topics&quot; profile for you, which is used to recommend questions. Whether the technique used in question recommendation is collaborative filtering or keyword based filtering is unknown. However, what I am more certain is that tags play an important role in this process." CreationDate="2013-10-24T07:06:08.297" UserId="7259" />
  <row Id="5001" PostId="1842" Score="0" Text="And I don't think it is a meta question. It is about recommendation algorithm so it should be migrated to somewhere else." CreationDate="2013-10-24T07:40:16.473" UserId="7259" />
  <row Id="5002" PostId="1842" Score="0" Text="This question appears to be off-topic because it is about machine learning algorithm" CreationDate="2013-10-24T07:40:48.130" UserId="7259" />
  <row Id="5003" PostId="1842" Score="0" Text="Based on these comments, I'm still confused about what it is you want to know. Are you trying to find out the machine learning algorithm that SE uses to determine what your 'favorite' tags would be, if you don't enter any on your own? That Q might be appropriate for meta.SO. FWIW, I don't know exactly, but I do know it is based only on tags. (Also, fortunately I keep checking back here, but if you want me to be alerted that you have left me a comment, you need to include `@gung` in your comment.)" CreationDate="2013-10-24T14:29:33.973" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5010" PostId="1844" Score="4" Text="I'm not sure I want to make this a *rule*; but it may be appropriate sometimes. I'd say we could have this as a helpful suggestion, but leave it to the discretion of the user who is interacting w/ the OP." CreationDate="2013-10-25T22:27:46.433" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5011" PostId="1844" Score="2" Text="On the TeX-LaTex board, in questions that get a lot of comments, there is often a summary written up by the original poster." CreationDate="2013-10-25T22:55:39.560" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="5013" PostId="1844" Score="2" Text="I'm all for such encouragement, especially when the OP makes it clear they have solved their problem. I've encouraged askers to post their solutions after receiving the guidance they were seeking before (and made some further suggestions if the solutions had obvious problems). I think this has advantages both for the site overall, as well as the OP. But I don't think it needs to be an official policy. I wouldn't mind there being something of a cultural shift toward encouraging OPs to post summaries of many comments that collectively cover much or all of the answer, as Peter Flom notes on TeXSE" CreationDate="2013-10-28T03:52:28.153" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="19834" PostId="1844" Score="0" Text="People not following through on self-study is one thing; people not seeing an occasion for self-study is another, and a bigger concern for me. Often answers and comments reveal gaps in the questioners' knowledge; when the questioners do not follow up with study, further engagement can be unpleasant." CreationDate="2020-05-26T15:35:10.763" UserId="225256" />
  <row Id="5015" PostId="1845" Score="2" Text="This question is fine for the main site. For a tag I would suggest [quality-control](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/quality-control) given the nature of the objective." CreationDate="2013-10-31T12:47:12.317" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="5016" PostId="1845" Score="2" Text="There are other statistical applications that calculate statistics for areas in vaguely similar plots (e.g. GINI Coefficient, ROC curves), but it isn't obvious to me that you need to work with the area at all. Just evaluating deviations from expected may be sufficient to identify problematic sensors." CreationDate="2013-10-31T12:48:56.450" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="5017" PostId="1845" Score="2" Text="Hi, Chris. I agree with @Andy that this would be fine for the main site. It could even undergo a slight tweak to open the door to other suggestions on solutions. You've put an admirable and impressive amount of work both into the test setup and your question! If you'd like the question moved here, please *flag* it on the main math.SE site, choose &quot;other&quot;, and ask them to migrate it to stats.SE. Cheers." CreationDate="2013-10-31T14:01:32.567" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="5018" PostId="1845" Score="0" Text="@cardinal thank you (and Andy) for the suggestion; I'll do that. Also please explain more on how to &quot;open the door&quot;. Thanks!" CreationDate="2013-10-31T19:41:12.450" UserId="32124" />
  <row Id="5022" PostId="1845" Score="0" Text="@ChrisK: I've migrated your question to Cross Validated. please go ahead and edit it w.r.t. the above suggestions! http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/74306/is-there-a-better-name-than-average-of-the-integral" CreationDate="2013-11-01T11:33:45.910" UserId="6226" />
  <row Id="5023" PostId="1846" Score="0" Text="Sounds reasonable to me." CreationDate="2013-11-01T15:03:52.007" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="5024" PostId="1846" Score="2" Text="It wasn't *only* for references, but for any list of stuff (e.g., jokes, quotations, paradoxes, etc) where this isn't really a single right answer. Such questions have always been frowned upon in the SE system, but then there have been exceptions..." CreationDate="2013-11-01T15:18:30.513" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5026" PostId="1846" Score="0" Text="(There is the perennial question of whether we should have the tag in the first place &amp; whether those 6 questions should be closed &amp;/or deleted but...) My hunch is that rather than make `[big-list]` a synonym for `[references]`, we should retag all the threads *other than* those 6, &amp; possibly tag a few others as `[big-list]`. Of course, this needs to be done a little at a time during slow periods, but I think having threads tagged appropriately is a big part of the proper organization of the site &amp; contributes greatly to its usability." CreationDate="2013-11-01T16:16:54.583" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5031" PostId="1846" Score="4" Text="Nice job, this must have been a lot of work. You make a good point about the meta-tags; `[big-list]` is a meta-tag--it describes something of the *character* of the question &amp; the nature of the set of answers that is expected &amp;/or desired. In light of that fact (unless people disagree), it should probably end up being eliminated." CreationDate="2013-11-03T22:54:40.813" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5029" PostId="1847" Score="3" Text="Did you try posting without using the discussion tag?" CreationDate="2013-11-01T23:54:17.770" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5046" PostId="1848" Score="0" Text="Indeed, one could argue that at some distant point in time, with a full, documented and bug-less feature set, all meta-questions *should* be tagged discussion." CreationDate="2013-11-11T18:56:36.937" UserId="5836" />
  <row Id="5030" PostId="1849" Score="2" Text="It seems to have been created by @Quartz for that [question](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/72937/what-is-the-statistical-efficiency-of-l-moments). Perhaps we should ask him (?) what the tag stands for, &amp; to edit the wiki &amp; excerpt. Note also that the tag will disappear if it isn't used on another question w/i 6 months." CreationDate="2013-11-03T02:01:29.557" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5044" PostId="1849" Score="1" Text="A third well defined &quot;dispersion&quot; is the unconstrained proportionality constant that's estimated in quasilikelihood." CreationDate="2013-11-09T16:16:10.207" UserId="8013" />
  <row Id="5039" PostId="1850" Score="2" Text="I have made such mistakes.  Most of the time I can rescue them by backtracking through the Web browser, recovering (hopefully) the original suggestion and implementing it." CreationDate="2013-11-05T18:32:43.027" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5037" PostId="1851" Score="1" Text="Thanks Andre ... my question looks like a duplicate of that. I tried a search, it looks like you did better with searching than I did." CreationDate="2013-11-05T14:35:11.513" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5040" PostId="1853" Score="2" Text="There are examples of the 2nd bullet that I don't think are covered by epidemiology. E.g. diffusion of innovation. This has quite an extensive literature, partly overlapping with network analysis." CreationDate="2013-11-07T20:04:01.810" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="5041" PostId="1853" Score="1" Text="@Peter, ok (got it). The proposal last paragraph tried to address this extra examples. Do we have question on CV under diffusion of innovation content? If yes, is there any other tag worthy to be used (like epidemiology for dispersion of diseases)? If no, do you think there is a better tag for diffusion of innovation than `dispersion`?" CreationDate="2013-11-08T12:31:37.527" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="5042" PostId="1853" Score="0" Text="Added another excerpt suggestion considering your comments. Most important I think is to eliminate the tag subjectivity (i.e. let it be used for just one meaning)." CreationDate="2013-11-08T12:40:16.703" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="5043" PostId="1853" Score="1" Text="How about &quot;Diffusion&quot;?" CreationDate="2013-11-08T12:53:22.303" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="5056" PostId="1853" Score="0" Text="@Peter, do you think we could proceed with the changing  of current `dispersion` tag excerpt? Or should we wait for other answers/suggestions or more votes on this thread? Tks" CreationDate="2013-11-13T12:25:38.150" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="5057" PostId="1853" Score="1" Text="It's been a month, I say go ahead." CreationDate="2013-11-13T12:31:46.133" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="13663" PostId="1853" Score="0" Text="IMHO the current situation with the [dispersion] tag is pretty awful, see the new answer and the comments underneath." CreationDate="2017-05-27T11:25:33.990" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13664" PostId="1853" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, why is it awful? Misuse?" CreationDate="2017-05-27T12:55:23.107" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="13665" PostId="1853" Score="0" Text="The tag whose excerpt begins with &quot;This tag is very ambiguous&quot; is a bad tag and should not exist." CreationDate="2017-05-27T13:34:02.303" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13668" PostId="1853" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, I don't see it as an awful tag (to me 'awful' is when it leads users to tag/group questions incorrectly), but perhaps it is near useless, which means it does not help grouping questions better than other already existing tags do. I suggest you posting an answer pro burnination, and explaining reasons. I will support it, after all, only 47 Qs in almost 4 years is not very encouraging." CreationDate="2017-05-27T14:54:56.747" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="13669" PostId="1853" Score="0" Text="But this tag does lead users to group questions incorrectly! This is precisely what happens. [Dispersion] tag is used to refer to &quot;spread&quot; and also to refer to the &quot;dispersion parameter in quasilikelihood&quot;. And maybe also to refer to epidemiology (not sure). I am not ready to post an answer because I did not look at the existing 47 Qs to figure out what are the most common uses of this tag, and do not have a good suggestion of how to disambiguate this tag for the future." CreationDate="2017-05-27T15:50:28.703" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13670" PostId="1853" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, a [quick search](https://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bdispersion%5D+quasi) did not yield any result in the second usage. Anyway, I have no objections eliminating [tag:dispersion]." CreationDate="2017-05-27T16:03:25.760" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="13671" PostId="1853" Score="1" Text="See https://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bdispersion%5D+glm and there's probably more." CreationDate="2017-05-27T16:37:22.890" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="5047" PostId="1854" Score="6" Text="I beg to differ with some of your assumptions, at least in the cases of the tags you point out, because they are distinct. They are in a hierarchy, with SVD being a form of matrix factorization, which is part of linear algebra. In this case there does not appear to be any problem: [tag:svd] will work fine. Similarly, eigenvalues are a linear algebra concept but only peripherally related to SVD or matrix factorization.  Consolidation would remove those distinctions, reducing the information provided by existing tags. This looks like a good reason to disfavor consolidation." CreationDate="2013-11-12T13:26:02.507" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5048" PostId="1854" Score="6" Text="I've seen no evidence that a limit of 5 bites many users hard. It obliges the poster (and just as important anybody else adding or subtracting tags) to identify which tags are most appropriate. Adding more tags would just be likely to increase false positive or marginal hits in searches." CreationDate="2013-11-12T13:41:35.253" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5049" PostId="1854" Score="1" Text="Please, consider: i) removing the word &quot;suggestion&quot; from title (add it to the question body) and; ii) add the tag &quot;discussion&quot; (just suggestions). I am upvoting your question because you raised an important point which is to keep the tags organized in the site (for example, by using proper synonyms). However, I think you did not provide good examples of synonyms, as pointed by whuber. I also agree with Nick that if there was not a tag limit, searching questions by label would be less effective. Welcome to CV Meta!!!" CreationDate="2013-11-12T18:44:29.913" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="5050" PostId="1855" Score="3" Text="In a situation like the one you describe, I think the best strategy is to leave a comment explaining that you think the Q is on-topic &amp; why. An example of where I have done this can be seen here: [generate data from a t-distribution with specified mean and standard deviation](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/73513/)." CreationDate="2013-11-13T02:40:49.530" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5051" PostId="1855" Score="2" Text="The mods are looking into this. Thanks for bringing it to our attention. :-)" CreationDate="2013-11-13T02:55:52.633" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="5052" PostId="1855" Score="1" Text="@gung As I explained, I was actually trying to do exactly that (as I said &quot;*it disappeared while I was trying to formulate - off line - an explanation of the relevance of the issue that was raised*&quot;) i.e. constructing a comment that I thought it was on topic and why (my fear was that it might end up on SO because it mentioned code), but it was gone between when I saw that post and finished typing my comment. (If at least there had been a close vote I'd have known to hurry it along.)" CreationDate="2013-11-13T03:37:45.930" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5053" PostId="1855" Score="1" Text="@cardinal Thanks. I'd rather not make more of this than it is." CreationDate="2013-11-13T04:00:44.260" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5055" PostId="1855" Score="5" Text="@Glen: It's ok. There are many questions that fall in grey areas and it's good to raise the question if you have doubts about any action the mods might have taken. Ultimately we want to find the best possible site for each question so that it gets a great answer." CreationDate="2013-11-13T11:21:52.980" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="5054" PostId="1856" Score="3" Text="Yes, thanks cardinal. I saw it and just came here to make sure it was made clear it was resolved ... but you've done that already. Fast work." CreationDate="2013-11-13T11:19:58.153" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5058" PostId="1856" Score="1" Text="I should be clear -- the 'fast work' there is a collective note of approval to all the moderators that were involved. I must applaud the speed and dedication with which you all seem to work and the way things operate. I agree with cardinal on the fact that there are grey areas - if the site operates as it should, these things will happen now and then." CreationDate="2013-11-13T22:39:55.630" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5059" PostId="1857" Score="3" Text="It's interesting. But I beg to differ with your characterization: most of those questions are not stupid. Apart from two notable exceptions, the questions that turn up in your query--where they have low votes, which not all do--tend not to be well *asked*: but there is thought behind them." CreationDate="2013-11-15T20:57:04.443" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5060" PostId="1857" Score="0" Text="I was being a bit tongue in cheek, maybe my word choice wasn't entirely fair. For &quot;stupider&quot; questions, change the maximumScore parameter from 5 to -1 or lower." CreationDate="2013-11-15T21:05:00.317" UserId="8451" />
  <row Id="5064" PostId="1857" Score="2" Text="Aren't the badge thresholds SE-wide?" CreationDate="2013-11-21T01:13:16.300" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5086" PostId="1857" Score="0" Text="How about a query for the most contentious questions/answers? Say min(upvotes,downvotes)." CreationDate="2013-11-25T11:38:24.907" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="5087" PostId="1857" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi how's this? http://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/150175/contentious-cv-questions?minUpVotes=3&amp;minDownVotes=3" CreationDate="2013-11-25T18:08:04.880" UserId="8451" />
  <row Id="5088" PostId="1857" Score="0" Text="Fixed a bug in the sorting: http://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/150179/contentious-cv-questions?minUpVotes=3&amp;minDownVotes=3" CreationDate="2013-11-25T18:39:44.430" UserId="8451" />
  <row Id="5089" PostId="1857" Score="0" Text="Cool! Thanks a lot." CreationDate="2013-11-25T19:28:22.053" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="5061" PostId="1859" Score="0" Text="Thanks for your help." CreationDate="2013-11-18T00:54:27.473" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5068" PostId="1861" Score="2" Text="(Thank you for the nice sentiments.)  No time for a good reply now--maybe in a few days--but have you noticed [this reply by @gung](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/20523/difference-between-logit-and-probit-models/30909#30909) and how rapidly it got to that point? Also noteworthy for its potential (for more upvotes and as a good answer to a FAQ) and its rapid rise in the voting is http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/51718 :-)." CreationDate="2013-11-21T08:09:01.253" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5069" PostId="1861" Score="0" Text="The edit to &quot;Great&quot; didn't take for some reason. Now done." CreationDate="2013-11-21T10:00:27.390" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5070" PostId="1861" Score="0" Text="Thanks @Nick. I fixed it in the body, completely missing it was also in my own title." CreationDate="2013-11-21T11:49:37.980" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5071" PostId="1861" Score="0" Text="@whuber Thanks - I hadn't noticed that answer of gung's in in a while; it's very close now." CreationDate="2013-11-21T11:52:12.553" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5085" PostId="1861" Score="0" Text="Who gives the badges ? I was under the impression these are the moderators. Ok blame me, I confess I have never read the FAQ." CreationDate="2013-11-25T08:45:14.390" UserId="8402" />
  <row Id="5090" PostId="1861" Score="1" Text="@StéphaneLaurent badges are automatically awarded by software after\* you fulfill the logical conditions for the badges. These conditions are (mostly) fairly clearly laid out on the [badges page](http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/badges). \*(usually they're awarded overnight for people in timezones like the US and Western Europe)" CreationDate="2013-11-25T21:15:30.590" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5091" PostId="1861" Score="0" Text="@StéphaneLaurent As you suggest, the [help](http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/what-are-badges) explains the situation: &quot;*Badges are always earned by achieving a measurable numeric goal queried out of the site database. They are based on data, rather than being arbitrarily awarded by a human.*&quot;; the criteria are the same on each site, so a badge that is fairly easily achieved on Stackoverflow may be extremely difficult to achieve on a smaller site like CV." CreationDate="2013-11-25T21:35:56.447" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5092" PostId="1861" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b Sounds like we are controlled by machines as in a science-fiction story." CreationDate="2013-11-25T22:56:07.973" UserId="8402" />
  <row Id="5094" PostId="1861" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b I was just joking :D" CreationDate="2013-11-26T07:11:39.733" UserId="8402" />
  <row Id="5095" PostId="1861" Score="0" Text="Sorry, it's a bit hard to convey such things sometimes." CreationDate="2013-11-26T07:30:24.387" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5110" PostId="1861" Score="0" Text="@whuber well it didn't take long; gung has achieved the gold badge on the answer you pointed to as of about 16 hours ago." CreationDate="2013-12-13T05:16:07.670" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5122" PostId="1861" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b, thanks. I hope it's a sign of things to come--there are a number of answers that I think are deserving." CreationDate="2013-12-19T22:35:11.967" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5260" PostId="1861" Score="0" Text="And [congratulations](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2691/making-sense-of-principal-component-analysis-eigenvectors-eigenvalues/2700#2700) to @JD Long." CreationDate="2014-01-24T01:32:25.713" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5291" PostId="1861" Score="0" Text="And [congratulations](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/83136/is-facebook-coming-to-an-end/83262#83262) to EpiGrad, er, @Fomite, that was fast!" CreationDate="2014-01-28T15:21:52.880" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5072" PostId="1862" Score="1" Text="+1, we could go higher than that &amp; talk about the number of *active* users w/ &gt;20k rep (ie, have full privileges &amp; use them to assist the moderators)." CreationDate="2013-11-21T17:40:36.920" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5075" PostId="1862" Score="8" Text="There is a little whiff of elitism here. I would like to think that everyone who asks or answers a good question is appreciated, including most people with reputation $&lt;&lt;$ 10k. Not everyone has the time or inclination to work at reputation; that's only a game...." CreationDate="2013-11-22T14:57:13.537" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5077" PostId="1862" Score="1" Text="I was commenting broadly, not at any one individual, but glad we agree." CreationDate="2013-11-22T15:51:43.903" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5078" PostId="1862" Score="1" Text="@NickCox, I want to second Andre's point. I very much *do not* think higher rep (&gt;10k or &gt;20k) users are better, more elite, more valuable, etc, than lower rep users. I was agreeing w/ Andre's post that it was a milestone because such users have privileges that allow them to help maintain the site. This only helps, of course, if those users are active &amp; take on that role." CreationDate="2013-11-22T16:36:14.467" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5079" PostId="1862" Score="0" Text="There very much are lower rep users who do a lot to help maintain the site, even though they don't yet have those privileges; Andre, eg, does a lot of editing, despite being &lt;2k, &amp; I have approved many of those edits. That helps keep the site in good order, even though an extra step is involved. I certainly appreciate his efforts &amp; think the site is better off for them. I think many (currently) lower rep users will eventually reach 10k or 20k. I recognize that it will take a lot of time. I don't think that reflects in any way poorly on those users." CreationDate="2013-11-22T16:38:13.897" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5080" PostId="1862" Score="2" Text="Good; but please note my words, which were chosen carefully: &quot;a little whiff of elitism&quot;. At most I suggest a second-order correction to the direction of discussion." CreationDate="2013-11-22T17:12:21.083" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5081" PostId="1863" Score="2" Text="Good question. One possibility for the thread at issue is to close it; it has no context, the OP hasn't said anything about what they understand / have tried etc, &amp; hasn't been back since asking." CreationDate="2013-11-23T23:13:19.657" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5082" PostId="1863" Score="0" Text="@gung thanks. I would be more ready to close it if I thought the question itself was without merit. But I think it illustrates a sort of silliness in question asking. And my answer, showing that it is really e) would point out something about how distributions work. I am also inclined to answer since it's pretty clear that a) the question was multiple choice and b) The answer was given." CreationDate="2013-11-23T23:16:00.530" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="5083" PostId="1864" Score="4" Text="(+1) Without being too flippant, my general philosophy regarding any particular rule for this site is that [it's more of a guideline than a rule](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087332/quotes?item=qt0475956). In other words, while it is good (and necessary) to have some community norms, we shouldn't allow ourselves to be completely straightjacketed by them either. If it makes good sense in the context of a particular question to deviate from the &quot;rules&quot; for the long-term betterment of the site, we should do so." CreationDate="2013-11-25T03:42:35.003" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="5084" PostId="1864" Score="0" Text="(+1) I think this is definitely a case where judgement suggests everybody's needs are best served by pointing out the flaws in the question and providing counterexamples to the 'official' answer. The thing about not just answering homework is in order that the student derive the benefit from thinking out answers for themselves, with some guidance if they show some level of engagement. The issue here is that it's something they already have an answer for, it just happens to be wrong. I think nothing is served here by holding back from addressing the question as completely as possible." CreationDate="2013-11-25T07:09:12.080" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5096" PostId="1866" Score="0" Text="This is a demonstration post to indicate how this should look when an ad is posted. It also doubles as your twitter ad, but it's up to you if you wish to promote it by voting" CreationDate="2013-12-06T11:25:20.130" UserId="5645" />
  <row Id="5097" PostId="1867" Score="0" Text="It is interesting that both meta.SO discussions seem to be OK w/ this. To show my hand a bit, I have several concerns: **1** there is an issue about how the duplicate should be treated vote-wise; **2** I think this will clutter up the site; **3** I think it will slow or prevent the positive knock-on effects I allude to (eg, many pages w/ the same answer doesn't attract the attention, Google or otherwise, of a single page w/ many links pointing to it &amp; many votes, etc)." CreationDate="2013-12-09T19:21:06.823" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5098" PostId="1867" Score="0" Text="In principle this worries me a bit; in practice hardly at all. It is not as if we are short of space. Some of the issues here seem to be about whether someone might get a bit too much reputation undeservedly; sorry, but I think that is taking the whole business too seriously. We should think statistically; all reputations are measured with error." CreationDate="2013-12-09T22:33:17.773" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5099" PostId="1867" Score="2" Text="For the record, I would much rather posting a link as a comment if SO respected user-content, e.g. did not delete questions, answers and comments without notice (+ without even given a possibility to retrieve the deleted content): I am totally against this SO destruction spirit but I can't do anything except complaining on meta, which I have already done ([1](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/209694/178179), [2](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/209040/178179) and [3](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/209317/178179)) to no avail. In the end, I find ctrl+c faster than dealing with all of that." CreationDate="2013-12-10T00:24:47.530" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="5100" PostId="1867" Score="2" Text="@FranckDernoncourt, I understand your frustration &amp; I agree. I think people should be notified, &amp; I think there should be a way to recover your content. I think this is much less likely to be a problem on CV, however. Unless an OP deletes their own question, I think we hardly ever delete anything here." CreationDate="2013-12-10T01:35:44.437" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5101" PostId="1867" Score="2" Text="Most material on CV (with the exception of certain less-frequented corners of the site like tag wikis) never entirely disappears: even deleted comments are retrievable by moderators. High-rep users can see deleted Q's and A's and (I believe) vote to undelete them.  Thus, I have little hesitation to delete or move material that clearly does not belong.  Most of this is moving posts from answers into comments." CreationDate="2013-12-10T02:31:19.100" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5102" PostId="1867" Score="0" Text="You can see previous versions of tag wikis by clicking history. I'm not sure if that's what you are referring to. Even if you are not a moderator, once you reach 10k rep, you can see deleted answers, &amp; edit them, or vote to undelete. You can see questions as well, but only if you can find them; the links to them tend to disappear. It may be possible to find them via the moderator tools page, but it isn't easy to do." CreationDate="2013-12-10T02:37:22.607" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5104" PostId="1867" Score="0" Text="Thanks for the clarifications, gung.  I was referring (albeit not very clearly!) to the frequent experience of losing *suggested* edits to wikis and of losing wikis altogether when tags are merged or made synonyms." CreationDate="2013-12-10T14:53:32.353" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5107" PostId="1867" Score="3" Text="@Franck: I've made a mild edit to your first comment with the intent of preserving the message while removing the overly inflammatory language. Apologies for the irony associated with this. Cheers. :-)" CreationDate="2013-12-10T17:25:28.483" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="19080" PostId="1867" Score="0" Text="For future readers: I believe present policy is to close the thread as a duplicate of the original question. Even if the questions are not identical, threads can be duplicates if the same *answer* addresses both questions." CreationDate="2019-09-18T09:58:28.270" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="5103" PostId="1868" Score="2" Text="+1 I agree completely that duplicate answers should be removed. Where - as a small part of a more extensive answer - a section of another answer is quoted, I think that's fine as long as proper attribution and a link is given. Where it's the same user saying the same thing, they may say nearly the same thing as part of another answer more than once without consciously copying. I have sympathy with that, but if its more than a few lines in common with another answer, it should probably be limited to a brief, explicitly-quoted, extract and a link to the original; an edit may be sufficient then" CreationDate="2013-12-10T02:57:03.273" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5108" PostId="1868" Score="2" Text="This is a very grey area. For example, one active and one less active user contribute the same style of answer to many time series questions, namely that you should think of doing this instead and using our software instead. My view is that their posts are interesting and well-informed, if not always helpful in the way OPs asked, but some answers are close to the same stuff repeated. (I am not veiling this darkly; naturally the people concerned have every right to comment if they wish.)" CreationDate="2013-12-11T15:35:44.933" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5105" PostId="1869" Score="0" Text="Image Credit: [@TildalWave](http://meta.astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/177/6)" CreationDate="2013-12-10T15:47:39.250" UserId="35976" />
  <row Id="5106" PostId="1870" Score="1" Text="Done--thanks.  I am closing this in light of a common meta thread we use to suggest tag synonyms; it helps keep such suggestions together." CreationDate="2013-12-10T16:34:55.223" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20544" PostId="1870" Score="0" Text="@whuber Surely this should have been &quot;general**ized**-additive-model&quot;! How do we edit tags to correct them?" CreationDate="2021-02-06T18:56:15.017" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="20545" PostId="1870" Score="1" Text="Gavin You're right: the &quot;ized&quot; version is used about ten times as often as the un-&quot;ized&quot; version on the Web.  Mods can edit tags at your suggestion.  This suggestion seems sufficiently well supported as to require no Meta discussion, so I have made the change." CreationDate="2021-02-06T19:57:18.757" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5109" PostId="1871" Score="2" Text="i just pushed a color change for the topbar on the main CV site. it has a hint of dark gray green to match the rest of the site design." CreationDate="2013-12-11T21:45:07.023" UserId="12" />
  <row Id="5111" PostId="1872" Score="1" Text="Which tag is it?" CreationDate="2013-12-13T15:54:02.303" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="5112" PostId="1872" Score="2" Text="It was the effect-size tag. But thanks to whuber's answer I know now what went wrong. Thanks!" CreationDate="2013-12-13T16:11:04.183" UserId="26338" />
  <row Id="5114" PostId="1873" Score="4" Text="I edited several of Andy's tag efforts myself, in an effort to make them a bit closer to typical tag wiki entries. Andy; if you look around it's generally not hard to find exactly who did what when. If you think someone has acted wrongly you can always raise it here. However, if anything people are very reluctant to reject well intentioned efforts, so it's usually for very good reason. (Tag wikis don't offer a chance for more than a few words of comment when editing or rejecting; reasoning and disagreements can be more easily clarified in comments on posts)" CreationDate="2013-12-14T07:10:29.840" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5115" PostId="1873" Score="3" Text="No you're right, I didn't think that whuber or someone else did something wrong - in fact the mods are doing a really good job here. I was just not aware of where to find the response given that the system doesn't notify users of these kinds of decisions. Now I know where to find them." CreationDate="2013-12-14T09:46:57.587" UserId="26338" />
  <row Id="5116" PostId="1877" Score="2" Text="Interestingly, in my browser, this occurs only for questions, not answers. But, it also happens for the bottom couple of entries in the reputation summary at right (but not the top two or three)." CreationDate="2013-12-16T12:57:47.830" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="5121" PostId="1877" Score="0" Text="This is happening on Opera 12, Windows 7 as well" CreationDate="2013-12-19T14:51:20.940" UserId="527" />
  <row Id="14951" PostId="1877" Score="0" Text="Hi EnergyNumbers! Are you still having this issue? If not (e.g. because this was some bug that was fixed since 2013) then maybe this Q can be deleted? I was about to get rid of the [style] tag on Meta but if this Q were to be deleted then there is no need to edit it :-)" CreationDate="2017-12-04T09:00:07.627" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="5117" PostId="1879" Score="0" Text="An alternative ad, if you prefer this design. Image Credit: [@MBR](http://meta.astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/183/6)" CreationDate="2013-12-16T16:23:37.290" UserId="35976" />
  <row Id="14076" PostId="1880" Score="0" Text="Would it perhaps be helpful for future visitors/searches to change the title here into something more informative, e.g. &quot;Is cross-posting allowed on StackExchange?&quot; or some such?" CreationDate="2017-08-18T15:14:23.367" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14084" PostId="1880" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Ordinarily the help would be pretty much the last word on such a question (if you ask the plain question, whatever the help said would normally be the *entire answer*). This question is explicitly intended as a question about whether the text of the help is actually wrong --- as had been claimed by Michael Hardy, because if it's wrong it would have to change! I'd say that the conclusion is that it's not so much wrong as it has some potential exceptions. I might consider a modification that didn't lose that central &quot;is the help actually wrong?&quot; aspect" CreationDate="2017-08-18T21:46:24.427" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14085" PostId="1880" Score="1" Text="Maybe something like &quot;Is the help wrong when saying that cross-posting is not allowed?&quot;. This would be more explicit about what the issue is actually about." CreationDate="2017-08-18T22:00:29.367" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14086" PostId="1880" Score="0" Text="Thanks, that's a clear improvement... edited" CreationDate="2017-08-18T22:03:27.950" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5118" PostId="1881" Score="10" Text="(+1) Regarding migration, etc.: MathOverflow 2.0 *is* a StackExchange maintained site, with some mild caveats that they [operate under a different ownership structure](http://meta.mathoverflow.net/a/970/17114) and have their own ToS and rules." CreationDate="2013-12-17T19:13:43.300" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="5119" PostId="1882" Score="3" Text="Thanks for coming in on this. I appreciate it." CreationDate="2013-12-18T22:57:38.700" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5120" PostId="1882" Score="6" Text="This is an interesting point. It may well be the case that &quot;it is incorrect to say that **all** stackexchange forums consider it **always** wrong to cross-post&quot;. However, it seems clear to me that there is a general consensus that cross-posting is typically inappropriate. It is better, if you aren't getting any answers on one site &amp; there is another site that might serve, to try to get your question *migrated* or to delete your Q on the old site &amp; then *repost* on the new site." CreationDate="2013-12-19T04:20:34.233" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5124" PostId="1884" Score="8" Text="Room unfrozen :) (15 days of inactivity is enough to close any chat room on the SE network) I agree with you that the new UI renders our chat rooms less visible. PS Sorry to post only a short comment, I only have an iPhone with me, not very handy for long reply." CreationDate="2013-12-24T18:32:59.883" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="5125" PostId="1884" Score="2" Text="I agree. The changes are terrible. They make it considerably harder to figure out what is going on and harder to navigate. Also, the diamond being lit up is not very obvious.  Should we raise the in the general site meta?" CreationDate="2013-12-24T18:49:31.450" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="5126" PostId="1884" Score="1" Text="@chl Thanks for that." CreationDate="2013-12-24T18:59:28.287" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5136" PostId="1884" Score="2" Text="I'd like to see usage stats (or just site views) for meta as well (I think the same for making meta more hidden in the recent UI change). It is difficult to evaluate though in the context that the winter holidays bring less activity in general." CreationDate="2013-12-30T12:58:40.020" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="5127" PostId="1885" Score="1" Text="Well, that was quick. From the reversal, it appears the answer is 'it was not legitimate'." CreationDate="2013-12-25T03:41:51.050" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5128" PostId="1885" Score="2" Text="You have a secret admirer ;-)." CreationDate="2013-12-25T18:08:30.647" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5156" PostId="1885" Score="0" Text="Possibly he saw one good answer of yours, looked at other answers from interest (perhaps sorted by vote total), &amp; voted them up as he read (&amp; liked) them. I did a similar thing once - not realizing it was 'bad' &amp; would get reverted." CreationDate="2014-01-07T20:37:38.700" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="5157" PostId="1885" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi Yes, I did the same thing myself before I found out (though I didn't think mine got reversed, so perhaps I didn't do it quite enough to trigger any response); it's likely to have been something relatively innocent like that, but I didn't want to leave it. It turns out I didn't need to worry - or to do anything - since it gets reversed automatically, presumably by a script that runs once a day." CreationDate="2014-01-07T22:33:43.610" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5158" PostId="1885" Score="0" Text="@Glen: I find it a little annoying actually, as I think I've learnt more from CV by following people than by following tags; but I don't know what a better way to automatically look for &amp; correct abuses would be." CreationDate="2014-01-07T22:40:21.237" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="5159" PostId="1885" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi I think I am in the same boat. There are particular users whose answers I especially seek out because of the insights offered by many of their answers. (I will use the tags when I am trying to find an answer a very specific question, but that's rare because usually it's either an issue I can research myself or it's a fairly hard question that I am not likely to find a good answer to.)" CreationDate="2014-01-07T23:02:53.477" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14737" PostId="1885" Score="0" Text="Something similar seems to be happening to me too, I'm getting 3-4 upvotes every morning. No reputation has been deduced, is this legitimate? Perhaps someone is hunting for voting badges..." CreationDate="2017-11-14T17:53:32.887" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="5129" PostId="1886" Score="0" Text="+1 You are right: Firefox (mis-)renders the page in the same way.  Thanks for bringing this to our attention." CreationDate="2013-12-26T14:15:56.197" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5131" PostId="1886" Score="0" Text="The appearance appears to be because of Kastellec &amp; Leoni image in the latter half of the article. In the normal view it is shrunk, but in the monthly view for some reason it is larger than the allotted width so it brings everything with it. I wonder why that is." CreationDate="2013-12-26T15:28:19.693" UserId="5645" />
  <row Id="5132" PostId="1886" Score="1" Text="Good news is we've found an explanation for it. I don't know how much the holidays are going to interfere with getting it fixed but I'll keep you guys posted for when it's ready to fix." CreationDate="2013-12-26T16:54:21.397" UserId="5645" />
  <row Id="5133" PostId="1886" Score="0" Text="@GraceNote Cool! No rush, I think this is one of the *really* minor issues." CreationDate="2013-12-26T16:56:46.683" UserId="1205" />
  <row Id="5130" PostId="1887" Score="0" Text="Ah, thanks for the information." CreationDate="2013-12-26T15:13:44.593" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5137" PostId="1889" Score="0" Text="Thanks for bringing our attention to this duplicate." CreationDate="2014-01-04T09:28:44.680" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="5138" PostId="1890" Score="0" Text="Thanks for your help!" CreationDate="2014-01-04T14:15:22.167" UserId="21599" />
  <row Id="5139" PostId="1892" Score="0" Text="That is quite a typo. I remember [similar discussion coming up before](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/a/879/1036) and changing the FAQ to not seem so exclusive to experts." CreationDate="2014-01-05T04:32:53.427" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="5140" PostId="1892" Score="12" Text="I suggest a wording such as ... people interested in statistics, machine learning, data analysis, data mining and data visualization." CreationDate="2014-01-05T09:52:48.947" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5141" PostId="1892" Score="1" Text="I think @NickCox has come up with the right wording" CreationDate="2014-01-05T12:34:44.857" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="5143" PostId="1892" Score="2" Text="Because the &quot;machine teachers&quot; is such a glaring error and your point about experts seems incontrovertible, I have proceeded to make the edit suggested by @Nick Cox.  Please do not let that preclude further discussion or suggestions!" CreationDate="2014-01-05T15:47:13.373" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5144" PostId="1892" Score="0" Text="Thanks @whuber. There are at least two other occurrences of the tag line: in the Stack Exchange/all sites drop down in the upper left (if you are not logged in) and on the statsqa twitter profile.&#xA;&#xA;I do hope to see other discussion regarding pure data visualization questions fitting in to CV, and how to encourage the desired result." CreationDate="2014-01-05T15:55:19.830" UserId="1191" />
  <row Id="5145" PostId="1892" Score="0" Text="xan, if you (or anyone else) would provide links to any such occurrences I will endeavor to make the fixes. Moderators might or might not be able to do this but I'll try." CreationDate="2014-01-05T15:57:30.667" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5146" PostId="1892" Score="0" Text="The twitter profile is at https://twitter.com/statsqa.&#xA;The dropdown text may have the same source as going to http://stackexchange.com/sites# and clicking on the Cross Validated icon." CreationDate="2014-01-05T16:00:36.707" UserId="1191" />
  <row Id="5147" PostId="1892" Score="1" Text="@xan I'm afraid that CV moderators can't alter Twitter profile (it is not maintained nor curated by any of us), or SE main profile page." CreationDate="2014-01-05T20:38:11.750" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="5148" PostId="1892" Score="0" Text="That makes sense, @chl. Could you contact the SE devs? I assume they can do this. Or should the question be migrated to meta.SE?" CreationDate="2014-01-06T03:48:10.720" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5151" PostId="1892" Score="0" Text="I can get this to the right hands - would someone just give me an exact description of what needs to be changed on the Twitter profile?" CreationDate="2014-01-06T14:43:55.803" UserId="6123" />
  <row Id="5152" PostId="1892" Score="1" Text="+1 on the original issue. A great deal of data visualisation questions are pretty complex. Where would someone who tinkers around with d3.js and ggplot2 but does not necessarily come from the statistics community find a home? Dataviz has gotten a lot more accessible recently, this board hasn't always ;)" CreationDate="2014-01-07T09:47:32.187" UserId="36646" />
  <row Id="5153" PostId="1892" Score="0" Text="@AbbyT.Miller, the request is to change &quot;statisticians, data analysts, -miners and -visualization experts&quot; to &quot;people interested in statistics, machine learning, data analysis, data mining and data visualization&quot; in the statsqa twitter profile." CreationDate="2014-01-07T14:05:15.893" UserId="1191" />
  <row Id="5154" PostId="1892" Score="1" Text="@xan, statsqa is not an official Stack Exchange twitter account - that's stackstats. statsqa needs to be updated to reflect that it is **not** an official account (and whatever other updates you guys want made). We can change stackstats for you, though." CreationDate="2014-01-07T16:27:57.010" UserId="6123" />
  <row Id="5149" PostId="1893" Score="5" Text="One thing to note is that the tag wiki *excerpt* is intended to help guide individuals when to use a particular tag on this site. The intro. Wikipedia statements on more advanced topics are rarely up to this task IMO." CreationDate="2014-01-06T13:01:53.547" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="5150" PostId="1893" Score="2" Text="Agreed, but I still don't think the source is as relevant as other characteristics by which one should judge excerpt content. Sometimes (if rarely) Wikipedia gives quite succinct and clear introductions; suiting to this site's purposes certainly necessitates some additional thought and writing/editing, but that would be true of any source other than the writer/editor him/herself. Maybe the parts that *need* to be original writing could be more clearly demarcated?" CreationDate="2014-01-06T13:08:12.260" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5155" PostId="1899" Score="1" Text="This is Community Team approved and we'll update it in all the places." CreationDate="2014-01-07T18:36:12.030" UserId="6123" />
  <row Id="5160" PostId="1899" Score="1" Text="(+1) Thanks, Abby!" CreationDate="2014-01-08T13:38:10.967" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="5161" PostId="1900" Score="9" Text="I stumbled several times through the first paragraph because nothing in it is correct! There is *no* difference between how our site functions and other SE sites; beginners *can* comment in their own threads (provided they log on with the same user id); and it is *not* more difficult to get reputation here than on most of the other SE sites (you misinterpreted Katey's meta question about low-voted threads). There is additional misinformation in your third paragraph. These bad &quot;facts&quot; just detract from your message, which is spot-on: it would be nice to see more generous voting." CreationDate="2014-01-08T22:03:43.023" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5164" PostId="1900" Score="3" Text="I think you missed &quot;even though this is actually not the case&quot; during your first read and also my guess is that you misinterpreted &quot;more difficult to get reputation&quot; and &quot;less points are rewarded here for various actions&quot;. I added &quot;because people don't vote as much&quot; and also edited the parts about comments in one's own thread. Only 1/3 of the &quot;facts&quot; were actually incorrect, although I agree that my presentation should have been more clear. Thank you for the comments." CreationDate="2014-01-08T22:16:30.590" UserId="36444" />
  <row Id="5165" PostId="1900" Score="11" Text="Thank you.  Your best point is in the middle: &quot;We are all able to tell whether a question is well researched, a duplicate, or reasonably on topic.&quot;  Concerning the last paragraph, I suspect you (and other readers of this thread) might be interested in closely related meta threads including http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1819 and http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1599. Incidentally, any &quot;generally trusted stackexchange user&quot; automatically gets 101 rep when they link to their other accounts, which is enough to comment." CreationDate="2014-01-08T22:43:31.660" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5168" PostId="1900" Score="5" Text="I'd like to second @whuber's points here. I wish upvoting were more generous on CV, but my impression is SO (the only other site where I'm moderately active) is *less* generous than CV. Eg, on CV there are 6,210 answers under the `[r]` tag, w/ 344 nice answers (5.5%), whereas on SO there are 70,474 `[r]` answers, of which 3,051 are 10+ (4.3%); &amp; 19.1% &lt;=0 on SO, but only 13.8% on CV. The 50 reputation requirement is frustrating, I recognize, but it is set by the SE team &amp; is system-wide. W/ reasonable contributions, 50 is doable." CreationDate="2014-01-08T22:49:00.193" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5169" PostId="1900" Score="8" Text="@whuber I'll add that the comments are increasingly becoming a place where valid answers are being left to languish. Often, yourself included, a very concise answer is supplied in the comments where it should have been an answer. Meanwhile, subpar answers are selected as correct (mine included) even when the poster has not provided sufficient detail or explanation of the problem. I think we should strive to ensure that all SE posts are of high quality. Abstaining from upvotes (and answers) seems to be a consequence of that." CreationDate="2014-01-08T22:50:35.870" UserId="8013" />
  <row Id="5170" PostId="1900" Score="3" Text="@gung Thanks for the research. I have been active on several SE sites; we're in the middle in terms of voting generosity.  It's substantially harder to get rep on the GIS site (but I think that the kind of person that site attracts is a confounder, because the upvote:answer ratios for my posts on GIS and CV are identical) and much easier on the *Mathematica* site (my own upvote:answer ratio is 50% greater there).  I would hold out the *Mathematica* community's behavior as somewhat of an ideal to strive for." CreationDate="2014-01-08T22:51:12.770" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5171" PostId="1900" Score="8" Text="@AdamO Yes, I know I'm guilty of such things :-).  I try to avoid using comments to answer, but there's a conflict: if I'm leaving succinct answers in comments, it's because I haven't the time (or in some cases the interest) to fashion a high-quality answer but I don't want to leave the OP in the lurch.  In most cases my comments really are requests for clarification and (partial) answers just seem to emerge as part of the justification of those requests." CreationDate="2014-01-08T22:54:08.457" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5172" PostId="1900" Score="1" Text="@gung Hmmm, that is very interesting. In my experience on stack overflow it is rather easy to get up-votes. I think that due to stack overflow's popularity, there is a lot of junk that gets posted there from non registered users, but I could be wrong. Also, are you including &quot;questions&quot; in your term &quot;answers&quot;. It would be really interesting to statistically test if there is a difference between the rep/vote ratio for users of SO compared to CV. Maybe the voting problem is really just a traffic problem." CreationDate="2014-01-08T22:54:59.317" UserId="36444" />
  <row Id="5173" PostId="1900" Score="2" Text="This was a very simple data collection effort, @user1544793. I didn't use SE's SQL database, just some searches &amp; arithmetic. My searches were answer only. My impression of SO is that it's much less friendly than here; I see a lot of downvotes, eg. My vote/answer rate is much lower there (although, I'm a lousy programmer, so it's not a clean comparison)." CreationDate="2014-01-08T23:00:55.357" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5175" PostId="1900" Score="4" Text="I think it is easier to post a quality question on SO because if you reference old posts, quote some of the documentation, and include code that can reproduce your error, you usually have a cut and dry good question. In CV you actually have to understand stats to some degree, and many people use stats without understanding it. You could argue that people have to understand programming, but usually its much easier to get clear cut answers googling programing issues than stats issues. That's just my opinion as someone who is rather lousy at both." CreationDate="2014-01-08T23:05:56.877" UserId="36444" />
  <row Id="5181" PostId="1900" Score="2" Text="From your comment, @user1544793, I wonder if your primary concern is more upvoting for *questions* (whereas I tend to think primarily about *answers* by default). If so, you may be interested to read my thoughts on upvoting questions here: [if a question is good enough for you to answer should you up-vote it?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1426//1427#1427) You'll see that, in general, I think we should have more upvoting of questions, &amp; that I tend to think the # of upvotes on Q's should typically be &gt; the # on answers." CreationDate="2014-01-09T00:21:28.727" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5182" PostId="1900" Score="0" Text="Yes, we definitely agree on this, thats my last paragraph of my very long question. There may be a feedback problem here though. I tend to think that a major source of up-votes is random people googling their questions, and finding the answer here (probably more true of SO than CV). However, because of the lack of votes on questions, many people who would be up-voting are physically incapable of doing so." CreationDate="2014-01-09T00:36:50.393" UserId="36444" />
  <row Id="5193" PostId="1900" Score="3" Text="+1 This thread has an upvoting problem. It is one of the major demotivation issues for me to provide answers to reputation 1 members, because I know with high probabiliy I will not get the credits. More generally also experienced users seem to be slow to upvote in my subjective impression. This thread cannot be voted highly enough." CreationDate="2014-01-09T20:19:13.047" UserId="24515" />
  <row Id="5194" PostId="1900" Score="2" Text="thats a great point tomka. Perhaps we should up-vote questions for rep&lt;15 users as long as they are not &quot;offensively bad&quot; or &quot;editable to the point of being good&quot; so that these users can actually up-vote answers." CreationDate="2014-01-09T20:26:55.140" UserId="36444" />
  <row Id="5197" PostId="1900" Score="0" Text="I think the main reason for a threshold reputation is quite different; it's to inhibit nuisances who might visit a site and leave nasty or silly messages here, there and everywhere." CreationDate="2014-01-09T21:53:01.183" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5207" PostId="1900" Score="2" Text="MHH While I understand your question applies to the overall behavior at the site (and might be read more constructively as 'how do we encourage more voting?'), I do wonder why you have passed up the numerous opportunities you've had to vote yourself (40 allowed votes a day times the 5 or 6 days you've had the reputation to do so), of which so far you seem to have exercised only 4. Your own votes could have been encouraging the very people you seek to encourage." CreationDate="2014-01-14T02:07:36.400" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5208" PostId="1900" Score="2" Text="That rep was not gained on CV, it was gained while on another stackexchange site. Its very difficult to vote on CV posts while not physically being on CV :\. Every time I have visited CV, I have up-voted nearly every question I read. So yep in one visit I voted for 4 posts." CreationDate="2014-01-14T02:19:12.503" UserId="36444" />
  <row Id="5508" PostId="1900" Score="0" Text="@whuber re &quot;we're in the middle in terms of voting generosity.&quot; Looking at the [avg votes query](http://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/81058/average-score-for-questions-and-answers?opt.textResults=true) for the sites you're bang on. Nevertheless, personally I find it's easier to get rep on stackoverflow than here. Mostly because I'm a better programmer than a statistician, but also there are recurring trivial questions on SO which you can get rep for, for which there is no equivalent on CV. I _like_ this: if I look at the rep I have on CV, I'd say it's broadly higher quality than elsewhere" CreationDate="2014-03-18T12:57:45.793" UserId="25936" />
  <row Id="5174" PostId="1901" Score="3" Text="Re &quot;cluttered low quality posts&quot;: would you minding linking to a few examples so that we can better understand what you are referring to?  Re &quot;edit confidently and often&quot;: that seems counter to the SE system of using the comment system to request clarification. Edits, although reversible, tend to surprise and offend many people, especially when they induce even the slightest change in a post's meaning. Moreover, if between an (invalid) edit and its rollback somebody posts an answer, we get into big trouble, because now we have a confusing discrepancy in the thread." CreationDate="2014-01-08T23:03:10.523" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5176" PostId="1901" Score="2" Text="@whuber Very good points. It's seemingly rare to have an OP come back to edit their post. See [this](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/31703/how-do-you-know-which-predictor-value-to-use-linear-regression/31709#31709) post for a (somewhat weak) example of what I mean. Inconsistent jargon heavy question, no clear objective, and long meandering answers from myself and others with little feedback. This is clutter, to me, and a waste of everyone's time." CreationDate="2014-01-08T23:11:19.717" UserId="8013" />
  <row Id="5178" PostId="1901" Score="7" Text="That's a worthwhile example to consider, because it really is marginal and people could decide either way (to keep or to close). I personally would love to delete such questions, but I generally do not because I am deeply concerned about the effect that would have--if consistently done--on the accessibility of our site. We have a need to welcome people with questions, for otherwise we will stagnate, as well as to inspire people who are experts in statistics and statistical explanations to provide high-quality responses. But most people with stats questions will need help formulating them." CreationDate="2014-01-08T23:20:44.333" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5183" PostId="1901" Score="10" Text="While it's true that many people don't put in the time to ask good questions, I think it is easy for those of us who know a bit about the subject to forget how hard it may be for newcomers to ask good questions. Often, when I ask questions on StackOverflow or SAS-L, it turns out that I left out something critical." CreationDate="2014-01-09T11:32:00.160" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="5184" PostId="1903" Score="14" Text="I appreciate the thoughtful and cogent views expressed in the second paragraph. I would ask you to reconsider the fourth one, though. The reason is that although reputation for its own sake is worthless, reputation *as the granter of powers to improve the site* has great value. Even after more than three years we still need more people able to engage fully and actively in the curation of our content, and that means people with 10K or 20K+ reputations. I also believe there is positive feedback: people who receive many upvotes may be more inclined to stay active on a regular basis." CreationDate="2014-01-09T15:34:47.687" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5187" PostId="1903" Score="4" Text="But I agree completely. My point and yours is that reputation is just a means, not the end. Acquiring reputation isn't difficult if you put in a bit of spadework and, as you say, getting upvoted repeatedly is very encouraging. But we're looking at different ends of the spectrum: if the question is Why aren't there more upvotes?, then a partial answer is because many questions just don't deserve them." CreationDate="2014-01-09T18:00:36.807" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5195" PostId="1903" Score="1" Text="I agree that ultimately votes are in the hand of the voter. Wikipedia has a general policy of &quot;do not bite the newcomers&quot; and I think if newcomers after a few questions posts/answers aren't granted commenting power, they leave. We might be shoeing away amazing future editors, who just need to learn what makes a good question or answer. Just a thought. Of course individuals should be able to vote how they please, but they also can be recommended to vote a certain way. No one is holding a gun to the voters head." CreationDate="2014-01-09T20:35:54.753" UserId="36444" />
  <row Id="5196" PostId="1903" Score="5" Text="I am for respect so long as it is a universal right, for established users too. Newcomers who expect substantial reputation for almost nothing don't understand the SO model. Many would be well advised to look around and to read the help before posting. It's not clear that many occasional posters are discouraged, as is often alleged; often they just fade away, for example, not developing initial questions despite requests to clarify, so we rarely get explicit feedback on their experiences." CreationDate="2014-01-09T21:50:33.250" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9526" PostId="1903" Score="2" Text="@whuber, is it not that the thresholds such as 10K are inspired by the main site of the SE network, viz. SO, where I perceive to be agreement that gaining reputation is easier on that site? If that is the case, could one make a case that there should be site-specific thresholds for privileges? (Obviously, it is unlikely that such a proposal has any hope of being implemented.)" CreationDate="2016-03-15T16:01:31.717" UserId="67799" />
  <row Id="9527" PostId="1903" Score="3" Text="@Christoph I think there is a very strong case to be made for site-specific thresholds.  The powers-that-be implicitly recognize its merits by using lower thresholds for Beta sites.  I do not know why this argument hasn't resulted in individual site thresholds, especially in the less popular SE sites." CreationDate="2016-03-15T17:11:30.190" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5185" PostId="1904" Score="3" Text="possible duplicate of [Should we tag questions that smell like homework?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1172/should-we-tag-questions-that-smell-like-homework)" CreationDate="2014-01-09T16:03:00.913" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="5186" PostId="1904" Score="1" Text="I've voted to close as a duplicate of the prior question, but I see no harm in revisiting the issue (especially if behavior has drifted). Also FYI your distinction of how homework doesn't refer to the content of the question is sometimes referred to as a [meta tag](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/)." CreationDate="2014-01-09T16:04:39.500" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="5188" PostId="1904" Score="1" Text="my POV. whuber's argument 'pro labeling' threads when it is clear they are routine questions (he provides guidelines), it is the strongest one in that answer. The OP can roll the edit back if he does not agree with it (which is not so likely to happen). Now if the edit is just to add the tag, maybe it is better to ask through comments and avoid minor edits. Some problems I see within adopting the policy you suggest: a) the OP does not always reply b) asking all times to the OP (while one already was going to make some edits in the post) can become a time-consuming task." CreationDate="2014-01-09T18:06:52.623" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="5189" PostId="1904" Score="2" Text="@Andre Silva Thanks for the comment. The problem is that under &quot;self-study&quot; we place both &quot;routine&quot; questions (which one may ask for whatever reason, and for which a one-step search over the web would in most cases provide an answer), but also &quot;homework&quot; questions, where we are meant to at least initially kindly push the OP towards finding the answer on its own. As for a) in your comment, I just propose to &quot;always ask first&quot; -if the OP does not react, then the matter passes on to the community, in which case Whuber's guidelines most certainly apply. As for b), yes that's an issue." CreationDate="2014-01-09T18:17:32.543" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="5190" PostId="1904" Score="9" Text="I am one of the people who approved that edit. I don't have a problem w/ people editing questions to add the `[self-study]` tag, &amp; I do it myself. This is especially true when, as here, someone just copies &amp; pastes a question from their homework. I'm happy to help users w/ their stats questions, but I have no interest in doing students' HW for them. I also assign these problems &amp; have no interest in my students getting their answers from the internet. There are resources--me, TAs, etc--available when students have difficulty. I try to deal w/ such Qs on CV just as I do when students email me." CreationDate="2014-01-09T18:50:32.653" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5191" PostId="1904" Score="7" Text="Regarding the issue of politeness, you raise a good point. When I edit to add the tag, I always also leave a comment (which I just copy &amp; paste &amp; change the name). Here is my standard note: &quot;We welcome questions like this, @user____, but we treat them differently. Please tell us what you understand thus far, what you've tried &amp; where you are stuck, &amp; we'll try to provide hints to get you unstuck. To better understand the process, you should read the wiki for the `[self-study]` tag.&quot; The hope is that this comment preempts any sense of the OP being disparaged." CreationDate="2014-01-09T18:54:55.563" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5192" PostId="1904" Score="0" Text="@gung Well, that's a comprehensive policy (+1)!" CreationDate="2014-01-09T18:59:06.923" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="5198" PostId="1904" Score="0" Text="If that happened to be my edit, and I wrote that in the description of the edit, I think I happened to be right that particular time, and I think I added a comment too. Just sayin'. :) Could be misremembering! Great to see some meta-discussion on the topic; I'll revisit the previous question too, so even if a duplicate, it's served its purpose!" CreationDate="2014-01-10T15:11:35.227" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5201" PostId="1904" Score="1" Text="@NickStauner Indeed, it was one of your edits Nick -which proved quite helpful to me, since it made me think about the matter!" CreationDate="2014-01-10T15:29:57.850" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="5205" PostId="1904" Score="3" Text="Always asking first would be polite, but I don't think it is especially practical. Often these questions come from new or inexperienced users not familiar with tagging, or much else; indeed they often back off and disappear when people don't do as they ask. Removing a mistaken tag is easy and painless when needed." CreationDate="2014-01-13T18:10:58.440" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5206" PostId="1904" Score="1" Text="@Nick Cox Hmm, that's a reasonable approach too. I think the overall sentiment is &quot;let's continue doing this -but carefully&quot;." CreationDate="2014-01-13T18:36:06.267" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="5203" PostId="1905" Score="3" Text="Just voted to close my own question given that I recognize it to be a duplicate." CreationDate="2014-01-10T19:25:38.387" UserId="10416" />
  <row Id="5209" PostId="1908" Score="0" Text="I use Firefox (version 26.0 currently). I just tried the link under help from the CV main page &amp; I didn't get a warning message. (Of course, I don't know that that means there is necessarily a problem on your end.)" CreationDate="2014-01-14T03:56:18.203" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5210" PostId="1908" Score="1" Text="@gung thanks. It's most likely just a temporary thing with me. I held off posting for a while to see if someone else posted... but then thought 'hang on, if everyone waits for someone else, an actual problem might go unreported'. Incidentally, the link in the top menu I mentioned now seems to have changed again so it doesn't use &quot;https&quot;, so whatever the issue was, it's gone again." CreationDate="2014-01-14T04:05:05.673" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5211" PostId="1908" Score="0" Text="are you sure you're not using any 3rd party stuff like https everywhere? SSL is still not officially supported, and we aren't generating any HTTPS links in the header." CreationDate="2014-01-14T08:16:31.457" UserId="37296" />
  <row Id="5212" PostId="1908" Score="1" Text="@m0sa It was certainly not happening everywhere. It only happened for about half an hour or maybe an hour and only on that *one* link that I described. Other links to meta on the same page at the same time worked fine (and were http: every time). No other sites outside SE I checked did anything like it. You could also *see* it was https by hovering over the link. I checked a bunch of stuff carefully before posting." CreationDate="2014-01-14T09:16:17.607" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5216" PostId="1911" Score="1" Text="Thank you @cardinal!" CreationDate="2014-01-14T15:05:11.487" UserId="8402" />
  <row Id="5234" PostId="1911" Score="0" Text="I have noticed that I cannot delete my own question that has an answer unless I flag it. This must mean that the moderators took it down?" CreationDate="2014-01-19T22:35:59.020" UserId="36444" />
  <row Id="5235" PostId="1911" Score="0" Text="@MHH: You cannot delete your own question if it has *upvoted* answers. In the case at hand, the answer in question had no votes when the original OP decided to delete it." CreationDate="2014-01-19T22:51:44.577" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="5222" PostId="1915" Score="1" Text="+1, these are good suggestions. I might add that we could put something like &quot;this tag is now defunct; please do not use it&quot; at the end of your excerpt for `[essential-questions]`." CreationDate="2014-01-15T21:16:28.983" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5231" PostId="1915" Score="2" Text="Point 2 should be ok now." CreationDate="2014-01-19T20:14:01.533" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="5224" PostId="1918" Score="3" Text="See [StackApps](http://stackapps.com/search?q=iphone), [a question on apple.SE](http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/12417/what-different-stack-exchange-apps-exist-for-ios/) and [another](http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/46831/what-different-stack-exchange-apps-are-available-for-the-ipad)." CreationDate="2014-01-17T13:46:05.050" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="5229" PostId="1925" Score="5" Text="You could: It's a request within a democracy. In fact, I've seen similar comments. If you did it repeatedly and wherever people don't vote the way you suggest (which as was pointed out gently is not the way you vote either!) then it might be counter-productive. At least, if you did it repeatedly, some people would get irritated (&quot;offended&quot; too strong a word here?). (P.S. I don't know what you can infer about &quot;most people on the meta site&quot; from that thread. The answer most up-voted was mine, which isn't strongly supportive of your views, but in effect says it's fine to vote as you like.)" CreationDate="2014-01-19T19:20:26.097" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5230" PostId="1925" Score="1" Text="What was gently pointed out is that I don't up-vote on this site while I'm not physically on this site, if that is what you are referring to. I have up-voted every question I have answered (that's a fact), and up-voted almost every question I have read on CV (that wasn't offensively un researched or a duplicate), so I'm not sure what you are talking about by &quot;not the way you vote either&quot;- it's pretty clear that I vote the way I describe. But yes that is good advice, and changed most to multiple. Sorry to be defensive, but that user tried to infer something he couldn't given the data." CreationDate="2014-01-19T19:45:04.643" UserId="36444" />
  <row Id="5237" PostId="1925" Score="1" Text="Thanks; that's helpful explanation. Note either way that plenty of people around here tend to ask &quot;What are the data? What do they show?&quot; That's our foible and our forte." CreationDate="2014-01-20T01:04:30.357" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5243" PostId="1925" Score="0" Text="You have (both times you've posted on meta) gone to some pains to point out that you are rarely on CV. There's no doubt that it's reasonable to ask such questions - but perhaps if you could give some context that would explain the motivation for these questions (how they arise for you as matters of concern given your emphasis that you're rarely here), it might be easier to give responses that address those particular motivations, and so would hopefully be more satisfying." CreationDate="2014-01-22T03:05:25.690" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5244" PostId="1925" Score="0" Text="That is a good question. As the record shows, I discovered CV very recently (past few weeks or so). I think you may be misinterpreting my answers as saying &quot;rarely here&quot; when in fact I said I just wasn't here in the few days that user was taking my voting record over and that I got the rep to up vote on this site by going over 200 rep on another stack exchange and hence getting the +100 bonus here. Perhaps you interpret a weeklong hiatuses as not on here that often. I'd interpret 1 visit a week as pretty active use." CreationDate="2014-01-22T03:37:13.057" UserId="36444" />
  <row Id="5245" PostId="1925" Score="0" Text="I first discovered CV when I was trying to ask a question about statistics and was frustrated that I couldn't comment on some other people's recent related questions due to my lack of reputation. It's the first time I have felt that way on any SE site. It is my opinion that after a single &quot;not horrible&quot; question one should be able to comment, and thats why I really want people to vote up single digit rep users. I think it will help them avoid asking duplicates in the future. That's been my main motivation from the start." CreationDate="2014-01-22T03:38:29.530" UserId="36444" />
  <row Id="5246" PostId="1925" Score="0" Text="If it has seemed like me painfully explaining my situation, please note that that first user effectively called my a hypocrite. You must understand that no matter how politely one accuses someone of such things the response will be painfully defensive." CreationDate="2014-01-22T03:42:34.780" UserId="36444" />
  <row Id="5247" PostId="1925" Score="1" Text="The word &quot;hypocrite&quot; is much stronger than anyone used until now, even when used indirectly. It's best to assume goodwill on CV unless evidence to the contrary really is obvious (which is very, very rare). In this case, it is only natural that when someone says a site is out-of-line we look at the data on who they are and what they have done. None of that invalidates or validates what you suggest, naturally. &quot;Pretty active&quot; use for me would mean visiting the site daily, including weekends." CreationDate="2014-01-22T10:01:06.520" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5250" PostId="1925" Score="0" Text="You don't vote how you are asking others to vote is pretty much the exact definition. You must understand how frustrating it was to hear that user's post used against me when it was pretty clear you didn't verify any of its claims (which would have only taken a few seconds). It appeared you didn't read the comment below his on that page too. By the time you posted I had 40 or so up-votes for questions on this site compared to only 1 answer. Your statement based on the available data was wrong. I know you had good intentions, I'm talking about how it made me feel." CreationDate="2014-01-23T15:03:47.067" UserId="36444" />
  <row Id="5267" PostId="1925" Score="1" Text="I have to disagree politely, as I did read your profile and all the comments you refer to. @Glen_b's point that in your time on CV you _could_ have voted much more was entirely factual, as was your reply that you don't visit the site very often. No one is trying to hurt your feelings, I'm sure. As Glen_b's answer clearly indicates, we're just trying to get a picture of who you are and where you're coming from, given that you're making very strong assertions about the site being out of line." CreationDate="2014-01-25T10:07:10.133" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5233" PostId="1926" Score="0" Text="Yes this is what I thought, which is why I asked the question. Thanks." CreationDate="2014-01-19T22:27:43.600" UserId="36444" />
  <row Id="5248" PostId="1928" Score="3" Text="What anyone can spot if no-one is voting (much) for a question or answer is that people answering or commenting are not doing so either. I presume this is what was meant and that those are the people who might get these reminders." CreationDate="2014-01-22T13:20:12.340" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5249" PostId="1928" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Yes, thanks for that, I was trying to get at that in my answer." CreationDate="2014-01-22T21:52:32.683" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5258" PostId="1928" Score="1" Text="+1 When I run across a thread that has a decent question and an answer but the question has no upvotes I just shake my head ... ." CreationDate="2014-01-23T23:27:25.210" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5253" PostId="1929" Score="0" Text="What's an &quot;intrinsic tag&quot;?" CreationDate="2014-01-23T22:53:07.970" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="5254" PostId="1929" Score="3" Text="#2 is the natural solution, provided we don't have to (manually) create loads of synonyms.  If `st.statistics` is the key synonym to make, that can be done within a minute.  Are there other MO tags we should be looking at, too?" CreationDate="2014-01-23T23:04:19.333" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5255" PostId="1929" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi this is a &quot;tag&quot; not actually used as a real tag on the site (typically since it is too broad/unspecific for the given site) but that is accepted as a tag when a question is migrated to it (it is stripped and the question might get [tag:untagged]). Like, tex.SE has no tag 'tex' but a queestion being tagged 'tex' should still be migrateable there, so it is intrinsic there. For 'official' info see Shog9's answer on the linke meta.SO question." CreationDate="2014-01-23T23:06:21.810" UserId="37747" />
  <row Id="5256" PostId="1929" Score="2" Text="@whuber  In addition to the st.statistics the other big one could be that on MO it is pr.probability (instead of probability). If you could have these two as synonyms then I think this should suffice, and one could try to make it known on MO that people voting to migrate to here pay attention to this, and add one of the two if nothing matching is present. It seems unlikely to me we have question to migrate where neither st.statistics nor pr.probability would work. At the moment the problem really is that the most common tags do not work due to the unusual naming MO has." CreationDate="2014-01-23T23:20:58.087" UserId="37747" />
  <row Id="5257" PostId="1929" Score="4" Text="I have a problem: in response to trying to create the synonym, the system tells me &quot;The tag st.statistics is banned.&quot; We will need to escalate this to the SE team.  I added a few tags to your question to try to get their attention :-)." CreationDate="2014-01-23T23:23:38.257" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5259" PostId="1929" Score="0" Text="@whuber Thanks for the rapid response and the info. Perhaps too close to only 'statistics' to trigger something or st.statistics was already dealt with explicitly, which would however be surprising as very recently it still was rejected. Let us wait what official info will come." CreationDate="2014-01-23T23:42:23.820" UserId="37747" />
  <row Id="5261" PostId="1929" Score="0" Text="@whuber the [tag:statistics] tag is blacklisted as an intrinsic tag, since everything on [main] would fit into the tag." CreationDate="2014-01-24T10:47:48.003" UserId="37296" />
  <row Id="5262" PostId="1929" Score="2" Text="@m0sa please note that whuber meant to create st.statistics (not statistics) as a synonym of an existing tag ([tag:mathematical-statistics]). The motivation is that st.statistics is [the name of the statistics-tag on MO](http://mathoverflow.net/questions/tagged/st.statistics) and presently questions being tagged (only) with this tag cannot be migrated here (from MO). If st.statistics were intrinsic (like statistics) the problem  would also be resolved (in a different way), see suggestion 1 in OP. But st.statistics seems to be neither creatable nor intrinsic." CreationDate="2014-01-24T11:16:47.237" UserId="37747" />
  <row Id="5263" PostId="1929" Score="1" Text="@quid, I'm sure he tired to create a synonym from [tag:st.statistics] to [tag:statistics]. If any of those 2 tags were blacklisted (statistics is intrinsic in this case, so that's true) he'd get the error message that the source tag is blacklisted (which is a bug - fixing), but that's what I think happened" CreationDate="2014-01-24T11:42:53.610" UserId="37296" />
  <row Id="5265" PostId="1929" Score="2" Text="@m0sa Your surmise is correct.  In fact I expected to encounter a problem in making anything a synonym of [tag:statistics] and was surprised that the error message pointed instead to [tag:st.statistics].  My reply to this thread details the work-around I found thanks to your comments.  I appreciate your help." CreationDate="2014-01-24T16:08:42.210" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5266" PostId="1930" Score="0" Text="Thanks for doing this! Soon I will make this wider known on (meta) MO." CreationDate="2014-01-24T18:30:02.803" UserId="37747" />
  <row Id="5270" PostId="1931" Score="13" Text="I think we can avoid heading down this particular (potentially endless) avenue of tags." CreationDate="2014-01-26T05:28:53.673" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12341" PostId="1931" Score="0" Text="Hi Peter, do you want to accept one of the answers? This issue is long settled. Thanks!" CreationDate="2017-02-10T10:57:23.643" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="5268" PostId="1932" Score="4" Text="Yes, I added it because I thought it would be the first question of many that would possibly come up later (regarding facebook statistics). I was not aware about the social-network tag (so facebook could be a synonym of it, imo). And congratulations for your question. I had never seen something like that before on CV (&gt;10K views in less than 2 days). Welcome to Meta." CreationDate="2014-01-25T17:49:44.880" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="5269" PostId="1932" Score="3" Text="@AndreSilva I think the reason of its popularity is better explained by Groucho Marx: &quot;I know that the title of this book is misleading, but there's more than one way to sell a book or skin a cat&quot;." CreationDate="2014-01-25T19:51:17.720" UserId="37729" />
  <row Id="5274" PostId="1934" Score="2" Text="My +1 one is for the research effort you put into your question and for the discussion it raises. It is not for the title." CreationDate="2014-01-27T17:38:31.120" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="5282" PostId="1934" Score="1" Text="Technically (according to SE's built-in tooltip anyway), an upvote means &quot;This question shows research effort; it is useful and clear.&quot; The ambiguity your different interpretation demonstrates is one of the issues with asking separate meta-questions for each synonym suggestion, as I've pointed out in the last two sentences of my OP." CreationDate="2014-01-28T01:03:28.087" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5284" PostId="1934" Score="2" Text="Yes, agree. It is because there are other guidelines for voting on Meta. See [here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/270/the-meaning-of-down-votes-in-meta-vs-stackoverflow)." CreationDate="2014-01-28T01:19:02.423" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="5288" PostId="1934" Score="1" Text="Good find! I tacked that onto the end. Arjan's answer quotes [the Help Center itself](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/help/whats-meta) as officially stating a different meaning associated with questions tagged [meta-tag:feature-request]! ¡Ay caramba!" CreationDate="2014-01-28T01:36:21.060" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5272" PostId="1935" Score="3" Text="I think with &quot;I voted to close that question&quot;, Peter Flom was referring to a different question (which asked people's opinion about the possibility of creating a more exciting social network than Facebook). Such question seems to have been deleted." CreationDate="2014-01-27T14:58:41.753" UserId="37729" />
  <row Id="5273" PostId="1935" Score="2" Text="As stated in my comment under LessFaceMoreBook's answer I thought I had a good reason to create the tag. If is still possible to make facebook (x0) a synonym of social-network we can handle this issue permanently." CreationDate="2014-01-27T16:53:36.470" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="5275" PostId="1935" Score="0" Text="I think nobody considered the idea of closing the question. That would be plainly irrational." CreationDate="2014-01-27T21:46:35.060" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="5276" PostId="1935" Score="0" Text="Interesting interpretation of the OP. @AndreSilva, I agree you had a good reason; just calling your attention to the *proposed* rule. You might want to downvote it! :) As for considering closing LessFaceMoreBook's question, think about how many individual examples of basic statistical errors we could find in random articles if that were CV's purview. My initial impulse occurred before considering the popularity of this particular article, and was more of a &quot;slippery slope&quot; concern. I'm certainly glad the question remained open (+1'd it and most answers myself), but even its original phrasing.." CreationDate="2014-01-27T23:46:33.540" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5277" PostId="1935" Score="0" Text="...implicitly acknowledged that it might not have appeared to be a statistical question at first. That first line has since been edited out (again, rightly so), but I take it to indicate @LessFaceMoreBook recognized some risk of closure too, maybe even the rationality of some possible arguments for closure." CreationDate="2014-01-27T23:48:42.750" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5283" PostId="1935" Score="0" Text="I believe the OP refers to the question of having a `facebook` tag. You seem to refer to the question about Facebook coming to an end; that is why I wrote that comment. I should have been more explicit so you do not misinterpret what I was talking about. Sorry! (Check @LessFaceMoreBook 's comment also, I think he has the same understanding of the issue as me.)" CreationDate="2014-01-28T01:14:49.973" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="5285" PostId="1935" Score="0" Text="Sorry, I might still be confused. I responded to your comment as a reference to LessFaceMoreBook's question, and closing that being irrational. If you meant closing @PeterFlom's OP here would be plainly irrational, I'd still disagree, because my answer lists some existing meta-threads and an automatic mechanism for resolving the issue of the particular &quot;facebook&quot; tag. Closing this as duplicative might (or might not!) direct additional attention to those meta-threads, which could always use more. Rational (if incomplete and unimportant) reasons for closing aside, I've +1'd this question too! :)" CreationDate="2014-01-28T01:25:46.243" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5279" PostId="1936" Score="0" Text="Yeah, I spent a lot of time researching the issue in an attempt to justify raising it. In the end, I partly couldn't decide whether I wanted to focus on presenting the research, or the question, and had a hard time getting it to be even this clear. Thanks for your efforts to navigate the convolutions nonetheless. I have bolded my direct questions already though, so I don't prefer your paraphrasing of my &quot;main idea.&quot; I appreciate your opinions on that and the &quot;other issues.&quot; I see you favor the current variety of options for suggesting synonyms, disagree with @gung's suggestion to delete the..." CreationDate="2014-01-27T23:58:51.583" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5280" PostId="1936" Score="0" Text="...old suggestions that have been implemented, and probably disagree with @whuber's decision to mark [this meta-question](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/1870/32036) as a duplicate. I hope we'll get some feedback from others on your opinions, and on theirs too :)" CreationDate="2014-01-28T00:01:01.980" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5286" PostId="1936" Score="0" Text="Sorry for the paraphrase. Reading the question's questions again made them clearer to me. So I will edit my answer's opening. Tks" CreationDate="2014-01-28T01:29:03.303" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="5287" PostId="1936" Score="0" Text="No need to apologize! It's not invalid to focus on that idea; I just didn't come to the conclusion myself that it was my main idea. Maybe I will on further reflection, but in the meantime, I think some of the other issues need attention too, and hesitate to designate a main idea...maybe I should though! It would certainly improve the clarity of this question somewhat to have one main idea." CreationDate="2014-01-28T01:33:11.940" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5290" PostId="1937" Score="0" Text="Edited the OP to note your 1st bullet point. Re: the 3rd, I think optimal usage of [your meta-thread](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/1200/32036) and synonym meta-questions should either be identical to avoid confusion, or should specify how readers should vote locally: i.e., whether to denote `dis`/`approval` vs. `useful`/`lessness`. The ambiguous status quo isn't intolerable, just sub-optimal if eliminating it is doable. Hence (a) all should be stated decisively or (b) as neutral questions, or (c) feature-request / discussion tags should govern and the choice be explained explicitly." CreationDate="2014-01-28T05:23:11.123" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5292" PostId="1938" Score="3" Text="Thank you for taking the time to document this." CreationDate="2014-01-28T15:24:54.920" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5293" PostId="1939" Score="0" Text="Is the upshot of this that the problem only exists if you try to login via meta, but that this problem doesn't occur if you login via the main site?" CreationDate="2014-01-29T15:34:48.797" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5294" PostId="1939" Score="0" Text="@Abby T. Miller I have made an exception for the meta cert for now, does this make sense to do? Do I understand correctly that there is no way for the user's browser to tell if the pass is sent plain text or not when using the stack exchange openid? The default login page is not SSL but the openid widget encrypts the data in the background? Sorry I am no expert in these matters. Also, there is still the problem that &quot;logging out&quot; does not appear to really log me out since the session cookies remain. This is misleading to the user and could cause trouble if they are at a library, etc." CreationDate="2014-01-29T15:57:32.297" UserId="38102" />
  <row Id="5295" PostId="1939" Score="0" Text="@gung From what I can tell, that should indeed be the case. Bug me  if you discover differently." CreationDate="2014-01-29T15:57:38.927" UserId="6123" />
  <row Id="5296" PostId="1939" Score="0" Text="@AbbyT.Miller This is bringing up more questions for me on how this all could be working under the current circumstances. When forcing the https:// page my browser is signing the log-in info with the public key of the &quot;invalid&quot; (due to syntax problems) cert and your servers are decrypting with the private key of the &quot;invalid&quot; cert? If I do not force https:// and there is no certificate to provide a public key, how/where is encryption occurring?" CreationDate="2014-01-29T16:24:05.337" UserId="38102" />
  <row Id="5297" PostId="1939" Score="0" Text="@AbbyT.Miller [This question/answers on security.stackexchange](https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/18495/isnt-openid-over-http-not-https-fatally-flawed-when-delegates-are-used) appears to ask a similar question." CreationDate="2014-01-29T16:41:31.170" UserId="38102" />
  <row Id="5298" PostId="1939" Score="2" Text="@Livid - where exactly are you posting a password in the site (meta or main)? The openId email/password comes through an IFrame that is served over SSL (https) and the domain has a valid certificate (for openid.stackexchange.com) - this is served in both meta and main sites, so communication of your password are fully encrypted with a valid certificate. I will note that this is going to change soon - we are reworking the login pages to come directly over https." CreationDate="2014-01-29T17:29:55.437" UserId="24254" />
  <row Id="5299" PostId="1939" Score="0" Text="@Oded I havent seen  a way to enter a pass into the meta site. I believe I understand what is happening now. So three problems remain: 1) Logging out is not really logging out since the cookies are not being deleted, this must be done manually. 2) The user needs to dig through the source to know they are actually sending the data over SSL, there is no way for the browser to detect this 3) If the user logs into CV using SSL, they will not be able to use the meta site unless they accept the &quot;invalid&quot; certificate, or log out, manually delete cookies, and log back in using the http address." CreationDate="2014-01-29T19:17:07.473" UserId="38102" />
  <row Id="5301" PostId="1939" Score="0" Text="@Livid - 1) logging out with openId requires to log out both the openId provider (say Google) and the site in order to be properly logged out - this is by far not something limited to Stack Exchange sites. 2) Yes, which is one reason these pages will become SSL only soon. 3) Until we resolve the certificate problem, that's the unfortunate reality at the moment." CreationDate="2014-01-29T19:25:07.913" UserId="24254" />
  <row Id="5302" PostId="1939" Score="0" Text="Also I have just attempted to post an answer to my original post and came across the same problem that I get a captcha for no reason and it will not load. So it appears I need to deactivate https everywhere to use stack exchange currently." CreationDate="2014-01-29T19:30:47.513" UserId="38102" />
  <row Id="5310" PostId="1939" Score="0" Text="@AbbyT.Miller I forgot to notify when posting my above comment. Https everywhere is still blocking the captcha." CreationDate="2014-01-29T23:55:05.563" UserId="38102" />
  <row Id="5311" PostId="1939" Score="0" Text="@Livid - can you provide more details? I have https everywhere on FireFox 26.0 and can see the captcha at both [stats](https://stats.stackexchange.com/captcha) and [stats-meta](https://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/captcha) (needed to add an exception on meta due to the invalid certificate, but otherwise it is OK). Can you outline the exact steps you took (what page you were on, what you clicked etc) and what browser and operating system you are using?" CreationDate="2014-01-30T14:28:37.943" UserId="24254" />
  <row Id="5319" PostId="1939" Score="0" Text="@Oded I just attempted to answer my own question here: https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/83612/what-are-good-ways-of-plotting-distributions-over-time-using-r. I logged in using https everywhere, navigated to that question by clicking the link in my achievements drop down list, then clicked &quot;answer&quot; question and posted &quot;test&quot; and a link to this page. The captcha failed to load as in the OP. I'm using W7 , FF 25.1, HttpsE 3.4.5. Also, I can see the captchas on the pages you linked." CreationDate="2014-01-31T15:04:39.290" UserId="38102" />
  <row Id="5320" PostId="1939" Score="1" Text="@Livid - looks like the problem may be with MathJax - currently, it will not load when using https. There _is_ work in progress towards getting it working properly over https" CreationDate="2014-01-31T15:07:13.837" UserId="24254" />
  <row Id="5321" PostId="1939" Score="0" Text="@Oded That is actually something I failed to mention. Mathjax is also not working. I did not connect the two." CreationDate="2014-01-31T15:19:15.127" UserId="38102" />
  <row Id="5322" PostId="1939" Score="0" Text="@Livid - thanks for posting a detailed description of the steps you took. This allowed me to track down the bug and fix it. Would appreciate it if you could confirm the captcha issue fixed." CreationDate="2014-01-31T20:35:52.313" UserId="24254" />
  <row Id="5323" PostId="1939" Score="0" Text="@Oded The captcha appeared (that this is happening every post is also a problem) but I could not answer it even after 5 different tries. I think I was doing it correctly." CreationDate="2014-01-31T20:41:31.857" UserId="38102" />
  <row Id="5324" PostId="1939" Score="0" Text="@Livid - as things stand, https is not fully supported yet. It is work in progress. I will try to hunt down the issue with submitting captchas but this may be something outside Stack Exchange control." CreationDate="2014-01-31T20:46:19.950" UserId="24254" />
  <row Id="5325" PostId="1939" Score="0" Text="@Oded Perhaps someone can create a https everywhere rule for stackexchange that allows it to work in the meantime (I have no idea if this is possible). Also to clarify, I can post comments no problem, the captcha only appears when posting questions/answers." CreationDate="2014-01-31T20:49:51.733" UserId="38102" />
  <row Id="5336" PostId="1939" Score="1" Text="@Livid - I don't know how that would work. Unfortunately, trying to fix this has uncovered some of the ways in which we are still not https ready - some things deep in our infrastructure which will take time to resolve. As things stand right now, I fear that https is not fully supported on our sites." CreationDate="2014-02-03T14:31:38.507" UserId="24254" />
  <row Id="5368" PostId="1939" Score="0" Text="@Livid the captcha should be working correctly now, can you please confirm?" CreationDate="2014-02-10T14:37:07.937" UserId="37296" />
  <row Id="5369" PostId="1939" Score="0" Text="@m0sa It appears to have worked: https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/83612/what-are-good-ways-of-plotting-distributions-over-time-using-r#autocomment167983 Why does it require the captcha over https every time though?" CreationDate="2014-02-10T21:44:30.030" UserId="38102" />
  <row Id="5370" PostId="1939" Score="0" Text="I'd guess https everywhere" CreationDate="2014-02-10T23:13:03.877" UserId="37296" />
  <row Id="5300" PostId="1940" Score="4" Text="`isaccepted:1 score:0` will search for answers which were accepted and have zero score. Moreover `hasaccepted:1 score:0` will search questions with zero score and which have an accepted answer (with whatever score). I hope this helps." CreationDate="2014-01-29T19:18:45.630" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="5303" PostId="1940" Score="0" Text="@AndreSilva Thanks - I will have a look." CreationDate="2014-01-29T19:33:33.790" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="5309" PostId="1940" Score="3" Text="My only concern here is that no one should simply go through the list &amp; upvote 0 socre accepted answers just because they are such. But if someone is going through the list, reads an answer that they otherwise wouldn't have noticed &amp; finds it worthy, upvote away!" CreationDate="2014-01-29T23:52:06.337" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5312" PostId="1940" Score="2" Text="Can you point me to an example of such a question *where the question is on the Unanswered list*? I am pretty sure having an &quot;accepted answer&quot;, even if it has no votes (or only downvotes), means it no longer counts as &quot;unanswered&quot;, but if you're seeing behavior to the contrary, it might be a bug." CreationDate="2014-01-30T14:40:50.153" UserId="6123" />
  <row Id="5313" PostId="1940" Score="1" Text="@AbbyT.Miller  I was _not_ able to find in the &quot;unanswered&quot; list two questions that I have answered, the answer got accepted but with no upvotes. So, it appears that although the criterion for &quot;unanswered&quot; is _stated_ as &quot;no upvotes&quot;, the system counts as an &quot;upvote&quot; the &quot;accept&quot; action also, at least for this particular filter... So it appears that I have raised a non-existent issue, wasting the time of fellow users in the process. Apologies to everybody." CreationDate="2014-01-30T15:11:11.050" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="5316" PostId="1940" Score="2" Text="@Alecos: No problem. I'm just glad you haven't found us a bug to chase down and squash :)" CreationDate="2014-01-30T17:04:02.350" UserId="6123" />
  <row Id="5304" PostId="1941" Score="0" Text="Good post, and no crusades!" CreationDate="2014-01-29T20:26:18.120" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5305" PostId="1941" Score="0" Text="But what about when the OP _is not permitted_ to upvote due to the OP's reputation level, and so &quot;accept&quot; becomes a substitute for &quot;upvote&quot;? Your search shows that such cases could be about 8% of &quot;unanswered&quot; questions, which is not negligible." CreationDate="2014-01-29T21:38:08.413" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="5306" PostId="1941" Score="2" Text="@Alecos, 15 rep is not hard to get. If you vote on the question, then, it requires just 10 (1 answer upvote, or 5 edits). We should not rely that much on the OP's vote, but community's." CreationDate="2014-01-29T22:49:04.743" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="5308" PostId="1941" Score="0" Text="+1, excellent answer, &amp; nice research effort." CreationDate="2014-01-29T23:49:04.510" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5314" PostId="1941" Score="0" Text="@AndreSilva You may want to read a comment I posted below my question in response to Andy T. Miller inquiry - with my apologies." CreationDate="2014-01-30T15:12:38.370" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="5315" PostId="1941" Score="0" Text="@Alecos, no need for apologies. This thread is useful because it brings insights about: the purpose of accepted-answers, voting, zero score answers, crusades activities." CreationDate="2014-01-30T15:34:43.523" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="5317" PostId="1942" Score="0" Text="Thanks. That settles it! (and exactly in the way I should think it should...)" CreationDate="2014-01-30T17:49:11.373" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="5326" PostId="1943" Score="1" Text="I don't see the need for this. Bear in mind that I don't do text mining, so maybe I'm wrong, but I think of classification, clustering, feature extraction, etc. as parts of data mining. Thus by analogy, I would see text classification, clustering of text, etc. to be parts of text mining. I do recognize that certain text preprocessing tasks like parsing &amp; turning words into stems are more like data cleaning than prototypical data mining, though. So if there are enough Q's to support it &amp; people think `[text-mining]` is too heterogeneous, we could have `[text-preprocessing]` as well." CreationDate="2014-02-02T03:45:22.647" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5327" PostId="1944" Score="3" Text="(1.) strikes me as clearly on-topic here. (Regarding your SO post on scatterplots w/ many points, you may be interested in this CV thread: [More efficient plot functions in R when millions of points are present](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/7348/).)" CreationDate="2014-02-02T04:35:01.983" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5328" PostId="1944" Score="6" Text="Many of these edge cases would be acceptable here, especially if couched in a way that exhibited their general interest to a community of statisticians and data miners.  The ones that definitely are not on topic here have nicely been flagged already by &quot;&lt;this language&gt;&quot;: when a question is language-specific, it almost surely ought to be on SO instead of here." CreationDate="2014-02-02T04:58:19.517" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5329" PostId="1944" Score="0" Text="Maybe, but I feel like if you're a statistician you're probably used to 'flat' 2D tables for most work, whereas algebraists and engineers do a lot with variable dimension 'cubic' matrices; why and what merits those approaches provide was not really addressed in the question I asked on SO (due to SO's scope)." CreationDate="2014-02-02T11:44:40.743" UserId="20307" />
  <row Id="5330" PostId="1944" Score="1" Text="I think the key is how much statistical knowledge is needed. I think that, among moderators, I am for a more inclusive approach here. But the guidelines apply to all." CreationDate="2014-02-02T13:29:41.457" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="5331" PostId="1945" Score="1" Text="Interesting question. I guess you could check more than once a day, but that may be impractical. And what one person views as interesting may be boring to another." CreationDate="2014-02-02T21:58:14.253" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="5332" PostId="1945" Score="3" Text="I like your query for images: that is useful.  However, I believe it overlooks the majority of posts with images--I'm sure we have more than the 2160 that were returned.  Replacing the &quot;AND&quot; with &quot;OR&quot; seems to do a better job." CreationDate="2014-02-02T22:29:13.613" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5333" PostId="1945" Score="3" Text="Regarding your query, be aware that the data site is updated only periodically (once a week at most), so rechecking it frequently will not give you any new information." CreationDate="2014-02-03T01:21:28.713" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5334" PostId="1945" Score="3" Text="The situation isn't *that* dramatic. Checking Q&amp;A using tags isn't too hard and in a way it unclutters ones view. Additionally, checking `hot` questions ensures one hasn't missed a biggie. Having said that, do you really care for a non-hot question that is not included in your specified interests?" CreationDate="2014-02-03T02:24:55.280" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="5335" PostId="1945" Score="4" Text="Some relevant (but not really identical) posts you might find useful: [post1](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1753/are-there-other-ways-to-find-good-recent-answers-on-crossvalidated) [post2](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1715/the-most-interesting-users-on-cv)" CreationDate="2014-02-03T05:50:54.077" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5338" PostId="1945" Score="2" Text="In addition to the posts @Glen_b notes, you might find [this](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1554/how-should-a-new-user-navigate-cross-validated-to-learn-more-about-statistics) helpful." CreationDate="2014-02-03T15:03:09.207" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5350" PostId="1945" Score="0" Text="One option could be to add &quot;follow my favorite tags&quot; page. In other words a user could choose which tags to follow and those would be automatically added to the page. Questions that the user have not seen in last visits could be highlighted. Then that page could be sorted based on number of views, votes, etc." CreationDate="2014-02-04T14:35:35.223" UserId="10829" />
  <row Id="5389" PostId="1945" Score="1" Text="I like the idea of having a &quot;hot topics this week&quot; tab, as suggested in the question, determined by those questions with the most upvotes/activity during the week. Of course, if a question is missed (no votes), then there is still a problem." CreationDate="2014-02-14T06:03:45.873" UserId="29433" />
  <row Id="5390" PostId="1945" Score="0" Text="@Drew75: this tab exists." CreationDate="2014-02-14T09:03:22.727" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="5337" PostId="1946" Score="8" Text="In practice comments are very often used to give replies (a useful neutral word here) that the poster feels fall short of full answers, in terms of relevance, length, depth or completeness. (Indeed, this comment is itself an example of that.) I haven't felt pain, confusion or guilt in doing that, and often, in some apparent conflict to the hover text. In short, I don't see this as a real problem." CreationDate="2014-02-03T14:38:45.717" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5342" PostId="1946" Score="1" Text="@Nick and peers, is it a bad thing if someone paraphrase somebody else's comment as an answer, and give it a proper citation? Like [this](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/54718/how-should-i-handle-questions-which-are-answered-in-the-comments) answer on MSO suggests?" CreationDate="2014-02-03T20:16:26.850" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="5343" PostId="1946" Score="2" Text="@AndreSilva Not quite sure what &quot;paraphrase&quot; and &quot;citation&quot; mean here, but promoting a comment to an answer can sometimes be right, as can demoting an answer to a comment. Usual reservations apply about plagiarism (bad) and acknowledgment (good)." CreationDate="2014-02-03T20:23:42.623" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5344" PostId="1946" Score="1" Text="Ok. paraphrase = rewriting of a comment as an answer without using the same words or phrase structure. citation = the user who posts the answer cites he/she is answering as suggested by the user who provided the comment (cc @Nick)." CreationDate="2014-02-03T20:32:22.223" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="5346" PostId="1946" Score="1" Text="Same answer, I think. Someone who much extends a short reply is contributing positively; someone who merely rewords an existing reply without adding content or clarity, and claims it as their own, is not." CreationDate="2014-02-03T21:25:11.200" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5347" PostId="1946" Score="1" Text="&quot;...and it claims it as their own...&quot; (even with citation?). So, imo, this is a problem. When a comment answers the question in a satisfactory manner, it will shrink the chances that thread will get an answer (actually, this happens a lot)." CreationDate="2014-02-03T22:36:00.677" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="5348" PostId="1946" Score="2" Text="@AndreSilva, [here](http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/27431//27505#27505) is an example of a situation where I was mostly copying the points made by others into an answer so that the question wouldn't count as officially unanswered. I made the answer community wiki. There have also been a number of times (no examples) when I have written an answer that mirrored the essence of a preexisting comment, but where I didn't feel that I was plagiarizing someone else's ideas. In those cases, I just put the answer that I would have put if the comment hadn't been there." CreationDate="2014-02-03T23:01:04.697" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5359" PostId="1946" Score="2" Text="There's a tension between the &quot;avoid one line answers&quot; policy and the &quot;don't answer questions in comments&quot; policy. I think the border between them is quite grey and we shouldn't try to be *overly* prescriptive about where to draw it. Where a comment fully answers a question we can encourage turning it into an answer." CreationDate="2014-02-08T02:35:00.483" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5360" PostId="1946" Score="2" Text="@AndreSilva rewriting comments into answers (especially summarizing information from several comments), or even incorporating better information from other answers into an answer (including other people's answer) all appear to be mostly acceptable -- and, broadly speaking, even officially encouraged -- behavior on SO. There appears to be more reticence to do that sort of thing here on CV; but there's no harm in encouraging others to make their comments into answers (and if they don't, to use the information in a more complete answer)." CreationDate="2014-02-08T03:04:11.083" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5339" PostId="1947" Score="4" Text="This isn't really an answer to the OP's question, @gung. It is more of a comment. Please only use the &quot;Your Answer&quot; field to provide answers. Consider converting this to a comment. Alternatively, you could try to expand it to make it more of an answer." CreationDate="2014-02-03T16:23:55.933" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5340" PostId="1947" Score="1" Text="That sounds right to me." CreationDate="2014-02-03T16:23:58.010" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="5341" PostId="1947" Score="4" Text="+1. I think you provided an answer (no need for the follow up comment). It is better to have a partial and sometimes objective answer than a comment answer. Objective answers also incentivize additional replies to show up with further information." CreationDate="2014-02-03T20:06:36.463" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="5345" PostId="1948" Score="12" Text="As a moderator I appreciate comments and flags that point out cross-postings. When a question would clearly be on topic on the math site, I am happy to close the posting here--they do a good job with purely mathematical questions.  When it's unclear where a question belongs, it's nice to leave a comment asking the O.P. to decide which is the appropriate site (and voluntarily delete the cross-post)." CreationDate="2014-02-03T20:40:41.997" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5351" PostId="1948" Score="4" Text="Please provide a model or proof of your choice that there is an unexpected surge in cross-posts, rather than a regular steady state &quot;noise&quot; of cross-posts between these two sites. Pedantic epidemiologist is pedantic. ;)" CreationDate="2014-02-04T15:59:00.260" UserId="5836" />
  <row Id="5352" PostId="1948" Score="2" Text="@Fomite Anecdotal evidence is fine for this purpose. It would be difficult indeed to construct a cross-site query to identify cross-posts.  We should all be willing to trust the impressions of someone who is as active on both sites as Alecos is.  Moreover, his assertions about an increase in cross-posting activity are plausible if only because the rate at which questions are posted here continues to increase exponentially (I have the data to back that up) and there was a sudden huge jump recently after the usual mid-winter lull." CreationDate="2014-02-04T19:53:39.307" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5353" PostId="1948" Score="2" Text="@whuber I was being cheeky, mainly because of a particular key word. Imagine, instead, that &quot;epidemic&quot; was substituted with &quot;statistically significant&quot;, if it suits better. Also, because one of the most popular questions on the site right now is about the consequences of assuming something follows an epidemic pattern. It wasn't a very serious comment." CreationDate="2014-02-04T20:28:01.230" UserId="5836" />
  <row Id="5354" PostId="1948" Score="3" Text="why exactly cross posting is a bad thing?" CreationDate="2014-02-06T03:51:39.953" UserId="3454" />
  <row Id="5371" PostId="1948" Score="3" Text="While I think simultaneous cross posts are inappropriate, I think posting a question here or on the math.SE after initially posting and not receiving a single answer on the other SE is completely appropriate." CreationDate="2014-02-11T02:19:51.207" UserId="36444" />
  <row Id="5453" PostId="1948" Score="3" Text="At minimum add a comment to each question linking to the other one. So if somebody having a similar problem finds one of them can find the other (which might have useful answers)." CreationDate="2014-02-28T18:16:10.570" UserId="36268" />
  <row Id="5941" PostId="1948" Score="1" Text="Some other important meta-questions deserve links here: [StackExchange: Mathematics vs. Cross Validated](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/1966/32036), and WRT the newer site-overlap issue, [Mathematics Educators Stackexchange and its relationship to statistics](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/2022/32036)" CreationDate="2014-07-30T23:16:58.847" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5942" PostId="1948" Score="1" Text="@NickStauner Thanks. I have accepted the invitation to Mathematics Educators site, but it does not look like they are very interested in how to teach Statistics -only 8 questions out of 595 have the tag." CreationDate="2014-07-30T23:23:39.873" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="5986" PostId="1948" Score="0" Text="@whuber It is good of course to leave it to the user of the site about the choice between two or more sites. If the question is not relevant in terms of objectives of the site, it should not be permitted for a post. If at all the moderator has not done his job well, the question may be migrated to other site with a sanction from the user or by voting by a certain number of the moderators" CreationDate="2014-08-09T14:11:39.010" UserDisplayName="user10619" />
  <row Id="5355" PostId="1950" Score="0" Text="Just curious - but why choose having than more than two answers rather than having an answer as a benchmark? Many answers are good enough that another would be redundant." CreationDate="2014-02-07T10:23:14.340" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="5361" PostId="1950" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi indeed - often I see an answer and think &quot;well, the points I'd have made look to be covered already, nothing to do but upvote&quot;" CreationDate="2014-02-09T02:36:05.520" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5362" PostId="1950" Score="3" Text="@Glen_b There has been a steady downward trend in the answer:question ratio in the last several years.  It started at 2:1 in fall 2010 when we &quot;graduated&quot; from beta. 15 months ago it dropped below 1:1.  It is now near 0.8:1.  That is one worrying sign that StasK may be correct that there is (unmet) &quot;demand for experts&quot; here." CreationDate="2014-02-09T22:58:19.170" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5363" PostId="1950" Score="0" Text="@whuber my comment relates to Scortchi's point about the number of answers not being much of a benchmark about whether a question has been well-answered - I often see questions answered fully even when there are only 1 or two answers. That's not to suggest that the underlying point of needing more questions with good answers was wrong." CreationDate="2014-02-09T23:03:37.570" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5364" PostId="1950" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b Understood. However, once the ratio drops below 1 it is evident there is a dearth of answers: The ideal toward which we aim is that every (unclosed) question ought to have at least one good answer." CreationDate="2014-02-09T23:07:08.520" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5365" PostId="1950" Score="0" Text="Yes, that's understood, and something it would be nice to improve on.." CreationDate="2014-02-10T00:26:54.623" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5366" PostId="1950" Score="3" Text="The conversation steered away from the JSM, but I see that there is interest (if that's what the upvotes of the question indicate). I will (1) set up a doodle poll for the best time, and (2) make a request with ASA organizing committee for a small room. I don't think we are ready to make a presentation to the ASA at large about CV (at least I am not; if Peter Flom or whuber are, that would be terrific), and the time to submit one is way past due, but I think we can organize a round-table next year within the consulting or the education section. We can discuss on Meta or in person at the JSM." CreationDate="2014-02-10T03:48:43.077" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="5367" PostId="1950" Score="1" Text="Sorry; it *was* just idle curiosity, &amp; I didn't mean to distract anyone from the question. Even if every question had 10 good answers it would still be worth publicizing CV among academic &amp; professional statisticians for their own benefit." CreationDate="2014-02-10T11:09:56.703" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="5382" PostId="1950" Score="1" Text="It would be interesting to see analyses of how far initially energetic users have dropped out (some notable examples above 10k rep) and conversely how far new active users have joined more recently. But the major issue seems to me that the scope for good general questions seems likely to diminish over time as the forum matures and the fraction of less interesting questions geared to specific datasets or research problems seems likely to drift upwards. Too many users see CV as a help line." CreationDate="2014-02-12T11:25:32.527" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5385" PostId="1950" Score="0" Text="Quick query on JSM -- what's the mix of applied vs. theoretical content? I'm finding it very hard to tell from the 2014 website at present." CreationDate="2014-02-12T20:01:05.710" UserId="16974" />
  <row Id="5386" PostId="1950" Score="0" Text="@JamesStanley, it is pretty much entirely up to you. You can make it theoretical and only go to the invited sessions by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. You can make it applied, take a short course or two, and go to the talks in your specific area of interest. You might want to look at the 2013 website; the conference has so much inertia in terms of the makeup of the topics and participants that the mix of applied and theoretical content will hardly shift around in the next 5 or so years. The 2014 program only has the invited sessions fixed up, which are probably more theoretical." CreationDate="2014-02-13T04:27:08.407" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="5387" PostId="1950" Score="0" Text="@StasK Thanks for that advice -- sounds like a good plan, I'll check the 2013 programme (and I'm very much interested in the applied side of things, rather than theoretical: I'd also seen some of the previous short courses which looked good.)" CreationDate="2014-02-13T04:29:32.083" UserId="16974" />
  <row Id="5388" PostId="1950" Score="0" Text="I taught a JSM short course once... and I am organizing an (applied) invited session in 2014. The biostat program at JSM is of course huge, and there are also side tracks on mental health, medical devices, imaging, and may be some other stuff. The conference is organized through the section sponsors -- when you submit an abstract (which is too late by now), you indicate which section it should go to, so each (contributed) talk goes through a particular broad area of statistics or two. Auckland has a huge presence, obviously, so you may want to talk to @Thomas Lumley to find out more." CreationDate="2014-02-13T04:34:57.997" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="5396" PostId="1950" Score="0" Text="@StasK Thanks, I'll drop Thomas a line." CreationDate="2014-02-17T20:04:52.210" UserId="16974" />
  <row Id="5356" PostId="1951" Score="7" Text="Agreed. I'd also underline a widespread comment on the original post that orienting discussion to one national association (for all its international links and roles) and to the situation in one country is quite inappropriate, if not insensitive. CV is an international forum." CreationDate="2014-02-07T13:46:15.883" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5357" PostId="1951" Score="2" Text="@Nick: Absolutely. In fact quite a lot of things in this question &amp; the comments perhaps side-tracked responses from the main issue, which is quite a worthwhile one to think about." CreationDate="2014-02-07T15:02:44.653" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="5358" PostId="1951" Score="3" Text="And I wasn't thinking about approaching presidents to get some sort of seal of approval, but sending in an article for the newsletter, suggesting a link to CV in the website, stuff like that." CreationDate="2014-02-07T15:17:03.540" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="6176" PostId="1951" Score="1" Text="@Horst: Assuming that opening sentence is followed by a statement of the goals of the analysis &amp; the particular difficulty encountered - otherwise it would just get closed - I don't see any general grounds for concern. Many of us - again, at all levels of statistical experience &amp; education - learn new stuff through first bumping up against issues that arise when trying to analyse a particular data-set. Where the OP is obviously out of his depth people often *do* suggest consulting a statistician or reading up on the subject." CreationDate="2014-10-15T13:19:51.763" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="5372" PostId="1953" Score="19" Text="In large part it's the [hot questions](http://stackexchange.com/questions) effect. This is seen on many other &quot;technical&quot; SE sites as well: A question that is reasonably easily understood by a large population of readers, usually in concert with a provocative/catchy title, and that ends up on the hot questions list will end up garnering an order of magnitude or two more views than a typical question." CreationDate="2014-02-11T03:55:13.907" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="5374" PostId="1953" Score="9" Text="To answer the second question in your title, I don't think it's a problem per se.  There are numerous questions on the Math.SE which some can deem &quot;soft&quot; or &quot;shallow&quot; (and some have provocative titles), gained much popularity very quickly, but bred good discussions and sometimes really great, thoughtful answers (Exhibit [A](http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/71874/can-i-use-my-powers-for-good), [B](http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/54431/why-do-people-use-it-is-easy-to-prove)).  If the result in interesting discussion, I worry less about its genesis." CreationDate="2014-02-11T13:15:18.973" UserDisplayName="user5594" />
  <row Id="5375" PostId="1953" Score="9" Text="cont.  Concerning the Amazon question, from the answers it's apparent that the question is deeper than it seems at first glance.  If I were to have a problem with it, it'd be that multiple answers arrive at the same conclusion using the same means, i.e. they're not adding anything that isn't already there.  I agree with whuber's comment that &quot;The answers that point out the ambiguities and discuss the assumptions are the ones that have merit.&quot;" CreationDate="2014-02-11T13:17:58.000" UserDisplayName="user5594" />
  <row Id="5378" PostId="1953" Score="0" Text="@cardinal: fair enough, but what about vote count? I would expect that people clicking on a catchy title in the list of SE-wide hot questions would not be registered on CV and so would not be able to vote. So I would not be surprised by sky-high view count, it is rather the huge amount of upvotes that puzzles me. (I asked the same question in the comments below, but it directly refers to what you said as well.)" CreationDate="2014-02-11T20:35:53.250" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="5383" PostId="1953" Score="4" Text="@amoeba: But, that's just it. If you have at least 200 reputation on *any* SE site, you get an automatic association bonus when you click through to CV. This *immediately* confers voting privileges. Since most of those people are probably coming in through the &quot;hot questions&quot; links, they're very likely to have that reputation on some site already. :-)" CreationDate="2014-02-12T14:51:25.610" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="5384" PostId="1953" Score="3" Text="@cardinal: Interesting, I did not know that. In fact I tried to up/down vote some question on Math.SE (my reputation on CV is above 200), but could not: the system asked me to log in (even though I am logged in on CV). So I thought it is impossible. But I guess if I do log in with my CV account, I would be able to vote. Makes me wonder whether it would make sense to weigh votes by CV reputation of the voter, so that, e.g. your vote counts more than mine or especially more than a vote of a random newcomer from another SE website. But this I guess goes against the whole SE ideology." CreationDate="2014-02-12T15:35:48.097" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="5397" PostId="1953" Score="3" Text="I think what we want is the ability to sort questions on the basis of votes made by high-karma users.  And special badges awarded on that basis if they don't already exist." CreationDate="2014-02-17T21:13:20.517" UserId="3748" />
  <row Id="5416" PostId="1953" Score="1" Text="Big +1 @MichaelBishop's first suggestion! Don't quite follow the badge idea though; care to clarify? Or, preferably, post that first idea on Meta SO and see if you can at least get a [meta-tag:status-declined] retag with some upvotes and maybe a user-defined script to support the idea?" CreationDate="2014-02-22T00:03:06.157" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5418" PostId="1953" Score="2" Text="@NickStauner, Thanks for the suggestion: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/can-we-add-the-ability-to-sort-questions-based-on-the-number-of-up-votes-from-hi  ...regarding badges, I don't think its as important, but we could create badges that are earned based on receiving question up-votes/favorites from high-karma users." CreationDate="2014-02-22T22:30:54.893" UserId="3748" />
  <row Id="5377" PostId="1954" Score="1" Text="Thank you, that is a nice summary! &quot;And when you combine accessibility to non-experts with a catchy title and place it in a prominent location, it'll be hard to stop the rise in view count&quot; -- fair enough, but what about vote count? I would expect that people clicking on a catchy title in the list of SE-wide hot questions would not be registered on CV and so would not be able to vote. So I would not be surprised by sky-high view count, it is rather the huge amount of upvotes that puzzles me." CreationDate="2014-02-11T16:46:36.530" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="5379" PostId="1954" Score="3" Text="I'd like to disagree somewhat about the &quot;depth&quot; of the Amazon problem. While whuber's comment has merit, I don't think the ambiguities and assumptions about the problem are really that interesting. How novel is it really to say that you need a representative sample of the population to do statistical inference? This isn't to say that the other comments (mine included) were more interesting or valid -- just that the whole thread wasn't really that interesting (to me, at least). I felt a little weird that I got so much reputation out of an answer that I put little thought into." CreationDate="2014-02-11T21:31:03.273" UserId="35917" />
  <row Id="5380" PostId="1954" Score="1" Text="@amoeba That's a good question.  It'd be interesting to see how many of the (currently) 25k and 15k views of those two questions are from the ~29k registered users of CV." CreationDate="2014-02-12T00:43:57.453" UserDisplayName="user5594" />
  <row Id="5381" PostId="1954" Score="7" Text="@AlexWilliams That's a valid criticism.  Concerning your comment, &quot;How novel is it really to say that you need a representative sample of the population to do statistical inference?&quot;, I agree with the sentiment.  However I was (perhaps unsuccessfully) trying to stress the importance of understanding assumptions and their implications, however seemingly trivial or customary they may be." CreationDate="2014-02-12T00:56:01.227" UserDisplayName="user5594" />
  <row Id="5391" PostId="1954" Score="4" Text="@Ale I believe a good answer ought to at least mention the important but little-noticed lurking issues: the distinction between percentages and counts; regression to the mean; and whether frequentist and/or Bayesian approaches would be useful. It also needs a thoughtful summary of the all-important but all-too-readily dismissed and misunderstood issue concerning the representativeness of the data (and what that even means). Unfortunately, posting such a response now would be useless because it just wouldn't be noticed or upvoted--perhaps leaving newcomers the impression it's unworthy." CreationDate="2014-02-14T20:19:03.913" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5415" PostId="1954" Score="1" Text="I might be biased, but I see [this question](http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/87416/32036) vs. [this question](http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/33413/32036) as another, somewhat less expected instance. In the former, I received 9 upvotes in 6 hours. In the latter, I *spent* an hour or so referencing new literature for an important basic question that's often handled inefficiently. I don't see a big difference in titles or accessibility, though I admit there are other factors. Both can be improved, I suppose. Good general suggestions whuber!" CreationDate="2014-02-21T21:44:30.353" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5392" PostId="1956" Score="13" Text="Please do not flag answers you think are incorrect: moderators are not arbiters of correctness or accuracy and cannot respond to such flags.  Some related threads worth consulting include http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/647, http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/67, and http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1039." CreationDate="2014-02-17T15:41:11.057" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5393" PostId="1956" Score="6" Text="This subject also has been extensively debated in several comment threads on our main site at http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/52319. I do *not* want to re-open that particular debate, but feel obliged to point it out because it shows that arguments over accuracy can become acrimonious and therefore need gentle treatment. In particular, we should always be aware that an answer may look incorrect because it implicitly makes different assumptions or adopts a different interpretation of the question than we expected. Consider probing that possibility with polite, directed comments." CreationDate="2014-02-17T16:17:29.730" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5394" PostId="1956" Score="0" Text="@whuber: I edited the question: I'm not primarily asking about what to do with a &quot;normal&quot; wrong answer (possibly recent, but importantly: both OP and answer author are active so they react - and if it is by downvoting my answer and insisting that the accepted answer is correct). I'm asking here because I don't know what should be done, but I think it would be good to have a policy for such situations." CreationDate="2014-02-17T20:02:00.010" UserId="4598" />
  <row Id="5395" PostId="1956" Score="0" Text="I promise I won't flag again in such a situation. I flagged because I (wrongly) thought that moderators may have some whatever tool for such a situation (there are these banners saying that the question is closed or whatever - there might have been a banner saying that there are concerns/controversy but unfortunately the concerned people are not active here any more). I don't think that deleting or closing would be appropriate for the question. And anyways not immediately." CreationDate="2014-02-17T20:04:46.913" UserId="4598" />
  <row Id="5398" PostId="1956" Score="9" Text="There is no special policy either possible or needed here. Every action is fallible, but within limits correctable! Original posters may accept poor or even incorrect answers (and then fade away). People may post poor or even incorrect answers (ditto). But people who are competent and confident can and should post good answers, explain firmly but politely the limitations or errors of other answers, and vote up (and down) accordingly. So, you did what you could, and that's fine." CreationDate="2014-02-18T00:06:02.253" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5401" PostId="1956" Score="1" Text="@NickCox: may I ask you to convert your comment into an answer?" CreationDate="2014-02-18T13:01:05.123" UserId="4598" />
  <row Id="5402" PostId="1956" Score="0" Text="I certainly will if you wish, but I regard it only as a statement of the well known." CreationDate="2014-02-18T13:04:27.150" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5403" PostId="1956" Score="2" Text="@Glen_b: may I also ask you to make his ans answer? As to (iii) editing: I'm extremely recluctant to edit an answer *because I think it wrong* (after all I may be wrong myself). Personally, I make only edits where I'm certain that I know what was meant. Which is fundamentally not the case if I think the answer wrong, not even if I have a guess what happened." CreationDate="2014-02-18T13:04:37.733" UserId="4598" />
  <row Id="5404" PostId="1956" Score="0" Text="@NickCox: I ask about writing down what how we think we should act in such situations. Such a &quot;policy&quot; should ideally align well with what is already well known - otherwise it is impractical. So yes, I think it answers the question." CreationDate="2014-02-18T13:07:19.340" UserId="4598" />
  <row Id="5405" PostId="1957" Score="4" Text="not sure to agree here. I think this question is ok, as it seeks for guidelines about what we should do. Once we create the guidelines, wouldn't be the other questions duplicates of this one?" CreationDate="2014-02-18T13:11:49.377" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="5408" PostId="1957" Score="0" Text="@Andre: Not sure *I* agree, but I remember seeing similar questions before, with the same consequences, &amp; a desirable outcome seems to have been achieved without recourse to moderatorial action or policy changes." CreationDate="2014-02-18T14:21:42.340" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="5409" PostId="1957" Score="5" Text="I think this does touch on a key point, how to draw others' attention to a mess. Substantial change to a post will bring it to the top of the active list; some people will notice comments in &quot;Chat&quot;; otherwise raising it in Meta, as suggested here, is a possibility. Note that moderators rightly emphasize that it is beyond their remit to decide on correctness of answers. At the same time, if every contested question were echoed by discussion in Meta, that wouldn't work well, but as we are a long way from that, I am not so worried." CreationDate="2014-02-18T16:34:10.827" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5417" PostId="1957" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi: by the way I was not aiming at *changing* any policy but rather on having it written down so a search on meta yields the (already implicitly) existing policy. Kind of: make the policy searchable / findable." CreationDate="2014-02-22T12:56:50.703" UserId="4598" />
  <row Id="5407" PostId="1958" Score="5" Text="+1 for both the first half (on what to do), &amp; the second half (on editing policy)." CreationDate="2014-02-18T14:12:30.953" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5456" PostId="1958" Score="4" Text="I would add one more thing: **comment** on the accepted answer, saying why it is wrong. First, it gives an opportunity for the author to clarify, fix or delete the answer. Second, it gives a warning note for others (and your comment will be upvoted or not - so it does not require special actions). Quite a few times, on StackOverflow, I saw accepted answer with a heavily upvoted comment, that it does not work (or should not be used). Then I naturally head to the next answers." CreationDate="2014-03-01T14:57:46.530" UserId="6552" />
  <row Id="5463" PostId="1958" Score="0" Text="that's a very helpful post. Re the note on editing, I've noticed that this varies across sites. For example on mathematics, edits to make corrections seems to be more likely to be accepted than they are here or on stackoverflow. So it's worth being aware of the site policy if you use more than one site." CreationDate="2014-03-02T12:55:22.487" UserId="25936" />
  <row Id="5464" PostId="1958" Score="0" Text="oh, and is it worth adding your note on &quot;mainly to improve presentation&quot; that editing tags is included in that? (I _was_ going to edit that into your post but thought better of it:)" CreationDate="2014-03-02T12:56:50.053" UserId="25936" />
  <row Id="5465" PostId="1958" Score="0" Text="@TooTone Thanks for your comments on editing. The need for formal &quot;acceptance&quot; depends on reputation, but I've noticed few objections from OPs to edits that are intended as improvements in presentation. Insertion or deletion of tags is clearly often appropriate. I had not intended this answer to be a complete guide to how and what to edit." CreationDate="2014-03-02T13:09:45.883" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5413" PostId="1961" Score="9" Text="I suspect that the explanation is very simple. High reputation users are sufficiently zealous here that queues disappear quickly. Compare, for example, Stack Overflow with $&gt;120,000$ close votes in the air...." CreationDate="2014-02-21T18:07:26.200" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5414" PostId="1961" Score="1" Text="I have had the same experience :-)." CreationDate="2014-02-21T18:21:02.493" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5420" PostId="1961" Score="1" Text="It happens to us all, I'm afraid ... one thing (of many) the moderators and high-rep users here manage to be very efficient at is keeping those review queues short. Sometimes I have to wait days before I get one. That's a good thing." CreationDate="2014-02-23T06:45:51.250" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5421" PostId="1961" Score="2" Text="Right now it's about 2am Sunday morning on the US east coast (not where I am, but probably an approximate time for the bulk of users) and there's exactly *one* item across six review queues, and it's only been there a short time (a few minutes, I'd guess). Even if I don't review it, someone else will have taken care of it before I can go get a cup of coffee." CreationDate="2014-02-23T06:55:06.510" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5436" PostId="1961" Score="0" Text="Thanks all for your responses - has alleviated my paranoia! I do get a certain perverse satifaction from correcting bad grammar and phrasing but certainly not a pressing issue." CreationDate="2014-02-24T09:37:36.650" UserId="11030" />
  <row Id="5439" PostId="1961" Score="2" Text="I can relate :) I probably got a few hundred rep points (2 at a time) just out of correcting bad grammar, spelling, punctuation, even capitalization! It was quite perversely satisfying." CreationDate="2014-02-24T15:56:54.523" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5419" PostId="1963" Score="6" Text="I think this is not possible on SE, because it violates the assumption of voting anonymity." CreationDate="2014-02-23T00:18:06.337" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="5426" PostId="1963" Score="1" Text="I think voting anonymity could be maintained quite easily.  Say the threshold for whether a user's votes counted was whether they were in the top 25% of the karma distribution.  I don't see that someone could deduce much about who voted for what by being able to sort by that." CreationDate="2014-02-23T19:40:04.460" UserId="3748" />
  <row Id="5428" PostId="1963" Score="4" Text="If by &quot;karma&quot;, you mean *reputation*, the user at the 75th percentile is presumably on [this page](http://stats.stackexchange.com/users?page=282&amp;tab=reputation&amp;filter=all), w/ rep = 101. Realistically, very close to 100% of all votes likely come from the top 25% of CV users by reputation. Moreover, only [275 users have cast &gt;= 100 votes](http://stats.stackexchange.com/users?page=8&amp;tab=voters&amp;filter=all). To narrow your set of users down (ie, below 25%) to a point where this would be useable would diminish the anonymity beyond what I believe the devs had in mind." CreationDate="2014-02-23T21:28:33.620" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5429" PostId="1963" Score="0" Text="@gung 'karma' is what reddit calls its version of 'fake internet points' (and perhaps, some other sites)." CreationDate="2014-02-23T22:43:31.283" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5430" PostId="1963" Score="2" Text="@MichaelBishop: 25% is WAY too much. I think a reasonable cutoff for what you are suggesting would be around 1000 rep, and there are only ~250 users passing this threshold, i.e. only ~1%." CreationDate="2014-02-23T23:37:53.783" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="5433" PostId="1963" Score="1" Text="Based on the helpful stats provided by @gung I guess we would need a higher cutoff than the 75th percentile in reputation points.  I don't think it would need to be as high as 1000 rep to be meaningful.  If the top 250-500 users qualify, that seems to me to be sufficient anonymity.  Additional measures to preserve anonymity could be taken, like adding a variable time lag to the vote count and hide the number of votes and only use rank to sort." CreationDate="2014-02-24T01:19:15.830" UserId="3748" />
  <row Id="5434" PostId="1963" Score="1" Text="I guess that ranking answers by the top 250-500 users' votes would yield something very close to [this](http://stats.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&amp;q=is%3aanswer)." CreationDate="2014-02-24T04:13:41.870" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="5435" PostId="1963" Score="2" Text="Anonymity is far from the only difficulty with this proposal. The principle on this site is that all votes are of equal standing; I doubt the powers that be will do anything to undermine that, even indirectly. I don't think it's even necessarily true that high-reputation users are more likely to vote for questions more appealing to experts, but my guess is based largely on unsystematically watching what the highest-reputation users comment on and answer; as the question implies, we don't have the data." CreationDate="2014-02-24T09:15:38.227" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5437" PostId="1963" Score="0" Text="@AndreSilva, I agree that the top of the ranked list would probably be close to identical with what we've already got.  I predict the difference would be the type of questions that one would find in the middle of the pack.  Admittedly, I don't think this feature would get constant use, even by power-users.  And to Nick Cox, I think you're right that I'm fighting an uphill battle... but I would argue that be a serious violation of the principle that all votes are of equal standing.  Vote counts would remain unchanged, it's just a proposal to aid question search/filtering." CreationDate="2014-02-24T13:01:28.163" UserId="3748" />
  <row Id="5441" PostId="1964" Score="0" Text="Any comments from the downvoter, or anyone else for that matter? I don't mind if you don't like these ideas, but I would like to address any specific critiques, and I don't see any completely intractable problems implied by the other answer(s for posterity?) or comments here." CreationDate="2014-02-26T22:17:13.510" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5445" PostId="1964" Score="2" Text="I didn't downvote this. But I can't support it. As a matter of principle, even implying in a limited way that some votes are more cogent than others seems contrary to the ethos here. (I know we have reputation, clearly.) As a matter of practice, your proposal hinges on what seem fairly arbitrary criteria. Again, we have arbitrary criteria all over the site but that doesn't make me fond of them. Finally, trying to quantify &quot;interesting&quot; in any sense seems doomed to failure. People should just decide what they personally think interesting and search accordingly." CreationDate="2014-02-27T09:36:30.633" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5446" PostId="1964" Score="3" Text="Bear in mind, if you haven't already, that &quot;On posts tagged feature-request, voting indicates agreement or disagreement with the proposed change rather than just the quality or usefulness of the post itself&quot;. To me it just doesn't seem worth the candle: like @Andre &amp; Nick, I'd guess that high-rep users vote on much the same kinds of post as low-rep users (they only get one vote per post, &amp; tend to vote on plenty), while I can already search for posts by user, tag, or key-words; there are other things I'd rather the SE developers spent their time on." CreationDate="2014-02-27T10:10:20.827" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="5449" PostId="1964" Score="0" Text="Of course, and no objections to disagreement; just interested in the basis for it. Now that I've got some, I'd welcome more downvotes from anyone who agrees with your points more than mine. It's a good point about the limits on SE developers' time; easy to forget how small SE still is behind the scenes. I suppose this factors into my interest in helping work out the kinks in the idea for them ahead of time." CreationDate="2014-02-27T17:43:49.607" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5450" PostId="1964" Score="0" Text="Other @NickCox: I agree, and would not want to change the site-wide core ethos. I would only propose to facilitate the preferences of those whose ethea([?](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ethea#English)) differ with it, and preferably in a very limited, experimental way. Simply having access to summary stats of some kind (let alone the sorting ability in question) might provide interesting insights about whether differences in vote cogency or &quot;interestingness&quot; are quantifiable and useful. I respect your pessimism, and don't mean to cry &quot;perfect solution fallacy&quot; yet, but some see potential here." CreationDate="2014-02-27T17:57:22.313" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5451" PostId="1964" Score="0" Text="Without the data you want we are all speculating. My impression, and it is no more than that, is that SE developers won't buy tinkering of this kind on all sorts of grounds, and being too busy is near the top of the list. (Ethos is an abstract singular noun, but it can clearly differ from group to group.)" CreationDate="2014-02-27T18:32:09.140" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5452" PostId="1964" Score="0" Text="Agreed. Still, it's a shame to deny statisticians data to tinker with! I guess this is one of those ideas that's bound to languish in limbo unless it picks up popular interest someday (or gets a [meta-tag:status-declined] stamp in the meantime)." CreationDate="2014-02-27T18:47:46.130" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5422" PostId="1965" Score="3" Text="I'd probably &quot;reward an existing answer&quot; substantially more frequently if there was the possibility of awarding a 20 to 30 point bonus for that particular purpose; I do worry about skewing things too much. I'd probably also do it more if I didn't have to wait until the question had been there two days; I often forget a post I meant to do that on." CreationDate="2014-02-23T07:03:33.637" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5423" PostId="1965" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b, I could have sworn it was possible to award lower amounts, eg 25, but evidently that is the amount automatically awarded by the system when someone offered 50 &amp; didn't award it manually. Asking the devs for more options is a potential meta.SO question, but I doubt it would go anywhere." CreationDate="2014-02-23T14:22:32.743" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5424" PostId="1965" Score="0" Text="&quot;*a potential meta.SO question, but I doubt it would go anywhere*&quot; - yep; I debated trying some time ago, but I concluded the same thing. It would require an odd exception to the usual operation of bounties." CreationDate="2014-02-23T14:58:53.693" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5425" PostId="1965" Score="3" Text="In light of this thread, an interesting idea would be to be able to award bounties to *questions* as well as answers, however. That might be worth asking, but it also probably wouldn't go anywhere. Any time you want to ask the devs to change the SE system, that is a high threshold to cross." CreationDate="2014-02-23T15:09:49.930" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5427" PostId="1965" Score="1" Text="Bounties are relevant, so I'm glad you brought them up.  But based on current usage, I don't think they can help sufficiently for the particular use-case I'm considering - when an expert wants to find questions of interest only to other experts.  As I mentioned in reply to Andre's comment, I don't see a meaningfully degree of anonymity is lost with this idea." CreationDate="2014-02-23T20:54:48.647" UserId="3748" />
  <row Id="5431" PostId="1966" Score="2" Text="Re the first question: have a look at posts under the 'mathematical-statistics' tag, or search for particular topics you're interested in, &amp; make up your own mind. Theory is certainly considered on-topic." CreationDate="2014-02-23T23:23:58.160" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="5438" PostId="1967" Score="5" Text="Nice primer on &quot;How to SE&quot;. Thanks for taking the time." CreationDate="2014-02-24T14:43:44.440" UserId="6123" />
  <row Id="5440" PostId="1967" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b thank you for the help, I just don't want to be a nuisance or waste people's time." CreationDate="2014-02-24T20:39:52.713" UserId="35526" />
  <row Id="5454" PostId="1970" Score="3" Text="Agree. In a similar vein, suggest that `multilevel` (even  `hierarchical`) should be lumped in the `mixed effects` tag. For a beginner I think the former terms make things easier to understand, whereas the `fixed/random` terminology can be a bit off-putting at first." CreationDate="2014-03-01T07:59:37.313" UserId="11756" />
  <row Id="5455" PostId="1970" Score="2" Text="@dardisco: Personally, I tend to agree, but note that yours is a much more contentious suggestion, see e.g. StasK's answer [here](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1369/redundant-tags-mixed-effects-and-related-models)." CreationDate="2014-03-01T13:52:44.363" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="5466" PostId="1970" Score="2" Text="Sensible suggestion. I'd vote to merge into 'mixed-effect'. I think this just reflects the different terminology in circulation more widely." CreationDate="2014-03-02T18:23:06.580" UserId="16663" />
  <row Id="5493" PostId="1970" Score="5" Text="@whuber: Now that I reached 1k rep, I can see that this question was upvoted 16 times and never downvoted. To me it looks like a consensus, but the tags are still not merged. What is actually the procedure (if any)? Is there a certain number of upvotes that has to be reached? I am sorry to bother you about that, but I noticed that most of the recent tag synonyms were declared by you." CreationDate="2014-03-08T15:51:42.013" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8561" PostId="1970" Score="0" Text="Any ideas on merging the tag wikis? [tag:mixed-model] is good but, oddly, doesn't make any mention of fixed vs random, like [tag:mixed-effects] does." CreationDate="2015-10-23T12:30:49.630" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8562" PostId="1970" Score="1" Text="I will try to merge the wikis, @Scortchi. However, I should say that even though I appear here as the main proponent of this tag merge, I am actually not really familiar with mixed models and my knowledge of econometrics is zero; so this terminology and the differences in definitions confuse me. I am sure many other users here could contribute a much more meaningful wiki edit..." CreationDate="2015-10-23T14:28:12.883" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8563" PostId="1970" Score="1" Text="Well at any rate it's better not to lose previous efforts &amp; it can always be improved in future." CreationDate="2015-10-23T14:36:41.160" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8564" PostId="1970" Score="1" Text="I wonder if we can recruit someone to assist with this before we merge the tags. There really is a difference between the way the names are used in econometrics vs more canonical statistics terminology. (cc @Scortchi)" CreationDate="2015-10-23T16:24:32.917" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="8568" PostId="1970" Score="2" Text="@gung, I have taken a careful look at the two wikis, and figured that I can merge them reasonably well. I did it now. Almost no text has been lost, I just copy-pasted and rearranged it (and adapted the excerpt). Just in case, I posted both tag wikis as they were before my edits as an answer here, and then deleted my answer; I believe both you and Scortchi can see the deleted answer. The wiki might not be perfect and it might be a good idea to ask somebody to take a look at it, but **I think we can go ahead with the tag merge nevertheless.** The wiki can always be edited later." CreationDate="2015-10-24T23:46:32.373" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="5461" PostId="1971" Score="3" Text="The record of your first attempted edit is at http://stats.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/28751.  It shows the Community bot did indeed reject it.  As far as I can tell it was a legitimate edit (which I would have approved); I cannot see anything that should have triggered an automatic rejection.  Strange." CreationDate="2014-03-01T20:26:07.310" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5457" PostId="1972" Score="0" Text="That's because I sent the edit a second time after receiving this:&#xA;Rejected 3 hours ago:&#xA;Community♦ reviewed this 3 hours ago: Reject" CreationDate="2014-03-01T18:53:07.163" UserId="26338" />
  <row Id="5458" PostId="1972" Score="0" Text="I don't see that in the [history](http://stats.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/history)." CreationDate="2014-03-01T19:52:18.920" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5459" PostId="1972" Score="0" Text="And the same thing just happened again: Community♦ reviewed this 12 secs ago: Reject. Should I post a screen shot?" CreationDate="2014-03-01T19:52:48.077" UserId="26338" />
  <row Id="5460" PostId="1972" Score="0" Text="Could it be that the user himself made a change to the post after my edit suggestion could be reviewed such that the system automatically rejected the change?" CreationDate="2014-03-01T19:59:07.057" UserId="26338" />
  <row Id="5462" PostId="1972" Score="1" Text="I don't see a [record](http://stats.stackexchange.com/posts/88375/revisions) of the OP making an edit around that time. From @whuber's comment above, I guess some of these things are hidden from me, so maybe it happened anyway somehow. It is also possible for the OP to reject / accept suggested edits to their post, but that should show up in the history as well. It does seem rather strange." CreationDate="2014-03-01T23:10:25.617" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5467" PostId="1973" Score="0" Text="Have you consulted our [help pages](http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/no-one-answers)?" CreationDate="2014-03-02T23:25:59.370" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5468" PostId="1973" Score="2" Text="I didn't answer it because my own knowledge of it is limited (I've read some books and papers, and had some limited exposure to using GAs), so I left it for someone with better knowledge. While I wouldn't say it's off topic here, you may get a better response on a different SE site; perhaps scicomp.SE, or cs.SE or math.SE - there might be a greater concentration of people familiar with GA on one of those (check their help pages for what exactly is on topic)." CreationDate="2014-03-03T04:29:08.800" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5469" PostId="1973" Score="1" Text="@whuber I have seen that page, which is why I edited the question previously to update the things I had tried and reformat the question a bit.  If you see some other deficiency then please tell me." CreationDate="2014-03-03T06:23:30.787" UserId="28556" />
  <row Id="5470" PostId="1973" Score="1" Text="I didn't answer because, like @Glen_b, I have very limited knowledge of genetic algorithms. In addition to the lists he suggested, you might look for a more specialized list." CreationDate="2014-03-03T10:36:51.860" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="5471" PostId="1973" Score="0" Text="@PeterFlom the only specialised list that comes to mind was the AI SE site but that never made it out of closed beta." CreationDate="2014-03-03T11:08:42.543" UserId="28556" />
  <row Id="5472" PostId="1973" Score="1" Text="How about one of the ones mentioned [here http://www.genetic-programming.org/gpmailinglist.html]" CreationDate="2014-03-03T11:30:01.083" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="5473" PostId="1973" Score="0" Text="@PeterFlom Genetic Algorithms and Genetic Programming are related but different topics.  Genetic Programming AFAIK is about finding the program that best solves a given problem.  The EC-Digest list on that page looks applicable, but not very busy.  cs.SE seems to be a better home for my question. I'll flag it for a move." CreationDate="2014-03-03T11:45:36.150" UserId="28556" />
  <row Id="5474" PostId="1975" Score="0" Text="I just edited the formatting in your question... but now that I re-read it I think I may have answered the question by doing it... Maybe you just wanted to know what [$\LaTeX$](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX) is?" CreationDate="2014-03-04T07:26:49.573" UserId="582" />
  <row Id="5475" PostId="1975" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b: note that the original question had some (unformatted) LaTeX in it... as said in my previous comment maybe I should not have edited it... waiting for the OP to explain if it's a problem of math or not..." CreationDate="2014-03-04T07:29:56.597" UserId="582" />
  <row Id="5476" PostId="1975" Score="0" Text="this is the book from where I copy pasted that code http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com/chap1.html" CreationDate="2014-03-04T07:34:29.233" UserId="35967" />
  <row Id="5477" PostId="1975" Score="0" Text="StrikeR, that all renders properly for me (it looks like mathematics not LaTeX code). My guess is you're blocking javascript in some way (I run noscript myself and have encountered the problem many times, so that's why I'm guessing that's your problem with that page)" CreationDate="2014-03-04T07:36:47.600" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5478" PostId="1975" Score="0" Text="@StrikeR: do you see those as code such as `\begin{eqnarray}` or do you actually see some mathematical notation? In the former case you should probably check you have JavaScript running correctly in your browser. That site (as this one) uses a JS engine called [MathJax](http://www.mathjax.org/) to render LaTeX code into math." CreationDate="2014-03-04T07:37:32.073" UserId="582" />
  <row Id="5479" PostId="1975" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b I have checked that link opening in other computer and it is being displayed in the form of mathematical formulae instead of this code. So, it must be the javascript problem, I'll try to look into that. And I rolled back the question as you asked." CreationDate="2014-03-04T08:16:23.973" UserId="35967" />
  <row Id="5481" PostId="1978" Score="0" Text="(1) The same policy is also applied to answers. (2) OP frequently becomes unresponsive." CreationDate="2014-03-04T18:00:04.983" UserId="2658" />
  <row Id="5482" PostId="1978" Score="4" Text="@AVB, Yes! Some workaround options: if the OP is unresponsive to comments, use your votes. Moreover, if one believe an answer is incorrect (and you know what that is), post a better one." CreationDate="2014-03-04T18:06:30.133" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="5483" PostId="1978" Score="5" Text="In this particular example, the error was obvious, serious and noted by more than one person. I'd have made the change myself eventually (I commented, hoping for the person who owned the answer would fix it; AVB was the person asking the question, to my recollection). While caution is certainly called for I don't think we should be overly dogmatic about never doing it, since mistaken edits can be undone (and in this particular case, the suggested edit would be reviewed). High reputation users would need to be extra-extra-careful because their edits will go through unreviewed." CreationDate="2014-03-05T00:13:49.567" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5484" PostId="1978" Score="0" Text="Incidentally, the fact that it won't let you make a one-character edit is a good thing (since it's a reminder to think very very carefully about what we're doing), but it's easy to get around. For example, `$\text{ }$` at the end of a paragraph (perhaps with a note in the explanation of the edit - e.g. `fixed formula, &quot;$\text{ }$&quot; because of 6 char. limit`); that can easily be removed by a subsequent edit if any further edits are made." CreationDate="2014-03-05T00:19:59.703" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5485" PostId="1978" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b, If that situation was obvious, then just using the good sense is ok. The answer was written more in a general context." CreationDate="2014-03-05T01:24:21.440" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="13835" PostId="1979" Score="0" Text="I cannot understand from your answer if you are for or against OP's proposal of removing the at-least-six-characters edit limit for formulas." CreationDate="2017-07-20T08:26:26.627" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13839" PostId="1979" Score="2" Text="@amoeba I point out that being able to make such a change would be consistent with the policy on editing (in the absence of the limit), and aside raising some precautions about it (such as being sure to give a clear reason for it), I believe my answer is clearly in favour. (if subdued in expression)." CreationDate="2017-07-20T08:55:39.150" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13840" PostId="1979" Score="0" Text="OK, thanks for clarifying. Your position was not very clear to me because one could argue that removing six-char limit *altogether* would be consistent with the policy on editing (&quot;to fix spelling mistakes&quot;) as well. Nevertheless, this limit exists and I am guessing it is unlikely to be removed any time soon." CreationDate="2017-07-20T08:58:47.250" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="5486" PostId="1982" Score="3" Text="Could you tell us how your vision of a tutorial differs from existing mechanisms, especially self-answered questions and our blog?" CreationDate="2014-03-06T04:32:31.293" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5487" PostId="1982" Score="2" Text="@Glen_b spells out that this is possible in principle and occasionally done in practice. Why not done more? A good answer might take somewhere between 2 minutes and 2 hours to write, and that's to many people acceptable, especially if one wants to see the answer oneself! Some of the more spectacular answers probably take much more. But to me a tutorial, even on territory on which I am comfortable, would take more like 2 days or 2 weeks, and I won't give the time, or more precisely I would give the time but it will end up as something I should be doing any way (e.g. a paper or lecture)." CreationDate="2014-03-06T11:08:27.587" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5488" PostId="1982" Score="1" Text="For whuber's question, I envision a separate area of CV specifically geared towards topical instruction. I view it as a reference, and the difference would be that the approach is not specific to a particular user's question/problem. For me, if I need knowledge of a statistical area, I usually go to a text or a reference like $\it{Kendall's \ Advanced \ Theory \ of \ Statistics}.$ Online, I try Wikipedia first. Both of these are valued sources, but I think we could provide another one that gives general instruction (and worked examples, too) of great value to the general users." CreationDate="2014-03-06T14:22:52.377" UserId="24073" />
  <row Id="5490" PostId="1983" Score="2" Text="@gung thanks for the edit. Your expression was better-chosen than mine." CreationDate="2014-03-07T01:12:20.257" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5489" PostId="1984" Score="7" Text="They don't exist because nobody created them. That doesn't imply any kind of prejudice; it's simply that nobody has felt the need to do so. (Given that nobody has felt the need in over three and a half years and almost 33 thousand questions, that's a pretty good argument that they *aren't* needed.) Personally, I feel the 'soft question' tag is a bad idea for several reasons (for example (i) it introduces an utterly subjective category that (ii) indirectly labels some questions to be less important/valuable than others). Statistics is not simply mathematics and needn't use the same sets of tags" CreationDate="2014-03-07T01:07:58.660" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5491" PostId="1984" Score="5" Text="Not all rules are equally enforced on all sites, &amp; I am not part of the group actively participating in math.SE. However, `[soft-question]` is clearly a *meta tag* &amp; SE policy is that meta tags are [explicitly discouraged](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/). `[career-development]` seems fine, if people wanted to ask questions about that, `[advice]` seems ambiguous, but `[soft-question]` I would be against." CreationDate="2014-03-07T02:20:16.587" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5492" PostId="1984" Score="0" Text="why the downvote? I am asking a question, surely disagreeing with the question is not a reason for a downvote?" CreationDate="2014-03-08T11:45:00.050" UserId="41431" />
  <row Id="5494" PostId="1984" Score="7" Text="Don't take it personally, @hmmmm. I am one of the downvoters. I rarely downvote on CV, but do much more frequently on meta.CV. Downvotes have different meanings on the 2 sites: on main sites, it means you think the answer is wrong or poorly done, etc; on meta sites, it means you don't agree w/ the suggestion, but it doesn't imply that it was poorly done or incorrect or some such." CreationDate="2014-03-08T16:16:49.433" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5497" PostId="1984" Score="1" Text="See also http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/224759/246931 about the soft-question tag on MSO." CreationDate="2014-03-10T01:59:27.717" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5498" PostId="1984" Score="3" Text="Downvotes on meta don't mean it was a bad question, they generally mean &quot;I don't think this idea is a good way for the site to go&quot;. They're certainly not personal. (I didn't downvote - but I didn't upvote what is a perfectly reasonable thing to ask about, for the reason that it would tend here to indicate agreement)" CreationDate="2014-03-11T00:21:54.497" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5495" PostId="1988" Score="2" Text="$This is a test of how a fairly long comment will render if all of it is wrapped inside a pair of dollar signs making MathJax think it's a single very long math expression.  Let's see what happens...$" CreationDate="2014-03-09T22:35:56.810" UserId="9808" />
  <row Id="5496" PostId="1988" Score="1" Text="Hmm, it's not so bad for me, since MathJax breaks the line at the comma after &quot;dollar signs&quot;. I wonder what happens if I remove the comma..." CreationDate="2014-03-09T22:40:11.700" UserId="9808" />
  <row Id="5499" PostId="1990" Score="2" Text="See http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/users/5739/stask for a frank (but in my view fair) comment about the use of `user#` handles." CreationDate="2014-03-12T09:30:10.083" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5500" PostId="1990" Score="3" Text="I sense more questions from people taking introductory statistics courses at undergraduate level than is implied here, but if that's true it strengthens the argument here, as such people are not thinking about jobs or careers, just the last lecture or the next assignment." CreationDate="2014-03-12T10:16:45.673" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6967" PostId="1990" Score="0" Text="I was wondering what you meant by &quot;studying math for their own enjoyment&quot;, do you mean whilst undertaking an Msc/Phd or some sort of independent home study?" CreationDate="2015-05-04T14:18:48.890" UserId="41431" />
  <row Id="9442" PostId="1992" Score="0" Text="Relevant meta.SO post [Should I remove fluff when editing questions?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/260776/should-i-remove-fluff-when-editing-questions); of course these things don't have to be identical across sites, but they do indicate the expectations of many people who come here." CreationDate="2016-02-25T22:44:19.747" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5594" PostId="1993" Score="1" Text="&quot;I've never seen anyone starting their answer with &quot;this is too simple for this site&quot; or likewise statements&quot; - Let me present Exhibit A: A question that I posted some time ago: http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/41789/what-makes-a-glm-estimate-the-means-differently-from-the-actual-sample-means" CreationDate="2014-04-09T15:29:03.360" UserId="3812" />
  <row Id="5595" PostId="1993" Score="0" Text="Just that I haven't seen it in almost one year of active membership doesn't mean it wouldn't happen. I'm sorry for your experience but in general this isn't how the community treats new users" CreationDate="2014-04-09T19:10:31.400" UserId="26338" />
  <row Id="5596" PostId="1993" Score="0" Text="Sorry, I misread your statement. It was I who started my *question* with a statement saying that it probably was a &quot;n00b question&quot; :)" CreationDate="2014-04-10T11:30:48.560" UserId="3812" />
  <row Id="5501" PostId="1995" Score="1" Text="Very close agreement. &quot;Dumb questions&quot;: I sometimes  think if it really is a dumb question, then don't ask it, or why can't you find out; but naturally beginner questions are fine, not least because lots of statistics is weird even when you are accustomed to it. Claims of urgency or desperation and other attempts at emotional blackmail are unacceptable; the principle of charity here is answering interesting questions because it benefits many, not addressing the personal situation of the questioner. Add for me &quot;I am not a statistician&quot; as a plea for extra help; well, I am not one either!" CreationDate="2014-03-14T09:32:59.843" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5502" PostId="1995" Score="1" Text="Good point about the `[basic-concepts]` tag. I never really thought about it. I have added it to a couple of Qs, but never in a pejorative way. Come to think of it, do you suppose it's a meta-tag? I haven't had any big objection to it, but maybe it should be banned. I always thought of it as a way to collect several categories that might be too small otherwise; basically for the type of info that comes in the 1st 1/3 of stats 101 (eg, difference b/t mean &amp; median, what is a histogram, etc)." CreationDate="2014-03-14T14:15:11.773" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5503" PostId="1996" Score="4" Text="This seems to match widespread current practice. The principle could be &quot;If it's worth editing, it's worth editing well&quot;, but doesn't exclude correcting one non-trivial slip." CreationDate="2014-03-14T15:38:58.683" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5504" PostId="1996" Score="1" Text="Given the worry over bumping the thread, is there any stackexchange support or hope of support for a minor/major edit distinction? Wikipedia has a minor edit checkbox, but I can see making minor edit the default here, with an explicit opt-in for new material that create a bump. Dreaming, I assume..." CreationDate="2014-03-14T18:49:37.100" UserId="1191" />
  <row Id="5505" PostId="1996" Score="1" Text="I'm afraid I'm not familiar w/ the minor / major edit distinction, @xan, but might be asking this: [Feature to edit without bumping?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/755/7290)" CreationDate="2014-03-14T19:13:32.490" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5506" PostId="1996" Score="1" Text="Yes @gung. Good to see it's already been discussed even if not with the outcome I was looking for." CreationDate="2014-03-14T22:54:10.203" UserId="1191" />
  <row Id="5509" PostId="1999" Score="0" Text="Yes, there is a recent spike of software questions which are migrated to SO, but in my opinion they were better suited for SO, i.e. little to nothing of statistical content. The problem is however that if worded correctly they might have stayed on here." CreationDate="2014-03-21T07:41:57.973" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="5510" PostId="1999" Score="4" Text="Perhaps you could link to some examples" CreationDate="2014-03-21T13:13:27.603" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="5511" PostId="1999" Score="2" Text="There does seem to be an increase in the number of threads popping up in the close queue recently (not just off-topic). Many I agree w/, but there have been some that I thought were ambiguous &amp; where the OP could have gotten the benefit of the doubt (at least for a little while) or at least gotten a comment to help them. If you want to review our close policies &amp; discuss this, it may be better to open a new thread, rather than resurrect this one." CreationDate="2014-03-21T14:51:07.160" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5512" PostId="1999" Score="2" Text="We can agree that this is an area of difficulty. But the thread at http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1744/r-questions-on-topic-for-cv (Sept 2013) is much more recent than this. Also, although that thread and some other discussions unsurprisingly showed some disagreement, the net result was absolutely no change in the policy as laid out in the help center. This implies a need for a statistical core to any question here, regardless of whether it is about statistical software. (Please) find my bug, review my code, or tell me the code are all unacceptable otherwise." CreationDate="2014-03-21T18:14:30.397" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5525" PostId="1999" Score="1" Text="@Scortchi Sorry, I just realized I hadn't come back and responded to this. Fair question. [Here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22645373/r-point-correlation-curve-and-excel-output-need-to-find-points) is a recent example of what I see as having an underlying statistical question with a software element that I think falls well inside what would be treated as on topic from the tenor of the answers here, yet it was migrated so quickly (in the space of about an hour from posting) that I didn't even get to see it (in spite of only being asleep a few hours). Such posts are pretty common lately." CreationDate="2014-03-25T22:38:34.737" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5544" PostId="1999" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b: Unfortunately that's been deleted from SO." CreationDate="2014-03-27T17:10:14.177" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="5514" PostId="2001" Score="0" Text="You haven't seen it happening on other sites? That's odd...I sure have." CreationDate="2014-03-24T03:10:52.067" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5515" PostId="2001" Score="1" Text="@NickStauner the other sites I use have very different characteristics in terms of frequency of questions and frequency of unanswered questions. I also use them differently too." CreationDate="2014-03-24T13:02:19.533" UserId="25936" />
  <row Id="5620" PostId="2002" Score="1" Text="How ironic, my post on edits by the community moderator bot was edited by the community moderator bot." CreationDate="2014-04-23T13:36:16.807" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5516" PostId="2004" Score="0" Text="The FAQs are the frequently answered or asked questions, which means most. A negative principle here is not being Wikipedia, but only for other reasons are the better answers being edited to approach something definitive. The more solid questions are usually better than W., especially when they capture a range of views on contested or complicated issues. I'd phrase this as centred on how do we persuade new and/or low-reputation visitors to read the help and use the resources (except that I don't know any data on visits to existing pages that resulted in happy visitors and no new question)." CreationDate="2014-03-25T16:16:01.540" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5517" PostId="2004" Score="2" Text="I wish I had an answer to the part about FAQs, because I spend too much time every day looking up duplicates to new questions.  The Community Wiki question is addressed on Meta SO at http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts." CreationDate="2014-03-25T16:30:56.597" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5518" PostId="2004" Score="1" Text="We don't seem to have a `[faq]` tag like they do on SO (eg, [r-faq](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/r-faq)). I wonder if we should? Note that SO's are language specific, whereas one here would end up filled w/ heterogeneous material on r, hypothesis testing, regression, clustering, pca, etc. A real question is whether it would actually help make material better organized &amp; more accessible." CreationDate="2014-03-25T16:36:40.203" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5519" PostId="2004" Score="0" Text="I'm a bit disappointed to learn this.  We need a permanent place for FAQs and need to have a single place to see what is there, so that we refer &quot;new&quot; questions to that place instead of duplicating answers.  I don't think a question being frequently asked helps organize the site, because it can be frequently asked in duplicate and under other guises." CreationDate="2014-03-25T17:13:38.887" UserId="4253" />
  <row Id="5523" PostId="2004" Score="2" Text="This is becoming reminiscent of the recent thread http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1982/why-doesnt-cv-offer-tutorials which pivoted around the obvious &quot;Why no X? Because no one wrote one&quot;. Somebody so inclined could write a FAQ that fit our format; whether it was labelled as such would be secondary." CreationDate="2014-03-25T21:01:50.637" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5524" PostId="2004" Score="0" Text="How would it be formatted Nick, as a new question titled &quot;Statistics FAQ&quot; that is heavily monitored and curated by the community?" CreationDate="2014-03-25T21:07:02.330" UserId="4253" />
  <row Id="5526" PostId="2004" Score="0" Text="I'd like to see some suggestions from the moderators here, but anybody posting and then answering a question as if it were an FAQ would presumably get edits, comments and votes on merit. A random example could be &quot;FAQ: Why are stepwise model selection procedures often criticised? Do they have no merits?&quot;. Nor would FAQ flavour rule out other answers." CreationDate="2014-03-26T01:27:11.587" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5527" PostId="2004" Score="1" Text="I guess the challenge is that we might want all the FAQs to be seen on a single page so would need to know how to format sub-questions. (?)" CreationDate="2014-03-26T12:38:44.030" UserId="4253" />
  <row Id="5539" PostId="2004" Score="2" Text="I see little point in debating the detail about a category that doesn't exist yet. If someone is able and willing to write something of FAQ character or style they have a chance to set precedents for how to do it, and in turn others might do something differently. Let standardization or tolerance of diversity arise as a question of its own accord." CreationDate="2014-03-27T01:06:31.487" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5541" PostId="2004" Score="1" Text="Nick let's at least figure out if we want one big question that keeps having individual FAQs added to it, or a separate topic for each FAQ with a title like FAQ: Does x imply y?  And what is the role of &quot;Community&quot; vs. individual postings?  Sorry there's some things I've never taken the time to understand." CreationDate="2014-03-27T12:05:00.853" UserId="4253" />
  <row Id="5520" PostId="2006" Score="5" Text="FWIW, I am sympathetic to the sentiments expressed in this question. I hold a degree in philosophy." CreationDate="2014-03-25T20:15:45.020" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5521" PostId="2006" Score="1" Text="Thanks for the response. Maybe I'm just an inexperienced user. When I see a post that's off-topic, I vote to close it, then I navigate to &quot;off-topic&quot; where I am given the option to select one of three related SE networks: Math, Computer Science, and Meta.  I think that in part explains the lack of votes to close questions suited for philosophy (my own and others). However, I can agree with the need to solicit opinions of statisticians." CreationDate="2014-03-25T20:51:45.440" UserId="8013" />
  <row Id="5522" PostId="2006" Score="7" Text="It's my impression that much (quasi)philosophical discussion of Bayesian vs frequentist statistics is within blogs, e.g. the Gelman blog, Deborah Mayo's blog. But I really would not see that as off-topic here, so long as it fit the question and answer format." CreationDate="2014-03-25T20:57:44.303" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5528" PostId="2007" Score="1" Text="I think the part where it says &quot;..or some R code available to compute standard errors for LASSO predictions&quot; played a major role for the decision made. Also, the custom closing reason on SO: &quot;questions asking for code&quot; does not exist anymore. However, I also believe there is room for discussion about if it should be migrated or not." CreationDate="2014-03-26T13:54:01.227" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="5529" PostId="2007" Score="2" Text="@AndreSilva The relevant closing reason is &quot;Questions asking us to recommend a tool, library, or favorite off-site resource are off-topic for Stack Overflow ...&quot;" CreationDate="2014-03-26T14:04:10.427" UserId="11849" />
  <row Id="5531" PostId="2008" Score="4" Text="There is not exactly a requirement for a reproducible example on the SO R-tag. It's only encouraged rather strongly to include one. But that only concerns the quality of a question and not if it is on-topic." CreationDate="2014-03-26T14:30:33.510" UserId="11849" />
  <row Id="5536" PostId="2008" Score="0" Text="+1 (more) for &quot;people seem to believe that all questions should have a home somewhere in the SE system&quot;. For example, many, perhaps most, Stata questions on SO are learner-users wanting code. They tend to get tolerated, but people are often warned that they should try writing code." CreationDate="2014-03-26T19:10:23.303" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11188" PostId="2008" Score="0" Text="I would consider 'or what is the package for' as on topic here. It *is* part of domain knowledge for a statistician." CreationDate="2016-10-19T07:58:51.143" UserId="603" />
  <row Id="5547" PostId="2009" Score="4" Text="+1, most especially for the caution on not migrating borderline questions. I think it's been a particular problem lately - questions which look to me to have at least an on-topic element are being migrated because they mention code, when often all they need is a minor edit to make them clearly on topic here; often the OP is more than happy with that and will make changes themselves if encouraged to do so." CreationDate="2014-03-28T00:41:56.277" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5532" PostId="2010" Score="2" Text="When I paste your text into an answer on the main site it does not work, but when I delete the link and use the link tool to recreate it it works just fine. The difference appears to be a matter of whitespace in front of the target `[1]: http://...`." CreationDate="2014-03-26T18:55:15.240" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5533" PostId="2010" Score="1" Text="Don't know what happened, but after trying a couple of times, the link was fixed." CreationDate="2014-03-26T18:58:11.680" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="5534" PostId="2010" Score="0" Text="Thanks both; whatever you did @AndreSilva seems to have worked as now the inline notation works too. And in case you are wondering, I *did* check this again this morning before posting here and it wasn't working then :-)" CreationDate="2014-03-26T19:02:04.053" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="5537" PostId="2010" Score="2" Text="I'm not sure what the problem is here. @whuber is right about the whitespace being finicky; you also need 2 blank lines (carriage returns) before the link references. But if I do that 1st, &amp; then paste in your link reference, it still doesn't work. If I use the link tool, it works fine, even though I can verify that they are identical. Odd..." CreationDate="2014-03-26T21:22:35.857" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5538" PostId="2011" Score="6" Text="In this case I agree that the question belongs on CV, but the wider issue remains difficult. I think it is easy to identify questions that fall between CV and SO. For example, someone posts a project description and then asks for complete code. Or someone posts a long program and then asks for debugging. On the other hand, those who think that any question on statistical computing belongs somewhere on either site should advise on what happens to kinds of questions that in practice no-one wants to answer. As we don't ever promise that all questions will be answered, they could just lie there." CreationDate="2014-03-27T01:02:47.177" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5540" PostId="2011" Score="1" Text="Since even relatively new users like me can vote to close pending migration (I voted against migration in your question's case), I'm not sure blame rests with the mods, as to some extent I expect they try to act on the votes of other users like us. Because the issue is very debatable as we've seen lately, I'm afraid there's some lack of clarity on where to draw the line. This probably most affects non-mod users like me who don't fully understand the issue and tend to vote in support of those who seem to. More reason for us to work harder at defining a line clearly so we can resolve confusion." CreationDate="2014-03-27T02:16:01.010" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5542" PostId="2011" Score="3" Text="I have only been here for about a year, but no topic seems to arise so much on meta and elsewhere. Long debates about six months ago produced no change in the policy encapsulated at http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic; namely, ask software authors directly about possible bugs; &#xA;if it needs statistical expertise to understand or answer, ask it here; if it's about an algorithm, routine data processing, or details of the language, ask elsewhere. But it still takes close reading to distinguish questions like Rob's from code review or tell me the code or package to use questions." CreationDate="2014-03-27T13:22:48.747" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5543" PostId="2011" Score="3" Text="@NickS As a moderator I pay attention to how others are voting and use that to understand how the community feels about issues. However, I make decisions independently and do not &quot;try to act&quot; on your votes; sometimes I find my vote is in the minority. Over time and with experience my view has evolved to where it is pretty closely aligned with what Rob Hyndman expresses here: we should be allowing a broad definition of on-topic questions. I still draw the line at &quot;write code for me&quot; or &quot;what did this program/app/script do wrong&quot; or &quot;what is the command to do `x` in system `y`&quot; questions." CreationDate="2014-03-27T15:07:26.303" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5545" PostId="2011" Score="1" Text="@whuber: Glad to hear it, but not at all surprised. Your process sounds exactly like what I'd meant by &quot;to some extent&quot; :) Thanks for your perspective. It seems the third class is most contentious. Arguably, `x` $=$ `standard errors for LASSO prediction` and `y` $=$ `R`. If you agree with @Rob but draw your line before this, I wonder if this means you think there is a truly off-topic element in the OP-linked question (the last sentence), but feel the question is on-topic overall. Maybe because it required statistical expertise to provide a negative but useful answer?" CreationDate="2014-03-27T20:26:40.330" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5546" PostId="2011" Score="1" Text="I'll have to follow up on this later, but I don't see any meaningful difference between `What is the code to do ROC analysis in R?`, which everyone seems to agree would be off-topic, &amp; `What is the package to do ROC analysis in R?`, which I think is equally off-topic." CreationDate="2014-03-27T22:45:06.093" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5549" PostId="2011" Score="0" Text="@gung I perceive a subtle distinction between the two. &quot;What is the code&quot; is asking for commands or operations within a computing system or application that is known to provide a particular service or computation. &quot;What is the package&quot; is seeking a new capability that is presently unavailable. Although the relationship is extremely close, I believe the knowledge needed to answer, as well as the nature of the potential answers, differs distinctly. The latter bears a close relationship to questions about books or Internet resources, which are on topic." CreationDate="2014-03-28T15:28:06.750" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5551" PostId="2011" Score="2" Text="@whuber, the analogy to books is interesting, but I don't think I agree. The answer to the 1st question is `pred = prediction(predict(mod, type=&quot;response&quot;), y); perf = performance(pred, &quot;tpr&quot;, &quot;fpr&quot;); plot(perf)`. The answer to the 2nd question is &quot;Try [ROCR](http://rocr.bioinf.mpi-sb.mpg.de/)&quot;. Both answers are accurate, complete, &amp; include no statistical information at all. W/ books, the OP presumably doesn't know or understand something about statistics &amp; answers pointing the OP towards specific references convey statistical information indirectly." CreationDate="2014-03-28T20:07:16.743" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5552" PostId="2011" Score="1" Text="I see what you're saying. I could stretch the point a little and note that &quot;Try XXX&quot; can say a lot, because (1) the existence and name of &quot;XXX&quot; are useful information for the statistician and (2) &quot;XXX&quot; likely comes with documentation; at a minimum, it is a useful tool to supply statistical information. I think the best way to press your point would be to focus on how broad or narrow the information might be: an add-on to a statistical package is useful and understandable *only* to people using that package, whereas books and Web sites should be universally intelligible and useful." CreationDate="2014-03-28T20:18:21.703" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5548" PostId="2012" Score="1" Text="I focus on actionable behavior (as opposed to debating the need for such an faq thread) as no action came out of previous discussion. I suspect any of the suggestions will have a net positive impact on the community - it is just necessary for some key individuals to take the steps to get the ball rolling." CreationDate="2014-03-28T01:46:53.837" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="5550" PostId="2012" Score="4" Text="Sounds good to me.  When I have time in a couple of weeks I'll start a controversial one to see how the process works, e.g. FAQ: How do you interpret a large $P$-value?" CreationDate="2014-03-28T16:06:03.913" UserId="4253" />
  <row Id="6381" PostId="2012" Score="1" Text="@Frank: It looks like you never got around writing this large p-value FAQ. Are you still thinking of doing it?" CreationDate="2014-12-12T14:20:49.807" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6382" PostId="2012" Score="0" Text="Yes, just haven't had time." CreationDate="2014-12-12T14:22:50.493" UserId="4253" />
  <row Id="5553" PostId="2013" Score="1" Text="I doubt your university access allows you to repost those papers on a public site like this." CreationDate="2014-03-31T14:06:38.557" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5555" PostId="2013" Score="1" Text="That's disappointing as it would really help with my questions" CreationDate="2014-03-31T14:10:17.437" UserId="12492" />
  <row Id="5556" PostId="2013" Score="6" Text="You can always quote relevant sections of anything under the [fair use rule](http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/fair-use-rule-copyright-material-30100.html)." CreationDate="2014-03-31T14:11:34.013" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5559" PostId="2013" Score="7" Text="Many on this site likely also have access to the manuscript via academic affiliations. A citation or link to a major bibliographic database (e.g. MEDLINE/PubMed) should suffice. A search of the author's website or a preprint server (e.g. [aRxiv](http://arxiv.org/), [bioRxiv](http://biorxiv.org/)) might yield a preprint of the manuscript, which will be publicly accessible." CreationDate="2014-03-31T14:45:07.587" UserId="2981" />
  <row Id="5557" PostId="2014" Score="0" Text="Regarding screenshots, often to make sense of the statistics in the results section, one also needs information contained in the methods section. Do you think posting parts of both the methods and results sections are within fair use?" CreationDate="2014-03-31T14:15:01.333" UserId="12492" />
  <row Id="5558" PostId="2014" Score="3" Text="Probably, you could keep it as minimal as possible, if you are worried. Posting screenshots of the whole paper would be off-limits, but where the line is located is a gray area." CreationDate="2014-03-31T14:16:49.623" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5560" PostId="2014" Score="3" Text="(+1) One rule (I don't know its origin) is that professors may scan and post (on a private academic site) up to 15% of the pages of a textbook for *internal* use by students in a class. Thus, 15% would seem to be an upper bound for the amount of a paper that would be considered fair use." CreationDate="2014-03-31T15:10:14.427" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5564" PostId="2015" Score="2" Text="This is very helpful, not least in reminding people that this is an international forum, which remarkably often seems to be forgotten or ignored. I'd say that the question is one of ethics and etiquette as much as of law: if you have access to certain documents only because of a particular workplace or study place affiliation or licence, you don't have moral rights to reproduce large fractions of that material, but quotations in practice don't bother many people (otherwise scholarship and science would be impossible)." CreationDate="2014-04-01T08:34:25.787" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5565" PostId="2015" Score="2" Text="@Nick Yes, there's nearly always some level of accommodation to make scholarship possible, and I think it would be reasonable to take some basic level to be widespread enough to proceed ... as long as we remember it may not always go quite as far as we might assume from seeing widespread discussion of the situation under US law." CreationDate="2014-04-01T08:48:01.730" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5573" PostId="2015" Score="1" Text="Excellent points. I wonder whose laws would apply if someone actually were to sue, and who would be liable. For instance, if both the asker and answerer are from different countries in South America, might a party in USA sue SE itself under USA law? I wonder if we could take further advantage of that Australian law student's enthusiasm..." CreationDate="2014-04-02T01:42:51.147" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5574" PostId="2016" Score="0" Text="This is strange, because one can't flag a question as duplicate if the original does not have at least one upvoted answer." CreationDate="2014-04-03T11:40:25.547" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="5575" PostId="2016" Score="1" Text="@Andre A moderator can close a question that hasn't been flagged though." CreationDate="2014-04-03T21:15:40.150" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5566" PostId="2018" Score="2" Text="You're a long way from 32K.  Please visit http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/privileges to review which privileges are associated with which levels of reputation. Question deletion does not become possible until 10K, so I would guess you cannot read deleted material until you have reached that level.  Consider contributing some good answers to our site; they can help grow reputation faster." CreationDate="2014-04-01T18:30:55.110" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5567" PostId="2018" Score="0" Text="I am already 32800, following the link in my post and also here http://stats.stackexchange.com/users/1005/tim." CreationDate="2014-04-01T18:34:03.763" UserId="1005" />
  <row Id="5568" PostId="2018" Score="0" Text="Sorry; you are misreading the numbers." CreationDate="2014-04-01T18:34:36.727" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5569" PostId="2018" Score="4" Text="@whuber, I think this is an SE April fools day gag. They are offering &quot;magic unicoins&quot; that you can use to do things like increase your reputation, etc. I suspect it will last 1 day only, and not have any real effects (ie, no extra privileges)." CreationDate="2014-04-01T18:41:45.097" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5570" PostId="2018" Score="1" Text="Thanks @gung. I feel deceived, because the unicoins have no effect on how *I* read the reputation values. Such a stark difference in how the site is presented to two people creates potential for misunderstandings, conflicts, and worse. I like a joke as much as anyone but this one doesn't look funny to me.  Tim, I am sorry about the misunderstanding." CreationDate="2014-04-01T18:45:52.583" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5571" PostId="2018" Score="0" Text="@whuber: Sorry that you feel deceived." CreationDate="2014-04-01T18:50:16.930" UserId="1005" />
  <row Id="5572" PostId="2019" Score="0" Text="it is just my little fantasy." CreationDate="2014-04-01T18:52:56.080" UserId="1005" />
  <row Id="5579" PostId="2021" Score="0" Text="+1 for &quot;close the older one&quot;. I often think that's the better solution, but it doesn't seem to be used by default." CreationDate="2014-04-06T17:06:40.863" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5580" PostId="2021" Score="1" Text="@gung As a matter of policy I believe this should be decided by each SE separately, through a users-vote or a decision by the moderators. The problem is that the existing set up of closing questions should be enriched in order to close the older question _and_ label it with the correct message, and this I think requires a feature request." CreationDate="2014-04-06T19:02:10.847" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="5581" PostId="2021" Score="3" Text="Usually the older thread has accumulated comments and/or replies, indicating closure would be inappropriate. For *orphan* posts, though, which have gotten no attention at all, it does make a lot of sense to close them in favor of the newer one." CreationDate="2014-04-07T20:42:39.693" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5582" PostId="2021" Score="0" Text="@whuber This is indeed a needed distinction for older posts, thanks for pointing it out. About that &quot;feature request&quot;, should somebody open a new meta-question for it, or it is up to moderators to take it to the SE engineers?" CreationDate="2014-04-07T20:55:45.870" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="5583" PostId="2021" Score="0" Text="Mods rarely contact the SE team about suggestions posted on our meta site unless they are truly urgent. Presumably, somebody on the SE team will review these posts eventually. For more attention to this issue--which concerns an SE-wide behavior--consider posting your suggestions on meta.SO." CreationDate="2014-04-07T20:59:54.240" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5577" PostId="2022" Score="4" Text="@AndreSilva This site is not for teaching math to newbies, it's about how to be a teacher. So the questions are about how to design a course, how to write exams, etc." CreationDate="2014-04-06T15:17:20.697" UserId="18177" />
  <row Id="5584" PostId="2022" Score="2" Text="*There have already been a few statistics education questions* - only two with the 'statistics' tag (i.e. less than 1%) so far." CreationDate="2014-04-08T02:57:56.323" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5588" PostId="2022" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b: Literally, less than 1% are only a few indeed." CreationDate="2014-04-08T13:33:52.897" UserId="36465" />
  <row Id="5585" PostId="2023" Score="6" Text="I think not. You can only accept answers to your own questions. But nothing stops you flagging in an edit to your question that there is a better answer elsewhere and that's a fine positive contribution." CreationDate="2014-04-08T11:28:37.057" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5586" PostId="2023" Score="2" Text="This appears to refer to http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/91750/how-is-the-formula-for-the-standard-error-of-the-slope-in-linear-regression-deri" CreationDate="2014-04-08T11:30:13.553" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5587" PostId="2023" Score="0" Text="That is correct." CreationDate="2014-04-08T11:33:40.727" UserId="42717" />
  <row Id="5590" PostId="2023" Score="1" Text="Nice thought. The correct thing to do would be to vote up the answer, which you will be able to do with another 2 reputation..." CreationDate="2014-04-08T22:50:25.763" UserId="25936" />
  <row Id="5591" PostId="2023" Score="4" Text="Mysteriously, some more reputation has appeared. You could now upvote it and mention its value in your question." CreationDate="2014-04-09T03:01:11.243" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5597" PostId="2026" Score="13" Text="Just looking at the first page of example questions near half are about efficient storage or retrieval of data - which I totally agree are very important for an analyst job. These are not currently on topic  on SO (and definitely not on topic here). They are maybe on topic at the [database site](http://dba.stackexchange.com/), but my impressions are the goals of the DB administrators are so different they would not be a good fit (see existing tags on the database site)." CreationDate="2014-04-13T13:17:56.073" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="5600" PostId="2026" Score="10" Text="It seems like a reboot of a failed [Big data](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/40518/big-data), and reboots are rarely successful..." CreationDate="2014-04-13T20:54:06.273" UserDisplayName="user88" />
  <row Id="5601" PostId="2026" Score="11" Text="Maybe they should start with defining the &quot;data science&quot; term. I still don't understand what it is. I have seen many people who call themselves &quot;data scientists&quot;. It's hard to find a pattern to describe them, they are so diverse." CreationDate="2014-04-14T13:35:49.800" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="5621" PostId="2026" Score="10" Text="@Aksakal As someone once flippantly put it &quot;Data science is statistics done on a Mac.&quot;" CreationDate="2014-04-23T23:08:27.310" UserId="5836" />
  <row Id="5622" PostId="2026" Score="1" Text="Just as an update: The site now reached 100% commitment, so we'll see how it goes in the beta." CreationDate="2014-04-24T15:25:46.317" UserId="8413" />
  <row Id="5967" PostId="2026" Score="3" Text="Here are other important meta-questions of theirs: [Are questions about Statistics on-topic?](http://meta.datascience.stackexchange.com/q/71/2810), [When is it okay to cross-post to on Data Science from Cross Validated?](http://meta.datascience.stackexchange.com/q/37/2810), and [How is Data Science Different From Cross-Validated?](http://meta.datascience.stackexchange.com/q/13/2810)" CreationDate="2014-08-02T20:18:42.893" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5598" PostId="2027" Score="0" Text="The questions didn't seem to be about how to get a regression model in `R`, eg, though." CreationDate="2014-04-13T14:07:53.580" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5599" PostId="2027" Score="5" Text="FWIW, here's Yavar's example question: &quot;How can I train Baum Welch Algorithm used in Hidden Markov Model in Mahout in parallel?&quot; Parallel processing in Mahout is probably off-topic here, but there seem to be [several related topics on SO](http://stackoverflow.com/search?q=parallel+mahout)...I suspect they're not entirely sure either, as was the case with the Mental Fitness beta that closed recently." CreationDate="2014-04-13T20:33:45.467" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5611" PostId="2027" Score="0" Text="I agree with you. +1" CreationDate="2014-04-17T22:26:42.493" UserId="1005" />
  <row Id="5614" PostId="2027" Score="2" Text="There are more than [50,000 questions tagged r on StackOverflow](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/r) and almost [6000 on CrossValidated](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/r)" CreationDate="2014-04-19T18:56:56.480" UserId="2958" />
  <row Id="6083" PostId="2027" Score="1" Text="@Henry that's a testament to the volume of questions and confusion as to what warrants an `r` tag here. I think the site would be improved greatly to remove it altogether, but that's been discussed before and I'm in the minority. An `r` tag would be important on a data science SE since R is pretty lousy with large data management tasks." CreationDate="2014-09-19T16:42:59.800" UserId="8013" />
  <row Id="5605" PostId="2030" Score="2" Text="+1, I appreciate your thoughts. There has also been an occasional push to have an R-centered SE site. I'm not sure what I think of it, but the idea of a (general) statistical software site has merit." CreationDate="2014-04-15T14:49:30.717" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5606" PostId="2030" Score="0" Text="Factual comment: number of subscribers to Statalist as a listserver exceeded 5000." CreationDate="2014-04-15T15:02:04.740" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5608" PostId="2030" Score="12" Text="Another solution suggested by these (very well considered thoughts) is that by being only slightly more accepting of software-related questions here, we would be suitable for all needs: the data science people (which already have more than 50% overlap with us in their highest-voted example questions) and Statalist (and R, SPSS, SAS, etc). The question that arises is whether that would make such a substantial change in our site that it would drive people elsewhere." CreationDate="2014-04-16T18:43:13.057" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5612" PostId="2030" Score="0" Text="+1. I also appreciate your thoughts!" CreationDate="2014-04-17T22:27:37.537" UserId="1005" />
  <row Id="5737" PostId="2030" Score="5" Text="@whuber I do think there's something to be said for being somewhat more accepting of software-related questions; there's clear demand for them but on their own they're not likely to support a new SE site any time in the near future. We could at least look at accepting more of the ones that are not obviously on topic elsewhere." CreationDate="2014-06-15T05:34:53.543" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5609" PostId="2031" Score="0" Text="I actually kinda like duplicate questions...especially when they're altered slightly to suit their respective sites, and acknowledge one another explicitly. Also, I like to point to [this answer on MSE](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/75012/246931) ([no longer MSO!](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/228888/246931)) when there's a question worth cross-posting. The tactics there worked for me ([more or less](http://parenting.stackexchange.com/q/11283/6389))!" CreationDate="2014-04-17T05:50:09.837" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5618" PostId="2031" Score="1" Text="I actually much like duplicate questions... especially when different talented people hang out at different sites." CreationDate="2014-04-20T15:12:04.847" UserId="1005" />
  <row Id="5610" PostId="2032" Score="0" Text="Thanks for the answer. The specific question I had in mind is somewhat beside the point, I wanted to learn the proper protocol here. Anyway my question was on the use of entropy in information theory to find the information gained though a process. On the face of it it looks like a purely CV question, but the more I read into it the more it seemed the specific uses of information gain are applied to cryptography! Again, thanks for your complete answer!" CreationDate="2014-04-17T09:25:38.797" UserId="36804" />
  <row Id="5613" PostId="2034" Score="6" Text="One difficulty with linked files is link-rot (old links die leaving a question without context) - questions should, as far as possible, stand alone. If it is possible to illustrate all (or essentially all) issues with a subset that is small enough to be included in the question, that will help, since that way if a link to the fuller data dies, at least only part of the context is lost. Some excellent points in this answer." CreationDate="2014-04-19T17:31:32.383" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5615" PostId="2034" Score="1" Text="How should I include data? I was actually expecting there to be a button to upload .csv files but I cannot find this. The only ways I can think of is to paste data as text or use one of R's download from Dropbox functions" CreationDate="2014-04-20T07:39:17.893" UserId="12492" />
  <row Id="5616" PostId="2034" Score="2" Text="@Glen_b Would it maybe be a good feature request then to make it possible to upload data sets (maybe upto a certain file size) on the SE server?" CreationDate="2014-04-20T07:56:08.430" UserId="31563" />
  <row Id="5617" PostId="2034" Score="1" Text="@rbm Yes, I think it would be very useful to be able to upload data sets that are too large to include in-post, but aren't necessarily big. Even if it was just ascii formats it would be a good start." CreationDate="2014-04-20T08:21:45.447" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5619" PostId="2034" Score="0" Text="@rbm Please see http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1035/uploading-data-to-site." CreationDate="2014-04-21T16:40:53.510" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5640" PostId="2034" Score="1" Text="It is worth noting that you can overcome 1 and 2 by scrambling it. If you take data from, say, a bunch of astronomical objects, but take away coordinates, modify the dates, and add a bit of noise/offset, they are essentially useless for science, but the analysis can be the same." CreationDate="2014-05-03T07:27:05.070" UserId="44847" />
  <row Id="5623" PostId="2037" Score="0" Text="Details in terms of +10, -4 or whatever tend to be visible briefly (for the order of a day?). I can't say it's not a bug, but I'd bet this is no more and no less than the occasional downvote." CreationDate="2014-04-24T17:12:48.963" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5624" PostId="2037" Score="0" Text="@Nick I believe you can recover the entire history of such details by clicking on individual bars of the reputation graph available through your user profile." CreationDate="2014-04-24T17:32:58.707" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5625" PostId="2038" Score="6" Text="I'd forgotten about user removal. Occasionally I've noticed a small flurry of downvotes: instead of thinking &quot;Someone is annoyed with me!&quot; I should think &quot;A fan has died&quot;." CreationDate="2014-04-24T17:48:58.890" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5626" PostId="2038" Score="2" Text="The two entires you mentioned are not visible to me, I guess only mods can see them. Good to know that it's not a bug but just unrevealed items. Do you have any thoughts on the suggested additional display option (reputation changes by category)?" CreationDate="2014-04-24T18:29:46.220" UserId="27403" />
  <row Id="5627" PostId="2038" Score="1" Text="Rectification: the two entries are visible when I select &quot;show removed posts&quot; (located at the very bottom of the page) as suggested by @Nick Stauner." CreationDate="2014-04-25T12:49:37.650" UserId="27403" />
  <row Id="5633" PostId="2038" Score="0" Text="You used the term &quot;low-rep&quot;, but all types of users (low, average and high) have their casted votes removed, except &quot;very high-rep&quot; users (see reference on Jeremy Banks answer, [here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/126470/what-does-user-was-removed-mean-and-why-did-my-reputation-change-because-of-it?lq=1))." CreationDate="2014-05-02T14:11:15.807" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="5634" PostId="2038" Score="0" Text="It sounds like you're saying the same thing I did, Andre.  I didn't want to get into the details of how the system and the SE team chooses whether to reverse votes--it's not especially relevant to this thread." CreationDate="2014-05-02T14:48:29.560" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5635" PostId="2044" Score="0" Text="Tags normally are created to reflect the contents of questions and sometimes of their answers. What threads cause you to recommend creating this tag?" CreationDate="2014-05-02T23:47:50.267" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5636" PostId="2044" Score="0" Text="http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/95873/distribution-of-distance-from-center-of-sample-group is mine, although if you search for Rayleigh on CV you'll see the distribution is often referenced in questions." CreationDate="2014-05-02T23:52:51.830" UserId="34792" />
  <row Id="5637" PostId="2044" Score="2" Text="Since that's your question, you can create the tag simply by typing it in." CreationDate="2014-05-03T00:42:07.510" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5639" PostId="2046" Score="0" Text="I've noticed the same, just in the last day or thereabouts. In the past the flag has indicated items in the &quot;Suggested Edit&quot; queue, but none appear there, and even after clearing other queues, it's still there, which wasn't happening before." CreationDate="2014-05-03T05:05:15.197" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5641" PostId="2046" Score="2" Text="[This](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/230874/bring-back-the-suggested-edits-notifications-to-the-top-bar-again) seems to be relevant. I'm not sure I get everything in that account though." CreationDate="2014-05-03T09:25:59.443" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5643" PostId="2047" Score="1" Text="-1 to indicate disagreement on the basis of @gung's argument, but I've nothing against the question's clarity, research effort, usefulness, stylishness, etc. On those bases it'd be a +1 any day." CreationDate="2014-05-03T22:31:59.943" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5648" PostId="2047" Score="0" Text="Are you saying you down-voted the _question_ based on disagreement?  What about the question is disagreeable?" CreationDate="2014-05-04T12:56:07.553" UserId="34792" />
  <row Id="5652" PostId="2047" Score="0" Text="Yep. See gung's answer..." CreationDate="2014-05-04T20:12:36.637" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5655" PostId="2047" Score="0" Text="Obviously I'm relatively new here, but this seems really weird: It's a question for discussion.  I can see disagreeing with an answer, but _disagreeing with a well-formed question because you agreed with an answer to the question_?  Your background suggests some grounding in logic and philosophy: perhaps you could describe the premises or reasoning under which such an action makes sense?" CreationDate="2014-05-04T23:50:55.400" UserId="34792" />
  <row Id="5656" PostId="2047" Score="3" Text="I understand your question as containing a proposal as a premise for discussion. I don't see a need for the proposal, and I've upvoted answers to this effect. Downvotes on meta-sites (excluding MSE, the big one) are often used differently. In case it's relevant and you weren't aware, they have no ramifications for reputation here (except badges). Pardon any confusion; it's a bizarre policy that had to be explained to me once personally...I've upvoted some questions on MSE that question the policy too, FWIW. Though I've tried to follow it here, I'm not entirely sure it's a good system..." CreationDate="2014-05-05T00:12:38.683" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5657" PostId="2047" Score="3" Text="@feetwet voting works differently in meta to the main site. Here voting indicates agreement/disagreement with a position, not with the quality of the post. It's not personal in any way." CreationDate="2014-05-05T00:17:47.810" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5658" PostId="2047" Score="2" Text="Personally I'd prefer if there were the usual up and down arrows (to reward post quality, on which badges were based) *and* a second autotallied +/- which indicated agreement/disagreement (when relevant) and which always gave both + and - numbers (+4 means something different on a 54/48 split than on a 4/0 split)" CreationDate="2014-05-05T00:23:36.687" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5659" PostId="2047" Score="0" Text="Thanks, I did not know that.  Does Meta have its own intro hidden somewhere?  It sounds like there should be a &quot;Proposal&quot; tag in the mandatory Meta tag set.  E.g., in this case I really didn't have an idea one way or the other, and the title doesn't even incorporate the key nuance in the discussion.  So even re-reading the full question it's not clear what position a voter is taking.  If I had a Proposal it would have had a decisive title like, _Resolved: Distribution tags should only include &quot;-distribution&quot; when necessary for disambiguation._  Now that's a &quot;question&quot; I could see voting on!" CreationDate="2014-05-05T02:03:37.670" UserId="34792" />
  <row Id="5642" PostId="2049" Score="0" Text="Words of wisdom, mother Mary. +1 for [sneaking in Beatles references](http://stats.stackexchange.com/a/92765/32036) (and the other merits of your answer, of course)!" CreationDate="2014-05-03T22:27:41.410" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="14523" PostId="2049" Score="0" Text="(+1) It's a pity that we still have [fisher] tag; it currently has 75 questions. All of these 75 threads should really be retagged and the tag eliminated. Do you remember if back then you removed the tag completely (and it re-appeared afterwards) or did you keep it on some threads?" CreationDate="2017-11-02T22:06:29.933" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14527" PostId="2049" Score="0" Text="I didn't remove all of them, @amoeba. Consider [Fisher Distance for feature selection](https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/41574/), it doesn't fit into any of the categories above, it is from Oct 31, '12, &amp; it has never been edited (to add or remove the tag, or for anything else for that matter). The idiosyncratic ones that didn't fit into the categories I came up with, I just left as is." CreationDate="2017-11-03T00:07:50.730" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14528" PostId="2049" Score="0" Text="I see. Well, currently I would say that if there are idiosyncratic uses of [fisher] tag then it's better to remove any Fisher-related tags from them. As long as [fisher] tag exists, people are going to use it for all sorts of things... Do you think this is worth a separate Meta discussion?" CreationDate="2017-11-03T07:32:27.917" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14532" PostId="2049" Score="1" Text="Nah, we can just start going through the threads &amp; removing the tag, @amoeba." CreationDate="2017-11-03T12:14:38.507" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14540" PostId="2049" Score="0" Text="OK. I might post something though, perhaps somebody else would join the effort." CreationDate="2017-11-03T20:58:15.927" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="5644" PostId="2050" Score="2" Text="As it stands, it conveys no useful information to me at all (while the old one did contain highly relevant information). I really liked the old one, since edits, at least, were noticed really fast. I'd rather *switch it off altogether* than have it behave like it does now." CreationDate="2014-05-04T05:08:48.893" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5645" PostId="2050" Score="1" Text="I can relate, but I get the feeling that highly active users who are on top of the review queue anyway are expected to accept this change for the good of the community. Yeah, your notification is probably less useful for you now, but the users who don't pay that much attention to reviews are now more likely to have a notification and do their part too. At least, I assume that's why review queues were emptying when Shog9 checked them; maybe this explanation is debatable." CreationDate="2014-05-04T05:27:49.293" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5646" PostId="2050" Score="2" Text="Review queues are empty here because the high reputation users work very hard to keep them empty (several users are much more diligent than me, &amp; contribute a lot to making the site work so well). I'm not sure that making that job harder in the *hope* that it might improve things long term is going to avoid *longer* queues. To me it seems a little premature, at least without getting some buy-in from the people bearing the load. It's not hard to see who is doing the reviewing on the various queues, so we should be able to see if there's been a clear increase in new people since the change." CreationDate="2014-05-04T05:34:02.777" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5647" PostId="2050" Score="2" Text="I get the feeling that the change was aimed at short-term improvements on other sites, and that it was somewhat insensitive to per-site differences in review issues.&#xA;Arguably, the new notification is more like a &quot;finger on the pulse&quot; of the community than the personal notifications we're used to. Maybe with time some uses for that information will become apparent, like organizing queue-clearing rallies...but I think that requires people to understand and embrace the new notification. Understanding and acceptance have been a little deficient so far (needless to say), and for good reasons." CreationDate="2014-05-04T05:38:52.773" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5660" PostId="2050" Score="0" Text="I also upvoted your meta.SE request." CreationDate="2014-05-05T03:51:40.100" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5649" PostId="2051" Score="0" Text="Do you mean you want to answer a question here with results from an academic paper and refer to this paper in your answer?" CreationDate="2014-05-04T16:17:22.487" UserId="26338" />
  <row Id="5650" PostId="2051" Score="4" Text="@Andy, I think it is the opposite. He/she is referring about using content retrieved from SE on an academic paper and give the credit (by citing) to the author of question/answer." CreationDate="2014-05-04T18:49:58.003" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="5651" PostId="2051" Score="1" Text="Oh okay, I actually thought that but it seemed a bit too idealistic to be real. I mean, the temptation is great to use the knowledge acquired on CV in a paper and pretend it's one's own work. After all what would a referee think if I thank CV user589646 in my first-page footnote? But of course it would be appropriate to somehow acknowledge other people's input. I don't see though how this can work given the anonymity that we have here?" CreationDate="2014-05-04T19:01:00.653" UserId="26338" />
  <row Id="5653" PostId="2051" Score="9" Text="This has come up on the math site, see [What is a good standard for publishing a reference to a stackexchange thread?](http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/q/1876) for one example. There are a few more if you look as well, e.g. [Do I cite mathstackexchange in my paper?](http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/q/4259) and associated threads in the comment." CreationDate="2014-05-04T20:56:37.773" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="5654" PostId="2051" Score="12" Text="Nothing here prevents or prohibits your citing material in a **submission** to an academic journal. The real question is what happens the other end. As a reviewer and journal editor, I know my own attitudes: I would much prefer a citation to a book or journal article for anything standard, but I would be happy to consider an argument for citing really original material. Some of the best posts here (e.g. those by @whuber) cover points not obviously covered, or covered so well, in the academic literature. You will find a bias in some quarters against citing anonymous material." CreationDate="2014-05-04T23:45:22.513" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5661" PostId="2054" Score="1" Text="Oddly enough, I can't find any such feature requests on [Meta Stack Exchange](http://meta.stackexchange.com/)...Seems like a suggestion with network-wide relevance (this is also to say we're unlikely to have any CV-specific implementation). It *could* be straightforward enough, but it might involve some programming complexity that they don't want to add to the main questions page, since only these proposed tabs would display personalized results. Nice idea anyway; I'd like to see it happen, if it wouldn't be too expensive or risky somehow..." CreationDate="2014-05-05T21:09:09.133" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5665" PostId="2054" Score="1" Text="+1 Being able to follow questions you're participating in/interested in would be great. Notifications are great if someone responds to you with an @, or someone posts a comment under your answer, but you can miss plenty. I would more often award bounties on other people's questions and answers if I had a way of marking them for followup after a couple of days (since you have to wait a couple of days to start a bounty)." CreationDate="2014-05-07T00:23:22.700" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5662" PostId="2055" Score="3" Text="I would have declined your first edit, because the comment points out an important distinction that remains relevant even after any responses might have been made; and I would have approved your second, because that comment, which requested an edit, was acted on and so no longer has any value.  In short, my policy has been to remove material that no longer is useful or informative but to let anything else stand, with a strong tendency to be *conservative*: the burden of proof lies on making a case *for* removal, not against it. The guiding principle is *above all, don't lose information.*" CreationDate="2014-05-06T16:25:25.853" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5664" PostId="2055" Score="0" Text="@whuber: [Some nice comments here](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/96636/why-has-the-result-of-fishers-method-such-a-high-significance-with-insignifican#comment188327_96636) support your position. These seem like good examples of comments that should not be flagged as obsolete, even though they might arguably have belonged to that class originally." CreationDate="2014-05-06T23:46:24.563" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5663" PostId="2056" Score="5" Text="Well, I delete my own when I see them, but of course I don't catch them all." CreationDate="2014-05-06T21:11:00.800" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5679" PostId="2061" Score="5" Text="Short answer is that we can't predict with certainty; what's certain is only that a bounty does draw attention to a question. (I think you are alluding to my comment on a now deleted Meta question; that's hard for most people to find, not that the original would add much here. But I am one of several Nicks around here.)" CreationDate="2014-05-12T13:11:08.823" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5723" PostId="2061" Score="4" Text="What the -very interesting- question about the &quot;New Systematic Quantile Normalization&quot; is missing, is its mathematical representation. Right now, you are asking people to be able to fully understand your verbal descriptions, then translate them into mathematics and then work on them. That's too much to ask, except if you happen to find somebody already proficient in the mathematical representation of sound and music." CreationDate="2014-05-21T23:25:00.427" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="5729" PostId="2061" Score="0" Text="+1 @Alecos -- a good summary of the basic issue" CreationDate="2014-06-02T02:36:31.743" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5680" PostId="2063" Score="0" Text="Wow thanks will do" CreationDate="2014-05-13T11:41:50.920" UserDisplayName="user11279" />
  <row Id="5681" PostId="2063" Score="0" Text="Did the sentences and pictures i added help enough or does it still need more work?" CreationDate="2014-05-13T18:08:53.657" UserDisplayName="user11279" />
  <row Id="5682" PostId="2063" Score="1" Text="It's certainly more attractive (and that has its benefits), but I suspect it won't make what you're doing, nor trying to get, that much more clear to the average statistician. Definitions or explanations of terms should probably be in words &amp; algebra, while pictures would convey data and summarize relationships. It may simply be my own ignorance of what you're doing, but I still don't understand what this is asking - I still don't follow even item 1. I think my knowledge of stats is fairly broad, so it likely leaves out a lot of people who could potentially offer some help as it is now." CreationDate="2014-05-13T21:25:06.163" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5683" PostId="2063" Score="0" Text="Thank you I will continue to work on it" CreationDate="2014-05-13T21:30:54.597" UserDisplayName="user11279" />
  <row Id="5685" PostId="2063" Score="0" Text="http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/97594/how-do-you-explain-dimension-reduction-with-statistics" CreationDate="2014-05-13T23:25:52.880" UserDisplayName="user11279" />
  <row Id="5686" PostId="2063" Score="2" Text="I get the feeling that we're talking mutually at cross-purposes here. I know what dimensionality reduction *is* for example, but that's kind of broad and unspecific as a topic. All the issue is entirely hidden in that last sentence of your new post. What the heck are we talking about there, *in terms of the data*? Statistics is about data, and models for data, and making inferences on the basis of those models. We don't seem to have remotely touched on your actual data, your models, or your desired inferences. It's a bit like asking an engineer &quot;how do I build a *structure*?&quot;." CreationDate="2014-05-13T23:43:26.317" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5687" PostId="2063" Score="0" Text="sorry i really am trying...my data is vocal recordings...the model for my data is sheet music...the inference for my data is correlations between the two sheets i create.." CreationDate="2014-05-13T23:48:28.167" UserDisplayName="user11279" />
  <row Id="5688" PostId="2063" Score="0" Text="No, sorry, data are not &quot;recordings&quot;. Data, ultimately are numbers, possibly derived from recordings. &quot;Sheet music&quot; is not directly a model, either, though it's arguably a way of representing one. When you say &quot;correlations&quot; there, can you define the term *algebraically*, please? It doesn't seem to mean what a statistician would mean by the term (but then again we don't seem to be using many terms to mean the same things). What, exactly are you talking about when you say correlation?" CreationDate="2014-05-13T23:52:39.477" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5689" PostId="2063" Score="0" Text="I have a thought: can you find a post here on CV that's talking about the same kind of thing you're after? There are over 36 *thousand* posts here, perhaps one is discussing something like what you need. That way, at least there's a different explanation of the kind of thing you seek. On the other hand, if you can't find even one, then at least in looking for one, you might see the ways that statistical questions are framed, which might give you more of a sense of what you haven't yet conveyed." CreationDate="2014-05-13T23:58:24.270" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5690" PostId="2063" Score="0" Text="no one else in cv has asked about sufficient dimension reduction i dont know that there is a term for the extrapolation of data into a new dimension" CreationDate="2014-05-14T00:09:54.050" UserDisplayName="user11279" />
  <row Id="5691" PostId="2063" Score="1" Text="CV has literally thousands of questions relating to dimension reduction in some form or other (though not always using those words), but I don't know what the &quot;sufficient&quot; explicitly means in your expression, so it's hard to tell which kinds of thing it relates to. There are also many questions that relate to inferring information in various ways, which may relate to your needs on the &quot;new dimension&quot; thing ... but again, it's not clear what you need, exactly." CreationDate="2014-05-14T00:19:32.960" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5692" PostId="2063" Score="0" Text="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufficient_dimension_reduction ?" CreationDate="2014-05-14T00:26:17.357" UserDisplayName="user11279" />
  <row Id="5693" PostId="2063" Score="1" Text="Ah, you mean 'sufficient' in the statistical sense. Okay, thanks, that helps a lot. There are probably well over a thousand questions on sufficient dimension reduction without that term necessarily having been used. Any sufficient statistic that's of smaller dimension than the data involves a sufficient dimension reduction ... and that's almost every question that relates to sufficient statistics." CreationDate="2014-05-14T00:28:19.003" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5694" PostId="2063" Score="0" Text="To discuss sufficiency for some $\theta$, we must have some model (as [here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufficient_statistic#Mathematical_definition) for example). As far as I can see we don't presently have anything approaching that. If there's a distributional model, there would be a way to start to talk about likelihood, for example." CreationDate="2014-05-14T00:34:51.790" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5695" PostId="2063" Score="0" Text="http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/97625/what-is-the-model-of-the-distribution-of-frequencies-as-represented-by-western-s" CreationDate="2014-05-14T05:00:52.670" UserDisplayName="user11279" />
  <row Id="5696" PostId="2063" Score="2" Text="Like Glen_b, I can't make sense of (1) in the question--and I have formal training in western music theory as well as a little bit of mathematical and statistical knowledge. Parts of that description are just too vague (&quot;the data ... inhabit the same vector space but not yet in the same Cartesian space&quot; is, according to my understanding of vector spaces and Cartesian coordinates, nonsensical) and others appear to be contrafactual (&quot;Western music is a periodic sample expressing a frequency but rounded to a few Hz&quot; is not really correct). There are comparable problems with (2) through (4)." CreationDate="2014-05-14T19:11:29.950" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5730" PostId="2063" Score="0" Text="Perhaps you would consider breaking this question down into parts." CreationDate="2014-06-04T02:04:38.983" UserId="13950" />
  <row Id="5698" PostId="2064" Score="15" Text="I am sorry that you ever got the impression I was making fun of you; that certainly was never the intent. In recognition of and deference to your demonstrably superior education, I would like to invite you on behalf of the entire community to participate more actively on our site by answering questions (especially the ones I cannot understand) and becoming a candidate during the next moderator election. We cordially welcome knowledgeable, well-spoken, friendly, and supportive people to join us in curating our site and helping others learn and appreciate statistics." CreationDate="2014-05-20T19:58:21.677" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5699" PostId="2064" Score="0" Text="@whuber, you made a block over my question because you thought that the information given in the box is not related with those dots and line. So you thought that my question is absurd and doesn't make any sense. And then I had to explain that this is commonly used technique. Then you get offended and keep my question on hold." CreationDate="2014-05-20T20:04:55.570" UserId="290" />
  <row Id="5700" PostId="2064" Score="0" Text="@whuber, you yourself, you are not following the rules http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/how-to-ask &quot;avoid asking for opinions or open-ended discussion&quot; http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1963/looking-for-good-introductory-treatment-of-meta-analysis" CreationDate="2014-05-20T20:09:58.750" UserId="290" />
  <row Id="5701" PostId="2064" Score="9" Text="Are you seriously saying that @whuber does not understand statistics?  That is very amusing." CreationDate="2014-05-20T20:12:43.127" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="5702" PostId="2064" Score="6" Text="Dear Ilhan, I am not in the least offended by your question. Please know that it is not &quot;blocked.&quot; Its &quot;on hold&quot; status provides you an opportunity to change it so that you can get better and more answers faster than otherwise. It takes only five community members--or just one other moderator--to re-open it. The *constructive* option available to you is to clarify your question. Your continuing attacks, by means of comments here and in the original thread, will likely only embarrass you and nobody wants that.  I have asked the other moderators to take over here, so I will be silent." CreationDate="2014-05-20T20:12:57.920" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5704" PostId="2064" Score="8" Text="Because your question was either just plain wrong (because those numbers should not go in a probability plot) or so badly worded that neither he nor I could understand it.  The idea that @whuber does not understand the assumptions of linear regression is ludicrous." CreationDate="2014-05-20T20:18:30.517" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="5705" PostId="2064" Score="0" Text="@PeterFlom, the title and the information in the box is given by Minitab, not me or someone else." CreationDate="2014-05-20T20:19:42.860" UserId="290" />
  <row Id="5706" PostId="2064" Score="6" Text="And why do you suppose Minitab puts those variables in a box and not on the graph? Do you suppose they, too, don't know what they are doing? Those numbers belong in a box (or in text) not on the graph. There is no place to put them on the graph." CreationDate="2014-05-20T20:21:36.537" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="5707" PostId="2064" Score="0" Text="@PeterFlom, it is placed by Minitab." CreationDate="2014-05-20T20:23:23.403" UserId="290" />
  <row Id="5708" PostId="2064" Score="0" Text="@PeterFlom, see yourself http://goo.gl/lDKq5C if you don't believe me." CreationDate="2014-05-20T20:24:58.017" UserId="290" />
  <row Id="5709" PostId="2064" Score="8" Text="The plot as produced by Minitab is fine. They all place the information in a box. Not on the graph." CreationDate="2014-05-20T20:27:39.287" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="5710" PostId="2064" Score="0" Text="@PeterFlom, I want that box, whether on right or in or on on doesn't matter. When I plot I don't get that info box http://i.imgur.com/nWcU3BK.png that is my problem." CreationDate="2014-05-20T20:31:28.497" UserId="290" />
  <row Id="5711" PostId="2064" Score="8" Text="The box is there in your output!  What are you asking? Maybe your whole question is unclear." CreationDate="2014-05-20T20:32:14.353" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="5712" PostId="2064" Score="0" Text="By box I mean that box which has p-value, mean, and standard deviation. I don't have it here http://i.imgur.com/nWcU3BK.png" CreationDate="2014-05-20T20:35:44.380" UserId="290" />
  <row Id="5715" PostId="2064" Score="3" Text="This (new) remark is simply misguided! A cooling-off period may be appropriate at this point." CreationDate="2014-05-21T12:02:58.740" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="5722" PostId="2064" Score="3" Text="@iihan is insulting multiple moderators. I think it's time for him to leave." CreationDate="2014-05-21T15:46:44.010" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="5726" PostId="2064" Score="5" Text="The ridiculous insult in the title doesn't bode well. I suggest you revise it to something that at least suggests some contact with reality. My own knowledge of statistics is pretty broad, but whuber's is considerably broader (and deeper) than mine. Every single moderator has (far) more than sufficient knowledge to carry out their duties. If you can't discuss your concern with the decision to place your question on hold in a more mature fashion, you should consider taking your questions to a forum that tolerates insult and innuendo. StackExchange isn't that place." CreationDate="2014-05-27T00:27:00.840" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5713" PostId="2065" Score="1" Text="Not having unconstactive moderators is constrictive and all you do here is protecting your friend." CreationDate="2014-05-21T07:57:53.457" UserId="290" />
  <row Id="5724" PostId="2065" Score="7" Text="ihan - chl and whuber don't even live in the same continent. (I live in a third continent, and have never met either; my judgements are based solely on observing their actions over several years). Both whuber and chl are consistently very patient and fair, and both are highly knowledgeable. You do yourself no favors by insulting at least three moderators by my count, none of whom seem to be doing anything but what their job as moderators needs them to do. Periodically I disagree with moderators, yet they are always willing to listen and revise their actions if there's even a hint of a mistake." CreationDate="2014-05-27T00:07:39.710" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5725" PostId="2065" Score="6" Text="... but there's no suggestion of any mistake in this case. The question requires clarification and a change of focus to meet the community standards that are generally applied. Your best action is to edit your question to improve it, and hope the community votes to reopen it." CreationDate="2014-05-27T00:10:14.787" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5728" PostId="2066" Score="2" Text="They both have tag wiki excerpts that seem perfectly adequate." CreationDate="2014-05-29T23:58:56.000" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5734" PostId="2069" Score="4" Text="+1, thanks for keeping up with this!" CreationDate="2014-06-12T13:54:06.410" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5735" PostId="2069" Score="8" Text="+1. All SE sites--including ours--have better voting and more active, engaged participation during the first month or three: they have something to prove and several thresholds to meet if they are to survive. With an average of just 4 questions per day (6 recently), it is evident the Data Science site will not meet those thresholds. It has attracted some useful kinds of new questions concerning how to manage very large datasets, which I would be pleased to migrate to CV when DS meets its demise. The extent to which statistics is misunderstood and mis-characterized there is distressing, though." CreationDate="2014-06-12T17:05:19.693" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5736" PostId="2069" Score="2" Text="Yes, this is also my prediction. I also think that summary statistics in this early stage can be misleading, after all its easy to have 100% answered questions, when you get only 4 qs per day. Couldn't agree more with the comment on misunderstanding  statistics, it really makes me sad and angry on equal measures." CreationDate="2014-06-12T18:28:56.327" UserId="8413" />
  <row Id="14045" PostId="2069" Score="0" Text="Guess I was wrong." CreationDate="2017-08-14T20:18:35.783" UserId="8413" />
  <row Id="5749" PostId="2070" Score="7" Text="As a general reminder, comments on stackexchange sites should be considered temporary and disposable. They have no revision history, may be deleted without warning by author, moderator, or after flag review, and have no direct effect on reputation. Contributors intending to add to discussion in a more lasting manner should do so through the editing or creation of a post. See http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/comment, http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/19756, and http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/255821. This very comment should probably be in a post rather than a comment." CreationDate="2014-06-17T16:44:07.460" UserId="2981" />
  <row Id="5750" PostId="2070" Score="1" Text="Just because the software allows for deletion doesn't mean they should be deleted.  The software also disallows editing after a period of time, so they are relatively permanent." CreationDate="2014-06-17T16:52:39.067" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="5754" PostId="2070" Score="4" Text="@rjpierce: &quot;Just because the software allows for deletion doesn't mean they should be deleted.&quot; True, but the established precedent on stackechange sites is that comments should be made under the presumption that they may be deleted at any time without warning and will not be around forever. See &quot;When should comments be deleted&quot; section of the StackExchange [FAQ on comments](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/19757/171338)." CreationDate="2014-06-17T17:26:40.803" UserId="2981" />
  <row Id="5755" PostId="2070" Score="1" Text="No intention of being argumentative, just drawing the attention of  future viewers to settled StackExchange policy regarding comment deletion." CreationDate="2014-06-17T17:40:33.770" UserId="2981" />
  <row Id="5757" PostId="2070" Score="0" Text="http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2072/how-are-policy-changes-made-on-cross-validated ; policy appears flexible across the entire cross exchange space ... and that may be a good thing." CreationDate="2014-06-17T17:52:02.267" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="5744" PostId="2071" Score="4" Text="Clear and understandable answer.  In that case I have no problem with the deletion of the offending topic and subsequent clarification comments once I've had a chance to offload that knowledge to one of the threads in that historical context." CreationDate="2014-06-17T13:31:45.960" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="5745" PostId="2071" Score="1" Text="I am happy with this outcome and would be pleased to wait until that happens before I take any action with the comments.  Thank you for your gracious understanding." CreationDate="2014-06-17T13:32:30.533" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5753" PostId="2071" Score="2" Text="This discussion is pleasantly civil and the outcome looks very satisfactory. However, as the comment in question is now deleted, most users have no way to judge whether or to what extent it was inappropriate. I am not asking for it to be reinstated, but just pointing out that we can only judge this discussion in abstract generality, whereas it is the concrete detail that would allow the comment to be regarded as a test case." CreationDate="2014-06-17T17:21:12.553" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5759" PostId="2071" Score="3" Text="@Nick I have edited my answer to provide that context." CreationDate="2014-06-17T18:50:39.940" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5760" PostId="2071" Score="0" Text="Thanks personally and behalf of others for those changes." CreationDate="2014-06-17T22:18:50.373" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5761" PostId="2071" Score="4" Text="I would note that while I have once or twice raised concerns about what I see as some drift in the line beyond which questions involving programming are closed, I think it may be more an issue of users with the reputation to do so more frequently nominating closure (most especially when first gaining that privilege - and for which I must accuse myself as much as anyone), assuming I am not mistaken. I don't see a substantial movement in the actions of individual moderators, nor evidence of anything happening by fiat." CreationDate="2014-06-18T01:47:42.810" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5762" PostId="2071" Score="1" Text="As everyone participating here knows, it takes the votes of possibly 5 members to get closure; in many recent cases of closure of software-related questions the requirement for 5 has been made unnecessary by the vote of a moderator. The issue revolves around how to interpret a stated policy and some of us draw the line in slightly different places." CreationDate="2014-06-18T07:03:25.283" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5763" PostId="2071" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b: The entire discussion is moot. Nevertheless, perhaps we disagree about what constitutes a by fiat change - but I think we agree about the actual mechanism that sets where this line is (after accounting for the detail mentioned by Nick Cox)." CreationDate="2014-06-18T10:33:05.380" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="5765" PostId="2071" Score="0" Text="Perhaps 'De facto' would be better than 'fiat'?" CreationDate="2014-06-18T11:09:50.170" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="5767" PostId="2076" Score="0" Text="Apologies fir the duplicate: I got an error when submitting the first time, which I corrected and then resubmitted the question. Seems the first one went through anyway." CreationDate="2014-06-19T03:14:26.250" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="5768" PostId="2076" Score="0" Text="As of right now, Ten fold renders fine for me on firefox." CreationDate="2014-06-19T04:11:59.303" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5769" PostId="2076" Score="0" Text="Firefox failing for me though. It is failing on http://cdn-chat.sstatic.net/chat/css/chat.stats.stackexchange.com.css?v=6744ac13df20 and when I go there I see a page with the [se] logo and the message &quot;We are currently offline for maintenance&quot;" CreationDate="2014-06-19T04:44:15.387" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="5770" PostId="2076" Score="0" Text="Yeah, that's giving me a wall of text right now. It starts w/ &quot;body{background:#faf9f6 url(../img/stats-chat-bg.png) repeat;}#input- ...&quot;, if that helps. But Ten fold comes through fine." CreationDate="2014-06-19T04:47:23.070" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5771" PostId="2076" Score="0" Text="That's suggest it should deliver. Odd...." CreationDate="2014-06-19T04:50:46.350" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="5772" PostId="2076" Score="1" Text="This appears to have been a temporary issue." CreationDate="2014-06-19T13:56:43.377" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5773" PostId="2078" Score="5" Text="Regardless of the merits of this idea, it seems like it should be addressed to the SO community and posted in [metase]: because migration decisions are made by SO, not us, the *only* thing we can ever do about migrations from there to here is to reject them." CreationDate="2014-06-19T18:14:25.140" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5774" PostId="2078" Score="2" Text="Thanks for the guidance. I have cross-posted it on [Meta Stack Exchange](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/234294/bridge-moderators-and-an-increasing-trend-of-so-to-cv-migration-worthy-questions). My request to anyone from CV that agrees with this assertion or some portion thereof, please offer supporting testimony there. I don't think this argument can be well understood without some background in statistics and I suspect the post will perish without expert support." CreationDate="2014-06-19T18:41:53.807" UserId="13950" />
  <row Id="5776" PostId="2078" Score="0" Text="@Andre You're right--that's the correct place for it." CreationDate="2014-06-19T21:58:21.893" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5777" PostId="2078" Score="1" Text="The question is also if http://datascience.stackexchange.com/ should (eventually) be involved in these considerations too. The overlap with SO/CV is getting really large." CreationDate="2014-06-19T23:23:06.020" UserId="8413" />
  <row Id="5778" PostId="2078" Score="1" Text="To close the loop I will point to [bluefeet's answer to your MSE question](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/234298/165581). Essentially, the Stack Overflow mods are backlogged. They'll get to migration flags. Especially if the word &quot;migrate&quot; is in the flag somewhere, as [Shog mentioned](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/234294/bridge-moderators-and-an-increasing-trend-of-so-to-cv-migration-worthy-questions/234298#comment770314_234294)." CreationDate="2014-06-19T23:59:35.823" UserId="6123" />
  <row Id="5934" PostId="2078" Score="1" Text="This question appears to be off-topic because it belongs on the main meta site, where it has been posted and answered." CreationDate="2014-07-30T16:28:31.883" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5779" PostId="2079" Score="2" Text="I cannot reproduce this circumstance: according to the [help](http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/privileges), you need only the minimum of one point to answer a question.  How exactly did you try to answer and what caused that to fail?" CreationDate="2014-06-20T15:26:27.210" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5780" PostId="2079" Score="0" Text="I clicked on add comment" CreationDate="2014-06-20T16:03:35.940" UserId="48729" />
  <row Id="5781" PostId="2079" Score="0" Text="Which apparently I can do on my own questions but not on other people's posts until I have 50 points." CreationDate="2014-06-20T16:04:18.267" UserId="48729" />
  <row Id="5782" PostId="2079" Score="0" Text="Playing around some more with voting up led me to my answer - http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/whats-reputation" CreationDate="2014-06-20T16:12:05.953" UserId="48729" />
  <row Id="5783" PostId="2079" Score="3" Text="It's true. You must have 50 rep to 'comment everywhere'. The fastest way, in my opinion, is to provide a well argued answer. I think there are more questions than answers generally. In this case you are referring to, you can provide this as the answer in the 'Your Answer' text box. If you add a little bit more explanation to it than 'use this software' someone will upvote it which is worth 10 points. If you are lucky the person asking the question will also check mark that your answer helped which is worth 25 points. Or you can suggest 25 edits: 2 points * 25 = 50 points." CreationDate="2014-06-20T16:14:52.943" UserId="13950" />
  <row Id="5784" PostId="2079" Score="0" Text="I guess that I am just still confused about how to get off of 1 reputation point because a user needs 5 user points to &quot;answer&quot; a question.  I guess that the only way is to ask good questions?" CreationDate="2014-06-20T16:18:22.223" UserId="48729" />
  <row Id="5785" PostId="2079" Score="2" Text="According to [this page](http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/create-posts) you should be able to provide an answer, you just can't provide a comment until 50. At 5 you can participate in meta but you are here already because your question was migrated. I don't see anything or recall anything that required 5 points to answer a question." CreationDate="2014-06-20T16:28:02.220" UserId="13950" />
  <row Id="5786" PostId="2080" Score="0" Text="Thank you meadowlark but you need to have 5 reputation points to answer in the &quot;Your Answer&quot; text box.  Until you have gained 5 reputation points, you see &quot;You must have at least 5 reputation on Cross Validated to answer a question.&quot;  Which according to the StatExchange email that I received a few minutes ago, indicates that you first need to have an upvoted post in order to be able to answer a question.  So, would you be willing to upvote this post just to let me answer posts?  I am a stats prof and I am extremely amused (and somewhat distracted) by this minor inconvenience." CreationDate="2014-06-20T17:37:55.327" UserId="48729" />
  <row Id="5787" PostId="2080" Score="2" Text="We are sympathetic and really appreciate your bearing with us.  We (the community members) have little control over these basic aspects of how the SE system works, but this thread helps me appreciate the wisdom of most of the restrictions. You ran into trouble because you were trying to create material that would have taken considerable intervention on the community's part to clean up. I hope you won't mind spending a few minutes reading over our [help]: it will help you decide if this is a good place for you to be and it will help you get up to speed quickly if you decide to participate." CreationDate="2014-06-20T17:54:00.407" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5788" PostId="2080" Score="1" Text="whuber, I believe (not sure) you'd need to ping @user48729, for calling his attention on someone else's post." CreationDate="2014-06-20T18:23:14.187" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="5790" PostId="2080" Score="0" Text="@user48729 I had already upvoted this question but in 'meta' upvotes do not increase reputation." CreationDate="2014-06-20T18:37:48.723" UserId="13950" />
  <row Id="5791" PostId="2080" Score="0" Text="@whuber I am curious to know what exactly happened. The documentation says he should be able to answer but he was not? I can't see the question he is referring to. Is there a link?" CreationDate="2014-06-20T18:38:32.533" UserId="13950" />
  <row Id="5792" PostId="2080" Score="0" Text="@MeadowlarkBradsher The original post was here: http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/82105/mcfaddens-pseudo-r2-interpretation  But, I have tried to answer other questions today and have found this note at the bottom of my page &quot;You must have at least 5 reputation on Cross Validated to answer a question.&quot;  Thanks for upvoting my post and then explaining why it isn't raising reputation points." CreationDate="2014-06-20T18:45:02.743" UserId="48729" />
  <row Id="5793" PostId="2080" Score="0" Text="@MeadowlarkBradsher would it be appropriate to post this to the stats.stackexchange.com site?  I guess that I am now confused by the difference between the meta site and the regular site.  Thank you for being a good community citizen and pointing out many of these basic things." CreationDate="2014-06-20T18:52:35.853" UserId="48729" />
  <row Id="5794" PostId="2080" Score="7" Text="User48729: (1) according to our [help](http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/privileges), you need only 1 point to answer a question *on the main site*, but 5 to answer here on meta. The role of the meta site is explained at http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/whats-meta.  @Andre: One does not need to ping either the thread originator nor the answerer; in fact, an attempt to do so at the beginning of a comment will automatically be deleted! Both those people will always be notified of any comments made. Pinging serves to notify others who might have been part of a comment conversation." CreationDate="2014-06-20T19:07:55.517" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5832" PostId="2080" Score="0" Text="This answer is a good example of how to make more growth out of smaller value questions.  When the answer you provide is compelling then it grows in value over time.  When it evokes discussion there is also point growth there.  The natural product of these is a rule that for a sufficiently good question (not hard to find here), a great answer can elicit response and value that increases over time.  Best of luck." CreationDate="2014-07-03T15:40:57.247" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="5796" PostId="2081" Score="1" Text="I guess it also helps to answer the pure statistics questions. At least in my experience answers to econometrics questions attract much less attention and upvotes." CreationDate="2014-06-21T12:29:29.687" UserId="26338" />
  <row Id="5830" PostId="2081" Score="0" Text="R related question were good hunting ground, but nowadays the easiest ones are moved to the stackoverflow. Econometrics and time series really do attract much less attention." CreationDate="2014-07-02T08:21:51.993" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="5831" PostId="2081" Score="1" Text="Among my top 100 tags, I find `simulation` (0.33 upvotes per answer, 24 answers) does much worse for me than `time-series` (2.4 upvotes per answer, 48 answers), in spite of my feeling that simulation is a subject I am a bit more knowledgeable on. However, they're both down the low end (in my top 100 tags my average is roughly twice that for time series.)" CreationDate="2014-07-02T09:30:21.677" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6519" PostId="2082" Score="0" Text="Too bad this isn't nested.  JMP script (JSL) is very particular and demanding.  It might qualify as its own sub-heading." CreationDate="2015-01-20T21:08:20.393" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="5820" PostId="2083" Score="0" Text="Have we data on number of &quot;regular users&quot; - say, number who are on a certain number of days/week or have a certain number of stars or something - on each site?" CreationDate="2014-06-25T22:29:11.500" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="5821" PostId="2083" Score="0" Text="@Peter Flom I wouldn't know how to retrieve them Peter. I guess since in the user's profile there are the &quot;visits&quot; data (member for, visited, last seen), I guess such kind of data can be gathered." CreationDate="2014-06-25T22:43:35.850" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="5826" PostId="2083" Score="0" Text="@Alecos The 'visited' data on profiles is not publicly visible - you can see yours, but presumably since I can't see yours, you won't see mine (you're welcome to it though - 783 days, 541 consecutive), so it's possible data.stats.SE might not give the information." CreationDate="2014-06-27T02:23:09.020" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5827" PostId="2083" Score="0" Text="@Peter what are stars? Are you referring to favorited questions or something else?" CreationDate="2014-06-27T02:25:35.163" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5828" PostId="2083" Score="0" Text="I meant those awards they give us for doing things. Now I realize they are little squares. The bronze, silver and gold things (not sure why I thought of them as stars)." CreationDate="2014-06-27T10:37:07.910" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="5878" PostId="2083" Score="0" Text="By any chance, do you have data on **bounties**? Is it possible that fewer bounties are being started on CV? (Note: I realize that bounties are a very small fraction of total questions--it was just something I was wondering about)." CreationDate="2014-07-20T07:35:00.773" UserId="41810" />
  <row Id="5798" PostId="2084" Score="7" Text="Take a look at [the unanswered upvoted questions](http://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=answers%3A0+score%3A1+closed%3Ano+duplicate%3Ano), Alecos.  Then, consider that [about half our unanswered questions have no upvotes:](http://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=answers%3A0+score%3A0+closed%3Ano+duplicate%3Ano) those should be evaluated separately. Some of them are pretty bad but not so bad they were closed, but apparently the rest have no upvotes only because nobody has any interest in (or understanding of) them." CreationDate="2014-06-22T17:37:21.597" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5804" PostId="2084" Score="2" Text="(re-post after accidental deletion)&#xA;Do you think analyzing unanswered questions by tag would help to identify the areas of Statistics that seem to go relatively unanswered? It would give us a more concrete idea about what kind of expertise CV appears to lack, and so make the attempts to bring in new qualified answerers more targeted. We could then even &quot;officially&quot; invite expert academics and professionals, supplementing our invitation with a series of existing questions that fall in their expertise. This would show research effort from our part, adding respect and weight to our invitation." CreationDate="2014-06-23T01:18:09.243" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="5823" PostId="2084" Score="0" Text="Here is one question of mine I am surprised get no interest:  http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/103834/regression-analysis-when-the-covariables-is-a-sample-from-a-population-of-potent" CreationDate="2014-06-26T07:32:15.440" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="5824" PostId="2084" Score="0" Text="@kjetil Please see our help concerning this issue: http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/no-one-answers.  In the meantime, I apologize that I did not notice your post and I have added a comment seeking clarification." CreationDate="2014-06-26T14:05:46.647" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="9445" PostId="2084" Score="1" Text="Not suggesting the policy should change, but we also do not answer many of the questions we could answer because they often happen to be the rare ones that are not vague: homework questions. I infer that other sites are less reluctant in that respect." CreationDate="2016-02-26T15:54:09.693" UserId="67799" />
  <row Id="21924" PostId="2084" Score="0" Text="Given the questions are hard to answer, what should the policy be on answering a question once somebody has altered it multiple times to match a commenter's wishes? Is it not good faith to then at least attempt an answer, or state why one can't be given? What should a poster do after they've altered their question and still have no answer? Should they try asking again in a different way?" CreationDate="2023-03-30T21:10:29.200" UserId="363857" />
  <row Id="21925" PostId="2084" Score="1" Text="Please visit our help, @Connor, and focus on the section at https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/asking.  The pattern I have noticed in your recent questions is that they propose methods that don't look suitable for the underlying problems.  That puts us in a quandary, because we know that answering your explicit question very well could just put you further down a frustrating path.  The questions aren't necessarily hard to answer: they're merely *unanswerable* in this sense." CreationDate="2023-03-30T21:13:35.923" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21926" PostId="2084" Score="0" Text="@whuber Thank you, I get that I might be wrong. But no one has suggested anything different. If it's clear that what I want to do isn't right, why doesn't someone just say that plainly, and explain why. The alternative is that I assume no one knows and I continue doing what I'm doing anyway." CreationDate="2023-03-30T21:17:37.827" UserId="363857" />
  <row Id="21927" PostId="2084" Score="1" Text="@Connor I believe we're all in the same mode of trying to figure out what it is you want to ask.  Until that happens, we can't even be in a position to say whether anything is wrong or what it is: we're all guessing." CreationDate="2023-03-30T21:22:31.037" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21928" PostId="2084" Score="1" Text="@whuber I think you're right. Thank you for engaging though. What you said made it instantly clear to me what the probable misunderstanding is!" CreationDate="2023-03-30T21:23:58.347" UserId="363857" />
  <row Id="5803" PostId="2085" Score="7" Text="This seems to accord with something I was thinking -that Statistics questions are inherently more complex at all levels, because apart perhaps from purely &quot;mathematical statistics&quot; questions, in all other cases they directly or indirectly ask &quot;how can I &quot;better&quot; approximate the real world phenomenon under study?&quot; -and in order to give some precise and case-specific meaning to &quot;better&quot;, we have to understand the real world phenomenon under study. This strengthens whuber's recommendation: if the going always gets tough here, you need tough to get going in greater numbers than usual." CreationDate="2014-06-23T01:16:15.173" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="5805" PostId="2085" Score="4" Text="But how do you get more people? I probably fall in the 2nd category that Glen describes as for most I participate in the reviewing and editing processes. Whilst I also frequently answer questions, my knowledge is limited to econometrics which only makes a small fraction of the questions here. If I now ask some of my friends from the PhD to join CV they will be just like me. Not being able to answer the majority of questions can be quite daunting in the beginning and discourage further use of the site as an answerer." CreationDate="2014-06-23T09:48:32.833" UserId="26338" />
  <row Id="5806" PostId="2085" Score="2" Text="@Andy - I'd have counted you in both categories. I usually don't answer econometrics questions because I figure other people will know more about those than me (I do answer some, but leave most); unless the kind of questions you can answer are nearly all answered, I think a lot of value would be added by having many more people like you. I find answering questions is also a good way to learn more." CreationDate="2014-06-23T10:07:54.703" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5807" PostId="2085" Score="5" Text="@Andy There are a couple of hundreds of questions with zero answers in tags that may fall into the knowledge of an econometrics PhD (&quot;econometrics&quot;, &quot;regression&quot;, &quot;least squares&quot;, &quot;panel data&quot;, &quot;time series&quot;, &quot;maximum likelihood&quot; etc). So my simple suggestion to you would be to tell your friends to join CV and attack older unanswered questions. Some of the most personally satisfying answers I posted here on CV (because they helped me also solidifying and expanding my own knowledge, as Glen_b explains), was by digging this queue." CreationDate="2014-06-23T13:30:28.757" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="5811" PostId="2085" Score="0" Text="I would agree about the diversity of statistics but it would take more than 600 characters for me to justify persuasively. Given that this is true, then generally speaking improvements in tags and improvement in features for engaging with them should have a more significant impact on CV answer rates than from other improvements with the exception of increasing the number of experts." CreationDate="2014-06-24T17:23:44.703" UserId="13950" />
  <row Id="5812" PostId="2085" Score="1" Text="I would add to this that if questions are specialized then it increases the chances that answers are as well. Under those circumstances fewer users should feel inclined to upvote an answer because it is not in their area of expertise to verify the conclusion. That should weaken the motivation of some proportion of users to answer many such questions." CreationDate="2014-06-24T17:36:22.173" UserId="13950" />
  <row Id="5813" PostId="2085" Score="0" Text="@Meadowlar While I believe that often answering questions requires somewhat specialized knowledge, the issue I was trying to get at in my answer is that quite often a single question spans many areas of specialized knowledge. People often have real data analysis problems, and those almost never fit neatly into a single tag or two; one may need to deal with panel data, multivariate responses, count data, nonparametric relationships between variables, missing observations, robustness, the impact of model selection, generation of prediction intervals, and more *all in the same question*... (ctd)" CreationDate="2014-06-24T22:31:07.207" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5814" PostId="2085" Score="0" Text="(ctd) Worse, you often can't disentangle the issues - each can impact how you deal with the others. It's no good being handy with (say) multivariate Poisson regression and time series (already quite specialized) if you know relatively little about how model selection affects inference and prediction - the  advice will quite likely be astray." CreationDate="2014-06-24T22:32:44.547" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5816" PostId="2085" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b I see. I'm pretty new here but I do recall at least wondering whether I should advise someone to break their question into parts and if other community members made recommendations in this line." CreationDate="2014-06-25T01:19:35.960" UserId="13950" />
  <row Id="5817" PostId="2085" Score="0" Text="@MeadowlarkBradsher I frequently advise people to split questions up if the questions are reasonably independent (questions can link to other questions for context so mild dependence is not a problem). Sometimes they certainly are independent enough to split up, and when they are it's good to do so. It depends on the context. &quot;How do I analyze this data&quot; are often the complex ones." CreationDate="2014-06-25T01:37:26.050" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5808" PostId="2086" Score="1" Text="Useful analysis, but it is _conditional on answered questions_. What does it tell us for unanswered questions? To me it strengthens the impression that we do need more expert _and diverse_ users, not because the existing ones are comparatively...&quot;lazy&quot;, but because there are areas of expertise for which we get questions but we cannot provide answers." CreationDate="2014-06-23T16:53:20.557" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="5809" PostId="2086" Score="0" Text="Yep I agree @AlecosPapadopoulos - my original hypothesis was that our curve would be above the others - which maybe has implications that we should nudge existing users to answer more questions. Some sites have group activity (like cleaning up particular tags) that would be types of behavior prompting action like that. But I was wrong, so it appears people are just asking too many questions per the group of experts to keep up. Case in point - physics has about 3,000 fewer questions, but has over 2,000 more people who have answered a question compared to stats." CreationDate="2014-06-23T17:04:15.560" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="5810" PostId="2086" Score="5" Text="+1 I feel sufficiently strongly about the need for breadth of participation that for the last year or so I have purposely cut back on my answering rate on both sites I moderate. I feel embarrassed when a very small number of individuals dominate the reputation boards: it's a sign of weakness, not strength. (I don't think this inaction will have affected the overall answering rates--my answers have simply been replaced by answers offered by others and this has given me a little more freedom to go after questions that seem not to be getting good answers.)" CreationDate="2014-06-24T15:47:00.773" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5815" PostId="2086" Score="2" Text="@AndyW thanks for bringing the data (and, especially for showing how to get it). If the concern were about the loss of a few people, though, we can't really see the potential impact in the plot, because that 'action' is in the extreme left of the plot, down at the bottom 20% or so. I think there are a very few users answering say 10-15% of questions (enough that a loss of even two would probably be very noticeable). While a few users on say math.SE might answer a lot of questions, there are so many other users answering that often others will be along in seconds, with multiple answers." CreationDate="2014-06-24T22:53:24.487" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5818" PostId="2087" Score="6" Text="Thanks for this point of view (+1). About the &quot;too good answers&quot; part, I (imperfectly) copy from memory something I read on a meta-post on another site: &quot;sites I stick around are those that I did not had to fight for every post&quot;. Look at my network profile, see how I started, see what happened eventually: Our super-star answerers do provide &quot;too good&quot; answers - but they are also _too good_ to those with lesser knowledge. To maintain high standards, they are obliged to point out mistakes and ask for corrections -but they _never_, I mean _never_, do it in an intimidating or insulting way." CreationDate="2014-06-25T03:40:15.667" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="5819" PostId="2087" Score="1" Text="And that's why I hope to stay. You guys work so hard to make this site as good as it is." CreationDate="2014-06-25T03:42:20.533" UserId="36229" />
  <row Id="5822" PostId="2087" Score="1" Text="&quot;*experienced members are around to clean up my posts*&quot; -- that's just what those of us who have been around a while should be doing. Your answers seem to be a good deal better than a number of my early efforts (the worst of which are mostly now either improved, or sometimes deleted if other people gave reasonable answers; a few of them still exist and I still make plenty of mistakes now). I wouldn't worry that there might be others who know a bit more than you. I doubt there's more than a couple of answers I've given here where of the people who might answer I was the best person to answer." CreationDate="2014-06-26T02:41:21.877" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5825" PostId="2087" Score="5" Text="I'm even lower on the totem than you ssdecontrol. I just have an undergraduate education and a curiosity that gets me into trouble. I'm well aware of my limited education and experience. I look at a lot of questions before venturing to answer one but when I find one, I swallow my pride and answer knowing that I am sticking my neck out. My assumptions are that better answers will get better votes, correction will be communicated to me, and I can always delete it if it's fundamentally flawed. Honestly, I answer to relearn what I know and push a little further in. I haven't gotten a negative yet." CreationDate="2014-06-26T17:44:57.990" UserId="13950" />
  <row Id="5838" PostId="2088" Score="1" Text="Thanks for participating in this discussion. Is it your impression that the phenomenon you describe happens relatively more often in CV than in the other sites that could be comparable to CV in other aspects, like e.g. the ones that I have sampled?" CreationDate="2014-07-04T16:56:47.200" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="5839" PostId="2088" Score="3" Text="I have no actual data, but here is my thinking.  Statistics is a tool used by people in many fields; more so than, say, physics (one of your comparison groups).  So a physics student might come here for help with statistics but a statistics student would almost never seek help with physics." CreationDate="2014-07-04T21:57:15.423" UserId="8137" />
  <row Id="5833" PostId="2090" Score="0" Text="I don't think this question is appropriate for this forum, and if it belongs anywhere, it belongs in meta. The tagging is also misleading as none of the tags deal with the content of the question." CreationDate="2014-07-03T17:04:06.723" UserId="36539" />
  <row Id="5834" PostId="2090" Score="5" Text="@rocinante This is a difficult question to classify. Most of the questions on their own seem to belong on meta. In that it's a very chatty and unfocused post (it contains about 10 questions, some quite disparate), it's possibly too broad both here and on meta, and likely belongs on chat. I was quite unsure but plumped for voting to move it to meta in the hope that it might be possible to clean it up enough to be on topic there." CreationDate="2014-07-03T17:36:06.633" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5835" PostId="2090" Score="1" Text="I think this Q has potential merit. In light of @Glen_b's good points, can you focus it more? (If this leads to subsequent, follow-up questions on meta.CV, that will be fine, but this question should be sufficiently focused to be able to be given a single coherent answer.)" CreationDate="2014-07-03T20:04:50.900" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5836" PostId="2090" Score="1" Text="Part of this question should be possible to answer with access to meta-data (or indeed downloading whole posts and using text analysis. That would be an interesting question (could even be a topic for a statistics master thesis?).  Without such analysis we are left to guessing!  I have a quite sure impression that it is easier to get high votes with elementary questions, the pool of possible answerers/voters are bigger!  Even very good questions, if they are too advanced, get little attention. The best way forward for a better CV is (many) more  active members." CreationDate="2014-07-03T21:49:20.487" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="5837" PostId="2090" Score="0" Text="This still seems too broad &amp; unfocused to me to get a viable answer. Eg, what would the &quot;moneyball&quot; of CV be? Do you want the output of an algorithm to predict question quality? (I doubt you'll get one.) The part about people repeatedly asking the same question is a good point worth discussing, but seems tangential to the rest. Etc." CreationDate="2014-07-04T13:29:01.617" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5840" PostId="2090" Score="0" Text="&quot;*assume ... that the score given to a question is the perfect measure of merit of a question*&quot; -- why would we assume something we know to be false? Scores given to questions reflect all sorts of things - including such trivialities as when they were posted (I have taken to posting questions at particular times because posting them at convenient times for me is counterproductive if I want the better answers that popularity/visibility tends to bring)." CreationDate="2014-07-05T05:41:07.950" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5841" PostId="2090" Score="0" Text="(ctd) ... It's certainly possible I missed the point with that assumption, but that may be because I found the question unfocused and over-long and missed something because my concentration was flagging." CreationDate="2014-07-05T05:51:12.933" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5842" PostId="2090" Score="0" Text="It is ludicrously false assumption.  Of course it is wrong.  It might be useful.  Its falsehood makes it more useful.  It is like assuming that the IRS does optimal harvesting of the US personal income then use logistic harvesting to estimate the US GDP, and compare that &quot;pseudo-optimal&quot; GDP to the _actual_ GDP and ask why they aren't the same.&#xA;&#xA;Sorry about &quot;War and Peace&quot;." CreationDate="2014-07-05T23:37:04.920" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="5843" PostId="2090" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b - I think that you should be able to get great answers with asking any particular time.  Is there a policy that would enable that as far as reasonable?  Data has to answer that." CreationDate="2014-07-06T23:54:52.360" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="5844" PostId="2090" Score="1" Text="You should, especially given that answers tend to be spread over several days. But my own anecdotal sense is that time of initial posting makes enough difference to matter. I notice similar effects on several other forums (reddit, for example, where the effect is stronger) - posting when North America is in bed is less likely to be noticed that posting when North American readers are on the site." CreationDate="2014-07-07T00:17:08.863" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5846" PostId="2091" Score="1" Text="Is there a site in the StackExchange system we could migrate the data questions to? I remember there were Area 51 proposals on data sources, but they never took off. It would be a bummer if we have to close questions without a resolution within StackExchange." CreationDate="2014-07-09T08:22:28.347" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="5849" PostId="2091" Score="2" Text="@StasK I guess that would be Data Science (http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2026/data-science-se)" CreationDate="2014-07-09T10:52:58.227" UserId="26338" />
  <row Id="5854" PostId="2091" Score="0" Text="I am pretty sure that it will be off-topic there, too. They are interested in technical solutions, not in the data sources. We can try migrating the data source questions to DS, but I doubt they will be happy answering them." CreationDate="2014-07-10T11:54:28.063" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="5847" PostId="2093" Score="2" Text="Is the &quot;Other (add a comment explaining what is wrong)&quot; option not only available for users with 3000+ reputation?" CreationDate="2014-07-09T10:29:45.677" UserId="26338" />
  <row Id="5848" PostId="2093" Score="0" Text="@Andy Could be. I'm not sure." CreationDate="2014-07-09T10:36:32.513" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5850" PostId="2093" Score="2" Text="@Andy, yes it is for 3k+." CreationDate="2014-07-09T11:03:33.673" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="5851" PostId="2093" Score="1" Text="I am not sure about the question in the last sentece, but I think the answer is yes. In this [question](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/189174/suggestion-to-include-crossvalidated-se-in-sos-off-topic-list), they said there was not more room in the dialog for migration paths." CreationDate="2014-07-09T11:11:30.153" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="5852" PostId="2093" Score="3" Text="(1) As someone who examines a lot of proposals to close, I appreciate being able just to tick off a radio button (instead of having to write a comment) in recurring, clear situations.  (2) As a community we should aim for most of the moderation work to be done by a large cross-section of the members rather than the moderators. This is not a matter of avoiding bothering the mods, but of creating a healthy and active community. I am grateful for all the work put in by Glen_b, @Andre, and others and warmly encourage *everyone* to participate in maintaining our site." CreationDate="2014-07-09T13:30:28.237" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5853" PostId="2093" Score="1" Text="+1 @whuber -- good points, especially the part about a large cross section of the members doing most of the moderation being good for the health of the community" CreationDate="2014-07-09T22:29:17.333" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5855" PostId="2094" Score="5" Text="This could be a tough one. See [the blog post about the demise of the AI.SE beta](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/no-artificial-intelligence-in-area-51/). Given the mention of statistical learning though, my inclination is to say give it a shot here if the statistical aspect isn't trivial or incidental, but actually an important part of the question. Just make it clear that you're not asking for opinions or a very broad range of possible answers, as those would be tempting reasons to put the question on hold as currently presented." CreationDate="2014-07-11T08:44:51.493" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5860" PostId="2094" Score="1" Text="From a purely definitional point of view, [CogSci.SE](http://cogsci.stackexchange.com/) ought to be the port of call for AI questions, as I don't think anyone could argue that artificial intelligence isn't an aspect of cognitive science. I don't think CogSci.SE, as it currently stands, could provide the answers you're looking for though." CreationDate="2014-07-18T09:46:12.840" UserId="42952" />
  <row Id="5856" PostId="2095" Score="3" Text="+1, I think it would be sufficiently on-topic here, but he'd probably get better answers on CS or TCS." CreationDate="2014-07-11T13:16:34.280" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5857" PostId="2097" Score="2" Text="Thanks for your response--in the process of reading different answers on **meta** I must've lost track of the specific wording of the off-topic reason (namely, that it only refers to &quot;*obtaining*&quot; datasets). In addition, I didn't realize that it *would* be acceptable to ask about obtaining certain *exemplary datasets* (as indicated by your second bullet point)." CreationDate="2014-07-14T21:54:13.050" UserId="41810" />
  <row Id="5858" PostId="2097" Score="2" Text="Well, that's my reading of &quot;specific&quot;, plus the feeling that the intent's to rule out &quot;Where can I get data on $X$?&quot; questions, which are better suited to CV sites covering $X$." CreationDate="2014-07-15T09:26:07.683" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="5859" PostId="2097" Score="4" Text="I meant &quot;SE sites covering $X$&quot; of course. Perhaps also worth pointing out that there's [Locating freely available data samples](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/7/locating-freely-available-data-samples), to avoid duplicates of the general &quot;Where can I find data to practise on?&quot; question." CreationDate="2014-07-15T17:26:24.907" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="5921" PostId="2097" Score="4" Text="There's also http://opendata.stackexchange.com (which like any big haystack is not easy to search)." CreationDate="2014-07-27T16:49:10.150" UserId="557" />
  <row Id="5869" PostId="2098" Score="0" Text="I'm curious why you say A/B test is not a technical term. Arguably, jargon is synonymous with &quot;technical term&quot;, and you give it this much credit within the BI (bioinformatics?) community. Furthermore, the answers seem to suggest some disagreement on its technical meaningfulness. Would you care to explain your initial opinion, even if it's changed? I note that you've seen it misused, but doesn't that imply a technically correct usage?" CreationDate="2014-07-19T21:37:31.813" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5870" PostId="2098" Score="0" Text="I meant that I don't think it is a technical term in the academic fields of statistics and probability but jargon from another field in which it is clearly a technical term. However, nobody seems to know what the term is in academia so I guess there is not one and we inherit &quot;A/B testing&quot; by default. Comparing two samples is a super common thing to do so I had assumed a term had been coined hundreds of years ago and wanted to try to proliferate appropriate semantics. The down votes seem to imply my assumption and/or goal was ill advised." CreationDate="2014-07-19T21:52:39.283" UserId="45876" />
  <row Id="5871" PostId="2098" Score="2" Text="FYI, BI is Business Intelligence" CreationDate="2014-07-19T21:54:00.257" UserId="45876" />
  <row Id="5872" PostId="2098" Score="3" Text="Downvotes on meta-posts can mean disagreement with the proposal in addition to the usual meaning; I'd guess it's only disagreement in this case." CreationDate="2014-07-19T21:55:34.727" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5873" PostId="2098" Score="0" Text="OK good to know. I am tempted to open a new question asking specifically for the term used by statisticians but fear the downvotes. :)" CreationDate="2014-07-19T22:03:10.747" UserId="45876" />
  <row Id="5874" PostId="2098" Score="1" Text="I don't think you'd get any downvotes on the main site. Seems like a perfectly good question to me, and our community is generally pretty friendly about voting. However, I think @gung's link to [the Wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A/B_testing) gives a pretty good answer (binary hypothesis testing). Still, might be interesting to see if the community agrees with that though. In fact, asking a sort of leading question like, &quot;Is binary hypothesis testing a better statistical term for what business intelligence often refers to as A/B testing?&quot; seems like an even better question to me" CreationDate="2014-07-19T22:07:35.333" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5875" PostId="2098" Score="1" Text="The policy for voting differs between the main site &amp; meta. Downvotes here *do not* mean that the question appears &quot;egregiously sloppy, [with] no-effort-expended&quot; etc. Instead, meta posts that appear to make a concrete proposal (even if marked w/ `[discussion]`) are upvoted if people agree w/ the implied proposal &amp; downvoted if people disagree. Note that you do not gain or lose reputation on meta.CV from votes. I am one of the downvoters here, as I disagree w/ the suggestion, however, I see no reason your proposed CV (main) Q should be downvoted." CreationDate="2014-07-19T22:29:41.557" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="8881" PostId="2098" Score="0" Text="Hi @Keith, consider accepting one of the answers if you think the issue raised by your question has been resolved/settled." CreationDate="2015-12-10T21:26:53.233" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="5862" PostId="2100" Score="1" Text="Good answer. I understand that there is need for such a topic. The question was more semantically motivated. If there is no technical term referring to this method of experimental analysis then clearly it should be kept. I have updated the question accordingly if you care to comment further." CreationDate="2014-07-18T14:07:32.513" UserId="45876" />
  <row Id="5863" PostId="2100" Score="4" Text="I agree strongly with the general and specific arguments here. Moreover, the repertoire of allowed tags should be not be based on arguments that one term is better or more widely used than another; it's sufficient that a term is widely used by a substantial fraction of statistical people. Otherwise, a large number of tags could be objected to on some such grounds." CreationDate="2014-07-18T16:44:03.193" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5864" PostId="2101" Score="1" Text="Awesome thanks. I am still curious if there is a more formal term than A/B test use by statisticians. It is especially awkward when people use it to refer to experiments with three variants." CreationDate="2014-07-18T23:50:45.650" UserId="45876" />
  <row Id="5865" PostId="2102" Score="2" Text="There's also [homogeneity analysis](http://www.datatheory.nl/pdfs/92/92_12.pdf) (but see the R homals package), so I would be inclined to update the list of synonyms for the [tag:homogeneity] tag in order to ensure that only heteroskedasticity &lt;-&gt; homogeneity-of-variance is suggested as tag synonym." CreationDate="2014-07-19T19:44:02.987" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="5867" PostId="2102" Score="1" Text="It seems homogeneity fits in the [meta tag concept](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/). It does not help to much narrowing down an issue. Maybe in that post you could use tags r, hypothesis-testing and uniform." CreationDate="2014-07-19T21:32:18.757" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="5866" PostId="2103" Score="2" Text="There's no problem in updating tag synonyms or editing current remaping. The problem really is what to do with [tag:homogeneity]." CreationDate="2014-07-19T19:46:08.933" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="5881" PostId="2104" Score="2" Text="Did your question explicitly and clearly state that you welcomed answers that addressed special cases?" CreationDate="2014-07-23T13:01:39.753" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5882" PostId="2104" Score="0" Text="No, since I would never give a general answer if only an answer starting with &quot;That depends. If ...&quot; can be true. All what we ask are true answers. ;)" CreationDate="2014-07-23T13:12:49.210" UserId="28705" />
  <row Id="5898" PostId="2104" Score="5" Text="The impersonal aspect of the question is relevant network-wide. See these Meta Stack Exchange threads: [Is accepting an answer discouraging more answers?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/18573/246931), [Am I accepting answers too early?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/70840/246931), [Does accepting an answer make other people slightly less likely to respond?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/99321/246931) [duplicate], [Discourage questions being marked as answered within an hour or so of being posted](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/38090/246931)..." CreationDate="2014-07-24T07:57:57.173" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5883" PostId="2105" Score="5" Text="+1. Additionally, if a really greater answer comes up, one can just change the accept checkmark. This is not considered a bad practice ([source](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/93969/is-changing-the-accepted-answer-frowned-upon))." CreationDate="2014-07-23T13:56:37.943" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="5884" PostId="2105" Score="4" Text="Now, my personal opinion is that for changing the accepted answer the other one should be outstanding in comparison with the former. If one day I do that I will try to compensate the rep lost by reading other useful answers from that unaccepted user and would provide one or two upvotes. This is not necessary, but I'd do anyway (just to not break the chain of paying it forward)." CreationDate="2014-07-23T14:00:16.863" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="5885" PostId="2105" Score="2" Text="Those are good points, @AndreSilva. I can say that I have added answers to threads that already had an accepted answer several times. I always took it as given that my answer wouldn't be accepted &amp; never thought twice about it. It would be fine w/ me if my answer weren't subsequently accepted even if people thought mine were better." CreationDate="2014-07-23T14:12:27.447" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5886" PostId="2105" Score="3" Text="+1, but I do not yet accept this answer. ;)" CreationDate="2014-07-23T14:31:26.787" UserId="28705" />
  <row Id="5896" PostId="2107" Score="3" Text="Great question! +1s all around. Very nice to have heard from our top three contributors right away, all professional statisticians. Valuable perspectives as always." CreationDate="2014-07-24T06:15:19.190" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="17081" PostId="2107" Score="2" Text="Not the question, but it works the other way. When I've been approached privately by individuals who are interested in hiring me because of my postings on CV or elsewhere, it most commonly turns out that (1) they want the analysis done for a paper or Master's degree and seem to expect that it will be obvious how to do it and that it can be done in about a hour given the data and/or (2) they have some very fixed ideas about what to do based on limited or idiosyncratic understanding of statistics and want a hired gun to implement it. Otherwise put, be circumspect about those who are hiring too!" CreationDate="2019-01-08T12:09:57.907" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17794" PostId="2107" Score="2" Text="Resume? You should put it on LinkedIn. We should have a LinkedIn group." CreationDate="2019-06-23T00:23:14.567" UserId="140504" />
  <row Id="5888" PostId="2108" Score="3" Text="Same here; not on my resume, but I have the flair box on my website." CreationDate="2014-07-23T14:42:32.560" UserId="29617" />
  <row Id="5891" PostId="2109" Score="2" Text="Great points. Agree about high rep != good quality. I think &quot;quality presence&quot;, as a part of a professional portfolio, is something I would be more apt to advertise, vs just trying to rack up rep. And hopefully any potential employer - or my current employer - doesn't scrutinize the timestamps of my posts too closely..." CreationDate="2014-07-23T17:01:41.213" UserId="40501" />
  <row Id="5892" PostId="2111" Score="9" Text="The *evidence* of your research may be intangible, but it's there. It will be reflected in future answers, in how you think about future problems, and how you share your insights. Isn't that ultimately its greatest value? Those who spend their time only answering questions they know the answers to are valuable contributors but it's unlikely they gain as much from those efforts (or write answers that are as clear and helpful). BTW, your remarks about anonymity presented an interesting challenge. You should update that fuzzy blue &amp; red photo! ;-)" CreationDate="2014-07-23T19:59:53.237" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5894" PostId="2111" Score="7" Text="@whuber On the research that didn't end up in an answer - please don't take it that I feel like the research was *wasted*. Not in the least - it's one of the reasons I come here. It's just that, in the context of the question, it doesn't result in something I can directly show to (for example) a potential employer - there's no direct evidence I did anything. Since I don't regard my activities here as something I would try to show a potential employer, it's really a non-issue for me. Eventually it will come in useful, though, since it does have relevance to some things I do." CreationDate="2014-07-23T20:33:34.263" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5897" PostId="2112" Score="2" Text="Just don't miss the deadline for awarding the bounty, or else half of the bounty will be awarded automatically and the other half will be lost!" CreationDate="2014-07-24T07:48:04.417" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5899" PostId="2112" Score="0" Text="@nick I should have been clearer; I was originally trying to emphasize not awarding it before offering the bounty, but my point sort of drifted..." CreationDate="2014-07-24T09:29:28.897" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5907" PostId="2113" Score="9" Text="I struggled to decide whether to close the question outright or convert it to CW. Strictly speaking such questions are off topic on SE.  This one was asked in a way that encouraged productive and useful answers; IMHO it's not merely a &quot;fun&quot; thread, but nevertheless it's one that clearly has no right or best answer.  The purpose of CW status is to allow such threads to fit appropriately within the question-answer-vote-accept-gain reputation framework.  You should be pleased to have gained any  reputation at all for the four upvotes made before CW status was applied :-)." CreationDate="2014-07-24T13:46:42.643" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5909" PostId="2113" Score="2" Text="Additionally to what whuber said, there will be lots of badges for you to compensate your idea :)" CreationDate="2014-07-24T14:51:23.890" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="5910" PostId="2113" Score="1" Text="And badges for us answerers too :D Don't sweat the mortarboard one; with your rate and quality of contributions, you'll get it soon enough (probably just a matter of waiting for one of your answers to land on a &quot;Hot Network Question&quot; when you also happen to be having a fairly successful day otherwise). Thanks for asking, and thanks to the community for keeping it as a wiki! It's tough to see when one of these big list questions is going to be a good fit for the community, but I saw a lot of upvotes on your question before I saw the first close vote, which I think is a good sentiment indicator." CreationDate="2014-07-24T19:38:27.720" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5911" PostId="2113" Score="2" Text="BTW, regarding big list questions, see also [What could be done with respect to tag “big-list”?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/1846/32036)" CreationDate="2014-07-24T19:38:45.227" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="6045" PostId="2113" Score="1" Text="I expect you'll hit the Mortarboard badge soon enough. If you count my active period here from mid-September 2012 (I was on for a good while before then but only intermittently answering), it was just over six months before I hit 200 the first time. There's no great secret to it, though it helps to have several days with a few good contributions in a row (because a good post will get votes over several days, and accepts may take some days as well). Sooner or later one of those good contributions will get not 4 or 5 votes but a dozen or so, and then a couple of other good answers will do it." CreationDate="2014-08-25T02:51:42.590" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5906" PostId="2114" Score="3" Text="I typically consider professional memberships to be in dues-paying orgs like APA/PRSA/APHA/whatevs but definitely agree that quality activity on an SE site can be a good proxy for professional experience early in one's career, whether on or off paper. Looking back, I really wish I had known about CV/SO 3-4 yrs ago when I was just starting on the job market &amp; was looking for opportunities to increase my professional activity level in any way. And my path toward stats probably would have been accomplished faster &amp; w/ less alcohol-induced life rumination." CreationDate="2014-07-24T13:44:18.430" UserId="40501" />
  <row Id="5908" PostId="2114" Score="4" Text="If you do find a job in academia you can consider contributions here as service to the field as well - which people typically do put those markers (journal/grant reviewer etc.) on their vitae." CreationDate="2014-07-24T14:13:13.043" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="5915" PostId="2114" Score="5" Text="Good luck with the postdoc." CreationDate="2014-07-25T01:34:54.860" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5920" PostId="2114" Score="1" Text="I got the job! Thanks :) Simulation study and longitudinal SEM questions coming soon, I'm sure!" CreationDate="2014-07-27T06:59:18.033" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5931" PostId="2114" Score="3" Text="@NickStauner: Congratulations!" CreationDate="2014-07-30T12:01:02.123" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="5900" PostId="2115" Score="5" Text="From the [revision history](http://stats.stackexchange.com/posts/109076/revisions) it appears the moderator whuber made the change to make it community wiki. In my experience this is common on Cross-Validated for &quot;fun&quot; questions that ask for a list of favorites [like this](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/423/what-is-your-favorite-data-analysis-cartoon) or [or this](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1337/statistics-jokes)" CreationDate="2014-07-24T12:10:02.120" UserId="8373" />
  <row Id="5901" PostId="2115" Score="0" Text="@DavidRobinson - should have looked in the revisions... I looked elsewhere, which didn't have that bit of data." CreationDate="2014-07-24T12:11:00.310" UserId="24254" />
  <row Id="5902" PostId="2115" Score="0" Text="Looks like the link to the revision history isn't active when the only revision is making community-wiki. Feature request?" CreationDate="2014-07-24T12:14:51.577" UserId="8373" />
  <row Id="5903" PostId="2115" Score="0" Text="@DavidRobinson - because nothing changed in the question text/title/tags." CreationDate="2014-07-24T12:15:42.333" UserId="24254" />
  <row Id="5904" PostId="2115" Score="1" Text="I know, I meant that that makes it hard to reach the page and find out that it was made a wiki." CreationDate="2014-07-24T12:16:41.660" UserId="8373" />
  <row Id="5905" PostId="2115" Score="0" Text="@DavidRobinson - yep true enough :)" CreationDate="2014-07-24T12:17:12.797" UserId="24254" />
  <row Id="5916" PostId="2119" Score="0" Text="Maybe this is a bug. At least according to [this](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/125208/when-exactly-do-i-get-comment-notifications) thread you should have got notified. Did you get notified now?" CreationDate="2014-07-26T12:32:23.697" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="5917" PostId="2119" Score="1" Text="@AndreSilva Yes I did. And I also get the latest notification from the user 1h ago." CreationDate="2014-07-26T14:06:03.283" UserId="8402" />
  <row Id="5918" PostId="2119" Score="3" Text="I notice you responded to all those pings within five minutes, suggesting you were monitoring the comment thread.  Perhaps the system recognized that and considered you notified." CreationDate="2014-07-26T14:23:59.640" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5919" PostId="2119" Score="1" Text="@whuber: that's possible, indeed the page was always open in my browser" CreationDate="2014-07-26T14:59:34.443" UserId="8402" />
  <row Id="5984" PostId="2119" Score="2" Text="Ooo, I think this is a bug around comment replies that are added during a comment edit; will check on it tomorrow." CreationDate="2014-08-08T06:44:17.887" UserId="3" />
  <row Id="5928" PostId="2122" Score="2" Text="By the way, welcome to CV! I've noticed you around the past couple days &amp; haven't had a chance to say hi. I linked your site (which I appreciate) in my question here: [Free internet or downloadable resources for sample size calculations](http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/63391/7290). If you know of any others, please add them." CreationDate="2014-07-29T20:33:09.210" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5932" PostId="2122" Score="0" Text="Hi back to you. Thanks for linking my site - I will add links there if I know of them." CreationDate="2014-07-30T13:08:04.747" UserId="52554" />
  <row Id="5937" PostId="2122" Score="1" Text="Russ -- One thing to note here in meta is that the meaning of upvotes is different. Here it doesn't necessarily mean &quot;good question&quot; - if you're asking &quot;is X okay&quot; and you get upvotes, that signals agreement that more people think it's okay than not. Perhaps even moreso with answers - downvoted answers are not bad, it's just their opinions are not agreed with, and upvoted answers are ones some people agree with. I don't suppose you can see the vote breakdowns yet (I think that's at 1000 reputation), but as I type nobody has disagreed with Scortchi's answer... (ctd)" CreationDate="2014-07-30T18:49:48.730" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5938" PostId="2122" Score="1" Text="(ctd)... Between all the upvotes on your question and Scortchi's answer, I think the indications so far are that your question is widely regarded as on topic by the people who participate here in meta (which largely determines how it runs -- at least within the broader constraints of how the network-wide rules are applied). There's no indication here that you should delete, at least not for now (and I don't expect that to change)." CreationDate="2014-07-30T18:59:09.640" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5923" PostId="2125" Score="2" Text="+1. The evidence appears to be that far more active users look at recent questions than follow chat. Moreover, I doubt very much that if a question is interesting and intelligible then extra publicity through chat will do anything to attract **extra** interest. It could even work as an irritant. Put **all** your effort into making your question comprehensible and worthwhile." CreationDate="2014-07-29T16:13:36.913" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5925" PostId="2125" Score="1" Text="@NickCox and Gung. Many thanks to both of you for your answers.&#xA;One more question.&#xA;And those who know more, like you, will also look more at recent qst than chat? For example, I posted a question that I'm not sure, but I don't think is basic, and possibly will not get answered unless someone with some knowledge of functional statistics helps me. And by surveying a bit the questions asked, not many are of this subject. &#xA;http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/109751/limiting-joint-distribution-of-estimators-functional-statistics-influence-curv" CreationDate="2014-07-29T18:03:40.117" UserId="40252" />
  <row Id="5926" PostId="2125" Score="3" Text="I really think very few people ever look at chat, @Anoldmaninthesea. As for your Q, yes it does look like it will require someone w/ specialized knowledge. Unfortunately, I don't know anything about functional statistics. If no one answers after a couple of days, we can put a bounty on it." CreationDate="2014-07-29T18:59:41.567" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5929" PostId="2125" Score="0" Text="Ok. Thanks Gung. ;)" CreationDate="2014-07-29T22:58:30.830" UserId="40252" />
  <row Id="5924" PostId="2126" Score="10" Text="That badge seems to be a kind of weak joke. Smile wryly and move on." CreationDate="2014-07-29T16:16:11.177" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="5927" PostId="2126" Score="2" Text="&quot;You tell us!&quot; seems to have been a good interpretation in this particular case. Enjoy [your self-learner badge](http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/badges/14/self-learner?userid=12615) and the [meta effect](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/235225/246931)!" CreationDate="2014-07-29T20:20:52.737" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5930" PostId="2129" Score="2" Text="Doesn't look like clear disagreement to me...Your answer has no downvotes, 4 upvotes (now including mine), and only 1 comment (upvoted 2× though it is) that seems more ambivalent or reflective than clearly opposed. Similarly, the other answers don't strike me as disagreeing directly. Scortchi's answer on the thread he linked seems indirectly supportive, and @RussLenth's question now has 4 upvotes (again, including mine) and 0 down/close-votes. Glen_b might disagree, but it's not clear to me if he wants these questions to be off-topic or is just trying to represent the community's interests." CreationDate="2014-07-30T05:11:09.147" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5935" PostId="2129" Score="2" Text="@Nick I was simply trying to interpret the explanations of what's on and off topic on the on-topic help page, my personal preferences didn't enter into it (at least not in any conscious sense); I'm interested to read people's thoughts here -- I hope to be convinced one way or another. I lean somewhat toward thinking this question probably should be acceptable here\*, but I don't read the words in the help that way. $\quad$ $\quad$ \*(though I also want to more clearly have a way to figure out where the grey line should go)" CreationDate="2014-07-30T18:36:48.263" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5936" PostId="2129" Score="0" Text="Oh, good point! I hadn't seen anyone refer directly to [the help page](http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) yet. Seems the relevant quote is, &quot;Questions about obtaining particular datasets are off-topic (they are too specialized).&quot; I suppose we wouldn't want to elaborate that too much, but if more good questions raise confusion about the limits of the rule, maybe inserting a link to this meta-question would be an efficient way to acknowledge reasonable exceptions." CreationDate="2014-07-30T18:45:51.233" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5933" PostId="2131" Score="2" Text="(1) What is &quot;ME&quot;? (2) Concerning cross-posting, please see http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2031." CreationDate="2014-07-30T16:26:18.907" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="5940" PostId="2131" Score="1" Text="It's Mathematics. ;)" CreationDate="2014-07-30T23:09:08.263" UserId="40252" />
  <row Id="5955" PostId="2131" Score="2" Text="Regarding &quot;time-to-respond&quot;, at least for probability theory and mathematical statistics questions, I would say the opposite happens: the answering team never sleeps over there." CreationDate="2014-08-01T21:20:02.183" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="5971" PostId="2131" Score="2" Text="I would say my experience doesn't match yours. I go there (math.SE) sometimes to answer some stats or prob questions and generally find the ones that have posted in say the last day that I'd be interested in looking at (which mostly means 'I am competent to respond to') *all have answers*. This is rarely the case here, where I can usually find 4 or 5 in the new queue that I'd happily answer, and which are either unanswered or where I think I can contribute something useful anyway. If I can find one on math.SE that's not answered, it usually has an answer before I finish typing." CreationDate="2014-08-05T05:20:04.743" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5973" PostId="2131" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b, yes it seems that you're right. &#xA;By the way, why then is there a stat.stack outside mathematics? Wouldn't it be better to just join both?" CreationDate="2014-08-05T09:43:41.640" UserId="40252" />
  <row Id="5974" PostId="2131" Score="2" Text="(1) not every statistical question is particularly a mathematical question, and even when it is, there seems to be a tendency for many (though not all) mathematicians to focus only on very particular aspects of it for some reason;  (2) the style of answers (and the overall culture) tends to be quite different at the two sites. I don't think that the most common approaches taken there tend to suit a large fraction of the people who ask here, though there is an overlap for particular kinds of question. There are questions here that I think would be likely to close or go unanswered there." CreationDate="2014-08-05T10:24:50.663" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5975" PostId="2131" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b And aren't many questions left unanswered a pointer to this community needing more experts/knowledgeable users such as you?" CreationDate="2014-08-05T14:14:54.153" UserId="40252" />
  <row Id="5976" PostId="2131" Score="1" Text="@Anoldmaninthesea. No doubt more statisticians actively answering questions here would be helpful for getting more questions answered, though I don't think it's the only factor. As I mentioned, the kind of question tends to be different, for example; I think it's an issue with a variety of causes." CreationDate="2014-08-05T21:11:54.457" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5988" PostId="2131" Score="1" Text="related [mathematics-vs-cross-validated](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1966/stackexchange-mathematics-vs-cross-validated)" CreationDate="2014-08-10T18:27:25.730" UserId="25936" />
  <row Id="5943" PostId="2132" Score="3" Text="Your answer has really been very informative and complete. I like your pedagogical perspective.It took me a bit to read most of the links, but most of them were very elucidative, like Robert Cartaino's answer. I'll start to, if the need arises, to only cross-post conscientiously, accordingly to your balanced and sound advices. :)&#xA;I must say I was a bit fearful for the possible penalty I could have received, and also for being an action very frowned upon. I'm a bit more relaxed now, and also more conscientious on how to behave in that situation." CreationDate="2014-07-30T23:25:11.483" UserId="40252" />
  <row Id="5944" PostId="2132" Score="1" Text="Many thanks. And nice memes! =D" CreationDate="2014-07-30T23:38:00.410" UserId="40252" />
  <row Id="5948" PostId="2132" Score="5" Text="+1 a comprehensive coverage of the issue. Congratulations on the Steward badge, that's a mighty effort. (If you want to make more progress on the Suggested Edit Steward-badge, you might have to leave more edits for lower rep users to be able to suggest, as difficult as that can be sometimes.)" CreationDate="2014-08-01T01:27:00.610" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5949" PostId="2132" Score="1" Text="Having developed those habits, I'm trying to transition away from basic curatorial tasks like editing, flagging, and first post reviews. After working on those for a while, I decided to use the gold badges as goalposts – a way of convincing myself that I'd done my part for the collective cause, learned what I could along the way, and that it's now time to focus on contributing in more self-directed, creative ways. Besides, though I've tried to be fastidious in editing &amp; flagging, I'm no grammar nazi, and don't want to push my style or views too hard. Plenty of excuses for letting others do it!" CreationDate="2014-08-01T01:54:29.367" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5956" PostId="2132" Score="4" Text="(+1) for the whole answer, and especially for policy 3) (&quot;Do not copy-paste; reframe the question&quot;). This is the single most convincing argument in favor of a productive cross-posting." CreationDate="2014-08-01T22:09:29.967" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="5957" PostId="2132" Score="0" Text="@AlecosPapadopoulos: Yeah, that section you quote was the first thing I decided to bold, because that's the one behavior above all others that really seems to annoy people (and not without reason). After that, I decided I could bold some other stuff to improve *skimmability*, but I'd underline that one sentence too if I could. Arguably, alterations make it misfit the definition of a cross-post, in the same sense that small variations / paraphrasings are practically all one needs to do to avoid charges of plagiarism – a similar crime in that its egregiousness depends on exactness of the cloning" CreationDate="2014-08-01T22:25:14.057" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5968" PostId="2132" Score="0" Text="+1, it's too bad we can't add bounties to meta threads ('one of the answers is exemplary and worthy of additional attention' ;-)." CreationDate="2014-08-03T23:46:39.077" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5969" PostId="2132" Score="0" Text="Thanks :) Even setting personal gain aside, I agree it's too bad. Some feature requests about that: [Bounty-like feature on metas](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/231215/246931) and [Can't post bounty on a per-site child meta](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/78264/246931)" CreationDate="2014-08-04T00:38:58.100" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5950" PostId="2136" Score="0" Text="+1 for the extra example, but I think I disagree with your interpretation. I'm still reading, but without really finishing it or forming a more thoughtful opinion of the question, I see it's a bit of a &quot;proofreading&quot; question: one response you're requesting is any critique of your argument, which is pretty elaborate. This might be cynical, but I think that might be holding this question back too. With most questions, it probably takes less than 5 minutes to reach roughly 90% comprehension, but yours has already taken me about that long to read incompletely, and I'll need to reread..." CreationDate="2014-08-01T19:54:16.100" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5951" PostId="2136" Score="0" Text="I've often sensed that the audience here is conditioned to expect relatively small demands on their attention spans, especially from questions. One can skim an answer for useful bits and move along, but I hesitate to answer if I feel I might be missing some important wrinkle. People also reward clarity, which depends on terseness when one isn't willing to read carefully for more than 5 minutes to follow an otherwise-clear train of thought...but people don't usually punish elaborate writing when other flaws aren't clearly present. I think they just conclude that it's not worth the time..." CreationDate="2014-08-01T19:56:25.407" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5952" PostId="2136" Score="0" Text="...which is so often the limiting factor. Some examples from my experience: [this comment](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/230833/modulate-the-review-notifications-color-to-reflect-changes-or-make-it-dismissi#comment758264_230833) on a question of mine, which probably owes its popularity more to the unpopularity of the notification I propose to change...after an elaborate discussion of the need for it...and [this version](http://parenting.stackexchange.com/revisions/11283/3) of my question on Parenting.SE, which got a &quot;too broad&quot; response before major reduction made it more digestible." CreationDate="2014-08-01T19:59:52.710" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5953" PostId="2136" Score="0" Text="Oh, and [my own personal tumbleweed](http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/q/13103/101205) on Area 51. Granted, traffic is much lower over there in general, but in retrospect, probably the same problem. I hesitate somewhat to ask questions now because I usually want to ask something long-winded like this if I can't just answer my own question quickly enough, but it seems difficult to get any input at that level of complexity. Happily, [my experience here](http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/83131/32036) has been better, but the answer was delayed understandably. Votes/comments were quick though" CreationDate="2014-08-01T20:06:45.427" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5954" PostId="2136" Score="1" Text="@NickStauner Nick, thanks for the input (and the upvote to my Tumbleweed I guess). The &quot;proofreading&quot; remark is right on target -I was trying to avoid having the answer closed because &quot;it will mainly generate opinion-based answers&quot;. For the fun of it, I added in the beginning of the Tumbleweed a TL;DR brief (it fits in one small-laptop screen!)." CreationDate="2014-08-01T21:16:37.250" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="5961" PostId="2136" Score="0" Text="FWIW, I think I would've given the same answer without the TL;DR section, but it definitely helped me put everything together...kind of like an abstract would: I knew what to expect as I read, and made easier sense of sections that were a little over my head because I already knew the context. Hope it helps you get more answers than just mine! Of course, editing to bump it in the active questions list is always a good tactic anyway." CreationDate="2014-08-02T04:56:17.373" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5963" PostId="2136" Score="0" Text="A meta-question regarding question length: [Does length of a question influence probability of receiving an answer?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/1382/32036) Hard to say if it really works the way I feared, but with your edit, your question follows the &quot;inverted pyramid&quot; guideline ([mbq's suggestion](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/a/1383/32036)) much better." CreationDate="2014-08-02T19:08:17.840" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5964" PostId="2136" Score="1" Text="@NickStauner ...which is what we do in business also: start with the &quot;executive summary&quot; and then proceed with gradually more detail." CreationDate="2014-08-02T19:11:36.447" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="5965" PostId="2136" Score="0" Text="@NickStauner It is &quot;inverted&quot; in terms of &quot;criticality&quot; perhaps, but a normal pyramid in terms of volume." CreationDate="2014-08-02T19:13:28.553" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="5966" PostId="2136" Score="0" Text="Yeah, criticality seems to be [the logic of the metaphor](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid), but the normal pyramid metaphor appeals more intuitively to me, now that you mention it...Leave it to American journalists to confuse things with a bad metaphor I guess!" CreationDate="2014-08-02T19:15:59.517" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="5970" PostId="2136" Score="1" Text="I remember reading it when it posted. I recall thinking ... &quot;hmm, that's not a trivial question - it's certainly not something I can deal with now, but a couple of short questions might fit into the time I have available&quot;. I did at least view it." CreationDate="2014-08-05T05:12:13.813" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5972" PostId="2136" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b The time factor again... if only we could behave as our asymptotic results..." CreationDate="2014-08-05T08:29:43.503" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="5962" PostId="2137" Score="3" Text="Alecos, if wasting other people time, or unknowingly consuming resources that could be used in other questions, can be avoided, at least in my opinion, by linking the two questions, and asking the answerer to post on both communities. If the users are already warned that the question is posted on both sites, then by answering on one, they would also answer on the other. If a tag is eventually created, it would be nice for it to do this automatically, without having to copy/paste ourselves." CreationDate="2014-08-02T07:44:16.457" UserId="40252" />
  <row Id="5958" PostId="2138" Score="0" Text="Thanks for the update. I'm guessing those numbers may not be strong enough." CreationDate="2014-08-02T01:49:53.733" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5959" PostId="2138" Score="1" Text="The first and the last are particularly the issue, from what I can understand. They have to improve one of the two to remain in beta. Check the interesting case of &quot;Reverse Engineering&quot;, http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/49551/reverse-engineering, which is in Beta for _500_ days (why? I guess because it is doing really good on all fronts, even in visits, but has a really low Q per day metric -so it is neither shut down nor does it graduate)." CreationDate="2014-08-02T01:54:08.890" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="5987" PostId="2140" Score="1" Text="I used to do this. In fact in my experience on math and stackoverflow the suggestion to move questions is rarely accepted because these are the busiest sites and the mods are overwhelmed. See [For questions which might belong on maths, stats, etc, is is better to vote to close or flag for migration?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/228626/for-questions-which-might-belong-on-maths-stats-etc-is-is-better-to-vote-to-c) on meta. Definitely worth commenting at least so that the posters are aware that CV exists and is a useful resource." CreationDate="2014-08-10T18:24:47.013" UserId="25936" />
  <row Id="5979" PostId="2142" Score="3" Text="As long as the answer has at least one upvote, it won't affect the &quot;questions with no accepted answers&quot; count." CreationDate="2014-08-08T03:42:56.000" UserId="6123" />
  <row Id="5980" PostId="2142" Score="0" Text="@abby thanks; I meant to mention that it had upvotes (and that I thought therefore it wouldn't affect the unanswered Qs rate)" CreationDate="2014-08-08T04:07:49.577" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="5985" PostId="2142" Score="1" Text="I suggest that you include the links to these questions of yours in this post Glen, and chances are, they will be looked after. Answering your own question is perfectly fine and creative. Reason to not accept your own lone answer: it creates a sense of helpless boredom spiced with a tad of loneliness (except of course if you are a certified narcissist)." CreationDate="2014-08-08T17:57:37.253" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="5989" PostId="2142" Score="1" Text="Accepting a post is a sign that you're not actively interested in further answers: comments on the answer would still be welcome of course. Otherwise someone might put in work assuming that you were still searching for a solution." CreationDate="2014-08-10T18:32:18.070" UserId="25936" />
  <row Id="5991" PostId="2142" Score="0" Text="@TooTone While I'd happily accept a better answer, I guess I'm not actively seeking one. Thanks." CreationDate="2014-08-10T21:18:15.207" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="15216" PostId="2142" Score="0" Text="What I have done, and what I have seen others do, is provide an answer if it was an adequate work around, and accept it if it was a satisfactory answer. If it was suboptimal, it should remain there but accepting questions has historically discouraged further attempts to answer. [Here](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/324661/frequency-of-an-event-at-a-given-time-from-a-list-of-times-of-occurrence/) is an example of user who gave their answer but did not accept it, and which I hope can garner more attention by remaining open." CreationDate="2018-02-01T22:21:27.440" UserId="8013" />
  <row Id="5992" PostId="2143" Score="1" Text="Well, I'm going to mark this as accepted; it seems as if it conveys the general thinking. I doubt we'll see any competition for an answer." CreationDate="2014-08-12T04:09:33.417" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6029" PostId="2146" Score="1" Text="The site may appear down when it's not; it seems to load very slowly every time I visit. I'm guessing their server(s) suck(s)." CreationDate="2014-08-21T18:23:51.023" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="6031" PostId="2146" Score="1" Text="I consistently see CloudFlare's 524 page since over a week back. I'm in Europe; maybe you are in a different region where there is no content delivery network between you and them? But if their CDN provider can't connect, either, that still means they are toast (and paying through their noses for a service which they seem to have caused to stop working)." CreationDate="2014-08-21T18:32:11.867" UserId="23810" />
  <row Id="13841" PostId="2146" Score="0" Text="The error page is now a 502 which suggests a more permanent error, but it's obviously been a few years since I last checked so I don't know when exactly this changed. They seem to still be wasting CloudFlare's resources ..." CreationDate="2017-07-20T13:20:16.430" UserId="23810" />
  <row Id="5993" PostId="2147" Score="0" Text="After posting my question, I found this one: [Handling “suggested edits” to posts](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1284/handling-suggested-edits-to-posts) by @Macro which renders mine almost a duplicate. However, I am still extremely curious to find out how to browse the history of edits (if it's possible at all)." CreationDate="2014-08-13T13:02:16.423" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="5994" PostId="2147" Score="0" Text="The history page is not empty when I look at it." CreationDate="2014-08-13T14:11:42.427" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5995" PostId="2147" Score="0" Text="@gung: But do you see there the history of all reviewed edits, or only the edits you reviewed?" CreationDate="2014-08-13T14:15:04.067" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="5996" PostId="2147" Score="0" Text="All edits, I was &gt;2k when the new review system came online. It may be that it's only showing you the edits that have happened since you turned 2k+." CreationDate="2014-08-13T14:16:54.623" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="5998" PostId="2147" Score="0" Text="@gung: This cannot be true: I turned 2k+ a couple of days ago, but see nothing there. But actually I noticed a &quot;show skipped reviews&quot; check button there; it does not change anything for me, probably because I did not &quot;skip&quot; any reviews (instead, I did nothing). So it might be, that the history only shows the reviews that one accepted, rejected or skipped. If so, I should start skipping reviews I am not sure about to be able to check later how the others voted. Still, if true, I find such history behaviour a bit weird." CreationDate="2014-08-13T14:21:28.867" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="5999" PostId="2147" Score="0" Text="I don't know, but I can definitely see reviews that I neither accepted, rejected or skipped." CreationDate="2014-08-13T14:23:50.073" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6000" PostId="2147" Score="1" Text="@gung: I found out the answer: one needs 10k rep to see the general review history. Until then one only has access to one's own review history. Thanks for the replies!" CreationDate="2014-08-13T15:39:17.167" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6001" PostId="2147" Score="0" Text="Huh, I've never heard of that, but then I was 10k+ when the new review system came online. Hmm, consistent with that idea, I only see my own edits on SO, where my rep is ~3k." CreationDate="2014-08-13T15:48:39.793" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6002" PostId="2147" Score="1" Text="@amoeba You shouldn't expect to be able to tell in every case, it's a learning process. Don't be afraid to reject edits as too minor, but if you're unsure about an edit, just skip it, someone else will get it. I still skip the odd Suggested Edit now and then and I've done over 900 of them." CreationDate="2014-08-13T22:36:35.890" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6003" PostId="2149" Score="5" Text="I don't think beta sites can be listed in the flag/close dialog as migration options; I think one has to suggest that destination in an `other (needs ♦ moderator attention)` flag." CreationDate="2014-08-14T23:58:17.113" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="6004" PostId="2149" Score="2" Text="Some of those kinds of questions might be a better fit for SuperUser, perhaps." CreationDate="2014-08-15T02:34:24.773" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6018" PostId="2149" Score="2" Text="While whuber gave an extended, philosophical, and probably opinionated answer (I am not convinced that DS is bound to fail; I am only convinced that they will have to reinvent statistics on statistics questions, reinvent parts of StackExchange as far as the programming side goes, and reinvent parts of SuperUser as far as file management goes... but the same must have been said about CV at the time that half of it is mathematics, and the other half is programming)... anyway if what Nick Stauner say is technically true, I'd be happy to accept that as *the* answer, at least for the time being." CreationDate="2014-08-19T13:34:48.070" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="6030" PostId="2149" Score="1" Text="The first step should always be to remove the code from the question and leave it here. Or perhaps split the question and move the coding part to SO. The DS page should not have pure coding questions. DS is more about Machine Leaning, business cases for hypothesis test and general questions about coding frameworks. Pure coding questions should not be on DS just like how pure R questions should not be here even though they are likely to get answers. In fact R questions are likely better off here since most data scientists use Python not R." CreationDate="2014-08-21T18:27:10.413" UserId="45876" />
  <row Id="6005" PostId="2150" Score="6" Text="+1. Sending questions to Data Science will be sending them to oblivion if nobody there is likely to answer. I see no [stata] tag on Data Science, for example. Also, remember that there is surely no religious or practical objection to recommending a forum outside SE whenever that is likely to provide more support (e.g. Statalist)." CreationDate="2014-08-15T09:59:10.820" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6006" PostId="2150" Score="1" Text="&quot;given that DS looks almost certain to fail&quot; Why would you say that?" CreationDate="2014-08-17T16:26:24.413" UserId="28288" />
  <row Id="6011" PostId="2150" Score="1" Text="@Jona None of the metrics SE uses to evaluate sites are in the &quot;good&quot; or &quot;excellent&quot; range for DS and there are no signs they are getting any better." CreationDate="2014-08-18T13:52:01.883" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6016" PostId="2150" Score="2" Text="@jona Info from http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/55053/data-science" CreationDate="2014-08-19T04:20:43.053" UserId="4485" />
  <row Id="6017" PostId="2150" Score="1" Text="Are CrossValidated statistics much better? I think whuber mentioned  (somewhere else) that we are below one answer per question, I think, although we should be good on the number of high rep users (given that the site has been around for a number of years)." CreationDate="2014-08-19T13:29:40.993" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="6020" PostId="2150" Score="1" Text="@StasK It would not be appropriate to compare the stats of a middle-aged site like ours to a beta. However, our beta was far stronger and graduated after several months. At the same stage the DS beta is languishing and gets little traffic. For instance, at three months we were getting 9 Q's/day, 20 A's/day, and over 1000 visits/day, while for DS the figures are 2.6, 7.2, and 190." CreationDate="2014-08-19T17:10:37.607" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6022" PostId="2150" Score="4" Text="Most of the questions I see on DataScience would do perfectly well either on SO or CV." CreationDate="2014-08-19T19:43:48.500" UserId="36229" />
  <row Id="6023" PostId="2150" Score="5" Text="@ssde That's an important observation.  I think it provides a plausible explanation for why DS is struggling: it hasn't been able to carve out a clear niche for itself.  I actually do keep DS in mind when making migration decisions, but in almost all cases if a question is off-topic here it's because it is primarily of a programming nature where it belongs on SO rather than DS.  That leaves almost nothing that truly qualifies to be sent to DS." CreationDate="2014-08-19T20:23:09.150" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6032" PostId="2150" Score="1" Text="@StasK - the comparable beta stats for our site is [here](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/33/statistical-analysis). The [data dump says](http://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/219753/number-of-qs-and-as) we have a current answer rate of 1.1 - for our beta it was 3. Looking at the past few weeks though (which I believe is slow for summer) we now get about [40 to 80 questions per day](http://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/219758/number-of-questions-per-day)." CreationDate="2014-08-21T20:27:47.320" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="6012" PostId="2151" Score="0" Text="I can recommend closure. You can only recommend deleting a Q after it's been closed for some period of time, &amp; an answer if it has 3+ downvotes, so I can't test that." CreationDate="2014-08-18T13:58:40.753" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6013" PostId="2151" Score="0" Text="@gung Thanks. It was odd - usually I have the ability to at least recommend closure, but yesterday there were a lot of posts (but not all of them, which was even odder to my eyes) where there was no 'close' option. [I've removed the reference to deletion since it's a distraction from the main issue.]" CreationDate="2014-08-18T21:18:03.770" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6026" PostId="2151" Score="0" Text="Arg, I tried to comment in the comment field in the jpeg. At any rate... @Glen_b, what you show is an *answer*; answers never have a close option--only questions do. You *flag* answers &amp; *close* Q's (if rep&gt;3k, or flag if &lt;3k; you can also flag to notify the moderators of something when rep&gt;3k). I wonder if there's a problem or a confusion." CreationDate="2014-08-21T01:46:28.990" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6027" PostId="2151" Score="0" Text="@gung After I posted, I wondered if someone might do that. Sorry, I should have cut that bit off. Interesting - apparently it's just that I've misremembered the options I've had. It sounds like your comment is actually a complete answer, and I'm just an idiot (though I have been sick, and fuzzy-headed the last few days, so that might explain why I suddenly thought I used to have an option I never actually had)." CreationDate="2014-08-21T01:59:03.597" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6033" PostId="2151" Score="0" Text="@NickStauner (I guess that won't notify you, but anyway) -- why the `votes` tag?" CreationDate="2014-08-21T22:10:57.857" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6034" PostId="2151" Score="0" Text="It's debatable. Currently [meta-tag:vote-to-close] is synonymized with [meta-tag:votes], and should also cover delete votes, which seems to have been what you were looking for...but I tend to be liberal in tagging things, and people who review my edits (on other sites where I have to suggest them) often remove one or two. I don't get it, but I acknowledge my bias :)" CreationDate="2014-08-21T22:28:33.013" UserId="32036" />
  <row Id="6035" PostId="2151" Score="0" Text="@Nick Ah. That makes sense to me now. vote-to-close -&gt; votes ... got it. Thanks." CreationDate="2014-08-21T22:39:45.840" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6007" PostId="2152" Score="0" Text="Hi Glen_b, the question that needed attention has already been answered. Thanks anyway. :) Given the downvotes, I would think that this question at meta was not interesting enough to get two answers. Sometimes, I don't seem to understand how a question people think is a bad one/uninteresting one, can get two answers, that don't dismiss the original question as unimportant or inadequate, and those two answers get a lot of upvotes. This makes me wonder how large is the go-with-the-flow effect of always upvoting users with an already big reputation..." CreationDate="2014-08-18T09:17:48.257" UserId="40252" />
  <row Id="6008" PostId="2152" Score="2" Text="In meta, downvotes tend to mean something different.  If the post has any sense of &quot;I think X should happen&quot; or even &quot;Should I do X&quot;, then it's likely to be seen as an invitation to vote on it as a proposal. As such, upvotes and downvotes don't reflect the quality of the post, but agreement with what it's seen as proposing. Since you don't gather reputation from posts here (your reputation is your main site reputation), this use is of little consequence. I found your question useful and valuable, and highly appreciated the post, but strictly speaking, I should probably have downvoted it also." CreationDate="2014-08-18T09:32:52.587" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6009" PostId="2152" Score="0" Text="I didn't know that it was seen as agreeing/disagreeing with the proposal. Thanks for explaining it. ;)" CreationDate="2014-08-18T09:39:26.670" UserId="40252" />
  <row Id="6010" PostId="2152" Score="0" Text="At the same time, answers that people agree with will gather upvotes. So gung got heavily upvoted because a lot of people agree broadly with the sentiments expressed there. My response was somewhat similar, but different in some aspects (like the second thought about posting to chat given it's been empty for a week), so I figured it was better to post than simply upvote." CreationDate="2014-08-18T10:29:31.180" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6028" PostId="2153" Score="1" Text="Thanks. It may be this &quot;*Actually, if an answer has a score &lt;-1 and your reputation is &gt;20k, you can vote to delete, but that's a different story*&quot; that led to my initial confusion (see first version in edit history) about having seen one of either a close or delete option on both." CreationDate="2014-08-21T05:48:42.950" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6846" PostId="2154" Score="1" Text="This doesn't preclude migrating to SO, which I think makes sense for at least R/Python questions (not as sure for SAS/Stata/SPSS)." CreationDate="2015-04-12T01:12:30.933" UserId="19676" />
  <row Id="6036" PostId="2155" Score="9" Text="I believe it's a vestige from the origins of this site, when four years ago we had not yet voted on a name.  Some of us have been aware of the discrepancy but have kept quiet because &quot;Statistical Analysis&quot; is manifestly a better description than &quot;CrossValidated&quot; :-)." CreationDate="2014-08-22T18:10:29.297" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6040" PostId="2155" Score="3" Text="Even if it is not on purpose, the association that creates is excellent: **&quot;Cross-validated Statistical Analysis&quot;** - what more can we ask for? (given that &quot;cross-validated&quot; may refer not only to a specific technique, but also to a general notion of credible statistical analysis)." CreationDate="2014-08-23T15:48:11.490" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="6038" PostId="2156" Score="7" Text="The reason given for being off topic was &quot;It is not answerable: it asks for opinions about your capabilities.&quot; Your last suggestion would not cure that subjectivity. As far as &quot;qualifications&quot; go, the question recounts the OP's efforts to learn but has no information whatsoever about qualifications. Hypothetically, if it did, then we would still be in the dark about what kind of &quot;job&quot; is meant, making the question too broad to be answerable. These shortcomings possibly detract from what you might really want to ask here, so perhaps it would be better not to reference that question at all." CreationDate="2014-08-22T21:12:27.113" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6039" PostId="2156" Score="1" Text="I think that actually answers my question." CreationDate="2014-08-23T00:42:28.940" UserId="36229" />
  <row Id="6058" PostId="2156" Score="3" Text="The answer to your title question is, &quot;Jobs are often on-topic&quot; -- see `career` [tag](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/careers). In the body of your question, you asked something different and narrow, and whuber gave a complete answer to that." CreationDate="2014-08-27T17:16:46.700" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="6071" PostId="2156" Score="1" Text="Interesting.  I found, as an engineer, that there were skills that I wish I had, gaps in my university education that I had to hand-fix instead of having them instutitionally built into my program.  Hand fixing is harder.  Is it acceptable to ask what sort of strengths/talents/skills are desirable in the current market, or where market trends suggest leading skills developed today will find excellent and only half-expected fit tomorrow?" CreationDate="2014-08-30T21:13:13.160" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="6042" PostId="2157" Score="0" Text="Thanks, that's a good point." CreationDate="2014-08-23T22:32:43.953" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6043" PostId="2158" Score="6" Text="+1 Thanks for bringing some data." CreationDate="2014-08-24T03:15:58.227" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6046" PostId="2158" Score="6" Text="This would have been a good post for the now dormant blog." CreationDate="2014-08-25T12:09:18.323" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="6047" PostId="2158" Score="0" Text="@AndyW Migrate then?" CreationDate="2014-08-25T12:11:14.890" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="6048" PostId="2158" Score="1" Text="No the blog is not a migration option. The general point of the blog was for generic discussion that did not really fit the Q/A mold, bit it fell in disuse. It still exists though, and if others wanted to contribute we could open it back up. If your interested, the blog will more likely get more general exposure than a post on meta, although is not as likely to generate as much back and forth with members of this site." CreationDate="2014-08-25T12:49:21.660" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="6049" PostId="2158" Score="0" Text="@AndyW I am ok with copy-paste my post to the blog and close it here, what is the procedure for the former?" CreationDate="2014-08-25T13:31:47.313" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="6050" PostId="2158" Score="0" Text="@AndyW, +1 (or 2), the blog is an excellent idea." CreationDate="2014-08-25T18:28:54.610" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6051" PostId="2158" Score="0" Text="@gung Can you tell me please how can I post something on the blog?" CreationDate="2014-08-25T18:38:29.917" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="6052" PostId="2158" Score="0" Text="I don't actually know, I've never done it. @AndyW is the expert there." CreationDate="2014-08-25T18:40:12.813" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6053" PostId="2158" Score="0" Text="@gung Thanks, I will wait for him then, because: CONTD" CreationDate="2014-08-25T18:48:59.157" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="6054" PostId="2158" Score="0" Text="CONTD @AndyW Woes of inactivity: In the blog's &quot;About&quot; the instruction is to go the the chat room &quot;Skewed Distribution&quot; in order to get an &quot;author account&quot; for the blog. But the specific chat room is frozen." CreationDate="2014-08-25T18:49:44.770" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="6055" PostId="2158" Score="0" Text="I'm working on it @AlecosPapadopoulos. I don't have the admin rights to add someone to the blog, but I know chl does. I've posted it in the chat room. Once you get access it is just a wordpress blog that you can copy-paste your post into." CreationDate="2014-08-25T18:49:46.847" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="6056" PostId="2158" Score="0" Text="@Alecos I have unfrozen that room and checked that it has &quot;public&quot; status, so anyone may enter and participate." CreationDate="2014-08-26T14:18:10.470" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6057" PostId="2158" Score="0" Text="Thanks @Andy. Sorry about the delay but I didn't get any notification from Ten Fold yesterday. I will grant writing permissions for Alecos on the blog ASAP." CreationDate="2014-08-26T17:00:45.070" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="6059" PostId="2158" Score="0" Text="@chl Following your info on chat yesterday, should I also open a &quot;bug&quot; request here?" CreationDate="2014-08-27T19:06:22.813" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="6061" PostId="2158" Score="0" Text="Following my reply on Skewed Distribution, it seems that you need to register yourself on the blog using your OpenID. A moderator will then change your rights to allow post editing." CreationDate="2014-08-28T11:36:10.283" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="6067" PostId="2158" Score="0" Text="I am not sure what it means to &quot;register&quot; to the blog, nor what the OpenID is. At the moment, I have connected to the blog through stats.blogoverflow.com/wp-admin , which is the only way that the blog can recognize me as a user, and I am seeing the Dashboard of the blog. Will somebody try to change my rights?" CreationDate="2014-08-28T12:39:27.210" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="6068" PostId="2158" Score="0" Text="@chl I forgot to alert you on my previous comment." CreationDate="2014-08-28T15:30:51.247" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="6069" PostId="2158" Score="0" Text="This should be ok now. Ping me on the chat room if there's any problem." CreationDate="2014-08-28T15:53:34.227" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="6044" PostId="2159" Score="1" Text="...and the domain name is not even &quot;statisticalanalysis.stackexchange.com&quot;, but &quot;stats.stackexhange.com&quot;. The first does not result -it does not redirect to the second." CreationDate="2014-08-24T14:08:16.817" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="6060" PostId="2160" Score="0" Text="Could you explain what happened? Your account is [still live](http://stats.stackexchange.com/users/20980/cagdas-ozgenc), AFAICT. Did you create a brand new account, or have you lost your login credentials? In this case, you should rather [contact the SE team](http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/merging-accounts)." CreationDate="2014-08-28T11:32:49.430" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="6062" PostId="2160" Score="0" Text="I recently enrolled to quant forum. I tried my existing email thinking that it will login, but instead I think it created a separate account. Then all of a sudden today those credentials merged and my cross validated reputations disappeared. I always used the same e-mail. I think quant forum did not accept my e-mail due to the fact that it was beta." CreationDate="2014-08-28T12:06:47.810" UserId="20980" />
  <row Id="6063" PostId="2160" Score="0" Text="http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/users/54842/cagdas-ozgenc" CreationDate="2014-08-28T12:07:50.727" UserId="20980" />
  <row Id="6064" PostId="2160" Score="0" Text="http://stats.stackexchange.com/users/20980/cagdas-ozgenc" CreationDate="2014-08-28T12:08:21.490" UserId="20980" />
  <row Id="6065" PostId="2160" Score="0" Text="I think these are two separate users with same e-mail and password and I cannot login to the one with the reputations anymore. If necessary we can destroy the one with no reputation in cross validated." CreationDate="2014-08-28T12:09:35.180" UserId="20980" />
  <row Id="6066" PostId="2160" Score="3" Text="Unless I am mistaken, these two accounts point to the same user but registration may have been done using a different email address. If that is the case, please follow the instructions that I provided above. I would recommend to contact the SE team to see what's more appropriate (merging/deleting) because you are not using the same account on stats.SE and quant.SE, and thus cannot link both accounts (which would get you 100 points of reputation, BTW)." CreationDate="2014-08-28T12:35:18.070" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="6070" PostId="2160" Score="6" Text="Follow the instructions [here](http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/merging-accounts) and we can get these accounts merged for you." CreationDate="2014-08-28T16:08:22.843" UserId="6123" />
  <row Id="6075" PostId="2164" Score="2" Text="Thank you for posting a summary of what happened and of the resolution of the problem." CreationDate="2014-09-12T17:09:14.080" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6076" PostId="2167" Score="0" Text="In respect of Update2: conclusions might change in the space of a couple of years; it's probably worth revisiting the question of how to deal with this. I imagine that the arguments there still largely hold up, but as the community grows, sometimes the need for particular tags can change." CreationDate="2014-09-16T23:17:53.910" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6077" PostId="2167" Score="2" Text="Would it make sense to rename [tag:kernel] to, say, [tag:kernel-smoothing]?" CreationDate="2014-09-17T03:06:44.143" UserId="9964" />
  <row Id="6079" PostId="2168" Score="0" Text="Thank you. I was going to see what other people would say, but as your answer remains the only one, I went ahead and provided wiki excerpts for both tags with the &quot;do not use&quot; bits. I am also going to migrate all kernel PCA questions to [tag:kernel-trick] in the next days as there are only few of them, but I don't think I am up to migrating all 60+ kernel SVM questions (as I never answer SVM questions)..." CreationDate="2014-09-18T10:02:00.443" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6082" PostId="2168" Score="0" Text="Turns out there is also a [tag:kernel-density-estimate] tag used 45 times, which makes the situation even more confusing (as the [tag:kernel] tag basically decomposes in two). Any thoughts about this one?" CreationDate="2014-09-19T10:24:21.753" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6084" PostId="2173" Score="0" Text="Very helpful: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/194476/someone-flagged-my-question-as-already-answered-but-its-not/194495#194495" CreationDate="2014-09-24T13:54:59.857" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="6086" PostId="2175" Score="3" Text="I don't think this is something CV is a good place for at all. You *could* ask specific people here with expertise in the relevant area  (via chat, or by direct contact if they've offered a means to do so) whether they'd be willing to take a look at it for you. You'll probably get polite &quot;no&quot;s (it's generally a lot of time and effort to invest without even the small gain of earning the thanks of an editor who might be getting a paper from you in a few months), but it can't hurt to ask." CreationDate="2014-09-25T01:08:07.450" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6085" PostId="2176" Score="2" Text="Nick knows this, but I'll make it explicit: of course Fogg may not be user987... but nevertheless be entirely innocent, which can compound the embarrassment. More than once I've seen topics I've done some substantial work on, at least the stage of showing to people for comment, then left aside for a while for one reason or another -- appear in journals almost exactly as I've been doing it, without any hint of anything untoward going on. It's only to be expected. (A far worse feeling to me is when you see an idea you've had just done *badly*.)" CreationDate="2014-09-25T01:01:00.963" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6088" PostId="2176" Score="0" Text="That can happen, but I am not clear on how it bears on the present question. There is a possibility that someone had the same idea earlier under any way of making ideas public: rows over priority and plagiarism preceded the introductions of journals in the 17th century. Perhaps the moral is, as before, that publishing anonymously makes nothing easier for anyone, even innocent parties." CreationDate="2014-09-25T08:22:26.900" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6089" PostId="2176" Score="0" Text="Well, it's not a big point, but the issue I was getting at is simply that public exposure of ideas can not only lead to plagiarism, but also to the appearance of plagiarism where there isn't any." CreationDate="2014-09-25T09:50:02.130" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6090" PostId="2176" Score="0" Text="&quot;lead to&quot; is perhaps not the best choice of words. If I publish something that others plagiarise, the plagiarism could not exist without my prior work, but I don't intend to cause or even encourage the plagiarism. But you know that." CreationDate="2014-09-25T09:56:18.070" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6091" PostId="2176" Score="0" Text="@Nick Cox, Thanks for your response, and the edits in the original question. So i guess you are right, the only way to saveguard the credit for the initial idea, and for the contributing commend seems by doing all the communications in a more formal way. Which is a bit of a pitty, because it there is a considerable increase in treshold for a non-specialist, between having and &quot;testing&quot; an idea, and preparing a manuscript for a publication, and a reasonable amount of discussion, say the equivalent of time you spend to answere here, could be of great help. But i understand the difficulties." CreationDate="2014-09-25T15:23:56.617" UserId="35811" />
  <row Id="6092" PostId="2176" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b I like your suggestion, of maybe contacting persons on CV who could possibly help. And i guess offering them a co-authorship, or personal acknowledgements, if there is a point in the initial idea the fairest way of deviding any credits." CreationDate="2014-09-25T15:29:18.867" UserId="35811" />
  <row Id="6093" PostId="2177" Score="1" Text="Flag the questions as &quot;overly apologetic&quot;?" CreationDate="2014-09-26T01:07:54.830" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="6094" PostId="2177" Score="1" Text="@StasK: What would that imply? That people are asked to go back and rephrase their question? The overarching issue here is to simplify questions, not to create more work for moderators." CreationDate="2014-09-26T15:44:04.723" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6102" PostId="2177" Score="0" Text="Two good answers; either might have deserved a tick to go with the upvote." CreationDate="2014-09-29T02:14:29.133" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6110" PostId="2177" Score="0" Text="This is one of several reasons why the &quot;help&quot; menu should actually be a giant obnoxious javascript popup that locks down your browser until you at least make a half-hearted attempt to skim it. Or, at least, shouldn't be hidden away in gray text way up in the corner." CreationDate="2014-10-01T00:17:03.877" UserId="36229" />
  <row Id="6087" PostId="2178" Score="3" Text="It took me a moment to spot the humor in the first sentence. At the least there's a page or two here on meta that might be pointed to after the fact ... not least this one ... which might avoid repeats from the same user." CreationDate="2014-09-25T04:00:32.837" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6132" PostId="2179" Score="1" Text="Also, remember that cultural difference are very important for things like this. In certain cultures apologizing for ignorance about a topic may be considered normal and not doing it may seem impolite." CreationDate="2014-10-05T20:27:22.353" UserId="582" />
  <row Id="6095" PostId="2180" Score="3" Text="If this is limited to few QAs, why not copying/pasting Markdown source and compiling it with, e.g., [Pandoc](http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/)?" CreationDate="2014-09-28T19:24:51.287" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="6096" PostId="2180" Score="0" Text="That would miss comment chains. But that's a useful link. Thank you." CreationDate="2014-09-28T19:32:38.083" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="6097" PostId="2180" Score="0" Text="Hmm... Pandoc also misses graphics..." CreationDate="2014-09-28T19:48:43.843" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="6098" PostId="2180" Score="1" Text="You can grab images from http://i.imgur.com ([as I did long ago](http://aliquote.org/memos/2011/01/20/archiving-my-responses-on-stackexchange), although I used ConTeXt rather than Pandoc)." CreationDate="2014-09-28T19:54:06.910" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="6099" PostId="2180" Score="0" Text="That's a bit opaque. Do you mean I can download images from a CV entry. Create an imagur account. Upload them. Copy the markdown to Pandoc, edit it to reference imagur URLs for the images and the compile the answer in LaTeX which I can then render into a PDF? 'Cause that's starting to sound like a job description, rather than what should be a simple task. :)" CreationDate="2014-09-28T20:17:23.943" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="6100" PostId="2180" Score="4" Text="I have had reasonable success using Chrome's built-in printing function for this. One option through that interface, even on Windows, should be to save as a PDF." CreationDate="2014-09-28T20:41:18.233" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="6101" PostId="2180" Score="1" Text="You can always just save a webpage as an HTML file &amp; store it in a folder for off-line viewing. I don't know about printing to hardcopy, but that will certainly save everything for you." CreationDate="2014-09-28T23:46:34.037" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6103" PostId="2180" Score="1" Text="@gung HTML does not help in that it is not in print form, nor in pdf form. :)" CreationDate="2014-09-29T03:40:38.910" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="6104" PostId="2180" Score="2" Text="@Alexis No, if you are familiar with Unix shell scripting, you can just write a little script that will extract URLs from any Markdown file and grab them directly from http://i.imgur.com in a dedicated folder. Otherwise, I believe ConTeXt, and probably some dedicated LaTeX packages, will allow you to write plain URLs in your document and images will be fetched during first compilation. I'm pretty sure this could be done with [knitr](http://yihui.name/knitr/) as well." CreationDate="2014-09-29T07:06:33.877" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="6105" PostId="2180" Score="1" Text="There are command line tools to print the page directly as well. I've played around with [wkhtmltopdf](http://wkhtmltopdf.org/) before. Here is an [example pdf](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3385251/TestCV_Page.pdf) with all of the defaults. The text is searchable and the links are saved. The math is printed as images, but it is a fairly high resolution so zooming in one can see the math pretty easily. There is a switch to prevent printing of the background image, which I presume would reduce the size of the PDF substantially." CreationDate="2014-09-29T12:01:41.790" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="6106" PostId="2180" Score="1" Text="@chl I appreciate your efforts, but as I wrote you are not providing a persuasive solution (i.e. use this one tool, or perform this one action), rather you are creating a work flow. The credible answer to my question (until I explore Andy W's solution) seems to be more along the lines &quot;No. There are a set of clumsy work-arounds.&quot;" CreationDate="2014-09-29T15:30:43.103" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="6108" PostId="2182" Score="0" Text="Thanks for the help. I intend the first meaning, and since your interpretation of the first is closest to what I'm going for, I'll stick with that" CreationDate="2014-09-30T03:51:14.523" UserId="41680" />
  <row Id="6107" PostId="2183" Score="4" Text="Ehr Mah Gherd! That totes works! Works *well*. If one is using NoScript one has to remember to permit StackPrinter, otherwise the MathJax does not render, but it is very nicely laid out otherwise." CreationDate="2014-09-30T00:26:34.683" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="6109" PostId="2183" Score="4" Text="You can optionally disable comments if you want, appending `&amp;comments=false` in querystring. Check this [Api help](http://www.stackprinter.com/docs/api.txt)." CreationDate="2014-09-30T17:25:19.013" UserId="56722" />
  <row Id="6137" PostId="2185" Score="2" Text="OK, seeing how the voting is going and not reading any objections, I made the change. For it to take effect another moderator must &quot;de-activate&quot; the current version and approve the new one." CreationDate="2014-10-07T19:47:23.020" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6113" PostId="2188" Score="3" Text="&quot;*seen the evidence of people being mean, mocking, and cynical to the newbies*&quot; - while it has no doubt happened I think it's quite rare on CV. Are there any examples you'd like to point to? $\quad$ &quot;*Why not be honest and look at the fundamental problem lingering on here*&quot; -- if there is a fundamental problem we should address it, but we should be clear about what exactly we're dealing with then. Where's this happening?  $\quad$ &quot;*And yes, this might be harsh*&quot; -- well, no I don't think it's harsh at all, where it's warranted. So what are we discussing, exactly?" CreationDate="2014-10-03T02:39:46.300" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6114" PostId="2188" Score="0" Text="I'll get back to you if I find some specific instances; the ones that especially came to my attention, I saw some time ago when I just discovered CV. I would say it's more common on Stackoverflow, but if I recently spot something along the lines, I will definitely let you know. @Glen_b As for the second question, if the question is how to stop people from apologizing, then I am urging you to look at the fundamental underlying problem, not just a fix." CreationDate="2014-10-03T02:44:38.410" UserId="54516" />
  <row Id="6115" PostId="2188" Score="2" Text="Any time you have concerns, you can raise them here or in chat. Don't be afraid to criticize (though of course constructive criticism is usually more effective). Moderators in particular seem to be keen to deal with rudeness. I agree it happens - people are people so of course it does, but for it to be fundamental, it must be common enough that a lot of newbies would see it before they post. I haven't seen something that would qualify as fundamental in that sense." CreationDate="2014-10-03T02:47:49.033" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6116" PostId="2188" Score="0" Text="this is the whole issue -- they see this attitude, they feel intimidated, so they do not register on the site and they don't post. So how are you expecting to recognize the pattern when there's no data? So how can you assume if it's &quot;common&quot; amongst newbies if they don't post to begin with?" CreationDate="2014-10-03T02:49:56.673" UserId="54516" />
  <row Id="6117" PostId="2188" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b plus, if someone really feels the need to apologize, they are going to do it anyways, by a simple manipulation of sentences in English you can subtly fulfill this goal and it's not going to be explicit or obvious. People are going to find their ways one way or another, because the fundamental issue is not going away" CreationDate="2014-10-03T02:52:53.960" UserId="54516" />
  <row Id="6118" PostId="2188" Score="2" Text="I'm unsure what you're saying now. Which attitude are they seeing (where you say &quot;this attitude&quot;)? If there's no pattern, no data, what are newbies seeing? I can see more on the site than they can (like deleted posts for example), so if it's scaring them away, I ought to see it. It's certainly possible that there's much more than I notice and I'm just being blind to it -- but in that case I want to see it. If I remember right, typically there's something like 50-60 questions a day. How many questions a day are people being rude or mean? Around five would seem to me like a serious problem." CreationDate="2014-10-03T03:01:44.593" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6119" PostId="2188" Score="1" Text="Oh, I do want to emphasize that I appreciate you coming in on this question. We need more voices, more opinions." CreationDate="2014-10-03T03:11:14.950" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6120" PostId="2188" Score="1" Text="You make strong assertions about supposedly widespread behaviour without even one specific example, but we want to focus on your claims. I can understand that posters may be unwilling to engage in debate with individuals whose posts they find obnoxious, but that is one of many good reasons for the ability to flag posts and to alert moderators. FWIW, I look at a lot of questions here and a very small sample on Stack Overflow and I have to agree from my very limited sample that there seems to be a higher fraction of aggressive, snarky and moderately rude wording on SO." CreationDate="2014-10-03T08:42:21.590" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6123" PostId="2188" Score="1" Text="Another perspective: 'Our super-star answerers do provide &quot;too good&quot; answers - but they are also too good to those with lesser knowledge. To maintain high standards, they are obliged to point out mistakes and ask for corrections -but they never, I mean never, do it in an intimidating or insulting way.' Alecos Papadopoulos in http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2083/unanswered-questions-as-percentage-of-total-why-does-cv-stand-out" CreationDate="2014-10-03T12:21:27.887" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6133" PostId="2188" Score="0" Text="@NickCox probably true but, due to the higher amount of questions that SO gets, there are also a lot more really bad questions there. Surely this does not justify rudeness, although I can understand that some people tend to lose their temper when seeing the nth question about the same topic for which a 5 seconds Google search would give an answer..." CreationDate="2014-10-05T20:31:01.340" UserId="582" />
  <row Id="6121" PostId="2189" Score="2" Text="I've done this too." CreationDate="2014-10-03T09:13:37.007" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6124" PostId="2189" Score="1" Text="That would be nice. Regarding suggested-edits, ideally it would be good to review from smartphones only if one is comfortable typing and formatting stuff (which normally it is difficult with such devices). Because the improvement of the post can be compromised, if a suggestion is valid but still misses important edits." CreationDate="2014-10-03T15:04:29.930" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="6125" PostId="2189" Score="0" Text="For reviews that require more extensive editing there is also the skip button, so this shouldn't be the problem in this case." CreationDate="2014-10-04T08:31:54.920" UserId="26338" />
  <row Id="6127" PostId="2189" Score="2" Text="While I am completely sympathetic to the wish (+1), one possibility is perhaps just to avoid tasks that aren't undo-able when on a device that's not currently especially suited to the task. Someone else can get them for a while. This is especially the case with suggested edits, which are currently as rare as hen's teeth. Someone else is sure to take care of it in very short time." CreationDate="2014-10-04T21:07:59.390" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6130" PostId="2189" Score="0" Text="I think we should leave aside the fact that I tend to review often. The point is that CV is based on the internet which is becoming increasingly mobile. Saying &quot;Don't participate if you're mobile, someone else will take care of it&quot; is therefore not the best approach in my view. Allowing for the correction of small mistakes (that can equally happen with a computer but probably less frequently) would be a contribution to making CV more user-friendly." CreationDate="2014-10-05T08:17:25.590" UserId="26338" />
  <row Id="6134" PostId="2189" Score="1" Text="@Andy My comment wasn't intended to suggest &quot;you review too often&quot; (I don't think you do), just that there are plenty of people doing it; the queues never seem to stick around long. I agree that the internet is becoming increasingly mobile (which is why I started with 'completely sympathetic to the wish'), and that the SE network should try to make that kind of access work better." CreationDate="2014-10-06T23:19:44.573" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6135" PostId="2189" Score="0" Text="Sorry, I meant no offense. I only wanted to highlight the point again but you're right, it wasn't really necessary :)" CreationDate="2014-10-07T12:50:33.037" UserId="26338" />
  <row Id="6141" PostId="2196" Score="4" Text="A newbie perspective is certainly valuable here. Please expand on what in your view is preventable. One of the problems of active users is that we're not the technical support arm of a company dedicated to supporting its clients, right or wrong. If a newbie (or anyone else!) doesn't have a question that is clear, different and pertinent, it doesn't belong here. The aim of the forum is not to answer every question in the way that posters would like it answered. That's tough for people to hear sometimes, and we certainly should be polite and sensitive, but it's tough the other way too." CreationDate="2014-10-09T11:14:34.263" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6142" PostId="2196" Score="0" Text="@NickCox It is a bit difficult to truly separate the preventable from the not, but I will quickly shot at it. When you make a statement like; &quot;If a newbie (or anyone else!) doesn't have a question that is clear, different and pertinent, it doesn't belong here.&quot;, what do you think that statement &quot;doesn't belong here&quot; communicates? How would it make someone feel? Let me make it clear, I am not calling out you or anyone individually, and I know talking about feelings ____(insert adjective here)___." CreationDate="2014-10-09T16:36:37.887" UserId="35526" />
  <row Id="6143" PostId="2196" Score="0" Text="I have observed there is a general attitude that users are not doing their due-diligence (in general I would agree), but that is to a large extent the nature of the beast. It is how you handle that situation. If it's not clear, just ask for clarification. If it is not pertinent, who really cares (maybe if you are feeling generous you guide them to the right resource)?" CreationDate="2014-10-09T16:37:25.767" UserId="35526" />
  <row Id="6144" PostId="2196" Score="0" Text="If it is a repeat, send them the link and let it be. Do we need to make a correction if it doesn't alter the context of the question? Before CV I had never been to a forum where others would change the content of my post, and it can be a bit jarring the first few times. Perhaps a bit of explanation of the correction process for newbies while it is occurring would go a long way." CreationDate="2014-10-09T16:38:00.567" UserId="35526" />
  <row Id="6145" PostId="2196" Score="0" Text="I think CV is great! I know taking the time to be extra polite to every newbie is difficult, but the initial impression is the most important." CreationDate="2014-10-09T16:40:36.807" UserId="35526" />
  <row Id="6146" PostId="2196" Score="2" Text="You're conflating what we say to posters in practice with a meta discussion about principles. If anyone wants to say that they have a question that is unclear and/or just the same as a previous question and/or not pertinent to the forum, then they're not going to impress me! I am totally on board with every plea for being as nice as possible, but even kindergarten can be a scary place when you first attend until you get socialised. Same here, except we aim mostly at adults." CreationDate="2014-10-09T16:41:48.413" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6147" PostId="2196" Score="1" Text="Somewhere on the forum is an explanation of editing along these lines: If you are uncomfortable with the idea of your questions being edited by someone else, then Stack Exchange may not be the place for you. I can't find it this instant. The larger point is that the SE system is large and complicated and takes a while to get used to -- that's true for all of us. SE is however on the whole fantastically well documented; it's a pity that more people don't look at the documentation more carefully." CreationDate="2014-10-09T16:48:03.150" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6148" PostId="2196" Score="2" Text="http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html is I think pertinent. Its tone is not one that I recommend here but its observations that on-line communities must police themselves and police themselves visibly are all too accurate. CV is a small town and traffic cops are needed." CreationDate="2014-10-09T16:52:07.577" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6149" PostId="2196" Score="1" Text="Found it: &quot;If you are not comfortable with the idea of your contributions being collaboratively edited by other trusted users, this may not be the site for you.&quot;  http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/editing This doesn't meet your suggestion of explanation while it's occurring. That is a detail for elsewhere, perhaps." CreationDate="2014-10-09T16:56:51.717" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6150" PostId="2196" Score="1" Text="@Nick Lol, is that a correction? I have a ton of empathy for major contributors. I understand, CV takes time to get use to, and people should do their due-diligence. However, just because my cell phone company told me that my data may be collected, that doesn't mean I &quot;feel&quot; good about it went it happens. The warning means little. You may know labor is going to hurt, but you don't truly know until you experience it. When traveling to another country, you hope that when you make cultural mistakes that others don't judge you but gently inform you about the customs. &quot;&quot;" CreationDate="2014-10-09T17:06:11.213" UserId="35526" />
  <row Id="6171" PostId="2197" Score="0" Text="I guess your idea would not work. For example, consider questions tagged with `normal-distribution`. A `how to integrate` question would belong more on Mathematics SE than CV." CreationDate="2014-10-10T18:06:52.843" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="6152" PostId="2198" Score="0" Text="@abaumann This happened on CrossValidated so maybe the people here need to address it. I asked for some statistical or other solutions and CrossValidated is the palce to get such answers. Therefore, I am happy to leave it here. To be honest, I don't care about points but I do care about bad etiquette. Almost makes you want to stop contribuing - which would be a shame" CreationDate="2014-10-10T10:00:58.373" UserId="9233" />
  <row Id="6154" PostId="2198" Score="0" Text="Martino, are you aware of doing something recently that could potentially piss someone off? Sometimes people get critics or downvotes too personally. Or, have you been participating in some discussion that could make someone think that it was YOU downvoting or criticizing?" CreationDate="2014-10-10T10:25:50.663" UserId="5509" />
  <row Id="6155" PostId="2198" Score="6" Text="This belongs on meta.stats.stackexchange. However, Stackexchange has an algorithm to detect serial voting (up or down) like this, so I'd be very surprised if this wasn't automatically reversed very soon." CreationDate="2014-10-10T10:40:02.487" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6156" PostId="2198" Score="0" Text="@Curious - no, I tend not to get involved too much. I have a day job ;)" CreationDate="2014-10-10T10:43:04.513" UserId="9233" />
  <row Id="6157" PostId="2198" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b Great, if there is an algorithm in place then this will be a good test case. I will report back when my reputation is intact!" CreationDate="2014-10-10T10:44:01.240" UserId="9233" />
  <row Id="6158" PostId="2198" Score="0" Text="@martino Of course that's only going to happen if it really was one account and over a short period of time. If three different people downvoted (or a number of other possible things happened), it (correctly) won't reverse that. If your suspicions are correct, you should likely get your reputation back (I think the script only runs once a day, it may take a while); if not, nothing will happen." CreationDate="2014-10-10T10:46:55.827" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6163" PostId="2198" Score="1" Text="(In the meantime, I just searched through and upvoted one of your answers, so there's no net loss in the meantime.)" CreationDate="2014-10-10T11:06:32.427" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6173" PostId="2198" Score="0" Text="The SE team reports that the downvotes in question have now been invalidated." CreationDate="2014-10-13T15:50:31.653" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6159" PostId="2199" Score="0" Text="Thanks Nick. I believe when a user is removed than this is the reason recorded against the removal of points. If a downvote is recorded then this is due to downvoting. If I click on a user name I see all their answers and could easily downvote a bunch of them in a short time. I do not mean to be negative but equally I would be surprised if a single user had upvoted all those answers in the first place, they are fairly diverse question subjects. So, my question still stands, can you offer some solutions to prevent this type of behaviour - whether it occurred in this instance or not" CreationDate="2014-10-10T10:22:07.987" UserId="9233" />
  <row Id="6160" PostId="2199" Score="0" Text="Nick, I'm afraid your explanation of automated downvotes is wrong. If automated routine would undo some of the upvotes, it would certainly appear as &quot;unupvote&quot; instead of a downvote!" CreationDate="2014-10-10T10:28:50.507" UserId="5509" />
  <row Id="6161" PostId="2199" Score="2" Text="@NickCox I am confused now - when  I lose points due to a user being removed then that is the message I get the following e.g.  &quot;-30	 21:08	removed	User was removed (learn more)&quot; and &quot;learn more&quot; link points me to http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/user-was-removed which states &quot;All the reputation changes from a single user's deletion are rolled into a single event in the reputation page labelled &quot;User was removed&quot;.&quot; It was with this in mind that I asked the question." CreationDate="2014-10-10T10:37:34.323" UserId="9233" />
  <row Id="6162" PostId="2199" Score="0" Text="OK; I think you should edit your question to make that clear; you evidently know more on that detail than I do." CreationDate="2014-10-10T10:42:47.783" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6164" PostId="2199" Score="1" Text="@Curious A vote (up or down) simply disappears after it is reversed. One's reputation summary will reflect a net (loss or gain) as a result. It works pretty much the same way as when a downvote on an answer (which costs you one point) is reversed when that answer is deleted by the user." CreationDate="2014-10-10T14:55:20.073" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6167" PostId="2199" Score="0" Text="@whuber, thanks for your note but it doesn't invalidate my argument that it the downvotes couldn't be caused by the automated SE process." CreationDate="2014-10-10T15:21:40.287" UserId="5509" />
  <row Id="6168" PostId="2199" Score="0" Text="@curious I haven't been able to discern any such argument in your previous comments, nor can I determine what explanation of Nick Cox's you are criticizing.  Thus I am not offering any kind of counterargument; I am only trying to supply helpful facts about the subject. Although it is true that there are circumstances in which the &quot;Community&quot; bot does issue downvotes, it will never do so wholesale on old posts, which is what happened to martino." CreationDate="2014-10-10T16:04:01.817" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6169" PostId="2199" Score="0" Text="@whuber The earliest versions of my post are not visible on Meta, even in Edit history. This is no doubt a side-effect of its migration from the main site. My main hypothesis originally was that apparent downvoting was a side-effect of someone leaving the forum and their votes being removed too. This was what curious was reacting to, if I understand correctly. Your investigations appear to show that the explanation lies elsewhere." CreationDate="2014-10-10T16:07:29.553" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6170" PostId="2199" Score="0" Text="Thanks Nick. I had indeed checked the edit history, thinking that @curious must have been responding to something in an older version of your post (which I infer from your comment actually was the case).  It is interesting that the full history was not carried over during migration." CreationDate="2014-10-10T16:10:35.173" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6165" PostId="2200" Score="6" Text="We all get the occasional &quot;drive-by&quot; downvote. (The longer you have been around, and the more upvotes you get, the more likely it is you will have collected some of these: nobody is immune.) I have looked into the voting record for you and find no systematic pattern. Posting &quot;why the downvote&quot; comments is discouraged: it is unlikely the downvoter will ever see them and they just add noise to the site. If the downvoter *does* see them, there's a risk they will get a positive reward in knowing they tweaked you. It's better to ignore them totally, IMHO." CreationDate="2014-10-10T14:59:02.513" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6174" PostId="2200" Score="0" Text="@whuber: Thanks." CreationDate="2014-10-14T19:46:49.560" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="6177" PostId="2200" Score="2" Text="@whuber - While posting &quot;why the downvote&quot; is discouraged, I've gotten some *very* useful responses to that question (e.g. one from Macro relatively early on, without which I might well have continued to do the thing he was objecting to; one very productive one from Russ Lenth much more recently, and I think there have been others). I think it's easy enough to delete the ones that don't produce such responses (the problem is remembering to, which is why its indiscriminate use probably should be discouraged)." CreationDate="2014-10-15T23:55:08.750" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6166" PostId="2201" Score="3" Text="Thanks for clarifying and taking action. I have no problem with downvotes but this appeared to be a really obvious case of unreasonable behaviour." CreationDate="2014-10-10T15:03:29.440" UserId="9233" />
  <row Id="6178" PostId="2203" Score="2" Text="None that I am aware of. Here is a similar [question on Meta.SE](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/87500)." CreationDate="2014-10-22T07:24:37.523" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="6180" PostId="2203" Score="12" Text="The occasional mistaken flag keeps us on our toes--it teaches us we should not automatically agree with flags posted by high-rep users (however much we might want to do that)!" CreationDate="2014-10-22T18:54:00.330" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6179" PostId="2204" Score="0" Text="I appreciate why you are saying this. See e.g. discussion at &#xA;http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/135/encouraging-people-to-explain-downvotes among which I like this comment &quot;I enjoy being able to down-vote posts I don't care for without worrying about retaliation. And I really enjoy being able to leave honest comments without worrying that they'll be justifiably interpreted as evidence that I've down-voted. I would not like to see the two systems linked.&quot;" CreationDate="2014-10-22T18:00:42.737" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6181" PostId="2204" Score="0" Text="I don't understand why that comment is any justification, because it simply says, &quot;I don't want to have to justify my downvotes&quot; but only in much more words than necessary. To be honest, I recently got a downvote and I am a little bit miffed about it, since the downvoter didn't bother to even justify the downvote. It is just plain disgusting, because the answer was written to help out somebody (in all good intentions) and votes are there to curate right and wrong answers, and here is a downvoter who is downright unhelpful, whosoever it was." CreationDate="2014-10-22T19:28:51.363" UserId="10823" />
  <row Id="6182" PostId="2204" Score="3" Text="I don't read it that way: he is just saying that downvoting and commenting are disjoint. As @whuber suggests in this thread, we have all been there. Really poor questions may get downvoted multiply as a strong signal to the questioner; in that case it can be sufficient that **someone** explains why the question is poor, without others adding the same kind of comment. I agree that an answer being downvoted without explanation is a disappointment, but one has to learn to treat it as a bit less than disgusting; it is just grit inside a shoe. Sure, some people are outliers, but we know that." CreationDate="2014-10-22T19:51:52.767" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6183" PostId="2204" Score="0" Text="Yeah, I guess I took it harder than it should be. Sorry for the outburst earlier, I hope I did not come off as condescending towards you. I did not mean to, I was just truly miffed at the downvote." CreationDate="2014-10-22T21:44:59.097" UserId="10823" />
  <row Id="6184" PostId="2204" Score="0" Text="No problem; as said, I think most people have experienced some downvotes and no one enjoys them!" CreationDate="2014-10-22T22:55:21.173" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6185" PostId="2205" Score="0" Text="Questions like these seem to place voters on a spectrum. Some use criteria such as &quot;unclear or not helpful&quot; and in downvoting focus on the question itself: &quot;unclear&quot; necessarily may include very poor presentation. In contrast, many give credit whenever the question has a core to it that can be used to produce an interesting or useful answer. I've seen advice from e.g. @whuber to the effect that if a question is worth answering it usually deserves an upvote, but while I respect that I sometimes discriminate between a poor question (downvote possible) and a good answer (upvote natural)," CreationDate="2014-10-24T15:19:29.197" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6186" PostId="2205" Score="0" Text="@NickCox: These examples don't strike me as being very unclear, &amp; no-one's commented that they are. There are others that suggest the OP has no experience of asking anyone anything ever." CreationDate="2014-10-24T15:39:17.930" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="6187" PostId="2205" Score="0" Text="I am trying to analyse the distribution of downvotes with no data on predictors, something which in the rest of what we do statistically we would usually regard as difficult if not futile. &quot;not helpful&quot; is also part of it. What you say about &quot;no experience of asking...&quot; rings true. The indications are that even our least experienced posters are typically well into undergraduate careers and many make it clear that they are graduate students or more senior." CreationDate="2014-10-24T16:20:32.663" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6188" PostId="2206" Score="6" Text="That's what the forum is for. But look at the Help Center to get guidance on what to post, and what not to, and look at some past questions, especially for questions that look like yours and got upvoted answers. What helps is being specific, explaining your question precisely and concisely and having a new question. Questions of the form &quot;I am working on X and wondering how to analyse my data&quot; have less chance of a good reply." CreationDate="2014-10-26T10:44:25.837" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6189" PostId="2206" Score="0" Text="@NickCox, why not make that an official answer?" CreationDate="2014-10-27T15:16:15.580" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6190" PostId="2206" Score="1" Text="@gung OK; thanks for encouragement." CreationDate="2014-10-27T15:48:28.067" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6191" PostId="2208" Score="0" Text="That's odd. It looked like it worked right when I got it. I imagine that it also counts also one-on-one discussions generated by answering questions as well." CreationDate="2014-10-29T05:27:58.113" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6192" PostId="2209" Score="1" Text="Yes, that is the message that I posted recently. But, for the life of me, I cannot recall posting 9 messages in Cross Validated chat rooms before that, and I cannot find the previous 9 by searching the Cross Validated chat rooms. Perhaps a long time ago, a one-on-one discussion regarding a question or an answer got moved to chat (as per @Glen_b's comment), and that chat room is now closed and not searchable by me?" CreationDate="2014-10-29T11:18:22.423" UserId="6633" />
  <row Id="6193" PostId="2209" Score="1" Text="That's almost certainly the answer, @DilipSarwate." CreationDate="2014-10-29T13:45:53.333" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6194" PostId="2209" Score="1" Text="@gung is correct: I have searched all your chat posts, Dilip, and found several rooms created for one-off conversations on &quot;Show Me the Money,&quot; &quot;Cryptography,&quot; &quot;Signal Processing,&quot; and the math sites, totaling about 30 posts.  I unfroze the math room (at http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/7738/discussion-between-dilip-sarwate-and-chris) so you can see it again; it will automatically freeze again after two weeks of non-use. Because only one post is in a CV chat site, I am guessing that the badge tracks your chat at *all* SE sites, not just in CV-related rooms." CreationDate="2014-10-29T13:59:54.890" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6195" PostId="2209" Score="1" Text="@whuber Thanks for letting me look at that chat room; yes, I guess that was indeed a protracted conversation with a student who was having a _lot_ of difficulty, and I had completely forgotten about it. The badge does seem to track chat across all SE sites since in that room, my reputation shows as more than 44K: far more than on any single site. I guess I _am_ talkative.... and will shut up for now and accept Skilvvz's answer so that this thread can be closed." CreationDate="2014-10-29T20:47:40.220" UserId="6633" />
  <row Id="6197" PostId="2211" Score="1" Text="That's exactly what I did a few days ago! (and I guess it worked, because the OP chose to delete the posts here and maintain the one in math.SE)." CreationDate="2014-11-08T18:01:25.170" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="6201" PostId="2215" Score="4" Text="You can't see people's votes. The answer in comments is easily dealt with - you can't accept that one, reducing your choice to two. Ultimately the one that solves your problem best is a good one - try the approaches; one might be easier or better. If you're keen to recognize both, it is possible to accept one and award the bounty to the other. It's also possible to award a second (larger) bounty if there are two answers you want to give a bounty on. But it's early days yet - as the bounty period goes toward the deadline, you might have the conundrum reduced by getting another answer or two." CreationDate="2014-11-17T00:09:22.160" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6202" PostId="2215" Score="9" Text="If you want to accept the comment as an answer, encourage the person who posted to expand it to an answer. Often people just post briefly for all the usual reasons, say that they are busy at the moment or just feel that a simple point can be made concisely. Yet that simple point can sometimes unlock the problem for the questioner." CreationDate="2014-11-17T00:12:41.103" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6204" PostId="2215" Score="1" Text="Thanks, I'll do that. I thought the idea mentioned in the comments seemed rather good, though I can't be sure that I'd accept it as an answer if/when it's written out in full form." CreationDate="2014-11-17T00:40:48.333" UserId="9162" />
  <row Id="6203" PostId="2216" Score="5" Text="+1 ... the way votes (and acceptances) go often puzzles me, certainly. There's little point getting much invested in such things, except so far as it encourages or discourages good answers more generally." CreationDate="2014-11-17T00:15:51.057" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6208" PostId="2220" Score="5" Text="Briefly, &quot;how does one visualize results of post hoc Nemenyi tests&quot; is not really an accurate summary of your original question, as the question is entirely about how to code a plot in specific software, which was why it was closed. (Disclosure: I voted to close, and stick by that view.) But that question **would** be entirely acceptable, indeed excellent, as a question here." CreationDate="2014-11-19T10:41:39.280" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6206" PostId="2223" Score="3" Text="I imagine I'll probably end up abstaining from this vote\*, but I do greatly appreciate that we get the opportunity to choose, and that there's also the chance to opt out individually.  \*(I'm fairly relaxed about the outcome - happy with whichever way people in Cross Validated decide to go, though judging from my past behaviour I'll most likely participate if it runs.)" CreationDate="2014-11-18T22:24:51.623" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6207" PostId="2223" Score="9" Text="I like how @Glen_b is even a statistician in evaluating his own decisions: all that matters observable data, not his present/future preferences." CreationDate="2014-11-18T23:46:40.573" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="6226" PostId="2223" Score="0" Text="Two quick questions: What sort of &quot;actions&quot; and are the hats only visible for the duration of the event?" CreationDate="2014-11-24T22:19:06.343" UserId="41810" />
  <row Id="6227" PostId="2223" Score="2" Text="@Steve The actions vary, but typically are akin to the kinds of site interactions used to earn badges. Many of these actions are announced in advance but some are kept secret.  Hats--and all associated statistical summaries--are visible only for the duration. All are rewards; none are punishments. The slight visual change they create on the site adds a little variety. For the first year I had some concern that this &quot;bash&quot; would look a little unprofessional, but it's not." CreationDate="2014-11-24T22:35:00.373" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6231" PostId="2223" Score="1" Text="@SteveS http://winterbash2013.stackexchange.com/ shows the hats that were available in 2013." CreationDate="2014-11-26T19:49:09.943" UserId="44112" />
  <row Id="6238" PostId="2223" Score="0" Text="Based on the results of this voting, I have notified the SE team that CV opts to participate in this event." CreationDate="2014-12-01T02:54:06.247" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6273" PostId="2223" Score="0" Text="[featured] can be removed and [status-completed] added, since the Dec 1 deadline has passed." CreationDate="2014-12-03T01:11:45.367" UserId="61975" />
  <row Id="8784" PostId="2223" Score="0" Text="@whuber: do you want to put up a similar poll question about us participating in the [2015 winter bash](http://winterbash2015.stackexchange.com/)?" CreationDate="2015-12-04T08:22:06.543" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="8788" PostId="2223" Score="0" Text="@StephanKolassa Thank you; the mods are working on it." CreationDate="2015-12-04T14:41:08.587" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6209" PostId="2226" Score="1" Text="+1 - I believe a lot of the questions that are migrated would take minimal effort to edit to be on topic. Typically they are of the form `I need code to do X` - although `X` is sometimes ambiguous and could benefit from discussion about the statistics here as opposed to just rote applying a set of code. (That isn't a criticism of the way things are currently done though - I think the balance of migration at this time is working out reasonably well given there will always be ambiguity.)" CreationDate="2014-11-20T12:39:47.530" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="6210" PostId="2226" Score="3" Text="@AndyW: That's true, but it's less obvious that it would help whoever asked the question. It's not a punishment to have a question migrated to SO. Asking your own statistical question inspired by someone else's programming one might be better." CreationDate="2014-11-20T15:11:13.323" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="6211" PostId="2227" Score="2" Text="Some overlap with http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2175/using-cross-validated-for-a-pre-review-of-an-idea-that-might-be-suited-for-a-p?rq=1 Two possibilities, I think. Use chat to ask for a volunteer (to be candid, low probability of getting one, I would guess). Post your novel idea as a question you answer yourself to get comments on it. Otherwise, it's hard to see that this would fit in here." CreationDate="2014-11-20T19:55:22.817" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6212" PostId="2227" Score="0" Text="Thank you for some suggestions. The concepts are clear. They are standard text book things. The issue is the way I am arranging data and results in paper I am on cross thought whether they are fine. I generally crossed with papers on similar problems looks fine, but looking once for an expert help." CreationDate="2014-11-21T04:57:03.147" UserId="2329" />
  <row Id="6213" PostId="2228" Score="0" Text="Thank you. Thank you for giving necessary courage. Yes, if there is some point I can discuss with you and my teachers." CreationDate="2014-11-21T15:41:55.883" UserId="2329" />
  <row Id="6214" PostId="2228" Score="3" Text="+1, I didn't respond to this question because I wasn't sure how to address it. This is the right approach &amp; good advice for the OP as well." CreationDate="2014-11-21T17:08:43.633" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6215" PostId="2229" Score="4" Text="What educational objectives would you have in mind? For instance, would you be hoping that interacting on CV would help students learn statistical concepts?  Learn to ask relevant questions to clarify problems?  Learn how to write clear explanations?  Learn how to search the Web effectively?  Learn how to ask clear, focused questions?  Their use of CV could vary depending on the objective, leading to different options for how you choose to exploit it as a resource in your course." CreationDate="2014-11-21T20:45:43.127" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6216" PostId="2229" Score="2" Text="Those are all great specific objectives, @whuber mostly I am asking myself &quot;is there an opportunity for my students here&quot; in a broad sense. I am interested in hearing if and how people have used CV in courses. Narrow or specific examples or ideas welcome." CreationDate="2014-11-21T22:43:16.863" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="6217" PostId="2229" Score="2" Text="I used some of the questions here as basis for test and homework questions in the past (in a MA course on data analysis most recently)." CreationDate="2014-11-22T09:06:38.767" UserId="603" />
  <row Id="6221" PostId="2231" Score="2" Text="Strongly disagree: to discourage (or refrain from encouraging) beginners in statistics from reading CV Q/As because some posts aren't at the right level, or writing their own Q/As because some aren't very good at it would be throwing the baby out with the bath-water." CreationDate="2014-11-24T11:16:33.657" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="6222" PostId="2231" Score="1" Text="@Scortchi, ok to disagree but these were not my points. It was: &quot;There are good content on CV, but they are too loose in context&quot;. It could be a distraction for starters, deviating them from the main sequence and topics of the discipline." CreationDate="2014-11-24T11:39:23.800" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="6223" PostId="2231" Score="0" Text="I don't know what &quot;too loose in context&quot; means then; I'd guessed it meant something like &quot;not at the right level&quot;. In any case some posts here are in no way inappropriate for beginners - @Glen_b has listed several - either to consolidate understanding of topics covered in an introductory course or to extend it somewhat (which is what tends to make the difference between a good mark &amp; an excellent mark in the exams &amp; dissertation). Of all the ways students might get distracted, reading round the subject must be the least pernicious." CreationDate="2014-11-24T12:45:42.670" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="6224" PostId="2231" Score="1" Text="I tried to mean the content is loose (i.e., there is not a logical sequence), and not that the students are loose. I agree with the last sentence from your last comment, and also think Glen_b's answer has useful hints for making it work. The value of information here in CV is incontestable. (@Scortchi)" CreationDate="2014-11-24T13:37:41.593" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="6225" PostId="2231" Score="2" Text="Well it's to be hoped there's a logical sequence to the course they're following; given that CV is complementing rather than supplanting the course, I can't see any harm in there not being an l.s. to CV's content." CreationDate="2014-11-24T14:24:51.690" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="6228" PostId="2231" Score="3" Text="There should be something for everyone here **given modest direction or at least guidance**. Even the poor questions should be instructive as showing how not to ask questions, which is important at every level." CreationDate="2014-11-25T18:45:24.690" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6219" PostId="2232" Score="0" Text="Glen it sounds like you and some of the other commenters would really encourage a *responsible* directing of students this way... as in accompanying that direction with instruction/modeling on how to be a &quot;good citizen&quot; on CV/SE." CreationDate="2014-11-23T03:48:38.510" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="6220" PostId="2232" Score="4" Text="I would; I think it's a valuable learning resource that motivated students can benefit from. I benefit from it daily, I'd like others to benefit as well. What concerns me is seeing it as something it isn't (it's not a resource for getting your assignment work done, nor for posting questions you haven't at least checked Wikipedia on); like many good tools you need to understand how to use it to get real value from it -- and brief guidelines help." CreationDate="2014-11-23T03:52:54.600" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6232" PostId="2235" Score="4" Text="Did you notice that the reason for closure was *not* that the question might need improvement, but only that it is not within the concerns that are considered to be on topic on this site?" CreationDate="2014-11-28T22:16:42.983" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6233" PostId="2235" Score="4" Text="I didn't realize this stats group had such a narrow focus, but looking through the tags, data-cleaning, a related topic, has only 28 posts! My question is not a technical question for Stackoverflow. The question is about conditioning the data _before analysis_, at the point of collecting data from various sources, but before analysis. Is this topic better asked in another forum?" CreationDate="2014-11-29T02:47:20.263" UserId="6517" />
  <row Id="6235" PostId="2236" Score="3" Text="(+1) Usually the best way to rectify apparently inconsistent actions is to flag one of the threads for moderator attention. Those with sufficient reputation can supplement that with votes to reopen, close, delete, etc., which usually add the affected threads to user review queues." CreationDate="2014-11-29T14:42:13.823" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6236" PostId="2236" Score="1" Text="@whuber thanks - this sensible action didn't occur to me at the time. Sorry about that." CreationDate="2014-11-29T21:56:40.820" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6234" PostId="2237" Score="1" Text="I agree and have just done that. (+1)" CreationDate="2014-11-29T14:40:22.983" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6237" PostId="2237" Score="1" Text="@gung It would be unreasonable to expect it to be perfect; my own frequent errors remind me of that well enough. That such things happen so rarely is a testament to the moderators. I should have had the brains to flag it though." CreationDate="2014-11-29T21:57:51.510" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6239" PostId="2242" Score="5" Text="(+1) Actually, long-term stats do not show a *dramatic* drop in answering rate: they show a long-term, consistent drop. (A couple years ago we dipped below the 1:1 A:Q ratio.) Recent stats show a moderately sharp acceleration in closed and deleted questions, which may go a long way towards helping us understand why a larger proportion of the (non-closed) questions remain without answers. Note that our site exhibits a seasonal pattern in which the rate of questions (and proportion of bad ones) peaks during exam time (early December, late April)." CreationDate="2014-12-01T15:21:20.930" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6240" PostId="2242" Score="1" Text="@whuber, maybe I'm missing something. Why would an acceleration in closed Qs explain why a larger proportion of non-closed Qs go w/o answers?" CreationDate="2014-12-01T16:12:38.643" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6242" PostId="2242" Score="4" Text="@gung The closed/not-closed dichotomy masks a distribution of question quality: having a larger proportion of closed questions is an indication of a shift of the distribution of question quality towards lower quality overall, suggesting that a larger proportion of the questions that are not closed are nevertheless of such low quality that few people, if any, care to answer them." CreationDate="2014-12-01T16:23:05.677" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6243" PostId="2242" Score="3" Text="@Andre [&quot;Journeyman&quot;](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journeyman) refers to someone who has completed an apprenticeship in a trade, intends to become a master someday, and is actively working towards that status by assisting a master. This was the pattern of the medieval European guild structure (which persists today in such professions as engineering, medicine, law, and teaching). The word is often used loosely to refer to anyone between the novice and expert stages of learning who has some capability of carrying out independent work." CreationDate="2014-12-01T16:28:16.817" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6244" PostId="2242" Score="0" Text="@whuber thanks, yes, that's what was intended by the word. I wanted to convey someone beyond novice, not yet expert (to be honest, I'm not even sure I quite count as an expert yet), but I didn't want to get into being pointlessly prescriptive about whether that meant holding a degree or having a certain amount of experience; *journeyman* seemed to cover the general sense I needed." CreationDate="2014-12-01T22:00:39.950" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6250" PostId="2242" Score="3" Text="Re &quot;Answering in the comments&quot;. Comments are great for communication/clarification, and perhaps to drop a relevant hyperlink or hint. But how far complete does an &quot;answer&quot; have to be, before it's worth putting as an &quot;answer&quot;? I tend to build my CV answers up over time by editing - laying down a basic idea, then coming back to flesh it out if  I feel it deserves it. Bit of a waste if the OP has already got the point, but better for those who arrive by search engine later. How welcome is this on CV? On SO, perhaps because it's higher traffic, I've had criticism for such &quot;incremental answering&quot;." CreationDate="2014-12-01T23:36:17.220" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6252" PostId="2242" Score="0" Text="In SO incremental answering can be a problem because there's so much competition to answer, and a benefit to 'going first'. Here on CV I'd actually encourage it, for three reasons. First, he number of questions that get more than one answer is pretty modest; better to encourage a reasonable answer that becomes a very good answer later than discourage an answer. Second, answers in SO tend to be &quot;contained&quot; much more so than here - often the question is specific and a complete answer can be brief. Here a brief answer can be helpful but leave out important caveats ... (ctd)" CreationDate="2014-12-01T23:59:01.600" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6254" PostId="2242" Score="0" Text="(ctd) ...  to the point of perhaps being misleading to a later reader. Third is that you end up with better answers! There are some wonderful answers that were built up over the course of a few edits, improved by responding to questions in comments, &amp;c. I'd say that if the comment actually answers the question, even if it's a little on the terse side, it should be seriously considered for pasting in as an answer, particularly if the comment may tend to dissuade others from answering (which happens with me when I see a good answer in comments -- though I've been answering more of them lately)" CreationDate="2014-12-02T00:05:51.137" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6300" PostId="2242" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b: It would be great if you could update your post with a long-term figure showing amount of new questions and new answers per month over last several years. Would be very interesting to see (and relevant for the discussion), and it seems that you have all the scripts ready to produce it easily." CreationDate="2014-12-04T10:07:57.777" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6301" PostId="2242" Score="1" Text="@amoeba Well, I don't have any scripts of my own; it's more a matter of finding someone else's script on data.stackexchange and using that. I have once or twice managed to edit a script to do something else, but I have no real idea what I'm doing when I do that. I do intend to try to do it, though." CreationDate="2014-12-04T10:48:58.763" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6304" PostId="2242" Score="1" Text="Although moderators have access to graphics of this sort, we are specifically enjoined from sharing them with others.  We can, however, summarize what they show: that is the basis of the remarks in my first comment." CreationDate="2014-12-04T13:45:25.123" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6305" PostId="2242" Score="0" Text="@whuber and others (who read these comments): I have made the plot I asked Glen_b to make, and posted it below in a separate answer." CreationDate="2014-12-04T14:19:17.083" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6307" PostId="2242" Score="0" Text="The new graph suggests that there has been a long consistent trend to fewer answers per question, as @whuber said earlier, but looking at it I think that the last three months seem qualitatively different. In the past the questions and answers have mostly moved up and down together on a broad upward trend, but with answers growing more rapidly. The newer data seems to have the two moving in opposite directions in a way that didn't happen in similar months last year or the year before." CreationDate="2014-12-04T14:54:12.417" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6310" PostId="2242" Score="0" Text="As you know, @Glen, seasonal components cannot be identified until several seasons have passed. The full history (four and a half years now) exhibits upward swings in questions asked (along with moderate downward swings in answers given) every November. So let's not read too much into what is currently happening: it's entirely consistent with what has happened the four previous Novembers. I can almost guarantee a large (c. 25%) drop in the question rate next month (with a smaller drop in the answer rate, making the A:Q ratio go up). The *long term* trend of decreasing A:Q continues, though." CreationDate="2014-12-04T15:36:53.483" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6324" PostId="2242" Score="2" Text="@whuber: Not that it matters a lot, but in the figure I posted below (covering all 4.5 years) I don't see any sign of regular upward swings in the number of questions asked every November... I wonder why." CreationDate="2014-12-04T22:18:47.363" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6326" PostId="2242" Score="2" Text="@amoeba It's hard to see such patterns when there is so much going on. Fit a trend and look at the residuals.  It might also be a little clearer in the weekly data, because the onsets and ends of the swings cross monthly boundaries and are affected by the holidays.  I admit I'm eyeballing this myself, because all I have are the graphics, not the data--but they do show more detail than the one you have posted." CreationDate="2014-12-04T22:50:23.307" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6341" PostId="2242" Score="3" Text="@whuber I've done some analysis, and I am forced to agree with you - the differing long term trend and differing monthly seasonality in Q's and A'a account for most of what we see (and the residual isn't nearly large enough to conclude something new might be going on). I have summarized what model I fitted to what data above, and the conclusions I draw from it in an edit to my question (since it doesn't really respond to what to do about worsening Answers per Question, I figured it was better in the question)." CreationDate="2014-12-08T04:06:58.800" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6343" PostId="2242" Score="0" Text="It's a pity that your analysis update does not include any figures!" CreationDate="2014-12-09T00:04:33.057" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6344" PostId="2242" Score="0" Text="That was deliberate (since I figured people might prefer to try their own ideas), but I will include one plot." CreationDate="2014-12-09T00:26:16.550" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6360" PostId="2242" Score="2" Text="Another factor to contemplate, Glen, is revealed by data on closed questions. Until this year there were only the barest upward wiggles in the trend during end-of-semester frenzies (Mar-Apr, Nov-Dec). This year the changes during those periods are substantial: +3.5 extra closed questions daily in early April, +4.5 extra during the last month. My interpretation: perhaps a small number of classrooms are being induced to post garbage. (At the moment, we are closing more questions each day than we were receiving *in total* three years ago.)" CreationDate="2014-12-11T18:45:22.453" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6364" PostId="2242" Score="2" Text="Answer in comments: we need to impose a requirement that nobody can be tenured in any department of statistics unless they generate a reputation of at least 2K per year." CreationDate="2014-12-11T23:21:21.387" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="6366" PostId="2242" Score="0" Text="@StasK Heh. That reminds me of the Monty Python segment where one banker's idea for improving the British economy was to &quot;tax all foreigners abroad&quot;." CreationDate="2014-12-11T23:37:56.147" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6367" PostId="2242" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b, it is interesting that references to [academia](http://academia.stackexchange.com/) seem Monty-Python-ish to you." CreationDate="2014-12-11T23:47:12.693" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="15940" PostId="2242" Score="0" Text="Following @amoeba 's example, I'm trying to keep a lid on the rising tide of mediocre neural network questions. But it's a hard, lonely road to travel..." CreationDate="2018-06-16T18:18:35.497" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="15943" PostId="2242" Score="0" Text="You seem to be having at least some impact on it. But if you're working on the gold badge, 200 answers in a tag does take a long time." CreationDate="2018-06-16T23:30:47.560" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6245" PostId="2243" Score="7" Text="Wait, what? I've seen a large number of very high quality answers from you -- some way above the level I felt I was describing. We get many self study questions, for example, that are easily at a lower level than the questions you seem to be able to give excellent contributions on." CreationDate="2014-12-01T22:05:55.247" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6246" PostId="2243" Score="4" Text="The problem of people not knowing what it is they really want - at least not in a way that they can formulate or express - is a very common one in statistics (and, no doubt, in many other fields). I think helping people with that is part of the skill set statisticians need to develop. I've occasionally driven people asking &quot;just a quick question&quot; to distraction with what seem to be endless naive questions (to figure out what the underlying problem is, how their data were collected, what their variables actually measure) ... before we even begin to discuss what kind of analyses may be needed." CreationDate="2014-12-01T22:13:36.840" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6247" PostId="2243" Score="0" Text="If it's undergraduate-level statistics (and well-removed from machine learning) my understanding is very good indeed. Graduate level stuff (asymptotics, measure theory, anything beyond basic Bayesian approaches, some of the heavier regression stuff especially shrinkage) I will read with interest on CV and elsewhere but won't attempt to make any contribution on. That sharp cut-offs means my contributions probably represent the maximal extent that someone with strong undergraduate-level background can add. Definitely non-negligible but rarely much use on the &quot;hard&quot; unanswered questions." CreationDate="2014-12-01T22:16:57.473" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6248" PostId="2243" Score="1" Text="Of &quot;easy&quot; questions, &quot;self-study&quot; seem easiest to construct an answer to as the question was usually posed, clearly, by a lecturer. (Can be hard to write enough of a hint, without answering the whole homework!) The &quot;easy&quot; questions that turn out to be &quot;hard work&quot; quite often seem to be when the OP doesn't really know what they want. This is familiar from my sideline at the bottom-end of the consultancy market: I've had people offer to fly me across the country to basically do a $\chi^2$ test, but if they'd known enough to know that's what they wanted, they'd never have called me to start with!" CreationDate="2014-12-01T22:26:42.370" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6249" PostId="2243" Score="0" Text="Your penultimate comment also isn't at all far off describing my own limitations on questions (I could maybe add a few topics to yours ... but a couple of those I've picked up basic knowledge of as a result of answering questions on CV)." CreationDate="2014-12-01T23:22:07.470" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6251" PostId="2243" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b The distinction between &quot;expert&quot; and &quot;novice&quot; seems to be &quot;all things are relative&quot;! Looking through the recent &quot;tumbleweed&quot; activity, I see lots of machine-learning, some hard (grad level) stats, quite a few questions I couldn't even decipher (maybe garbage, maybe just very technical and tersely worded) and some &quot;novice data analysis&quot; questions that could only have been resolved with lots of communication/clarification from the OP (which with &quot;drive-by&quot; Qs presumably needed to happen earlier). I saw no high school/undergrad self-study Qs but my sample may not have been representative." CreationDate="2014-12-01T23:45:55.870" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6255" PostId="2243" Score="0" Text="Try also the [&quot;no answers&quot;-unanswered](http://stats.stackexchange.com/unanswered/tagged/?tab=noanswers) questions (since views, comments and votes may keep questions out of Tumbleweed status, but still unanswered). You may want to scroll a bit. Also the recent-unanswered (which includes questions with answers not yet upvoted) may be a good spot to either give an answer or upvote one. If we could get a couple of dozen more people nearly as good as you, each answering 1 or 2 questions a day, I think things would improve quite noticeably (and not just in terms of answered questions)." CreationDate="2014-12-02T01:15:37.083" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6269" PostId="2243" Score="1" Text="A bit off-topic, but nevertheless: I have had zero encounters with statistical consultancy, but what you  describe (in your answer and in the comments) sounds *amazing*. Who are your clients? I cannot even imagine. Students? Academic researchers in, say, biology? People from industry? What industry? Who needs to run a $t$-, or a $\chi^2$ test so badly as to pay somebody flight tickets and fees, and why? Sorry for probably very naive questions." CreationDate="2014-12-02T22:38:50.403" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6270" PostId="2243" Score="0" Text="@amoeba: I'll try to address that while keeping on-topic! There seems to be a substantial pool of people and organisations (eg small businesses) who have generated some data for some purpose, *need* to do something fairly basic with it, but either don't know what, don't know how, or don't have time (or importantly, software licenses) so want to outsource it. Data from market research, training scheme evaluations, academic work - quite diverse sources. It's all got to be analysed, and when managerial/academic deadlines loom, plenty of data users are prepared to pay for help." CreationDate="2014-12-02T23:30:42.940" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6271" PostId="2243" Score="1" Text="@amoeba I think it's relevant to this discussion as my experience suggests there are many people with very basic, but often urgent, stats needs. Nick Cox makes the excellent point that folk expect the Web to provide answers these days. And even better, for free! If the type of people who seek out low-level statistical advice from the likes of me were all to discover SE, I suspect this site would be utterly deluged. Moreover they'd be very difficult to help, as they find it hard to formulate their own needs. Such a change in composition of questioners could result in (or explain) lower answer %" CreationDate="2014-12-02T23:42:34.353" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6272" PostId="2243" Score="0" Text="Another &quot;hard to help&quot; issue is lack of technical skills. Most of my clients use Excel as a giant table, maybe with pretty shading and borders, but have yet to discover the joys of `=SUM()`. The better-skilled got used to pressing buttons on student editions of SPSS at uni, but with no licence at work, can't run the analyses they used to. (For many folk, stats *is* SPSS - this often shows with new SPSS-tag Qs on CV.) Saying &quot;download R and install this package&quot; is no &quot;solution&quot; in such cases. Fortunately most &quot;novice&quot; questioners on CV still exhibit (to me) surprisingly high technical skills." CreationDate="2014-12-03T00:04:22.893" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="10053" PostId="2243" Score="0" Text="@Silverfish re SPSS users... seeing/hearing phrases like &quot;run a correlation&quot; (or &quot;run-an-*X*&quot; more generally) seems to be a dead giveaway for a lot of fairly novice SPSS users. I have definitely seen the tendency to equate SPSS with statistical analysis among some such users." CreationDate="2016-06-21T02:39:11.230" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6260" PostId="2244" Score="2" Text="Second point is fine. The first point seems a red herring here. Discussion of temporary loss of reputation, a trivial problem for all and a transient problem for individuals, is a distraction from the larger aims of the forum. On the third point: I have nothing against publicity but my own experience is that only participation makes clear the attractions of moderate or high contributions here." CreationDate="2014-12-02T14:39:38.433" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6261" PostId="2244" Score="0" Text="It's just that I think this feature hearts some fair stats here (but, agree it is red herring, so won't extend on this). About the third bullet: I hypothesized that people who search for help, frequently find CV with Google, but people willing to help (e.g. journeyman statisticians) could hear more about CV through other media channels. (@NickCox)." CreationDate="2014-12-02T15:05:36.053" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="6262" PostId="2249" Score="1" Text="+1, but maybe using &quot;site&quot; in singular form?[main-site-statistics]" CreationDate="2014-12-02T16:01:37.710" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="6263" PostId="2249" Score="2" Text="@AndreSilva, that was meant to be the possessive case, not plural, but you're right: it may be better without the &quot;s&quot;." CreationDate="2014-12-02T16:32:23.373" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12980" PostId="2249" Score="0" Text="FYI: This has just been implemented by Glen_b." CreationDate="2017-04-04T11:01:26.723" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6264" PostId="2250" Score="1" Text="(+1) Regardless of qualifications you are clearly &quot;expert&quot; at a professional level. I suspect there is a strong link between your extensive professional practice, and your many excellent contributions on CV: STATA, data-vis and regression are presumably regular tools of your trade. In contrast, I tend to use CV to keep my skills sharp in those areas that I *don't* see in my (more limited) professional practice! Perhaps your academic background means your stats skills are &quot;narrow but deep&quot;, but that still puts fruit in reach that someone with shallow (even if wider) skills can't." CreationDate="2014-12-02T19:49:02.543" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6266" PostId="2250" Score="0" Text="Thanks for the compliments. I do have 23 years' experience of using Stata intensively. I am strongly interested in graphics and use regression-type models a lot. In terms of following questions, I mostly tend to look at what's new first and don't follow particular tags. If a link throws up something older, sometimes there is evidently work to be done." CreationDate="2014-12-02T20:00:55.833" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6267" PostId="2250" Score="1" Text="That does make me return to pondering whether unanswered &quot;good&quot; questions reflect skillset mismatches between askers and answerers, or perhaps a weakness in the filtering system by which answerers can find skill-matching questions (I guess this is the point of the tags, but I'm not sure how well they work). I think the thrust of your piece is a very sound explanation of the unanswered &quot;bad&quot; questions. I have seen suggestions on metaSO to emphasise the &quot;possibly matching answers&quot;: [this discussion](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/253305/1895415) reflects similar concerns to yours here." CreationDate="2014-12-02T20:01:07.120" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6268" PostId="2250" Score="7" Text="Statistics has always been a subject largely made up of people from other areas. Wilcoxon was a chemist, Spearman a psychologist, Tukey a topologist, and so on. When I was a student I heard it said &quot;nobody goes to university intending to be a statistician&quot;. [It wasn't *quite* true then, and it's somewhat less true now, but it may be so to a greater degree than almost any other profession.]" CreationDate="2014-12-02T20:31:29.577" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6368" PostId="2250" Score="4" Text="The CV mechanism works great for situations where there's an unambiguous answer. Most of my LaTeX Google queries land on [TeX.SE](http://tex.stackexchange.com/), which provide exact answers to my questions like &quot;How do I set this stupid table up&quot;. I am happy to upvote both the question and the answer to indicate their relevance. It looks like in statistics, the answers may be not be as clear or straightforward. As far as I can tell, TeX.SE runs at about 1 A/Q, but with twice the votes of the top questions. I can't believe that there are more people who know LaTeX than those who analyze data." CreationDate="2014-12-12T00:01:28.900" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="6275" PostId="2251" Score="2" Text="My suggestion about econometrics questions which relates to statistics and which are asked here, should remain on CV. Also, I don't believe it is a good idea to migrate old unanswered questions: the OP could be inactive. Better closing the question if it is unclear or off-topic." CreationDate="2014-12-03T02:25:09.150" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="6299" PostId="2251" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b Older content can be migrated manually (just copy-paste the text), being transformed in the process. But I have done the search, and found nothing in the unanswered queue here with the econometrics tag, that would be fit for Economics.SE." CreationDate="2014-12-04T00:58:49.570" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="6274" PostId="2252" Score="0" Text="Your answer sounds like we disagree on something, while we don't: I did not propose &quot;migration by default&quot;. I wrote about &quot;alerting the OP&quot; and let him decide. Econometrics are the child of Economics and Statistics, and so certainly some of the child's needs will be better served by the one parent, while others by the other." CreationDate="2014-12-03T01:33:06.460" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="6276" PostId="2252" Score="0" Text="@AlecosPapadopoulos, I was responding to the phrase before that (&quot;flagging it for migration&quot;), but I didn't mean to be argumentative. The main point I wanted to make in my answer was that the issue would be tricky to adjudicate. I recognize you have the best of intentions here &amp; I trust your judgment." CreationDate="2014-12-03T03:15:48.157" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6334" PostId="2252" Score="1" Text="(+1) As well as considering the OP's wishes, it'd be a shame to start removing areas of applied statistics from CV's remit (&amp; where would it end?). Rather hope that the Economics SE helps bring more econometricians to CV." CreationDate="2014-12-05T11:05:08.960" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="6282" PostId="2253" Score="6" Text="(1) Might also be useful to pick some examples of the kind of questions one large site would be accepting that CV currently doesn't, (&amp; consider which of those aren't suitable for SO). (2) *Are* we closing many Data Science questions? The last I can see migrated to DS was asked on 19 Sep, two and a half months ago." CreationDate="2014-12-03T11:42:20.537" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="6289" PostId="2253" Score="0" Text="_&quot;It seems to me that CV needs better PR at least.&quot;_. What is PR?" CreationDate="2014-12-03T15:36:24.317" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="6291" PostId="2253" Score="2" Text="@AndreSilva public relations, e.g. a 'better' image." CreationDate="2014-12-03T15:59:47.420" UserId="25433" />
  <row Id="6293" PostId="2253" Score="16" Text="This topic is excellent, well-posed, and well worth discussion. It looks pretty clear, though, that the data science site (in its current &quot;unhealthy&quot; condition) is doomed, so I wouldn't worry overmuch about the overlap.  (The rate at which new questions appear on the DS site currently is just one-quarter of the rate at which we are *closing* questions here!)" CreationDate="2014-12-03T16:23:11.767" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6335" PostId="2253" Score="3" Text="@whuber: If it's doomed should we be thinking whether we'd want the Data Science questions that are currently off-topic on both CV &amp; on Stack Overflow?" CreationDate="2014-12-05T11:13:38.637" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="6337" PostId="2253" Score="1" Text="Related on meta.DS: [What characterises the difference between data science and statistics?](http://meta.datascience.stackexchange.com/questions/86/what-characterises-the-difference-between-data-science-and-statistics)" CreationDate="2014-12-05T12:54:59.147" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="6338" PostId="2253" Score="2" Text="@StephanKolassa: Taking the [highest-voted answer to that question](http://meta.datascience.stackexchange.com/questions/86/what-characterises-the-difference-between-data-science-and-statistics/88#88) at face value, the problems tackled by data science - data collection, manipulation, scale, mining, &amp; communication - are not obviously off-topic on CV." CreationDate="2014-12-05T14:31:48.390" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="6342" PostId="2253" Score="2" Text="I think the community agree we should expand the scope of Cross Validated to incorporate (some) topics of Data Science. Next step maybe would be a question asking for opinions about the scope, in which there would be separate answers containing the Data Science topics so people could vote on (e.g. treatment of large data, computational issues, etc). Of course we would need to wait to see that site's future (if it will work or not). cc/ @conjectures." CreationDate="2014-12-08T13:31:37.703" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="6404" PostId="2253" Score="3" Text="@Andre None of those things have been considered off-topic here, so it's not evident that any expansion of our scope is needed.  The [DS help](http://datascience.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) is useless because it doesn't even state what *is* on-topic there! A [beta post about the potential overlap](http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/a/13502/17138) reflects a dismaying amount of misunderstanding of what CV is about, but I don't think that's our fault: it looks like willful ignorance on the part of the respondent there (who mischaracterizes CV although he has never even joined it!)" CreationDate="2014-12-14T22:48:11.213" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6405" PostId="2253" Score="3" Text="@Andre (and everyone else): [some thoughtful replies](http://meta.datascience.stackexchange.com/questions/112) have appeared in a related DS meta thread. They provide good reasons for DS to exist (*eg*, &quot;It is about how the engineering and stats should work together when you need to build a solution to a problem&quot;), as well as pointing to reasons why it is failing (too many low-quality questions and answers)." CreationDate="2014-12-14T23:10:51.680" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6456" PostId="2253" Score="0" Text="Another example from today: http://datascience.stackexchange.com/q/3760/1156" CreationDate="2014-12-26T16:25:06.103" UserId="36229" />
  <row Id="6491" PostId="2253" Score="0" Text="@whuber the answer you link to summarizes CV as &quot;regression and R.&quot; That is a brutal assessment of our site, even if it has truth in it." CreationDate="2015-01-12T06:04:24.050" UserId="36229" />
  <row Id="9082" PostId="2253" Score="0" Text="This question should be closed as answers here will be biased. A neutral place to discuss this is http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/266067/158075" CreationDate="2016-01-27T08:53:24.437" UserId="25741" />
  <row Id="9083" PostId="2253" Score="0" Text="@moose: Well if there were to be a vote held on the future of the DS site, it oughtn't to be here. But this is discussion: people can read the answers &amp; make up their own minds whether they're biased." CreationDate="2016-01-27T10:04:56.523" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9085" PostId="2253" Score="4" Text="@moose: Though most answers are &quot;No&quot;, the different reasons given are interesting. I suspect questions on the Stack Exchange Meta risk being overlooked by most participants on both CV &amp; DS Metas, &amp; can't see any harm in CV members discussing a matter of interest to them on their own Meta. Still, linking to similar discussions on DS Meta &amp; elsewhere is a good idea, &amp; of course we'd welcome hearing contrary views from people who've been more active on DS than CV (the rep. requirement to post here is only 5)." CreationDate="2016-01-27T12:01:49.110" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9088" PostId="2253" Score="1" Text="@moose You're welcome. And thanks for bringing up the matter - I've added an answer to make the links to where this question's been discussed elsewhere more prominent. If you know of others please add them." CreationDate="2016-01-27T12:23:03.347" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="6277" PostId="2254" Score="1" Text="My guess it's probably the name.  CrossValidated is quite an obscure name.  A casual browsers might not see the connection to Statistics or to DataScience.  Its a shame really, because good Data Science must absolutely be concerned with the theory and application of various probability models &amp; statistics." CreationDate="2014-12-03T08:31:50.280" UserId="14640" />
  <row Id="6278" PostId="2254" Score="3" Text="@Assad, CrossValidated is obscure but Data Analysis &amp; Statistics is not. It is pity to some extent that new fashionable disciplines such as Data Science and, earlier, Data Mining, try to promote themselves at the expense of Data Analysis by partly duplicating it." CreationDate="2014-12-03T09:09:51.183" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="6321" PostId="2254" Score="0" Text="I suppose this will soon be obsolete because DataScience.SE seems bound to fail (unless something unforeseen happens). See http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/55053/data-science" CreationDate="2014-12-04T21:13:00.350" UserId="8413" />
  <row Id="15012" PostId="2254" Score="0" Text="Cross Validated vs Data Science: https://i.redd.it/5193db0avbey.jpg" CreationDate="2017-12-18T14:53:22.940" UserId="1104" />
  <row Id="6279" PostId="2255" Score="0" Text="My problem is, I'm relative active on the DS forum, anyway I would like to discuss some question, which were published here. For some users (like me) it is difficult to jump between two simillar forums with the small numbers of topics. Probably it would be good solution to combine both in the one?" CreationDate="2014-12-03T08:36:08.057" UserId="49268" />
  <row Id="6280" PostId="2255" Score="3" Text="@Guforu, I don't think combining will be a good idea. Rather, the two should put it clear in what respect they demarcate. CV is _data analysis_ (broad, including also learning/prediction and mining); and I even think CV ought to be renamed accordingly. CV doesn't accept data management questions which, I suppose, is the core topic of DS." CreationDate="2014-12-03T09:14:52.500" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="6281" PostId="2255" Score="3" Text="@ttnphns not sure ... I think a problem of CV is that it has a higher barrier of entry compared to data science for people without a theoretical background. We see a lot of theory questions popping up at DS and usually plenty of people can answer said questions there. I think trying to change that dynamic won't work. I'm not sure that keeping them separate is the best choice in the long run. Keep in mind that CV is not *that* active on its own. Maybe one large 'data' SE would be better than two smaller, intertwined fora. Stackoverflow shows that a wide variety of topics can work fine." CreationDate="2014-12-03T10:01:02.950" UserId="25433" />
  <row Id="6297" PostId="2255" Score="1" Text="I have to wonder about SO. In some ways it looks dysfunctional to me with $\sim 10$K votes to close (not so long ago it was more like $100$K, until the number was cut arbitrarily). It works not so badly when it behaves as almost closed sub-communities. Presumably surveys show that many people prefer all the questions of some interest to them together in one place (and all the others elsewhere). Setting up DS was based on a deliberate decision that such questions don't fit in here, it seems." CreationDate="2014-12-03T20:09:22.090" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6283" PostId="2256" Score="1" Text="One thing I find interesting (and positive) about this post is that it suggests a mechanism (in this case, tags) for matching skills of answerers with needs of questioners is performing its purpose, at least in this area. `" CreationDate="2014-12-03T12:56:22.857" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6284" PostId="2256" Score="2" Text="I generally try to write for a dual audience: the original poster (in &quot;drive-by&quot; cases, possibly long gone) and search engine arrivals. In numerical terms, the latter are probably more important, which suggests answers should be written with a broad scope rather than overly specific to (though still attempting to meet) the particular needs of the OP. This aligns with whuber's comment. I'd argue the same applies to whether a question is &quot;interesting&quot; - the OP thought it interesting enough to ask, search engine arrivals thought it interesting enough to search, even if potential answerers didn't." CreationDate="2014-12-03T13:01:25.043" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6286" PostId="2256" Score="6" Text="&quot;Uninteresting&quot; isn't a listed close reason, &amp; with good reason. But there are certainly unanswered questions that are unclear, too broad, duplicates, &amp;c. - these should be flagged if they weren't at the time they were asked. Placing a bounty on them is an option for interesting ones you don't want to answer yourself." CreationDate="2014-12-03T13:04:04.857" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="6287" PostId="2256" Score="4" Text="@Scortchi: It is indeed not a close reason, and I agree that it should not be, however Stack Exchange network [does automatically delete questions](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/92006) that post factum turned out to be uninteresting to the community. Under a current system, when I look at an old question with 0 upvotes and 0 answers (that I *personally* find uninteresting), I can more or less certainly make it disappear by downvoting it and waiting 30 days. I am wondering what community thinks about such an action, but maybe I should ask it as a separate meta question." CreationDate="2014-12-03T15:19:36.673" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6288" PostId="2256" Score="0" Text="Bullet number two from my answer partially address some of the stated concerns." CreationDate="2014-12-03T15:31:17.227" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="6290" PostId="2256" Score="1" Text="+1, I'm going to vote for &quot;noble enterprise&quot; over &quot;internet addiction&quot;. It may interest you to know that there is, in fact, an unanswered question on meta.CV here: [Should the standards for closing questions be relaxed somewhat for old questions?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/1409/7290), which was intended to get at some of these issues. If you were to provide an answer of comparable quality, I predict it would get an upvote ;-)." CreationDate="2014-12-03T15:53:16.003" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6294" PostId="2256" Score="4" Text="I've been puzzled by that post by @whuber. Naturally, I'd write a spectacularly good answer rather than a mediocre one given a straight choice between the two. But there are many questions that won't interest many people and even competent, concise, clear answers won't get more than a few upvotes. I don't think we're expected to ignore such questions." CreationDate="2014-12-03T16:25:13.623" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6295" PostId="2256" Score="3" Text="@NickCox: I think this reflects the difference in attitudes of different people. [Here is a top 100 list of users](http://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/253671) sorted by average answer score among the users with over 50 answers. Cardinal is leading with a whopping average of 13. Whuber is pretty close to the top with 7. But the OP Glen_b, who is approaching whuber in total rep, has average of only 3.6, showing that he answers *a lot*, often getting only a few upvotes, if at all. Yours is 3.5, mine is 2.8. If everybody acts like whuber suggests, there will be a lot of unanswered questions." CreationDate="2014-12-03T17:07:39.243" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6296" PostId="2256" Score="4" Text="That's a interesting table. Thanks for adding data to the discussion! @Glen_b certainly gets a noble prize for helping lame dogs and lost cats." CreationDate="2014-12-03T17:39:58.297" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6312" PostId="2256" Score="0" Text="If we look to the tag's badge criteria, two of them are: i) minimum upvotes in the tag, ii) minimum number of posts in the tag. So users won't earn them with few outstanding answers nor with a lot of poor answers. So, I think the SE site wants a mix of quantity and quality (outstanding answers, but also good/ /short/objective answers). Because if it was only about quantity, SE would be like a yahoo answers, and if it was only about quality, perhaps people would prefer to invest time on a different subject, like publishing papers, etc." CreationDate="2014-12-04T15:42:44.487" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="6332" PostId="2256" Score="7" Text="Re the update: That is an excellent point about quality *vs* quantity. Perhaps it comes down to whether we're here to keep answering variations of the same old questions or to generate some uniquely high-quality posts and tackle original, interesting, difficult questions. Although we would like to do all those things, it might come down to making a choice. One way to help accomplish both is to identify the duplicates of more questions and close them as duplicates rather than waste energy on answering them again, and again, and ... ." CreationDate="2014-12-05T02:01:07.337" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6361" PostId="2256" Score="0" Text="@whuber, completely agree. I tried to make a similar statement in [this](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2259/how-does-stack-overflow-actually-manage-to-work-given-100x-higher-traffic-than/2261#2261) answer." CreationDate="2014-12-11T19:50:06.587" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="16180" PostId="2256" Score="0" Text="As a user of statistics, I came across lots of answers I dont understand the first sentence. I really cant decide whether to upvote those answers. I guess knowledge gap between askers and answerers is huge in this site. How many guys fit neural network understand the math behind it?" CreationDate="2018-07-11T07:47:34.000" UserId="57093" />
  <row Id="6303" PostId="2257" Score="3" Text="Although occasionally people delete answers because they are irretrievably wrong, a second option to consider is to improve your post through edits. The comments (usually) will remain and the editing history is available to anyone who really wants to review it." CreationDate="2014-12-04T13:43:27.477" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6308" PostId="2257" Score="3" Text="I was a party to the particular discussion cited here. I'd support @whuber's suggestion of considering an edit rather than deletion. If you alert commenters via further comment, they in turn can choose whether to delete comments that no longer apply." CreationDate="2014-12-04T15:09:43.727" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6314" PostId="2257" Score="2" Text="Related: [Protocol on deleting an answer](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/1039/2970)" CreationDate="2014-12-04T18:28:27.710" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="6306" PostId="2258" Score="0" Text="+1 Thanks for the extended data." CreationDate="2014-12-04T14:35:07.743" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6309" PostId="2258" Score="9" Text="I'd guess at two key trends. As time passes, it becomes harder to ask a really interesting new kind of question. Also, as CV grows and becomes more widely known, it attracts more lower-level questions which are less interesting to active people here. The first lame dog is cute; the 100th lame dog you've seen before." CreationDate="2014-12-04T15:13:37.790" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6327" PostId="2258" Score="0" Text="This is a guess, but I suspect if you were to subtract off the numbers of closed and deleted questions, then that alarming-looking upswing at the end might look more moderate.  You also ought to be plotting these data on a vertical log scale, because the growth in most metrics on SE sites is exponential. By highlighting the summer months (Jun-Jul-Aug-Sep) and holidays (late Dec through lat Jan) you will also reveal a clear seasonal cycle in the questions asked." CreationDate="2014-12-04T22:56:15.583" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="16054" PostId="2258" Score="0" Text="I would be interested in seeing an updated version of this chart." CreationDate="2018-07-02T19:58:01.973" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16055" PostId="2258" Score="0" Text="@Sycorax Good idea! Actually you can see a version of it directly here http://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/59302/questions-and-answers-per-month#graph" CreationDate="2018-07-02T20:17:50.790" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16056" PostId="2258" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Thank you for pointing that out! I had no idea such a thing had already been &quot;canned,&quot; although it obviously makes sense that it ought to be." CreationDate="2018-07-02T20:25:15.793" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16059" PostId="2258" Score="0" Text="@Sycorax I am a bit confused though because I don't see Q&gt;A in 2014 on the graph at data.SE.com, in disagreement with the plot I posted here back in 2014." CreationDate="2018-07-02T21:17:56.770" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16060" PostId="2258" Score="0" Text="I’m wondering if there’s a difference between the two, perhaps one includes closed questions? Or something else?" CreationDate="2018-07-02T22:55:13.347" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16075" PostId="2258" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I've updated my answer to include several refinements upon my original plot/the original query that you furnished to me." CreationDate="2018-07-03T18:48:59.940" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="6311" PostId="2260" Score="2" Text="I am pretty much in the same niche as Nick, as far as SO goes. There's a separate Statalist.org forum for Statafolk with may be 50 questions and answers per day; at some point, I suggested relocating it to SE platform, as I am missing the SE functionality there very badly (tags, ability to edit other people's posts, etc.), but it was never picked up. Given that there's such a strong and highly qualified Stata community elsewhere, I am surprised *any* Stata questions are getting asked on CV or SO (although they end up being answered by one of about five or ten people no matter where they land)." CreationDate="2014-12-04T15:42:41.263" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="6313" PostId="2260" Score="3" Text="@StasK I love being able to edit your posts. A detail that may bite with some is that Statalist has an expressed strong preference for posters using their real full names. Here and indeed on talkstats identifiers are at choice and that may be crucial to those who wish to ask what may appear to be ignorant or stupid questions in public without loss of face or reputation or prospects. Economists seem especially prone to a cost-benefit analysis approach to such matters, and indeed life in general." CreationDate="2014-12-04T15:49:26.723" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6318" PostId="2261" Score="1" Text="Interesting point about golden tag badges, but I have to point out that they are EXTREMELY difficult to get on Cross Validated (because 1000 upvotes is an enormous lot here, unlike Stack Overflow). In fact, only two users currently have golden tag badges: Glen_b (in [regression] and [r]) and gung (in [regression])." CreationDate="2014-12-04T20:23:58.037" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6319" PostId="2261" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, correct. I was trying to emphasize we could make more effort to find and link the dupes (in CV it is easier to find them comparing to SO)." CreationDate="2014-12-04T20:37:08.940" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="6322" PostId="2261" Score="1" Text="And regarding the duplicates: if I am not mistaken, questions closed as duplicates are never automatically deleted (unlike other closed questions) and remain hanging around. At the same time, the &quot;main&quot; question displays all of them in the &quot;Linked&quot; list on the right. I am very fond of this list and always check it, but if gets filled with worthless duplicates, I imagine it loses any value. Does it happen on CV? Maybe the whole Stack Exchange network should better separate &quot;Linked&quot; into &quot;Linked&quot; and &quot;Duplicates&quot;..." CreationDate="2014-12-04T21:37:26.857" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6325" PostId="2261" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I have had exactly the same thoughts about &quot;linked questions&quot;. I wonder whether CV takes a different attitude to &quot;duplication&quot; than SO does, since our questions tend to be more conceptual and not just about implementation details. It's difficult to define a metric, but I feel as if many of our duplicates tend to be &quot;less similar&quot; than those on SO." CreationDate="2014-12-04T22:30:16.350" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6330" PostId="2261" Score="0" Text="Duplicates do not get deleted because they serve a purpose, which is to lead users to a good answer. It is common users with different background asking the same thing in different ways, so they are kept as pathways for future readers. About the linked questions, it is a SE network-wide feature. Suggestion: in cases of duplicates, one can go first to the main post and look to the linked question from there. (cc/ @amoeba)." CreationDate="2014-12-04T23:03:29.997" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="6331" PostId="2261" Score="2" Text="@Andre, but that is exactly what I meant: &quot;linked&quot; questions list in the *main* post will be filled up with duplicates (that are useless there)... On the other hand, duplicates usually have not many upvotes, so they should be in the bottom of the &quot;linked&quot; list." CreationDate="2014-12-04T23:23:13.850" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6336" PostId="2261" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, sorry. That is correct. I overlooked it. It should be like you say (no links of duplicates in the main post, under the 'Linked' section; or at least they could be in the bottom). Tks." CreationDate="2014-12-05T12:42:28.530" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="6315" PostId="2264" Score="5" Text="+1. Strong support here. Also I'd add that although I understand why many people want to ask software-specific questions here, here's a practical fact: if they were allowed, the volume of questions would go up dramatically and many of us would have a harder job wading through questions on software we don't use." CreationDate="2014-12-04T18:35:21.973" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6320" PostId="2264" Score="1" Text="Huge +1 to this, @gung. You are confirming exactly what I suspected: that SO has in a certain sense turned into a number of disjoint forums, corresponding to different tags (even though how can anybody monitor tags such as `[c#]` with 700k questions, I am still not sure). I have exactly the same feelings as you about CV and I join your rue (special thanks for using this word with which I was unfamiliar and had to look it up; one learns more than only statistics on CV). A more practical question that I suggest we consider here, is can (and should) we do anything to prevent it?.." CreationDate="2014-12-04T21:12:41.017" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6340" PostId="2264" Score="0" Text="gung I agree, and currently believe that the expertise required to successfully vet and answer questions on SO is much more broadly distributed within society than on CV: *many* more people code than statistic." CreationDate="2014-12-07T18:29:11.113" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="6323" PostId="2265" Score="1" Text="Just in case this needs clarifying: I don't have a problem with the community deleting some answers (non-answers, spam, etc.). I just don't think answers should have to be deleted because they are wrong. Comments &amp; downvotes are available &amp; appropriate actions in that case; whether to delete should be up to the OP." CreationDate="2014-12-04T21:49:57.660" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6316" PostId="2270" Score="10" Text="It is undoubtedly tough on people like you, but as you appear to know the system-wide idea is to impose a threshold for commenting to cut down drastically on spam, nastiness and wackiness. You just have to hold in there until you're 50. (When you are 50, it won't feel so great....) I emphatically don't endorse any rude wording such as STFU if you really have found that on the system." CreationDate="2014-12-04T20:12:44.327" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6317" PostId="2270" Score="3" Text="I found an answer I was happy to vote up, so hey presto! your personal problem is solved. Still, the principle remains open to discussion, but I guess zero chance of changing the procedure here." CreationDate="2014-12-04T20:16:57.037" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6333" PostId="2271" Score="4" Text="-1 for mentioning the phase of the moon parameter. That's a classified algorithm you're messing with!" CreationDate="2014-12-05T04:05:46.837" UserId="6123" />
  <row Id="6339" PostId="2271" Score="2" Text="(+1) Speaking as another moderator, let me second the part, in particular, about not being unduly &quot;inconvenienced&quot; (given current site-activity levels) in converting such posts from answers to comments." CreationDate="2014-12-05T17:44:50.130" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="6329" PostId="2276" Score="3" Text="That's a rather interesting idea." CreationDate="2014-12-04T23:02:20.657" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6345" PostId="2276" Score="0" Text="Aylmer Fishee, perhaps? ;-)" CreationDate="2014-12-09T10:51:58.580" UserId="61519" />
  <row Id="6353" PostId="2284" Score="5" Text="It's certainly not clear to me on what basis that was deleted, since it does seem to respond pretty directly to the question; before the edit it may have been a little indirect (in the sense that it's more explaining why it's not as simple as a yes-or-no thing), but still responsive to the question. After the edit, I don't see how it could be argued to be not responding quite directly to the question." CreationDate="2014-12-09T23:16:19.590" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6354" PostId="2284" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b: it looks like the answer was converted into a comment. I can see some edition of Tim's answer in [google cache](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:KGfElksC5FwJ:stats.stackexchange.com/questions/126904/are-all-simulation-methods-some-form-of-monte-carlo+&amp;cd=1&amp;hl=en&amp;ct=clnk), and the beginning of the same answer appears now as the first comment to the OP. As the comment space was to narrow, the answer was cut off. Now the question is, who converted it into a comment, why, and can this maybe be reversed?" CreationDate="2014-12-09T23:21:31.577" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6355" PostId="2284" Score="7" Text="@amoeba Yes, it was converted to a comment (and so, deleted as an answer). One of the moderators did so (I can see who, but I don't think it's really important). The why is more an issue. If that ones a comment, a very large proportion of answers here are." CreationDate="2014-12-09T23:25:48.957" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6362" PostId="2284" Score="0" Text="I must say that I am surprised and disappointed that this issue has still not been clarified in the past two days since you asked this question." CreationDate="2014-12-11T22:41:37.120" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6371" PostId="2284" Score="0" Text="I follow this tread but, yes, it does not seem to go anywhere..." CreationDate="2014-12-12T07:23:06.127" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="6374" PostId="2284" Score="2" Text="I flagged your comment for moderator attention, leaving a link to this thread there. If nothing happens after some time, you can do the same." CreationDate="2014-12-12T09:51:35.380" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6351" PostId="2288" Score="1" Text="Cool, thanks! I indeed just defined some favorite tags today and didn't connect the dots to the new appearance..." CreationDate="2014-12-09T14:03:53.583" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="6352" PostId="2295" Score="2" Text="In general I find that tags that are subsets of other tags tend to create confusion, so I would argue this should be avoided. E.g. if there are lots of questions about definitions marked with [terminology] and not with [definition], then having separate sub-tag [definition] is not being very helpful. Looking at the page with newest [terminology] questions, I see quite a bit of those." CreationDate="2014-12-09T23:05:07.860" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6356" PostId="2295" Score="2" Text="I tend to favour the status quo and thus agree with @Glen_b.. To me questions of definition do blur into questions of terminology, but they can be distinct. Often terminology doesn't correspond to a formal definition (e.g. I talk about looking for pattern or structure in data, and if someone doesn't understand I can try explaining what I mean in other words, but there's no formal definition out of sight). A recent question about gold standard and ground truth is another case where there is terminology, but it tends to be used informally." CreationDate="2014-12-11T10:30:31.197" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6357" PostId="2295" Score="0" Text="@Nick and Glen: I can see the distinction you are making, I am just not sure what to do with sub-tags (in general, and also in this case). Should I retag a question about a definition tagged with [terminology] to [definition], if I see or happen to edit one? Should I add [definition] in addition to [terminology]? Does this then mean that all questions with [definition] should ideally have [terminology] as well? Should we maybe add to the tag excerpt of [terminology] something like &quot;Please use [definition] for questions about definitions&quot;?" CreationDate="2014-12-11T11:24:38.790" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6358" PostId="2295" Score="2" Text="@amoeba Use your judgement: it will be good. I see no objection to using both [definition] and [terminology] wherever both make sense. I don't have a feeling for which is the more likely search term." CreationDate="2014-12-11T12:08:34.543" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6359" PostId="2295" Score="2" Text="I think generally speaking, if there's a more general and a more specific tag, where one could be regarded as a subset of the other, if the more specific tag applies, you would not use the more general one unless it also applied outside that inclusion of the more specific sense." CreationDate="2014-12-11T15:08:02.197" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6363" PostId="2295" Score="0" Text="@Nick and Glen: After some further reflection, I realized that my objection to sub-tags was not as warranted as I originally thought. We actually have many sub-tags that are pretty successful, e.g. [multiple-regression] exists together with [regression] and they are both used a lot. So I must admit that my suggestion was not very well thought-through." CreationDate="2014-12-11T22:50:53.373" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6365" PostId="2295" Score="1" Text="It's interesting that you mention that specific pair -- I had the same pair in mind as I constructed my previous comment." CreationDate="2014-12-11T23:32:59.380" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8489" PostId="2295" Score="0" Text="Hi @Glen_b, I noticed that my tag synonym suggestion about [terminology]/[definition] from last December is still in the system marked as pending (pretty amazing that they never expire): http://stats.stackexchange.com/tags/synonyms?filter=suggested&amp;tab=newest. As we decided that these two tags should *not* be merged, can you as a mod perhaps somehow reject this pending suggestion and make it disappear? I cannot even revoke my own vote; this whole tag synonym voting system is just awful." CreationDate="2015-10-15T14:30:35.657" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8494" PostId="2295" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I think that did it. I agree, the tag synonym setup is not good." CreationDate="2015-10-15T16:10:56.890" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8495" PostId="2295" Score="0" Text="Thanks, @Glen_b! By the way, when I look at the list of synonyms I see another old pending synonym suggested by StasK in Oct 2014. It has zero votes and does not appear on the &quot;suggested&quot; tab. Strange. I guess if you can somehow get a hold of it, it can be removed too." CreationDate="2015-10-15T16:14:04.640" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9203" PostId="2300" Score="0" Text="A follow-up: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2953." CreationDate="2016-02-06T21:17:37.290" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6372" PostId="2301" Score="0" Text="Good idea! As for me: I am open to edits and suggestions about my answer since I have doubts if it is not overtly long and so if it does not miss the point I wanted to show." CreationDate="2014-12-12T07:40:04.190" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="6373" PostId="2301" Score="4" Text="It is not completely clear to me that the OP meant by &quot;real-life&quot; exclusively real-life situations that actually did happen in the past; &quot;real-life&quot; could refer to and in particular could in this particular instance have been supposed to refer to an imaginary or hypothetical situation that directly relates to real life. I am against downvoting and strongly against deleting answers that interpreted the question like that. I am not even sure that I am happy with your edit of the question, but this is a smaller issue." CreationDate="2014-12-12T09:46:43.960" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6375" PostId="2301" Score="3" Text="I am also not sure about editing the question itself. Real-world is also &quot;having to do with actual experience or practice, rather than being theoretical, idealistic, or impractical&quot; or &quot;having a practicable, verifiable quality&quot; (cf. [here](http://www.yourdictionary.com/real-world)) so it is not only &quot;that happen in real life&quot;. I would say that statistics *do not* happen in real life ;)" CreationDate="2014-12-12T10:04:05.027" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="6400" PostId="2301" Score="0" Text="Why was this downvoted?" CreationDate="2014-12-14T15:08:36.107" UserId="36229" />
  <row Id="6407" PostId="2301" Score="2" Text="@ssdecontrol: Downvoting questions on meta-CV means that people do not agree with whatever proposal OP was trying to make. Voting works a bit differently on meta-CV than on CV itself and has an actual &quot;voting&quot; flavour to it. This particular question has been upvoted +4 times and downvoted -5 times until now, indicating lack of clear consensus (but it's hard to say because some people might have upvoted as a way of appreciation that this topic was brought up or OP's intentions, while disagreeing with the specific suggestions...)" CreationDate="2014-12-15T14:35:31.593" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6447" PostId="2301" Score="0" Text="I very much appreciate the raising of this issue (and the issue in D.W.'s other recent post), and while I agree with several points or suggestions in both instances, have difficulty upvoting either question because I also disagree with other parts. That is, I want to signal these are good *questions* (and I would happily upvote either on that basis), but I disagree with at least some part of the suggestions they contain. In the end, I'm upvoting this one, but not the other. On the other hand, and by way of clarification where I disagree with the actions, I fully support Nick Cox's answer." CreationDate="2014-12-20T22:51:21.147" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6369" PostId="2302" Score="0" Text="(*I may add more later.*)" CreationDate="2014-12-12T01:13:27.850" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6370" PostId="2302" Score="1" Text="Thanks for the thoughtful answer!  Using community wiki for 'big-list' questions only seems like it might be a reasonable intermediate point.  However, community wiki is also being applied to questions that are not a 'big-list' question, and that's where I have the biggest issues.  The overfitting question I link to is not a 'big-list' question, and I think the points I make apply to it more.  Think about each of your 3 bullet items -- how does your reasoning apply to those kind of non-big-list questions?" CreationDate="2014-12-12T01:52:25.923" UserId="2921" />
  <row Id="6376" PostId="2302" Score="3" Text="I agree with @gung here. I also think it's singularly futile to try to lay down exact policy on what should be community wiki. It's more or less whatever a moderator thinks is so different that it's in the best interests of the community that they be so designated. That doesn't mean that decisions can't be challenged." CreationDate="2014-12-12T11:15:06.243" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6377" PostId="2302" Score="3" Text="The consent of the original poster is also indefensible as a criterion. Why not an argument that no question, answer or comment should be deleted without the OP's consent? Further, a small loss of potential reputation for a few individuals is just a trivial side-effect and is never a good argument for or against a policy." CreationDate="2014-12-12T11:21:14.977" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6383" PostId="2302" Score="3" Text="@D.W., IMHO the overfitting question *is* a 'big-list' question. Over time, it will undoubtedly garner a long list of suggested examples of overfitting with no real objective way to determine which is the 'correct' suggested example of real-world overfitting. Under strict adherence to the rules it should be closed as off-topic &amp; deleted." CreationDate="2014-12-12T14:45:42.697" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6379" PostId="2303" Score="1" Text="Frank Harrell had a similar suggestion about creating a [FAQ](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/2004/1036) tag." CreationDate="2014-12-12T14:13:51.643" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="6380" PostId="2303" Score="0" Text="Thanks for pointing this one! I agree with his idea and it seems the same proposal reappears again and again." CreationDate="2014-12-12T14:15:57.850" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="6378" PostId="2304" Score="0" Text="+1. I would roll back the edit made by the OP, but I guess by now it is better to wait a bit and see if there is a clear majority supporting this... If anybody is AGAINST rolling back, please say so explicitly." CreationDate="2014-12-12T14:13:26.320" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6384" PostId="2304" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, I have rolled the edit back." CreationDate="2014-12-12T15:05:21.097" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6390" PostId="2304" Score="0" Text="*&quot;Edits should correct or improve presentation (grammar, spelling, punctuation, poor style, code and mathematical formatting, etc., etc.) and at most correct small and entirely uncontroversial errors.&quot;* - Well... I'm not sure that is StackExchange policy.  StackExchange encourages editing questions to improve them. See http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/editing.  That specifically lists other categories of encouraged edits, including &quot;clarify the meaning of the post (without changing that meaning)&quot;.  If I may speak in my defense, that's exactly what I tried to do." CreationDate="2014-12-12T18:03:56.447" UserId="2921" />
  <row Id="6391" PostId="2304" Score="1" Text="... and if my edit didn't match what the OP had in mind, he/she was welcome to roll it back and edit the question accordingly.  However keep in mind that here we have an absentee OP -- the original user provided a short question without many details, then disappeared and did not respond to requests for clarification.  In my defense, my edit was a good-faith to improve the question to reflect what the OP seemed to be asking, not an attempt to change the intent of the OP." CreationDate="2014-12-12T18:05:19.640" UserId="2921" />
  <row Id="6393" PostId="2304" Score="0" Text="However, I hear you.  If this kind of attempt to improve questions and answers does not fit the sort of thing the community here would appreciate, I will take that to heart and act accordingly in the future." CreationDate="2014-12-12T18:08:34.437" UserId="2921" />
  <row Id="6395" PostId="2304" Score="1" Text="The nub and the rub here is &quot;without changing that meaning&quot; on which people can disagree in good faith. It's clearly common here on CV, and perhaps even true of the majority of questions, that they show some misunderstanding of statistics. If we corrected the questions too, the answers would often be very difficult to follow." CreationDate="2014-12-12T18:14:25.447" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6396" PostId="2304" Score="0" Text="As someone very active on CV, and active on only one other SE site, I find myself a little cool on SE policy generally. I don't want to subvert or contradict it. But it seems to allow, for example, a higher use of vulgar epithets and pointed exchanges on Stack Overflow than would be welcome here. (N.B. that is quite tangential to this thread.)" CreationDate="2014-12-12T18:16:41.960" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6397" PostId="2304" Score="7" Text="@D.W., although I have disagreed w/ your suggestions in these 2 posts, I want to say that I think you have done a good job in bringing these issues up for discussion. The questions are clear, well-researched &amp; -articulated. On the main site, they would get upvotes. As you may know, the voting scheme is different on meta, w/ downvotes indicating disagreement w/ the suggestion, not low quality. In addition (whether I agreed w/ your actions or not), I do not think you have acted in bad faith at any point. &amp; I think you have been very mature about this in the face of disagreement from others." CreationDate="2014-12-12T18:17:13.727" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6398" PostId="2304" Score="0" Text="@gung, thanks for the kind words.  I definitely appreciate them.  I understand that meta works differently and the downvotes don't bother me, but thanks for mentioning it, as otherwise I imagine it could be disheartening for someone who wasn't familiar with that aspect of SE." CreationDate="2014-12-12T18:31:19.003" UserId="2921" />
  <row Id="6401" PostId="2304" Score="2" Text="I strongly disagree about down votes. Most of us have little to gain or lose by 1 reputation except our pride, yet because vote counts are low those single votes can make a big impact on a question's visibility and momentum. Meanwhile, the basic downvote criteria include answers that don't answer the question. Therefore I think it would be better if we all became much more liberal with our downvotes. They can always be reversed" CreationDate="2014-12-14T15:14:20.463" UserId="36229" />
  <row Id="6402" PostId="2304" Score="3" Text="We can all make our own choices. A downvote can also be very discouraging to people trying to learn the game here." CreationDate="2014-12-14T15:17:37.120" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6387" PostId="2305" Score="3" Text="@Andre Those are thoughtful points. There are several options when you raise a flag. The best to use in such a case is the &quot;other (needs ♦ moderator attention)&quot;: it provides a text box to explain your concern. The flag will be handled by the first moderator to encounter it. Providing a good explanation is useful: it often can persuade even the same moderator to reverse his/her previous action. (A poor explanation or repeated efforts to flag for the same reason are indeed rude.) If you don't get satisfaction from a flag, *then* meta (or, possibly, chat) is the next option to try." CreationDate="2014-12-12T16:13:52.843" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6399" PostId="2305" Score="3" Text="@Andre, I am not sure you know that one can flag *individual comments* (and that is what I did in this case: flagged the comment that Tim's answer was turned into). It's not very obvious, because the flagging icon is normally hidden and appears only on mouse over; it is located to the left of each comment, below the upvoting icon. I use it sometimes to flag obsolete comments, and they usually get erased by mighty moderators." CreationDate="2014-12-12T21:02:04.897" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6389" PostId="2306" Score="0" Text="Although this may look like a small mutual admiration society, I am very happy to endorse this post. In this thread, the larger point was the OP's editing the question on the main site, but editing answers is hardly different in principle." CreationDate="2014-12-12T17:55:13.653" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6392" PostId="2306" Score="0" Text="@NickCox, personally I admire mutual admiration societies ;-), however, I am responding to concrete suggestions in the question. I just think your points extend more broadly than you happened to frame them, &amp; coincidentally enough, an analogous situation occurred to me yesterday that I thought was worth relating." CreationDate="2014-12-12T18:06:01.797" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6394" PostId="2306" Score="0" Text="Don't worry: I would disagree with you as politely and as logically as possible if I disagreed with you." CreationDate="2014-12-12T18:11:05.833" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9555" PostId="2309" Score="2" Text="&quot;... I think SciComp will take care of that ... &quot; The problem is that there are interactions between the stats models used (Stats.SE), the coding (SO.SE), the implementation (SciComp.SE) and to be asking aspects of what is actually *one question* in multiple places is not going to get the best answer. I would expect that DS.SE would be able to suggest where on the various layers of the solution you should be working on the problem and making a change. Im still undecided about one/two sites question though." CreationDate="2016-03-22T10:20:11.797" UserId="105606" />
  <row Id="6455" PostId="2311" Score="0" Text="One week after posting this meta question, with nobody saying that this would be a bad thing to do or downvoting my post (currently 7 upvotes, 0 downvotes), I went ahead and made the suggested title edit." CreationDate="2014-12-22T16:07:21.793" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6408" PostId="2314" Score="2" Text="Re overfitting question: I think that &quot;real world&quot; can be understood more broadly than &quot;actually taken place&quot; (as I argued on the related meta thread) so I think that title is fine. Come to think of it, I would put it in plural and remove quotes: *What are real-world examples of overfitting?*" CreationDate="2014-12-15T16:57:04.347" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6409" PostId="2314" Score="1" Text="Re my example about PCA: well, the question body does mention PCA but in a different context (I believe). But you are right, editing in the [pca] tag was already a potentially (??) controversial edit along the lines of what I am asking here about." CreationDate="2014-12-15T16:59:30.827" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6410" PostId="2314" Score="0" Text="By the way, this is not an isolated case, I could come up with other examples." CreationDate="2014-12-15T17:00:22.530" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6411" PostId="2314" Score="0" Text="Re overfitting question: for example, I would not change the title there to _What are examples of overfitting_? (removing the real-world part). But keeping on-topic here, it is not ok to change the title to encompass content embedded in one answer, if the answer is off topic to the question. Clearly, that was not the case in the example you cited." CreationDate="2014-12-15T17:05:54.980" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="6413" PostId="2314" Score="1" Text="I might include some other examples later, but for now assume that the OP had not not even mentioned PCA in the question's body. Then it seems to me that your last sentence would not really apply. What then? Just to be clear: thanks for your answer, I appreciate it, but of course I am still hoping to collect opinions of other users as well. This is a discussion thread, I don't think there is one &quot;correct&quot; answer." CreationDate="2014-12-15T17:16:36.840" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6414" PostId="2314" Score="0" Text="Sure amoeba, that is fine. I suppose if the OP had not mentioned PCA, then the proposed edit would not make sense. In such situation, probably ttnphns's answer would not be there either." CreationDate="2014-12-15T17:31:57.893" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="6415" PostId="2314" Score="0" Text="I disagree completely. The OP reads: *I keep reading about instances where we center the data (e.g., with regularization or PCA) in order to remove the intercept*. As I understand it, this refers to centering in regression, and PCA is mentioned as one possible way to center the variables. The question though is about what happens with regression after centering, not about what happens with PCA after centering. So this mentioning of PCA is a red herring. Still, ttnphns's answer might have been nevertheless motivated by it of course." CreationDate="2014-12-15T17:35:11.923" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6416" PostId="2314" Score="2" Text="@amoeba When I edit I try to take particular care to respect the intent of the OP. But on a years-old thread with a long-departed OP, now the thread is mostly of use search engine arrivals, maybe it's a silly hang-up of mine. For Qs like &quot;How do I do X in SPSS/R?&quot; the on-topic meat of the Q is usually &quot;How do I do X?&quot; so I don't mind changing such titles. Other times it's unclear whether X should be construed in a wider way that includes Y too. Particularly as titles don't always adequately summarise question bodies! Ensuring title reflects body seems wise to me. ..." CreationDate="2014-12-15T21:00:12.857" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6417" PostId="2314" Score="1" Text="..so &quot;You would be adapting/improving the title to what already exists in the question as a matter of content&quot; summarises my opinion (+1). Re overfitting, I agree with @amoeba. A *restrictive* reading of the title suggests a narrow scope, but it can be read as &quot;why/where in the real world, might an analyst overfit a model?&quot; The body says &quot;I need help as to how to come up with a real-world example that applies to overfitting&quot;, where &quot;come up with&quot; seems more likely to mean &quot;create my own example&quot; than &quot;find a published paper&quot;. Only OP can edit to correct vagueness as only they know their intent" CreationDate="2014-12-15T21:10:37.603" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6419" PostId="2314" Score="2" Text="NB answers are *often* wider than Qs on CV, [Alecos Papadopoulos blogged](http://stats.blogoverflow.com/2014/08/answering-narrowly-or-more-broadly-some-evidence-from-green-checks-and-upvotes/) this, generally favouring &quot;wider&quot; answers. Also, non-expert often ask questions which receive answers addressing their deeper intent. &quot;How do I test X?&quot; often gets &quot;Your data are inappropriate for X because of reason R. But if you want to do X because your underlying goal was A, have you considered test Y?&quot; Yet the title concerns X. Is &quot;X vs Y&quot; *implicitly existing* in the Q? Should it be edited in? Hmm." CreationDate="2014-12-15T21:18:12.087" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6420" PostId="2315" Score="4" Text="Wow, this is one heck of a convoluted hack! +1 if only for coming up with it." CreationDate="2014-12-15T23:54:10.167" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6421" PostId="2315" Score="4" Text="The show/hide functionality would be great; it is a pity SE doesn't have it, and I don't actually understand why not, but alas. Until such functionality appears, I think separate repository is a neater solution than yours. I suppose one can be *very* sure that links e.g. to *gist.github.com* will not rot. One does not need to register there to paste some code, there is syntax highlighting, etc., so I think it's pretty convenient." CreationDate="2014-12-15T23:59:06.813" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6422" PostId="2315" Score="3" Text="BTW, regarding syntax highlighting: SE does have it, but it only works automatically if the question is tagged with the corresponding language tag. That's why your code e.g. [here](http://stats.stackexchange.com/a/125678/22228) is not colored. You can manually turn it on by writing `&lt;!-- language: lang-r --&gt;` and leaving empty line (!) before the code block. If you write `language-all` then all subsequent blocks will also have highlighting. [See here for more details](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/184109)." CreationDate="2014-12-16T00:02:58.497" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6423" PostId="2315" Score="1" Text="+1. Personally, I am fine with the code block scroll bar. It is common here in CV high quality answers providing the code (to reproduce pictures) at the answer's end. Also, I do not think you are abusing the feature." CreationDate="2014-12-16T00:24:57.740" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="6428" PostId="2315" Score="2" Text="What in interesting idea. I do wish we could just hide/show code." CreationDate="2014-12-16T22:41:17.063" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6424" PostId="2316" Score="4" Text="+1. If I am not mistaken the 10 edit conversion to cw feature does not exist anymore. When I have the chance I will try to look for the source of this information." CreationDate="2014-12-16T19:34:34.263" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="6425" PostId="2316" Score="0" Text="Thanks for letting me know, @AndreSilva." CreationDate="2014-12-16T19:36:28.463" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6426" PostId="2316" Score="2" Text="Found it: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/227290/stop-using-community-wiki-as-a-reputation-denial-mechanism/228940#228940" CreationDate="2014-12-16T20:00:35.750" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="6427" PostId="2317" Score="4" Text="I believe we should be more opened to practical questions on machine learning and data mining. If 'how do I do a neural network in matlab' requires knowledge that is not only programming, than it is ok." CreationDate="2014-12-16T20:09:47.177" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="6444" PostId="2317" Score="1" Text="@AndreSilva in my experience, we _are_ open to those questions, but as amoeba mentioned in the comments to Gala's answer we might lack expertise in that area." CreationDate="2014-12-20T06:31:01.410" UserId="36229" />
  <row Id="6445" PostId="2317" Score="3" Text="&quot;I don't know why people felt motivated to start a new SE rather than contribute here and at other existing SE sites.&quot; -- what kind of opportunities are there for us to &quot;recruit&quot; DS users to CV? Is there some kind of framework for this, especially if DS does in fact fail?" CreationDate="2014-12-20T06:32:20.370" UserId="36229" />
  <row Id="6446" PostId="2317" Score="1" Text="@ssdecontrol, if someone has an account over there, or wants to start one, they could raise the issue (eg, on meta.DS) of what to do if the site gets closed. They could suggest that people contribute to existing sites like CV, SO, &amp; TCS. You'd have to be very diplomatic, though." CreationDate="2014-12-20T15:04:12.507" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9554" PostId="2317" Score="1" Text="@gung, as a (new) user of both DS and Stats, my reading suggests the reason for DS creation was the closing as off topic of a number of questions which had elements of both stats AND server architecture. So either Stats SE broaden its remit to include valid questions within DS or accept that DS.SE should exist ... its a hard one ... and emotive too!" CreationDate="2016-03-22T10:13:48.333" UserId="105606" />
  <row Id="6429" PostId="2319" Score="1" Text="In this case the linked duplicate was cross-posted on SO - the cross-posting is linked from CV in the comments, and someone seeking this information can find a good answer on SO. So &quot;it does not provide any help to those who asked&quot; isn't quite true, though it's a somewhat roundabout route!" CreationDate="2014-12-17T13:22:12.720" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6430" PostId="2319" Score="1" Text="But there is also a general issue here: marking as a duplicate of a question with low-quality answers. It happens." CreationDate="2014-12-17T13:25:23.780" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="6431" PostId="2319" Score="0" Text="My remark was on this specific case rather than on the general issue - hence a &quot;comment&quot; not an &quot;answer&quot;. This is certainly a topic worthy of discussion, though the particular example in the title/body of this Q introduces some side-issues e.g. cross-posting." CreationDate="2014-12-17T13:31:56.433" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6436" PostId="2319" Score="2" Text="Tim, yes it is problematic to refer someone to a duplicate question whose answers are of low quality. (I hate to do this.) But the problem is not with the duplication: it lies with the poor answers! The solution is to *improve the answers.* I confess that in such cases, since I usually have neither the time nor the ability to improve the answers personally, I look for some way (however small) in which the two questions differ. I write a comment pointing that out and emphasizing that difference--and leave the new question open." CreationDate="2014-12-17T16:25:11.873" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6432" PostId="2322" Score="2" Text="Just for disambiguation, non moderator users can't flag questions as duplicates of unanswered questions ([source](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/165933/changes-to-close-as-duplicate)). This [post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/165928/we-should-be-able-to-close-questions-as-duplicates-of-any-question) is another source supporting your arguments." CreationDate="2014-12-17T16:05:38.070" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="6433" PostId="2322" Score="0" Text="It is not only the *text*: if I am not mistaken, the system does not allow to mark a question a duplicate of another question, if that second question does not have any upvoted answers (NB: it does not work even if there is an answer, but it is not upvoted)." CreationDate="2014-12-17T16:06:18.553" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6434" PostId="2322" Score="1" Text="Thank you, @Andre.  Also related is the SE team's explanation at http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/166707 (which IMHO misses the point, as explained by a highly-upvoted answer there)." CreationDate="2014-12-17T16:22:00.760" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6435" PostId="2322" Score="0" Text="With closing unanswered there is one problem: a *recent* question is closed and linked as duplicate to *old* question. So you can say it is linked to something that is already somewhere &quot;deep&quot; and forgotten. Closed question disappears with no answer. (I don't know if it was clear what I wanted to point out?)" CreationDate="2014-12-17T16:25:06.840" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="6437" PostId="2322" Score="0" Text="Old questions are not forgotten, Tim, nor are they buried deeply. They are available through searches--and, in fact, the original poster of the new question should already have found the old question (everybody searches the site before asking a question, right?). Any action that modifies that thread will put it right at the top of the queue of active questions. Several badges (Revival and Necromancer) exist to encourage people to answer old questions. In effect, *activating an old question* can be a better way of getting answers than re-asking it!" CreationDate="2014-12-17T16:30:17.307" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6438" PostId="2322" Score="1" Text="@whuber Well, yes an no. If there is a question that hangs on the front page, I argue that there is a greater chance that someone will answer it, then if you have deliberately to search for the question to answer. Also consider that if someone asked the question long before then he may be not interested in the answer any more, so as answerer you could ask yourself if there is a point in answering this kind of question." CreationDate="2014-12-18T11:08:56.093" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="6439" PostId="2322" Score="0" Text="Yes, there is a point to answering *any* question: that's what this site is all about! We would become a much worse place for everybody if we kept duplicating old questions on the (speculative) basis that the old proposer might no longer be interested in the answers." CreationDate="2014-12-18T16:57:08.843" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6440" PostId="2322" Score="1" Text="I agree that there is a point. I am rather taking about how this could end up *in practice*. I argue that the longer the question is unanswered, the lower is the probability that it will be answered soon (we could even do a survival analysis of unanswered questions ;) )." CreationDate="2014-12-19T09:21:30.870" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="6442" PostId="2322" Score="2" Text="Are you aware, Tim, of the &quot;Community bot&quot; that promotes upvoted questions without accepted answers to the top of the queue every 30 days?" CreationDate="2014-12-19T16:35:44.837" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6449" PostId="2322" Score="0" Text="@whuber, I almost never see community-promoted questions answered because of such promotion. It seems to me that people tend to actively ignore them (at least personally, I usually do). I wonder if the available data allows to look into that (e.g. what % of community-promoted questions get answered in the 24 hours after being promoted)." CreationDate="2014-12-21T22:43:29.483" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6451" PostId="2322" Score="1" Text="@amoeba I beg to differ: I see many such questions upvoted, commented on, and answered. (I personally have answered quite a few older questions that came to my attention this way. I have also closed quite a few of them, too!) You might shift your point of view a little and view the Community questions as easy opportunities for a &quot;Revival&quot; or &quot;Necromancer&quot; badge :-). (BTW,  I don't think we have access to records of when a community promotion occurred: those events would have to be inferred from a database query that attempts to reproduce the promotion algorithm itself.)" CreationDate="2014-12-21T23:23:19.587" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6483" PostId="2322" Score="0" Text="I try to look at Community questions whenever I can, and some of them do carry answers worthy of an upvote (cc/ @amoeba)." CreationDate="2015-01-05T23:20:24.310" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="6441" PostId="2323" Score="7" Text="Apart from identity issues, there *is* a lot less expertise in machine learning here on CV than on classical statistics. Questions e.g. on t-tests and binomial confidence intervals get amazingly thorough answers here, but questions on deep belief or convolutional networks will usually get superficial answers at best. I have no idea if the situation is any better on Data Science (probably not), but I think I can understand why somebody from machine learning would rather try to open another site than join this one. If only to avoid dealing with hundreds of layman questions on hypothesis testing." CreationDate="2014-12-19T10:23:51.453" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6443" PostId="2323" Score="5" Text="@amoeba I don't disagree with your observations but I am not sure I see how they fit together. The same could probably be said for specific sub-fields of statistics and of course for less popular programming languages on SO, yet I don't think splitting is generally seen as a good solution in those cases. And of course there is not much expertise of any kind on a fledging site. So there is no reason why creating a new one would seem so attractive as a solution to these problems." CreationDate="2014-12-20T00:14:39.933" UserId="6029" />
  <row Id="6448" PostId="2324" Score="0" Text="Thanks! Frankly, I am not sure I understand the point of *non-merged* duplicates. The idea behind keeping (and even, as some say, cherishing) duplicates is that they can help leading future readers to the correct thread; in the perfect world, all duplicates would be closed immediately and would never have answers. In reality closing takes time and answers often appear, but I would argue that closing with merge should be the default option, as opposed to closing without merge... However, I see your point. I will maybe try to bring up some duplicate discussions on meta to see how it goes." CreationDate="2014-12-21T22:19:10.787" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6450" PostId="2324" Score="3" Text="After having performed many searches on this site, I have grown to appreciate the value of duplicates: it often is difficult to know which keywords to use (even when searching for an answer of one's own!).  Duplicate *questions* often state a problem in different ways and use different vocabularies.  The merging process *destroys* the questions and keeps just the answers, which would lose that latent semantic information." CreationDate="2014-12-21T23:19:45.703" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6452" PostId="2324" Score="0" Text="Wait, @whuber, in this case I must have misunderstood how the merging works! I was assuming it leaves the duplicate question intact, and its only effect is to move all the answers into the &quot;main&quot; thread. If what you are saying is true and the merging destroys the duplicate question, then can you explain e.g. what these questions are: http://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=[pca]+locked%3Ayes ? I found three &quot;locked&quot; questions with [pca] tag; all of them say that they were &quot;merged&quot; into other questions (with link provided). Isn't it how merging always works?" CreationDate="2014-12-21T23:28:18.790" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6453" PostId="2324" Score="2" Text="@amoeba You're correct: I had forgotten that the duplicate question was left behind. (The feedback given to mods when going through the merge process does not include a visit to the affected thread; it's just a lot of text messages documenting all the changes that were made.) That fact must make me reconsider the merging process. It still remains the case that merging cannot be undone by anyone in the community--and might even be pretty difficult for SE programmers to do, too--so we would still want to proceed with caution." CreationDate="2014-12-21T23:41:15.997" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6454" PostId="2324" Score="1" Text="I am glad that this misunderstanding was cleared! Still, maybe it is a good idea to bring up some specific merging suggestions here on meta. Actually, I listed two suggestions in the OP here, but have now reviewed them and see that the second one (about PCA imputation) was maybe not ideal: the answer to the duplicate is referring quite substantially to the specific details of the question. I edited my post to remove it. But my first suggestion (about PCA feature selection) still stands; it would be strange to re-post it as a new meta thread. Shall we maybe try to consider it here?" CreationDate="2014-12-21T23:59:02.387" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6459" PostId="2327" Score="2" Text="I meant to include my suggested answer as part of the question. More or less to say, here's the problem and here's my work so far." CreationDate="2014-12-30T16:46:49.757" UserId="24617" />
  <row Id="6461" PostId="2327" Score="5" Text="I would strongly advise towards @gung proposal to be posting your answers as an answer proper and not as part of the body of the question. Otherwise, and if your answer is fine, then the thread will only receive comments like &quot;It's ok&quot; or similar, creating artificially &quot;unanswered&quot; questions." CreationDate="2014-12-31T04:11:53.807" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="6467" PostId="2328" Score="2" Text="Hey, I recognize those numbers." CreationDate="2015-01-01T01:03:34.960" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6480" PostId="2328" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b Yeah I had used your account profile for example. I hope you dont have any pbm !! will you?" CreationDate="2015-01-05T10:03:54.187" UserId="62487" />
  <row Id="6481" PostId="2328" Score="1" Text="No problem as far as I'm concerned, since it's public information - I think anyone with an internet connection can see it already. It was just quite interesting to find the example to be strangely familiar. It took me a while to realize why." CreationDate="2015-01-05T12:41:05.307" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6457" PostId="2329" Score="1" Text="It seems we can also add : By clicking mylogins link in our account page.Step 1: Click 'my logins' link in your account page.&#xA;Step 2: add the other account logins.&#xA;Step 3: repeat both the step 1 &amp; 2 in both the accounts(In our case,repeat the step 1 and 2 in both stack overflow and cross validated account)" CreationDate="2014-12-30T07:25:56.107" UserId="62487" />
  <row Id="6462" PostId="2330" Score="4" Text="+1 One advantage of OP posting suggested answers as answers is they give scope for people to post &quot;looks okay&quot; as a comment without leaving the Q unanswered, or to post hints, or ultimately a better answer" CreationDate="2014-12-31T04:33:47.070" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6463" PostId="2330" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b and gung. Thank you for the suggestions. The issue has been on my mind for some time, so much appreciated. I think that posting an answer proper is probably the best way to do it. Now, the next step is for me to learn how to ask (and answer!) &quot;good&quot; self-study questions!" CreationDate="2014-12-31T05:02:58.730" UserId="24617" />
  <row Id="6464" PostId="2330" Score="4" Text="@GraemeWalsh There's a constant tension between providing good answers to interesting questions (pretty much the purpose of the site) and avoiding doing people's homework for them (what a lot of students seem to want the site to be, and what many educators really wish it wasn't)." CreationDate="2014-12-31T05:05:48.313" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6465" PostId="2330" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b Interesting comment bringing to light something I should consider. I suppose the aim would be to provide good answers to interesting graduate level econometrics questions and to encourage, perhaps, even better answers from the CV community. Hopefully I wouldn't be tipping the balance down the road of doing people's homework! With graduate level questions, maybe we'd be over that hump!? Following the outcome of this thread, I'll try one to see how it works and if it's useful for CV. If it's not, I'll happily bin the idea." CreationDate="2014-12-31T05:32:00.517" UserId="24617" />
  <row Id="6466" PostId="2330" Score="2" Text="My advice: start doing it the way you thought, and see how it goes. I don't think we're risking much of great consequence, but if there's a lot of objection, it's not going to be so hard to modify the approach." CreationDate="2014-12-31T05:33:57.050" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6488" PostId="2330" Score="0" Text="This might be particularly valuable for those books that don't have the end-of-chapter exercises worked out even for instructors, and where self-study is likely because they are texts you might read later in your career for your own research.  Gelman, et al.'s Bayesean Data Analysis comes to mind, with only some exercises having model answers. http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/book/" CreationDate="2015-01-08T23:53:22.560" UserId="3919" />
  <row Id="6468" PostId="2334" Score="0" Text="This is a demonstration post to indicate how this should look when an ad is posted. It also doubles as your twitter ad, but it's up to you if you wish to promote it by voting." CreationDate="2015-01-01T03:24:03.133" UserId="5645" />
  <row Id="7111" PostId="2334" Score="0" Text="so how do I use this in a tweet?" CreationDate="2015-07-28T13:11:54.673" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="6470" PostId="2336" Score="6" Text="What's the mechanism for deciding on &quot;best&quot;? In essence, Stack Exchange is not Wikipedia. There's no mechanism to create official or standard or canonical or best answers by design; the mechanism is just that anything aspiring to that status should receive many upvotes if it's really that good." CreationDate="2015-01-02T00:22:23.653" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6475" PostId="2336" Score="1" Text="possible duplicate of [Common Issues and FAQs](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2004/common-issues-and-faqs)" CreationDate="2015-01-03T15:39:51.343" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="6476" PostId="2336" Score="1" Text="I've voted this as a duplicate of a prior question, [Common Issues and FAQs](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/2004/1036). Prior discussion suggested creating a specific faq tag to accomplish this." CreationDate="2015-01-03T15:41:02.633" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="6477" PostId="2336" Score="3" Text="Good approximations to FAQs are possible by someone just writing a good question and then answering it really well. Others could contribute. Everyone, I suppose, approves of the idea, but in practice, this would be as much effort -- for topics such as stepwise selection, evils of, or normality testing, very limited benefit of -- as writing a paper for a journal. I guess that in practice those capable of doing this would rather write a paper for a journal. There aren't enough rewards in what is, for all of us, just one thing that we do on the side to justify the time and effort needed." CreationDate="2015-01-04T10:25:12.917" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6478" PostId="2336" Score="1" Text="@NickCox, I was thinking that it must be easy to formulate a good question title, then alternative titles inside the body of the question, then in the answer link to all relevant prior answers. I didn't mean to write an entirely new perfect answer, that would take a lot of time. If one has time, then he could write little annotation to prior answers. From there on, this &quot;best answer&quot; would be the place all other answers would tend to collect." CreationDate="2015-01-04T18:05:44.300" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="6479" PostId="2336" Score="2" Text="Your notion of an FAQ is proving rather elusive. Compiling a list of references to pertinent threads would indeed be easier than writing a definitive very high quality answer, but in my view it wouldn't deserve the tag FAQ." CreationDate="2015-01-05T09:26:49.730" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6484" PostId="2336" Score="2" Text="@Nick Cox In fact the appropriate place for creating &quot;lists of important pertinent threads&quot; would presumably be on the tag-wiki entries, which is something the site doesn't take much advantage of and I'm sure the vast majority of readers never visit." CreationDate="2015-01-05T23:33:22.163" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6485" PostId="2336" Score="0" Text="@Silverfish: Since a couple of weeks, I have been slowly reviewing all questions in one of the tags and am collecting a list of &quot;important pertinent threads&quot; along the way. With the current pace, it will probably take me a couple of months (I am trying to restrain myself in order not to get carried away spending all my time doing that). Once I am done, I will post the list on the meta and we can discuss what's the best place for it and if such an endeavor makes sense at all." CreationDate="2015-01-06T12:05:50.263" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6486" PostId="2336" Score="1" Text="@amoeba For comparison, look at e.g. the SO tag-wikis for [C++](http://stackoverflow.com/tags/c%2b%2b/info) which includes a list of top SO questions." CreationDate="2015-01-06T12:09:01.573" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6487" PostId="2336" Score="0" Text="Thanks, @Silverfish. I see that the [c++-faq] has 130+ questions on SO, whereas the wiki lists only 9. So I guess these are like the super-faq. I guess the main question here is how broad the criterion for &quot;important pertinent threads&quot; should be. I guess though that it only makes sense to discuss with the specific examples, and that's why I think my list (once finished) is going to be a good starting point for such a discussion." CreationDate="2015-01-06T12:32:00.327" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6471" PostId="2337" Score="8" Text="&quot;Can this error be corrected before more damage is done? How do we reverse course?&quot; We can't. This is within SE rules. However, the site seems to not get off the ground, so it might fail soon. One way or other, it would be very sad if you'd stop participating. I think we need you and the Data Science people to participate here." CreationDate="2015-01-02T23:26:29.670" UserId="8413" />
  <row Id="6473" PostId="2337" Score="1" Text="Thanks for your comment.  I will continue to participate in stats.stackexchange but for &quot;Data Science&quot; it may be best to post comments referring statistics-related questions to this site." CreationDate="2015-01-03T15:33:51.003" UserId="4253" />
  <row Id="6474" PostId="2337" Score="4" Text="This is a bit hyperbole IMO. By looking at the front page, we have gotten around 40 questions in the prior 24 hours. Data Science is averaging [slightly over 2 per day](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/55053?phase=beta). (I agree what they discuss there is in large parts on topic here - I'm just disagreeing with the assertion that it will have a noticeable impact on the site here.) I slightly question the presumption that the neighboring sites are a zero sum game though in terms of Q's and A's." CreationDate="2015-01-03T15:35:32.743" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="6490" PostId="2337" Score="0" Text="@AndyW I tried (ineloquently) to discuss those ideas in my answer" CreationDate="2015-01-12T05:58:53.867" UserId="36229" />
  <row Id="6482" PostId="2339" Score="3" Text="*&quot;To edit the question's title (when it is confusing or disruptive) to reflect more accurately what the post is about&quot;* -- this is something that should **always** be done anyway!" CreationDate="2015-01-05T16:23:12.470" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6498" PostId="2345" Score="1" Text="@whuber, great edit. One question is about #8. Do you mean not adding words in the title like &quot;please&quot;, &quot;I need...&quot;, &quot;I am desperate to..&quot;, etc?" CreationDate="2015-01-16T12:02:11.920" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="6499" PostId="2345" Score="3" Text="Yes--although that suggestion applies to the entire post as well." CreationDate="2015-01-16T15:05:47.063" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6492" PostId="2346" Score="0" Text="Sadly,proposal of ML and AI site always fail at Area51." CreationDate="2015-01-14T02:37:29.783" UserId="30310" />
  <row Id="6493" PostId="2346" Score="0" Text="I think CV is most appropriate for such questions." CreationDate="2015-01-14T07:18:07.763" UserId="25433" />
  <row Id="6518" PostId="2346" Score="0" Text="@WeiChing why did the ML site fail? is it because this one encompasses ML?" CreationDate="2015-01-20T20:54:40.983" UserId="28986" />
  <row Id="6520" PostId="2346" Score="0" Text="because data-science site and CV site ." CreationDate="2015-01-21T03:27:59.770" UserId="30310" />
  <row Id="6504" PostId="2347" Score="0" Text="Also if your question is mainly about implementation, Computational Science SE might be appropriate as well." CreationDate="2015-01-17T19:28:07.807" UserId="36444" />
  <row Id="6494" PostId="2351" Score="2" Text="Did you take a look at [Computational Science beta](http://scicomp.stackexchange.com) or [Computer Science beta](http://cs.stackexchange.com)? However, I should note that the question you refer to was closed because it was also too broad." CreationDate="2015-01-15T14:42:51.333" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="6497" PostId="2352" Score="2" Text="Computational science seems a good place to go. Thanks to @chl as well." CreationDate="2015-01-15T16:27:06.850" UserId="20551" />
  <row Id="6500" PostId="2352" Score="1" Text="I'd say Mathematics could handle way more sophisticated questions than lagrange multipliers. Any optimization topic that could conceivably be taught at the first year PhD student level is probably more on topic in Mathematics than Math Overflow." CreationDate="2015-01-17T03:37:04.033" UserId="36444" />
  <row Id="6501" PostId="2352" Score="1" Text="@MHH Lagrange multipliers were mentioned only as an example, because I would expect far fewer readers of this meta site to be acquainted with quasiconvexity, MILPs, etc. &quot;Elementary&quot; is in the eye of the beholder, but I'm not qualified to give clearer guidance: as to where Mathematics ends and MathOverflow begins, I will have to leave that to those two communities. My sense is there's some overlap." CreationDate="2015-01-17T15:21:08.360" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="10485" PostId="2352" Score="0" Text="See also http://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/optimization" CreationDate="2016-08-18T15:41:22.770" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="6502" PostId="2358" Score="4" Text="This has been happening to me too. I can only reject if I enter a custom comment. What browser are you using? (I use Firefox.)" CreationDate="2015-01-17T17:07:25.013" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6503" PostId="2358" Score="1" Text="@gung oh yea sorry, I should have said that. I'm also using Firefox." CreationDate="2015-01-17T17:09:21.687" UserId="26338" />
  <row Id="6532" PostId="2358" Score="1" Text="I have run into the same problem repeatedly (Firefox also), so mods are not immune." CreationDate="2015-01-22T19:53:44.953" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6752" PostId="2358" Score="0" Text="This problem still persists (Firefox). Almost always I have to add a comment when rejecting edits." CreationDate="2015-03-27T09:00:00.047" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="6505" PostId="2360" Score="0" Text="I realised the question was a bit multifaceted, but thought I could house all the facets under the term 'appropriate'. You are correct that the bounty in question is that one. I wasn't sure if linking it would be regarded as appropriate, but would appreciate feedback (from you, or anyone) on how it could be reworded so as to make a response more likely." CreationDate="2015-01-18T14:29:13.733" UserId="9162" />
  <row Id="6507" PostId="2360" Score="2" Text="Just to add: [We now double the minimum &quot;spend&quot; for successive bounties on the same question by the same user. So if you started at 50: your next bounty on that question has a minimum of 100, the next 200, the next 400, the next (max).](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/105275/abusing-bounties-for-unlimited-profit/105639#105639)" CreationDate="2015-01-18T21:14:10.323" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6508" PostId="2360" Score="4" Text="+1. _&quot;A pessimist would ask what grounds you have for thinking that the second bounty would fare any better.&quot;_ (answer: a bigger prize!)." CreationDate="2015-01-19T11:33:47.347" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="6506" PostId="2361" Score="0" Text="A lot of people who come here need a solid overview of the basics. The Khan Academy videos are online (i.e., convenient), free, &amp; high-quality." CreationDate="2015-01-18T17:51:19.567" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6509" PostId="2361" Score="2" Text="Khan academy stats&amp;prob is often poor, so please help vote this down!" CreationDate="2015-01-19T11:48:08.317" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="6513" PostId="2361" Score="0" Text="@kjetilbhalvorsen, I've only ever seen a couple of them, but they were very basic &amp; the kind of info that's standard in stats 101. Are there problems with them? I can delete this, if KA videos would likely lead people astray." CreationDate="2015-01-19T16:15:18.177" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6514" PostId="2361" Score="0" Text="They are very traditional, and a little to much of &quot;this is how to plug into that formula&quot;, not about conceptual understanding." CreationDate="2015-01-19T17:19:33.447" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="6515" PostId="2361" Score="3" Text="@kjetilbhalvorsen, that seems reasonable, based on what I've seen. But that is what most stats 101 classes are like as far as I can tell (not mine, though ;-). I think that may be a decent, &amp; necessary, place for many people to start, especially some of the people who come to CV &amp; are not even anywhere near square 1." CreationDate="2015-01-19T18:31:25.350" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6521" PostId="2371" Score="0" Text="Thanks a lot, Glen, for such a thorough answer! The opening paragraph in my question is of course to be removed later; I inserted it, as well as created this meta thread, in order to to draw some attention to this topic and perhaps to motivate some much more knowledgeable people than me to post such Q&amp;A threads as well... I fully agree with you that it could be very interesting if people did it more often." CreationDate="2015-01-21T10:03:45.573" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6522" PostId="2371" Score="0" Text="Perhaps you are right and the word &quot;FAQ&quot; should better be removed from the title. But I am not sure... Would be curious to hear what other people think. In this particular case my question and answer are very very basic and standard, and don't contain any sophisticated or non-trivial material." CreationDate="2015-01-21T10:05:21.790" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6523" PostId="2371" Score="0" Text="Also, thanks for the link to your interpolation question. I have seen it before (and upvoted back then) but forgot that it was a Q&amp;A question as well. By the way, it would be interesting to use the data site to search the CV for all questions posted simultaneously with the answers. My knowledge of SQL commands is a bit rusty, so if somebody else could easily provide a corresponding request I would be most grateful." CreationDate="2015-01-21T10:06:53.163" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6524" PostId="2371" Score="3" Text="I think this answer summarises the situation excellently and that you, @amoeba, have done a very good job. I'd just advise strongly against the flag &quot;FAQ&quot;. If it's noticed, then people might start using it capriciously or for not so good reasons, which we don't want; or then we have to start identifying criteria for when it fits, which (I suggest) we don't want; it's too hard! If it's not noticed, it serves no purpose. In short, wanting to do this and doing it are both **excellent**, but it's a matter of filling a gap, and whether we do that on purpose or not is a matter of personal motive." CreationDate="2015-01-21T11:00:43.923" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6525" PostId="2371" Score="0" Text="Thanks, @Nick. You convinced me about avoiding &quot;FAQ&quot; in the title; I edited the question to remove it." CreationDate="2015-01-21T16:29:37.410" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6526" PostId="2371" Score="1" Text="Follow-up to my comment #3. Here is a query I wrote to find all (currently 17) questions posted simultaneously with the answers: http://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/266804." CreationDate="2015-01-21T16:34:59.823" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6531" PostId="2371" Score="0" Text="@amoeba interesting. Some good ones there. There may be some where the question and answer are not posted on the same day. There are over 1600 self-answered questions though, so I don't plan to go through them all to pull out the others that seem to have been designed to be answered by the OP (though I have found some answered later where I believe the OP likely had their answer in mind when posting)." CreationDate="2015-01-21T22:30:57.330" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6557" PostId="2374" Score="0" Text="Agree with Andre Silva." CreationDate="2015-02-04T14:50:48.930" UserId="36540" />
  <row Id="6527" PostId="2375" Score="0" Text="Thanks for the clarification. There is statistical content. To take the particular example, I am trying to use EM to estimate the parameters for a particular model. So, it is a combination of statistics (for example, certain operations with expectations) and also of course some calculus steps which i do not do with full conviction yet." CreationDate="2015-01-21T17:30:53.033" UserId="36540" />
  <row Id="6528" PostId="2375" Score="2" Text="@Luca, that certainly seems within the scope of CV to me." CreationDate="2015-01-21T17:32:19.497" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6529" PostId="2375" Score="1" Text="I guess there is a third caveat, when the question is not a question and what is posted is correct; in such cases, a valid answer could be &quot;yes, the calculations/analyses/etc are correct&quot;." CreationDate="2015-01-21T20:01:31.367" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="6530" PostId="2375" Score="2" Text="@AndreSilva, that would be ironic, but the OP wouldn't know in advance that everything is correct. I think that is an acceptable risk, &amp; the Q should be considered on-topic even if it might be right. That's just my opinion." CreationDate="2015-01-21T21:11:55.823" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6533" PostId="2375" Score="0" Text="May be a special tag should be set up for the questions of this kind, like [proofs-derivations]. Or at least the existing [proof]." CreationDate="2015-01-26T04:40:07.940" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="6535" PostId="2378" Score="3" Text="+1 Good points. I would add, though, that a question posed as a pure optimization problem--with no reference to its application in stats, machine learning, or anything else considered on-topic here--should usually be considered *off* topic. This is as much out of compassion for the OPs as it is for our community, because such questions rarely get any answer or comments at all here: they need to find a better home." CreationDate="2015-01-27T22:46:47.180" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6536" PostId="2383" Score="5" Text="I was not talking about an assignment." CreationDate="2015-01-29T17:44:52.317" UserId="36540" />
  <row Id="6537" PostId="2383" Score="3" Text="It's a reasonable point in the event that others end up on this question. A lot of people ask for homework help and it is probably a gray area that can lead to a lot of problems if it happens to be discovered." CreationDate="2015-01-29T17:46:19.673" UserId="62528" />
  <row Id="6538" PostId="2383" Score="4" Text="Although in a strong sense this kind of reservation applies to everything in this forum, this seems to me a fair point and not deserving of the downvote it received. I upvoted it." CreationDate="2015-01-29T20:31:56.967" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6539" PostId="2388" Score="3" Text="I reached Cross Validated from Stack Overflow. And I reached SO from a colleague tip." CreationDate="2015-02-01T18:15:08.800" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="6541" PostId="2388" Score="2" Text="I first got to Cross Validated because Rob Hyndman mentioned it somewhere (likely on his blog); it's possible I saw it pointed to by another blog, or on one of the stats groups on reddit (but I'm pretty sure it was a direct message by Rob that I saw so if it was reddit he may have posted there) - this is while it was still in beta. (I was already on SO.) I came and checked out the beta, and made an account at some point or other. Then after a little activity I pretty much forgot about it for a while (nearly 18 months I think). Then I realized I hadn't looked in a long time and came back." CreationDate="2015-02-02T23:58:24.560" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6553" PostId="2388" Score="1" Text="@Silverfish's answer was quite interesting.  Would still like to hear from anyone with access to site statistics." CreationDate="2015-02-04T13:07:10.833" UserId="2669" />
  <row Id="6558" PostId="2388" Score="1" Text="Google sent me here" CreationDate="2015-02-04T15:10:09.997" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="6542" PostId="2389" Score="3" Text="&quot;*I think it's safe to presume very few readers are registered SE users.*&quot; - I think that's a very safe bet. The [&quot;people helped&quot; prototype query](http://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/253267/people-helped-public-prototype-1) that's planned to be used (likely in some modified form) on the new user pages (whenever they happen) - a measure which is based on views - put me at well over a million &quot;people helped&quot; (and several users have much larger figures than that). There's no way SE registered users generate those sort of stats. Many more people than are currently users are seeing what we do" CreationDate="2015-02-03T00:07:02.417" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6543" PostId="2389" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b I think it's worth distinguishing between &quot;registered users&quot; and more general &quot;users&quot; (i.e. people who use the site, but &quot;lurk&quot; rather than contribute, and are not registered) against a wider pool search-engine arrivals or people who arrive by link, but probably see a smaller fraction of our content. While it's true that &quot;Many more people than are currently users are seeing what we do&quot;, my impression is that's concentrated on a very small fraction of questions." CreationDate="2015-02-03T00:13:33.017" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6544" PostId="2389" Score="0" Text="Yeah, I'd say that's right." CreationDate="2015-02-03T00:16:11.633" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6545" PostId="2389" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b Just to clarify (though I think you got the impression from my post), I don't simply mean that some questions have more page-views than others - clearly they do - but that the audience composition varies substantially from question to question. Questions which don't rate highly in SEO and are not link targets presumably have almost entirely internal traffic." CreationDate="2015-02-03T00:16:50.073" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6546" PostId="2389" Score="4" Text="It's interesting that in spite of &gt;10000 views on that question, no answer has more than 6 upvotes, and the question only has 10. That does suggest almost all those views are non-active users. At least a few of those viewers will look around and become interested in the site." CreationDate="2015-02-03T00:40:57.767" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6540" PostId="2390" Score="2" Text="Some of the default &quot;messages&quot; (and available closure reasons) have changed several times in my recollection." CreationDate="2015-02-02T23:52:49.270" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6547" PostId="2390" Score="0" Text="No idea. Nice bit of research, though." CreationDate="2015-02-03T02:29:53.830" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6548" PostId="2390" Score="1" Text="Note that the change is somewhere near the 19th page if you are viewing 50 threads per page. At any rate, we can narrow the change point to somewhere between [Feb 2, 2013](http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/49026/7290) &amp; [Feb 6, 2013](http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/49421/7290)." CreationDate="2015-02-03T05:04:46.730" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6549" PostId="2390" Score="0" Text="What I don't understand, @gung, is how it even *can* be different. Questions are stored in the database, as well as the information about which questions are duplicate of which ones. Then there is (presumably) a script that queries the database and renders the question's HTML page. Why would this script work differently for questions closed before and after February ~4th, 2013?" CreationDate="2015-02-03T12:53:58.140" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6550" PostId="2390" Score="0" Text="I don't know too much about HTML, but I wouldn't have thought that everything was stored in a database &amp; pages were recreated every time someone navigated to one. That strikes me as too cumbersome. I'm aware that there is a database &amp; some info is read from it (rep, eg), but I always thought much of the page was preexisting." CreationDate="2015-02-03T14:32:42.737" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6551" PostId="2390" Score="0" Text="@gung, you are right: generating all the pages on the fly would (usually) take too much resources, so big websites never do that; instead pages are &quot;cached&quot;, i.e. are generated from the database once in a while and remain stored for some time to be delivered upon the request. However, I would be surprised if they are never regenerated. Actually, there is a way to test it: we can edit one of the &quot;old&quot; duplicates, and see if it changes format; presumably an edit would trigger updating of the cached copy." CreationDate="2015-02-03T14:38:25.700" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6552" PostId="2390" Score="0" Text="@gung, I tried doing it, and results surprised me. See the update." CreationDate="2015-02-03T15:43:42.327" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6556" PostId="2392" Score="0" Text="Absolutely right! I will also ask the mods to merge my question with that one. Apologies for not finding it myself." CreationDate="2015-02-04T14:50:31.110" UserId="36540" />
  <row Id="6559" PostId="2393" Score="3" Text="Thank you very much.  I wonder why and by whom you are enjoined from being more specific on some points.  I'm also curious as to why you don't count google.com as a search engine (did you really mean that?)." CreationDate="2015-02-05T00:16:46.097" UserId="2669" />
  <row Id="6570" PostId="2393" Score="0" Text="@rolando2 The database separately reports on search engines--of which Google is by far the major contributor--but also lists &quot;google.com&quot; as a &quot;referring site&quot; (albeit with a tiny fraction of the referrals). I couldn't tell you what distinguishes the two kinds of referrals. I am enjoined by the SE team from sharing the &quot;specifics&quot; of the statistics to which I, as a moderator, have easy access.  (But many of these are available, with a little time lag, to anyone willing to write a little SQL transaction against the SE database.)" CreationDate="2015-02-09T20:03:06.460" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6571" PostId="2393" Score="1" Text="Looking over the last 60 weeks, [comments per week](http://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/161411/site-activity-and-votegraph) typically run at something around 3-4 times the rate of questions per week (sometimes up to 5x), while they are typically at around 3.5-5 times the rate of answers per week." CreationDate="2015-02-09T22:25:24.787" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6560" PostId="2394" Score="0" Text="This post appears to have tailed off mid-sentence! (I've seen this happen to a couple of people before, and I wonder what causes it.)" CreationDate="2015-02-05T01:59:29.667" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6561" PostId="2394" Score="2" Text="The generic advice at http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic on software-related questions seems to apply here. Else in what sense is that advice problematic or irrelevant?" CreationDate="2015-02-05T12:31:12.327" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6562" PostId="2394" Score="0" Text="It is the half-and-half world between programming (details of the language) and the fundamental idea behind the language - aka the Machine Learning part.  The answer that I referenced seems to say a loud yes.  The on-topic generic advice seems to say &quot;get the heck out&quot;.  I'm not sure which to listen to and if you want one then we as a community don't get the other." CreationDate="2015-02-05T14:10:20.793" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="6563" PostId="2394" Score="3" Text="Think there's a difference, though, between the examples from the answer you referenced - e.g. &quot;Why does the kernelized support vector machine algorithm care that the kernel function be positive semi-definite? What happens if it isn't?&quot; - &amp; the examples you propose - e.g. &quot;here is the code to upload a text file to h2o from your interface&quot;. The former don't sound at all like the &quot;routine data processing&quot; or &quot;details of the language&quot; referred to in the guide to what's on topic; the latter do." CreationDate="2015-02-05T16:19:03.307" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="6564" PostId="2395" Score="1" Text="where can I find out more about CV blog posts?  Right now deep-learning is exploding and 'h2o' is decent package for it.  In my looking, I have not found any &quot;in the wild&quot; tutorials.  I think that if such things were associated with stackexchange they could substantially improve its value to the community." CreationDate="2015-02-05T16:29:35.550" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="6565" PostId="2395" Score="1" Text="@EngrStudent The CV blog is here: http://stats.blogoverflow.com. If you want to contribute, you can join our Ten Fold chat room and we will create an account for you." CreationDate="2015-02-05T17:14:56.083" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="6566" PostId="2395" Score="3" Text="As someone active on SO too, I want to underline that many code questions are not appropriate on SO either. SO bills itself as for professional and enthusiast programmers and focuses on specific code-based questions. It doesn't really aim at serving  people whose coding problem is &quot;I need code and don't have any&quot;, although capriciously sometimes such questions get answered. All forums I know about have a tacit or explicit policy that you should Read The Fine Manual first, for all that increasing numbers think asking on the internet is the way to avoid reading documentation." CreationDate="2015-02-05T17:51:03.740" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6567" PostId="2395" Score="0" Text="Also note there's a Google Group dedicated to h2o." CreationDate="2015-02-06T11:35:04.523" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="6568" PostId="2395" Score="0" Text="@NickCox - Sometimes the manuals are more easily used than others.  I see this as potentially making a more easily used manual in a forums where people are looking for it." CreationDate="2015-02-06T16:52:25.447" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="6569" PostId="2395" Score="1" Text="Twofold reaction: First, I am sympathetic. Outside this forum, a large fraction of what I do is expository and consists of going beyond the documentation for my favourite software (which is excellent!). Second, and more crucially, weak documentation is a problem for anybody who uses software -- in essence, anyone here -- but it's not obviously a problem for this forum. If people want better explanations of statistical operations, their questions will often (usually?) fit in here. If people want better explanation of the why or how of some software, then more often (more usually) not." CreationDate="2015-02-06T16:58:16.223" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6572" PostId="2399" Score="3" Text="http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/128703/can-i-print-a-single-answer" CreationDate="2015-02-11T14:22:12.883" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="6573" PostId="2399" Score="3" Text="There is also a previous question on our site, [How to print a Cross Validated question or answer?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/2180/1036). Not sure of an easy way to just print the answers though." CreationDate="2015-02-11T14:39:24.860" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="6574" PostId="2399" Score="2" Text="@AndyW I think I'll go with your solution, but it would be nice to have an option, like the 'edit', 'share', and so on, that are directly under the question or answer." CreationDate="2015-02-11T15:12:13.983" UserId="40252" />
  <row Id="6575" PostId="2399" Score="1" Text="+1 that's a really nice idea. It would make our site even more valuable to those who seek knowledge of statistics." CreationDate="2015-02-11T22:34:25.710" UserId="26338" />
  <row Id="6576" PostId="2400" Score="5" Text="Did you search on our Help Center? http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/formatting" CreationDate="2015-02-13T08:09:39.913" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="6581" PostId="2400" Score="0" Text="Also related: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1384." CreationDate="2015-02-13T18:10:16.947" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6577" PostId="2401" Score="2" Text="I suspect this is an illusory correlation. (We'll need the data to know.) However, bear in mind that the data would be endogenous. That is, there may be nothing about having more tags that leads to lower views. For example, someone who doesn't really know what they are asking or how to ask it may add a lot of tags &amp; also ask an unfocused &amp; uninteresting question, such that the tags &amp; the views are independent effects of the same cause. FWIW, I don't think it's abuse to use the system as best you can to get deserved attention to your questions." CreationDate="2015-02-13T15:11:45.390" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6578" PostId="2401" Score="0" Text="Thanks! The correlation might indeed be illusory. I just wanted to see if there is some simple mechanism associating tags and views so as to avoid any negative consequences." CreationDate="2015-02-13T15:36:14.647" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="6608" PostId="2401" Score="0" Text="Generally speaking more tags will (very slightly) tend to increase views, since people searching for those tags will be more likely to find the post. On the other hand if more tags were associated with a less focused or unclear question that might lead to less attention." CreationDate="2015-02-16T00:54:35.497" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12643" PostId="2401" Score="0" Text="I remember some years ago, having the same impression for my questions in StackOverflow SE. But if it was more than an impression, can't say." CreationDate="2017-03-01T13:44:07.470" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="6579" PostId="2402" Score="0" Text="It seems to be more interesting/adequate with 100 top tags instead of 64. Also, note that the exact geometry of the network is different on each reload (topology is always the same of course, but the 2D embedding seems to be stochastically optimized)." CreationDate="2015-02-13T15:41:13.817" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6586" PostId="2402" Score="2" Text="Author here. I wanted to post it but you were quicker :). It is a follow-up of [Tag Map for CV](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1467/tag-map-for-crossvalidated). Some of description is there: https://github.com/stared/tagoverflow#tagoverflow." CreationDate="2015-02-13T21:38:24.490" UserId="6552" />
  <row Id="10306" PostId="2402" Score="0" Text="@PiotrMigdal is the warning regarding being blocked real though?" CreationDate="2016-08-03T13:30:49.310" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="10321" PostId="2402" Score="0" Text="@Firebug Bad news: yes. Just try doing it a few times in a row and you will get blocked. Good news: but just for a few minutes." CreationDate="2016-08-05T11:24:50.657" UserId="6552" />
  <row Id="6582" PostId="2403" Score="0" Text="Boy, my answer sure is informative now..." CreationDate="2015-02-13T18:15:43.953" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6583" PostId="2403" Score="1" Text="I've often wondered what was causing that indentation issue!! If bounties were available on Meta, I'd give a +50 for that." CreationDate="2015-02-13T19:05:26.187" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6588" PostId="2403" Score="0" Text="@Silverfish, FTR I have considerably more rep than I need. At any rate, that part of 'my' answer was written by whuber, who is also the person who figured this out originally (see [here](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/1384/7290))." CreationDate="2015-02-13T23:04:53.690" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6589" PostId="2403" Score="0" Text="Well, many thanks to @whuber then. I've quite often spent time re-re-rewritting my R code until finally, magically, the indentation returned to normal. Now I understand what's going on, a considerable frustration will be eased!" CreationDate="2015-02-13T23:11:31.267" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6609" PostId="2403" Score="0" Text="Thanx @gung it realy work.How can I do the same in comments? as I asked in the second part of my question." CreationDate="2015-02-16T04:54:22.670" UserId="68801" />
  <row Id="6610" PostId="2403" Score="0" Text="@sumairasarwar, you use the backticks as I discussed; you cannot have code blocks in comments." CreationDate="2015-02-16T14:33:00.263" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6613" PostId="2403" Score="0" Text="ok thanx @gung." CreationDate="2015-02-17T07:29:07.503" UserId="68801" />
  <row Id="6615" PostId="2403" Score="0" Text="@sumairasarwar, you're welcome. If this has resolved your question, you may want to accept it by clicking the check mark to its left." CreationDate="2015-02-17T14:07:06.477" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6584" PostId="2404" Score="5" Text="One of the authors has participated on CV, [Piotr Migdal](http://stats.stackexchange.com/users/6552/piotr-migdal) and on a few other stackexchange sites. One of the projects I think would be neat would have questions as nodes, and then see what highly linked questions could potentially be FAQ's." CreationDate="2015-02-13T19:42:30.393" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="6594" PostId="2404" Score="0" Text="@AndyW Nice ideas. I don't have that much time, but if there is a need, we can make a statistical analysis of this site (I launched a collaborative pad: https://hackpad.com/metastatsis-4gfEVdu8z7g)." CreationDate="2015-02-14T14:14:14.650" UserId="6552" />
  <row Id="6595" PostId="2404" Score="2" Text="@gung area ~ counts (no log); queries from JSON API, not SQL (at least, not directly); see [description for more information](https://github.com/stared/tagoverflow#tagoverflow). Here community detection is mostly for visual purposes, I can get it more serious (with a bit different graph and method) - of course, the most resilient things will stay the same." CreationDate="2015-02-14T14:17:35.613" UserId="6552" />
  <row Id="6597" PostId="2404" Score="1" Text="@AndyW: As an aside, &quot;highly linked questions&quot; are directly available [via the &quot;frequent&quot; tab](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=frequent)." CreationDate="2015-02-14T14:55:39.600" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6599" PostId="2404" Score="1" Text="@PiotrMigdal, feel free to add your own answer as the authoritative post. You needn't refrain just because I already posted. I could even delete mine, if necessary." CreationDate="2015-02-14T15:41:25.783" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6602" PostId="2404" Score="0" Text="@gung Please don't delete it. I really like seeing how things are getting interpreted. In any case, I don't have much to add except for things I have already said/" CreationDate="2015-02-14T16:44:18.783" UserId="6552" />
  <row Id="6585" PostId="2406" Score="0" Text="Thanks for the answer. Now I understand the difference between comment and notice.Also I will flag answer if I see great answer with post notice." CreationDate="2015-02-13T19:45:34.300" UserId="13177" />
  <row Id="6587" PostId="2406" Score="0" Text="Do all such notices come manually from moderators? I was under the impression that there is an algorithm in the background that adds them automatically." CreationDate="2015-02-13T22:44:28.863" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6590" PostId="2406" Score="0" Text="@gung Sometimes the &quot;Community&quot; bot might add such notices; I cannot recall whether it does or not.  Pretty obviously it cannot add the &quot;rapidly changing event&quot; notice or the &quot;citation&quot; notice." CreationDate="2015-02-13T23:44:53.407" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6591" PostId="2406" Score="0" Text="Yeah, I was thinking of the &quot;insufficient explanation&quot; one. There may be (or may used to have been) other notices that seemed automatic as well." CreationDate="2015-02-14T01:09:40.700" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6592" PostId="2407" Score="1" Text="Trying to use your solution but it does not work... after hitting the button to save a page as pdf, I get nothing..." CreationDate="2015-02-14T10:22:31.563" UserId="40252" />
  <row Id="6593" PostId="2408" Score="3" Text="There is a typo in your title (or is it a pun/joke I am too dense to get....)" CreationDate="2015-02-14T13:06:31.137" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="6604" PostId="2408" Score="3" Text="Where an abbreviation is ambiguous (which is surprisingly often), it's pretty much an essential edit -- but it often makes sense to keep the abbreviation as well, or at least make sure it's present in the body text." CreationDate="2015-02-16T00:09:33.880" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6603" PostId="2409" Score="4" Text="Specifically in this case, &quot;ML &quot;is often used here to mean &quot;machine learning&quot;. So, to spell out the obvious, ambiguous abbreviations should certainly be expanded. One of my pet dislikes is &quot;IV&quot;, which despite commonly meaning independent variable often also means instrumental variable (particularly to economists)." CreationDate="2015-02-15T00:53:38.927" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6605" PostId="2409" Score="1" Text="Besides *Principal Component(s) Analysis*, I've seen PCA crop up in a statistical context used for each of the following: Partial Correlation Analysis, Percentage of Calls Answered, Prostate Cancer Antigen, Patient Controlled Analgesic, Prescribed Concentration of Alcohol (and likely others I don't recall at the moment). On the other hand, I think I've only seen &quot;ANOVA&quot; used to mean one thing, so ANOVA is pretty safe. Three letter acronyms (like PCA or GLM) may often be ambiguous, especially for some areas (a reader from the medical field for example, or from computing, may misconstrue PCA)." CreationDate="2015-02-16T00:32:34.770" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6606" PostId="2409" Score="1" Text="@Nick Indeed I just now came from expanding &quot;ML&quot; to &quot;machine learning&quot; in a title" CreationDate="2015-02-16T00:33:14.680" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6607" PostId="2409" Score="1" Text="GLM can mean general linear model or generalized linear model. Often the poster has in mind some syntax so named, but it's ambiguous without detail." CreationDate="2015-02-16T00:37:05.823" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6600" PostId="2410" Score="1" Text="+1, I don't think there is any disagreement between us here. My point was that *some* abbreviations are so common (PCA? ANOVA?) and *some* titles are so long, that they would be better of without explicit spelling out of these abbreviations." CreationDate="2015-02-14T16:09:00.197" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6601" PostId="2410" Score="1" Text="Yeah, I wouldn't spell out ANOVA either, @amoeba." CreationDate="2015-02-14T16:15:05.840" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6611" PostId="2411" Score="4" Text="You would have to try it to be certain, but I am personally clear that this would be wildly off-topic here. First, the statistical or machine learning content of this is minimal; at best it's about data acquisition (questions about getting datasets are off-topic here). Second, this is about software, and we have explicit advice that software-related questions are off-topic without a statistical core. Third, this  is based on rumour and anecdote so far as we are concerned. But the advice at http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic does imply all the key problems with this as a posting." CreationDate="2015-02-16T19:22:23.523" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6617" PostId="2411" Score="3" Text="Although I agree w/ @NickCox that the quoted question would be off-topic on CV, *this* question (asking whether the quoted Q would be on topic on CV) *is* clearly on-topic for meta.CV. Discussing what might be on- or off-topic on the main site is definitely within the purview of the meta site." CreationDate="2015-02-18T00:20:17.673" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6619" PostId="2411" Score="2" Text="Asking &quot;is this kind of question on topic on CV&quot; is clearly on topic on meta, even when the answer is &quot;no&quot;" CreationDate="2015-02-18T02:41:44.017" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6620" PostId="2411" Score="0" Text="Thanks guys, any idea where on SO this question would fit?" CreationDate="2015-02-18T09:02:32.337" UserId="68817" />
  <row Id="6616" PostId="2412" Score="5" Text="What's your targeted outcome? The OPs didn't get what they wanted and I would like to know on top of that what other results or effects you are envisioning." CreationDate="2015-02-17T23:58:49.273" UserId="13047" />
  <row Id="6618" PostId="2412" Score="7" Text="We get occasional spikes in these sort of question. It looks to me like the site worked much as it should ... one thing to keep in mind is to keep reminding answerers to stick to offering guidance and hints on questions which follow the self-study guidelines (at least where it still could still be current, and sometimes even then) and to not directly answer anything that looks like assigned work. We should just close the &quot;tell me the answer to this question&quot; ones every time... and not rush to give information away too fast on the questions that do follow the rules." CreationDate="2015-02-18T02:27:49.047" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6621" PostId="2412" Score="4" Text="This is an occupational hazard of being what we are. Presumably there is a spectrum from those totally happy if others will do their work for them to those very confused or unclear about the limits of the forum, but it's hard to tell and these posts are not acceptable either way. It just needs the vigilance of users with sufficiently high reputation to catch these posts, including yourself Tim!" CreationDate="2015-02-18T13:26:25.093" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6622" PostId="2412" Score="2" Text="I'd suggest post an incorrect solution, just to liven things up for the OP." CreationDate="2015-02-19T04:05:50.203" UserId="24905" />
  <row Id="6623" PostId="2412" Score="3" Text="That's not a good idea wolfies. Also others who do the required work but get stuck in between for the same question may see such a wrong answer and follow its lines." CreationDate="2015-02-19T08:23:21.940" UserId="26338" />
  <row Id="6624" PostId="2412" Score="2" Text="Andy is correct; mischievous thoughts are better not implemented; otherwise you just create work for others cleaning them up. I am all for bringing a sense of humour to CV but that would be going too far." CreationDate="2015-02-19T10:52:52.763" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6625" PostId="2412" Score="1" Text="That's what the [Malicious Mallard](http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/malicious-advice-mallard) is for. :) Alright alright, I won't use it. Used another meme on Academia and got my hand slapped pretty badly by the mod even I had gotten glorious 35 upvotes." CreationDate="2015-02-20T15:59:32.373" UserId="13047" />
  <row Id="6638" PostId="2418" Score="0" Text="I think it depends. There might also be some other SE sites, which better fit software-focused questions. For example, most recently I've recommended to migrate [this question](http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/139709/31372) to Data Science (DS) SE site, as, while the question is clearly off-topic on Cross Validated, it fits DS reasonably well." CreationDate="2015-02-28T08:32:13.513" UserId="31372" />
  <row Id="6626" PostId="2420" Score="2" Text="Yes, but still one could argue that this kind of questions are related to statistics (&quot;how to do statistics with&quot; or &quot;what can help me to do statistics&quot;) so the description of the off-topic mark does not fit perfectly to this situation. The real reason is that this kind of questions *are about software* and not that they are not about statistics." CreationDate="2015-02-22T22:47:16.963" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="6627" PostId="2420" Score="1" Text="That's a reasonable position, @Tim, but I disagree w/ it. Once you are no longer asking about statistics, but about something that may help you to do statistics, where do you draw the line? I use my keyboard &amp; mouse to help me do statistics, after all. My position is questions about statistics / ML / DM / visualization are on-topic here; all others are off-topic." CreationDate="2015-02-22T22:56:47.647" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6629" PostId="2420" Score="1" Text="This is perhaps the most difficult long-term question on Meta and even higher-reputation members rarely agree exactly where the line should be drawn (although I seem usually close to @gung in voting). I've found myself increasingly noting that many questions don't belong on SO any more than they belong on CV. I'm tempted to suggest that almost no community wants many learner questions about software (is there a package/function/command to do X? why do I get &lt;basic error message&gt;?) any more than we want to calculate means for people or check their arithmetic." CreationDate="2015-02-23T00:11:01.313" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6630" PostId="2420" Score="2" Text="The criterion in the help for determining the topicality of such questions is &quot;requires statistical expertise to understand or answer&quot;. I think in at least some cases advice about the appropriate choice *really does* require exactly that, presumably making it on topic. There's a previous question about interpreting the phrase [here](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1514/what-standard-should-be-applied-in-deciding-whether-a-question-requires-sufficie) (not that I'm claiming my comment is related to answers in that question, just pointing out its existence)" CreationDate="2015-02-23T00:22:10.437" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6631" PostId="2420" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b, I strongly dislike that statement, which I think is ambiguous &amp; leads to problems. My criterion has always been, *what does the OP need explained?*. Note that 'why is my ROCR code not giving me the ROC I wanted?' requires &quot;statistical expertise&quot;--no one w/o stat / ML expertise would know what a ROC is, but the Q is clearly a coding Q. I hold that Qs where the OP needs a statistical issue explained belong here, even if they are asking for code, and Qs where the OP needs code explained go to SO, even if no one w/o stat expertise would know what a ROC is." CreationDate="2015-02-23T04:43:09.557" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6632" PostId="2420" Score="1" Text="I can imagine a Q where the OP asks for a package, but what they really need (although they wouldn't know it) is to have some statistical concepts clarified. However, I don't believe I have actually seen such a Q." CreationDate="2015-02-23T04:44:48.923" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6633" PostId="2420" Score="0" Text="@NickCox, there are 2 issues: (a) the essential nature of the line, &amp; (b) where it lies relative to any given Q. I believe that most users on CV are more or less in agreement on (a) &amp; certainly that you &amp; I are. (b) OTOH is often a difficult judgment call; I'm not sure that you &amp; I actually disagree there so much as some situations are truly ambiguous." CreationDate="2015-02-23T04:57:39.397" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6634" PostId="2420" Score="2" Text="What about the fact that `R` tag is by a large margin the most popular tag on Cross Validated (CV)? If questions of how to use `R` are off-topic at CV, then what could be done? I am not sure how good `r-help listserv` is, but if people are looking for `R` help at CV so often, maybe `R` deserves a separate site on Stack Exchange?.." CreationDate="2015-02-24T10:15:13.983" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="6635" PostId="2420" Score="0" Text="@RichardHardy, this is a contentious issue. There are many R Qs on CV--in fact I've asked 1 &amp; answered ~200! So Qs w/ an R component are not necessarily off-topic. However, there are many fold more on SO (8k vs 82k), &amp; much much more than that on the r-help listserv. I vote to migrate b/c I believe askers will get better &amp; faster As there. The idea of an R specific SE has been raised several times; it didn't go anywhere (see: [What happened to the idea to start an R-specific StackExchange site?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/1616/7290))." CreationDate="2015-02-24T14:28:48.987" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6628" PostId="2421" Score="3" Text="+1. Good summary as usual. We, the community, can close their accounts but if and only if a moderator does that for us. I suspect that many of these characters do not return if they get no reply quickly, but I have no data. Sometimes the questions are so outrageous that they provide minor amusement, but never to offset the nuisance." CreationDate="2015-02-22T23:52:43.987" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6640" PostId="2424" Score="2" Text="You have, I think, a good point that lack of research effort is a key signal, but that is a criterion for down-voting, not for exclusion from the site. Otherwise a high fraction of learner questions with the flavour &quot;I know nothing much about statistics, but&quot; would not qualify here.  Similarly, the distinction between &quot;data manipulation&quot; (not suitable here, you say) and &quot;model implementation&quot; (suitable here) is in my view a long and smooth gradation. I don't have easy demarcation rules either; in my experience of this site software-related questions raise more difficulties than any others." CreationDate="2015-03-05T00:40:57.943" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6646" PostId="2425" Score="0" Text="**Yes**, this is a very good idea that is coherent with my recent question on Meta: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2418/redirecting-looking-for-package-in-r-to-so" CreationDate="2015-03-06T17:18:11.893" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="6647" PostId="2425" Score="0" Text="@Tim Thank you.  I didn't find your question in my search because it does not have the [tag:close-reasons] tag." CreationDate="2015-03-06T17:47:25.743" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6648" PostId="2425" Score="0" Text="I didn't find this tag while searching for it either..." CreationDate="2015-03-06T18:05:31.627" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="6641" PostId="2426" Score="3" Text="These are reasonable points. It seems to me there are 2 parts to your answer here. 1 pertains to combining the two closing rationales. 2 raises the issue of whether all coding Qs need migration. Your 2 doesn't seem to be quite an answer to *this* meta Q, but it is a good Q. Coding migration has been raised &amp; debated over &amp; over on meta.CV--w/o much progress :-(, but that specific issue is a novel &amp; worthwhile distinction. It may do well as another meta.CV thread." CreationDate="2015-03-06T04:26:08.527" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6642" PostId="2426" Score="3" Text="Re 1, I prefer the two closing reasons to remain separate. I would further prefer if the &quot;not about stats...&quot; were used less often (I think it strictly applies infrequently). To my mind the 2 rationales are distinct &amp; having them as differing options would be best." CreationDate="2015-03-06T04:28:17.460" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6645" PostId="2426" Score="1" Text="You're right, my second point is off-topic. It's an issue I hold dear and I saw a relation to whuber's question :) It makes sense to have the two separate, especially with the text you added to the option in your answer." CreationDate="2015-03-06T11:06:27.163" UserId="26338" />
  <row Id="6650" PostId="2426" Score="2" Text="You were prescient, Andy: limitations in the length of the text and in the number of default reasons compel us to adopt your approach, using something very much like your wording.  Please don't hesitate to comment further on the edits I have made to the question." CreationDate="2015-03-07T18:24:09.203" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6643" PostId="2427" Score="5" Text="+1, but I would replace &quot;MCVE&quot; by &quot;reproducible example&quot; (while still keeping the link). An abbreviation will only be confusing." CreationDate="2015-03-06T09:57:50.963" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6644" PostId="2427" Score="1" Text="+1, also agree with @amoeba" CreationDate="2015-03-06T11:04:38.913" UserId="26338" />
  <row Id="6649" PostId="2427" Score="1" Text="+1 I'd go with &quot;small reproducible example&quot;, myself (I don't care if it has 3 numbers or 12, as long as I can easily copypaste)" CreationDate="2015-03-07T07:33:08.073" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6651" PostId="2427" Score="1" Text="Thank you, Gung.  I tried to implement this suggestion, but was stymied by system-imposed limits.  A fuller explanation appears in edits to the question." CreationDate="2015-03-07T18:24:51.407" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6652" PostId="2427" Score="0" Text="@whuber, is it that you have a character limit?" CreationDate="2015-03-07T18:37:08.550" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6653" PostId="2427" Score="0" Text="@gung Yes--and it is 100 characters less than you are allowed when writing your own custom close reason (&quot;Other (add a comment explaining what is wrong)&quot;)." CreationDate="2015-03-07T18:38:45.953" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6654" PostId="2427" Score="1" Text="@whuber, I updated my answer. See what you think. If we are allowed 400 characters, it would just make it." CreationDate="2015-03-08T16:31:17.793" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6655" PostId="2427" Score="1" Text="Thank you: that's getting to the crux of the matter and addresses the issue that was troubling me most." CreationDate="2015-03-08T17:22:59.960" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6656" PostId="2428" Score="3" Text="There are two dangers -- (i) breadth and (ii) inviting answers that are purely opinion-based. I think you might be able to make one, or perhaps more than one, question that would avoid those dangers, and then perhaps raise the rest on chat (chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/18/ten-fold), where opinion-based and broad questions could be discussed (though with less chance of attracting a lot of attention)" CreationDate="2015-03-11T03:20:44.847" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6657" PostId="2428" Score="2" Text="@Glen_b, interesting to see that we were thinking the same things." CreationDate="2015-03-11T03:28:34.680" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6675" PostId="2432" Score="2" Text="Unfortunately, none of the posts so far really follow the request of &quot;please only post one question per answer&quot;. I'm happy to attempt to answer all the questions that have been posted when the time comes (I count 13 across the four posts beside Grace Note's default set), but I think we should be trying to take the request more seriously. By its nature, the requested format restricts the kind of question one can ask; presumably that's actually the intention (or why restrict it at all?). ... (ctd)" CreationDate="2015-03-19T22:14:08.500" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6677" PostId="2432" Score="1" Text="(ctd)... [I also think that questions should avoid &quot;coaching&quot; candidates about what kinds of answers to give or not to give, but that's more a personal opinion. If candidates give an inadequate/naive/impossible answer, that's an important indication in itself, I'd have thought.]" CreationDate="2015-03-19T22:26:40.763" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6685" PostId="2432" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b I understand a &quot;question to a candidate&quot; as &quot;posing an issue and requesting the candidate's stance&quot;. So necessarily, it is a series of highly... correlated questions that all together make a whole. Speaking for my question, if, say, I had only asked &quot;In your opinion, is there a serious threat/challenge that Cross Validated currently faces?&quot;, I believe that most candidates, if they had something in mind, they would answer all other questions in the sequel. &quot;So why write them down, if they are self-understood?&quot;, one could ask. (CONTD)" CreationDate="2015-03-20T19:45:25.203" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="6686" PostId="2432" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b CONTD ...Well, I have learned to be particularly alert to how much different content can &quot;self-understood&quot; have for different persons." CreationDate="2015-03-20T19:45:37.233" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="6688" PostId="2432" Score="0" Text="Asking a string of questions that are all inter-related (like follow-ups or just are part of one more composite question) is fine. No reason to consume multiple question slots on essentially the same question. That said, with ones as long as whuber's... let's just say I'll need some time to figure out how to condense it, haha. On a personal level I also prefer questions that don't &quot;coach&quot; as Glen notes, but there's no restrictions against those here lest y'all vote otherwise." CreationDate="2015-03-20T19:51:56.870" UserId="5645" />
  <row Id="6667" PostId="2433" Score="5" Text="The idea of &quot;simply reaching 20k rep&quot; is always amusing to me :)" CreationDate="2015-03-17T16:59:27.473" UserId="6123" />
  <row Id="6660" PostId="2435" Score="2" Text="For some reason, after you edited it seven hours ago it never showed up in the &quot;Reopen&quot; review queue.  This might be something for the SE team to address." CreationDate="2015-03-16T22:55:19.090" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6661" PostId="2435" Score="0" Text="@whuber shouldn't it have been in the review queue from when Vass edited it before me?" CreationDate="2015-03-16T22:59:57.650" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6662" PostId="2435" Score="3" Text="The history shows it was closed by community voting on March 11. Three people voted not to re-open it between 21 and 13 hours ago. Your edit was logged 7 hours ago. After that, up to the point (a few minutes ago) when I re-opened the thread, there are no visible records of votes for or against reopening and the thread itself indicated there was only one reopen vote (presumably yours). I checked the Reopen review queue and found it empty. On this evidence I suspect that a thread that has been voted down for re-opening might not ever make it back into the Reopen queue, even after more editing." CreationDate="2015-03-16T23:07:30.720" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6663" PostId="2435" Score="0" Text="Hmm. That does seem a worry. But I find the votes not to reopen on Vass' edit puzzling in any case - whatever its remaining flaws I don't fathom how it can have been regarded as still too broad." CreationDate="2015-03-16T23:10:58.680" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6665" PostId="2435" Score="1" Text="I voted to leave closed. When I did so, which may be before the edits were finished, I thought the Q was 90% of the way there. I meant to leave a comment, but it appears I didn't." CreationDate="2015-03-17T14:13:16.017" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6666" PostId="2435" Score="0" Text="@gung the fault was entirely mine. (If I'm going to edit, I need to remember to edit first, then vote to reopen.)" CreationDate="2015-03-17T14:16:21.560" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6669" PostId="2437" Score="0" Text="I think this is a great question - concise but covers some very important ground not in Grace Note's &quot;general questions&quot;" CreationDate="2015-03-18T18:14:01.577" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6670" PostId="2443" Score="6" Text="To me this elegantly, concisely and comprehensively captures the most common, and the most awkward, dilemmas that recur daily on this forum." CreationDate="2015-03-18T19:50:02.103" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6678" PostId="2448" Score="8" Text="We can't impute reasons reliably unless people explain, but lack of time surely is why many people rule themselves out, just as you have done. Many people are **very positive about the forum** and don't just post many answers, but do much work on improving questions and bouncing poor questions away, just as you do. But **the precedent of outstanding moderators who have done a spectacular job is difficult to follow** and the precedent of moderators who have accepted but seemingly had too little time to do much is a warning to those who are very busy (and who isn't?)." CreationDate="2015-03-20T12:28:37.087" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6679" PostId="2448" Score="3" Text="Not also that there are (at the time of writing) three days to go before the nomination period ends; if previous elections are any guide we can still expect more candidates to come forward." CreationDate="2015-03-20T13:54:10.387" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="6680" PostId="2448" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi I am hoping so and this is one of the reasons I am bringing this subject." CreationDate="2015-03-20T13:55:08.293" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="6681" PostId="2448" Score="8" Text="@Scortchi: personally, I hope that you, yourself, will consider to nominate. You would be one of my favourite candidates, if I am allowed to say that. I said it before on chat: perhaps we should have some way to root for people in advance, as it might motivate somebody to nominate..." CreationDate="2015-03-20T14:32:09.060" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6682" PostId="2448" Score="5" Text="This is a good place to echo amoeba's suggestion, which I have wanted to make also. @Scortchi is abundantly qualified in  statistical expertise and forum experience, but also just a while ago quite brilliantly handled a difficult comment elsewhere. I suppress the details out of delicacy, but most people likely to read this will have noticed an inappropriate criticism that lingered briefly and was (I imagine) noted with some horror by people who knew that it would be wrong to get into a fight at that time and place. Scortchi's comment defused it utterly and showed real but firm diplomacy." CreationDate="2015-03-20T15:08:02.890" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6683" PostId="2448" Score="0" Text="@Nick Cox It is part of SE policies I think that you can propose for nomination somebody else than yourself. I understand that this may feel &quot;pushy&quot;, but I have seen it happen on other SE sites, and I have also seen such proposals effortlessly declined, no hard feelings on any side." CreationDate="2015-03-20T16:52:51.480" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="6684" PostId="2448" Score="0" Text="@Alecos I think that's right, but at this moment I would rather people felt encouraged to nominate themselves. As we're speaking frankly I will add that you would in my view also be an excellent candidate. I do think we need at least two strong candidates; enough (perhaps too much) said." CreationDate="2015-03-20T16:55:24.430" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6687" PostId="2448" Score="2" Text="@Alecos As far as I know you can only nominate yourself: you cannot nominate someone else.  If you have found a mechanism to nominate others in this election, could you provide a link to it?" CreationDate="2015-03-20T19:50:08.590" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6689" PostId="2448" Score="0" Text="@whuber Hmmm, maybe this was a left-over reflex from &quot;Moderators pro tempore&quot; which were recently appointed in Economics.SE, http://meta.economics.stackexchange.com/questions/88/who-would-you-like-to-see-as-a-mod. There people proposed others." CreationDate="2015-03-20T21:53:33.977" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="6690" PostId="2448" Score="2" Text="I can speak only for myself: I would be happy to nominate myself as a moderator and to fulfill its duties, except that I feel there are many potential nominees who are more active in the community and would make better candidates. If they nominate themselves (@Scortchi is certainly a great example!) I would much rather cast my vote for them than nominate myself." CreationDate="2015-03-20T23:06:36.237" UserId="8373" />
  <row Id="6691" PostId="2448" Score="6" Text="@DavidRobinson nominate yourself! Nothing wrong will happen if we had &quot;too many&quot; nominees." CreationDate="2015-03-21T07:21:36.323" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="6692" PostId="2448" Score="8" Text="Thank you for your encouragement. The two reasons I hadn't put myself forward were being busy &amp; knowing that there are others who could do a better job. But your comments made me think - people who aren't at all busy, &amp; have no other impediment to standing, &amp; know they're among those who could do the best job, must be few &amp; far between; &amp; the CV community deserves a wide choice of candidates to pick from. I hope more people will consider nominating themselves, including the commenters here." CreationDate="2015-03-21T21:03:34.860" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="6693" PostId="2448" Score="6" Text="@Scortchi Excellent news! Thanks very much for nominating yourself." CreationDate="2015-03-21T23:07:13.570" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6697" PostId="2448" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi I can certainly sympathize with the feeling that there are several others who could do a better job." CreationDate="2015-03-22T22:46:48.880" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6698" PostId="2448" Score="0" Text="Er, to clarify -- I was suggesting that I share that feeling." CreationDate="2015-03-22T23:44:17.893" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6699" PostId="2448" Score="0" Text="@Alecos At the corresponding stage for CV we had [&quot;nominations&quot; of that kind](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/133/who-should-the-moderators-be-locked). Past that stage it's always self-nomination (though often after a period of gentle persuasion by others)." CreationDate="2015-03-22T23:47:02.343" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6716" PostId="2448" Score="3" Text="I was traveling during the nomination period &gt;.&gt;" CreationDate="2015-03-24T10:19:09.023" UserId="5836" />
  <row Id="6727" PostId="2448" Score="1" Text="@Fomite That's a pity. I recall voting for you as one of my choices last election (I think it may have been under your previous name at that time, but I'm uncertain of the relative timings); the reasons to do so this time around are substantially stronger." CreationDate="2015-03-24T22:37:58.527" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6743" PostId="2448" Score="0" Text="@Gleb_b That's very kind of you. Perhaps next time :)" CreationDate="2015-03-26T22:11:50.393" UserId="5836" />
  <row Id="14029" PostId="2448" Score="0" Text="@Fomite FYI: If you are still interested in becoming a mod, there is an election going right now. Nomination period ends tomorrow." CreationDate="2017-08-12T14:24:31.553" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14048" PostId="2448" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Thank you for the heads up - unfortunately, I don't think I can devote the time to moderating that this site deserves. Great to see you throw your hat into the ring though." CreationDate="2017-08-15T20:03:25.873" UserId="5836" />
  <row Id="6696" PostId="2450" Score="2" Text="This seems to be a duplicate of http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1607/how-to-contact-other-user and http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1250/how-to-contact-a-user" CreationDate="2015-03-22T12:45:43.540" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6700" PostId="2455" Score="3" Text="Many thanks for finding this and providing a quick workaround!" CreationDate="2015-03-23T00:49:30.793" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6713" PostId="2460" Score="4" Text="+1 I apologize for making you work to condense my question; you did a great job of it." CreationDate="2015-03-23T21:00:05.770" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6804" PostId="2460" Score="0" Text="I'm not sure if these questions came from a template of sorts, but wanted to say that they're excellent questions." CreationDate="2015-03-31T19:08:30.953" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="6810" PostId="2460" Score="0" Text="The last 5 were ones that the Community Team selected as excellent questions taken from the pool of questions commonly asked by site members in most election Q&amp;As during our first two years (where we ran these in chat). The first four were provided by your community members here at Cross Validated in an earlier thread." CreationDate="2015-04-01T00:44:39.953" UserId="5645" />
  <row Id="6711" PostId="2461" Score="0" Text="As I understand the system, questions should have been submitted before the start of the election phase, which is now under way. Let's hope that the candidates address this question somehow." CreationDate="2015-03-23T20:31:06.927" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6712" PostId="2461" Score="1" Text="I agree w/ @NickCox, that this question may have been posted too late. That said, when you write &quot;on-topic&quot;, did you mean *off-topic*? Questions purely about programming have always been off-topic, but maybe I misunderstood the description of the question." CreationDate="2015-03-23T20:53:46.903" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6714" PostId="2461" Score="1" Text="Yup, probably too late. Oh well....I figured it was worth a shot since there were &lt;10 questions.&#xA;&#xA;@gung, I think there's some disagreement about what constitutes &quot;about&quot; programming. No one wants &quot;How can I read a file in R?&quot;, but there's some wiggle room for things like &quot;Why doesn't &lt;function&gt; converge?&quot;, which could be statistical (the model stinks) or could be something more programmatic (you're passing the data in wrong)." CreationDate="2015-03-23T21:04:43.257" UserId="7250" />
  <row Id="6715" PostId="2461" Score="0" Text="@MattKrause, that sounds right to me (eg, I agree that 'why doesn't... converge' can be on-topic). I just think your descriptions of the questions (eg, 'happen to use...') are ambiguous &amp; I wonder if you meant *off-topic* where you wrote &quot;on-topic&quot;." CreationDate="2015-03-23T21:36:29.360" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="8697" PostId="2462" Score="0" Text="This can arguably be deleted now …" CreationDate="2015-11-28T16:59:58.170" UserId="36423" />
  <row Id="8699" PostId="2462" Score="0" Text="@Wrzlprmft Perhaps--but the site is still worth visiting." CreationDate="2015-11-28T19:58:30.517" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="9013" PostId="2462" Score="0" Text="@whuber the site is down, the domain is probably deleted." CreationDate="2016-01-21T20:23:37.600" UserId="8013" />
  <row Id="9014" PostId="2462" Score="0" Text="@AdamO I have no problem linking to it!" CreationDate="2016-01-21T20:49:13.240" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="9015" PostId="2462" Score="0" Text="@whuber hmm! not sure why it went fubar, probably on my end. Nevermind." CreationDate="2016-01-21T20:53:32.773" UserId="8013" />
  <row Id="6718" PostId="2464" Score="0" Text="You wrote: &quot;most of the pots there&quot;. Should that be &quot;points&quot;? Also &quot;the differences style&quot;. Should that be &quot;the different styles&quot;?" CreationDate="2015-03-24T19:16:41.800" UserId="7008" />
  <row Id="6719" PostId="2464" Score="1" Text="@FaheemMitha You've exemplified Glen_b's points perfectly on how we can all pitch in. There is a bright future for you as an editor of posts here. On the first point, I think Glen_b means &quot;posts&quot; not &quot;pots&quot;." CreationDate="2015-03-24T20:10:32.397" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6721" PostId="2464" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Thanks. I do a fair amount of typo fixes on my &quot;home turf&quot;, unix.sx." CreationDate="2015-03-24T20:15:21.883" UserId="7008" />
  <row Id="6725" PostId="2464" Score="0" Text="@Faheem thanks for your kind help. I have edited. The second was meant to be 'differences in style' -- a partially completed edit before posting was the culprit there." CreationDate="2015-03-24T20:58:19.980" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6730" PostId="2464" Score="9" Text="What a remarkable reply! This treatise could serve as a guide for existing moderators, including on many other sites of our size or smaller." CreationDate="2015-03-25T15:37:24.473" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6780" PostId="2464" Score="0" Text="I realized only now that @Glen_b wasn't a moderator, always thought he was :) It's clear that he thought about these questions" CreationDate="2015-03-30T16:31:35.257" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="6793" PostId="2464" Score="0" Text="On the off chance it helps anyone, the current moderators are [here](http://stats.stackexchange.com/users?tab=moderators). When a mod posts, there's a little diamond (&quot;♦&quot;) after their name, like whuber's comment above. If you don't see the diamond ... not a moderator." CreationDate="2015-03-30T21:21:46.790" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6731" PostId="2465" Score="5" Text="(+1) It's clear you're well prepared to assume the role of moderator." CreationDate="2015-03-25T15:38:03.053" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6765" PostId="2465" Score="2" Text="I like your brevity." CreationDate="2015-03-27T22:51:06.800" UserId="3835" />
  <row Id="6770" PostId="2465" Score="7" Text="@mark999: Well, the remaining two candidates are even more brief." CreationDate="2015-03-29T09:11:41.647" UserId="36423" />
  <row Id="6803" PostId="2465" Score="0" Text="@mark999, in this case brevity is not a virtue. Moderator's job requires a substantial time commitment, so I'd expect the candidates to not spare their time on an election campaign, it's a blink of an eye compared to how much time they'll spend moderating" CreationDate="2015-03-31T19:04:56.247" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="6812" PostId="2465" Score="0" Text="@Aksakal You appear to be saying that brevity indicates that insufficient time was spent. I don't agree." CreationDate="2015-04-01T07:09:09.673" UserId="3835" />
  <row Id="9475" PostId="2468" Score="3" Text="There's a related question  here: [library of helpful responses](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/771/library-of-helpful-responses/)" CreationDate="2016-03-02T23:07:46.617" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9927" PostId="2468" Score="3" Text="When commenting on questions, it may also be helpful to link to our meta.CV thread, [Internet Support for Statistics Software](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/793/7290)." CreationDate="2016-05-23T13:43:06.277" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15101" PostId="2468" Score="0" Text="Another cross-reference is https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3175/top-k-list-of-reasons-to-close-a-question-immediately The tone of answers there is closer to &quot;Come on, if you think about it you should see that to be a dopey question that hard to answer. You can and should try to improve it.&quot;  but the style of trying to give feedback on where posters are getting it wrong is otherwise similar." CreationDate="2018-01-12T11:23:07.333" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21929" PostId="2468" Score="0" Text="The [original version of this question](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/posts/2468/revisions) included a kvetch about how clunky the review queue is to use. It's improved a lot in recent years, so that section isn't really relevant anymore, so I have edited to try to align it with the current use of this thread as a stock comments compendium" CreationDate="2023-03-31T20:32:57.047" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6732" PostId="2469" Score="7" Text="I often go to the comments history on my userpage &amp; copy&amp;paste. I think the review queues are poorly designed; I find it interesting that you think the same &amp; seem to have some of the same complaints I do. I always figured this was just a symptom of my curmudgeon-ness." CreationDate="2015-03-25T20:14:28.563" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6733" PostId="2469" Score="3" Text="@gung Good reviewer and curmudgeon go together, it seems. Naturally we have it on good authority that correlation is not causation." CreationDate="2015-03-26T01:38:42.087" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6764" PostId="2469" Score="0" Text="@gung I was wondering if you might consider posting an &quot;answer&quot; with some of your most useful comments. I've certainly found Glen_b's answer very helpful, and that would be useful too." CreationDate="2015-03-27T21:24:35.787" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6775" PostId="2469" Score="0" Text="I keep thinking about it, @Silverfish, but I'm not sure what I have to add to Glen_b's comments." CreationDate="2015-03-30T03:17:20.813" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6783" PostId="2469" Score="0" Text="@gung I've paid a visit to your comments history :-) If I've set this up correctly, tags and links should be easily copyable from the post I've cribbed together." CreationDate="2015-03-30T20:24:44.907" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="21196" PostId="2469" Score="0" Text="&quot;When you posted on SE, you gave up ownership of the content&quot;: not quite - the copyright is still yours, but you've licensed S.E. (&amp; readers of your post) to publish it" CreationDate="2022-01-30T23:58:19.987" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21198" PostId="2469" Score="0" Text="Did you mean to comment under the other answer? I agree with the comment; while it links to the right place in the creative commons license it should be clearer that you have simply transferred some rights. Perhaps &quot;gave up exclusive ownership&quot; might work. (TBH ... I haven't used a stock comment in years. I had even forgotten that I had some)" CreationDate="2022-01-31T00:12:07.817" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="21200" PostId="2469" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b: I did, thank you. 'Exclusive ownership' is concise &amp;  - IANAL but I think it gets the idea across accurately" CreationDate="2022-01-31T11:41:24.427" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21206" PostId="2469" Score="0" Text="I don't think people expect us to be lawyers, we're just trying to get a general idea across, even if it's not correct legal jargon." CreationDate="2022-02-01T00:38:32.367" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6728" PostId="2471" Score="7" Text="Thanks for bringing our attention to that apparent duplicate! I agree with you and will be happy to merge these two tags, unless there are specific objections to that." CreationDate="2015-03-25T08:22:16.100" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="6734" PostId="2471" Score="1" Text="@chl: it doesn't seem to me like waiting any longer will generate any objections. Could you please merge the tags, and add [tag:status-completed] to this question? Thanks!" CreationDate="2015-03-26T07:24:08.900" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="6735" PostId="2473" Score="1" Text="Perhaps it'd be interested to know why it hits your sore spot?" CreationDate="2015-03-26T15:19:47.710" UserId="8413" />
  <row Id="6740" PostId="2473" Score="5" Text="In response to why I call this a &quot;sore spot&quot; -- this sort of issue often occurs in conversations when I explain what I do.  While I view it as part of my duty as both a research psychologist and a scientist to correct misunderstandings about what I do, sometimes I just want to read about statistics (which is the purpose of this site) rather than correct misunderstandings about whether psychology is a science." CreationDate="2015-03-26T16:20:45.063" UserId="11091" />
  <row Id="6756" PostId="2473" Score="7" Text="The title should perhaps be Why is a comment that maligns my field not considered inappropriate for CV? I know that's more indirect and long-winded, but it's closer to the issue. It's not that the community endorses that comment; it's rather that a moderator decided on balance that the comment should stand, while recognising that there are objections to it." CreationDate="2015-03-27T18:39:36.847" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6760" PostId="2473" Score="3" Text="@NickCox fair point. I have made the suggested edit." CreationDate="2015-03-27T20:14:57.833" UserId="11091" />
  <row Id="6771" PostId="2473" Score="7" Text="Why didn't you reply to the commenter? Sometimes, it is more fruitful to engage in a discussion (even if it is only written text rather than verbal communication) and to ask for clarification. Whether the issue is the number of votes or the content of this comment, which is still unclear to me, I would have taken the same decision as @whuber: it is not targeting a specific user or the SE system as a whole, and I do not consider it as spam or offensive; it is however open to (possibly) endless discussion and this deserves to be discussed in a chat room, IMHO." CreationDate="2015-03-29T19:32:07.060" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="6781" PostId="2473" Score="4" Text="I made that comment, and had no idea that it inspired such an interesting discussion. You can trash physics all day long, and it won't offend me a bit. As a physicist, I'd think that whoever made the comment is an idiot and forget about it. So, I didn't think that my comment would offend psychologists. I guess I don't get psychology! :) Also, not everything needs to be science. Music and theater are not science, and there's nothing wrong with them." CreationDate="2015-03-30T17:25:10.603" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="6835" PostId="2473" Score="5" Text="@Aksakal The reason why it wouldn't upset a physicist is that there is no &quot;Physics is not a science&quot; stereotype. The fact that some people do psychology research poorly or that psychology data will inherently be more noisy than physics data does not make the field less scientific than physics. Similarly, I doubt white people would be offended by the phrase &quot;white people are lazy&quot; because it doesn't reinforce any stereotypes about white people (obviously this is completely different from race - but I think it helps illustrate the point)." CreationDate="2015-04-08T17:53:50.827" UserId="36444" />
  <row Id="6739" PostId="2474" Score="5" Text="Don't we want CV to be used by economists, medical doctors, and research psychologists, and so on?  If these comments do occur regularly, then I see this as a problem.  There's a big difference between saying &quot;Psychology is unscientific&quot; and &quot;X practice leads to invalid conclusions&quot;.  The former comment is unconstructive (and, I believe, impolite), while the latter is constructive (and may actually have something to do with statistics)." CreationDate="2015-03-26T15:40:20.260" UserId="11091" />
  <row Id="6741" PostId="2474" Score="2" Text="Also, I don't think that concerns about censorship apply here.  CV is not a free-for-all environment where anyone can express any opinion -- it is a site where people can ask and answer questions about statistics.  The specific purpose of CV is reflected by the fact that moderators can edit and remove posts that do not facilitate the site goals.  If comments like these do not facilitate the site goals, I think they can and ought to be removed." CreationDate="2015-03-26T17:11:38.250" UserId="11091" />
  <row Id="6746" PostId="2474" Score="2" Text="FTR, I thought your remark about economists was funny &amp; I upvoted that post &amp; @naught101's comment. I am not an economist, but I do think it's a valuable &amp; interesting field--I just thought it was funny. However, if I were a moderator &amp; someone flagged those as 'offensive', I would delete them. They don't speak directly to the thread's question or to any legitimate statistical issue. If someone had been offended, I would have deleted it. I don't see any gray area here." CreationDate="2015-03-26T22:17:46.813" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6744" PostId="2475" Score="8" Text="FWIW, if I had been a moderator &amp; I received an 'offensive' flag to that comment, I would have deleted it--really w/o any hesitation, although I would have left a comment to its author. The argument that removing that comment would have eventually forced us to abandon the comment mechanism altogether does not strike me as plausible. (NB, I also have a strong reaction to slippery slope arguments that is orthogonal to this issue, but may relate to my reaction here.)" CreationDate="2015-03-26T22:12:19.103" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6745" PostId="2475" Score="5" Text="I would have deleted it as well - it's not a request to limit discourse, but to maintain CV as a welcoming environment." CreationDate="2015-03-26T22:13:30.203" UserId="5836" />
  <row Id="6747" PostId="2475" Score="2" Text="I understand the argument that I should read the comment charitably. However I disagree that the comment is germane to the topic, which is about whether BASP's change in policy is wise, not about the scientific status of psychology (which, by the way, is much larger than one small journal)." CreationDate="2015-03-26T22:39:03.917" UserId="11091" />
  <row Id="6749" PostId="2475" Score="7" Text="This is why people don't apply for being moderator; it is very tough job :). If it helps, in the main meta site, they keep saying comments were designed to be temporary." CreationDate="2015-03-27T02:05:07.290" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="6766" PostId="2475" Score="3" Text="I don't agree with the commenter that psychology is an unscientific field, and I don't think the comment was meant to be benign, but I applaud whuber's decision not to delete it." CreationDate="2015-03-28T08:39:57.293" UserId="3835" />
  <row Id="6767" PostId="2475" Score="2" Text="That's an interesting position, @mark999. Can you explain your reasoning? Most here who have argued that it should stay do so by arguing that it was (or should be read as) benign. Do you think it's good to have a comment that you believe is inaccurate &amp; is not benign on the site? Would CV be better off if we had a lot of inaccurate, non-benign comments all over the place?" CreationDate="2015-03-28T15:42:12.623" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6769" PostId="2475" Score="4" Text="@gung My reasoning is simply that I value freedom of speech. I'm not saying that I think the moderators should never delete anything, but I don't think that &quot;someone was offended&quot; is sufficient reason for deletion. In reply to your second question, I see the presence of that comment as neither good nor particularly bad. In reply to your last question, of course it wouldn't." CreationDate="2015-03-29T04:32:43.890" UserId="3835" />
  <row Id="6832" PostId="2475" Score="1" Text="Would it have been less offensive to say that &quot;several disciplines (including psychology, medicine, and economics) have a record of using statistics to dress up conclusions that cannot be repeated and have dubious validity&quot;? (I'm a physician and am continually embarrassed at the sloppy use of statistics in the medical domain.)" CreationDate="2015-04-07T02:30:59.910" UserId="2129" />
  <row Id="6742" PostId="2476" Score="8" Text="+1, however, I feel compelled to note that although I work hard at speaking / writing nicely, if the requirement were truly &quot;think nicely&quot; I might be banned from CV." CreationDate="2015-03-26T22:02:41.677" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6748" PostId="2476" Score="0" Text="@gung I wonder what kind of meaning we should attach to &quot;CV's Most Wanted&quot; in such a case." CreationDate="2015-03-26T23:53:25.367" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="6750" PostId="2476" Score="2" Text="This seems very reasonable, Alecos. On balance I still think the comment (and others like it) contributes to an unwelcoming environment. However, it is certainly possible that I misinterpreted the intended meaning." CreationDate="2015-03-27T02:25:39.447" UserId="11091" />
  <row Id="6751" PostId="2477" Score="0" Text="It merely looks like this thread was automatically processed by the SE bot, probably because of the number of close votes and flags." CreationDate="2015-03-27T07:51:22.900" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="6753" PostId="2478" Score="4" Text="This is an interesting point. I would have felt much better if I had had a way to down vote the original comment" CreationDate="2015-03-27T17:25:45.067" UserId="11091" />
  <row Id="6754" PostId="2478" Score="3" Text="There is a simple extra dimension to this. Sometimes even otherwise smart, independently minded people just follow the crowd. If I see a really terrible question already downvoted heavily I will still (be tempted to) add my downvote even though it is totally predictable that the question is doomed. The same can happen with +1 on comments too, even if no-one can see who you are. (The opposite can happen too, but I'll stop there.)" CreationDate="2015-03-27T17:48:31.977" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6817" PostId="2478" Score="0" Text="A good way to see disagreement with a comment is to respond to it (as long as it's not too long after the fact). With a good response, upvotes for the response will also tend to indicate the feeling the other way." CreationDate="2015-04-02T01:13:08.010" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6755" PostId="2479" Score="1" Text="I agree strongly with this reasoning" CreationDate="2015-03-27T17:50:41.803" UserId="11091" />
  <row Id="6757" PostId="2479" Score="4" Text="Honest question: What if a person writing the comment would feel offended by the deletion? I remember a contributor who called for a lot of deletions because he felt mistreated. And that in turn alienated other users." CreationDate="2015-03-27T19:07:56.350" UserId="8413" />
  <row Id="6758" PostId="2479" Score="2" Text="That's a good question, @Momo. In this scenario, are the potentially offensive comments relevant to the thread they're on &amp; do they contain legitimate statistical information?" CreationDate="2015-03-27T19:16:17.257" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6759" PostId="2479" Score="3" Text="Lets assume its a comment as the one thst started this. No statistical content whatsoever but not against SE rules. It gets deleted because it was flagged as offending. Now the author of the comment feels offended and complains that it was deleted (or any of the 10 upvoters). Who should get precedence? I think thats what @whuber calls the slippery slope." CreationDate="2015-03-27T20:11:34.697" UserId="8413" />
  <row Id="6761" PostId="2479" Score="4" Text="@Momo, yes I would delete that. Under this reasoning, possibly 11 people are offended, but I might suspect it's more like 1. On the other hand, although only 1 person flagged I would guess that more people, especially over time, would be offended by the comment, but no one else will view the page, think to themselves 'why isn't there a comment like *psychology sucks* on this thread somewhere?' &amp; be offended. In the long run, the balance of offense will run strongly in favor of deleting." CreationDate="2015-03-27T20:22:42.980" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6762" PostId="2479" Score="3" Text="Although I wasn't offended by this comment, in retrospect I'm not surprised that someone was, but I would be surprised if anyone beyond (possibly) the comment's author is offended that they cannot use CV to vent. Eg, I would be surprised if a comment upvoter were offended by the deletion. (I have to say that my intuitions are not very reliable, though; I am one of the least thin-skinned people on the planet.) As @Andre notes, SE policy is that comments are supposed to be impermanent anyway." CreationDate="2015-03-27T20:26:25.263" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6763" PostId="2479" Score="7" Text="Here's an analogy: on the same thread, person A says 'I like blue cheese!', which gets 10 upvotes. Another CV user who is part of [People for the Ethical Treatment of Mold](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruitarianism) flags this comment as offensive. In this case, I would delete the comment. It isn't related to the thread, doesn't contain any statistical information &amp; offended someone." CreationDate="2015-03-27T20:50:05.030" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6768" PostId="2482" Score="1" Text="I like the idea of putting together an answer that shows how &quot;different interpretations that lead to entirely different answers&quot;. That seems quite useful." CreationDate="2015-03-29T02:23:53.107" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6772" PostId="2483" Score="3" Text="+1, I was wondering about it as well." CreationDate="2015-03-29T21:52:52.583" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6778" PostId="2483" Score="0" Text="I agree that this should be stated directly. However notice that using three votes results getting a badge, so it is a tough decision to make (just joking)." CreationDate="2015-03-30T16:16:20.450" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="6779" PostId="2483" Score="0" Text="Haha, you can always wait for another election where there are 3 candidates you are actually interested in winning." CreationDate="2015-03-30T16:17:52.787" UserId="17661" />
  <row Id="6892" PostId="2483" Score="0" Text="See also [this](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/290805/is-it-okay-to-vote-for-just-two-candidates) in relation to the currect SO election." CreationDate="2015-04-20T23:30:05.417" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6773" PostId="2484" Score="1" Text="excellent snooping whuber" CreationDate="2015-03-29T23:36:33.540" UserId="17661" />
  <row Id="6774" PostId="2484" Score="1" Text="+1 I've also looked at the votes in previous elections; it's definitely the case that users can vote for fewer than 3 candidates and still have their votes count. I've also just participated in a real-world election that uses a similar system... but has vastly more candidates. It used to be the case in the real-world one that you had to order the entire field of candidates -- well over a hundred of them (but nowadays, fortunately, the requirement is reduced to a smaller number). [Well, there was a shortcut that involved only indicating one thing, but it involved a compromise I could not bear.]" CreationDate="2015-03-30T01:48:00.330" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6792" PostId="2486" Score="2" Text="@gung Thanks, I didn't know it was possible to format like that! A downside of having it display like this rather than all in one line, is that when copy-and-pasting, the text in the entry field also gets broken up across several lines. That doesn't matter once you press &quot;add comment&quot;, since the it doesn't display broken up, but it does make editing a little harder. On the upside, it makes it clearer what exactly you're copying." CreationDate="2015-03-30T21:01:43.867" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6794" PostId="2486" Score="2" Text="@Silverfish, I think its easier to copy&amp;paste this way, but feel free to change it back if you prefer. Note that for the `[self-study]` comments: I use the 1st version if someone has identified that it's S-S &amp; has made some attempt etc.; I use the 2nd version when someone copies&amp;pastes their HW w/ nothing in the hopes someone will do it for them (&amp; I'm feeling grouchy). I don't know if you want to add something to that effect in the post." CreationDate="2015-03-31T00:22:49.883" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="7035" PostId="2486" Score="3" Text="Just wanted to point to a useful SE app that you can set up (up to) six standard comments for: http://stackapps.com/questions/2116/autoreviewcomments-pro-forma-comments-for-se ... so for additional ease, pick six of the above and put them in the app." CreationDate="2015-05-26T00:45:57.607" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="7039" PostId="2486" Score="1" Text="I've just set up the above app for myself (well, I did it yesterday) but haven't really used it live yet. Here's an example (below) of one of the default answers:" CreationDate="2015-06-04T03:14:53.820" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="7041" PostId="2486" Score="1" Text="Once you set it up (Firefox or Chrome), it's a matter of clicking the &quot;auto&quot; link that shows up on the right when you have a comment box (immediately to the right of the one that says 'help') and either clicking the relevant comment or using the menu at the bottom to set up some of your own." CreationDate="2015-06-04T03:28:21.673" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8372" PostId="2486" Score="3" Text="Having used the app actively for a while now, it makes the standard comments much easier. I think its limited number of default comments is fine, actually, it works to cover a large fraction of my regular commenting activity (I have set up a number of my own, or edited the defaults -- and after they paste in, I often edit the boilerplate, but its still faster than doing it from scratch)" CreationDate="2015-09-30T04:21:16.610" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6796" PostId="2487" Score="1" Text="@smillig They're certainly closely related questions. I don't think my question is answered there - I know that such answers are discouraged by policy and where the community stands on them, which I hope I've made clear in my question text. But I'm not clear what this means *I* should do when I encounter one." CreationDate="2015-03-31T07:34:58.043" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6797" PostId="2487" Score="1" Text="The fact such answers are discouraged could be consistent with writing a comment to inform the author of this (linking to the Answer Guide), maybe even downvoting it. Or a more extreme option, if we regard such answers as functionally deficient, of flagging for a Moderator to convert to comment (but they're an overworked lot and if this is regarded as unnecessary work for them I'd rather avoid it). The review queue also prompts for deletion, but this generally seems quite extreme if the link contains useful information." CreationDate="2015-03-31T07:40:23.250" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6798" PostId="2487" Score="1" Text="(It's also worth noting that thread dates from 2011 - link rot has become a more serious issue since then, as more and more links stop working. So it's worth wondering whether what is considered the &quot;proportionate&quot; response has changed too.)" CreationDate="2015-03-31T09:06:52.887" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6800" PostId="2487" Score="2" Text="In his answer to the linked question, @whuber recommends making a comment that there needs to be more context and when an edit is not forthcoming he &quot;downvotes or votes to close, depending on how uninformative the reply has been.&quot; Coming from whuber, I would take this approach as &quot;cannon&quot;!" CreationDate="2015-03-31T13:58:30.730" UserId="9249" />
  <row Id="6801" PostId="2487" Score="3" Text="@smilig I did find whuber's answer there useful (more so than the accepted answer) but I wasn't sure how one would implement it as a workflow. For instance, if I see such an answer in the Review Queue, should I add a comment asking for further information to be added, then press &quot;Looks OK&quot; (even though it doesn't), then remember to come back to the thread after a reasonable time to fulfil the request has elapsed? Or should everyone &quot;skip&quot; it in the Review Queue, so it stays under the scrutiny of the Queue until either collective patience is exhausted or the necessary edits get made?" CreationDate="2015-03-31T14:11:18.800" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6802" PostId="2487" Score="2" Text="(If the latter then it relies on *all* reviewers following the same procedure, since if a few press &quot;look okay&quot; then such posts will fall out of the queue. A very clear consensus on workflow would be necessary for this to be sustainable.)" CreationDate="2015-03-31T14:13:04.930" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6805" PostId="2488" Score="4" Text="Welcome on board!" CreationDate="2015-03-31T20:03:43.397" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="6806" PostId="2488" Score="2" Text="Congratulations to both of you!" CreationDate="2015-03-31T20:04:45.627" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6807" PostId="2488" Score="8" Text="Congratulations, Glen and Scortchi.  And grateful thanks to all who participated in the election.  Please continue to contribute to our site and make your voices and concerns heard.  We can continue as a strong community only through the help and ideas of everyone.  (And thanks to you also, Jon Ericson, for posting the election results so expeditiously.)" CreationDate="2015-03-31T20:36:19.573" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6808" PostId="2488" Score="2" Text="Congratulations! I'm sure you'll do this hard job just as great as the others did so far." CreationDate="2015-03-31T21:14:05.663" UserId="8413" />
  <row Id="6809" PostId="2488" Score="1" Text="@whuber: No problem. The last three or so elections I've dropped the ball. So this time I used my calendar to remind me. :-)" CreationDate="2015-03-31T21:31:35.010" UserId="27774" />
  <row Id="6811" PostId="2488" Score="0" Text="Congrats you two! Well deserved and fantastic new mods! :)" CreationDate="2015-04-01T02:44:34.320" UserId="44952" />
  <row Id="6813" PostId="2488" Score="2" Text="Congratulations Glen_b, Scortchi; two fine additions to our dedicated team of Mods!" CreationDate="2015-04-01T14:39:31.747" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="6814" PostId="2488" Score="0" Text="Congratulations! I am sure you will be great additions to the group." CreationDate="2015-04-01T21:07:17.437" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="6816" PostId="2488" Score="0" Text="Thanks everyone. Still trying to figure everything out. Getting there, if a bit slowly." CreationDate="2015-04-02T00:45:03.610" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6820" PostId="2488" Score="0" Text="Thanks! I'll do my best." CreationDate="2015-04-02T13:04:28.063" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="6824" PostId="2488" Score="0" Text="Congratulations @Glen_b and Scortchi, and thank you for your service!" CreationDate="2015-04-02T14:50:16.890" UserId="17286" />
  <row Id="6857" PostId="2488" Score="0" Text="I really appreciate the excellent service and insights that both of you have provided to date.  Thanks for taking on these important community roles." CreationDate="2015-04-13T01:33:56.123" UserId="4253" />
  <row Id="6882" PostId="2488" Score="0" Text="Congratulations Glen_b and Scortchi !!" CreationDate="2015-04-16T03:33:04.123" UserId="59485" />
  <row Id="6902" PostId="2488" Score="0" Text="Excellent outcome and congratulations!" CreationDate="2015-04-23T06:36:04.113" UserId="67799" />
  <row Id="9678" PostId="2488" Score="0" Text="Hell yeah dude!" CreationDate="2016-04-01T14:46:27.013" UserId="100507" />
  <row Id="8880" PostId="2490" Score="0" Text="Consider accepting chl's answer as it seems to have settled the issue." CreationDate="2015-12-10T21:23:17.663" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6815" PostId="2492" Score="4" Text="My concern with removing it is it will likely get remade and reused. I suggest that if it happens again any time soon and stays around, it might be worth making it a synonym of `r`." CreationDate="2015-04-01T22:47:52.277" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6818" PostId="2492" Score="0" Text="On the other hand, there's also the distinct possibility, now or in the future, that `rstudio` could be just as valid a tag as `r`, since it adds a lot of functionality (and presumably will add more), related to which there might ultimately be valid questions (with statistical content or that require statistical knowledge to answer) that don't apply to `r`. (We can undo merging/mapping one tag to another? Or not?)" CreationDate="2015-04-02T01:44:31.460" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6819" PostId="2492" Score="3" Text="IMHO there is not need for such tag and it should be removed. RStudio is just a GUI, if we make tags for such things we should also consider `vi`, `emacs` etc. tags. RStudio alone is incapable of doing anything related to statistics or data visualization (while being the best available GUI for R)." CreationDate="2015-04-02T12:38:36.627" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="6827" PostId="2492" Score="2" Text="@Glen_b My main concern is that RStudio is really just a tool, just like Emacs ESS, as Tim said, not a statistical package. It is much like creating an [Hadley-verse](http://adolfoalvarez.cl/the-hitchhikers-guide-to-the-hadleyverse/) tag, IMO. (P.S. No, we cannot undo merging.)" CreationDate="2015-04-04T09:42:31.307" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="6828" PostId="2492" Score="3" Text="@Tim Here's an example of the kind of question that might relate to statistical content -- in a discussion of how to organize a large number of statistical projects -- what I'd regard as bang on topic -- RStudio does provide tools for that in a way that R doesn't (at least not 'built-in'). If those aspects grow, RStudio could *easily* be the subject of specifically statistical question that don't apply to R." CreationDate="2015-04-04T10:03:48.980" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6829" PostId="2492" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b ok, but how many other topics like this possibly exist? I would say not many. Also, IMHO, this is not less &quot;technical&quot; issue then programming questions on R." CreationDate="2015-04-04T21:32:51.970" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="6826" PostId="2497" Score="4" Text="You might find answers to this question at http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2253.  It would be wise to [look at the site statistics](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/55053?phase=beta), too, if you care whether your question survives as a useful resource for future readers. Regardless of the site, it's important to do some research before asking any question, which is a little harder here because we probably already have the answer somewhere!" CreationDate="2015-04-02T21:35:14.507" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6830" PostId="2508" Score="0" Text="(+1) I think that the best treatment is to convert them to comments. It also drives the point home to the person who posted a link-only answer, for future motivation. Members can and should alert the moderators whenever they hit upon such a link-only answer." CreationDate="2015-04-06T17:09:15.783" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="6831" PostId="2508" Score="0" Text="What I am not sure about (and this is partly a technical question about how this site works) is whether sufficient people recommedning deletion on the review queue will remove the answer entirely before a Moderator has the opportunity to convert it into a comment. (My guess would be that a Moderator could see it even if it was deleted, anyway, and that the flags on it recommending conversion to a comment would still be active, but I don't know. Could anybody help me out here?)" CreationDate="2015-04-06T20:39:24.543" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6833" PostId="2508" Score="0" Text="@Silverfish, a moderator would know about the flags-are-still-visible part, but *yes*, if a post in the Low Quality review queue gets 3 delete votes or 5 recommend delete votes, it will be deleted &amp; won't be converted to a comment by those actions." CreationDate="2015-04-07T14:20:28.433" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6834" PostId="2508" Score="3" Text="Could the downvoter to Andre Silva's answer explain what aspect they disagree with, or post a suggestion of their own? (I know that on Meta such a downvote generally means someone has a different opinion on how such things should be done, and that's really what I was trying to elicit by asking my question in the first place!)" CreationDate="2015-04-07T15:39:41.977" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6836" PostId="2510" Score="0" Text="Do we need `[kernel-regression]`? Would it be enough to have `[kde]` &amp; `[regression]`?" CreationDate="2015-04-09T02:26:15.727" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6837" PostId="2510" Score="0" Text="Yeah, `[kernel-regression]` is pedantically distinct from `[kde]` but I don't see a practical reason to distinguish it." CreationDate="2015-04-09T02:26:52.763" UserId="9964" />
  <row Id="6838" PostId="2510" Score="2" Text="+1, Thanks for bringing this up again. After my question (that you link to) I went through all PCA questions and retagged all kernel PCA ones to [kernel-trick]. But I did not touch kernel SVM questions etc. I think we should have two tags in the end: [kernel-trick] and [kernel-smoothing]." CreationDate="2015-04-09T08:54:22.407" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6901" PostId="2510" Score="1" Text="As a note: I've been slowly going through and categorizing the [kernel] tag, but I decided tonight to just sort it entirely into [kernel-trick] and [kernel-density-estimation] as appropriate, removing [kernel] as I go. I think that should be the easiest path to ending up where we want to be, though it'll take a while to get there. (It's a shame simply retagging bumps to the homepage....)" CreationDate="2015-04-23T06:01:42.723" UserId="9964" />
  <row Id="6839" PostId="2511" Score="1" Text="Some examples might be useful for this discussion - no-one's likely to favour tolerating *exact* duplicates &amp; &quot;the same or closely related topics&quot; is perhaps not precise enough to avoid different construals." CreationDate="2015-04-10T09:07:45.670" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="6840" PostId="2511" Score="1" Text="I'm not sure I understand the question. You seem to suggest there is merit in &quot;redundancy,&quot; but immediately thereafter you talk about how to &quot;cover all possible aspects of the field of interest.&quot;  The latter suggests something more like the opposite of redundancy, where the each answer addresses a distinct aspect of a subject. It's also unclear to me how you conceive of such &quot;redundancy&quot; being instantiated: we already &quot;encourage more answers&quot; to any given question and provide various rewards for doing so. But we try to collect them all within a common thread rather than leaving them scattered." CreationDate="2015-04-10T14:05:31.957" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6841" PostId="2511" Score="1" Text="I can see how my wording is imprecise, and perhaps I should have held off on posting this question until I know more about the site. The cycle I often find myself in is: Google search -&gt; Great return on CV -&gt; Question kind of closed with comments about its having been asked before -&gt; Follow internal hyperlink to original question -&gt; ... but not quite the same angle... specific problem -&gt; Now exit CV to Wikipedia or some college handout. It would be great if once in CV you'd never need to leave regardless of your level of expertise." CreationDate="2015-04-10T15:09:21.240" UserId="67822" />
  <row Id="6842" PostId="2511" Score="1" Text="@AntoniParellada: (1) If you waited until knowing more about the site you might have forgotten the challenges you faced as a new user - so this question is welcome. (2) Again, I think an example or two of a specific instance when you found yourself in this cycle would better help us consider how to improve than a general description of the issue alone." CreationDate="2015-04-10T15:58:45.903" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="6843" PostId="2511" Score="1" Text="Scortchi, I'm having problems &quot;reproducing&quot; my findings, but I plan on illustrating the issue as soon as I get a good example." CreationDate="2015-04-10T21:26:57.413" UserId="67822" />
  <row Id="6844" PostId="2511" Score="0" Text="OK... Not exactly the perfect example, but perhaps it may help... I've been trying to understand the concept of &quot;orthogonal contrasts&quot; in ANOVA for the past few days, and ran into https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/63379/why-is-maximum-number-of-orthogonal-contrasts-equal-to-the-number-of-groups-minu on a Google search. When I read the question, I thought - This is it! Except the question is not greatly formulated and there is no answer. Is 'tantalizing' a good adjective? Should CV ideally aim at having solutions for these types of fundamental questions? I don't know." CreationDate="2015-04-11T04:15:38.287" UserId="67822" />
  <row Id="6848" PostId="2511" Score="0" Text="A better example: http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/145962/is-the-standard-intuition-for-bessels-correction-in-unbiased-sample-variance-wr" CreationDate="2015-04-12T12:52:16.700" UserId="67822" />
  <row Id="6867" PostId="2511" Score="0" Text="The first example is just a q. that hadn't been answered (until you did - thank you!) rather than one flagged as a duplicate. The second has just one vote to close it as a duplicate (&amp; three to leave it open, though you can't see those); &amp; a couple of links to related posts (I don't think it's being suggested that they provide answers to *this* question). So we're still inviting answers to both these questions - I was hoping for examples of q.s that were closed as duplicates when addressing a slightly different angle from the original might have been useful." CreationDate="2015-04-14T15:45:02.630" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="6868" PostId="2511" Score="1" Text="Points well taken. I will provide examples as I stumble upon them, and I hope it is understood that my perception is that this site is phenomenal thanks to the contributions. I just would like for its to be the last click on any search for answers regardless of the level of statistical/math knowledge." CreationDate="2015-04-14T15:50:48.053" UserId="67822" />
  <row Id="6845" PostId="2513" Score="0" Text="Excellent clarification. Thanks." CreationDate="2015-04-11T06:58:34.103" UserId="67822" />
  <row Id="6847" PostId="2514" Score="2" Text="I'm not sure where it is best asked. I suspect CV won't be the best place. You could add something like [cstheory.SE] to your list." CreationDate="2015-04-12T04:29:55.780" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6886" PostId="2514" Score="1" Text="If you happen to use Mathematica, then you would probably get a good answer from Mathematica stack exchange, they have some very good experts there for this type of question." CreationDate="2015-04-16T17:52:05.233" UserId="10065" />
  <row Id="6887" PostId="2514" Score="3" Text="My guess would be http://scicomp.stackexchange.com/ which is the Computational Science SE rather than a Computer Science one!" CreationDate="2015-04-17T23:41:06.000" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6910" PostId="2514" Score="1" Text="There is probably no one right answer. [Stack Overflow](http://stackoverflow.com/) has the largest user base of any of the Stack Exchange pages (see [here](http://stackexchange.com/sites) for details). However, @Silverfish has a good suggestion. Wherever you decide to go, make sure you target your question to that site (e.g., focus on programming at SO or statistics at at CV). The meat of question will be the name, but you'll just want to frame it differently." CreationDate="2015-04-25T00:23:50.070" UserId="73292" />
  <row Id="6856" PostId="2515" Score="3" Text="It's an opportunity to make your question clearly understood by more people. If you disagree with a comment like that, the first thing to do is edit your question to clearly distinguish your question from the other one. Of you feel it's as clear as you can possibly make it already, point to the other question and explain why the two are different, and then perhaps add a (polite) comment saying you don't think it is." CreationDate="2015-04-12T21:39:13.287" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6858" PostId="2515" Score="4" Text="Whenever a comment or answer is &quot;obviously wrong&quot; to you, a good default position is to assume--at least hypothetically--that your post is subject to multiple conflicting interpretations: that is, somebody has understood it in a way you did not intend.  The first action to take is to seek out the possible source of such misinterpretations and edit your post to clarify what you are asking." CreationDate="2015-04-13T14:34:31.953" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6859" PostId="2515" Score="0" Text="@whuber: Thank you, so I did the right thing :-)" CreationDate="2015-04-13T14:39:09.783" UserId="230" />
  <row Id="6849" PostId="2516" Score="6" Text="+1. @vonjd: Note that &quot;obviously wrong&quot; cannot be a summary of judgments here when there is clearly **some** disagreement on how far your question is a new question. Your postings on this site are subject to review by others and their comments and the consequences of their comments will not be removed just because you think them unfair or inaccurate. As with gung, I guess your question will survive; your greater concern with getting good answers is not well served by disputing peer review in this manner." CreationDate="2015-04-12T15:08:43.547" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6850" PostId="2516" Score="0" Text="Ok, so the problem might be that I as the OP thought that everybody saw it so prominently placed at the beginning of the question. This is obviously confusing!" CreationDate="2015-04-12T15:19:29.567" UserId="230" />
  <row Id="6851" PostId="2516" Score="0" Text="@NickCox: I am afraid that *it is* obviously wrong. It is a complete mystery to me how anybody could think both questions are duplicates!" CreationDate="2015-04-12T15:22:56.850" UserId="230" />
  <row Id="6852" PostId="2516" Score="0" Text="@NickCox: See also my edit above - Thank you." CreationDate="2015-04-12T15:27:50.547" UserId="230" />
  <row Id="6853" PostId="2516" Score="7" Text="Once more: the strength of your opinion has itself no implications for how peer review is handled. The standard wording itself carries the implication that it is a suggestion (and one offered in good faith by someone with sufficiently high reputation)." CreationDate="2015-04-12T15:28:59.270" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6854" PostId="2516" Score="0" Text="@NickCox: Thank you. I mean perhaps there *is* a connection after all and I fail to see it. You are one of the members with a very high rep counter: Can *you* guess why *anybody* would think that both questions - after reading them - are duplicates? I would be very interested in your opinion." CreationDate="2015-04-12T15:43:12.860" UserId="230" />
  <row Id="6855" PostId="2516" Score="5" Text="Sorry, but I intend to restrict my attention to the meta issues you have raised and not to spend time reading those threads too. I will just point out that very busy people often read something through quickly; it's the collective decision that counts, not whether individuals got something wrong." CreationDate="2015-04-12T15:48:50.717" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6860" PostId="2517" Score="4" Text="I asked a very similar question a year ago: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2147. It became clear in the comments discussion that one needs 10k reputation to see the review queue history. Too bad." CreationDate="2015-04-13T22:40:25.413" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6861" PostId="2517" Score="1" Text="Thanks, @amoeba, that's really helpful.  I didn't find your question when I was looking and the links / discussion made for good reading. That is indeed too bad, because that's exactly what I was looking for.  I believe that would make mine a duplicate, unless others are inclined to answer the second part pertaining to how they personally got to grips with the system.  Thanks for the thoughts!" CreationDate="2015-04-13T23:30:48.203" UserId="44952" />
  <row Id="6862" PostId="2517" Score="2" Text="Just my opinion, but it doesn't seem to me that this Q needs to be closed. I would think we can be more liberal w/ discussion Q's on meta.CV." CreationDate="2015-04-14T02:29:28.087" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6863" PostId="2518" Score="0" Text="This is fantastic advice, and I will remember it.  Thank you Glen_b, it's very kind of you to spend time helping less experiences users such as myself." CreationDate="2015-04-14T13:39:41.047" UserId="44952" />
  <row Id="6866" PostId="2518" Score="1" Text="Good answer! Perhaps you want to include this [link](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1479/how-to-ask-a-good-question-on-crossvalidated/2345#2345) in the second bullet under the advice #3. It has an answer guiding towards writing and editing better titles. Tks." CreationDate="2015-04-14T15:18:10.437" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="6870" PostId="2518" Score="0" Text="Great link, @AndreSilva, very useful." CreationDate="2015-04-14T16:01:02.900" UserId="44952" />
  <row Id="6871" PostId="2519" Score="0" Text="I don't quite follow your suggestion. Are you saying $\{$`[kernel]`$,$ `[kernel-density-estimate]`$\}\rightarrow$ `[kde]`, &amp; then that `[kernel-smoothing]`$\rightarrow$`[kernel-density-estimate]`?" CreationDate="2015-04-14T16:48:36.660" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6874" PostId="2519" Score="0" Text="Apologies for confusion. My suggestion is that we end up with two tags: one is [kernel-trick] and another is [kernel-something] that corresponds to kde; perhaps it can be [kernel-density-estimate]. Then [kernel-smoothing] and [kde] can be both synonyms to [kernel-density-estimate]. I am not sure what to do with the [kernel] tag itself; it feels wrong to make it a synonym for something more specialized. Perhaps we can simply eliminate this tag via manual retagging and see if it ever reappears... What do you think?" CreationDate="2015-04-14T22:06:58.940" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6879" PostId="2519" Score="0" Text="The tag will need to be destroyed by a moderator. That's the only real solution. I took the liberty of editing your post to make the suggestions explicit. If you don't like it, roll it back w/ my apologies. You may also prefer to edit it, if I got some part wrong. On a different note, people seem to prefer `[kernel-density-estimate]`, but we could go w/ the shorter `[kde]` instead if we wanted. As long as the longer version exists as a synonym, people wouldn't have trouble finding it. I'm not sure where I stand on that, but it's a possibility." CreationDate="2015-04-15T03:49:42.243" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6940" PostId="2519" Score="0" Text="What does it mean for the tag &quot;to be destroyed&quot; by a moderator, @gung? I have never encountered such a procedure. Does it mean that the tag gets deprecated and nobody can post a question with this tag anymore?" CreationDate="2015-04-29T09:59:07.013" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6943" PostId="2519" Score="1" Text="I'm not a moderator, @amoeba, so I don't know exactly. But the mods can blacklist a tag so that it can never be used again. This is more extreme, &amp; permanent, than making a tag a synonym. If we don't make `[kernel]` a synonym, it won't disappear &amp; will certainly be used again." CreationDate="2015-04-29T14:36:28.030" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6864" PostId="2520" Score="2" Text="Our wiki is hard to find, maybe a community promotion add banner for it?" CreationDate="2015-04-14T14:36:39.893" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="6865" PostId="2520" Score="2" Text="Ha, this is nice!" CreationDate="2015-04-14T15:06:46.137" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="7055" PostId="2520" Score="0" Text="... except that many of the questions will be off-topic!" CreationDate="2015-06-24T21:22:12.067" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="7056" PostId="2520" Score="2" Text="@NickCox yes, but this is another reason why visible and direct link to better resources is crucial for such questions not to appear so often." CreationDate="2015-06-25T07:07:26.950" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="7058" PostId="2520" Score="1" Text="@Nick the banner above links to our meta page with resources; the idea would be to channel more of those questions directly to the list of resources." CreationDate="2015-06-27T04:41:33.633" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6872" PostId="2521" Score="1" Text="This is great advice, and very reassuring to know that it's okay to take some risks as a newbie.  Do the mods and high rep users such as yourself often look to see if a newer reviewer such as myself is making good decisions? I imagine that might be time consuming." CreationDate="2015-04-14T17:59:07.210" UserId="44952" />
  <row Id="6873" PostId="2521" Score="1" Text="I mostly don't. I don't know about others." CreationDate="2015-04-14T18:00:18.793" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6875" PostId="2521" Score="0" Text="+1 This is good. The middle section is largely what I was trying to get at in my point 2), but far better expressed." CreationDate="2015-04-14T22:53:53.750" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6876" PostId="2521" Score="0" Text="ChrisC -- I haven't really investigated someone else's reviews in that way. It's possible one might occasionally notice if someone is regularly voting in what seem to be odd ways -- but it's typically not obvious from the usual interaction with the system. That's not to say I've never looked at someone's recent reviews, since I have done so once or twice, but not in order to judge their overall performance. If there was a reason to (if something seemed off or the person asked me to, or perhaps some kind of script flagged a potential problem) I would take more of a look. ... (ctd)" CreationDate="2015-04-14T23:06:03.290" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6877" PostId="2521" Score="0" Text="(ctd) But there are some checks built in to make sure people are actually looking at the reviews. For example, at some point later it's possible you might strike a 'fake' review once in a rare while, which the review system might throw at you. These tend to have an obvious decision (such as being obvious spam or vandalism or just nonsense), and if you happen to skip one it's not a problem (you're allowed to be unsure) -- but if you skip them every time, or make a number of pretty obviously wrong choices, it suggests you're not paying attention to the review process. (ctd)" CreationDate="2015-04-14T23:13:53.533" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6878" PostId="2521" Score="0" Text="(ctd) I don't think they happen in all queues though, so you might not strike one of those for a good while." CreationDate="2015-04-14T23:14:45.263" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6890" PostId="2521" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b, sorry I just noticed your reply! I've been following your advice and keeping questions open in a new tab to see what the review decision is. I think I'll be doing a lot more watching than deciding for the near future.  It's good to know about the &quot;fake&quot; reviews, and I will definitely watch out for them. Thanks again for the help." CreationDate="2015-04-20T15:30:10.510" UserId="44952" />
  <row Id="6891" PostId="2521" Score="2" Text="There are some other ways to work I didn't mention. You should be able to get back to questions you've given a review decision on in your own review history (under `all actions` on your user page), for example. It's not really important to watch for the fake reviews. While it's certainly okay to watch how decisions go, if you lean one way on a review, just take that choice (and then see how it comes out). It won't hurt anything if your opinion differs from someone else's - that's why it normally takes multiple people to make a review (except for mods; their choices are applied immediately...)" CreationDate="2015-04-20T16:53:15.707" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6880" PostId="2523" Score="8" Text="BTW there's a `terminology` tag which is already being used." CreationDate="2015-04-15T20:30:10.813" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="6883" PostId="2523" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi good point! However, the particular kind of questions as the one I linked somehow does not seem to fit for this tag - isn't it? Maybe a synonym tag is needed..?" CreationDate="2015-04-16T06:17:23.690" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="6884" PostId="2523" Score="1" Text="Why not? Google gives the definition:-&quot;the body of terms used with a particular technical application in a subject of study, theory, profession, etc&quot; &amp; the tag wiki excerpt is:-&quot;Indicates questions asking about the use and meaning of specific technical words/concepts in statistics&quot;. Both seem to fit with this q. (`nomenclature` is already a synonym - if people are creating different tags with similar meanings we can add to the synonym list.)" CreationDate="2015-04-16T10:14:01.810" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="6881" PostId="2525" Score="1" Text="Isn't &quot;to learn&quot; transitive even outside ML? E.g. &quot;to learn a poem&quot;." CreationDate="2015-04-15T21:39:29.023" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6885" PostId="2525" Score="4" Text="@amoeba That is correct. However, &quot;learn&quot; is used both as a transitive and intransitive verb.  The meaning &quot;to acquire knowledge or skill&quot; is intransitive, but this also seems to be the sense in which &quot;learn&quot; is meant even when it is used *transitively* in the ML community.  The discord in phrases like &quot;learn a hypothesis&quot; or &quot;learn a classifier&quot; is jarring." CreationDate="2015-04-16T15:00:14.753" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6893" PostId="2527" Score="7" Text="Depends on who you ask. I can think of some who would say 'too much'." CreationDate="2015-04-21T22:32:47.103" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6894" PostId="2527" Score="4" Text="I am not a top rep user, but I have recently said &quot;too much&quot; to myself and set a browser block for CV during productive hours... It used to be several hours per day, not it's below half an hour. Perhaps once I feel that I am off the hook, I will remove the block." CreationDate="2015-04-21T23:24:42.373" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6897" PostId="2527" Score="4" Text="I am also not a top rep user, but the nature of my work means that I go between spells of insanely, incessantly busy, to having time on my hands. My free spells generally correspond to time I spend on CV, and I have found that relatively little daily time is required to be well within the Top 10 users by rep on my &quot;free&quot; months. Perhaps 30 mins to an hour a day, on average. Many of the very top users by cumulative rep have been doing so for years and more consistently than me, but it's possible to be useful in less time than you think, particularly if you focus on a few, high quality answers." CreationDate="2015-04-22T15:45:18.700" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6899" PostId="2527" Score="3" Text="I understated how easy a high rank is! I was last seriously active in January, contributing just 5 answers since - I've mostly been reviewing/editing/commenting instead, better suited to drive-by visits to the site - and I'm *still* ranked in the 2015 Top 10! That's largely on one month's contributions. If your work pattern is more regular than mine, that suggests it's possible to be a Top 10 user over the course of a year, by consistently running at about a quarter of the activity level I had in January: 1 or 2 good answers per week would do, so it needn't be a time-hog. Dive in &amp; contribute!" CreationDate="2015-04-22T22:29:47.900" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6907" PostId="2527" Score="4" Text="@Silverfish: You make an important point, namely that it is *possible* to be at the top by reputation growth by only posting a couple of answers per week. However, one should also say that it is nowhere as &quot;easy&quot; as you make it look! It's like a professional pianist saying that playing Appasionatta is easy; well, perhaps it is, but only after decades of training. Most of the users contributing to CV would certainly *not* be able to be in the Top 10 by posting only a couple of answers per week." CreationDate="2015-04-24T13:40:47.003" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6909" PostId="2527" Score="1" Text="@amoeba A very fair point - the average rep per answer also matters and that varies a lot, not just dependent on quality (including general appeal of the topic area you post in - ironically the fact I'm not technically qualified to answer more advanced or &quot;niche&quot; areas probably works in my favour, rep-wise). Still, two quality answers per week regularly would likely translate to several 1000 rep per year, enough to be comfortably in the top few %. Someone who writes regular answers is likely to get better - and faster - at producing them, too." CreationDate="2015-04-24T21:18:54.080" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6898" PostId="2529" Score="0" Text="Thanks for the feedback." CreationDate="2015-04-22T18:17:29.600" UserId="74180" />
  <row Id="6933" PostId="2530" Score="0" Text="I think the confusion lies in that experimental design is actually its own item on this list, perhaps suggesting to readers that data collection doesn't mean what we take it to mean. Perhaps one item is more appropriate, e.g. &quot;data collection (i.e. experimental design, sampling methods, surveys, etc.)&quot;" CreationDate="2015-04-29T00:30:43.160" UserId="36444" />
  <row Id="6903" PostId="2531" Score="2" Text="I might be wrong, but I don't think LaTeX tables have ever been supported on SE. I've seen *arrays* in the LaTeX maths environment, which look like tables." CreationDate="2015-04-23T12:08:18.127" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="6904" PostId="2531" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi This may well be the case. My memory may be deceiving me, but I am sure I recall seeing &quot;tables&quot; in Latex complete with gridlines. Perhaps they were heavily formatted arrays, or similar - I'm not enough of a Latex wizard to know!" CreationDate="2015-04-23T12:12:33.947" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6906" PostId="2531" Score="2" Text="I always use arrays -- they can include lines; I could never figure out how to get tables to work, and I eventually concluded that they didn't." CreationDate="2015-04-24T01:10:50.490" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6905" PostId="2532" Score="1" Text="Thanks, I wondered whether those threads had been superseded (I know there have been some changes to rendering) but apparently not - suspect you're right that the posts I found simply never worked, rather than have stopped working recently!" CreationDate="2015-04-23T15:56:30.063" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6908" PostId="2537" Score="7" Text="&quot;Created after the bounty started&quot;" CreationDate="2015-04-24T20:16:32.417" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6911" PostId="2537" Score="0" Text="@whuber, Oh, I see. Thank you!" CreationDate="2015-04-25T05:10:43.237" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="6912" PostId="2537" Score="4" Text="@RichardHardy, maybe you could post an answer to your own question, so it would be highlighted for future users having the same question. Tks." CreationDate="2015-04-25T14:09:42.660" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="6914" PostId="2540" Score="13" Text="+1 As always, your thoughtful and insightful comments are appreciated. There is something new being revealed in the site data, however. Briefly, a year ago we were closing 55 questions per week out of 475 posed and posting 350 answers (to the remaining 420). Now we are closing 150 per week out of 650 posed and posting 425 answers (to the remaining 500). IMHO, we are not closing enough--many questions appear to be duplicates. Those tend not to be answered or even commented on by experienced community members, but instead attract newcomers, some of whose contributions are spotty." CreationDate="2015-04-28T14:18:21.060" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6916" PostId="2540" Score="8" Text="@whuber Thanks; that's data, and we respect data around here.... I'd guess at these shifts as indirect reflections of the success of the site. As it becomes more visible, we might expect a slow drift downward in the quality of questions. There is less effort to search the site for past answers and more of a perception that all you need to do is ask a question! I have a few times noticed a little more aggression from new members who take the line that their question is on-topic if they think it is and it's your job to answer it. (FWIW, I am fairly active in closing questions.)" CreationDate="2015-04-28T14:33:49.653" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6917" PostId="2540" Score="8" Text="A current example of what I wrote about in my comment is unfolding at http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/148663/why-is-mathbb-ex-sum-i-1nx-i-px-i#148693. One thing that appears to be missing from responses provided by newcomers is *patience*: instead of stopping to ask for clarification, many jump right in to give answers which might or might not make sense and might or might not be correct. Such answers nevertheless seem to get one or two upvotes routinely. The conundrum is: how to encourage participation among newcomers while helping them do so *constructively*?" CreationDate="2015-04-28T14:40:51.427" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6918" PostId="2540" Score="3" Text="In various professions the answer would be training, mentoring, etc. but I don't want to propose new procedures for that here. The best training and mentoring, in my view, is to react directly to postings, encouraging good stuff and discouraging the rest, with reasons." CreationDate="2015-04-28T14:55:14.503" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6945" PostId="2540" Score="1" Text="@whuber I don't know if the site already does this, but maybe something could pop up when you click to post your first answer, like &quot;Hey, here's typically how you're supposed to answer&quot; and you have to scroll to the bottom and press &quot;got it!&quot; before continuing. Like those EULAs nobody reads. then at least it was put in front of them. I didn't even think to click the &quot;help&quot; button up top until I already had 1k+ rep" CreationDate="2015-04-30T03:59:24.770" UserId="36229" />
  <row Id="6952" PostId="2540" Score="1" Text="What about wrong answers (part of the original question)? Just recently I've encountered [an answer](http://stats.stackexchange.com/a/41292/36515) that was accepted and upvoted 5 times on a somewhat popular question, yet the answer was it seems partly wrong (since 2012, see history). After exchanging several comments, the user admitted to the errors and corrected most of them. But I was surprised how the peer-review system had failed for such a long time in this case, affecting many readers..." CreationDate="2015-05-04T13:30:07.743" UserId="36515" />
  <row Id="6953" PostId="2540" Score="4" Text="What to do about wrong answers is the main focus of my post. SE is a quixotic variation on &quot;peer review&quot; as (a) survival as a post doesn't depend on anyone's approval or upvoting (b) politeness or indifference or being too busy to fight all battles can lead to lousy stuff just being ignored (c) if a post isn't spotted by someone active within a few days of being posted it can often lie there unnoticed for a long time." CreationDate="2015-05-04T13:34:47.827" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6959" PostId="2540" Score="1" Text="@NickCox When a user suspects a certain answer of being (technically) wrong, and has exhausted the comments mechanism (e.g. no further comments from poster), is there a way to flag such posts for further review by high-rep users?" CreationDate="2015-05-04T14:07:21.293" UserId="36515" />
  <row Id="6965" PostId="2540" Score="1" Text="Flagging strict sense only attracts the attention of moderators: you shouldn't flag what you think is wrong. It's not the moderators' job to rule on right or wrong! You should only flag spam, rudeness, stuff that isn't an answer at all, etc. Otherwise there are no special mechanisms. The bottom line is that this is a **forum**: the other person has a right to be wrong-headed in public, just as you have the right to be correct in public. Sometimes the most valuable part of a thread is a single polite but sharp debunking remark from someone very competent. @whuber is the master here." CreationDate="2015-05-04T14:17:16.827" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6966" PostId="2540" Score="1" Text="@landroni See above + The main way to bump a thread to wide attention is to add your own answer. If it's good as you think, that's the best and the most publicity you can get for you view." CreationDate="2015-05-04T14:18:34.387" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6969" PostId="2540" Score="1" Text="@NickCox All good points, thanks." CreationDate="2015-05-04T14:26:42.837" UserId="36515" />
  <row Id="7000" PostId="2540" Score="1" Text="I agree with @whuber , this is exactly my point in here!" CreationDate="2015-05-08T08:55:28.773" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="6915" PostId="2541" Score="14" Text="(+1) Identifying duplicates--which adds valuable information to the site by linking related material--takes *insight* and *research*. It is a valuable service, even though it is underappreciated within the SE system." CreationDate="2015-04-28T14:19:49.023" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6919" PostId="2542" Score="6" Text="This has been discussed some time ago, see [R-specific StackExchange site or greater integration of R community within CV?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/909/930) (with [follow-up comments](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/1616/930))." CreationDate="2015-04-28T16:05:22.293" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="6921" PostId="2542" Score="2" Text="There are, of course, a great deal of R programming questions already on [SO]. It seems to me the issue is of greater concern for them than for us. Are you thinking the existing SO Qs should be migrated to the new R.SE? How do you see the new site being related to SO &amp; CV generally?" CreationDate="2015-04-28T19:27:50.060" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6922" PostId="2542" Score="0" Text="@gung I think the situation would be analogous to http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/. They also had a lot of questions on SO, which eventually got migrated to mathematica.SE." CreationDate="2015-04-28T19:35:36.777" UserId="5536" />
  <row Id="6923" PostId="2542" Score="3" Text="I'm open to the idea of an R.SE site, but I'm ambivalent about it. I think it would create more confusion than it's worth to have R Qs on CV, R Qs on SO, &amp; an R.SE site. If the R Qs on SO were all migrated to the new R.SE, &amp; we could maintain an otherwise identical arrangement--that would mitigate against the 3-site confusion. OTOH if the new site is really the same as R on SO, there is some question of why making the new site is worth the effort &amp; (SO) disruption." CreationDate="2015-04-28T19:43:05.563" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6924" PostId="2545" Score="0" Text="I have become so used to the nifty &quot;edit&quot; button I even had a glance to see where it had gone so I could change &quot;embrased&quot;, but of course there was no such option :-)" CreationDate="2015-04-28T19:57:59.333" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6925" PostId="2545" Score="3" Text="I am intrigued here. How can one user close a proposal like this? (I have serious doubts about the merits and viability of this idea, but that's not my point at all.)" CreationDate="2015-04-28T19:58:40.377" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6926" PostId="2545" Score="0" Text="Me too; embrace your favourite dictionaries!" CreationDate="2015-04-28T20:00:12.610" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6927" PostId="2545" Score="1" Text="It's like saying that SAS users embraced the use of `CARDS` statement to input their data. Yes, it's there; but it does not mean that it's the best solution to the problem." CreationDate="2015-04-28T21:05:01.537" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="6928" PostId="2545" Score="1" Text="I'm thoroughly confused--exactly *what* &quot;went on to gain a strong following on (CV)&quot;? Is Cartaino saying CV is the place for `R` questions? That it's not?  That CV supports keeping `R` questions on SO?" CreationDate="2015-04-28T22:08:53.313" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="6929" PostId="2545" Score="2" Text="@whuber Other than a vague sense that he is seeking to avoid splitting up R on the SE system any further, I'm not sure what he means. (But he really did write &quot;embrased&quot;!)" CreationDate="2015-04-28T22:19:34.917" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="6934" PostId="2545" Score="0" Text="Maybe he was trying to type &quot;embarassed&quot; and it just *looks* like he meant &quot;embraced&quot;." CreationDate="2015-04-29T05:14:17.643" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6936" PostId="2545" Score="0" Text="I don't think being &quot;Director of Community Development&quot; marches well with just squashing the proposal immediately and unilaterally. How much community involvement is that in discussing the merits of a proposal? (Or, if this is not what it seems, it should have been better explained.)" CreationDate="2015-04-29T09:23:28.847" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6939" PostId="2545" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b: Or &quot;embarrassed&quot;?" CreationDate="2015-04-29T09:57:06.317" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6941" PostId="2545" Score="0" Text="@NickCox I typed it that way but the built in spellchecker that's running on this machine underlined it in red. I changed it until it stopped complaining. I mistakenly assumed it knew better than me. I presume one-r is US spelling." CreationDate="2015-04-29T10:13:51.073" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6942" PostId="2545" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b How embarrassing. (I won't milk this any more....)" CreationDate="2015-04-29T10:15:25.697" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6932" PostId="2546" Score="3" Text="I am not an active SO user, but your interpreation of what is (or rather should be) on-topic there seems to be pretty restrictive. Think of any specific question in any specific programming language and google it: e.g. [python remove element from dictionary](https://www.google.com/search?q=python+remove+element+from+dictionary) -- the first hit is often to a SO thread that answers the question. There are myriads of similar questions on SO. How are they more &quot;in the context of developing executable code&quot; than a question about tweaking `ggplot` to achieve something?" CreationDate="2015-04-28T23:27:21.210" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6937" PostId="2546" Score="0" Text="On Statalist: As @StasK knows, I was party to the decision to relaunch as a separate web forum. There were, and are, some minuses as well as pluses to the decision, but the most important point is that people wishing to use SE for Stata questions were and are free to do so." CreationDate="2015-04-29T09:28:09.423" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6938" PostId="2546" Score="0" Text="I would echo the reservations here about the kinds of questions asked about statistical software on SO. Many of the questions asked about Stata on SO are not programming questions at all: some don't even include any code but are just &quot;How do I do X in Stata?&quot;. It's only because SO operates as a set of separate forums which largely police themselves that many of these questions survive at all." CreationDate="2015-04-29T09:55:43.337" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6972" PostId="2546" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, Python leads to an executable code, eventually. People learn Python to write programs that deal with pretty much any area of application. However, I am yet to hear about anybody having written, say, a web server that runs in R. (This is of course about me as an occasional R user, at best; may be such webservers do exist, and may be Univ of Auckland Dept of Statistics website is being run in R...)" CreationDate="2015-05-04T15:27:44.733" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="6973" PostId="2546" Score="0" Text="@NickCox, people who are not aware that CV/SO exist cannot be in the category of those wishing to use them to ask Stata questions. Arguably, this could be classified as a failure to self-educate of what the existing learning resources are. However, one indicator of the lack of visibility of statalist.org is that, unlike say &quot;How do I do X in LaTeX?&quot; questions that invariably land on latex.se, &quot;[How do I do X in Stata?](https://www.google.com/?q=how+do+I+run+a+nonlinear+regression+in+stata)&quot; are unlikely to land on statalist.org, although SO/CV won't be among the top links, either." CreationDate="2015-05-04T15:36:40.747" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="6976" PostId="2546" Score="0" Text="@StasK Not clear of your point. But Statalist posts are of the order of 100 posts per day while Stata posts on SO are more like 2 per day. Which is evidently more visible to Stata users?" CreationDate="2015-05-04T15:41:38.350" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6978" PostId="2546" Score="0" Text="statalist is visible to the &quot;proper&quot; Stata community -- those who come to user group meetings/conferences, subscribed to the Stata Journal, and take short classes from Stata. Beyond that, there's an ocean of students on whom Stata was dumped by their economics professors without explanations, and who have to find some answer somewhere. 100 posts/day is a very solid activity, likely comparable to R tag activity here, and probably would have satisfied the [healthy beta requirements](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/215572/be-clearer-on-what-a-beta-site-needs-to-graduate) quite easily." CreationDate="2015-05-04T15:55:26.613" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="6979" PostId="2546" Score="0" Text="Statalist is intended as a one-stop, one-shop forum covering Stata **and** statistics. I don't think that would work here as part of SE, but anyone is welcome to try to propose that. Judging from the thread here a proposal would not get far. I wouldn't want to work on the criteria for Stata on SO vs Stata on CV vs Stata somewhere else." CreationDate="2015-05-04T16:01:50.153" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6990" PostId="2550" Score="1" Text="Well, that happened... and it wasn't even 6-8 weeks." CreationDate="2015-05-06T02:29:57.213" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6947" PostId="2551" Score="0" Text="=D =D nice loss of memory usage." CreationDate="2015-05-03T10:26:37.507" UserId="40252" />
  <row Id="6948" PostId="2552" Score="1" Text="Seems to be answered on [meta.SE](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/78107/email-subscription-to-a-combination-of-tags-using-and-operator)" CreationDate="2015-05-03T10:28:11.467" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6949" PostId="2553" Score="2" Text="I can only speak only for myself -- I simply think other people than myself would be better placed to respond that. You may want to consider whether more details, some clarification, or greater visibility might help." CreationDate="2015-05-03T13:47:00.170" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6951" PostId="2557" Score="1" Text="if it's too much programming for xv, and too much statistics for so, does it belong on the [data science se](http://datascience.stackexchange.com/)?" CreationDate="2015-05-04T12:56:00.713" UserId="70461" />
  <row Id="6964" PostId="2557" Score="5" Text="I voted to close that Q, but I voted as &quot;unclear...&quot;, not to migrate. In general, we should migrate Q's w/ a [reproducible example](http://stackoverflow.com/q/5963269/1217536) (ie data &amp; code), &amp; not otherwise." CreationDate="2015-05-04T14:17:05.167" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6982" PostId="2557" Score="0" Text="I voted &quot;not to close&quot; that question---the statistical content was clear, I am surprised it was migrated." CreationDate="2015-05-04T16:37:22.117" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="6983" PostId="2557" Score="0" Text="@kjetil It wasn't migrated from here. The OP concluded from the advice there (the advice was fine; it's the outcome I'm concerned about) that such a question should be deleted here and reposted to SO. SO then migrated it here. [However, similar posts do migrate on the basis that it &quot;belongs on SO&quot;, and if it hadn't been deleted it would have been likely to migrate.]" CreationDate="2015-05-04T16:39:27.950" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6998" PostId="2557" Score="1" Text="either way, this new format is really cheesing me off at least. I agree that history does not belong on here; etc. But why, in an age when data science,statistics, and programming are becoming more ubiquitous is there any distinction at all. Cross-breading has a huge benefit (mathematicians learn to program, programs learn new stats for AI, graphics; etc. win-win)" CreationDate="2015-05-07T16:03:33.367" UserId="67387" />
  <row Id="7003" PostId="2557" Score="1" Text="I think programming-related statistics questions should be welcomed here. I very often answer questions on SO which are basically statistics questions, but framed as programming questions in Matlab (or R, ...)." CreationDate="2015-05-08T17:38:04.127" UserId="17023" />
  <row Id="7004" PostId="2557" Score="1" Text="I don't have the faintest idea why anyone would think that is a SO question" CreationDate="2015-05-09T13:11:29.523" UserId="36229" />
  <row Id="7014" PostId="2557" Score="2" Text="[As a diamond mod on SO](http://stackoverflow.com/users/50776/casperone) I can say that it being migrated back here was absolutely wrong.  That question should have been closed there as off topic, not providing a clear, reproducable problem (in other words, &quot;what have you tried, what is the error you're seeing&quot;).  Sorry that it got kicked back here when it shouldn't." CreationDate="2015-05-13T12:29:40.863" UserId="740" />
  <row Id="6960" PostId="2558" Score="1" Text="(+1) Don't think it's hard to read, but the others are shrewd observations. (1) Inclusion of untranslated jargon can make the problem appear potentially more complicated than it is - do we have a different function of something at each time point to consider, or just a value of a function? As well as being tedious to have to ask, it suggests an unthoughtful questioner, which doesn't bode well. (2) Doing some research beforehand can allow you to focus the q. &amp; make it more enticing to people who might answer." CreationDate="2015-05-04T14:10:51.047" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="6950" PostId="2559" Score="0" Text="Voting to close is certainly a reasonable choice for questions like these; the OP still has a chance to improve the post, or to ask for migration (though I wouldn't migrate that one as it was). Additionally, our usual close reason for the code-related problems points to a list of resources, so there's some increased opportunity to find a solution. Even if we can't do anything else for them, closure is a good option." CreationDate="2015-05-04T08:40:14.373" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="7005" PostId="2559" Score="0" Text="I don't participate on this site, at all I think (through I have some interest in data analysis, as economist, I haven't found a reason to participate), but what you say about &quot;There is no axiom that all questions have a place somewhere on SE&quot; is another way of the saying &quot;we don't migrate crap&quot; which I wholeheartedly agree and follow. Crap is crap, wherever you see it." CreationDate="2015-05-09T19:11:59.577" UserId="52748" />
  <row Id="7006" PostId="2559" Score="0" Text="@Braiam I am pleased that you think you agree with me, modulo a difference in wording. But my main point is just that many questions are **off-topic both here and on SE**. Many would go fine in other forums. It is true that many do not show research effort, or are unclear or not useful, but that doesn't seem the point of this thread." CreationDate="2015-05-09T19:38:33.497" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6954" PostId="2560" Score="5" Text="See [here](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1992/whats-the-site-policy-on-removing-text-such-as-thankyou-or-this-question-is/1996). (I wouldn't have bothered in this case if I wasn't already editing your q.)" CreationDate="2015-05-04T13:35:05.307" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="6955" PostId="2560" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi Ok, thanks. I asked as on math.stackexchange, where the majority of my post are located, my &quot;thank you&quot; statements are normally left in but here it seemed they were being rapidly removed. Thanks for the clarification." CreationDate="2015-05-04T13:41:08.150" UserId="41431" />
  <row Id="6956" PostId="2560" Score="4" Text="Did you thank me twice in the comment to make up for the lack of thanks in the question? ;)" CreationDate="2015-05-04T13:43:40.840" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="6957" PostId="2560" Score="2" Text="Just for the record, I also had the habit to write 'thanks' in all asked questions. But got convinced not to [some time ago](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1740/tags-on-meta-cv-about-questions)." CreationDate="2015-05-04T14:04:17.887" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="6958" PostId="2560" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi I didn't even notice I had done that!" CreationDate="2015-05-04T14:06:54.337" UserId="41431" />
  <row Id="6961" PostId="2560" Score="0" Text="@AndreSilva Yeah I have never really been convinced about the arguments against thanking people. I can see why similar things such as &quot;this is too easy&quot; or &quot;I'm not a mathematician/statistician..&quot; should be omitted but I see distinct differences between the two. First the second kind of statements often appear in titles or at the start of questions and so are read by anyone who wants to view the question and can be a distraction, unlike thanks which appears at the end and doesn't, in my opinion disrupt the clarity of a question." CreationDate="2015-05-04T14:11:16.343" UserId="41431" />
  <row Id="6962" PostId="2560" Score="0" Text="The second is that I don't think they add any value at all where as I feel that saying thanks is a genuine signal of appreciation." CreationDate="2015-05-04T14:11:24.627" UserId="41431" />
  <row Id="6963" PostId="2560" Score="0" Text="I will of course defer to the practices of the specific forum that I am posting in and will endeavor to refrain thanking people at the end of posts." CreationDate="2015-05-04T14:13:38.827" UserId="41431" />
  <row Id="6988" PostId="2560" Score="1" Text="You can always leave a comment to thank for a good answer that your question received. This is often done here and perfectly tolerated (especially if the comment is a bit more substantial than just &quot;thank you&quot;). So essentially you may (and perhaps should even try to) say thank you, but *after* you got an answer, not *before*. And in the comments space." CreationDate="2015-05-05T10:48:17.727" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="6970" PostId="2562" Score="1" Text="I once supported an Area 51 proposal for a Matlab site, which is closed now. But already then I had the feeling that maybe the community is too small to warrant its own site. On the other hand, I feel that the Matlab community on SO is something of a foreign object. What about a site that brings together people interested in programming for data analysis &amp; statistics regardless of language, covering R, Matlab, Python with SciPy, etc. etc.?" CreationDate="2015-05-04T14:50:30.003" UserId="17023" />
  <row Id="6971" PostId="2562" Score="3" Text="Some would argue that DataScience.SE is such a forum." CreationDate="2015-05-04T15:20:10.780" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="6974" PostId="2562" Score="2" Text="In principle, yes, but it doesn't feel like that. I monitor the matlab tag on SE, and so I answer questions across SO, CV, math.SE, DSP etc., but there hasn't been a question on DS that I felt inclined to answer. One reason might be that it is much more &quot;machine learning&quot; than statistical data analysis. I'm aware that the two cannot be cleanly separated, but my feeling is &quot;data science&quot; is dominated by engineers that just want something to &quot;work&quot;, and often operate under the assumption that there's nothing relevant that is older than 30 years." CreationDate="2015-05-04T15:38:25.407" UserId="17023" />
  <row Id="6975" PostId="2562" Score="2" Text="Then how about welcoming statistical programming questions on CV? On SO, I often find that the OP needs help with understanding the statistics just as much as with implementing the analysis, so the line is blurred anyway." CreationDate="2015-05-04T15:39:23.967" UserId="17023" />
  <row Id="6977" PostId="2562" Score="2" Text="30 years??? These must the engineers who are in their sixties to recall that far back. And TAOCP was first published, mind you, more than 50 years ago." CreationDate="2015-05-04T15:43:48.267" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="6981" PostId="2562" Score="1" Text="I was thinking about [Machine Learning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Learning_(journal)), since 1986." CreationDate="2015-05-04T16:18:21.650" UserId="17023" />
  <row Id="6980" PostId="2563" Score="0" Text="Indeed; @Glen_b tried very hard to get the OP to improve the question, evidently with no success (although perhaps time zones interfered)." CreationDate="2015-05-04T16:11:45.870" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6986" PostId="2564" Score="2" Text="Within the next few days." CreationDate="2015-05-04T18:07:06.233" UserId="75177" />
  <row Id="6989" PostId="2564" Score="4" Text="Or perhaps today." CreationDate="2015-05-05T15:00:36.130" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="6987" PostId="2565" Score="5" Text="I'm not aware of any such proposed feature, but I bet it's been asked about before -- it might be useful to have such facilities from a variety of viewpoints (a personal sandbox would be very handy). The thing to do is search on meta.stackexchange for posts on this kind of things, and if you don't find any, to post a feature request. The features of such a notebook would presumably vary from SE site to SE site. (e.g. only a few sites have MathJax)" CreationDate="2015-05-05T02:51:03.627" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="6991" PostId="2565" Score="3" Text="This better fits for Meta-meta, as @Glen_b suggested. As about the functionality, I don't think it fits the SE framework. SE is problem-focused rather then social networking site, so it is not really user-focused, while this kind of notebook would in fact be some kind of &quot;blog&quot; - blogs are *not* problem-focused. Also the idea of Q&amp;A site is *not* to share personal thoughts and ideas, so this kind of subjective page does not fit it." CreationDate="2015-05-06T12:15:46.473" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="6992" PostId="2566" Score="3" Text="How would that work? Suppose I write an R package [that won't happen for other reasons, but consider the hypothetical]  but don't document it well: do you then edit its documentation or do you write a separate guide? (I know this is a side-issue to this thread, but I am curious about what you envisage.)" CreationDate="2015-05-07T07:18:37.280" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6993" PostId="2566" Score="0" Text="That would be maintained somewhere with sources. So I would send the pull request or a patch to documentation. You would consider my contribution and accept it. Since you don't give a dam about docs, it's likely that my contribution would make a big positive difference." CreationDate="2015-05-07T10:49:46.243" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="6994" PostId="2566" Score="0" Text="I'd be interested to know if this ever happens. In the Stata community user-written contributions are essentially open source too, but essentially what happens when programs are poorly documented is they are ignored or complained about, but other people competent in the same territory don't rewrite their lousy documentation; they're more likely to write their own programs instead." CreationDate="2015-05-07T11:09:27.313" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6995" PostId="2566" Score="0" Text="I doubt that it happens a lot. Writing the docs is time consuming. People want too be compensated for it, so they end up writing books. That's why there's so many books on open source, it works out well with poor documentation. The developers like developing they don't like writing docs. However, since all code repositories are public, it's possible in principle to contribute to documentation." CreationDate="2015-05-07T11:45:05.403" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="6996" PostId="2566" Score="3" Text="Interesting; thanks for the comments. By the way, I don't fully support your stance here about R. It just seems to me that &quot;documenting the software&quot; and &quot;teaching the users about the methods&quot; are treated rather differently by the R community than by firms selling proprietary software." CreationDate="2015-05-07T11:55:43.180" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="6997" PostId="2566" Score="0" Text="Your examples aren't comparing the same things: R's is for, as it says, &quot;an F test to compare the variances of two samples from normal populations&quot;; Stata's &quot;performs Wald tests of simple and composite linear hypotheses about the parameters of the most recently fit model&quot;. (I'm sure you could find better ones though.)" CreationDate="2015-05-07T15:59:52.960" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="6999" PostId="2566" Score="7" Text="CV is committed to willingness to answer statistical questions regardless of how well the software that people use documents the underlying methods.  So, R users who ask statistical questions are just as entitled to support as anyone else." CreationDate="2015-05-07T16:24:16.047" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="7008" PostId="2568" Score="0" Text="Good catch. We'll fix it." CreationDate="2015-05-10T18:07:57.187" UserId="75177" />
  <row Id="7009" PostId="2568" Score="0" Text="@KurtisBeavers, the upvote normal distribution also shifts slightly to the right when clicked." CreationDate="2015-05-11T17:55:37.630" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="7010" PostId="2568" Score="0" Text="Yeah, the sprite got shifted. Fixing soon." CreationDate="2015-05-11T20:24:32.417" UserId="75177" />
  <row Id="7015" PostId="2568" Score="1" Text="This issue should be fixed now." CreationDate="2015-05-13T21:12:04.133" UserId="75177" />
  <row Id="7011" PostId="2569" Score="0" Text="A question with some relevance to this discussion (also linked in my answer) is here: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2511/asking-for-clarification-on-the-benefits-of-redundancy-or-multiple-questions-and" CreationDate="2015-05-12T01:45:01.723" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="7012" PostId="2570" Score="4" Text="(+1) With levels 2 &amp; 3 it's sometimes helpful to briefly explain *why* the duplicated/linked posts are related, when this might not be obvious to everyone." CreationDate="2015-05-12T09:23:58.823" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="7013" PostId="2570" Score="2" Text="+1 @Scortchi excellent point; indeed, giving an explanation when flagging is often a big help." CreationDate="2015-05-12T09:26:48.680" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="7016" PostId="2576" Score="1" Text="Unfortunately your last sentence is the nub of the matter: tougher &quot;border controls&quot; would need to be system-wide. The key weakness of the SE system is that there is no strong disincentive to posting poor questions. Arguably there should not be, as it does offer itself as a place where you can ask questions. On CV there is no shortage of people using statistics who lack the training, background, inclination or time to do much reading first. On &quot;few people bother to edit questions&quot;: are you thinking of lack of effort by OPs, longer-established members or both?" CreationDate="2015-05-14T12:32:37.980" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="7017" PostId="2576" Score="1" Text="Perhaps I should amplify my last comment. There are many strong disincentives to posting a poor question: downvoting, deletion, being ignored, what posters often regard as unhelpful or irrelevant comments, etc. The point is just that they often don't seem to bite -- or apply after the question has been posted." CreationDate="2015-05-14T14:10:10.637" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="7018" PostId="2576" Score="0" Text="@NickCox &quot;few people edit questions&quot;. I don't have any data on this. But a major edit of a question can really only be done before there are any answers, or your edit of the question may make the answer look wrong or incomplete." CreationDate="2015-05-14T15:35:42.280" UserId="25" />
  <row Id="7019" PostId="2576" Score="4" Text="There are two types of major edits in my view. One makes numerous minor changes to presentation (e.g. grammar, spelling, punctuation, style, equation mark-up, formatting) but does not deliberately change what is being asked. The other tries to formulate a better question (in the editor's view). The latter kind is usually inappropriate, as explaining why a question is misguided or wrong is part of an answer to the OP, not the purpose of an edit." CreationDate="2015-05-14T15:42:10.017" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="7020" PostId="2577" Score="2" Text="In respect of the downvote (which wasn't mine) -- just a reminder that in meta votes, can often be used to express disagreement with whatever is bring proposed, without necessarily being a reflection on the quality of the question; that may be the case here." CreationDate="2015-05-15T03:10:52.953" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="7021" PostId="2577" Score="2" Text="Mention your authorship of the package on your user profile." CreationDate="2015-05-15T15:12:57.833" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="7022" PostId="2579" Score="6" Text="I'd advise something already embedded in this answer. Find a [glmnet](http://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bglmnet%5D+answers%3A0+closed%3A0) question in CV, where you can provide an (awesome) answer and use your software to complement it, liking providing examples and outputs with code generated by it. Don't forget to say you are the author of such software." CreationDate="2015-05-15T15:41:29.947" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="7023" PostId="2580" Score="15" Text="Main thread on meta.SE: [should downvoting be allowed on comments](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3615/should-downvoting-be-allowed-on-comments) ... several duplicates already exist e.g. [ability to downvote comments](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7014/ability-to-downvote-comments), [please let us downvote comments](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/14641/please-let-us-downvote-comments), and the revisit [why was downvoting comments declined](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/171677/why-was-downvoting-comments-declined-should-this-feature-be-revisited)" CreationDate="2015-05-16T02:29:37.630" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="7024" PostId="2580" Score="9" Text="So the short answer would appear to be: It has been considered. If it ever happens, it looks like it's not going to be any time soon. The most obvious response to a poor comment remains &quot;reply to it, explain what's wrong&quot;." CreationDate="2015-05-16T02:40:23.857" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="7025" PostId="2580" Score="6" Text="@Glen_b hmm, how disappointing.  The argument that seems to have carried the most weight is that the SE staff aren't sure what the use of downvoting would be.  To me this is obvious -- it's a way to say &quot;this comment isn't useful&quot; without replying to the original comment, which in itself would create a comment that is also off-topic and/or not useful." CreationDate="2015-05-16T16:29:54.380" UserId="11091" />
  <row Id="7027" PostId="2580" Score="6" Text="Comments do not possess the same options as answers/questions, because &quot;officially&quot;, they are considered lowlies and are discouraged in the SE ecosystem. I believe that SE knows very well that much activity goes on on comments, questions being answered there etc, and they very deliberately try not to encourage this even more. (It did not discourage me from posting this as a comment and not as an answer!)." CreationDate="2015-05-18T20:57:32.593" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="7028" PostId="2580" Score="3" Text="Maybe that system of comments works well for programming questions, but I think comments are quite necessary for statistics, wherein much of a given problem involves properly defining the scope of the question!" CreationDate="2015-05-19T04:29:19.340" UserId="11091" />
  <row Id="7026" PostId="2582" Score="1" Text="Thanks Glen_b, much appreciated to know that all was working as intended. I did realise I could make some of the suggestions along the lines of what you have written above (in terms of elucidating further information) that didn't require any rocket-stats." CreationDate="2015-05-18T01:24:11.520" UserId="16974" />
  <row Id="7029" PostId="2589" Score="1" Text="See http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/45598/225179" CreationDate="2015-05-23T12:52:15.297" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="7030" PostId="2589" Score="0" Text="How could I have missed that. :)" CreationDate="2015-05-23T12:59:27.343" UserId="28705" />
  <row Id="7031" PostId="2589" Score="4" Text="'Share' isn't all that obvious; at any rate it took me a while to find out about it. But in general Meta SE is a good place to look for answers to technical questions about how the site works." CreationDate="2015-05-23T13:09:18.427" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="7033" PostId="2589" Score="1" Text="&quot;Share&quot; buttons often link to some facebook, twitter whatsoever login page. Since I don't use these, my brain might have started to keep these buttons out of my conscience. It's a neuronal share button filter." CreationDate="2015-05-23T17:12:03.060" UserId="28705" />
  <row Id="7034" PostId="2589" Score="1" Text="@HorstGrünbusch, for the longest time, I did the same thing. Because I don't use Facebook &amp; twitter, I assumed the 'share' wasn't for me. I didn't figure it out until I had been here a couple years." CreationDate="2015-05-24T14:08:06.813" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="7032" PostId="2590" Score="7" Text="(+1) With many browsers, a right-click on the &quot;share&quot; link will raise a pop-up menu including an option to copy the link to a clipboard.  This tends to be the easiest and fastest way.  A similar operation applied to the *time of post* indicator on a comment will provide a link to the comment." CreationDate="2015-05-23T16:17:06.350" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="7036" PostId="2590" Score="0" Text="Does &quot;announcer&quot; measure number of times a link is used *within CV*, rather than as an external link? I'm surprised at how few times it has been awarded in this case, it would suggest that few readers are clicking through links in questions/answers." CreationDate="2015-05-31T09:47:51.700" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="7037" PostId="2590" Score="0" Text="@Silverfish, announcer only counts the number of unique IP addresses that have clicked on a link in the special format that is provided by &quot;share&quot;. Any other link won't do. Multiple clicks from the same IP address are only counted once. It doesn't matter if the link was on CV or posted off site (eg a tweet). I think you're right that few readers are clicking on the links listed in Qs &amp; As here." CreationDate="2015-05-31T14:10:16.447" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="7038" PostId="2590" Score="0" Text="@gung Thanks. Yes sorry should have clarified I meant only the &quot;share&quot; type links. I often use them for brevity and they must be strewn across my answers, questions and - especially, for space constraints - comments. But have never got that badge and few other folk have either." CreationDate="2015-05-31T16:04:19.723" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="7051" PostId="2596" Score="0" Text="Do you know where I could get the black-and-white meta version?" CreationDate="2015-06-20T00:46:28.880" UserId="36229" />
  <row Id="7053" PostId="2596" Score="0" Text="Thanks! I tried the same thing but I guess I didn't inspect the right piece." CreationDate="2015-06-20T00:49:21.300" UserId="36229" />
  <row Id="7043" PostId="2599" Score="2" Text="I just pushed a fix. This should go live on our next production server build." CreationDate="2015-06-05T14:27:10.360" UserId="75177" />
  <row Id="7054" PostId="2604" Score="0" Text="Steve Pierson at the ASA writes, &quot;*This is Statistics* is introducing high-school students and college undergraduates to careers in statistics as well as the importance of being statistically literate in today’s competitive jobs market. ... We also ask you to follow the campaign on your personal Twitter and Facebook accounts. Doing so is a great way to keep up to date and to share its messages with your social media networks. ... We’d of course also welcome your recommendations/advice for this campaign.&quot;" CreationDate="2015-06-24T20:57:03.267" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="7057" PostId="2604" Score="1" Text="This is a cool site! Tks," CreationDate="2015-06-26T13:47:46.093" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="7059" PostId="2606" Score="5" Text="Good job. There are only five questions in [kernel-regression], why don't you manually change them to [kde] + [regression] as well? That's probably easier than wait for a moderator action. Also, I am not sure I understand what you suggest about [kernel-smoothing]. Currently this tag does not exist anymore. Regarding the wikis, I think you should go ahead and make the suggested edits! You are definitely the one most familiar with these tags by now, so you are in the best position to write the wiki excerpts. They can always be edited further." CreationDate="2015-07-03T08:32:17.310" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="7060" PostId="2606" Score="0" Text="I agree w/ @amoeba's points. Go ahead &amp; edit the wiki's; the edits are very likely to be approved." CreationDate="2015-07-03T15:01:58.253" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="7061" PostId="2606" Score="4" Text="@amoeba It's not at all clear to me that kde + regression is adequate -- indeed I think that's *actively misleading* since kernel regression is NOT kde. `kernel-smoothing` + `regression` would be much better." CreationDate="2015-07-03T17:21:01.760" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="7062" PostId="2606" Score="0" Text="@gung can you clarify for me how kernel regression is adequately described by kde, as amoeba seems to suggest? Presently that makes no sense to me." CreationDate="2015-07-03T17:22:02.427" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="7063" PostId="2606" Score="4" Text="I agree with @Glen_b on renaming to `kernel-smoothing`, since there's no density estimation going on in kernel regression, though I may not have said that clearly above...." CreationDate="2015-07-03T17:24:45.783" UserId="9964" />
  <row Id="7065" PostId="2606" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b, you're right about that, sorry. My main point was to go ahead &amp; edit the wikis." CreationDate="2015-07-03T17:38:15.777" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="7066" PostId="2606" Score="2" Text="Yes, my thought was to rename all of [kde] to [kernel-smoothing], as well as the current 5 threads of [kernel-regression]; I renamed into that because I wasn't clear what the outcome of the previous conversation was other than that [kernel-regression] and [kde] don't need to be separate. Re wikis, the only reason I didn't do that yet was because it slightly depends on whether we go with [kde] or [kernel-smoothing]." CreationDate="2015-07-03T17:44:55.583" UserId="9964" />
  <row Id="7068" PostId="2606" Score="2" Text="This discussion seems to have halted. So the Dougal's suggestion seems to be to be to mass-rename [kernel-density-estimate] into [kernel-smoothing], i.e. (?) to make them synonyms with [kernel-smoothing] being the &quot;main&quot; tag, correct? @Glen_b, you are the only moderator taking part in this discussion so far; do you agree with this approach? Can you do it?" CreationDate="2015-07-07T14:47:55.797" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="7069" PostId="2606" Score="0" Text="@amoeba We don't even have an upvoted answer; I'm not sure there's a clear consensus yet." CreationDate="2015-07-08T03:01:40.027" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="7073" PostId="2606" Score="2" Text="@Glen_b: I understand. However, according to my experience of tag-related discussions on meta.SE, it might be easier for Dougal to manually retag all ~200 questions than to reach what will look like a clear consensus here. I recall asking a question on meta.SE with some tag merge suggestions that got 20+ upvotes and still nothing was done and remains so. My impression is that tag changes are very difficult to organize via meta." CreationDate="2015-07-08T09:03:48.587" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="7071" PostId="2608" Score="0" Text="There is some truth in this, as I acknowledged in my question the other sites are beta. I decided to ask this question due to the change in SE approach towards betas - they will now be shut if they degrade in quality but not for failure to grow. This makes betas much safer (at present none are considered at risk, last I saw) and there should be adequate warning to change links if anything changes on this front, although I agree it would be a pain to change if it occurs." CreationDate="2015-07-08T08:10:35.287" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="7072" PostId="2608" Score="0" Text="The lack of migration options seems to me to be a stronger argument for getting a question asked in the right place in the first place! Not everybody reads the help pages, of course, but every little signpost to the correct destination has got to help." CreationDate="2015-07-08T08:12:17.257" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="7070" PostId="2609" Score="0" Text="Thanks @EnergyNumbers -- I recently learned that (i) there was actually a system in place that used bots, and (ii) therefore, to work it needed the spam left alone -- after I became a mod and started hanging out on the moderators' chat room" CreationDate="2015-07-08T07:36:31.100" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="7077" PostId="2609" Score="1" Text="+1. For most type of spams (advertisements, off topic answers, etc) I agree with your answer. In cases of (very) offensive content I'm with whuber's answer." CreationDate="2015-07-08T16:31:04.170" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="7074" PostId="2610" Score="0" Text="Except that the consensus on the linked thread was that although the comment I flagged for deletion was not necessarily germane to the topic, it should also not be deleted.  Either there is an inconsistency with how the community is treating comments or there should be some way to voice one's disagreement with comments other than flagging them for deletion and/or posting a new comment (that will also not be germane to the topic)." CreationDate="2015-07-08T13:54:35.093" UserId="11091" />
  <row Id="7075" PostId="2610" Score="0" Text="I don't see a consensus on that thread. All that happened was that you flagged a non-constructive comment as rude &amp; offensive, and your flag was correctly declined. Flag a non-constructive comment as non-constructive and move on." CreationDate="2015-07-08T14:57:53.517" UserId="3794" />
  <row Id="7078" PostId="2610" Score="1" Text="The criteria for flagging do include being &quot;not constructive&quot;. So you are drawing attention to what is already SE policy. But flagging creates work for moderators; that's a problem too.  I think the difficulty arises when one thinks the other person's comment of view is incorrect or wrong-headed but is reluctant to fan the flames of an over-extended or over-heated miniature debate. Sometimes we best show our support for moderators by not expecting them to rule on what is wrong or wrong-headed!" CreationDate="2015-07-09T00:45:07.950" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="7079" PostId="2610" Score="1" Text="The main reasons cited for not removing the comment were based on vague freedom of speech principles, whereas the main reasons for deletion centered on the fact that it was not constructive and created an unwelcoming environment. I did as you suggesting by flagging the comment, and yet it remains, and not because it added to the discussion. As I already said, I think something about the system is not working." CreationDate="2015-07-09T02:46:46.590" UserId="11091" />
  <row Id="7080" PostId="2611" Score="4" Text="This is a good question, but did you notice [How to print a Cross Validated question or answer?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/2180/7290) How does your Q differ from that?" CreationDate="2015-07-09T17:20:48.027" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="7081" PostId="2611" Score="0" Text="that answers it.  I can delete this question, if appropriate." CreationDate="2015-07-09T19:04:16.787" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="7083" PostId="2612" Score="5" Text="In addition be being perplexed by &quot;flag&quot; like @AndreSilva, I should note that the `[self-study]` tag is a [meta tag](https://blog.stackexchange.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/) (which are supposed to be verboten) &amp; hence is a little bit of a necessary evil. Of course, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't also have `[analysis]` as (another) necessary evil." CreationDate="2015-07-11T15:24:15.463" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="7085" PostId="2613" Score="2" Text="It certainly sounds as it is potentially very ambiguous. However, doing &quot;something&quot; with this tag would probably require somebody to go through all of the questions (below 100, so doable), checking the actual usage and retagging questions as appropriate. Perhaps retagging to [confidence-interval] is not necessary, as these two tags can be declared synonyms, but I am afraid that there is a fair amount of [confidence] questions that are not about [confidence-interval]. I have not checked though. Perhaps you can take a look and report on the actual usage?" CreationDate="2015-07-13T16:49:15.753" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="7097" PostId="2613" Score="2" Text="Would you say that you... lack confidence in the tag?" CreationDate="2015-07-21T23:07:04.657" UserId="36229" />
  <row Id="11958" PostId="2613" Score="0" Text="Hi Tim. I am trying to see if we (as a community) can manage to push some tag synonyms without mod intervention. Could you see if you can upvote some of these suggestions: http://stats.stackexchange.com/tags/synonyms?filter=suggested&amp;tab=newest" CreationDate="2017-01-20T12:13:40.017" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11959" PostId="2613" Score="0" Text="up-vote in what sense? I can see them, that's all." CreationDate="2017-01-20T12:28:43.237" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="11963" PostId="2613" Score="0" Text="The interface is very un-intuitive. For each suggestion, you should click on the master tag (left column); a new page will open where you can see synonym suggestion(s), each with up/down voting arrows. There you can vote. If you don't have &gt;=5 rep points in the master tag then you will get a pop-up saying that you cannot vote. Otherwise your vote will count. Thanks!" CreationDate="2017-01-20T14:07:27.920" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11964" PostId="2613" Score="1" Text="@amoeba I didn't know that, done!" CreationDate="2017-01-20T14:42:51.770" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="11966" PostId="2614" Score="0" Text="+1. See updates to this thread and please vote for the synonym suggestion here: http://stats.stackexchange.com/tags/confidence-interval/synonyms. (By the way, consider also voting for other pending suggestions here: http://stats.stackexchange.com/tags/synonyms?filter=suggested&amp;tab=newest -- all of them are taken from our Meta discussion on tag synonyms.)" CreationDate="2017-01-21T09:34:21.080" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11921" PostId="2615" Score="0" Text="+1. We should really get rid of this tag. By now there are 124 questions, most of which (about 100) are about confidence intervals. On many others the tag can be removed altogether or replaced by [probability]. There are very few questions like this one http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/45174 that talk about people's confidence in their choices, and here I am not sure what to do. Perhaps replacing with [uncertainty] as AdamO suggested is fine. But [confidence] should be eliminated, it's too easy to confuse with confidence-interval and people do it often." CreationDate="2017-01-18T13:55:52.420" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11922" PostId="2615" Score="1" Text="Perhaps we can clean [confidence] questions of everything that is *not* about CIs and then make it a synonym with merge? This should be relatively easy." CreationDate="2017-01-18T13:59:56.797" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11923" PostId="2615" Score="1" Text="You have a lot on your plate with tag work. I will try to look into it." CreationDate="2017-01-18T14:02:15.960" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11928" PostId="2615" Score="0" Text="I had forgotten about this answer of mine. Thanks for your help. @amoeba" CreationDate="2017-01-18T15:02:33.840" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="11965" PostId="2615" Score="1" Text="See update to my answer. Please vote for this synonym and for other pending ones too (see my conversation with Tim in the comments under his question)." CreationDate="2017-01-20T16:54:59.773" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="7086" PostId="2616" Score="0" Text="I upvoted three of your questions. Hopefully you will soon get across 50 rep barrier and will be able to comment. Personally, I find this 50 rep limit quite unnecessary." CreationDate="2015-07-15T20:11:15.677" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="7087" PostId="2616" Score="0" Text="I have noticed (thank you). What do you think about the discusion I tried to start?" CreationDate="2015-07-15T20:13:53.580" UserId="43209" />
  <row Id="7088" PostId="2616" Score="8" Text="You raise many issues, but note that your (lengthy) post does not have a single question mark. What exactly are you asking?" CreationDate="2015-07-15T20:30:12.730" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="7089" PostId="2616" Score="0" Text="My concearn is mostly around the low rates of answers in Cross Validated compared to other Stack Exchange sites. If found some other meta posts regarding to this issue. I'm just wondering if there's any way to tackle that by promoting different scoring and/or new member policies." CreationDate="2015-07-15T20:50:32.347" UserId="43209" />
  <row Id="7090" PostId="2616" Score="0" Text="Several of these issues have been much discussed on Meta. The most distinctive feature that results in low average votes here is, arguably, a large number of rather poor questions from people obliged to do data analysis but who lack the time, inclination or ability to study statistics in any depth. One does see some questions on Stack Overflow that amount to &quot;I have no code, so please write some for me&quot; but questions showing little or no research are rather common here.  I don't understand your question about reputation, however, as anybody can answer!" CreationDate="2015-07-16T00:16:50.290" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="7091" PostId="2616" Score="1" Text="The threshold for commenting is supposedly to cut down on poor quality comments, including offensive or spam remarks. One argument in favour is that it apparently does work!" CreationDate="2015-07-16T00:22:00.387" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="7092" PostId="2616" Score="3" Text="We certainly can't control the scoring; it's the same across the SE network. I do notice that some sites are more aggressive about closing or even deleting what I'd regard as rescuable questions, which presents an unfriendly face to newcomers who often need help here at a technical level far beyond their ability to clearly ask for. There's the fact that each application area uses different terminology and focuses on different techniques, so unless you know what every area calls something (will the average econometrician know that Jarque-Bera is usually called something else among statistcians?" CreationDate="2015-07-16T00:52:08.693" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="7093" PostId="2616" Score="2" Text="... Or the average med stats person know that Bland Altman is just a Tukey mean-difference plot? Such splintering of jargon leads to mutual incomprehension). It's also relatively easy to ask stats questions that nobody has good answers for yet. We could cut down our unanswered questions by closing some old ones that have no prospect of good answers. One thing we could really use on the site is more regular active answerers with the reputation to engage in helping improve questions (across a variety of application areas), but I don't have a good idea how to achieve that." CreationDate="2015-07-16T00:52:18.800" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="7094" PostId="2616" Score="3" Text="For your issue of few votes -- some of your questions are not clearly posed, or unclear. In the case of your [recent question](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/161526/comparing-several-asymmetric-distributions), it's quite a vague question, and there's also an issue with the premise of the question -- to even get it to a state where it's really asking something well answerable would require a lot of effort. I had intended to come back to that question when I had time to discuss the issues in comments, but don't always manage to find time before still more things come up." CreationDate="2015-07-16T01:42:03.530" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="7095" PostId="2616" Score="0" Text="I agree 100% with you, and I understand that the questions in this site are difficult to answer and also difficult to ask because they need a lot more specificity than the other questions on SE network. They usually get into a lot of comments and everyone lose track." CreationDate="2015-07-16T03:52:16.860" UserId="43209" />
  <row Id="7096" PostId="2616" Score="6" Text="Another problem is that it seems harder to ask a good and answerable statistics question than a good and answerable programming question" CreationDate="2015-07-16T13:10:13.467" UserId="36229" />
  <row Id="7098" PostId="2617" Score="3" Text="Standard advice applies: if it a question needs statistical expertise to understand or answer, ask it here; if it's about an algorithm, routine data processing, or details of the language, then please refer to the collection of links to resources we maintain. By the way, I am not clear that broad questions on software design go down well on SO, but it runs as a set of largely self-contained communities, so who can be certain? The Python users on SO would soon tell you if they thought a question off-topic, as we would here. I fear that your question could seem too broad in any forum, however." CreationDate="2015-07-22T10:51:03.717" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="7099" PostId="2617" Score="0" Text="Yeah, I am struggling with that as well. I will try and narrow the scope of my question. The problem is that it requires a lot of domain specific knowledge which is in abundance here :-)" CreationDate="2015-07-22T17:11:04.010" UserId="36540" />
  <row Id="7100" PostId="2617" Score="0" Text="@NickCox this would appear to be a complete answer. Perhaps you should consider positing it as such?" CreationDate="2015-07-22T21:11:42.473" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="7101" PostId="2617" Score="2" Text="Not that there are a number of computing/programming-related groups other than SO which you might consider; in this case &quot;conceptual questions about software development&quot; go on programmers.SE, so it may be worth considering. See also here: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/129598/which-computer-science-programming-stack-exchange-do-i-post-in" CreationDate="2015-07-22T23:47:29.070" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8297" PostId="2617" Score="1" Text="My personal opinion is that we need to be clear about our content borders.   I refer to the variance of the border.  It is rare in &quot;sufficiently complex&quot; (in a Godel sense) topics to have a clear border.  Given the power of computing and its place in statistics the border must be turbulent, evolving in time, and hard to measure.  A value-creating rule, one that improves and sustains community health and relevance, is going to account for that." CreationDate="2015-09-21T17:05:23.160" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="7102" PostId="2620" Score="4" Text="This is probably something that should be handled on SO side, IMO. Are there many packages that are tagged with `r-`? I didn't find `r-ggplot` or `r-Hmisc`, and I believe SO users use two distinct tags, e.g. `r` + `ggplot2`. (Note that there is a `python-ggplot` tag, but I guess this is because this [Python library](http://ggplot.yhathq.com) was inspired by the corresponding R package.)" CreationDate="2015-07-25T10:20:27.763" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="7103" PostId="2620" Score="0" Text="No it *isn't* something that can be handled on SO side, and if you'd just clicked through to the definition of r-caret you'd see why it won't and shouldn't change. Yes it's rare to be obligated to call a package 'lang-package' instead of just 'package'. Note that the SO tag is 'r-caret' for disambiguation (thus you still tag both: r r-caret), not to break the convention of not making lang-specific tags." CreationDate="2015-07-25T16:07:29.233" UserId="7291" />
  <row Id="7119" PostId="2620" Score="0" Text="@user777 ok if you want to post that as an answer. Just given that there is very frequent migration to/from SO&lt;-&gt;CV, it instantly breaks the tag. It helps create constant need for tag cleanup and mistagging." CreationDate="2015-07-30T18:57:38.587" UserId="7291" />
  <row Id="7108" PostId="2621" Score="2" Text="Can you clarify the nature of the limits that [SO] has that we don't? What are they exactly? How strict are they? Would it be possible to have those limits, but with a looser (or tighter) threshold?" CreationDate="2015-07-27T13:46:28.670" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="7109" PostId="2621" Score="0" Text="@gung my knowledge is for the moment partly vague; there are [&quot;rate limits&quot;](http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/question-limited)  and there are [posting bans](http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/question-bans) (there's also one for answers). I believe we may have the first but not the second, but it's possible I have that information backward. I don't know exactly how strict they are (in how hard it is to hit them or to lift them) and if I did I expect I wouldn't be able to say. The stricter ban link says &quot;One or two bad posts will not cause you to be blocked from using the site&quot;. ... ctd" CreationDate="2015-07-27T15:49:19.967" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="7110" PostId="2621" Score="1" Text="ctd... Back before I was elected mod I did manage to get the sense (partly via things I'd read and partly via discussions) that even 3 or 4 bad posts shouldn't get the ban but that by then you would have hit the rate limit. I don't know how solid that understanding is. My understanding is there's only &quot;on&quot; or &quot;off&quot;." CreationDate="2015-07-27T15:53:44.307" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="7104" PostId="2622" Score="0" Text="Thanks Nick. If by &quot;quantity&quot; you mean &quot;how much they have to do various things before they hit these limits&quot; ... even moderators don't know exactly (but could probably figure out by checking cases after the fact). If you mean &quot;how many people would this affect on introduction&quot; ... again, I don't know but may be able to find out. I will say that posters *can* try again, but they're progressively more encouraged to try fixing their existing questions first (that is, to learn the norms by starting to follow them). The user that triggered the original conversation has posted around 25 questions." CreationDate="2015-07-27T10:38:11.197" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="7105" PostId="2622" Score="4" Text="I'd argue deleting low quality questions is public spirited *if you're not going to ask it again*. If you delete it in order to ask essentially the same poor question multiple times, that's gaming the system in a way that many of the SE sites have been set up to stop you doing. The SE model is &quot;improve the question you've already asked&quot;." CreationDate="2015-07-27T10:43:09.087" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="7106" PostId="2622" Score="0" Text="Thanks; I appreciate the difficulties. 25 was the kind of signal I wanted. Thank goodness I missed that case; it might have triggered apoplexy. The *same* poor question again and again is certainly a confounded nuisance: terminate with extreme prejudice!" CreationDate="2015-07-27T10:49:21.440" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="7107" PostId="2622" Score="1" Text="Not all of them were the one same question; the most reposted one may only have been five or six times ... but a number of other questions have been posted and then deleted, then posted again. Well over half the total posts (I think it was nearer 60%) have been deleted." CreationDate="2015-07-27T12:11:53.317" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="7127" PostId="2622" Score="0" Text="Is there anything to prevent such users from simply setting up new accounts? They seen unlikely to have high reputation they would like to keep." CreationDate="2015-08-02T08:02:37.370" UserId="67799" />
  <row Id="7112" PostId="2627" Score="0" Text="Thanks. I figured it was something like that. I've seen sites scrape SE before, but they don't do a full blown spoof as well; they just steal the q&amp;a. And, FYI, this did in fact outrank all other sites in a google search; this was the top result." CreationDate="2015-07-28T16:07:57.353" UserId="83483" />
  <row Id="7113" PostId="2627" Score="0" Text="Would you mind reporting it to Google, then?  They will want to know the exact search you used." CreationDate="2015-07-28T17:21:52.740" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="7114" PostId="2627" Score="0" Text="OK. Will do; if I can find it in my history." CreationDate="2015-07-28T17:25:18.377" UserId="83483" />
  <row Id="7115" PostId="2627" Score="2" Text="That's awesome. It's good to see such a swift response from a website that I don't even pay (directly) to use! Thanks mod for helping this along." CreationDate="2015-07-28T20:09:23.720" UserId="83483" />
  <row Id="7116" PostId="2630" Score="0" Text="Well, I'd have put things a bit differently, but there's no problem, since I can explain myself in an answer (and have). Thanks. I'd upvote your question as a good question to raise, but this is more of a &quot;choose between approaches&quot; type of question," CreationDate="2015-07-29T23:42:07.033" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="7120" PostId="2630" Score="0" Text="By the look of things, this appears unlikely to be resolved any time soon -- if at all. It seems unlikely that there will be clear support for the generalization of the title but on the other hand the newer title is not a very substantial change from the original title (that is, if we aren't generalizing the title, the OP's original choice - which is at leats reasonable - should be respected). As a result I think we should be conservative, so I'm reverting to the OP's original title until we have some clearer sense of there being a reason to choose something else." CreationDate="2015-07-30T20:32:38.920" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="7121" PostId="2630" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b fair enough. Perhaps the solution is simply to create and self-answer a general question of this variety." CreationDate="2015-07-30T20:39:27.883" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="7140" PostId="2633" Score="5" Text="Another advantage of waiting the week out is that the additional attention sometimes produces improvements to the original question or answers, particularly due to the insights added by fresh eyeballs in the comments." CreationDate="2015-08-10T20:15:00.073" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="7125" PostId="2635" Score="1" Text="Uhuh. a) I never suggested match *every* SO tag, only this one because it's commonly migrated b) The reason for the SO tag naming is disambiguation, not a violation of language-specific tags. '[tag:r-caret] is already a peculiarity on SO" CreationDate="2015-07-31T05:31:43.573" UserId="7291" />
  <row Id="7126" PostId="2636" Score="1" Text="I am coming, I am there from Friday late night to all of Thursday." CreationDate="2015-07-31T20:45:43.727" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="7139" PostId="2636" Score="1" Text="OK, it looks like there are about 10 people, but they will prefer to stay anonymous. Fair enough :)" CreationDate="2015-08-09T05:43:53.007" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="7141" PostId="2636" Score="1" Text="Hey, who was it who bumped into me last night??? Did not catch your name!!!" CreationDate="2015-08-11T13:42:18.160" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="7142" PostId="2636" Score="0" Text="I didn't make the JSM this year &amp; am sorry I missed a chance to visit Seattle. Were there one or two presentations you attended that stood above the rest?" CreationDate="2015-08-12T15:46:29.117" UserId="13634" />
  <row Id="7146" PostId="2636" Score="1" Text="A short course on communication and soft skills was the best JSM event over the past few years of my attendance. I work in industry, I need to come to mutually understood agreements with other members of my team and the clients regarding the work to be done. I was terrified to see how consulting statisticians in academia are being tossed around. A couple of technical ideas in my field that I will take home on multiple imputation and disclosure protection, too. The coolest presentations were happening elsewhere if you look at https://twitter.com/hashtag/jsm2015." CreationDate="2015-08-13T17:50:05.883" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="7128" PostId="2638" Score="2" Text="According to http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/258876 (see also linked answers), the reputation threshold for including pictures is 10, but only on several large SE sites such as e.g. SO and Math; on other SE sites including CV there should be no threshold. It would be good to confirm if this is really true for CV though." CreationDate="2015-08-05T10:45:30.563" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="7129" PostId="2638" Score="8" Text="In the past, we've been quite happy to put an image in the post if posters include a link to the image (they're easy to upload to imgur, but any non-dodgy site where you can access the image directly would do). But I haven't had to do that for someone for a long time" CreationDate="2015-08-05T12:03:06.793" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="7130" PostId="2639" Score="7" Text="+1. Nevertheless, your comment to the question perhaps is even a more constructive answer: when a newbie encounters difficulties posting an image (for whatever reason) but otherwise appears to have a good question, it takes little time or effort to have them provide a link to the image and then for us (anybody) to convert that link to one that is supported by the SE engine." CreationDate="2015-08-05T12:54:02.440" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="10405" PostId="2640" Score="2" Text="Ahh.. Pharmokinetics people.. bless them. They did NLME models before it was cool." CreationDate="2016-08-10T07:54:15.050" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="7133" PostId="2641" Score="5" Text="A credit to the comments is exactly the right thing to do, but personally I would rather write &quot;as mentioned in the comments by @Xi'an&quot; instead of just &quot;as mentioned in the comments&quot;. (Also, if you think a question is worth answering it is probably worth upvoting too, isn't it? A question you linked to has 0 upvotes meaning that you did not upvote it yet...) Anyway, to answer old unanswered questions is a good thing to do, so +1." CreationDate="2015-08-06T14:27:23.047" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="7134" PostId="2641" Score="2" Text="Meta Stack Exchange (related): http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/207638/comment-promoted-to-answer/207639#207639" CreationDate="2015-08-06T14:58:09.533" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="11647" PostId="2643" Score="0" Text="I have seen people put short answers in comments probably because they felt it was too short or incomplete.  Sometimes an OP likes the answer so much that he/she suggests that the writer make an answer out of it and sometimes they will go ahead and accept it as the best answer.  But @gung taking someones answer that you have already seen and claiming it as your own makes no sense. You can't be hungry for reputation points!  It is kind of like plagiarism." CreationDate="2016-12-28T01:04:15.753" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11648" PostId="2643" Score="1" Text="@MichaelChernick, I give my own answer if it is what I would have said anyway. I don't consider it plagiarism if someone asks 'what is 2+2', &amp; before I say '4', I notice that someone else has already stated that in the comments, YMMV. You're right that I don't need more reputation &amp; am not really motivated by that anymore." CreationDate="2016-12-28T01:08:32.720" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="7137" PostId="2648" Score="0" Text="Also they release entire dumps of the same data available via the explorer (update every few months I think), https://archive.org/details/stackexchange." CreationDate="2015-08-08T00:17:40.343" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="7138" PostId="2653" Score="1" Text="Thanks whuber! ^-^" CreationDate="2015-08-08T19:07:28.250" UserId="44339" />
  <row Id="7143" PostId="2658" Score="3" Text="+1, I have been annoyed by the lack of this feature too." CreationDate="2015-08-13T11:39:18.353" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="7144" PostId="2658" Score="5" Text="since that would be a SE-network-wide change, I think the place to ask would be meta.stackexchange" CreationDate="2015-08-13T12:34:31.287" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="7145" PostId="2658" Score="2" Text="Thank you @Glen_b.   Just did a quick check.&#xA;&#xA;Seems like it already exist.  http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/168035/display-tag-excerpt-tooltips-when-editing-a-question" CreationDate="2015-08-13T12:53:17.540" UserId="84191" />
  <row Id="7194" PostId="2658" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b, been through the above meta link. But, I couldn't find any such feature (didn't find it in any stackexchange site, including SO)" CreationDate="2015-09-02T10:52:31.427" UserId="84191" />
  <row Id="7195" PostId="2658" Score="0" Text="I believe that this is not implemented anywhere (at least not quite as you describe) ... which is why I explained that the place to *ask* for it would be meta.SE ..." CreationDate="2015-09-02T10:58:24.937" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="7148" PostId="2659" Score="1" Text="I added a (brief) wiki." CreationDate="2015-08-15T15:09:05.443" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="7149" PostId="2659" Score="2" Text="One infers the meaning of a tag by seeing what questions it's used on. Indeed with acronyms, even if you're quite sure you know what it means, it's often important to check what people use it for, because many abbreviations have more than one meaning in stats (GLM apparently has at least three, now; LDA has at least four, or if we also count actuarial applications, possibly six). Where possible we should disambiguate ones where more than one interpretation is widely used for the tag (say by generating two new tags that spell things out then retagging, and so on)." CreationDate="2015-08-15T22:07:25.010" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="7150" PostId="2659" Score="2" Text="@Glen_b This overloading of terminology appears to suggest that acronyms-as-tags is an ambiguous way to go about sorting questions. Is it really a great idea to use [plm] (and [glm] and [lda]) instead of a more descriptive term?" CreationDate="2015-08-17T12:03:27.017" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="7151" PostId="2659" Score="0" Text="Yes, we should clean up and choose more descriptive terms!" CreationDate="2015-08-17T12:04:25.857" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="7152" PostId="2659" Score="1" Text="@user777 We might be able to make an argument for retaining glm for generalized linear model (by sheer numerical superiority), but perhaps we could discuss whether lda is better expanded; latent dirichlet analysis vs linear discriminant analysis is the main competition for that TLA" CreationDate="2015-08-17T20:05:03.030" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="7153" PostId="2662" Score="0" Text="+1, FWIW, I would re-order the phrases: `If your question is of the following type: &quot;How do I do X in R?&quot;, then CrossValidated is not the best place to ask. Here is a list of support resources for this kind of question.`" CreationDate="2015-08-18T21:24:28.677" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="7154" PostId="2662" Score="0" Text="@gung: thanks, that does sound better. I changed it around." CreationDate="2015-08-19T06:25:12.967" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="7155" PostId="2662" Score="3" Text="I have a concern that we may end up defining ourselves away from the current guidelines in the [on topic help](http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), which don't quite go so far as saying this. In particular the on-topic help outlines explicit circumstances in which it might be on topic to post something like that here." CreationDate="2015-08-19T09:07:13.313" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="7156" PostId="2663" Score="4" Text="The easiest solution is to manually change 4 instances of [imputation] to [data-imputation]; the empty tag will disappear after one day. No moderator action is needed for that, which is a big advantage (moderators here are often reluctant to proceed with any tag changes, AFAIK partially because those cannot easily be reversed)." CreationDate="2015-08-19T15:09:34.503" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="7157" PostId="2663" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Thanks for the tip! I was concerned that &quot;going rogue&quot; and doing so without attempting to reach consensus among other CV users would be frowned upon. I'll hold off until others have had a chance to weigh on." CreationDate="2015-08-19T15:16:31.593" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="7158" PostId="2663" Score="1" Text="Note that creating a tag does not require any &quot;consensus&quot; whatsoever, and once a tag is created it is likely to be used every now and then. Therefore I would argue that tidying up minor tags does not *necessarily* require a discussion either; of course any large-scale changes should be discussed." CreationDate="2015-08-19T16:31:00.143" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="7173" PostId="2663" Score="0" Text="I wanted to look at the 4 questions with the imputation tag and realized that there are none: [imputation] is a synonym of [data-imputation] (since 2013) and if you try to look at these 4 questions you get redirected to the data-imputation with 160+4=164 questions... Looks confusing to me, but I guess that's how synonyms work on SE." CreationDate="2015-08-26T23:25:49.463" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="7174" PostId="2663" Score="0" Text="Update: I read this FAQ http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/70710 about synonym tags. It seems that if we edit these 4 questions in any way, then the tag will be automatically replaced by the &quot;master&quot; tag (and again, if no questions with [imputation] are left, it will disappear). Alternatively, a moderator can &quot;merge&quot; these two tags, leading to the same effect. At the moment they are not &quot;merged&quot;, but are simply synonyms." CreationDate="2015-08-26T23:30:52.953" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="7192" PostId="2663" Score="0" Text="Current situation looks fine in that if you choose &quot;imputation&quot; as a search tag, you get redirected to all the &quot;data-imputation&quot; questions, and if you begin to add imputation as a tag to a question, you see that &quot;data-imputation&quot; predominates." CreationDate="2015-09-01T09:54:16.990" UserId="4884" />
  <row Id="7159" PostId="2664" Score="1" Text="Thanks for bringing it up here first here in Meta - see [Is it reasonable to go tag-hunting?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/1622/17230])." CreationDate="2015-08-21T10:17:58.207" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="7160" PostId="2664" Score="0" Text="Or the relatively new alias list: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/1200/6432" CreationDate="2015-08-21T10:19:41.693" UserId="6432" />
  <row Id="7167" PostId="2664" Score="0" Text="Also the following searches: http://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=%22fisher%27s+method%22+-[combining-p-values]+is%3Aquestion and http://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=stouffer+-[combining-p-values]+is%3Aquestion" CreationDate="2015-08-21T17:57:55.283" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="7162" PostId="2666" Score="3" Text="(+1) There's also the consideration that &quot;combining p values&quot; is likely to occur to a lot of people who haven't heard of &quot;meta-analysis&quot;." CreationDate="2015-08-21T10:53:28.200" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="7163" PostId="2666" Score="1" Text="@gung: No problem with the edit, but my remark was definitely not intended to be a &quot;snark&quot; (if I understand this word correctly and it refers to a critical comment)! I just found it curious that just several days after I created this tag somebody came across it and started wondering; it felt like a coincidence. So I meant &quot;funny&quot; in a good way :)" CreationDate="2015-08-21T16:41:02.793" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="7164" PostId="2666" Score="0" Text="@amoeba: No offense taken. I've only learned about combining p-values in the past few weeks..." CreationDate="2015-08-21T17:08:54.543" UserId="6432" />
  <row Id="7165" PostId="2666" Score="1" Text="Started the first bunch of edits. Can't vote today anymore, though, will vote later." CreationDate="2015-08-21T17:22:49.463" UserId="6432" />
  <row Id="7166" PostId="2666" Score="0" Text="My apologies, @amoeba, perhaps I misinterpreted. It came across as testy to me." CreationDate="2015-08-21T17:32:59.007" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="7168" PostId="2667" Score="11" Text="Leaving aside the specifics of this case; as a general principle, there's really no need to create tags before you have any questions to apply them to." CreationDate="2015-08-25T13:08:08.980" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="7170" PostId="2667" Score="0" Text="Yeah, makes sense.  Seems like there is already a tag named julia (thanks for the edit.) on this question: http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/25672/does-julia-have-any-hope-of-sticking-in-the-statistical-community&#xA;&#xA;But, do you think it should be julia-lang instead of julia (the reverse remap of the existing one)?" CreationDate="2015-08-25T14:02:52.320" UserId="84191" />
  <row Id="7171" PostId="2667" Score="1" Text="We have `r` (the most popular tag on the site), `matlab`, `sas`, `spss`, `c++`, `c#` etc ... so the `julia` tag fits with those while `julia-lang` does not. [In fact until you made `julia-lang`, there was not even a single language-name tag with  `-lang` in it. It's probably best to avoid breaking the local convention unless there's some level of agreement here on meta.]" CreationDate="2015-08-25T23:15:48.987" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="7172" PostId="2667" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b, thanks for clarifying. Totally agree with you. And the fact that unnecessarily creating tags when there is no demand is also a very sensible point." CreationDate="2015-08-26T02:35:10.207" UserId="84191" />
  <row Id="7175" PostId="2672" Score="0" Text="Thanks for clarifying.  I had an association bonus that day. So, that counts to 125 on that day.&#xA;&#xA;A real neat explanation like this one is definitely needed, in order to avoid confusion." CreationDate="2015-08-27T07:59:04.690" UserId="84191" />
  <row Id="7181" PostId="2672" Score="3" Text="One of the answers on the &quot;[FAQ](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7931/faq-for-stack-exchange-sites) for stackexchange sites&quot; has the details (they can be found in a few other places as well.) See the third bullet point under &quot;Additionally&quot; [here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7237/how-does-reputation-work)." CreationDate="2015-08-27T13:38:03.470" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="7176" PostId="2673" Score="0" Text="Wonderful question.  Yes, something needs to be done about it.&#xA;&#xA;Maybe a nice wiki, or a better ranking system for the feed?" CreationDate="2015-08-27T10:55:58.037" UserId="84191" />
  <row Id="7178" PostId="2673" Score="0" Text="I don't know my percentages by question; but my feeling is your figures seem a bit low for me (I often get votes over several days) ... but I do see a large fraction of my daily reputation coming from votes on old posts (which may still be consistent with your percentages if one has enough old posts, I suppose)." CreationDate="2015-08-27T12:22:07.143" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="7179" PostId="2673" Score="0" Text="Thanks. That may also be a reflection of the difference in quality of the answers, I suppose :-)." CreationDate="2015-08-27T12:24:57.457" UserId="67799" />
  <row Id="7180" PostId="2673" Score="0" Text="I think it's probably more to do with other factors." CreationDate="2015-08-27T12:38:36.750" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="7182" PostId="2673" Score="5" Text="Some natural experiments are available. *Eg*, [User 11032](http://stats.stackexchange.com/users/11032) was very active for a half year abruptly ending in mid-October 2012, at which point (if memory serves) he had 19K points. Since then his posts have received few downvotes or acceptances and few people have abandoned the site (which causes their votes to be eliminated). We can estimate from his current 24K reputation that the annual reputation increase from upvotes has averaged 8%. Since his mean rep/answer is much less than average, we would expect others to do better than that." CreationDate="2015-08-27T14:12:41.487" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="7185" PostId="2673" Score="3" Text="For very good questions/answers there is a very long tail. I have a (very) few answers where votes are coming now and then, even if they are year old. The percentage of votes after 24h would be above 90%" CreationDate="2015-08-28T14:48:57.620" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="7177" PostId="2674" Score="4" Text="I don't really agree with the premise that upvotes and being a repository of knowledge are the same thing either. Visibility (in terms of page views) and upvotes I imagine are highly correlated though." CreationDate="2015-08-27T12:09:39.210" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="7191" PostId="2675" Score="0" Text="I don't think you are violating any rules here, @sepideh. On meta.CV, down votes just signal disagreement (i.e., that people don't want to use this as one of our community ads), not that you are doing something wrong." CreationDate="2015-08-31T21:16:32.133" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="7188" PostId="2678" Score="0" Text="Thanks. I will suggest an edit that will make the question on topic." CreationDate="2015-08-31T04:00:39.067" UserId="7616" />
  <row Id="7189" PostId="2678" Score="0" Text="Btw, would you suggest that I edit the question directly, or suggest the edit in a comment? Because I believe the real question is not just, &quot;Is there a package that does X,&quot; but more, &quot;What are the state-of-the-art methods for fitting non-parametric multinomial logit models?&quot; At least that is what I try to do when I ask a question that is also, &quot;And is there a package for that?&quot;" CreationDate="2015-08-31T04:05:22.097" UserId="7616" />
  <row Id="7200" PostId="2678" Score="1" Text="Generally speaking -- especially if the OP is likely to see it - it's better to comment. If they're not on the site regularly, edit it yourself but leave a comment explaining what you've done and why and pointing out how the OP can roll it back or re-edit it themselves." CreationDate="2015-09-04T00:26:35.327" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="7190" PostId="2679" Score="6" Text="Given the first carries the &quot;bayesian&quot; tag, talks about updating prior belief to posterior beiief and explicitly contains &quot;$p(\theta|y_1,...,y_n)\propto p(y_1,...,y_n|\theta)p(\theta)$&quot;, I think it's unarguably a question about *Bayesian* predictive distributions." CreationDate="2015-08-31T08:41:36.270" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="7196" PostId="2683" Score="0" Text="That (backspacing to bring up the tag info) is something works for me just fine here and on CV.  It may require some minimum level of privilege perhaps." CreationDate="2015-09-02T11:02:52.403" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="7197" PostId="2683" Score="0" Text="The whole discussion on that meta link is about people ranting about the feature, and yet it's not back.  Not sure about the reputation requirements, as I could do that on the **Workplace** community too, where I have a rep of 101." CreationDate="2015-09-02T11:07:38.267" UserId="84191" />
  <row Id="7198" PostId="2683" Score="0" Text="It looks like it works [here](http://i.stack.imgur.com/dLop6.png)" CreationDate="2015-09-02T11:12:24.013" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="7199" PostId="2683" Score="0" Text="Yes, it works everywhere. But, I'm saying that I'm not sure about the privileges part." CreationDate="2015-09-02T11:15:58.410" UserId="84191" />
  <row Id="8201" PostId="2684" Score="5" Text="+1 too. Perhaps while this feature gets implemented, you could try to customize the css/html for the vote arrows in the PC you use the most. Something like [this](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1072/could-we-change-the-color-of-the-accepted-answer-check-for-color-blind-people/1702#1702)." CreationDate="2015-09-04T15:13:07.947" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="8204" PostId="2685" Score="0" Text="Can you include a link to one such question please?" CreationDate="2015-09-07T05:20:31.040" UserId="84191" />
  <row Id="8205" PostId="2685" Score="0" Text="@Dawny33 There's 3 there now." CreationDate="2015-09-07T05:54:40.543" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8206" PostId="2685" Score="0" Text="Or maybe four (.... ish)" CreationDate="2015-09-07T06:08:30.910" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8207" PostId="2685" Score="7" Text="Encourage them to point out where they've got doubts about their reasoning &amp; focus on that in the question? After all, there must be something they don't quite understand - unless they're worried about a careless mistake, which arguably isn't something worthwhile for CV." CreationDate="2015-09-07T08:28:30.723" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8268" PostId="2685" Score="2" Text="On [cs.se], we tend to close such questions as &quot;Unclear what you're asking.&quot; and leave a comment along the lines of [this](http://meta.cs.stackexchange.com/questions/627/reference-templates-for-common-comments/722#722), which links to a couple of CS Meta discussions about this very topic [1](http://meta.cs.stackexchange.com/questions/597/) [2](http://meta.cs.stackexchange.com/questions/519/)." CreationDate="2015-09-18T09:48:14.113" UserId="43031" />
  <row Id="8319" PostId="2685" Score="1" Text="I think [this](http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/173781/17230) is a very clear example." CreationDate="2015-09-23T12:06:53.313" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8321" PostId="2685" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi yes, thanks, that's just the sort of problem. After XI'an's one line comment, is there much more one can say?" CreationDate="2015-09-23T23:17:07.690" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8332" PostId="2685" Score="1" Text="A good answer, or good answers, might (1) make explicit the assumptions behind the calculations, (2) explain the connection to the distribution of minima &amp; maxima, (3) illustrate the use of series/parallel diagrams (like circuit diagrams for resistors) as an aid to solving this kind of problem, (4) give useful references, (5) suggest extensions of the approach e.g. to stand-by components, (6) show how to simulate failure times as a check." CreationDate="2015-09-25T09:37:14.490" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8691" PostId="2685" Score="0" Text="AndreSilva pointed out in a thread on another question that this meta.SE question is relevant: [Question closed because yes/no answer](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/183177/question-closed-because-yes-no-answer?lq=1)" CreationDate="2015-11-25T15:50:53.717" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10683" PostId="2685" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b I know this is an old thread, but I had a thought. Could one option be to answer the &quot;Yes&quot; instances of these questions in the comments, but then encourage the poster to split their question into a Q &amp; A where they answer their own question? (Assuming these questions are not just from one-time users with no interest in broader participation.)" CreationDate="2016-09-07T02:34:08.560" UserId="127790" />
  <row Id="10684" PostId="2685" Score="0" Text="@Geomatt If there's a way to reword the question to make the answer more than just &quot;yes&quot; then it's great if the poster answers their own question. But then again, if they can reword the question to do that, why not just reword the question in the first place and let anybody answer it (including themselves)? It's not clear to me that the OP answering with &quot;Yes&quot; is any better than if someone else (you, or myself say) doing the same." CreationDate="2016-09-07T02:43:43.993" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10685" PostId="2685" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b I was thinking that an authoritative &quot;yes&quot; in the comments might give them enough confidence to reword and then answer their question. (As in they change the posted question to be the one from their teacher/book, and then post their solution as the answer.)" CreationDate="2016-09-07T02:48:34.900" UserId="127790" />
  <row Id="10686" PostId="2685" Score="0" Text="@GeoMatt In a few cases, perhaps, and with encouragement to do so, perhaps a few more. More generally, they see a 'yes' and leave." CreationDate="2016-09-07T02:51:42.417" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8208" PostId="2686" Score="0" Text="I don't know the answer yet, but I note that you have more hypothesis-testing answers than factor-analysis ones, so that may be relevant." CreationDate="2015-09-07T20:45:58.457" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8209" PostId="2686" Score="0" Text="Indeed! I did not pay attention to that. So it might be sorting by the number of answers or perhaps by the average answer score. Strangely, I could not find an answer on meta.SE. Here is one similar question, but without a definite answer: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/113890." CreationDate="2015-09-07T21:10:11.640" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8210" PostId="2686" Score="1" Text="Actually the answer there does seem to tell us the answer, merely by replacing &quot;week&quot; by &quot;all time&quot; (since you're asking about the all tab) since animuson (who's an SE employee) explicitly states the criterion: &quot;*the three tags are the tags that you've earned the most votes in during this week*&quot;, keeping in mind also the distinction between 'live' and 'cached' in that answer." CreationDate="2015-09-07T21:18:35.663" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8211" PostId="2686" Score="0" Text="Right, but then the number of answers per tag should not matter, so I am back to my puzzlement about why hypothesis-testing instead of factor-analysis is selected as the third tag for me... I don't think live/cached nuance matters in my case, as I did not post almost any answers in the last week(s)." CreationDate="2015-09-07T21:20:54.817" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8212" PostId="2686" Score="0" Text="Yes, good point... a comment there might be a good place to express your puzzlement." CreationDate="2015-09-07T21:23:35.033" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8213" PostId="2686" Score="0" Text="The tag score displayed in the profile is the total score of non-wiki answers; perhaps the Users page adds the questions score to that. This could potentially explain the inconsistency as I have several hypothesis-testing questions, but not a single factor-analysis one. I don't have a profile on meta.SE and am a bit reluctant to create one solely for the purpose of this comment... Might do this at some later point if no answer appears here." CreationDate="2015-09-07T21:29:01.403" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8214" PostId="2687" Score="0" Text="Thanks, gung, this sounds correct. I'm not sure that this inconsistency makes sense, but at least there is some logic behind it. I will remove the &quot;bug&quot; tag from my question." CreationDate="2015-09-08T13:14:41.060" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8215" PostId="2689" Score="5" Text="+1 There is often an alternative method, a &quot;shortcut&quot;, a sanity check, a verification-by-simulation, ... Somebody who is asking &quot;is this right?&quot; is in some ways implicitly asking *and how can I know if it is?*" CreationDate="2015-09-08T18:27:29.633" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="8216" PostId="2693" Score="4" Text="Please take a few moments to review our help system so you understand how this site works.  I deleted your post because it did not answer the question (and therefore was likely to collect downvotes very rapidly, BTW). That has been the fate of ten thousand such posts before yours and will continue to be the fate of such posts in the future.  If you find that improving this site by removing such material is &quot;shameful,&quot; then you might prefer participating in a different kind of forum." CreationDate="2015-09-12T20:24:05.310" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="8217" PostId="2693" Score="0" Text="Dear whuber. It's better not to give any answer than a wrong answer. Your post treats RMS as standard deviation which is wrong. There is no negotiation in this. Correct it or delete it. If you don't understand how math works it is better for you to participate in a different forum since since wrong answers lead to bad science. The shameful part is the copy of my answer in the second post which initiated this post." CreationDate="2015-09-12T20:28:50.377" UserId="87513" />
  <row Id="8218" PostId="2693" Score="0" Text="Re the edit to this post: your representation of the events is woefully incorrect and not borne out by the record. You are making unsupported and scurrilous public accusations of misbehavior.  Please think hard before you continue this course of action. BTW, I did not copy any answer of yours--nor, as anyone who has any familiarity with this site will know, have I any need to.  Whether or not either of us understands math is not a question for public debate, so any further posts on your part about such issues will be deleted without further notice." CreationDate="2015-09-12T20:29:14.863" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="8219" PostId="2693" Score="0" Text="I'm glad we have timestamps so even at this point there is no negotiation." CreationDate="2015-09-12T20:30:57.530" UserId="87513" />
  <row Id="8220" PostId="2693" Score="0" Text="And what do we learn from it? If you are a moderator you can give wrong answers, delete the correction, don't correct your own post for the sake of science and copy other posts without being punished. Such a lack of self-criticism is very dangerous." CreationDate="2015-09-12T20:37:07.610" UserId="87513" />
  <row Id="8221" PostId="2693" Score="1" Text="I would agree--if anything like what you say actually happened. Why don't we try this: over the next few days, the more experienced members of this community will read your post and may investigate your claims. If they find merit in them, they will respond positively and upvote your post. If they do not, they will likely downvote this thread and perhaps even offer comments (or answers) explaining their reasons. These are the people who have the ultimate power on this site: no single moderator does. In the meantime, please be so kind as to visit http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/be-nice." CreationDate="2015-09-12T20:41:13.597" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="8222" PostId="2693" Score="0" Text="Dear Dr. Huber, you don't want to argue with me that for a sample $RMS=\sigma$  don't you? I don't think you're that silly. Both of us know you're wrong. So let's take this point aside and correct your post. There is absolutely no &quot;I would agree--if&quot; inside for you. Take your moderator role more seriously. For the second point: I might be wrong but I posted the same answer first, which is my point. After you deleted my answer without a correction, you posted the same answer in short form. There is also no negotiation on this point. Your lack of self criticism is bad for a scientific community." CreationDate="2015-09-12T20:53:34.517" UserId="87513" />
  <row Id="8223" PostId="2693" Score="0" Text="Downvotes don't count when it comes to judgement between right or wrong. It's a logical fallacy to believe if the bigger mass believes in something it must be right. I'm writing it down here for the sake of documentation and to rise awareness of possible abuse of moderator rights. You are a reputable person (here) but this does not mean that you have the right to derange at some point." CreationDate="2015-09-12T20:59:52.230" UserId="87513" />
  <row Id="8224" PostId="2693" Score="2" Text="I would like to help, but I confess to being baffled. Your question here references two threads on our main site. In the first, I deleted your post that began &quot;I can't comment on...&quot; on the basis that it was a comment that did not answer the question. In the second, I answered a question that you had already answered. That's routine on SE. My answer is completely different than yours (for otherwise it would be pointless to repost it--I have better things to do). Your claims do not appear to describe these events. Are you perhaps referring to some other thread?" CreationDate="2015-09-12T21:07:39.057" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="8225" PostId="2693" Score="1" Text="First Point: Due to the lack of some points I wasn't able to comment and point out that your answer is wrong. Should I keep quiet if someone posts a wrong answer and, as you state it &quot;the more experienced members of this community&quot; up-vote it? This is ridiculous. It is okay to delete my comment as long as you correct your initial post. Otherwise it's better to delete your answer to avoid bad work being derived from it. But obviously you have no problem with wrong answers since it's still not corrected. Second point: Your answer was 175,-10 with $n$=100 which I posted around 3 hours before you." CreationDate="2015-09-12T21:24:06.050" UserId="87513" />
  <row Id="8229" PostId="2693" Score="5" Text="Re &quot;*Should I keep quiet?*&quot; -- until you have spent the small amount of time and effort needed to gain the reputation to comment, actually that's *exactly* what the site is designed to try to make you do. [You'd also need to do a much better job of explaining why you think you're right than you managed there.]" CreationDate="2015-09-12T23:21:01.883" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8235" PostId="2693" Score="0" Text="It's silly to keep quiet if someone posts a wrong answer which leads to wrong results and the &quot;experts&quot; upvote it ignoring the fact that it is a wrong statement. My answer was: &quot;In general RMS≠σ. To compute the standard deviation σ from a sample, as asked in the OP, you need to divide by the degrees of freedom which is usually n−u : number of observations minus number of parameters.&quot; This is explanation enough." CreationDate="2015-09-13T00:52:25.730" UserId="87513" />
  <row Id="8226" PostId="2694" Score="0" Text="There is a lot of text. It does not matter since. A wrong answer is a wrong answer. If it's not corrected, it harms more than it helps. You're the second who thinks that the mass is right. A huge logical fallacy. I guess that's the difference between a valuable journal and online sites where moderators and the crowd can decide what's wrong and what's right. Upvoting and experience don't prevent people from doing mistakes. Judge yourself is he right or wrong? Where is your experience? See what I mean? There should be always an option - even for newbs - to point out wrong answers in an easy way." CreationDate="2015-09-12T22:39:26.283" UserId="87513" />
  <row Id="8227" PostId="2694" Score="2" Text="Where did I say &quot;the mass is right&quot;? I don't think that at all. Only a small proportion vote on the site, and it's easy to identify who many of the main ones are. Those journals that you think are valuable, take a look at the people who edit them and publish in them, and then look at who votes, edits and comments here, and you'll see a lot of overlap. (In some cases it may take you a while to figure out who is who but others make their names plain enough that you could figure out that in many cases it's a lot of the same people. Outside that we have a good number of highly experienced people)" CreationDate="2015-09-12T22:49:29.767" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8228" PostId="2694" Score="2" Text="In that first post, I *did* already look at whuber's answer and decided it was a good contribution back when I first voted on it, a couple of years ago. If I could vote again, I'd upvote it now as well. The reason why new users need 50 reputation isn't because new users can't be correct, and that's not what I said." CreationDate="2015-09-12T22:51:52.527" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8230" PostId="2694" Score="0" Text="+1, but to be completely honest, one should add that moderators often  choose to convert answers that should rather be comments into comments. In this case, @whuber decided to delete OP's answer instead of converting it into a comment under his own answer. As you said in (1.d) that you would have done the same, I wonder if you want to explain why." CreationDate="2015-09-12T23:43:44.190" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8231" PostId="2694" Score="2" Text="@amoeba If you mean &quot;why would I not choose to convert it to a comment?&quot; -- It's not required, but I do it sometimes as a matter of courtesy, under consideration of two aspects that help: (i) the poster is a brand new user who has no idea how things work (which doesn't apply in this case); (ii) the comment is a good contribution which otherwise follows the rules and site conventions.  I was pondering whether to do so in this case, but the exchange under the question here made me think I'd have to delete the entire conversation anyway. Given the nature of the discussion here, it would ...ctd." CreationDate="2015-09-12T23:51:11.447" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8232" PostId="2694" Score="4" Text="ctd... at best go into a chat room. Ultimately the reason I haven't converted it is that I think we'd simply get the same argument in comments there, and there's little benefit to that. The OP here is 2 rep points short of being able to comment, and I'm prepared to wait that out in the hopes that the comment, when it finally comes, is more measured, or at the least better argued. If conversion to a comment seems likely to lead to more heat than light, I'm not going to do it without very careful thought. Nothing I've seen so far makes me think the site would be better for it." CreationDate="2015-09-12T23:51:27.173" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8233" PostId="2694" Score="0" Text="@amoeba It's just occurred to me that there's an aspect of my answer that may be misleading you -- *deletion* of a comment-as-answer occurs either way; I'd have done that as a matter of course, since that's our job. The only aspect that may change is that some of those can end up as a comment. That's not something I would rush into in the present circumstances. However, if you feel it should happen now (rather than wait out the two reputation points), you don't need a mod -- simply find one of the OP's answers (5 to choose from) that you think is worth an upvote." CreationDate="2015-09-13T00:30:10.373" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8234" PostId="2694" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b: The answer was wrong. Point. A reputable journal would accept any correction-submission in any form. Point. It's still not corrected. This fact disqualifies both of you as moderators." CreationDate="2015-09-13T00:44:33.910" UserId="87513" />
  <row Id="8236" PostId="2694" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b: &quot;why would I not choose to convert it to a comment?&quot; -- It's not required&quot; Are you serious? It's a wrong answer and my correction was short and straight to the point. This is a clear miss-use of moderator privileges. The right behavior from whuber should be a short change, and honestly I wouldn't mind if my comment is deleted afterwards. Now since you are in the game you start to talk around instead of getting to the point and accepting that the answer is wrong and that whuber should have corrected it.  I'm glad this is documented, it shows the quality of such portals and their mods." CreationDate="2015-09-13T00:58:24.203" UserId="87513" />
  <row Id="8237" PostId="2694" Score="0" Text="Glen_b, my point was not so much that @nali's comment-answer should be converted into a comment now; my point was that if it had been converted into a comment right away (instead of simply deleting it) then this would likely not have alienated OP so much. I am also a bit surprised that this did not happen, given that such comment-answers are often being converted into comments. I guess it had to do with this comment-answer not being seen as helpful or correct; so perhaps this discussion should rather center on whether it is in fact correct or incorrect." CreationDate="2015-09-13T09:21:11.077" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8238" PostId="2694" Score="0" Text="amoeba: As hard as it sounds (it's not meant as attack on you or someone else), math is not about negotiation whether something is true or not. His answer was false. No discussion needed at this point. The rating or voting system already failed since it's the most voted answer. Though it's a basic thing to differentiate between rms and sigma. This clearly shows that most people don't know what they are doing." CreationDate="2015-09-13T10:50:57.203" UserId="87513" />
  <row Id="8239" PostId="2694" Score="10" Text="@nali, you have already repeated a couple of dozens of times that you believe that whuber's answer is wrong; as you say yourself, math is not about negotiation or arguing, so perhaps you can attempt to prove that it is wrong. You probably noticed that EVERYBODY here seems to disagree with you; don't you find it strange? If $x_i$ is a sample of size $n$ and $\bar x$ is the sample mean, then $\frac{1}{n}\sum (x_i-\bar x)^2$ is the maximum likelihood estimator of variance. You seem to think that this is false. If so, you are confused." CreationDate="2015-09-13T13:24:35.043" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8241" PostId="2694" Score="0" Text="@amoeba: It does not matter how many people vote here, you see upvotes of wrong answers all the time while right answers can also be downvoted. Mostly it's about psychology and does not have to do if someone is right or wrong. If people are polarized they're too stuck to accept that they're wrong. Luckily were not in philosophy or political sciences where things have to be negotiated: I found a very very very easy [explanation](http://www.statsdirect.com/help/basics/degrees_of_freedom.htm)." CreationDate="2015-09-13T23:29:43.460" UserId="87513" />
  <row Id="8242" PostId="2694" Score="0" Text="In short terms: you compute $\bar{x}$ from your **sample** not from the whole set. You also don't know it beforehand without snooping into the data. While computing the mean value $\bar{x}$ you snoop into your data. Your probability of a bad event rises. Therefore your degree of freedom is decreased by one. And here is the difference between copying equations and actually understanding statistics. If you read the OP you see that this is exactly the case. $\sigma \neq RMS$, limited sample, computation of $\bar{x},\bar{y}$. Sorry guys but this proves again that qualification &gt; mass." CreationDate="2015-09-13T23:39:59.313" UserId="87513" />
  <row Id="8244" PostId="2694" Score="0" Text="What qualifications are you referring to?" CreationDate="2015-09-13T23:50:11.777" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8245" PostId="2694" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b: It's my everyday work. It's what I've studied. It's what I have to teach from time to time. Sorry if i heated up the debate, probably I've should have posted some easier explanations beforehand. Psychology forbids to accept someone as authority which you're in a heavy argument with. Cheers :)" CreationDate="2015-09-13T23:56:04.243" UserId="87513" />
  <row Id="8246" PostId="2694" Score="8" Text="How are those aspects for you different from any other person in the thread? I have a PhD in stats, have published in a number of high-ranked journals and refereed for others, supervised a number of postgrad theses (including PhD), have taught statistics &amp; stats-heavy subjects at several universities over more than 25 years (mostly to postgrads; right now I'm teaching a research subject to masters students to help prepare them to write their thesis), and I have worked in stats research in industry over an even longer period. That's nothing compared to whuber; take a look at his CV some time" CreationDate="2015-09-14T00:41:51.387" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8247" PostId="2694" Score="8" Text="Almost all the usual active participants in meta are highly qualified, many much more than me; several are editors for high ranked journals.  Which is to say, you can bet that almost everyone *voting* in this thread has very impressive qualifications (it will be the same people voting as usually participate). If the sort of qualifications you mention really count for you, you should be reconsidering your position." CreationDate="2015-09-14T00:47:53.750" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8248" PostId="2694" Score="8" Text="Personally, I don't put that much weight in qualifications; I think performance here is a better indicator of value; people who consistently generate very highly ranked answers over a long period of time demonstrate not only understanding, but ability to communicate that understanding. If you want to identify the people who know what they're doing, I'd say try something like count the &quot;good answer&quot; badges per hundred answers. If you want to have some idea of breadth of knowledge, look at tag badges per hundred answers. These are not the only indicators, but might be a starting point." CreationDate="2015-09-14T01:00:59.143" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8250" PostId="2694" Score="7" Text="@nali, You appear to be under a delusion that nobody here understands this $n$ vs. $n-1$ issue. This is, frankly, ridiculous. Everybody here knows this well. Maximum likelihood estimator for variance is biased, and the Bessel's correction is needed for an unbiased estimator. Yes. So what? You did not even start explaining why you insist on the unbiased estimator; what if one prefers the maximum likelihood one? Also, the formula given in whuber's answer was for standard deviation. Even with Bessel's correction it remains biased. Come on, you need to invoke better arguments." CreationDate="2015-09-14T09:23:19.423" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8252" PostId="2694" Score="0" Text="@amoeba the question poster is always pinged so there should be no need." CreationDate="2015-09-14T09:31:23.453" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8253" PostId="2694" Score="0" Text="@amoeba My comment about the automatic notification of OP is wrong (it's a misinterpretation of a part of [the rules about who is notified](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/43019/how-do-comment-replies-work/43020#43020)). However, I believe that my first such comment (as a direct reply under OP's comment) will cause a notification even if the later ones don't." CreationDate="2015-09-14T10:54:47.287" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8254" PostId="2694" Score="0" Text="@amoeba: I explained my position several times, if you search for it, you'll find it. Your answer is still wrong. Picking the wrong estimator is as bad as picking the wrong equation. It sheds a very bad light on this community if you still get up-voted. I'm glad this is documented." CreationDate="2015-09-15T21:13:37.790" UserId="87513" />
  <row Id="8243" PostId="2697" Score="0" Text="Sorry I've just read this post. There might be some hot arguments from my site which you can find prior to this answer. You don't need to apologize. I also overreacted. But honestly I never thought that a basic thing like penalty for the loss of degree of freedom is not taught at the university level. Wish you a nice start into the week." CreationDate="2015-09-13T23:46:27.897" UserId="87513" />
  <row Id="8258" PostId="2697" Score="1" Text="&quot;any answer not only has to be correct to be of any value: it also has to communicate&quot;  That is true of any SE/Q&amp;A site in my opinion." CreationDate="2015-09-16T23:40:43.807" UserId="89026" />
  <row Id="8240" PostId="2698" Score="4" Text="+1. This is perhaps a better way because it's slightly shorter: `\DeclareMathOperator{\Corr}{Corr}` vs. `\newcommand{\Corr}{\operatorname{Corr}}`." CreationDate="2015-09-13T21:40:48.873" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="21251" PostId="2698" Score="0" Text="This appealing answer; however, I've noticed that declaring operator through`\DeclareMathOperator{\Cov}{Cov}` prints`Cov` using the document font (Arial in my case), it would be more presentable if the `Cover` would be printed with the same font as the text generated via `\log` and other similar commands." CreationDate="2022-02-28T17:06:50.190" UserId="59815" />
  <row Id="8249" PostId="2700" Score="0" Text="thanks, apparently something broke in firefox" CreationDate="2015-09-14T08:10:20.943" UserId="67447" />
  <row Id="8259" PostId="2704" Score="0" Text="There's a related question somewhere I'd like to link to that has some relevant things in it, but its not in &quot;Related&quot; and after several searches I can't seem to locate it. (This is in part a reminder to me to look again)" CreationDate="2015-09-17T22:21:46.110" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8265" PostId="2704" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b, I also have a feeling of deja vu here. I seem to recall a comment from whuber in response to the question. I bet the related question does exist, but I can't think how to find it." CreationDate="2015-09-18T03:46:44.653" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="8266" PostId="2704" Score="0" Text="I did think of one other page where a few things are mentioned -- my [Q&amp;A answers at the moderator election](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2460/2015-moderator-election-qa-questionnaire/2464#2464); that lists 4 things to do, at least three of which you only need quite low reputation for." CreationDate="2015-09-18T04:20:49.823" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8267" PostId="2704" Score="21" Text="CV's a Q &amp; A site: you're giving, not taking, when you ask a question." CreationDate="2015-09-18T08:42:14.117" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8269" PostId="2704" Score="1" Text="@Scortchi Agreed. It takes two to tango. Without questions then the site couldn't function. That being said, the ability to answer questions is a great way to pay forward the help you receive, or (might) request. I'm not saying questions have no value. I'm saying my limited ability to answer questions prevents me from paying forward the help I receive in the most direct manner. I think this is reflected powerfully in the rep system since acceptance rep doesn't count to the daily rep cap." CreationDate="2015-09-18T15:38:11.950" UserId="89026" />
  <row Id="8292" PostId="2704" Score="3" Text="Every insight counts in my opinion! Furthermore, questions are a good source of knowledge for everyone: the fact they had already been asked has saved me a lot of time." CreationDate="2015-09-20T14:08:19.487" UserId="68622" />
  <row Id="8261" PostId="2705" Score="4" Text="Thank you for your detailed answer.  There is certainly a lot more for me to contribute than I originally thought!  I'll definitely start following the `self-study` tag for questions that I can potentially answer." CreationDate="2015-09-17T23:19:58.140" UserId="89026" />
  <row Id="8264" PostId="2705" Score="11" Text="*Lot's* of good points here. I guess we don't do bounties on meta, but otherwise I would offer one for this." CreationDate="2015-09-18T03:45:01.860" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="8272" PostId="2706" Score="3" Text="If you could supply a link or two to such threads, it would help us determine what actually happened." CreationDate="2015-09-18T18:57:39.963" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="8273" PostId="2706" Score="1" Text="If I recall correctly, I believe the following was an example of a user with a low rating adding a &quot;Thanks guys!&quot; or something to the end of the original question (which I rejected). &#xA;&#xA;http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/173121/kernel-density-estimation" CreationDate="2015-09-18T19:04:53.870" UserId="76981" />
  <row Id="8274" PostId="2706" Score="1" Text="This included an edit that was okay (I approved, but it really didn't help that much...) by a user with rating = 149. &#xA;&#xA;http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/173141/confident-interval-negative" CreationDate="2015-09-18T19:21:00.047" UserId="76981" />
  <row Id="8277" PostId="2706" Score="1" Text="Perhaps this my misunderstanding; I thought that a minimum ranking of something like 500 was required, but I now see that all that is required is 100." CreationDate="2015-09-18T20:56:17.020" UserId="76981" />
  <row Id="8281" PostId="2706" Score="0" Text="@gung no our edits were ships passing the night.  I started editing before your edit was committed.  When I started that text was deleted.  You deleted it and I didn't.  When I committed your edit it was ~20 sec after you finished.  [I couldn't rollback my suggested edit](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/80933/301021), so I was stuck.  (I had that link handy because I looked it up after reading your edit.)" CreationDate="2015-09-18T21:06:00.157" UserId="89026" />
  <row Id="8282" PostId="2706" Score="0" Text="@Erik, oh I see that now. My apologies." CreationDate="2015-09-18T21:07:23.283" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="8284" PostId="2706" Score="0" Text="@gung  No worries.  I understand the confusion, and that is why I up-voted the request to allow rolling back edits on Meta. :)" CreationDate="2015-09-18T21:10:04.217" UserId="89026" />
  <row Id="8285" PostId="2706" Score="0" Text="@CliffAB I just realized that you linked to my edit in the comments above." CreationDate="2015-09-18T21:27:29.870" UserId="89026" />
  <row Id="8286" PostId="2706" Score="0" Text="@Erik, ha, don't take it as insult. I had just thought that users needed a higher rating to edit posts and was confused why they were allowed to do so. That was just an example of what was confusing me." CreationDate="2015-09-18T21:31:08.890" UserId="76981" />
  <row Id="8287" PostId="2706" Score="0" Text="@CliffAB Don't worry about it.  It takes more than that to make me feel insulted. I figured I was partly responsible for you asking this question when I read the title because I edited 4 or 5 questions earlier today based on the response to [this Meta question](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/2704/89026)." CreationDate="2015-09-18T21:36:12.857" UserId="89026" />
  <row Id="8290" PostId="2706" Score="5" Text="The rep needed to suggest an edit is deliberately very low. It looks to me like things are working.  A new user suggesting edits doesn't necessarily know what all the network rules and site conventions are and so we may well be rejecting quite a few edits early on. If a suggestion is mostly OK, approve and edit; if it makes the post worse, or breaks a more important rule, reject it.  If you think there's a more serious issue (such as vandalism) or think a short explanation from a moderator would be required to set things straight, you can always flag a particular post and explain the problem." CreationDate="2015-09-18T22:47:51.760" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8471" PostId="2706" Score="0" Text="@whuber: ah, here's an example of someone with rating of 1 editing a post: http://stats.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/79961. Not trying to bust anyone, just not sure what's happening." CreationDate="2015-10-12T21:57:32.263" UserId="76981" />
  <row Id="8279" PostId="2708" Score="1" Text="If reviewers are catching bad edits then the system is working. That is the reason for peer review, and an important part of teaching younger members." CreationDate="2015-09-18T21:01:31.693" UserId="89026" />
  <row Id="8283" PostId="2708" Score="0" Text="yes, I had been confused with some of the privileges (I mixed up ability to approve edits with ability to edit). Some of the edits are a little annoying (i.e. neutral edits, where I think the quality of the answer remains unchanged), but that's just the peer review process." CreationDate="2015-09-18T21:09:22.960" UserId="76981" />
  <row Id="8293" PostId="2708" Score="0" Text="No, the limit for tag wikis is 5K (else I coulnt edit them)" CreationDate="2015-09-20T20:51:36.810" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="8294" PostId="2708" Score="1" Text="@kjetilbhalvorsen, check the link. You can *suggest* edits only (&amp; review other's suggested edits). When you reach 20k you can edit tag wikis without your suggested edits having to be approved by others in the review queue." CreationDate="2015-09-20T22:11:31.053" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="8498" PostId="2709" Score="0" Text="Hi @Franck, do you want to accept one of the answers? The tags have been made synonyms now." CreationDate="2015-10-15T21:05:22.033" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8499" PostId="2709" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Sure, I am not a huge fan of &quot;natural-language&quot; though, too bad &quot;natural-language-processing&quot; isn't a valid tag." CreationDate="2015-10-15T21:23:33.203" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="8500" PostId="2709" Score="0" Text="It could technically be a valid tag, but there is always a constraint to try to make tags as short as possible..." CreationDate="2015-10-15T21:25:47.230" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8295" PostId="2710" Score="4" Text="I would suggest to have [natural-language] as the master tag because when I see &quot;NLP&quot;, the first thing that comes to mind is the so called &quot;neuro-linguistic programming&quot;, and it's confusing." CreationDate="2015-09-21T09:28:12.583" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8296" PostId="2710" Score="3" Text="Ahh, totally forgot about that. Seems like natural-language seems like the better bet.  Edited the answer." CreationDate="2015-09-21T09:40:28.287" UserId="84191" />
  <row Id="8325" PostId="2710" Score="1" Text="NLP for me is &quot;non-linear programming&quot;." CreationDate="2015-09-24T16:07:27.117" UserId="27915" />
  <row Id="8341" PostId="2710" Score="0" Text="@Weiwei I find non-linear optimization clearer :)" CreationDate="2015-09-27T05:07:24.800" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="8304" PostId="2711" Score="0" Text="Something like this would definitely solve my problem. Good answer." CreationDate="2015-09-22T14:35:01.973" UserId="36757" />
  <row Id="8315" PostId="2711" Score="0" Text="Personally, I don't like the aesthetic. I'm not looking forward to a circle around a normal distribution. I do agree that we should have a colorblind safe design. I wonder if we could come up with something else." CreationDate="2015-09-22T21:25:48.577" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="8316" PostId="2711" Score="2" Text="@gung A circle is just an example that is why I added &quot;something&quot; too.  It might be fun to skew the normal distribution right after an up-vote, and left after a down-vote, but that isn't great either....  I think the principal of making a more impactful change than a color shift is sound though." CreationDate="2015-09-22T21:28:54.183" UserId="89026" />
  <row Id="8317" PostId="2711" Score="1" Text="Skewed distributions are a cute idea. I wonder how distinctive they'd look." CreationDate="2015-09-22T21:56:36.990" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="8326" PostId="2711" Score="3" Text="Looking the [grpahic design stackexchange](http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com) they have a filled vs non-filled shape for up and down. Maybe going from 1 distribution to two overlapped distributions would be cool." CreationDate="2015-09-24T16:26:35.747" UserId="36757" />
  <row Id="8299" PostId="2714" Score="7" Text="What is especially interesting about the link you supply is that it has nothing at all to do with big data!  According to [one answer](http://stats.stackexchange.com/a/173063/919), that question deals with &quot;small data.&quot; Although here is not the place to debate what &quot;big data&quot; means, you ought to consider differentiating between &quot;big&quot; in the sense of (a) *large enough to create computational difficulties* and (b) *large enough to suggest using non-standard, sophisticated, or detailed statistical procedures* for exploration and analysis." CreationDate="2015-09-22T12:31:06.677" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="8300" PostId="2714" Score="0" Text="@whuber That question might not be about Big Data(the data might look humungous for the OP, but in general it's not). But, it's just an example I cited for explaining the question, as it's wordings seem to be close to my doubt.  I am asking about such **type** of questions. Just wondering, is my question clear?" CreationDate="2015-09-22T12:36:12.250" UserId="84191" />
  <row Id="8301" PostId="2714" Score="2" Text="It's not clear to me because I still don't understand what you mean by &quot;type,&quot; especially because you have supplied an example that does not seem to be an example at all.  It does show that the phrase &quot;data is large&quot; is subjective and arbitrary, which rules it out as an effective criterion for determining whether a question is on topic." CreationDate="2015-09-22T13:23:52.430" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="8303" PostId="2714" Score="4" Text="I think that a question e.g. like &quot;How can I apply PCA to a 100gb data table that does not fit into my RAM?&quot; would be absolutely on topic, even though 100gb is not really &quot;Big Data&quot;. In fact, we do have similar questions and they have useful answers and are not closed (see e.g. [this question](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/164162) and the ones linked from there)." CreationDate="2015-09-22T14:26:23.557" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8318" PostId="2714" Score="0" Text="@whuber Seems like Andre have managed to cite the examples which I wanted to cite in the question." CreationDate="2015-09-23T05:52:17.513" UserId="84191" />
  <row Id="8309" PostId="2715" Score="1" Text="Thanks for clarifying. Seems like these are the exact examples I wanted to cite, but somehow ended up putting a wrong one." CreationDate="2015-09-22T17:40:56.803" UserId="84191" />
  <row Id="8305" PostId="2717" Score="0" Text="Just about all the SE sites have their own twitter accounts.  I don't know anything about how they work" CreationDate="2015-09-22T17:18:25.970" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8306" PostId="2717" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b Interesting.  I guess I'm not very observant elsewhere." CreationDate="2015-09-22T17:22:50.000" UserId="89026" />
  <row Id="8307" PostId="2717" Score="2" Text="http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/183407/how-does-the-twitter-bot-work" CreationDate="2015-09-22T17:23:30.080" UserDisplayName="user90127" />
  <row Id="8308" PostId="2717" Score="0" Text="e.g. see here: http://english.stackexchange.com/posts/275268/revisions which was tweeted to [StackEnglish](https://twitter.com/StackEnglish)" CreationDate="2015-09-22T17:25:14.313" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8323" PostId="2722" Score="3" Text="I'm a fourth year undergrad, and I honestly echo each one of your sentiments. I feel like this is a pretty accurate portrayal of why (students) get involved in the community. This is an important conversation, and I hope this question gains some traction." CreationDate="2015-09-24T13:57:40.940" UserId="44952" />
  <row Id="8324" PostId="2723" Score="0" Text="This 2 year old meta post you link to is very relevant. This is exactly what I have observed. I do not know what metric SE is using in general but I think it would be nice to look at the churn rate of new users and try to do some changes to try to affect it in a positive way." CreationDate="2015-09-24T15:15:45.250" UserId="68057" />
  <row Id="8333" PostId="2723" Score="2" Text="I dont think it is reasonable to expect that a high ratio of new users will become regulars.  I have an account on maybe $\approx 40$ SE sites but regular on only 3-4, the other sites only for an occasional question." CreationDate="2015-09-25T12:11:09.267" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="8334" PostId="2723" Score="3" Text="Although it will maybe never be a high percentage, I still think that we can do somethings to affect the churn rate. I think that it might not be w.r.t. current users, but rather exposing the site to more people in the field." CreationDate="2015-09-25T12:30:09.747" UserId="68057" />
  <row Id="8335" PostId="2723" Score="6" Text="While some people aren't going to be drawn to chat rooms, no-one's going to be put off CV by other peoples' using a chat-room: so any ideas you have to stimulate activity in Ten Fold will, I'm sure, be well received." CreationDate="2015-09-25T16:09:54.250" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8406" PostId="2723" Score="1" Text="There could certainly be a subset of users who might find a more active chat an attraction, and I am curious to hear suggestions about how to do that." CreationDate="2015-10-03T10:34:45.263" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8328" PostId="2725" Score="0" Text="On topic if phrased suitably for our site: See questions like [this](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/102962/dice-probability-amount-of-hits-in-a-pool), [this](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/24385/distribution-of-complex-results-for-pool-of-ten-sided-dice-specific-to-custom-t), [this](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/32309/relevancy-of-order-statistics-to-the-roll-and-keep-dice-mechanic), [this](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/110671/probability-for-completely-unfair-stats-when-rolling-ability-scores-using-4d6-dr), ...." CreationDate="2015-09-25T06:11:47.597" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8329" PostId="2725" Score="0" Text="... [this](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/116792/dungeons-dragons-attack-hit-probability-success-percentage) and so forth. Just be sure to explain the mechanic clearly, try to avoid RPG jargon and define any that you do use. [The question you posted there would barely need to change here. If you want to request migration you could, or alternatively you could make a (somewhat differently phrased) new post here.]" CreationDate="2015-09-25T06:13:37.540" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8330" PostId="2725" Score="0" Text="gung ... if you see this, do you see the comment by the mod at the bottom of the linked question? It relates to our earlier conversation about some SE sites being a lot more proactive about removing comments. Similar comments can be seen on many posts there." CreationDate="2015-09-25T06:14:41.947" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8331" PostId="2725" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/174099/how-to-calculate-the-probability-of-the-outcome-of-this-convoluted-dice-rolling is this sufficiently edited?" CreationDate="2015-09-25T06:17:49.453" UserId="90384" />
  <row Id="8339" PostId="2729" Score="3" Text="I don't disagree that there are questions that could be on topic at DS, but off topic here &amp; on SO. The question is whether there are enough of them to sustain the site. My impression is that most of their Qs are better asked elsewhere (&amp; in fact are often duplicates); despite that, however, DS seems to be not getting enough action to stay alive." CreationDate="2015-09-26T17:36:10.487" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="8355" PostId="2729" Score="2" Text="@gung I had this doubt when I was a newbie at both the sites, so I posted a question at (http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/266067/difference-between-the-cross-validated-and-data-science-se-sites); and after spending time in both, I have self-answered(http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/266067/difference-between-the-cross-validated-and-data-science-se-sites/266996#266996) it from my experiences and answers from here.&#xA;&#xA;And coming to the activity part, I do agree with you that it is moving towards a slow death." CreationDate="2015-09-28T13:02:16.320" UserId="84191" />
  <row Id="9147" PostId="2729" Score="6" Text="@gung re:duplicates -- It is the proud tradition of data science to expend much time and effort recreating results from other fields." CreationDate="2016-02-03T19:28:23.470" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="8340" PostId="2731" Score="6" Text="&amp; the other way around: I often use explanations / examples / figures I have created here when I develop materials for a new lecture." CreationDate="2015-09-26T17:38:10.050" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="8343" PostId="2732" Score="1" Text="Isn't this question suitable for the main site?" CreationDate="2015-09-27T17:27:26.420" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="8345" PostId="2732" Score="4" Text="@AndreSilva But it's also a Meta issue, in the sense that it's a recurring issue - across *hundreds* of questions." CreationDate="2015-09-27T23:05:55.577" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="8347" PostId="2732" Score="6" Text="I often link to one of these posts [Algorithms for automatic model selection](http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/20836/17230), [Feature selection and cross-validation](http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/27750/17230), [Should covariates that are not statistically significant be 'kept in' when creating a model?](http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/66448/17230)." CreationDate="2015-09-28T08:29:18.797" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8346" PostId="2733" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b the last solution you suggested seems to be the best one for this kind of problem although I'm more confident about the code and more worried about flaws in the methodology. If you answer the question I'll mark your answer as accepted since you solved my problem" CreationDate="2015-09-28T00:07:24.470" UserId="68622" />
  <row Id="8348" PostId="2735" Score="1" Text="It's the [Gravatar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravatar) logo - presumably this is used as a default when your own identicon can't be found for some reason. I can see your usual identicon in this &amp; other posts; perhaps try clearing your browser cache." CreationDate="2015-09-28T09:39:40.550" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8350" PostId="2736" Score="17" Text="The most important thing is making your question clear &amp; interesting to as many users as you can. Pay especial attention to the title &amp; to selecting a variety of relevant tags." CreationDate="2015-09-28T12:04:41.670" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8353" PostId="2736" Score="4" Text="Do you mean &quot;answer&quot; rather than &quot;ask&quot;? (Also the bounty feature really isn't new). Getting the question as clear and engaging as possible is much more important than a bounty." CreationDate="2015-09-28T12:42:11.573" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8354" PostId="2736" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b yes I meant answer, sorry, I've just edited the question. I noticed the bounty only recently and was wondering if there are any other similar tools to help &quot;promoting&quot; a question." CreationDate="2015-09-28T12:51:44.990" UserId="68622" />
  <row Id="8357" PostId="2736" Score="6" Text="About the advices provided by our moderators, this post can help: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1479/how-to-ask-a-good-question-on-crossvalidated" CreationDate="2015-09-28T15:18:20.623" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="8358" PostId="2736" Score="12" Text="To the other suggestions I would add--after reviewing some of your highly voted questions and others with no votes--that you should attempt to ask your question *as briefly as possible.*  I suspect that any time a question exceeds one page, it will lose a majority of potential readers unless it is so engagingly asked and illustrated that people really enjoy reading through it.  Even if you feel that offering many details is necessary, *ask your question at the outset* so that people know what it's about, whether they are interested in it, and whether they might be able to answer." CreationDate="2015-09-28T15:50:30.107" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="8373" PostId="2736" Score="0" Text="@whuber makes a very good point there. Take your recent question [Simulating the game of bingo using a Monte Carlo approach. Is this methodology correct?](http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/174500/17230) as an example. I only read to the bottom of that because I wanted to give you tips on asking questions owing to this Meta post. If it had started along the lines of &quot;I simulated 500 bingo games in which each of 150 contestants should have had an equal chance of winning, &amp; was surprised to find the proportion of games won by each [...]&quot; I think it'd've been answered more quickly." CreationDate="2015-09-30T10:03:56.983" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8374" PostId="2736" Score="2" Text="Some other things: (1) More people (though still not many) will read through code if it's well commented, perhaps showing examples of outputs at particular steps. (2) An accumulation of very minor hindrances to ease of reading (such as irrelevancy, poor formatting of equations, typos, &amp; mislabelled or unlabelled plots) can put people off IMO." CreationDate="2015-09-30T11:24:26.150" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8375" PostId="2736" Score="1" Text="Ok I think I got it, I'll try to improve the way I ask questions. I sometimes feel that giving as much details as possible helps but clearly it's not always the case." CreationDate="2015-09-30T11:28:31.940" UserId="68622" />
  <row Id="8422" PostId="2736" Score="1" Text="Writing an engaging question is not easy. Many of my questions didn't do well for this reason." CreationDate="2015-10-05T03:00:34.450" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8423" PostId="2736" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b I know, sometimes I'm so deep in a topic that I make a mess when trying to ask a question.. But I must say, in general in my experience people here on Cross Validated are really nice and polite and try to help even though the question isn't perfect." CreationDate="2015-10-05T12:11:13.357" UserId="68622" />
  <row Id="8695" PostId="2736" Score="0" Text="@AndreSilva: with regard to your title edit, see http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Incentivize. I am not a native English speaker so my personal opinion is of little importance, but the word does sound pretty awful to me." CreationDate="2015-11-27T15:11:52.387" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8696" PostId="2736" Score="1" Text="I rolled the edit back (@amoeba)" CreationDate="2015-11-27T15:29:27.203" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="8359" PostId="2737" Score="3" Text="Well, get to work. LAs are rare. This is an opportunity for people to rack up their counts. I'll stay away so others can make some progress towards review badges." CreationDate="2015-09-29T19:33:28.657" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="8360" PostId="2737" Score="1" Text="@gung To be fair, having started to get through a few, a decent proportion of them could actually do with a review!" CreationDate="2015-09-29T19:37:39.320" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="8361" PostId="2737" Score="0" Text="I imagine that's true. My comment wasn't supposed to mean that you should feel obliged to do all of them." CreationDate="2015-09-29T19:40:47.757" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="8362" PostId="2737" Score="0" Text="@gung Yes no such obligation is felt, though how you managed to get to 1000 reviews yourself without such unusual events I have no idea, they are as rare as hen's teeth! :) I do think it'd be a shame if they just all get removed from the queue, it's an interesting opportunity to go through and fix up some long-standing stuff." CreationDate="2015-09-29T19:42:48.093" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="8363" PostId="2737" Score="6" Text="See [Jon Ericson's answer on MSE](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/267080/208518) for some background on this." CreationDate="2015-09-29T19:46:50.010" UserId="72321" />
  <row Id="8364" PostId="2737" Score="1" Text="Are reviews prioritized on your favourite tags? I'm only getting genetics, multiple comparisons, and FDR questions/answers which are my &quot;favourites&quot;." CreationDate="2015-09-29T19:55:53.857" UserId="44952" />
  <row Id="8365" PostId="2737" Score="3" Text="For users who haven't used the site for many years, it does seem a bit pointless leaving extensive written feedback. So I am probably not doing as much justice in my reviews as I normally would, just looking for howlers, things that need down/up-voting, and things that could do with a copy-edit such as adding links and full citations." CreationDate="2015-09-29T20:15:17.720" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="8366" PostId="2737" Score="2" Text="I've hit the &quot;Thank you for reviewing 20 late answers today; come back in 3 hours to continue reviewing&quot; limit. Whoever knew there was one! A couple of other people have also maxed out their 20 so we're down to 400 already. It doesn't look like the queue will take long to shift. (Which means I won't be able to add much to my review tally. Boo.)" CreationDate="2015-09-29T20:31:07.357" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="8367" PostId="2737" Score="0" Text="Yeah, you have a max of 20 reviews per queue per (GMT) calendar day. It is unlikely anyone will be able to get to `reviewer` from this alone, but hopefully it will help get a lot of people started." CreationDate="2015-09-29T21:24:30.647" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="8368" PostId="2737" Score="0" Text="@ChrisC, at the top, beside the gray &quot;Late Answers&quot;, there should be a link called &quot;filter&quot;. If you click that, you should be able to request only posts w/ specified tags." CreationDate="2015-09-29T21:26:38.450" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="8369" PostId="2737" Score="1" Text="From the 20 reviews that I completed, it looks like this was a worthwhile exercise. The posts had been on our site for a while, but many of them needed some attention. If the SE team decided to raise the threshold even further, thus putting more old posts into the queue, then on this basis I would be supportive." CreationDate="2015-09-29T21:27:45.510" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="8370" PostId="2737" Score="0" Text="@gung, Thanks! Never knew that existed." CreationDate="2015-09-29T21:29:44.837" UserId="44952" />
  <row Id="8376" PostId="2737" Score="0" Text="Late Answers queue has been cleared some minutes ago, so it took ~16 hours to clear 500+ entries. Not bad." CreationDate="2015-09-30T11:32:59.153" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8378" PostId="2737" Score="0" Text="Nice work on the late answers, guys." CreationDate="2015-09-30T15:55:50.403" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="8380" PostId="2738" Score="1" Text="I would be interested to see how many people on CV use SO Careers, to be completely honest I haven't seen that many. Saying that, I do, and would be supportive of this idea." CreationDate="2015-10-01T02:01:47.650" UserId="44952" />
  <row Id="8381" PostId="2738" Score="1" Text="@ChrisC That's because a chunk of users here, are academicians, but I'm pretty positive, there are data science professionals here, who might benefit from it. Let's wait for what the community has to say." CreationDate="2015-10-01T05:37:42.583" UserId="84191" />
  <row Id="8382" PostId="2738" Score="0" Text="&quot;Academics&quot;, I believe, but it's a good point." CreationDate="2015-10-01T15:25:00.093" UserId="44952" />
  <row Id="8388" PostId="2738" Score="1" Text="I added answers to collect the votes polling style.  Let me know if you want them deleted." CreationDate="2015-10-01T23:46:17.617" UserId="89026" />
  <row Id="8390" PostId="2738" Score="0" Text="@Erik Thank you.  Seems good to me." CreationDate="2015-10-02T04:28:13.197" UserId="84191" />
  <row Id="8424" PostId="2739" Score="0" Text="Thanks for this thoughtful answer. I wasn't thinking about prediction especially, however. If &quot;assessing a variable's relevance&quot; means making point &amp; interval estimates for coefficients of terms involving it, you don't want to drop it during feature selection, &amp; you don't want the biased estimates got with regularization. (Note that when you've a couple of highly collinear predictors, LASSO's just as flighty in which it excludes as stepwise procedure.) If it means testing how well you can predict with it vs without it, then do just that, as you say. So I wouldn't be pushing people towards ..." CreationDate="2015-10-05T13:04:14.377" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8425" PostId="2739" Score="0" Text="... elastic net regularization in either case. If someone had a model that didn't work well (wide confidence intervals for coefficient estimates, badly over-fitting) &amp; wanted to make inferences about *all* predictors, I'm not sure what I'd suggest except to get more data. (There might be needles-in-a-haystack type problems where feature selection could help by setting low coefficient estimates to zero - examining its consistency through resampling would be advisable.) But I think this question is more concerned with people who've got perfectly good models that they unfortunately feel they ..." CreationDate="2015-10-05T13:08:04.553" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8426" PostId="2739" Score="0" Text="... *ought* to muck about with even though they needn't" CreationDate="2015-10-05T13:08:26.753" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8411" PostId="2747" Score="6" Text="Personally I find that the main issue is that on Stack Exchange that is no way to indicate that an edit is minor and the edited post should thereby not be pushed to the front page." CreationDate="2015-10-03T22:49:11.277" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="8387" PostId="2748" Score="2" Text="I added one extra point, re batch editing. Can't remember whether it was mentioned in this chat but it is certainly an issue that has been raised before and there seemed to be fairly clear consensus on." CreationDate="2015-10-01T23:08:18.763" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="8391" PostId="2748" Score="3" Text="Any guidance on when exactly activity is slow? (With the time zone indicated, please.)" CreationDate="2015-10-02T08:04:37.440" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="8392" PostId="2748" Score="5" Text="Good points. Some suggested others: 1. Edit with a view that people are asking a technical question, so anything that doesn't explain or clarify the technical question should go (personal chit-chat, pleas of urgency or desperation, etc.). 2. It's not the job of an edit to fix substantive errors or confusions, change the notation to one more accurate or congenial, etc. Fixing those often features in appropriate answers or comments. 3. No one is obliged to edit to rewrite very poorly presented questions, which can be voted to close on the grounds that it's unclear what is being asked." CreationDate="2015-10-02T09:25:01.880" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="8398" PostId="2748" Score="1" Text="(+1) for Nick Cox's suggestion. Another thing that I tend to remove is &quot;this is probably a stupid question&quot;, &quot;I'm a novice in ...&quot;, etc which comes under Nick's &quot;anything that doesn't explain or clarify the technical question&quot; banner." CreationDate="2015-10-02T17:12:14.497" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="8399" PostId="2748" Score="0" Text="@Silverfish There is some value to &quot;I'm a novice&quot; in my opinion. This is because the level of abstraction/answer should be adjusted for novices.  It might be obvious to you that &quot;Because of ABC it is obviously follows XYZ&quot; but not to me. I agree with your other points though." CreationDate="2015-10-02T17:20:47.003" UserId="89026" />
  <row Id="8400" PostId="2748" Score="1" Text="Actually, that's true, it can help future answerers addressing the needs of the OP. As part of a larger edit I will generally strip it out on questions where the OP has already been satisfactorily answered. There's no obligation on answers to reflect the ability of the OP, since answers are for the benefits of future readers too. [Here's one of my all-time favourite answers on CV](http://stats.stackexchange.com/a/159637/22228),as an example..." CreationDate="2015-10-02T17:25:27.630" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="8401" PostId="2748" Score="0" Text="@Silverfish Agreed." CreationDate="2015-10-02T17:31:18.473" UserId="89026" />
  <row Id="8403" PostId="2748" Score="0" Text="(Or Nick's comment could be incorporated fairly easily into this answer, this being CW.)" CreationDate="2015-10-02T17:36:22.000" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="8404" PostId="2748" Score="0" Text="@Silverfish that is what I meant. He should move it into this answer, since he was the one that brought it up." CreationDate="2015-10-02T17:40:43.850" UserId="89026" />
  <row Id="8408" PostId="2748" Score="2" Text="I'll mention two circumstances where I think even seemingly trivial edits are worth making: (1) Titles should be correctly spelled, especially with keywords. (2) even in body text, important keywords are worth spelling correctly. This is because people may be trying to search for posts and correctly spelled titles (and keywords more generally) make that easier." CreationDate="2015-10-03T16:36:02.177" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8410" PostId="2748" Score="1" Text="I agree with @Glen_b ... it's also worth pointing out, for those who aren't aware, that the site's internal search  feature *does not search through comments*, only question title, question body and answers. If a keyword appears extensively in the comments and not at all in the body/title then it may be worth editing to include it (though unless this was an especially glaring omission, I'd only do it if there was something else to fix). This is a rare occurrence but sometimes happens in those situations where the OP only reveals what they really want in a comment/" CreationDate="2015-10-03T22:04:47.393" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="8412" PostId="2748" Score="1" Text="@Silverfish that's an important point to make, thanks. Either the OP should be encouraged to edit the question to include the important information (good if they're likely to respond), or a kind editor should add it for them." CreationDate="2015-10-04T01:06:22.453" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8389" PostId="2751" Score="0" Text="This is my vote, but I can't vote on my own answer." CreationDate="2015-10-01T23:47:30.057" UserId="89026" />
  <row Id="8394" PostId="2752" Score="8" Text="Perhaps, you could help the OP by editing that question; or maybe providing guidance with comments to help him making an own improvement." CreationDate="2015-10-02T12:23:01.530" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="8396" PostId="2752" Score="5" Text="I edited the question now." CreationDate="2015-10-02T14:16:31.050" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="8409" PostId="2752" Score="0" Text="The question is clearer w/ your edits. That is actually what I first thought might be being asked, but when I went back &amp; read more closely, I was no longer sure, so I voted to close. W/ your clearer statement of the question (&amp; the OP's thumbs up in comments), I have voted to re-open. It is open again now." CreationDate="2015-10-03T21:31:37.737" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="8397" PostId="2753" Score="7" Text="(+1) Completely agree. Even if a closed question seems all right to me I won't re-open it before it's been edited: the five users who've voted to close it are representative enough of potential answerers to show it *is* unclear in the only sense that matters to us." CreationDate="2015-10-02T15:00:52.287" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8405" PostId="2753" Score="3" Text="Much good stuff here. I actually think that if a question is unclear to you -- even in an area you're not totally familiar with -- it probably should be clarified so as to be more broadly understood. In particular I am not keen to see essentially the same question three times with different sets of jargon and notation (yet sometimes that's what happens)." CreationDate="2015-10-03T03:17:18.330" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8427" PostId="2756" Score="0" Text="[E-m] has only six questions. Somebody just needs to go ahead and  retag all six of them manually (perhaps you can do it, @Franck?). This is much simpler than to get moderators to make a tag synonym. After the tag is cleared off from all questions, it will be automatically deleted in 24 hours." CreationDate="2015-10-05T23:45:42.040" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8428" PostId="2756" Score="1" Text="@amoeba sure, done" CreationDate="2015-10-05T23:49:42.323" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="8430" PostId="2756" Score="0" Text="@Amoeba It is a simple matter for mods to make a tag synonym--which I have done. The beauty of that is it's *reversible*. It's much more difficult to reverse a systematic retagging. Upon checking the tag wikis, I discovered the wiki for the &quot;e-m&quot; tag stated &quot;EM (expectation-maximization) is an iterative clustering algorithm that allows one to partition a data set into clusters based on the data's log-likelihood.&quot; That's much more specific than the wiki for [tag:expectation-maximization]. I wonder, then, whether those who used it did so expressly to indicate an interest in clustering." CreationDate="2015-10-06T01:02:49.157" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="8431" PostId="2756" Score="0" Text="@whuber I spotted that as well, but looking at the questions it was any kind of expectation maximization." CreationDate="2015-10-06T01:10:34.427" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="8433" PostId="2756" Score="1" Text="@whuber, that's right. The only reason I suggested to do this manually in this case, is that I have the feeling that moderators tend to be very reluctant to carry out any tag changes. I can easily point to several threads on meta where a tag change was suggested, got a very positive response (lots of upvotes, no downvotes or no negative comments), but no moderator  action was taken (kernel tag comes to mind, recent thread about nlp, etc). In fact, I was planning to ask a new meta question to draw attention to this issue and to discuss what should we do about it. Maybe it's a right time now!" CreationDate="2015-10-06T14:27:29.107" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8434" PostId="2756" Score="1" Text="@amoeba When mods are reluctant to make tag changes, perhaps that should be taken as a sign that such changes might be problematic. Manually forcing those changes through via wholesale edits to many posts doesn't seem like a constructive way to address that issue.  (BTW, I don't think any problems were created in this particular case.)" CreationDate="2015-10-06T14:41:02.907" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="8435" PostId="2756" Score="0" Text="Yes, @whuber, I can see this point. I guess I will bring it up on meta as a separate question and then we can discuss it. Thanks." CreationDate="2015-10-06T14:43:42.673" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8436" PostId="2758" Score="2" Text="If you want, you can also include this [post](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1846/what-could-be-done-with-respect-to-tag-big-list) to the list. However, it is important to say that in other 8 occasions I got help (mainly from moderators) and the tag tasks were successfully accomplished (search inside my questions; there is also a deleted post in the 'current synonyms...' post). Continues...." CreationDate="2015-10-06T18:15:14.803" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="8439" PostId="2758" Score="3" Text="(+1) I notice, with a little embarrassment, that I've upvoted some of these suggestions. Perhaps at least part of the trouble's that there's not a fixed deadline for a decision &amp; so they get forgotten about as other things happen. (I've just looked at the tag synonym history, &amp; it seems to be whuber &amp; chi doing most of the work here, so I should start looking into it.)" CreationDate="2015-10-06T20:34:25.310" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8442" PostId="2758" Score="1" Text="@Scortchi: it would be great if you could help moving these things forward! Take a look at the four cases that I listed. Do you think these suggestions are reasonable enough and upvoted/supported enough to act upon, or not? If yes, why not going ahead. If not, then perhaps a comment explaining that you still find it too premature to implement and maybe setting some goal (in terms of e.g. upvotes) of what would be *not* too premature, would go a long way towards making the whole process more transparent." CreationDate="2015-10-07T00:05:10.793" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8446" PostId="2758" Score="1" Text="@amoeba: I will, I have done, &amp; I do. The examples you've given all show clear support for merging, though sometimes the direction doesn't seem clearly indicated - `gls` or `generalized-least-squares`? Perhaps an easy resolution would be for someone with the necessary privilege who thinks there's enough support to reply in Meta:-&quot;All right, I'm going to do *this* now&quot; &amp; to go ahead &amp; do it if there are no objections." CreationDate="2015-10-07T09:08:47.513" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8443" PostId="2759" Score="2" Text="Thanks for your answer! I appreciate all these points. Point #1 is clear, but I guess we can edit the questions on meta to bump them, ping moderators in chat, post new meta questions (like I did now), etc., so the danger of moderators simply forgetting about the issue seems to me to be almost non-existent. I guess the real problem is your point #2: if you see a tag suggestion that seems somewhat controversial and has $n$ upvotes, then when do you decide that $n$ is big enough? I think that's what we should really be discussing here." CreationDate="2015-10-07T00:09:15.263" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8444" PostId="2759" Score="0" Text="@amoeba thanks for the response; yes, #1 highlights a need to bump moderators occasionally because there's not really any other mechanism. In terms of #2 I don't know whether a formal procedure is necessarily called for, but at least some sense of what should be seen as &quot;enough&quot; might help." CreationDate="2015-10-07T00:13:28.747" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8445" PostId="2759" Score="4" Text="Maybe it will help to make the discussion more concrete and consider four specific cases that I listed; I would appreciate if moderators who are reading this thread could comment on whether the support there seems insufficient or whether in some cases  it does perhaps seem sufficient, but nobody simply got around acting upon them so far. This would give a sense of what is seen as sufficient/insufficient, and would perhaps suggest some ways of making the whole procedure more efficient. (I agree that a formal procedure is not needed and that's not something I am calling for.)" CreationDate="2015-10-07T00:20:50.813" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8452" PostId="2760" Score="9" Text="It's fair to ask a mod what is on topic on *their* site, but you should give no weight to their characterization of *another* site (such as this one), especially when it is obviously at odds with the evidence." CreationDate="2015-10-11T14:40:37.360" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="8453" PostId="2760" Score="5" Text="If you're referring to the dialogue in the comments [here](http://datascience.stackexchange.com/questions/8381/how-to-do-machine-learning-the-right-way#comment7992_8381), that's not *quite* what the Data Science moderator said." CreationDate="2015-10-11T15:31:31.147" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8454" PostId="2760" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi, it is a rather curious comment from him. He is a valued member here, as well as a mod there. Although being a mod there implies a certain level of commitment, he has more posts here (Q: 13, A: 164) than there (Q:1, A:87), &amp; has more rep here than there. OTOH, none of his Qs here were tagged w/ ML, but his Q there was. It would be interesting for him to contribute to this thread." CreationDate="2015-10-11T20:13:48.437" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="8455" PostId="2760" Score="4" Text="I agree with @Scortchi: even the apparently strongly worded *referring to CV as &quot;the SE site for ML&quot; is simply wrong* seems fine to me, if we take the emphasis to be on the &quot;the&quot; (which seems natural). It reads more naturally in context, as the reply to a message that says &quot;[CV] is the SE site for ML&quot;, which was itself posted to suggest that a post was off-topic on Data Science SE (which fairly clearly it wasn't). I didn't interpret any aspect of that comment as &quot;anti-CV&quot; nor was it in any way opposed to ML activity on CV (if anything it was encouraged), just that ML is on-topic on DS too" CreationDate="2015-10-11T20:35:34.023" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="8456" PostId="2760" Score="0" Text="The answer to &quot;ML questions: Here or at Data Science?&quot; may well be *both*, possibly depending on context. I think this was the point that the moderator there was making." CreationDate="2015-10-11T20:39:19.627" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="8457" PostId="2760" Score="0" Text="@Silverfish I would hope so, but I don't read it that way." CreationDate="2015-10-11T21:53:59.437" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8458" PostId="2760" Score="0" Text="It's even worse for ML questions about NLP, as there is a 3rd fully overlapping SE, linguistics (and some content also end up on SO and the CS SE)." CreationDate="2015-10-12T05:55:08.910" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="8459" PostId="2760" Score="11" Text="There shouldn't be two separate sites. Problems like this will keep coming up while there are." CreationDate="2015-10-12T08:24:12.713" UserId="16663" />
  <row Id="8460" PostId="2760" Score="2" Text="It turns out @AlexandrBlekh does think machine learning questions are a better fit to Data Science than to CV - see [here](http://meta.datascience.stackexchange.com/a/2176/3361). Fair enough; at any rate I think his comment still has to be read in the context of his responding to the perceived implication that they're off-topic on DS." CreationDate="2015-10-12T10:08:24.833" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8566" PostId="2760" Score="4" Text="Haven't really been following it (casual visitor here at CV), but given that most machine learning technics are statistical in nature, distinguishing between stats and machine learning doesn't make sense to me." CreationDate="2015-10-23T21:21:37.157" UserId="6658" />
  <row Id="8461" PostId="2761" Score="3" Text="&quot;When it comes out of beta...&quot; -- when *and if*, I guess. [It doesn't look very promising at the moment](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/55053/data-science)." CreationDate="2015-10-12T12:47:23.713" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8462" PostId="2761" Score="1" Text="† I fortunately get to talk to a lot of machine learning experts, and a lot of people who study statistics at an advanced/graduate level (but who may not be among the best statisticians out there).  Folks in the former group generally seem to take an &quot;of course&quot; attitude to the concept of cross validation, while those in the latter often seem to be lacking the concept altogether. Surely, some statisticians use the concept regularly in their work (it's so useful), but it doesn't seem to be as core to the field as it seems to be in ML.  If it's offensive, I'll delete it." CreationDate="2015-10-12T15:11:24.877" UserId="80594" />
  <row Id="8464" PostId="2761" Score="2" Text="@amoeba: Well, if DS withers, that'll raise different questions. But let's hope it thrives, &amp; is able to focus on a distinctive set of topics that aren't covered elsewhere." CreationDate="2015-10-12T16:04:43.037" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8465" PostId="2761" Score="5" Text="@WBT: Seminal references are Mosteller &amp; Tukey (1968), &quot;Data analysis, including statistics&quot;, in Lindzey &amp; Aronson (eds) ,*Handbook of Social Psychology*, **2**, Stone (1974) &quot;Cross-validatory choice and assessment of statistical predictions&quot;, *JRSS B*, **36**, 2, &amp; Geisser (1975) &quot;The predictive sample reuse method with applications&quot;, *JASA*, **70**, 350 - noting the authors &amp; journals suggests cross-validation wasn't thought to be in any way outside the mainstream of Statistics. I'm sure no-one's thin-skinned enough to be offended; though in truth it's sometimes a *little* trying for ..." CreationDate="2015-10-12T16:05:41.510" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8466" PostId="2761" Score="5" Text="... statisticians when it sometimes seems that anything more advanced than an t-test gets claimed by newer, more fashionable disciplines. At any rate my point's that we can't decide, &amp; oughtn't to try to decide, who &quot;owns&quot; cross validation, along with many other techniques." CreationDate="2015-10-12T16:09:42.727" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8470" PostId="2761" Score="2" Text="@Scortchi: You're right in that we shouldn't decide who &quot;owns&quot; cross validation or other techniques; we should all use what works best and seek to share &amp; spread new ideas that work well.   That I personally have for the most part only encountered the concept of CV in ML settings and not in stats settings outside ML (even encountering the notable *absence* of CV in such settings) may be just a fluke of my own experience." CreationDate="2015-10-12T19:33:38.390" UserId="80594" />
  <row Id="8474" PostId="2765" Score="9" Text="It is a fact you helped the OP there. My impression is that you could have provided more details: e.g, mentioning the functions inside the R packages, adding visual examples about that type of plots. The OP would still need to learn how to parameterize such functions, to learn the theory behind such graphs, etc. We shouldn't silver spoon when answering, but I guess the example you used is not a good one about providing guidance, without hand-holding. When studying from great (upvoted) answers here in CV I frequently need to do extra research. They help me getting started." CreationDate="2015-10-13T15:33:33.760" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="8475" PostId="2765" Score="1" Text="I wouldn't want to focus on that question: it is arguable that the extra detail on R functions would actually be off-topic unless it had a clear statistical focus. The bigger issue is that minimal hints don't score many votes on internet forums. I have sometimes resorted to them myself with closing comments of the form &quot;That is set as an exercise&quot; (facetiously) or &quot;You can work that out yourself using ...&quot; but it's detailed (or especially lucid or ingenious) explanations that get the votes." CreationDate="2015-10-13T15:44:39.027" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="8476" PostId="2765" Score="5" Text="In teaching the better of one's own students will respect the ideal that it's not your job to spoon-feed them. Also, within that context it is always known whether students know enough (e.g.) probability theory, calculus or matrix algebra that will let them work something out. Outside that context it's not an aim here, so far as I can see, to second-guess how much help people **minimally** need. Indeed, most good answers have something for several levels of readers. (I think this is a little hard to separate from whether concise answers can sometimes be more helpful than lengthy ones.)" CreationDate="2015-10-13T15:50:57.513" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="8548" PostId="2765" Score="1" Text="The person who made the comment is fairly prolific in `r`-related tags on StackOverflow.  I think there is a bit of a cultural difference here between StackOverflow (programming solution) and CrossValidated (where a more general or conceptual answer might be fine)." CreationDate="2015-10-20T20:23:08.853" UserId="39632" />
  <row Id="8478" PostId="2767" Score="3" Text="I am really struggling to understand what you mean by your last sentence (`So, when a tag that have a many question which fleeing of the community focus can be another community?`). Can you please try to formulate it a bit differently? Right now it is very difficult to understand." CreationDate="2015-10-14T09:00:31.253" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8479" PostId="2767" Score="3" Text="I think &quot;fleeing of the community focus&quot; is an over-literal rendering of &quot;fogem do foco da communidade&quot; - not clear English, as @amoeba says - so I've edited your question. Please edit again if that's not what you meant." CreationDate="2015-10-14T11:01:22.530" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8480" PostId="2767" Score="5" Text="If not [duplicate](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2542/new-proposal-at-area51-r-statistical-computing), at least related." CreationDate="2015-10-14T12:17:40.810" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="8481" PostId="2769" Score="9" Text="Even if the answer is eligible (and not accepted), the auto award feature will only transfer half of the bounty. [Reference](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/16065/how-does-the-bounty-system-work)." CreationDate="2015-10-14T18:29:02.337" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="8482" PostId="2769" Score="1" Text="@AndreSilva thanks.  I guess it is my fault for not understanding the bounty system.  Would appreciate if a moderator could weigh in on whether it could be un-expired.  It's only 50 rep but I feel like I shafted the guy who took the time to answer my question." CreationDate="2015-10-14T20:56:09.660" UserId="39632" />
  <row Id="8484" PostId="2769" Score="10" Text="(1) Moderators have no power to unexpire bounties. (We can remove bounties while they're still open.) (2) I think we should get the message changed if we can." CreationDate="2015-10-14T22:09:52.260" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8485" PostId="2769" Score="2" Text="Heh. I just went to your post to put a bounty on it myself... but Scortchi was there first." CreationDate="2015-10-14T22:38:44.407" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8532" PostId="2769" Score="10" Text="We'll take a look at changing this message. Thanks for the report!" CreationDate="2015-10-19T08:48:25.793" UserId="80755" />
  <row Id="21858" PostId="2769" Score="1" Text="My removal of the tag here is primarily to indicate that this post isn't in current review by the staff of the site. If this is still an issue y'all are experiencing, please feel free to continue discussion or ask about it on Meta Stack Exchange." CreationDate="2023-02-14T21:31:05.423" UserId="202450" />
  <row Id="8486" PostId="2770" Score="6" Text="+1, ask on meta.SE is good advice, but note that I'm pretty sure the SE development team periodically monitors site metas for threads like this, so someone may notice just from this." CreationDate="2015-10-15T03:01:35.863" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="21856" PostId="2770" Score="0" Text="Thanks @NickCox" CreationDate="2023-02-09T22:46:29.160" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8488" PostId="2771" Score="1" Text="Hmm, just to double-check: I don't see it appearing here http://stats.stackexchange.com/tags/synonyms. Does it take some time to get running, or were you only *going* to map it but have not yet?" CreationDate="2015-10-15T14:26:04.623" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8490" PostId="2771" Score="1" Text="@amoeba: I think I thought I'd done it. Anyway I did it (again?) just now, &amp; it's appeared." CreationDate="2015-10-15T15:29:32.907" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8497" PostId="2772" Score="2" Text="Great! I'll propose some wiki edits once you do." CreationDate="2015-10-15T17:53:35.240" UserId="9964" />
  <row Id="8511" PostId="2772" Score="1" Text="@Dougal: Thanks - now done." CreationDate="2015-10-16T12:34:03.423" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8522" PostId="2772" Score="1" Text="@Dougal, there is now several questions (actually only 7) that have [kernel-smoothing] tag and &quot;kernel regression&quot; phrase, but are *not* tagged with [regression]: [see search results](http://stats.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&amp;q=[kernel-smoothing]%20%22kernel%20regression%22%20is%3aquestion%20-[regression]). Some of them might have had [kernel-regression] tag before (but after the merge there is no way to know). I guess it would make sense to add [regression] tag to them. Perhaps you can take a look? (I know nothing about this topic myself.)" CreationDate="2015-10-16T17:01:59.070" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8524" PostId="2772" Score="0" Text="Tag wiki edits proposed, and I'm looking through @amoeba's suggested results to add [regression]. Probably many of the questions now tagged [kernel-smoothing] should also have [density-estimation] (currently barely-used), but I think it's probably fine that they don't." CreationDate="2015-10-16T19:40:59.557" UserId="9964" />
  <row Id="8525" PostId="2772" Score="0" Text="@Dougal, great, I took part in approving your tag wiki edits. Very impressive that you actually wrote full wikis (not only excerpts), good job. By the way, consider accepting Scortchi's answer." CreationDate="2015-10-16T20:00:02.617" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8487" PostId="2773" Score="4" Text="Given that the procedure is relatively complicated, I am not sure if [kernel] has to be blacklisted or not (so I have not voted either way so far). But I should say that [kernel] *did* recrudesce: I have recently (perhaps two weeks ago) noticed it and manually edited around 7 questions to replace it. I think it only takes a user with enough rep to recreate it by accident, and it will be used every now and then after that. Perhaps it is enough if the community monitors the situation and terminates it whenever it shows its head again." CreationDate="2015-10-15T14:16:05.267" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8496" PostId="2773" Score="3" Text="I don't have a strong opinion that it needs to be blacklisted, as long as we keep an eye out for it coming back again. If it keeps coming back then we can reconsider." CreationDate="2015-10-15T17:14:45.740" UserId="9964" />
  <row Id="8502" PostId="2775" Score="0" Text="Can one see, after the migration happened, who voted to migrate it? With closed questions this information is always displayed." CreationDate="2015-10-16T09:49:52.993" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8504" PostId="2775" Score="2" Text="@amoeba I knew exactly who migrated when I posted but I don't want to point the names out; because then it's too much like pointing fingers. If people choose to respond themselves, that's great but I am not going to raise any names myself; I think that would be counterproductive." CreationDate="2015-10-16T10:30:51.443" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8505" PostId="2775" Score="0" Text="Of course, I understand. My question was if non-moderators can see this information somewhere; not in this particular case but in general. It looks like we cannot and it's a bit strange (because for closed questions or the ones put on hold, this information is right there)." CreationDate="2015-10-16T10:35:52.170" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8506" PostId="2775" Score="1" Text="To my knowledge, I have no easy way to find out what you see if I don't already know. I have asked that mods be able to set their privilege level to be [lower temporarily](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/260588/allow-mods-to-experience-the-behavior-of-the-site-to-user-at-any-lower-rep) but it's a dupe and 'status declined'.." CreationDate="2015-10-16T10:41:01.520" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8512" PostId="2775" Score="6" Text="+1 On a positive note, this event is a milestone of sorts.  Until a couple years ago, it was rare to find five non-mods with enough reputation to close or migrate a question.  I am pleased to see a wider cross section of the community involved in the review and maintenance needed to keep our site in good shape." CreationDate="2015-10-16T12:52:09.103" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="8516" PostId="2775" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, anyone w/ rep &gt;10k can find out who voted to close. You go to the review queue then click on `tools` -&gt; `migrated` -&gt; `away`, find the thread in question &amp; click on it, which will take you to the stored, original CV version w/ the closed by ... &lt; reason &gt; information." CreationDate="2015-10-16T14:49:12.337" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="8521" PostId="2775" Score="3" Text="Thanks, @gung! As I understand now, one can also append `?noredirect=1` to the end of the URL address; then the redirect to SO won't happen and one can read the &quot;migrated by&quot; information. This is actually available to all users, independent of the rep (I've just checked after logging out), given that they have the original URL." CreationDate="2015-10-16T16:46:46.840" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8526" PostId="2775" Score="1" Text="@amoeba There's actually no need to do manual URL changing; the message on the stackoverflow page, &quot;migrated from [stats.stackexchange.com](https://stats.stackexchange.com/posts/177136/revisions) 12 hours ago&quot;, in fact has a link to the CV version of that post even though the way it's written makes it look like it's just a link to the CV homepage." CreationDate="2015-10-16T20:08:14.407" UserId="9964" />
  <row Id="8508" PostId="2776" Score="1" Text="Sorry, I had missed the link from your answer. So, it seems the best way is indeed to accomplish the task manually (and smoothly). I'll wait for a couple of days to see if someone is against this, and if not, will do the job. Tks." CreationDate="2015-10-16T11:50:17.270" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="8510" PostId="2776" Score="1" Text="It *is* a bit strange that mods do not have the power to burninate a tag in one click, but that's how it seems to be." CreationDate="2015-10-16T11:53:10.660" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8559" PostId="2776" Score="0" Text="@Andre, I started gradually eradicating [big-list]." CreationDate="2015-10-23T09:18:39.030" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8560" PostId="2776" Score="0" Text="ok. I had already started too. I'm doing one per day." CreationDate="2015-10-23T11:32:10.793" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="8611" PostId="2776" Score="1" Text="@AndreSilva: one per day! You are a man of great patience." CreationDate="2015-11-05T22:38:44.460" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8664" PostId="2776" Score="1" Text="Alright; we are done. Thanks for your help." CreationDate="2015-11-22T13:37:03.470" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="8665" PostId="2776" Score="1" Text="Good job. If we end up deciding to eliminate [best-practices], it will be a longer process... But the discussion there seems to have stopped without much interest from the community." CreationDate="2015-11-22T13:46:27.357" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8666" PostId="2776" Score="1" Text="Yes. With more experience on SE, I started having this hypothesis that subjects involving tag organizing, if not spotted very accurately and in a manner it will **not** consume all discussions/time in meta, it can be besides boring, harmful. Because it would (could) trigger many campaigns of tag edits at the same time, while there would be more important things to concentrate on. Not that tags are not important; they are (but it costs a lot to organize old things). Nowadays, I'm not sure if I'd write a post like this again. :)" CreationDate="2015-11-22T14:01:20.297" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="8517" PostId="2781" Score="6" Text="It's not entirely obvious though, at least to me, that failure of a non-linear mixed model to converge is just a programming issue. There's nothing *wrong* with the OP's `nlme` code. (I admit I'd prefer a good answer about convergence problems on CV to the OP's being given `lme4` code that works for some reason, even if that made the OP happy.)" CreationDate="2015-10-16T15:14:40.220" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8519" PostId="2781" Score="5" Text="Thanks. I suppose it's two points: (1) that statistical computing's on-topic, even if the minutiae of how to do $X$ with software $Y$ aren't, &amp; (2) that explaining principles trumps immediate gratification of the OP; both in my opinion." CreationDate="2015-10-16T15:50:45.907" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8520" PostId="2781" Score="6" Text="+1 for stepping in and giving an explanation about your point of view." CreationDate="2015-10-16T16:00:51.120" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="8523" PostId="2781" Score="0" Text="Those are all reasonable points, @Scortchi, but I would still vote to migrate here. I don't think SO has to just have `try &lt;some code&gt;` answers; eg, understanding coding strategies &amp; problem solving should be part of their mandate too. I don't really see the Q as *about* statistical computing any more than it's about regression, even though it has a regression model. Your 2 is tricky: I think we want both, &amp; even if we emphasize principles over helping, it needs to be the principles that are really behind the Q. My interpretation remains that this one is ambiguous, but that I lean towards SO." CreationDate="2015-10-16T17:18:54.257" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="8530" PostId="2781" Score="7" Text="+1 Thanks for the response gung, I appreciate you giving the reasoning. I disagree with much of your assessment (so the +1 isn't to signify agreement in this case, but an appreciation of a thoughtful answer). I'd like to try to find a way to achieve better consistency on this sort of question. If I saw that question there, I'd vote to migrate it here (and many people on SO migrate much less clearly statistical questions than that to us)." CreationDate="2015-10-17T01:58:54.603" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10816" PostId="2781" Score="0" Text="-1. I downvote because, after reviewing this admittedly old discussion, I think the Q in question should not have been migrated. It's a pity there was no opposing answer at the time; @Glen_b's comment above saying that the question belongs here got 7 upvotes whereas your answer got 6 (before my downvote) and at least 2 of these upvotes are not because of agreement (see comments above). So clearly no consensus has been reached here, but it seems that the majority of Meta voters thought the Q should have stayed." CreationDate="2016-09-17T22:52:36.330" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8536" PostId="2782" Score="2" Text="My personal preference would actually be *variance matrix*, but I expect few people would go for that (and with a first-past-the-post system you don't want three options anyway, so I won't add it to the choices here). The corresponding searches are also smaller than either present option. Nevertheless it might be worth having as a synonym of whichever of these alternatives wins." CreationDate="2015-10-19T16:51:06.450" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8537" PostId="2782" Score="1" Text="Interesting, @Glen_b, I've never heard &quot;variance matrix&quot; before. Good idea to add it as another synonym." CreationDate="2015-10-19T18:53:12.030" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8554" PostId="2782" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi, I based this entirely on the above by comment by Glen_b. I have never seen this exact term before. [A search on google scholar](https://scholar.google.pt/scholar?hl=en&amp;q=%22variance+matrix%22) finds lots of uses, but many of them are for &quot;co-variance matrix&quot;; still, by looking at the search results it does seem that some people refer to it simply as &quot;variance matrix&quot;. No idea how widespread it is. Perhaps we should rather take if off from the wiki excerpt." CreationDate="2015-10-22T13:31:59.377" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8555" PostId="2782" Score="1" Text="It's *easy* to find out approximately how widespread it is; search on *&quot;variance matrix&quot; -&quot;co-variance matrix&quot;*. If I recall correctly it gets about a quarter the hits of *&quot;variance-covariance&quot;*." CreationDate="2015-10-22T13:49:18.473" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8585" PostId="2782" Score="1" Text="This is interesting.  I've never really consciously thought about this, but whenever I'm trying to find, what I call the covariance matrix of, say a matrix $X$, I write $Cov(X)$ instead of of $Var(X)$ as some do." CreationDate="2015-10-29T23:22:56.077" UserId="7962" />
  <row Id="8533" PostId="2784" Score="0" Text="I would upvote this option, but I cannot upvote my own answer." CreationDate="2015-10-19T13:44:55.650" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8534" PostId="2784" Score="4" Text="When I teach, I refer to the &quot;variance-covariance matrix&quot;, which I think is clearer. It isn't wholly unheard of; the R command is `vcov()`, eg. That said, most of the time I just say &quot;covariance matrix&quot;, probably out of laziness ;-). Nb, as long as they're linked, so one is the synonym of the other, it won't really matter." CreationDate="2015-10-19T15:22:24.753" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="8535" PostId="2784" Score="0" Text="Interesting about the name of the R function, @gung, I didn't know. In Matlab it's `cov()`. In SciPy it's `cov()` too." CreationDate="2015-10-19T15:28:19.513" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8538" PostId="2784" Score="4" Text="I agree with @gung that &quot;variance-covariance&quot; has added clarity. Over the years, one pedagogical point has brought me back to liking &quot;covariance matrix&quot; a bit more: &quot;variance-covariance&quot; suggests &quot;variance&quot; and &quot;covariance&quot; stand in contradistinction to one another, whereas really we should be thinking of &quot;variance&quot; as nothing more than a special type of covariance. (One of the many things where whuber's influence on this site has changed the way I perceptualise some key concepts, though I can't recall him making this exact comment in the context of the nomenclature of these matrices.)" CreationDate="2015-10-19T20:14:05.397" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="8539" PostId="2784" Score="2" Text="@Silverfish, I am happy to agree that the term &quot;variance-covariance matrix&quot; has some extra clarity; if the tag in question were called [variance-covariance-matrix] I would be less annoyed by it (but arguably it's too long). But if we compare [covariance-matrix] and [variance-covariance], I find the first one clearer because of the word &quot;matrix&quot; in it. Apart from that, good point about some implied tension between &quot;variance&quot; &amp; &quot;covariance&quot;." CreationDate="2015-10-19T20:34:33.257" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8540" PostId="2784" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, that's a good point. That's another reason to prefer this version." CreationDate="2015-10-19T22:49:30.897" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="8549" PostId="2784" Score="1" Text="I've done this now" CreationDate="2015-10-22T10:42:30.557" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8550" PostId="2784" Score="0" Text="Thanks, @Scortchi. I think [variance-covariance] had a wiki excerpt, but [covariance-matrix] unfortunately doesn't and now I cannot access the old excerpt, because I always get a redirect to the new tag... Can you as a mod perhaps still see the old wiki somehow? Then you could copy it to the new tag. If not, I can suggest a new wiki excerpt." CreationDate="2015-10-22T10:50:29.527" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8551" PostId="2784" Score="0" Text="@amoeba: I'm afraid I can't see the old wiki either ..." CreationDate="2015-10-22T12:30:36.333" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8552" PostId="2784" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi: I made a wiki edit suggestion. But it's good to know for the future that one should better take care of the tag wikis before merging." CreationDate="2015-10-22T13:19:51.570" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8565" PostId="2784" Score="0" Text="A covariance matrix equation can be derived from the variance equation, true, but it is not always trivial ([as demonstrated here](http://stats.stackexchange.com/a/61298/25538)) and the purpose and usage is quite different. So I think that &quot;variance-covariance&quot; is an amalgame, while &quot;covariance-matrix&quot; is quite precise. Thus, &quot;covariance-matrix&quot; should be the master tag." CreationDate="2015-10-23T17:47:14.660" UserId="25538" />
  <row Id="8541" PostId="2786" Score="7" Text="+1. This question provides a very convincing illustration of how fastidious you indeed are :)" CreationDate="2015-10-19T23:30:19.213" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8542" PostId="2787" Score="3" Text="What stops you from a friendly warning in such cases? I don't review much myself (so this particular issue can hardly apply to me), but I don't think I would feel offended if a moderator pointed out to me that one or another aspect of my behaviour here can and perhaps should be improved; on the contrary, I think I would appreciate it." CreationDate="2015-10-20T00:32:18.067" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8543" PostId="2787" Score="5" Text="Several things: (i) I find the process in issuing a warning rather daunting and quite limiting (you're enjoined from saying much of anything direct; often the central point is buried in polite platitudes); (ii) the great ease with which people who are otherwise good contributors can be offended; this is also a concern with private chat rooms (another process whose setup I find relatively daunting, especially if they're not a user of chat already). It's easy to give offense, and I've seen good contributors leave, or greatly reduce their contributions over what seem to be fairly mild comments..." CreationDate="2015-10-20T00:56:07.307" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8544" PostId="2787" Score="5" Text="(ctd) ... from moderators or other high reputation users. It can be very difficult to judge exactly what might give offense in these situations. Lastly, I think it's important not to be too heavy-handed, and it can be hard to judge whether there's likely to be real benefit in acting rather than (say) discussing things here. I have complained (in general terms) about similar things here at least once." CreationDate="2015-10-20T00:58:45.700" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8545" PostId="2787" Score="2" Text="I tend to hang about on the main forum and voting whether to close much more than I look at first posts. (I don't know why; I do have an impulse to improve posts, as I edit quite a lot.)  That gives me a biased perspective as I see many poor questions that are off-topic or very badly presented. So, how did they get through this process? I know many are not first posts. On the other hand, I am quite possibly a fast reviewer, but when you are checking whether something belongs and there are other votes and comments, that is often evident very quickly." CreationDate="2015-10-20T10:44:25.990" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="8546" PostId="2787" Score="1" Text="It's a feature when people who react strongly to peer comment decide to leave the system without a big fuss. We do seem to have lost some valuable contributors that way, but no one promises to stay forever." CreationDate="2015-10-20T10:48:08.757" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="8567" PostId="2787" Score="0" Text="Re &quot;average time on a review&quot; metric: in many cases, things that come up in the review queue are things I've seen before and already spent a bit of time thinking about (at least in the back of my mind): for example, because they are on the active posts page, or because I saw something on the review queue before but closed the tab (or skipped, then went back to it using my review history with &quot;show skipped reviews&quot; ticked). Sometimes I will clear a whole batch of reviews in a &quot;couple of minutes&quot; but it's usually been longer than that! Wouldn't surprise me if other people work in a similar way." CreationDate="2015-10-24T18:13:43.093" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="8570" PostId="2787" Score="1" Text="@Silverfish Certainly people do things like that -- and that will move the averages about... but then you won't have a bunch of reviews that have let through posts that anyone who even gives the quickest of glances to the posts would realize they needed to be acted on.  &quot;Short review time&quot; isn't of itself a problem, if you're not letting through a lot of bad posts." CreationDate="2015-10-25T00:06:32.013" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8575" PostId="2790" Score="7" Text="Some of these seem a bit odd: e.g. (statistical) [tag:quality-control] is broader than [tag:control-chart],  encompassing acceptance sampling, measurement systems analysis, &amp; design of experiments. But if the synonym's a good one, I can't think of a reason for not merging." CreationDate="2015-10-26T13:26:45.810" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8586" PostId="2790" Score="2" Text="Is this suggestion also valid for synonyms on CV Meta?" CreationDate="2015-10-30T23:29:38.267" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="8587" PostId="2790" Score="2" Text="@Andre, Yes, why not?" CreationDate="2015-10-31T10:38:06.623" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12891" PostId="2790" Score="2" Text="Next election I will vote for you as a moderator (if you nominate yourself), because all the good work you have done; and because I would like to see all those synonyms (in main and meta sites) merged :)" CreationDate="2017-03-27T14:01:22.807" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="12893" PostId="2790" Score="1" Text="@AndreSilva Haha. I would not be a very good moderator candidate; one reason is that I am trying to decrease my participation, another is that I have never been working on the review queues. But perhaps we could/should have a designated &quot;tag mod&quot; :)" CreationDate="2017-03-27T14:09:36.760" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8576" PostId="2791" Score="1" Text="This does indeed seem to work well, in particular the &quot;this will be implemented in X days unless somebody objects&quot; countdown part. I was hoping that this thread will end up in some sort of consensus guidelines about what constitutes &quot;enough support&quot;, but this discussion does not seem to be happening, so perhaps we should simply leave it there. My present impression is that above 5 upvotes with 0 downvotes seems to be mostly enough support for a tag synonym." CreationDate="2015-10-26T16:04:58.627" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8577" PostId="2792" Score="4" Text="I'll merge them soon if no-one comes up with a good reason not to." CreationDate="2015-10-28T20:13:11.650" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8595" PostId="2792" Score="3" Text="I've done it now." CreationDate="2015-11-02T15:48:41.440" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8597" PostId="2792" Score="2" Text="Looks like this issue is resolved!" CreationDate="2015-11-02T19:37:59.513" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20307" PostId="2794" Score="1" Text="Try this answer I provided for getting started with statistics for computer vision: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9745559/statistics-help-for-computer-vision/64773218#64773218" CreationDate="2020-11-17T12:07:21.587" UserId="302965" />
  <row Id="8594" PostId="2797" Score="0" Text="Thank you your input. Yes, I am clearly concerned for the situation one quotes a paper verbatim. In an indirect quote it is a no-brainer that we would not give the wrong statement. / I followed your advice and made a comment about it." CreationDate="2015-11-01T09:43:52.137" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="8598" PostId="2798" Score="5" Text="It has been addressed and declined [here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3669/would-it-be-possible-to-have-a-community-accepted-feature) ;)" CreationDate="2015-11-03T13:56:14.710" UserId="72321" />
  <row Id="8599" PostId="2798" Score="0" Text="@JNat OK. Thanks!" CreationDate="2015-11-03T13:57:19.787" UserId="67822" />
  <row Id="8600" PostId="2798" Score="5" Text="It may be better to leave such questions undeleted, since it may reduce the tendency of later users to re-ask them (if they search our site instead of meta, they'll find the link to meta here). I leave it up to you, but I'd be inclined to let it stand." CreationDate="2015-11-03T14:20:30.233" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8601" PostId="2798" Score="1" Text="It is a tough path this one. Are you aware the [unsung-hero](http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/badges/51/unsung-hero) badge? It is a kind of reward for answering new users' questions. It is very hard to get (because OPs take off, etc), but I bet you'll get it. Good luck hero!" CreationDate="2015-11-03T16:15:40.950" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="8602" PostId="2798" Score="1" Text="@AndreSilva I have to admit that the green counter at the top is very addictive. I know I have a ceiling as an outsider, so it doesn't matter if it is 1K, 2K or 5K, at the end of the day is about learning and being in the virtual company of very smart people... but we all like the positive feedback... I hope you are a Barça fan beside being a numberphile! Saúde!" CreationDate="2015-11-03T16:26:42.230" UserId="67822" />
  <row Id="8603" PostId="2798" Score="4" Text="+1 for spelunking being less slippery than statistics ;-)." CreationDate="2015-11-03T16:31:57.843" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="8604" PostId="2798" Score="6" Text="I certainly wouldn't erase the post even if the reaction is mostly against. This is our forum to talk about problems even if there is no immediate or easy solution. The simplest reply is that good answers will get upvoted by those with voting powers any way; what you are most likely to miss are acceptances from those transient users who don't spend time learning about the system. My experience is thoroughly statistical: you can get several upvotes for something minor and none or few for something you regard as a much bigger contribution. Over time it averages out about right." CreationDate="2015-11-03T20:12:04.143" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="8605" PostId="2798" Score="2" Text="@NickCox Yes, I got a ton of votes for saying that two vectors are orthogonal if their inner product is zero... ha ha ha [Here](http://stats.stackexchange.com/a/142879/67822). Not that I have posted anything so great, but this one, of all the hours I spent working on others..." CreationDate="2015-11-03T20:14:41.490" UserId="67822" />
  <row Id="8606" PostId="2798" Score="1" Text="That was funny! Thank you!" CreationDate="2015-11-03T21:24:16.603" UserId="67822" />
  <row Id="8607" PostId="2798" Score="5" Text="I have to come to think that most of these minor problems arise because many users are treating CV, a discussion forum with the aim of building an archive resource, as if it were a **help line**. On a help line you don't even know, and are not obliged to care, about anything but your immediate question. Once done, you leave promptly. (Another misunderstanding, for a separate question perhaps, is regarding CV as a kind of **multiple blog**, in which &quot;This is my opinion&quot; is the prevailing style and many individuals have no notion of a collective responsibility.)" CreationDate="2015-11-04T09:28:00.743" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="8609" PostId="2798" Score="0" Text="@JNat you should post that as an answer so it can be accepted ;)" CreationDate="2015-11-04T20:27:33.750" UserId="60822" />
  <row Id="22484" PostId="2798" Score="0" Text="I sympathize with this suggestion. Questions without accepted answer are shown as &quot;unanswered&quot;. If the question is esoteric enough, a good answer is left without votes, and this may be interpreted as &quot;not sufficient&quot; by other users." CreationDate="2023-09-18T10:33:21.323" UserId="237561" />
  <row Id="8610" PostId="2804" Score="3" Text="Looking at the lits of all 59 questions tagged with [best-practices] I cannot detect any coherent system. If [best-practices] is supposed to mark threads (related to some analysis choices) of &quot;high importance&quot;, then (a) it's definitely failing to do so (there are lots of poor threads with this tag), and (b) arguably cannot and should not serve such a purpose anyway (because no tag should). It looks like it might better go [the way of big-list](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/a/2776/28666)... Good that you raised this issue." CreationDate="2015-11-05T22:37:34.540" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8612" PostId="2804" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Unless someone can come up with a plausible usage guideline then I am inclined to agree. It is possible, of course, to define guidelines that are *stricter* than the ones that are currently tagged, and then remove those which would not fit the proposal. But I haven't included a clear proposal in my question because, like you, I struggled to find something coherent." CreationDate="2015-11-05T22:54:35.087" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="8613" PostId="2804" Score="0" Text="I found about the best practices tag recently and used it. I think is should be used on question that can be a a hub of answers of  some general area (like coping with imbalanced data sets). I agree that that is no clear definition of the tag and when to apply it. However, I think that having such a tag will be very beneficial. If you feel that the best-practices tag is not the appropriate one, maybe we should create a new tag for that peruse with a clearer definition." CreationDate="2015-11-06T06:21:57.160" UserId="81056" />
  <row Id="8622" PostId="2804" Score="1" Text="@Dan A &quot;*question that can be a hub of answers of some general area*&quot; should certainly be closed as too broad. So it sounds like it serves the very useful purpose ... it's a tag that says &quot;close me&quot;." CreationDate="2015-11-11T08:48:29.223" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8624" PostId="2804" Score="0" Text="Well, any usage can be a justification for the tag. ;-) Is the concept of a &quot;survey tag&quot; (like survey papers) acceptable?" CreationDate="2015-11-11T09:22:24.857" UserId="81056" />
  <row Id="8672" PostId="2804" Score="2" Text="This tag is undoubtably a residual from StackOverflow. I don't think there's an exact parallel to this in the world of statistics. I also think that's a shame." CreationDate="2015-11-23T00:09:46.793" UserId="76981" />
  <row Id="8692" PostId="2804" Score="0" Text="The [big-list] is now gone, by the way." CreationDate="2015-11-26T15:01:21.843" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8795" PostId="2804" Score="0" Text="Today I came across [basic-concepts] tag with 200+ questions. Looks like another useless meta tag to me, or what do you think?" CreationDate="2015-12-04T22:45:56.683" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8796" PostId="2804" Score="0" Text="@amoeba It sounds it to me. Think that might need a whole new meta thread, though this one does not seem to have come to much of a conclusion. (Though pretty much everyone seems to be in favour of getting rid of &quot;best-practices&quot;, I am not sure how this would be turned into some sort of implementation.)" CreationDate="2015-12-04T22:50:51.223" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="8797" PostId="2804" Score="0" Text="Precisely, and basic-concepts has 4 times more threads, making manual elimination hardly possible. If we had enough support, we could ask SE developers to blacklist and remove these tags all at once; but I doubt we will get this support. People seem not to care much." CreationDate="2015-12-04T22:55:42.350" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8919" PostId="2804" Score="2" Text="I went through all the questions where [best-practices] or [basic-concepts] were the *only* tags and re-tagged those. I think both these tags are now ready to be burninated, if the community approves of that. I've just put [burninate-request] tag on my meta thread re basic-concepts; I'd say we should put it here too." CreationDate="2015-12-20T00:40:22.030" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8939" PostId="2804" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Thanks for that!" CreationDate="2015-12-21T11:44:19.587" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="10304" PostId="2804" Score="1" Text="It seems, nothing happened after your last update. I'm willing to gradually remove those tags, if you think it is appropriate. Just let me know. Tks." CreationDate="2016-08-02T19:09:50.950" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="10305" PostId="2804" Score="1" Text="@andre thanks, I accepted your answer" CreationDate="2016-08-02T19:51:06.857" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="10329" PostId="2804" Score="2" Text="@Andre I'm not sure whether `[rule-of-thumb]` actually is especially &quot;meta&quot; (any more than e.g. `[intuition]` is) ... but I can see that being something other people might come to different conclusions on. So might be worth a post. (Personally I'd suggest keeping that one, I think it is rather clearer in purpose and more useful than &quot;best practices&quot;.)" CreationDate="2016-08-05T14:27:10.183" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="10417" PostId="2804" Score="0" Text="Fully agree that [rule-of-thumb] is worth keeping. (+1)" CreationDate="2016-08-10T15:26:02.393" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10418" PostId="2804" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, I saw this thread when it was posted. I'm not sure what I have to say, but I'll think about it.  I removed the tag." CreationDate="2016-08-10T15:27:57.450" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10838" PostId="2804" Score="2" Text="[Done](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/best-practices) (cc/ @amoeba)." CreationDate="2016-09-19T22:42:07.587" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="10840" PostId="2804" Score="0" Text="Great job, @AndreSilva! I'd suggest you update your answer here so that more people notice." CreationDate="2016-09-19T23:07:21.197" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10874" PostId="2804" Score="0" Text="Not exactly the question here, but I'd actually like to see &quot;best practices&quot; questions considered off topic. The premise is essentially always false -- in my opinion I've yet to see such a question where the scope was narrow enough that there *could* be an actual *best* (it's sort of akin to asking for a UMP test without the conditions for one to exist holding), so it seems to me they're -- pretty much literally -- *always* too broad. Since questions that recognize the problem would tend to avoid the phrase, the inclusion of the phrase is the very thing that tells us to close it... ctd" CreationDate="2016-09-21T07:49:21.003" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10875" PostId="2804" Score="0" Text="... Has there been more than a few that didn't need substantial editing/revision or a bunch of unjustified assumptions to answer?" CreationDate="2016-09-21T07:50:03.110" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10877" PostId="2804" Score="0" Text="@glen_b [This thread](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2910/how-to-efficiently-manage-a-statistical-analysis-project) was very good (asked by experienced user which is why the editing was basically over tags) but probably comes very close to being too broad. I think there were a few Tha were just the right side of the line. Not a complete answer to your question but the broadness point is good." CreationDate="2016-09-21T08:26:20.660" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="10878" PostId="2804" Score="0" Text="@Silverfish  Thanks -- you got me, that's the kind of situation where it's at least potentially possible to ask a reasonable question of that type ... but I think that's partly because it's not really asking a question about *statistics* so much as about *project management* (though with some special aspects because that involves statistics). One could in a similar vein ask one about statistical consulting." CreationDate="2016-09-21T08:55:55.830" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10879" PostId="2804" Score="1" Text="@glen_b Indeed - I did tentatively suggest some of the better threads might benefit from a &quot;professional-practises&quot; tag or similar. It seemed that it was more &quot;how we go about a data analysis task&quot; rather than &quot;how do I do the underlying statistics&quot;. But probably more specific tag names would be better. We already have &quot;project-management&quot; for instance" CreationDate="2016-09-21T09:00:39.213" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="8615" PostId="2805" Score="3" Text="I'd rather see 'best-practices' leaving, without needing a substitute tag." CreationDate="2015-11-09T13:12:52.010" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="8616" PostId="2805" Score="2" Text="@andre Post that as an answer, I think it is a perfectly reasonable alternative." CreationDate="2015-11-09T14:52:19.120" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="8618" PostId="2805" Score="1" Text="I have edited my answer, so people who upvoted me earlier but may now prefer to vote for Andre's answer can do so." CreationDate="2015-11-09T17:08:46.627" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="8619" PostId="2805" Score="1" Text="+1 for getting rid of [best-practices]. Having [professional-practice] is maybe not a bad idea, but it seems that its intersection with the current usage of [best-practices] will be only very cursory. Most of the threads currently tagged with [best-practices] are outside of the scope of [professional-practice]. So it appears to be an almost unrelated issue." CreationDate="2015-11-09T22:13:59.137" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8621" PostId="2805" Score="1" Text="@amoeba I get the feeling that, by some margin, `P(professional-practice|best-practices) &gt; P(professional-practice)` but you are right that `P(professional-practice|best-practices)` would still be fairly small (well below 0.5)" CreationDate="2015-11-09T22:18:32.203" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="8617" PostId="2807" Score="1" Text="I think this is perfectly reasonable as an alternative. My argument is essentially that &quot;professional practice&quot; seems (to me) to be easier to pin down and captures something of the spirit of a certain subset of these questions that may be worth connecting together; &quot;best practices&quot; seems more akin to pinning jelly to a wall with your left shoe." CreationDate="2015-11-09T16:58:24.973" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="8620" PostId="2807" Score="1" Text="+1 for getting rid of [best-practices]. As I wrote in a comment to Silverfish'es answer, [professional-practice] (if created) will hardly be a substitute for [best-practices]: most of the threads currently tagged with [best-practices] are outside of the scope of [professional-practice]." CreationDate="2015-11-09T22:16:21.230" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8623" PostId="2807" Score="3" Text="+1 ... Incidentally (if a bit off topic) a tag like `self-study` needs constant attention. They do serve a purpose but they're a lot of work." CreationDate="2015-11-11T08:50:18.843" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10039" PostId="2808" Score="0" Text="Jnat, &#xA;&#xA;The meta-stackexchange deals with a different question altogether. They tackle the possibility of having a community answer, as a signal for the most correct answer, when the OP accepts an answer which is not the best. This question on meta CV is for 'dead'/inactive questions to have a community answer." CreationDate="2016-06-19T00:37:15.647" UserId="40252" />
  <row Id="10041" PostId="2808" Score="0" Text="The answer remains, anyway: whether the OP accepted &quot;the wrong answer&quot; or just didn't accept an answer at all, _the community can show their acceptance of &quot;the right answer&quot; through votes_." CreationDate="2016-06-19T09:50:57.293" UserId="72321" />
  <row Id="10042" PostId="2808" Score="0" Text="But the case it's completely different when you look at the stats of answered/unaswered questions. That puts pressure on the moral of users. They see that it never ends, keeps increasing, then think 'why bother' and just give up on answering questions that will never get tagged answered..." CreationDate="2016-06-19T09:58:16.553" UserId="40252" />
  <row Id="9319" PostId="2810" Score="0" Text="Hi Antoni. This seems to be our best meta thread on editing questions and other questions are starting to get closed as duplicates of it. Nick's answer does indeed provide excellent guidance. However, the question is a bit long and its first part is more of an introduction. Given the question's popularity, I thought perhaps you might want to condense it to make it more to the point (&quot;What is the etiquette for editing questions?&quot;). (I guess if you prefer I could suggest an edit and you roll back if you don't like it.) Feel free to leave it as is if you find it more appropriate. Just an idea!" CreationDate="2016-02-13T21:53:09.477" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9321" PostId="2810" Score="0" Text="@amoeba It would be greatly appreciated it if you edited this question. There is no question on my mind that the changes would be an improvement. So please, please go ahead... Just don't decompose it into eigenvectors :-)" CreationDate="2016-02-13T23:04:21.030" UserId="67822" />
  <row Id="9326" PostId="2810" Score="1" Text="I gave it a shot." CreationDate="2016-02-14T15:16:03.847" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="21654" PostId="2810" Score="4" Text="**If a user edits a post to include &quot;(Solved)&quot; or similar in the title, I will make fun of them in the comments.**" CreationDate="2022-12-09T00:54:25.793" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="8631" PostId="2813" Score="0" Text="Glen, Thank you for your answer. I tried the code and I got the following: `OPdata=read(stdin(),header=TRUE)&#xA;Error: could not find function &quot;read&quot;`" CreationDate="2015-11-14T00:52:26.067" UserId="67822" />
  <row Id="8632" PostId="2813" Score="0" Text="@Antoni thanks, that was meant to be `read.table`. I believe I originally typed read.table but I likely screwed it up during editing of my answer before posting." CreationDate="2015-11-14T01:39:17.543" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8633" PostId="2813" Score="1" Text="I have a vague idea what rocket science is. However I would be interested to know what is rocket surgery?" CreationDate="2015-11-17T14:51:12.327" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="8634" PostId="2813" Score="3" Text="@mpiktas Two common sayings are &quot;it's not brain surgery&quot; and &quot;it's not rocket science&quot;, both of which mean the same thing. Mixing the two is amusing in a silly way, possibly implying the speaker (or writer in this case) is stupid. See [urbandictionary](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=rocket+surgery) or [TvTropes](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThisAintRocketSurgery) or [A Way With Words](http://www.waywordradio.org/rocket_surgery/)" CreationDate="2015-11-17T15:16:23.047" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8635" PostId="2813" Score="0" Text="Just as I suspected :)" CreationDate="2015-11-17T15:17:30.987" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="8636" PostId="2813" Score="0" Text="The former saying has received (what shall I say?) a renewed boost recently with the ventures of a former brain surgeon outside brain surgery." CreationDate="2015-11-17T17:25:16.893" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="8638" PostId="2813" Score="1" Text="@Nick Yes, I've watched those ventures with some amusement. It would be even funnier if the eventual outcome weren't so serious." CreationDate="2015-11-17T21:58:36.227" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8641" PostId="2813" Score="1" Text="On data as singular and plural. _Data_ clearly has a Latin root as a plural, but language changes and need not be logically consistent. Older folks who grew up writing down each value, adding them up and so forth are more likely to think of their data as plural than younger people for whom the data is [sic] just a single entity handled on the computer; and indeed the data can be both. Latin plurals can become singulars (who says &quot;the agenda are long&quot;?) and words can be both singular and plural (there's a hair on your shirt; I need to get my hair cut)." CreationDate="2015-11-18T09:57:35.470" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="8642" PostId="2813" Score="4" Text="I still usually prefer to say and write for myself &quot;the data show&quot;, &quot;the data are&quot;, but it's far, far too late to eradicate the other form. &quot;The data is consistent with a linear pattern&quot;: I find myself saying such things too. But I still cringe at &quot;I have a data&quot; which I have only noticed in the last few years, but I can't put my finger on why. I think it's just that one form is idiomatic around me and the other isn't, so it's all probably food for the sociologists." CreationDate="2015-11-18T10:03:04.110" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="8643" PostId="2813" Score="2" Text="Similarly on the word _code_ as anything from a few lines in some language to a self-contained program. &quot;I have some code&quot;; &quot;the code isn't working&quot; sound fine but &quot;I have a code&quot; doesn't sound at all right and I tend to edit it out. That statement may well seem utterly parochial, all the way down to my perception of what is said among my own peer group of some British academics. But editing what is not widely idiomatic to what is widely idiomatic can be important too." CreationDate="2015-11-18T10:07:46.507" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="8644" PostId="2813" Score="3" Text="Declaration of war: I always edit out _i_ for _I_ and _gonna_ and _wanna_." CreationDate="2015-11-18T10:08:19.913" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="8645" PostId="2813" Score="0" Text="I agree with your particular points there." CreationDate="2015-11-18T10:20:34.737" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8646" PostId="2813" Score="0" Text="*Data* is so clearly defective as a count noun - the queerness of &quot;How many data are there?&quot;, &quot;We collected sixty data&quot;, &quot;This datum is an outlier&quot;, &amp; the like is apparent, I think, to native English speakers - that preservation of its grammatical plurality can hardly be defended on any other grounds than a general principle of linguistic conservatism. Though I can't quite bring myself to treat it as a  (grammatically singular) mass noun, I therefore don't correct it when editing others' posts." CreationDate="2015-11-18T16:36:52.617" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8647" PostId="2813" Score="0" Text="@NickCox: &quot;I have a data&quot; is still wrong under the view of *data* as a mass noun that justifies &quot;the data shows&quot;. The same with *code*, I think." CreationDate="2015-11-18T17:36:22.590" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8648" PostId="2813" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi You may have a golden thread there out of the maze. But we can say &quot;I saw a crowd&quot; and &quot;The crowd was large&quot;. So, in such cases, _a_ and _the_ both seem idiomatic. What's the difference?" CreationDate="2015-11-18T17:45:05.160" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="8649" PostId="2813" Score="1" Text="@NickCox: *Crowd* is a collective noun rather than a mass noun. You can't say &quot;I saw a water&quot; or &quot;I saw a cutlery&quot;." CreationDate="2015-11-18T17:47:54.543" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8650" PostId="2813" Score="0" Text="But _crowd_ to me maps one-to-one to _data_. Why are _data_ a mass? It seems quite arbitrary to deny that they are a collective. I can't rebut any grammarians' distinctions here, but these are rules taught by grammarians to each other that have no hope of influencing standard usage. (I was taught in school by graduates in English to avoid split infinitives as a indisputable imperative, only to learn years later that professionals regard that taboo as ridiculous nonsense.)" CreationDate="2015-11-18T17:54:48.267" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="8651" PostId="2813" Score="0" Text="Is &quot;I have some data&quot; correct?" CreationDate="2015-11-18T20:17:43.523" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="8652" PostId="2813" Score="0" Text="@Andre Yes, in my book -- I think it would be correct whether you're one to consider data to be countable (like peas or cows; *I saw two cows* vs *I saw some cows*) or an uncountable/mass noun (like rice or sand; *I ate some rice*). On the other hand, English will do what it will do, and in time &quot;data&quot; will almost certainly become seen as singular by a majority -- and all the students that I see write &quot;datas&quot; presently will become right, and fogies like me will just have to deal with having become archaic. Indeed data has been headed that way for a while (and agenda with it).  ... ctd" CreationDate="2015-11-18T22:11:58.500" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8653" PostId="2813" Score="2" Text="ctd... As far as I see, few people have said datum or agendum in a long time." CreationDate="2015-11-18T22:23:12.813" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8654" PostId="2813" Score="2" Text="_Datum_ retains a specific meaning in surveying and geodesy. For example, land surface altitudes in Britain are reported relative to Ordnance Datum. But within statistics stricter sense I don't think I've heard the word used in recent years, except facetiously. Data point is often useful and (often deliberately) matches the geometric or graphical meaning perfectly." CreationDate="2015-11-18T23:40:03.183" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="8655" PostId="2813" Score="0" Text="I should also have added *erratum* to the list of dying singular forms. I hear &quot;an errata&quot; occasionally." CreationDate="2015-11-18T23:49:06.743" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8657" PostId="2813" Score="1" Text="I think &quot;an errata&quot; is more nearly just a mistake. Ditto &quot;a criteria&quot;, &quot;a phenomena&quot; (switching to Greek from Latin)." CreationDate="2015-11-19T09:32:54.647" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="8658" PostId="2813" Score="0" Text="@NickCox: Grammarians in this case are trying to explain what's happened to *data* by observing how we use it rather than to stipulate how we ought to use it, &amp; in many ways our use of *data* follows the pattern of our use of mass nouns. I'd imagine knowledge of Latin was originally widespread among those few who had occasion to use the word: later, as *data* waxed &amp; Latin waned, for many the *only* clue pointing to its plurality came from verbal inflection; no surprise that some started to assimilate it to a familiar pattern. Singular *data* was a tragedy waiting to happen." CreationDate="2015-11-19T10:30:25.307" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8659" PostId="2813" Score="1" Text="Of course *data* had a tragic flaw: the lack of a dominant, unambiguous criterion for individuation. We can, &amp; often do, talk glibly of &quot;data&quot; without a clear notion of what a single datum would be (is a point on a scatter-plot a datum? or two data?). Though attempted explanations of grammatical categories in terms of semantics seem to throw up as many exceptions as regularities, there's a tendency for mass nouns to share this lack, &amp; I feel that some sense of *data*'s kinship to *news*, *information*, &amp; the like played a part in the change. Even careful writers who treat ..." CreationDate="2015-11-19T10:34:32.383" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8660" PostId="2813" Score="0" Text="... *data* as plural when conjugating the verb of which it's the subject often prefer &quot;much data&quot; to &quot;many data&quot; &amp; &quot;less data&quot; to &quot;fewer data&quot;. (In fact, Glen_b, you seem to be one of them!) Taking this view, we should expect to see &quot;data is&quot; replacing &quot;data are&quot;, but  &quot;a data&quot; or &quot;datas&quot; will remain rare solecisms. In fine smoothing out one irregularity - an apparent mass noun's being grammatically plural - introduces another - a Latin plural's being grammatically singular. I think reasonable people can differ as to whether it's worth it." CreationDate="2015-11-19T10:37:58.903" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8661" PostId="2813" Score="0" Text="@NickCox: I've garnered &quot;how much data are missing&quot;, &quot;there are now too much data&quot;, &quot;how much data are needed&quot;, &quot;less data are likely to be required&quot;, &amp; &quot;very little data are missing&quot; from CV posts by users whose English would nearly always pass muster with conservatives - one can't imagine any of them writing &quot;how much apples are missing&quot; &amp;c. (You seem to be a paragon of consistency by the way.) This suggests to me that singular *data* is exerting an attraction, though I suppose it could be argued that it's merely infectious." CreationDate="2015-11-20T15:53:13.000" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8662" PostId="2813" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi Very interesting. I'll take the compliment &quot;paragon of consistency&quot; and run! But as my opening comment admitted, I find myself sometimes using _data_ singular in conversation, but I tend to edit it out of my own prose, just as Yeah is often what I say, but Yes is always what I write. Orthogonally to all this I often use _data set_ or even _dataset_ as a way of avoiding solecism. The last I learned from Stata documentation, disliked for a while, but now regard as a positive solution for talking about the data when considered as a singular whole." CreationDate="2015-11-20T18:07:42.450" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="8663" PostId="2813" Score="0" Text="I am the same; I will use it as singular when talking, but I try to fix it in my writing" CreationDate="2015-11-21T01:16:58.153" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="22596" PostId="2813" Score="0" Text="It seems I've lost my long battle against &quot;codes&quot;; *code* for instructions to a computer has been a mass noun for considerably more than half a century, but I now regularly see &quot;codes&quot; even for just a few lines of code. This one makes me feel distinctly dispepsic on the best of days, so I seem to have picked my hill there." CreationDate="2023-12-05T02:32:12.120" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8637" PostId="2814" Score="2" Text="Based on your earlier comments in chat I was keen to see you post -- especially because there's a few aspects where we differ. However, this is a better post even than I had hoped to see, with many good points and useful suggestions. It's important that people be able to see it here." CreationDate="2015-11-17T21:43:40.707" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8639" PostId="2814" Score="2" Text="@Glen_b Thanks! I don't think we differ much at all. So far as I can gather, you lean towards fixing technical side issues and changing graphs to improve presentation a little more than I do." CreationDate="2015-11-18T01:31:09.357" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="8640" PostId="2814" Score="1" Text="Yes, it's a small difference on a few items,  but I think it's important to get a sense of those differences. I'll be considering those sort of edits more carefully, for one thing." CreationDate="2015-11-18T01:36:23.853" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="20591" PostId="2814" Score="0" Text="Re common name mangling: lower case gauss, and markov spring to mind. :) Also with respect to applying ancient Greek or Latin orthography to contemporary (statistical) English appears to me to be akin to the [etymological fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymological_fallacy)." CreationDate="2021-03-05T18:07:45.480" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="20592" PostId="2814" Score="0" Text="I am favour of recognising the great people at whose feet we sit and on whose shoulders we stand. It would be interesting to learn of any cases where family names should not receive an initial capital for some different reason. For no good reason, I find references to cox regression and box-cox transformations particularly painful." CreationDate="2021-03-05T18:22:17.123" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21190" PostId="2814" Score="5" Text="IMHO, the most egregious common misspellings on CV are [&quot;Wilcox&quot;](https://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=%22wilcox+test%22) and [&quot;Wilcoxin&quot;](https://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=wilcoxin) for Frank Wilcoxon.  The former is an original sin of the `R` development team while the latter must just be ignorance, fueled perhaps by the absence of the &quot;on&quot; in the `R` terminology... .  Fortunately, these have been fixed in 98% of the cases.  (Another awful misspelling is &quot;Normal&quot; for &quot;Gauss,&quot; but that one left the barn long ago :-)." CreationDate="2022-01-28T21:54:14.717" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21191" PostId="2814" Score="2" Text="@whuber Thanks for Wilcoxon; I've often muttered at Wilcox coming straight from an R function name (it's incidental that Wilcoxon also had a coauthor called Wilcox). I've also added Winsor, after seeing yet another Windsorize on this site." CreationDate="2022-01-29T11:47:55.843" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22595" PostId="2814" Score="0" Text="On Cramer vs Cramér; I (somewhat) recently saw some disputation on the correctness of the accent. I really wish I could locate it again so I could link to it." CreationDate="2023-12-05T01:55:40.400" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="22602" PostId="2814" Score="0" Text="The accent is there in his 1946 book from Princeton UP, which I understand to be a reprint of the Swedish version from 1945." CreationDate="2023-12-05T09:18:55.357" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="23824" PostId="2814" Score="0" Text="Charles Paine Winsor." CreationDate="2024-03-17T13:24:07.943" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="8668" PostId="2816" Score="2" Text="If you search for questions only, then it's [400 candidate threads](http://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=%22correlation+matrix%22+is%3Aquestion), not 800. Still a lot of course. I have recently decided to create a [factor-rotation] tag and propagated it backwards on ~10-15 threads (out of many more possible candidates) that I thought are most important. With [correlation-matrix] this would probably be several dozens of &quot;important&quot; threads to mark, but certainly well below 100." CreationDate="2015-11-22T14:34:48.817" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8670" PostId="2816" Score="4" Text="I've often wondered why we had 'covariance matrix' but not 'correlation matrix', but the task of putting it where it was needed seemed daunting. While I wouldn't suggest trying to put it everywhere it might be used, the strategy of identifying a few dozen questions it might be most important to have it on is interesting. We might then just put it where we see it's needed after that. Perhaps it's less than ideal (I don't think we can get ideal at this point) but I think it would help people find questions they're looking for." CreationDate="2015-11-22T22:21:13.193" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8671" PostId="2816" Score="3" Text="This resonates with my feelings well, @Glen_b. I started with suggesting a tag wiki excerpt. Unless somebody protests here in the next day or two, I might look for some threads to add this tag to." CreationDate="2015-11-22T23:56:19.083" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8685" PostId="2816" Score="2" Text="I think it is a reasonable tag to have. Propagating it backwards can be beneficial but I guess it is something it can happen slowly and naturally as older questions resurface." CreationDate="2015-11-24T23:38:30.220" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="8674" PostId="2819" Score="6" Text="I think a few examples help with these kind of questions. My initial reaction is that good, full answers to *simple* questions are probably already on our site somewhere, &amp; finding them &amp; linking to them would be better than providing a new one-line answer." CreationDate="2015-11-24T10:54:15.310" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8676" PostId="2819" Score="2" Text="@Scortchi OK but for &quot;What method to use for my data?&quot; the &quot;my data&quot; part is hard to find and link to. In such cases you could write an extended answer describing what linear regression or ANOVA are, where we use them and how they work, but it does not seem to be necessary and such questions not often seem to ask about it." CreationDate="2015-11-24T11:54:16.267" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="8681" PostId="2819" Score="3" Text="The related question of *forcibly* converting comments to answers is addressed at [Comments that are actually answers](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/832/comments-that-are-actually-answers)." CreationDate="2015-11-24T14:19:36.650" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="8682" PostId="2819" Score="4" Text="It's worth noting that some users have an obvious preference to *only* post elaborate and insightful answers, and upon seeing a rather trivial question would much rather post a comment with a brief answer because such a brief answer posted as an &quot;answer&quot; would be below their personal standards. The most striking example is cardinal who only ever posted carefully crafted meticulous (and usually brilliant) answers and has a higher rep-per-answer than anybody else here, with a large margin :-) He mentions that it's his personal policy in the thread linked by @whuber." CreationDate="2015-11-24T16:42:31.663" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8683" PostId="2819" Score="3" Text="My comment [insert obvious meta-comments mentally] is to say &quot;Wait and see&quot;. Sometimes a quick comment seems all that is possible and/or (all too common) one is glancing at a question but has no time or inclination for a full answer. But if the thread is revisited and it becomes obvious that there isn't a better reply, then it can be worth expanding the comment to an answer. Similarly, if the question is initially too brief or too cryptic to deserve or allow a full answer, but then the OP responds well to encouragement, then a full answer may seem sensible and appropriate." CreationDate="2015-11-24T20:50:04.940" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="8684" PostId="2819" Score="2" Text="Another comment is to be responsive to peer encouragement. I've been grateful several times for suggestions from other members to take my comments and make them into an answer. (Often, this may be where a series of ideas added intermittently can be combined and fleshed out into a fuller answer.) I turn I hope to do this (more) for other people." CreationDate="2015-11-24T20:52:31.863" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17268" PostId="2819" Score="0" Text="Some of the discussion in this thread is relevant here: https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5402/is-a-quick-and-dirty-answer-better-than-no-answer/5405#5405" CreationDate="2019-02-16T14:46:30.007" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="8675" PostId="2820" Score="0" Text="OK, agree, but sometimes with questions like &quot;What method to use for my data?&quot; one-liner + reference is enough to be said and *is* what OP wants while this does not really qualify as acceptable-quality answer." CreationDate="2015-11-24T11:48:37.347" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="8677" PostId="2820" Score="6" Text="Who said it doesn't? In my opinion, if the question is on-topic, not duplicate and well posed (perhaps 'what method for my data' would require a data sample, an explanation of what OP is trying to achieve, etc); this kind of answer is fine. However, it happens that chances of someone come and post a more complete answer are not small, and if this happens the other answer will receive more credit. [example 1](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/92141/pp-plots-vs-qq-plots/100377#100377); [example 2](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/76234/covariance-of-timeseries/77632#77632). (@Tim)" CreationDate="2015-11-24T11:58:07.587" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="8678" PostId="2820" Score="1" Text="Also, there is the possibility of explaining why that method is being recommended, besides providing a reference." CreationDate="2015-11-24T12:01:52.600" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="8679" PostId="2820" Score="1" Text="Yes, I absolutely agree. But **in practice we often have not enough manpower** (and we are lazy) so there are **thousands of unanswered simple questions**, many of them that received some comments (!). In many cases lazy comment-one-liner is the only thing that OP receives, the question is: is it better to provide them, even if low quality, as answers or leave as they are?" CreationDate="2015-11-24T12:02:06.227" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="8680" PostId="2820" Score="4" Text="It is difficult to answer objectively. For example, in the first example you provided Peter Flom expanded the comments in his answer, in the second one, all your comments could be compiled in one answer. I think it is better having answers in the answer box. @Tim" CreationDate="2015-11-24T12:42:27.033" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="8687" PostId="2820" Score="2" Text="I think this post also has some peripheral relevance to the question, because it's about questions that are hard to answer other than as a comment: [A difficulty with self-study like questions of the form &quot;is this correct?&quot;](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2685/a-difficulty-with-self-study-like-questions-of-the-form-is-this-correct)" CreationDate="2015-11-25T09:36:19.177" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8689" PostId="2820" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b, feel free to include that post in the related posts list in this answer. I'm not sure if you suggested this, but  I think it's a good idea. About questions which the possible answers are yes/no, I think they should be off-topic, especially when the answer is 'yes, you are correct'. If it is 'no, you aren't correct', it will depend if it can be complemented with more info. I based my opinion on [this post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/183177/question-closed-because-yes-no-answer?lq=1), which was written in SO's context, but with some modifications could also be applied here." CreationDate="2015-11-25T12:18:13.083" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="8690" PostId="2820" Score="0" Text="@Andre thanks for that link" CreationDate="2015-11-25T15:48:50.193" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8700" PostId="2826" Score="3" Text="If there are questions you think merit a bounty (because they'd require substantial effort to answer, or indeed for any other reason), feel free to mention them here or on chat. Even if StackExchange is unlikely to add additional incentive for those questions, that doesn't stop CV users from considering placing bounties on questions. If pointing to such questions becomes a very regular activity over a period of time it would be a simple matter to set up a chat room devoted to it. I realize it would only make a small dent, but it's one way to make some difference." CreationDate="2015-11-28T22:18:32.793" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8702" PostId="2826" Score="3" Text="(a) may not be answered and (b) possibly worth a good answer are not necessarily contradictory, but they are not identical either. I think commenting, voting to close and down-voting provide the mechanisms we need to send signals.The root problem remains the large number of casual/beginning users of statistics who (understandably enough) ask too many questions geared to a dataset we can't see, or want to be told the correct method, etc., etc. It's really hard to ask a good new question here." CreationDate="2015-11-29T09:40:29.780" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="8703" PostId="2826" Score="0" Text="It sounds as if you think (&quot;worthwhile&quot;, &quot;worth people's time&quot;, &quot;bounty&quot;) insufficient scope for gains in reputation is key here. People must speak for themselves, and it's possible to be altruistic and also be pleased at any reputation gain, but my impression that people motivated by reputation alone would get frustrated here fairly quickly. Tinkering with the system would not change that." CreationDate="2015-11-29T12:28:52.247" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="8704" PostId="2826" Score="2" Text="@NickCox I agree with both of your comments.  However, I read the previous discussion where it was stated that some users felt that it might not be worth their time providing an answer that would require substantial effort when there might only be 0 or 1 votes for it.  I don't think reputation motivates most people entirely, but I do think it can and does motivate a bit.  In my limited experience, a single checkmark is hardly as satisfying as high page views and 100s of rep; that may be a result of my having a very low rep though.  Proof that rep does motivate is that bounties work." CreationDate="2015-11-29T14:50:23.357" UserId="60822" />
  <row Id="8711" PostId="2826" Score="0" Text="That people are different I take as axiomatic. I see the most active users here helping out often when there's no prospect of much by way of votes.  I think it's a little strong to talk of proof of the effectiveness of bounties. Some people are indifferent to bounties. If I didn't have anything to say first time round, a bounty won't change that." CreationDate="2015-11-29T23:59:45.180" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="8730" PostId="2826" Score="0" Text="@NickCox I certainly won't dispute that people are different :)  At the end of the day, I guess it all boils down to the same thing: statistics questions are often more demanding to write and answer than many other exchange areas (e.g. overflow).  I'll take the zero vote count as affirmation that nobody supports the idea of auto-bounties or adding other tools.  Thanks for the discussion." CreationDate="2015-11-30T14:23:29.843" UserId="60822" />
  <row Id="8731" PostId="2826" Score="2" Text="My guess is the zero vote reflects a judgement on practicality, and does not at all connote lack of sympathy for your views. The essence is outlined by @gung in his answer, namely that changes like this would need to be SE-wide. In addition, as no one person could decide on difficulty or degree of specialization, this would be one more level to decide on collectively (and to discuss where there are disagreements). My own stance is at once more optimistic and more pessimistic than yours (I don't see good posters as needing these inducements, but also   I don't know alternative good solutions.)" CreationDate="2015-11-30T14:28:27.703" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="8705" PostId="2829" Score="3" Text="Once the tag is cleared off from all threads, it will be automatically deleted in 24 hours. Do you think there is a danger of it getting re-created?" CreationDate="2015-11-29T22:16:20.227" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8706" PostId="2829" Score="2" Text="In addition to that: do you think the danger of [students-t] being re-created is any higher than any other possible similar tag  such as [student] or [student-t] getting created? The case seems to be equally strong to blacklist any of them." CreationDate="2015-11-29T22:20:23.260" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8707" PostId="2829" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, is it true that tags w/o any threads are deleted in 24 hours? I've never heard that. I do know that new tags w/ only 1 thread are automatically deleted after 6 months, but that's a different issue. If the tag deletes itself, you're right that nothing should really need doing." CreationDate="2015-11-29T22:47:49.467" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="8708" PostId="2829" Score="2" Text="@gung Yes, [Tags not associated with any question are automatically destroyed at 03:00 UTC every day](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/19753)." CreationDate="2015-11-29T22:50:47.017" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8710" PostId="2829" Score="0" Text="@amoeba yes, that's my specific concern. I should have been clearer." CreationDate="2015-11-29T23:55:04.317" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8804" PostId="2829" Score="1" Text="Hi Glen_b, this is just a nudge: a week has passed, my answer by now has 11 upvotes and there was no disagreement at all. Shall we make these synonyms and resolve the issue or do you have any reservations?" CreationDate="2015-12-06T00:05:06.563" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8805" PostId="2829" Score="1" Text="@amoeba Thanks for the reminder. No reservations; it's in the mental list of things to take care of but less urgent than some other things I need to do on site. If it's not done in two days feel free to nudge me with extreme prejudice." CreationDate="2015-12-06T00:11:15.100" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8882" PostId="2829" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b, I imagine you have more than enough to do (whereas this issue is not pressing at all), but as you asked me to nudge you again after two days, I will point out that four days have passed." CreationDate="2015-12-10T23:56:46.613" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8883" PostId="2829" Score="0" Text="@amoeba thanks, you were right to do so. I'll try to get it today." CreationDate="2015-12-11T01:00:04.493" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9008" PostId="2829" Score="0" Text="Not sure you will notice that Scortchi has now implemented the mappings; consider accepting my answer here and perhaps also gung's answer [in the previous thread](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1710) to make both threads appear resolved on the meta front page. Cheers!" CreationDate="2016-01-20T17:14:52.557" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8701" PostId="2830" Score="1" Text="I changed the term in your post because I used the wrong word in mine -- it seems 'burninating' merely refers to the deletion of a tag, whereas I believe we both mean making it so the tag won't just get remade again (which needs CM intervention, assuming we get a consensus)." CreationDate="2015-11-29T04:26:45.327" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8709" PostId="2830" Score="0" Text="Thanks @gung for clarifying in the face of my correction. Given the number of times it was used in the last few months, I was assuming the tag would simply be remade every time we deleted it." CreationDate="2015-11-29T23:54:03.173" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8712" PostId="2830" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b, in light of the quote you added, blacklisting seems to be a pretty big deal, &amp; as amoeba notes, people could just create `[student-t]`, etc. If the tag is automatically deleted, I see no problem to be solved." CreationDate="2015-11-29T23:59:59.407" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="8713" PostId="2830" Score="0" Text="One could of course make the same argument about the tags that have been blacklisted before. I am content, however, that there will not be consensus to ask for a blacklist, so all I need do is remove the last question with the tag. Thanks gung." CreationDate="2015-11-30T00:01:47.273" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8714" PostId="2830" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b, I just saw that there was actually 1 thread left. I changed the tag. We can check tomorrow to ensure that the tag is gone." CreationDate="2015-11-30T00:03:43.690" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="8715" PostId="2830" Score="0" Text="yes, I had deliberately left one until the thing was decided, just in case the CMs needed an existing thread for their blacklist script. Anyway, nothing to do now but wait." CreationDate="2015-11-30T00:04:43.240" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8716" PostId="2830" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b: I am wondering what is the list of tags that *are* blacklisted on CV?" CreationDate="2015-11-30T00:09:39.103" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8717" PostId="2830" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I was referring to the blacklistings on SO and meta.SE, for example, tags that need another tag (&quot;meta-tags&quot;) that arise are banned; I don't know of any here." CreationDate="2015-11-30T00:12:50.160" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8719" PostId="2830" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b, here is one idea: let's create [students-t-test] as a synonym of [t-test] and [students-t-distribution] as a synonym of [t-distribution]. Then whoever types &quot;student...&quot; in the tag field will get these two suggestions and will I think be very unlikely to use something else instead." CreationDate="2015-11-30T00:21:20.207" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8721" PostId="2830" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Actually, that makes a lot of sense. Can't do it right now; I'll try to do it later." CreationDate="2015-11-30T00:22:14.680" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8722" PostId="2830" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, that's clearly the superior solution here. Why not add that as an official answer &amp; it could be accepted? (Not meaning to be presumptuous, of course. It's Glen_b's prerogative to accept or not as he chooses.)" CreationDate="2015-11-30T00:23:42.260" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="8727" PostId="2830" Score="0" Text="Sorry about jumping the gun on editing the tag, @Glen_b. I didn't realize you were holding off. I thought they were all supposed to have been gone &amp; so I checked to see if the tag still existed &amp; saw the last one. Also, given amoeba's answer, I can delete this one if you think that's appropriate." CreationDate="2015-11-30T00:38:04.127" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="8728" PostId="2830" Score="0" Text="There's no problem with the tag edit, everything is fine; I was simply explaining why I had left one there. I don't think you should delete this answer; it has upvotes, so it represents a segment of how people feel." CreationDate="2015-11-30T03:02:31.260" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8757" PostId="2830" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b, turns out that there *is* one tag blacklisted on CV and it's [statistics]." CreationDate="2015-12-02T00:24:02.490" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8758" PostId="2830" Score="0" Text="@amoeba oh, of course, thanks for that. Yes, I had heard that one before and it's an obvious one to ban here." CreationDate="2015-12-02T06:11:38.510" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9003" PostId="2832" Score="2" Text="I've implemented these two mappings." CreationDate="2016-01-20T16:32:12.510" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8732" PostId="2835" Score="2" Text="In the interim, you could attract more attention to the thread in question by listing it here in your Q." CreationDate="2015-11-30T18:34:23.170" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="8737" PostId="2835" Score="0" Text="See this answer on meta.SE [Is it possible to offer more points for a bounty that is already offered?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/142600/is-it-possible-to-offer-more-points-for-a-bounty-that-is-already-offered/142602#142602) and also some relevance in this one [Is there any way to edit the bounty amount I allocated for a question?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/268084/is-there-any-way-to-edit-the-bounty-amount-i-allocated-for-a-question/268085#268085)" CreationDate="2015-11-30T22:30:23.750" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8741" PostId="2835" Score="4" Text="I suspect the extra attention drawn to a question with a bounty on it varies little with the amount of the bounty, &amp; that offering successive bounties will be more effective by keeping it in the 'Featured' list for longer." CreationDate="2015-12-01T09:43:41.017" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8736" PostId="2836" Score="4" Text="+1 (edited) However, I think it only doubles if the previous bounty is yours (also note that the &quot;at least twice as large&quot; requirement ceases to apply once the maximum bounty - i.e. 500 - is reached .)" CreationDate="2015-11-30T22:17:59.897" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8742" PostId="2838" Score="2" Text="Weak law of large numbers" CreationDate="2015-12-01T12:57:34.480" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8743" PostId="2838" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi yes, I know, I read the tag wiki... My point is that the acronym is not the best choice for tags' name." CreationDate="2015-12-01T12:58:23.983" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="8744" PostId="2838" Score="7" Text="Sorry, I thought I was on a quiz show for some reason, &amp; just hit the buzzer; I didn't realize there was a wiki already. I think the acronym's fairly common but a synonym would certainly be a good idea." CreationDate="2015-12-01T13:03:53.003" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8755" PostId="2838" Score="5" Text="@Scortchi Please join any quiz team I am in." CreationDate="2015-12-01T19:30:27.267" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="8745" PostId="2839" Score="5" Text="I think it needs to be the other way around. see my answer." CreationDate="2015-12-01T13:09:25.030" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8910" PostId="2839" Score="1" Text="Maybe you could comment on amoebas proposal? This thread seems to be slowly dying while IMHO amoebas proposal is simple and reasonable." CreationDate="2015-12-17T10:02:41.440" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="10568" PostId="2839" Score="0" Text="I retagged all wlln into law-of-large-numbers (see updates to my answer above); consequently, wlln has been deleted. However, your synonym still exists; I guess synonyms do not  get automatically removed in such situations. Should we delete it (now both tags still appear as pop-ups when looking for tags)?" CreationDate="2016-08-28T15:15:33.717" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10570" PostId="2839" Score="0" Text="@amoeba: Thanks, I've deleted the existing synonym. Do we now want to make  [law-of-large-numbers] a master &amp; [weak-law-of-large-numbers] a synonym?" CreationDate="2016-08-28T17:42:18.967" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="10572" PostId="2839" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi I'd say there is no need for that; whoever starts typing &quot;law&quot; of &quot;large&quot; will get [law-of-large-numbers] as suggestion, so I don't see how the presence of [weak/strong-law-of-law-numbers] would help." CreationDate="2016-08-28T20:20:49.813" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10600" PostId="2839" Score="0" Text="@amoeba: I was thinking of someone who started typing &quot;weak-law[...]&quot;" CreationDate="2016-08-30T08:54:09.307" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="10601" PostId="2839" Score="1" Text="Hmm, yes, good point. I guess we could make [weak-law-of-large-n] and [strong-law-of-large-n] pointing at the [law-of-large-numbers]." CreationDate="2016-08-30T08:57:07.060" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8746" PostId="2840" Score="2" Text="So maybe we don't need to be so precise and `[law-of-large-numbers]` is enough..?" CreationDate="2015-12-01T13:10:21.943" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="8747" PostId="2840" Score="0" Text="The distinction can be be pretty central to some questions. Possibly we could have `law-of-large-numbers` along with `weak-law` and `strong-law` when needed, which can have synonyms that point to them." CreationDate="2015-12-01T13:13:10.547" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8748" PostId="2840" Score="0" Text="Ah ... I didn't know about the character limit. I've swapped them, at least for now." CreationDate="2015-12-01T13:16:51.530" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8749" PostId="2840" Score="2" Text="@Glen_b central -- yes -- but for taxonomic reasons maybe it is enough? I doubt that there is/will be that much questions on WLLN and SLLN combined that it would be hard to search through them." CreationDate="2015-12-01T13:22:35.920" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="8750" PostId="2840" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi at least, as far as I know it's still 25 characters -- I may have missed something though" CreationDate="2015-12-01T13:31:51.337" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8751" PostId="2840" Score="0" Text="It is; I've just checked." CreationDate="2015-12-01T13:49:20.433" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8752" PostId="2840" Score="2" Text="The names could be [weak-law-of-large-n] and [strong-law-of-large-n]. However, I notice that there is no tag for the strong law at all! From this I conclude that there is not enough questions on CV to warrant this difference and would perhaps go with @Tim's suggestion of making all these tags synonyms of [law-of-large-numbers]." CreationDate="2015-12-01T14:40:27.497" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8912" PostId="2840" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b what do you think about amoebas proposal? This thread seems to be slowly dying while IMHO amoebas proposal is simple and reasonable." CreationDate="2015-12-17T10:26:58.873" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="8838" PostId="2841" Score="1" Text="There is no consensus in this case. Maybe let's discuss @amoeba's (and mine) proposal? What are the cons of this idea?" CreationDate="2015-12-08T22:22:02.417" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="8760" PostId="2843" Score="2" Text="What are the arguments for not having a homework tag in Math SE?" CreationDate="2015-12-02T14:00:54.790" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8761" PostId="2843" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi Edited ^-^" CreationDate="2015-12-02T14:21:38.220" UserId="44339" />
  <row Id="8762" PostId="2843" Score="2" Text="@Scortchi: see here http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/14981. Some arguments are compelling but seem to stem from the fact that homework questions are much more widespread on math.SE than on CV, so here we simply do not seem to have many of the issues raised there (that might be part of the answer to BCLC's question). However, it's not very clear to me how math.SE deals with homework questions now that they do not have the homework tag." CreationDate="2015-12-02T14:21:41.227" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8763" PostId="2843" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I don't really see why self-study and non-self-study questions should be treated differently. Why can't we just pretend everything is self-study? Askers give effort. Answerers give prompts. Self-study or not." CreationDate="2015-12-02T14:22:20.053" UserId="44339" />
  <row Id="8764" PostId="2843" Score="2" Text="Okay, but is it the current policy of math.SE too (apart from being your personal opinion)? Or are they still trying to restrict themselves to only providing hints if the question smells like homework?" CreationDate="2015-12-02T14:24:16.777" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8765" PostId="2843" Score="1" Text="@amoeba afaik, math SE treats homework and non-homework questions the same. If the user shows little to no effort, in general, don't give a full answer. If the user has shown sufficient effort, answer as you see fit. I don't see how this doesn't apply to every question on SE, homework or not" CreationDate="2015-12-02T14:25:48.747" UserId="44339" />
  <row Id="8766" PostId="2843" Score="2" Text="I see. I don't have any opinion on that but I think this discussion is very welcome and am looking forward to it. But I wanted to share my major quibble with our [self-study] tag, and that is that many (most?) of the questions tagged with it are actually *not at all* homework. I have now looked at the [self-study] questions ordered by vote count and scrolled down the first several dozens; almost none of them is homework! Something is very wrong with this tag." CreationDate="2015-12-02T14:49:16.920" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8767" PostId="2843" Score="3" Text="@amoeba `self-study` is not a different word for &quot;homework&quot; but a broader class of question that includes homework." CreationDate="2015-12-02T15:00:46.833" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8768" PostId="2843" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b, yes, sure. The tag wiki excerpt says &quot;A routine question from a textbook, course, or test used for a class or self-study&quot;, and that's what I think it is. But I still claim that from the first several dozens of the highest upvoted [self-study] questions *almost none* is a routine question from a textbook. This, however, might only be true for the highest upvoted threads; I do not know." CreationDate="2015-12-02T15:02:31.740" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8769" PostId="2843" Score="2" Text="@amoeba, some self-study posts may not be homework, because the tag is self-study, not homework. That means self-study is broader than homework. If I want to start learning on my own I can ask here and label the post self-study in order to not receive a full response, or to show fellow users I am studying this for 'self-learning' (It is not a homework received from someone else). Now if this policy works, or is misused is another story. I don't know how homework word(ed) in Math, but the discussion here should consider that conceptually 'self-study' is different from 'homework'." CreationDate="2015-12-02T15:03:48.617" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="8770" PostId="2843" Score="2" Text="@amoeba some people who are trying to solve a problem themselves (i.e. undertaking 'self-study' add it because they're seeking the kind of answer the tag requires. I think it's reasonable to use the tag that way. The excerpt won't necessarily describe every appropriate use of the tag" CreationDate="2015-12-02T15:03:54.823" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8771" PostId="2843" Score="2" Text="@Glen_b: This is fair enough but I would simply encourage to you look [at the list](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/self-study?sort=votes) and inspect the questions yourself. &quot;How to interpret a QQ plot&quot; and &quot;Pitfalls in time series analysis&quot; (two highest upvoted questions) is just not something I would call a routine textbook question or a problem that people can be trying to solve themselves. If that's self-study then everything is self-study. But this is a bit of an aside to the topic raised by OP." CreationDate="2015-12-02T15:06:45.917" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8772" PostId="2843" Score="9" Text="@amoeba It's quite possible for some posters to use the tag incorrectly (that happens with any tag); since most legitimate self study questions get few votes it's hardly surprising that the highest voted ones might tend to be mislabelled ones. That's not a problem with the tag itself." CreationDate="2015-12-02T15:11:35.523" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8773" PostId="2844" Score="3" Text="These are very good points, but we do have a relatively vibrant [mathematical-statistics] tag with around 1.5k questions (and there are many more questions where this tag could in principle be applied too; it's not used very consistently) that are certainly considered on-topic, and that probably are closer to the math.SE modus operandi. So even though textbook exercises are indeed not the &quot;norm&quot; among the bulk of the questions here, they seem to be pretty close in spirit to a substantial part of questions that are on-topic." CreationDate="2015-12-02T19:59:39.870" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8774" PostId="2844" Score="1" Text="@amoeba I am having trouble equating questions about computing Normal probabilities, using Venn diagrams, calculating with logarithms, etc, with any form of &quot;mathematical statistics.&quot;" CreationDate="2015-12-02T20:38:00.153" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="8775" PostId="2844" Score="2" Text="Sure, but I imagine that folks at math.SE also enjoy answering questions on differential geometry or Galois theory more than about how to solve quadratic equations or transform some sines and cosines... In fact, I took our [self-study] policy for granted until this thread came up today and was surprised to see that math.SE decided to deprecate [homework] tag. But this did make me wondering if we really need it too. I am not disagreeing with your point of view, by the way; I don't really know." CreationDate="2015-12-02T21:17:25.300" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8776" PostId="2844" Score="1" Text="@amoeba I understand. Although I have not followed the math.SE debate, I suspect one key issue would have been where to draw the line: is a basic Galois theory question &quot;homework&quot;? What about a question of advanced calculus?  Etc. On CV I think we have a clearer criterion to apply. In some sense, I think of most math-like questions--at least those with known answers or answers that are readily developed--as being of the &quot;self study&quot; type and the rest of the questions here as not being self-study because they deal with *actual applications*--something that is irrelevant to a pure mathematician." CreationDate="2015-12-02T22:37:26.343" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="8777" PostId="2844" Score="3" Text="This is an interesting point of view. Almost all questions that I ever answer here (about the math of PCA, LDA, and related methods) are self-study under this broad definition. However, we are not tagging them with [self-study] tag and not trying to provide &quot;helpful hints&quot; only, but instead readily go into all necessary mathematical details. So I agree that there is this clear criterion, but we are not using *this* criterion to assign [self-study] tag and to use associated with it policies. That I think is the crux of the discussion." CreationDate="2015-12-02T22:46:17.357" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8780" PostId="2845" Score="0" Text="With +5 votes, no comments and no objections we probably could close this thread and agree with amoeba?" CreationDate="2015-12-03T14:16:13.527" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="8781" PostId="2845" Score="1" Text="@Tim, tag synonyms are sometimes a bit hard to push through. I suggest we wait for 1 week (as opposed to 1 day) and then, if it's still not done, ping one of the moderators in chat, e.g. Scortchi (who helped to implement several recent tag merges). Maybe you can try not to forget about it :-)" CreationDate="2015-12-03T14:24:58.307" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8840" PostId="2845" Score="0" Text="@Tim, as I said before, I don't think that accepting an answer with a specific suggestion on meta is helpful before this suggestion is implemented. Now for somebody looking through the list of questions on meta main page this thread will appear as &quot;resolved&quot; (green), but it is actually not resolved in the sense that it requires moderator action. So I would suggest to leave it un-accepted for now. Experience tells me that moderators usually do implement the tag merges, but it can take a long time. If you are impatient, it might help to politely ping one of them." CreationDate="2015-12-08T22:26:49.250" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8842" PostId="2845" Score="0" Text="so it seems I do not fully understand the accept button in meta. As for me the thread is closed." CreationDate="2015-12-08T22:32:18.580" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="8898" PostId="2845" Score="2" Text="I've merged them now." CreationDate="2015-12-14T12:20:02.267" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8899" PostId="2845" Score="0" Text="@Tim: it's done, feel free to accept :-)" CreationDate="2015-12-14T13:21:51.613" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8785" PostId="2847" Score="0" Text="If the topic is that advanced, then give an answer right away. If the topic is relatively basic, give hints. Why is a self-study tag is needed?" CreationDate="2015-12-04T13:49:21.243" UserId="44339" />
  <row Id="8786" PostId="2847" Score="2" Text="I say, give hints for self-study questions but give straight answers to all the rest (regardless of how advanced). What is basic for you may not be basic for me, and I might not have the time for playing a teacher and a student, so to speak." CreationDate="2015-12-04T13:54:06.127" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="8787" PostId="2847" Score="5" Text="@BCLC &quot;Simple&quot; and &quot;advanced&quot; is a poor distinction in this context. A homework question that's done as preparation for an exam at graduate level may be quite advanced, but is still basically bookwork (even if it's bookwork done at a high standard), and this isn't a site to do people's homework for them. On the other hand a conceptual question might be asked at a very basic, pre-university level, but merit a clear and didactic answer rather than a hint-dropping conversation." CreationDate="2015-12-04T13:55:01.467" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="8789" PostId="2847" Score="2" Text="@Silverfish 'this isn't a site to do people's homework for them' but Math SE is? :|" CreationDate="2015-12-04T15:11:45.393" UserId="44339" />
  <row Id="8790" PostId="2847" Score="5" Text="@BCLC Maths SE is whatever its users want it to be. But to a greater extent than on Stats SE, question-askers there seem to want to ask homework questions, and answerers there seem quite happy to provide complete solutions (often with an emphasis on the &quot;neatness&quot;,  &quot;elegance&quot; or speed). Relatively few questions on Maths SE come from issues users have encountered in the real world, and that proportion is higher on Stats SE, so it is unsurprising the cultures are quite different on the two sites." CreationDate="2015-12-04T15:35:55.407" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="20553" PostId="2847" Score="1" Text="@Silverfish why don't you post that as an answer?" CreationDate="2021-02-13T23:03:21.110" UserId="44339" />
  <row Id="8791" PostId="2848" Score="0" Text="Please visit http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/03/redesigned-tags-page/.  It will suggest additional ways in which our tag wiki excerpts can be improved." CreationDate="2015-12-04T16:58:32.650" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="8793" PostId="2848" Score="1" Text="Do we have viewing figures for the tag wikis?" CreationDate="2015-12-04T21:52:41.757" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="8806" PostId="2848" Score="3" Text="@Silverfish Yes, for individual tags at least – there's a &quot;stats&quot; block on the right of the tag wiki page. The [distance-covariance] wiki has been viewed a whopping 11 times thus far (though who knows exactly how that's counted)." CreationDate="2015-12-06T04:24:56.637" UserId="9964" />
  <row Id="8857" PostId="2848" Score="2" Text="@Dougal, I didn't know that existed. I see that the `[self-study]` tag has been used 3081 times &amp; its wiki has been viewed 3063 times. Success!(?)" CreationDate="2015-12-09T19:43:40.267" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="8799" PostId="2850" Score="2" Text="FWIW I prefer your version for `elastic-net` (though I'd still like it to be a bit shorter) &amp; whuber's for `total-least-squares` &amp; `distance-covariance`. But part of the excerpt's job is to rule out inappropriate interpretions, which &quot;a regularization method for regression models&quot; still does." CreationDate="2015-12-05T14:20:32.600" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8834" PostId="2850" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi: Perhaps we  could work out some compromise excerpt version for `elastic-net`. I have just left a comment suggesting one under gung's answer." CreationDate="2015-12-08T21:39:24.733" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8848" PostId="2850" Score="1" Text="I like @gung's two sentence version best, as it manages to work in penalization, shrinkage, &amp; regularization as well as mentioning LASSO &amp; ridge regression - &amp; all in two sentences! I don't think your original version was bad though." CreationDate="2015-12-09T12:05:40.173" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8853" PostId="2850" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi: Thanks, I fully agree that gung's version of elastic-net is the best, but I was also wondering about your opinion on two other tags that gung made suggestions for; not so much on his specific wording, but rather on whether the level of detail is appropriate." CreationDate="2015-12-09T15:04:40.340" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13603" PostId="2850" Score="0" Text="I think in your header for the update you mean May 19 2017?" CreationDate="2017-05-19T20:39:50.073" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="13604" PostId="2850" Score="0" Text="Thanks @mdewey, indeed. I fixed it." CreationDate="2017-05-19T22:18:33.147" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8833" PostId="2851" Score="2" Text="Thank you for the answer. The prevailing opinion seems to be in favour of shorter excerpts. But given that both you and Scortchi remarked that you preferred my version of [elastic-net] (that goes beyond providing user guidance and is more similar to a very brief encyclopaedic entry about elastic net), I wonder if we should try to arrive to some sort of a compromise version of it. How about `A regularization method for regression models, combining Lasso and ridge regularization terms`? Perhaps you can consider expanding your answer to include some compromise suggestion?" CreationDate="2015-12-08T21:37:13.773" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8844" PostId="2851" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, I made some attempts." CreationDate="2015-12-08T23:08:46.143" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="8847" PostId="2851" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, yeah I was thinking that too. But I think people often think of regression prototypically as simple regression. I figured this would be easiest for people to understand. I'm fine with the shorter version, though." CreationDate="2015-12-09T00:49:40.337" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="8856" PostId="2851" Score="2" Text="Thank you for these illustrative suggestions.  Because they seem to veer into the territory of a full tag wiki, they might be made better for their purpose by shortening them.  E.g., &quot;A regularization method for regression that combines the penalties of LASSO and Ridge Regression&quot; (96 chars); &quot;Regression when both X and Y have measurement error, including Orthogonal and Deming regression as special cases&quot; (112); &quot;A measure of dependence, aka Brownian covariance, computed from pairwise distances among all points in a dataset&quot; (112).  (cc @amoeba)" CreationDate="2015-12-09T18:50:10.270" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="8858" PostId="2851" Score="4" Text="@whuber, those seem fine to me." CreationDate="2015-12-09T19:44:16.920" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="8859" PostId="2851" Score="1" Text="@whuber, I do like your suggestions. They are very brief but still include a hint of definition and/or context which I think can be quite helpful. They also provide a guideline that 100--150 characters would usually be enough for this purpose." CreationDate="2015-12-09T21:27:30.087" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8860" PostId="2851" Score="0" Text="[cont]. @whuber, I will wait to see how other participants of this discussion react to your suggestions. If this ends up being the consensus in terms of length/details, then I would be happy to accept an answer that makes this consensus explicit and gives some examples. Perhaps you will want to edit them into your answer, and/or gung will want to update his." CreationDate="2015-12-09T21:28:17.950" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8861" PostId="2851" Score="2" Text="@amoeba, FWIW I don't think we should make 100 - 150 (or any other exact #s) into gospel. To paraphrase Einstein, I think we should make excerpts [as short as possible, but not shorter](http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/alberteins103652.html)." CreationDate="2015-12-09T21:35:04.553" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="8862" PostId="2851" Score="1" Text="That's a good quote and a good piece of advice; I think that having several worked out examples is much more useful and meaningful than providing a number. That said, good examples do give some sort of a ballpark number to have in mind." CreationDate="2015-12-09T21:36:41.307" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8794" PostId="2852" Score="0" Text="Thanks, this clarifies to me the principles that underly your edits. As Scortchi, you stress that the excerpts are primarily for *usage guidance*; in the examples you gave there is indeed some guidance necessary. My confusion is about the tags that don't need any particular guidance, such as [elastic-net]. Anybody who wants to use this tag will know that it's a regularization method; hence your version of the excerpt (&quot;A regularization method for regression models.&quot;) seems to serve almost no purpose. My intention was to provide *a definition*, aimed more at readers than at question askers." CreationDate="2015-12-04T22:38:03.240" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8798" PostId="2852" Score="4" Text="@amoeba I am glad you understand the spirit of my reply: I am not trying to challenge you, but only trying to explain my understanding of how all this works.  I would be very glad to see improvements to the tags you mention, as well as any others, that make them more effective.  I appreciate your efforts to improve our site--not only with these tag wikis, but in the many other areas where your work has been so useful." CreationDate="2015-12-05T00:17:54.123" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="8854" PostId="2852" Score="0" Text="Together with Scortchi and gung, you have convinced me that excerpts should better be concise. However, there seems to be some substantial disagreement even among the three of you about how concise they should be exactly. Gung has updated his answer (currently the most upvoted one here) with specific suggestions for the three mentioned tags. His versions are roughly halfway (in length &amp; in level of detail) between my original ones and your shortened ones. Could you comment there on what you think about it?" CreationDate="2015-12-09T18:39:31.750" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14055" PostId="2854" Score="1" Text="This tag is violating the [basic-concepts] of what a tag should be. It should be burned." CreationDate="2017-08-17T22:18:15.560" UserId="174010" />
  <row Id="8828" PostId="2855" Score="6" Text="dibs on &quot;p-hat&quot;" CreationDate="2015-12-07T21:41:16.563" UserId="39632" />
  <row Id="8829" PostId="2855" Score="5" Text="@C8H10N4O2 Unfortunately, the selection of hats are not chosen by us. You might be lucky (I wouldn't mind a hat-matrix myself)." CreationDate="2015-12-08T02:47:15.600" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8852" PostId="2855" Score="1" Text="It would be very geeky if there were &quot;hat&quot; alone, i.e. ^, to dress your avatar! ;)" CreationDate="2015-12-09T13:41:15.733" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="8872" PostId="2856" Score="4" Text="30 votes in 3 days! Why do all these people not vote on all the other meta suggestions? This would make life so much easier." CreationDate="2015-12-09T23:22:22.327" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8873" PostId="2856" Score="4" Text="@amoeba last year there were 56 votes (over a longer period, admittedly). It would be good if more people participated the rest of the time ... which is one reason why elections and these &quot;popular&quot; votes are very useful -- they get some people to meta who would otherwise never come. Typically a few new people participate regularly after such things." CreationDate="2015-12-09T23:29:09.647" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8886" PostId="2856" Score="2" Text="Maybe there should be a hat for visiting Meta weekly ;)" CreationDate="2015-12-11T10:28:21.417" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="8934" PostId="2856" Score="0" Text="Consider accepting this answer, @Glen_b." CreationDate="2015-12-21T02:43:36.723" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8935" PostId="2856" Score="0" Text="@amoeba sure, if there's a point in it -- to what purpose?" CreationDate="2015-12-21T02:46:32.113" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8937" PostId="2856" Score="0" Text="Well, simply to visually mark this thread as &quot;resolved&quot; and &quot;not requiring further discussions/actions&quot;. I don't know about others, but I usually scroll through the recent meta activity and look for non-green posts (i.e. without accepted answers) -- those that have accepted answers appear &quot;done&quot; and &quot;closed&quot;. Do you have a different attitude towards accepting on meta?" CreationDate="2015-12-21T10:19:27.570" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8938" PostId="2856" Score="0" Text="@amoeba .. That's a good purpose." CreationDate="2015-12-21T10:33:08.783" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8855" PostId="2857" Score="3" Text="Just to be clear... A &quot;No&quot; vote means &quot;not only do I hate this idea, but I want everyone else to be left out, too.&quot;  People who don't like hats could always vote &quot;Yes&quot; to give other people the option to have their (admittedly silly) fun, and then just click &quot;I hate hats&quot; and never be bothered by it." CreationDate="2015-12-09T18:48:44.300" UserId="39632" />
  <row Id="8876" PostId="2857" Score="4" Text="I respect differences of opinion on this, which people don't have to explain." CreationDate="2015-12-10T02:03:29.287" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="8877" PostId="2857" Score="1" Text="@NickCox -- agreed, but given the &quot;discussion&quot; tag, explanations are certainly not out of place" CreationDate="2015-12-10T13:18:47.140" UserId="39632" />
  <row Id="8878" PostId="2857" Score="1" Text="Indeed, much of politics (probably most) consists of explaining why other points of view are objectionable. In return those who voted this way need not be killjoys, which seems to be the implication of the comment." CreationDate="2015-12-10T13:24:35.820" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="8808" PostId="2858" Score="0" Text="Thanks  for your answer. By the way, what's you opinion about [best-practices] tag?" CreationDate="2015-12-06T15:25:59.480" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8813" PostId="2858" Score="0" Text="Consider also that [beginner] was removed in 2010: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/264. How is [basic-concepts] different? Perhaps I am missing something." CreationDate="2015-12-06T16:59:29.103" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8819" PostId="2858" Score="0" Text="Because a basic concept is not necessarily a bigger concept? For example, asking about the difference between a Bayesian and Frequentist approach is not necessarily a beginner question but it is a basic concept in many cases." CreationDate="2015-12-06T20:36:25.240" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="8822" PostId="2858" Score="6" Text="To everybody: let's not downvote answers in this thread (and in any other meta thread that has several contradicting answers). Instead, upvote the answer with which you agree. If you disagree with one of the answers very strongly, please comment to say so (instead of downvoting)." CreationDate="2015-12-07T10:46:53.260" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8826" PostId="2858" Score="2" Text="The problem with [basic-concepts] (as with most meta tags) is that there is no clear scope. Which concepts are basic enough to warrant this tag? Which are not? This is entirely subjective, hence the mostly random usage of this tag (leading to it not being helpful). This is contrast with subject-matter tags such as [regression] or [clustering] which have clear scope." CreationDate="2015-12-07T15:09:52.800" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8827" PostId="2858" Score="0" Text="I do agree that it a clear element of subjectivity; I disagree on the necessity to remove the tag." CreationDate="2015-12-07T20:36:02.057" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="8875" PostId="2863" Score="4" Text="Possible duplicate of [Why are there no soft question, advice, career development tags on Cross Validated?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1984/why-are-there-no-soft-question-advice-career-development-tags-on-cross-validat)" CreationDate="2015-12-10T01:13:32.043" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="8936" PostId="2863" Score="1" Text="A question that came up a few weeks ago that got closed, much to my dismay, was something along the lines of &quot;What should one know to be a biostatistician (as compared to the more generic term of statistician)?&quot;. There was a comment along the lines of &quot;apply statistics to biology&quot; and then the question was closed. I felt this was extremely misleading and a missed educational opportunity." CreationDate="2015-12-21T03:20:38.680" UserId="76981" />
  <row Id="8831" PostId="2864" Score="8" Text="I am not sure the answer really is &quot;no&quot;, given that we have [tag:careers] tag with 30+ questions." CreationDate="2015-12-08T20:28:37.143" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8835" PostId="2864" Score="0" Text="Perhaps I am wrong about what opinion-based is. About questions tagged careers, some are closed with precisely this reason. (@amoeba)." CreationDate="2015-12-08T22:11:05.430" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="8836" PostId="2864" Score="1" Text="I agree CV may be a place primarily for statistics and topics that can be answered by facts. However, stackexchange in general invites opinion based boards, such as http://academia.stackexchange.com/ which in my view is primarily a opinion based discussion board. So maybe a data science career board may be helpful." CreationDate="2015-12-08T22:16:12.597" UserId="24515" />
  <row Id="8839" PostId="2864" Score="1" Text="@Thomas, true. Have you already looked at the DataScience Stack Exchange? Perhaps, there would be an alternative." CreationDate="2015-12-08T22:25:20.103" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="8849" PostId="2864" Score="3" Text="Note also that a high proportion of the `careers` questions have been made community wiki, &amp; that the tag wiki excerpt says &quot;When asking a question with this tag, please make sure that it is of general interest, rather than seeking advice about your particular job situation&quot;. I'm not sure there's a consensus that careers questions are off-topic per se, but they're likely to be better received when inviting fairly objective answers focusing on required statistical knowledge &amp; experience for roles in general rather than peripheral or localized matters." CreationDate="2015-12-09T12:55:43.513" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8850" PostId="2864" Score="3" Text="Perhaps we could benefit having an additional answer emphasizing such points. I still read words like 'advice', 'general', 'career-development' and I imagine most type of questions in this category being opinion-based. (@Scortchi)" CreationDate="2015-12-09T13:26:24.863" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="8851" PostId="2864" Score="7" Text="@AndreSilva: I do tend to agree with you. &quot;How can I transfer into the field of statistics from being an economist at xyz?&quot; is a non-starter; &quot;What concepts &amp; methods from an education in (general) applied statistics would someone with a specialization in econometrics be unfamiliar with?&quot; looks more promising. I'll try to work these points up into an answer that people can vote up or down when I find time." CreationDate="2015-12-09T13:38:00.727" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8897" PostId="2869" Score="0" Text="I think this would fit better as a promotion: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2333/community-promotion-ads-2015" CreationDate="2015-12-13T22:13:27.933" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="8900" PostId="2869" Score="2" Text="Aha, I thought there should be another mechanism. http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/a/2870/5739" CreationDate="2015-12-14T14:56:09.807" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="8915" PostId="2873" Score="2" Text="How would this meta-list differ from the tags?  For instance, if you click through [tag:books] you will get a list of all threads about books in a searchable format." CreationDate="2015-12-18T17:11:13.810" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="8916" PostId="2873" Score="0" Text="@whuber yes but still each week there is at least one thread about looking for books that duplicates multiple others, so maybe we should have something more than this." CreationDate="2015-12-18T19:29:21.737" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="8917" PostId="2873" Score="1" Text="Could you explain what the &quot;more&quot; would be?" CreationDate="2015-12-18T20:17:16.007" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="8918" PostId="2873" Score="1" Text="This is an opportunity to discuss about recommendation of references and try to advance with the internal policy on this matter. In the earlies of CV, recommendation lists were welcomed; gradually they started to be marked as community wiki. Nowadays, it seems that only questions which are well asked (going beyond &quot;what is best reading for x&quot;?) are welcome. I think except for these ones, all the other should be closed from now on as opinion-based. But it would be nice if someone could make a review in our meta to raise all past discussions and put together in one answer." CreationDate="2015-12-19T13:00:51.460" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="8921" PostId="2873" Score="0" Text="@whuber I meant higher accessibility. Obviously to find the [tag:boos] you just have to search through the tagged questions, but it is exactly the same with software questions -- you just have to read the help page to learn that they are off-topic. Problem is that people in general do not do this. Providing easier access to such list could help in here. We could also make new **close reason that redirects to such list**. I also agree with Andre, that maybe we should change our policy about books questions." CreationDate="2015-12-20T09:21:01.507" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="8920" PostId="2876" Score="8" Text="Quite a few posts tagged convolution are not about CNNs, too, so I don't think we should simply rename the tag. Whatever we do I'd prefer if we could end up with a convolution tag that was actually for, you know, convolution." CreationDate="2015-12-20T06:56:09.537" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8922" PostId="2876" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b sounds good" CreationDate="2015-12-20T15:13:09.897" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="8928" PostId="2876" Score="2" Text="+1 for raising this issue, but I agree with @Glen_b that we should not rename it. Looks the tag should be split instead. Ideally somebody needs to go through all the questions in [convolution] and manually retag the ones that are about CNN." CreationDate="2015-12-20T16:14:09.410" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8940" PostId="2876" Score="0" Text="By the way, there is around 25 questions mentioning &quot;convolutional neural network&quot; [with convolution tag](http://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=%22convolutional+neural+network%22+is%3Aquestion+[convolution]&amp;tab=votes) and around the same number [without this tag](http://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=%22convolutional+neural+network%22+is%3Aquestion+-[convolution]&amp;tab=votes). You might want to go through the latter category too and see if there are threads worthy of adding the new tag to them." CreationDate="2015-12-22T00:49:25.507" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8941" PostId="2876" Score="0" Text="@amoeba good catch, thanks, I'll look at it." CreationDate="2015-12-22T01:02:03.300" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="10504" PostId="2876" Score="0" Text="I accidentally noticed that there is still over 20 questions about CNNs with convolution tag, some of them well upvoted, [see here](http://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=%22convolutional+neural+network%22+is%3Aquestion+%5Bconvolution%5D&amp;tab=votes). Would be great if you could retag those, I actually thought you already did it last year :-)" CreationDate="2016-08-20T20:05:41.000" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10505" PostId="2876" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I may have forgotten to complete it, since Stack Exchange doesn't provide any good way to retag many questions at once." CreationDate="2016-08-20T20:10:19.540" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="8923" PostId="2877" Score="1" Text="+1, but is this abbreviation recognizable enough? I think [conv-neural-network] could be better (and it's probably still not too late to change)." CreationDate="2015-12-20T15:49:54.077" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8924" PostId="2877" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Sure we can always rename the tag or create a synonym anytime. No preference." CreationDate="2015-12-20T15:52:44.300" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="8925" PostId="2877" Score="2" Text="Experience tells that it's *much* easier to create a good tag name from the beginning, then to rename it later. Tag renamings and synonyms tend to be difficult to initiate here. I think if somebody writes a question about convolutional nets, they will start typing &quot;convolutional...&quot; in the tag field and will likely never find [cnn]. I suggest we switch to something that begins at least with &quot;conv&quot;." CreationDate="2015-12-20T16:02:13.700" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8926" PostId="2877" Score="0" Text="@amoeba sounds good, let's wait to see whether people are ok with [conv-neural-network] then retag accordingly. I've never really understood how tags work." CreationDate="2015-12-20T16:03:48.487" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="8955" PostId="2877" Score="0" Text="@aamoeba  done. Seriously there is no mod tool to do it?" CreationDate="2016-01-06T02:01:20.767" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="8956" PostId="2877" Score="0" Text="There is a tool, but our mods are (for reasons not totally clear to me) rather reluctant to carry out tag merges/renames, even the trivial ones. E.g. there are currently over 10 pending suggestions on meta for over a month. Perhaps the tool is complicated to use." CreationDate="2016-01-06T09:55:47.283" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8929" PostId="2878" Score="0" Text="&quot;The convolution tag currently has no excerpt or full wiki.&quot; -&gt; done.   &quot;we should create a [conv-neural-network] tag&quot; -&gt; done. Can you mark it as synonym for cnn? thanks" CreationDate="2015-12-20T18:08:24.890" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="8930" PostId="2878" Score="0" Text="@FranckDernoncourt, I cannot--I am not a moderator. I cannot even suggest it as a synonym, b/c I don't have 5 upvotes on the tag (that system doesn't work anyway). It might be better to hold off on these actions to build more of a consensus from the community first, though." CreationDate="2015-12-20T18:26:10.357" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="8932" PostId="2878" Score="2" Text="+1. @Franck, for the time being I still think it's better to manually retag cnn-&gt;conv-neural-network, and continue retagging convolution into conv-neural-network. And please write an excerpt for conv-neural-network too!" CreationDate="2015-12-20T19:32:03.887" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8933" PostId="2878" Score="0" Text="@amoeba &quot; please write an excerpt for conv-neural-network too! &quot; -&gt; done" CreationDate="2015-12-20T20:19:06.873" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="8942" PostId="2879" Score="2" Text="I agree it's not a duplicate.  When it was originally posted, it appeared to focus on the question the community identified as a duplicate.  After it was edited, it more clearly focused on iterated expectation. As it stands, it does appear to duplicate other threads about iterated expectations, such as http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/69399.  Should we reopen the question and close it as a duplicate of that one?" CreationDate="2015-12-23T15:17:11.377" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="8943" PostId="2881" Score="2" Text="This is my view. I also note that we link to Open Data SE in one of our stock close reasons (about data sets), so it seems odd not to link to it in our help page. (Perhaps that could be point 4 on your list!)" CreationDate="2015-12-23T16:19:07.970" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="8945" PostId="2884" Score="2" Text="Have you considered asking on the [SE TeX site](http://tex.stackexchange.com/)?" CreationDate="2015-12-31T14:03:44.037" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="8946" PostId="2884" Score="0" Text="Is that site about mathjax? I thought it was about TeX/LaTeX, not about mathjax?  If you think it is better asked there, I can reask there, and then delete it here." CreationDate="2015-12-31T14:05:26.437" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="8947" PostId="2884" Score="0" Text="I just figured that site would be the natural locus of expertise in this area... ." CreationDate="2015-12-31T14:09:25.490" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="8948" PostId="2884" Score="0" Text="According to discussion here http://meta.tex.stackexchange.com/questions/3482/mathjax-boilerplate  mathjax questions is offtopic there ...  They mention a mathjax tag om SO though ..." CreationDate="2015-12-31T14:12:45.753" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="8949" PostId="2884" Score="1" Text="The comments to that question provide some helpful advice and suggestions about where to go for MathJax questions.  I imagine that a carefully formulated MathJax question might be on topic; something like &quot;within the constraints of the MathJax environment, how can I create a facsimile of the unsupported `\textperthousand` character?&quot;" CreationDate="2015-12-31T14:15:07.107" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="8950" PostId="2884" Score="4" Text="Historical evidence suggests that would still be considered off topic.  They are willing to answer questions about how you would do something in TeX, but if MathJax doesn't do that, it makes the question off topic.  Better to as on SO or on the [MathJax user forum](http://codepen.io/mathjax/details/avZRzM)." CreationDate="2015-12-31T19:19:29.913" UserId="9462" />
  <row Id="8951" PostId="2886" Score="0" Text="I would prefer a solution which actually works everywhere ..." CreationDate="2015-12-31T21:23:12.533" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="8952" PostId="2886" Score="6" Text="Then you will have to go with Glen_b's approach or something similar.  The mathJax fonts do not include the desired character, and so you either have to trust that the user has another font that does, or do something fancy like he suggested." CreationDate="2015-12-31T22:11:38.270" UserId="9462" />
  <row Id="8961" PostId="2888" Score="13" Text="You can post your answer simultaneously with your question. There is a feature to let you do that.  I see no reason why you should wait before adding your answer. The opportunity to post your answer is the reason for asking the question in the first place. (You don't have to *accept* your answer, though.)" CreationDate="2016-01-08T02:15:35.000" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16962" PostId="2889" Score="1" Text="Thanks. Much improved. I have in turn edited that into the numbered list above it, which I probably should have done before." CreationDate="2018-11-26T22:55:40.600" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8957" PostId="2892" Score="10" Text="If true, probably because more users understand the simpler answers than the elaborated ones. But independent of votes, the latter are more valuable, in my opinion." CreationDate="2016-01-06T12:03:41.600" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="8960" PostId="2892" Score="1" Text="I think the correlation is negative. We live in the tl;dr era." CreationDate="2016-01-07T20:26:59.320" UserId="76981" />
  <row Id="8962" PostId="2892" Score="2" Text="I believe you might find it illuminating to read all the comments to both (current) answers at http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/35387. It is one of many instances I can recall in which I worked hard on an answer--and in this case it was scarcely upvoted; it received a downvote; and it was repeatedly attacked by a very reputable statistician (a Fellow of the ASA, no less). I will leave it to you to decide whether that answer is correct or sufficiently well justified, but it stands as a stark reminder that there is no guarantee that effort leads to upvotes." CreationDate="2016-01-08T16:03:34.500" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="8963" PostId="2892" Score="0" Text="That seems very intereting. I shall try to have a closer look (but do not expect to be able to weigh in between the two of you anyhow as far as the concrete question is concerned). What the episode suggests to me that other users seem to have substantially more challenging criteria to what makes an answer worth upvoting than I do. Essentially, I (at least try to, and do my best to adhere to my goal to) upvote whenever I have the impression that the answer is likely to leave the OP better informed than he was prior to the answer." CreationDate="2016-01-08T16:12:12.493" UserId="67799" />
  <row Id="8964" PostId="2892" Score="1" Text="@whuber I have read both answers in that thread, and you and Michael clearly have interpreted the question differently. I find it unfortunate that this led to some angry words in the comments, because the question *is* very ambiguous; I re-read it carefully but still can't say whose interpretation (if any!) is correct. The fact that your answer got accepted does indicate that you might have understood the Q correctly, but the wording of the Q itself is quite confusing." CreationDate="2016-01-08T16:27:20.930" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8965" PostId="2892" Score="0" Text="@whuber I have edited the Q and left a comment there. Please do let me know if I misunderstood anything, as I would not like to bring *additional* confusion to that old thread." CreationDate="2016-01-08T16:39:27.243" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8966" PostId="2892" Score="2" Text="@Amoeba I think you have identified an important criterion: ambiguous questions (and it's not always obvious at the outset that they *are* ambiguous!) often do not get much attention or love, nor do any of their answers.  This is one more reason why it's so helpful to read questions critically when they appear, to point out possible ambiguities or alternative interpretations, and to ask for clarification.  Some of my higher-voted posts in fact did all of this by themselves: they pointed out two or more interpretations and discussed them before offering any answer." CreationDate="2016-01-08T17:43:01.840" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="8968" PostId="2892" Score="1" Text="@whuber You have too much respect for people flaunting their titles." CreationDate="2016-01-12T07:41:15.577" UserId="2592" />
  <row Id="8969" PostId="2892" Score="1" Text="@Did I have respect for people, individually, and reasoned argument generally." CreationDate="2016-01-12T14:42:50.603" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="8970" PostId="2892" Score="1" Text="@whuber Is this what I am talking about? In the present case (which I happen to know a little bit), to mention the ASA fellowship might be slightly misleading." CreationDate="2016-01-12T14:45:43.050" UserId="2592" />
  <row Id="8959" PostId="2894" Score="0" Text="Plenty of great points, too!" CreationDate="2016-01-07T20:18:56.253" UserId="67799" />
  <row Id="10829" PostId="2894" Score="0" Text="I agree with the edits point. I noticed getting a few points when fixing grammar of my most voted old answers." CreationDate="2016-09-19T15:56:08.590" UserId="123561" />
  <row Id="10830" PostId="2894" Score="1" Text="And I would add another point: The most people can understand and answer (and question), the most points it gets. Sometimes that favours answers to easy questions (for example, questions on basic probability) and sometimes it favours layman stile answers in front of rigorous journal of mathematics style very elaborate answers, although the later needs more effort." CreationDate="2016-09-19T15:58:48.067" UserId="123561" />
  <row Id="8958" PostId="2895" Score="5" Text="Also known as the [&quot;Matthew effect&quot;](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect)." CreationDate="2016-01-07T08:22:12.230" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="8967" PostId="2897" Score="0" Text="Thank you, Glen. I try to avoid migrating if I think the question will get closed, but your response makes sense and I will migrate." CreationDate="2016-01-12T00:36:09.377" UserId="70449" />
  <row Id="8971" PostId="2898" Score="0" Text="[Another meta thread on older posts](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1409/should-the-standards-for-closing-questions-be-relaxed-somewhat-for-old-questions) is somewhat related but seems to be addressing a somewhat different issue (unanswered questions vs computing questions) to this one." CreationDate="2016-01-12T23:18:32.550" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="8972" PostId="2898" Score="3" Text="I agree that the borderline has moved (though I haven't always been successful at convincing others that it did). I'd lean toward leaving the older questions alone." CreationDate="2016-01-12T23:31:13.790" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="8973" PostId="2898" Score="0" Text="What exactly do you mean by &quot;grandfathering&quot; in your title question? Does it imply &quot;being more liberal with letting them stand open&quot; or rather &quot;being strict in closing them&quot;?" CreationDate="2016-01-13T10:38:52.457" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8975" PostId="2898" Score="2" Text="Sorry @amoeba, I should have made that clearer - it's a legal term. A [grandfather clause](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfather_clause) allows pre-existing exceptions to be exempted from newer standards. In this case, it would mean allowing older questions (that would once have been considered on-topic but would now not be) to be left alone." CreationDate="2016-01-13T13:36:56.470" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="8976" PostId="2898" Score="2" Text="Ah, I see, this makes it clearer, thanks. Regarding your worry that closed old questions might have ossified outdated answers without ever getting fresh ones, one should note that it *is* still possible to leave correcting comments under answers in the closed threads and it is also possible to edit answers in the closed threads (e.g. to make an update or a caveat note)." CreationDate="2016-01-13T13:57:42.097" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8977" PostId="2898" Score="0" Text="I'm assuming the downvotes indicate disagreement with the idea of grandfathering idea but it would be good if someone could submit an answer to that effect. Personally my tendency has been to vote to close older coding questions  in the review queue but not to actively flag them when I encounter one in the wild. I'm unsure whether grandfathering is desirable but I think it is at least worthy of discussion given the current situation is not entirely satisfactory or self-consistent." CreationDate="2016-01-13T21:49:19.847" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="8979" PostId="2898" Score="0" Text="I'd suggest copying the explanation of what &quot;grandfathering&quot; means into the question. (The sense here was utterly new to me.) The most worrying aspect to me is not that we have shifted our boundary over time, but the news that code in several older answers just won't work any more. Whenever that's spotted, there should be a comment at least. Also, we need to think about this quantitatively: if there are hundreds of such questions, we should tend to leave them as is. Untidy corners and side rooms are inevitable in a forum like this." CreationDate="2016-01-14T12:26:24.087" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="8980" PostId="2898" Score="0" Text="@Silverfish, I am one of the downvoters b/c I disagree w/ the suggestion. My answer below attempts to explicate my position. (FTR, I greatly appreciate your efforts on the site.)" CreationDate="2016-01-14T15:53:07.240" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="8981" PostId="2898" Score="1" Text="It is difficult for me to evaluate and support the idea on this post without being able to see some examples about what you think is off-topic and should not be closed (and perhaps having some counter examples, too)." CreationDate="2016-01-14T19:23:53.203" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="8982" PostId="2898" Score="0" Text="@gung No problem - I was just wondering whether the downvotes were to express disapproval of the proposal, or whether this is one of those threads that needs &quot;Yes&quot; and &quot;No&quot; answers to weigh up opinion (meta seems to vary in the way these are handled)." CreationDate="2016-01-15T00:28:39.193" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="8996" PostId="2898" Score="3" Text="[Here's](http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/16057/17230) another example - clearly off-topic nowadays, but a useful up-to-date answer's just been given." CreationDate="2016-01-18T13:29:01.487" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8997" PostId="2898" Score="0" Text="Thanks for adding the examples and bringing up the discussion (+1). However, I do not think we should grandfather those, because the costs are high. Like you said if we do not close off-topic posts they can mislead new users, I think things are working like they should be. In the examples you cited, the answers are still valid, so what you argued about answers becoming obsolete and misleading do not seem to be a strong case (at least for now)." CreationDate="2016-01-18T15:25:24.497" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="8998" PostId="2898" Score="3" Text="@Scortchi That is a particularly good example, thank you. That fresh answer actually refers to a new package so would not have worked well as a comment since it's not just an update to earlier answers (particularly since that would have prevented including an image of the output, which is important in data visualization questions). Had the question been closed earlier, such a helpful addition would not have been possible." CreationDate="2016-01-18T20:10:12.443" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9002" PostId="2898" Score="0" Text="Silverfish and @Scortchi: Moreover, this new answer has by now been accepted by the OP." CreationDate="2016-01-19T23:39:14.753" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="8978" PostId="2899" Score="0" Text="I was also wondering about point one - I'm sure I have seen something like that before but couldn't find an example so didn't include it in my question. I think both one and two are reasonable and feasible solutions." CreationDate="2016-01-13T21:50:52.740" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9080" PostId="2899" Score="2" Text="(+1) There's a moderator option to &quot;lock&quot; a thread so it's closed to further contributions but allowed to stand as a historical artifact.  I don't set out to do this, but from time to time such an old thread resurfaces because a new user has answered it or someone has edited part of it and that brings it to my attention.  Unfortunately the system doesn't consider such actions important enough to present in logs of moderator activities, so I'm unable to look up specific threads that I have recently locked in this way." CreationDate="2016-01-26T23:18:31.543" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="9103" PostId="2900" Score="1" Text="I heard an opinion (from somebody doing research on sociology of science) that physics is one of few disciplines with a high degree of internal consensus. If you show a paper about a perpetuum mobile to five physicists, they would all agree it's BS. If you show a paper with an OLS regression to a frequentist statistician, to a Bayesian statistician, to an econometrician, to a machine learning researcher, you will probably get four different answers. So it's more acceptable in physics to use one person's post as it is relatively likely to be representative of what the discipline thinks." CreationDate="2016-02-01T16:09:36.077" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="9104" PostId="2900" Score="0" Text="[ctd] Also, physicists are quite used to referencing online resources, primarily arXiv. (It's kinda there for statistics, too, but I don't know how much it is being used; theoretical/mathematical statisticians do post there a lot, but my own area, survey statistics, is very poorly represented.) Note finally that there aren't that very many people who use real names on CV, so while material by say whuber is always of high rigor, you would have to edit that BibTeX snippet to put his name in (which he may not really want that much, as a matter of fact)." CreationDate="2016-02-01T16:12:44.987" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="9146" PostId="2900" Score="3" Text="Does anyone know of a downside?" CreationDate="2016-02-03T17:18:50.177" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="14223" PostId="2900" Score="0" Text="@AndreSilva Well, I think that one question should actually be merged with this one, which is older" CreationDate="2017-09-14T12:42:29.400" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="14225" PostId="2900" Score="0" Text="@Firebug, It is not mandatory that the older question remains as the original one, though it could be merged (but I don't think it is necessary, bacause merge is for when there are very useful answers in both posts)." CreationDate="2017-09-14T12:45:28.833" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="14226" PostId="2900" Score="1" Text="@AndreSilva Yeah, you're right in that regard, what I meant is that we should have actually perceived the duplication before. Now I deleted my asnwer and the one you linked is the canonical answer, so we should really merge this one question into the one you linked." CreationDate="2017-09-14T12:46:49.693" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="10060" PostId="2901" Score="0" Text="Grace, sorry for a stupid doubt. But, what if we are interested but we don't know how to design one?  (Asking on behalf of DataScience site)" CreationDate="2016-06-24T12:50:59.437" UserId="84191" />
  <row Id="8983" PostId="2902" Score="0" Text="This is a demonstration post to indicate how this should look when an ad is posted, now with 80px more width! It also doubles as your twitter ad, but it's up to you if you wish to promote it by voting." CreationDate="2016-01-15T03:25:01.727" UserId="5645" />
  <row Id="8984" PostId="2903" Score="4" Text="If the only reason for not undeleting the question is because having answered it you can no longer be disinterested, why not ask another moderator to take a look at it? (Though I wonder if the consequences of a lack of impartiality in these situations could be harmful enough to be worth bothering about.)" CreationDate="2016-01-15T11:55:52.750" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8990" PostId="2903" Score="2" Text="I don't disagree with other answers, but it deserves brief emphasis that the ability of OPs to delete their own questions is more commonly a feature. They may realise that the question is off-topic, already answered  or unclear, or that we can't play the invited game of telling them what's the correct analysis or the right way of approaching their project (or even  of setting it up). That's consistent with the point of view that regardless of the merits of the question, a good answer based on a lot of effort deserves a prompt upvote, not just on its merits but to protect it against deletion." CreationDate="2016-01-17T14:21:21.937" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="8991" PostId="2903" Score="1" Text="I naturally can't comment on precisely **why** this thread was deleted and in any case this Meta thread addresses the general principle. Sometimes it appears to be lack of awareness of the goals of the forum, namely that a good thread will be of use or interest to others in the future. Sometimes it's an attempt to remove a footprint from the internet: in some fields, people are paranoid that web searches by employers will reveal a history of asking dumb questions, even if identifiers don't reveal exact names." CreationDate="2016-01-17T14:28:26.253" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9011" PostId="2903" Score="2" Text="The first &quot;field&quot; that came to my mind when starting to read the post are students - if they ask self-study questions and copy &amp; paste the answers they obtain here, plagiarism detection software (or an inquisitive teacher) may find that the answer is not actually the student's with a simple web search." CreationDate="2016-01-21T13:47:49.707" UserId="67799" />
  <row Id="9079" PostId="2903" Score="1" Text="Sometimes it's best, I think, to address a couple of issues in comments &amp; only bother with more if the OP responds. On the other hand it's easy that way to end up partially answering the question in an inordinately long comment thread (e.g. http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/189385/17230 (&amp; I still owe an answer!))." CreationDate="2016-01-26T17:24:40.640" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="15649" PostId="2903" Score="0" Text="(+1) On https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/189183/confidence-levels-for-mean-of-measured-distribution, both question and @Glen_b's answer. Also, put in my own short answer. The question is 1) common 2) usually unexplained to newbies and 3) worthwhile keeping. Here is one example of a closed question that I was downvoted on that I understood the OP question and was accepted by the OP with others nipping us for no good reason. https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/338802/how-to-measure-similarity-agreement-between-two-temperature-time-series/339114#339114" CreationDate="2018-04-23T19:10:36.080" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="8987" PostId="2905" Score="2" Text="Re. #4 I think developers, not mods, have that ability: http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/86616/225179" CreationDate="2016-01-15T16:08:55.390" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8988" PostId="2905" Score="0" Text="Thanks, @Scortchi. I thought that was possible." CreationDate="2016-01-15T16:18:59.423" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="8989" PostId="2905" Score="3" Text="You're welcome. Found some info [here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/239366/225179) &amp; [here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/96732/225179): basically you need to use the 'Contact us' link to send an email to SE." CreationDate="2016-01-15T16:58:57.487" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="8999" PostId="2908" Score="0" Text="I'm not too sure about this ad, but a quick search using the keyword &quot;cities&quot; gets me around 500 results, and since one of the focuses for scope of this proposal is the concept of &quot;smart cities&quot;, I figured it could be a good fit here. About the ad, I'm also going to see if I can get a pretty-looking ad to replace the not-so-good-looking A51 ad, but I've got exams right now, so it may take me a week or two :D" CreationDate="2016-01-19T13:32:14.383" UserId="101158" />
  <row Id="9000" PostId="2908" Score="3" Text="This may be a reasonable proposal, but as an ad on a stats site, the connection seems tenuous at best." CreationDate="2016-01-19T16:00:44.010" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9001" PostId="2908" Score="1" Text="@gung Fair enough. I think my goal with this ad is to attract a specific audience, and that audience (people experienced with smart cities and data analysis) will be around here. :)" CreationDate="2016-01-19T16:02:27.023" UserId="101158" />
  <row Id="9016" PostId="2909" Score="0" Text="Hi Paul, thanks for your comments. However, it's not quite clear to me how your advice would work in the context of the question we're discussing. Could contribute an answer there that follows the principles you'd like to have seen followed, by way of example? There's little doubt I have something to learn, but I don't see exactly how to approach it in this instance. I'm sure such an example could be helpful to a number of us (as well as to the asker)." CreationDate="2016-01-21T23:55:51.483" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9017" PostId="2909" Score="1" Text="&quot;all questions posted on this (entire) domain are down voted once&quot;: that is not true of CV. Are you alluding to an average of some kind? Can you show or cite results from a website or reproducible analysis we can run? As for &quot;useless answers&quot;, &quot;patronised&quot;, &quot;harsh&quot;: we should discuss such criticisms if true, but these are strong claims. What fraction of posts do you think fall under one or more of these headings?  If you see this specifically, do post better comments or more helpful  answers. The implication that this is general needs more substantiation." CreationDate="2016-01-22T01:58:50.387" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9018" PostId="2909" Score="0" Text="My comment doesn't relate to the issue of deleted questions, but I just wanted to say that I agree with Paul's comment about some answers being too long and detailed. I sometimes see answers (often with the highest number of votes) that I think would be more helpful if they were a quarter of the length that they are. I know a lot of people will disagree with me, but I value conciseness. For that reason, I really dislike the message &quot;We're looking for long answers...&quot;, as though an answer has to be long to be good." CreationDate="2016-01-22T02:07:03.153" UserId="3835" />
  <row Id="9019" PostId="2909" Score="0" Text="I should also mention that I'm not suggesting that long answers are necessarily bad. I've seen long answers here that I thought were excellent." CreationDate="2016-01-22T02:08:54.397" UserId="3835" />
  <row Id="9020" PostId="2909" Score="2" Text="@mark999 In such cases, why not post a shorter answer yourself? or a summary comment that you think contains the nub of the matter? or a comment that said &quot;Helpful, but please add a short summary&quot;?  I know that if I posted an answer that was longer than my average and someone chipped in with a pithier summary, I would want to regard that as constructive." CreationDate="2016-01-22T02:31:40.710" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9021" PostId="2909" Score="0" Text="Thanks for your comment @NickCox. Posting a shorter answer might be a reasonable thing to do, but it would be essentially posting a subset of an existing answer as a new answer, which I wouldn't want to do. Also, for the majority of questions here, I don't feel like I know enough to post a good answer." CreationDate="2016-01-22T02:52:01.350" UserId="3835" />
  <row Id="9022" PostId="2909" Score="3" Text="Fair points both. However, but what then should be done if you are right? A long answer can always be skimmed and skipped. An answer that is short can be more useless and I see that as a more common problem. I always try to be mindful of the other people who might be interested by an answer. I am not happy at the thought of people leaving the site after a brief visit who are frustrated or disappointed at the answers (or lack of them) that they got, but in many such cases the questions just were not clear or the posters stopped trying. That's frustrating and disappointing for us too." CreationDate="2016-01-22T03:11:18.220" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9023" PostId="2909" Score="0" Text="@NickCox I agree with everything you wrote. I don't think it's a matter of anyone being &quot;right&quot;; I have my preference and other people have different preferences. It's true that long answers can be skimmed and skipped, but I've seen answers where the preamble and extra details have made it relatively hard to find the actual answer to what was asked. Since writing my intial comment, I saw this: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/268421/were-looking-for-long-answers-no I agree with Tomas but clearly many people don't." CreationDate="2016-01-22T04:25:24.920" UserId="3835" />
  <row Id="9024" PostId="2909" Score="1" Text="@mark999 I take the point. In practice, that message is sent here quite frequently but only if the answer is undeveloped and incomplete. It's not the only principle there is. I go along with those who think that the spirit is right, but the initial wording could be improved: &quot;long&quot; could be just &quot;high quality&quot;, followed by hints on what that means. Moderators and high-reputation users are often positive about high-quality answers that are concise and complete, say one paragraph long, from anyone." CreationDate="2016-01-22T09:53:54.123" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9025" PostId="2909" Score="0" Text="Thanks for your reply @NickCox" CreationDate="2016-01-22T10:15:33.010" UserId="3835" />
  <row Id="9026" PostId="2909" Score="2" Text="I'm sorry you've been frustrated here, Paul. It might help if you open a new meta.CV thread to discuss the problems you mention, &amp; especially if you could give some concrete examples. For instance, you claim that all questions on CV have been downvoted. My impression is that only a small percentage are; in particular, I notice that none of your 5 questions have been downvoted. I could go on, but my point is that your perception of the site is quite foreign to me, but even if only partially true, it is something that we need to address." CreationDate="2016-01-22T17:05:35.480" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9027" PostId="2909" Score="0" Text="I think Paul's comment on downvotes per question was based on figures that are network-wide, not CV only -- likely based on the numbers for stackoverflow (2.5 M questions, 3.2 M answers, 2.3 M downvotes) and for the rest of stackexchange other than stackoverflow (almost 1M Q's, 1.3M A's, 1M downvotes) [mentioned here](https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2016/01/year-in-review-2015/). There's perhaps a mistake in thinking that questions that are taking all or nearly all of those downvotes, but network wide there's still a high rate of downvotes per post." CreationDate="2016-01-23T02:35:19.740" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9028" PostId="2909" Score="2" Text="However, from looking at data.stackexchange.com/stats ,  here on CV last year we averaged about 2200 questions per month (we have a similar rate of answers but I haven't looked those up) and 70 downvotes per month (across questions and answers). (We upvote about 30 times as often as we downvote.) ... a lot of those upvotes come from [familiar names](http://stats.stackexchange.com/users?tab=Voters&amp;filter=all) (If we we having this conversation late last month I could point out the top voters for 2015; I know who they were but it would be nice to be able to point straight to the figures)" CreationDate="2016-01-23T02:41:16.773" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9029" PostId="2909" Score="0" Text="For where I got those numbers form, see [votes per month](http://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/385019/votes-per-month) and [questions per month](http://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/385019/votes-per-month). Note that the dates on the questions per month are not &quot;start of the month in question&quot;" CreationDate="2016-01-23T02:42:01.213" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9032" PostId="2909" Score="1" Text="@gung I was actually talking about the entire domain (not sure what to call it these days, perhaps Stack Overflow) as posted in the &quot;year-in-review-2015&quot; blog entry.  Similarly, every question has to be effectively asked twice as it is then edited (more than) once.   Between editing and downvotes you might understand why some people decide to not have their questions on-line any more.  Especially with employers checking these things that might be perceived as casting negative connotations." CreationDate="2016-01-23T19:16:17.633" UserId="74762" />
  <row Id="9044" PostId="2909" Score="3" Text="Paul, as my figures above clearly show, on Cross Validated our downvote rates are very low -- averaged across both questions and answers less than 2% are downvoted. Even if you assumed every downvote was applied to a question it would only be about 3%. Instead of lots of downvoting and closing, we lean towards requests for clarification and edits (and a large fraction of those requests for clarification and those helpful edits fall on very few shoulders)." CreationDate="2016-01-24T23:20:22.473" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10082" PostId="2910" Score="0" Text="[The chat room dedicated to this proposal](http://goo.gl/VxYdsL)" CreationDate="2016-06-30T18:01:03.007" UserId="79636" />
  <row Id="9030" PostId="2911" Score="5" Text="I would definitely encourage readers to go to the thread in question and read my original (absent the interpolated comments above) and draw their own conclusions. I'd also encourage anyone who wishes to contribute a better answer in that thread *to actually do so*. I'd be keen to upvote (and learn from) any answer better than my own. The OP at the original question appeared to me be using the term &quot;*technical measurement*&quot; to mean a very specific thing (i.e. to be using it as a term of jargon with a particular meaning) but I had no idea what that might mean in the context he was using it" CreationDate="2016-01-23T02:48:29.283" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9031" PostId="2911" Score="2" Text="Specifically it seemed to me that understanding the distinction he was drawing between &quot;technical measurement&quot; and &quot;natural quantities&quot; seemed directly relevant to answering the question properly (hence why I asked)." CreationDate="2016-01-23T02:55:14.060" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9033" PostId="2911" Score="2" Text="Sorry, iko, but I disagree. If you call this discussion rude, then most of the answers on this forum also qualify. Someone is confused, unclear, wrong, not even knowing what language to use to discuss their situation: these are common difficulties on this forum and in the thread being discussed. Some times we can translate easily to statistical terms; often we can't. I see @Glen_b's style of answering as civil and intended to be helpful. I have no idea either quite what the original question meant here and if I had answered I would have had to ask similar questions." CreationDate="2016-01-24T11:09:28.630" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9034" PostId="2911" Score="0" Text="When someone is &quot;confused, unclear, wrong, not even knowing what language to use to discuss their situation,&quot; I think this person is in an especially vulnerable position. It takes them courage to ask an expert and they're afraid their question makes them look stupid. When I try to help other students, I'm careful not to pick them apart and to sound as neutral as I can saying &quot;X and Y is unclear&quot; or &quot;could you  explain what you mean by X and Y for me?&quot;" CreationDate="2016-01-24T12:36:35.850" UserId="101490" />
  <row Id="9035" PostId="2911" Score="2" Text="We agree. But that is exactly what @Glen_b was doing. A lesson that vulnerable questioners need to learn quickly is to try not to be offended by tone. I've been told that British people (I'm one) often sound terse and blunt, whereas we are just trying to be concise and go straight to the key points and believe that waffle wastes time and helps nobody. Glen_b is not British, but he really isn't rude either. More generally, we're all going to draw the line on rudeness in different places. &quot;That's a stupid thing to say&quot; or anything ruder would not be tolerated here if anyone noticed it." CreationDate="2016-01-24T13:44:59.990" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9036" PostId="2911" Score="0" Text="At the general level, we agree. As I said, I don't agree that is exactly what this particular answer was doing. With the best intentions, the OP's answer sounds provoking and patronizing to me, because of *how* it asks for clarification. A good answer would ask for clarification in a neutral way and be brief and to the point. It's not my place to flag such an answer, but I can understand the questioner deleting his question after this answer. I think un-deleting it does not respect the questioner's privacy (right to withdraw own question from public place)." CreationDate="2016-01-24T15:05:58.063" UserId="101490" />
  <row Id="9037" PostId="2911" Score="1" Text="A problem intrinsic to the internet is that all [paralanguage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paralanguage) (ie, tone of voice, facial expression, etc) is lost. Something said &amp; meant in a respectful way may be interpreted differently. This isn't necessarily the fault of either person. Having observed Glen_b's behavior on this site over several years, I have a good sense of him. Like @NickCox, I did not interpret anything as rude or patronizing. Someone who doesn't know him &amp; is feeling especially vulnerable might read that in to his words even though it wasn't there." CreationDate="2016-01-24T15:25:49.533" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9038" PostId="2911" Score="1" Text="@gung So should the criterion for neutrality be: a person who doesn't know you either way (for good or bad) thinks that your writing sounds reasonably neutral? Or should it be instead, people who know you're a lovely person think that your writing sounds neutral?" CreationDate="2016-01-24T15:30:16.430" UserId="101490" />
  <row Id="9039" PostId="2911" Score="1" Text="Not knowing you, @iko, &quot;people who know you're a lovely person...&quot; comes across to me as having an edge. I generally give people the benefit of the doubt. You make a perfectly reasonable point that some askers may be feeling vulnerable &amp; take a neutral comment as derogatory. I often explicitly try (&amp; I know Glen_b does, too), but I don't doubt I occasionally fail nonetheless." CreationDate="2016-01-24T15:51:01.090" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9040" PostId="2911" Score="1" Text="The right to privacy is important, but a red herring here. People can attain privacy by never posting in the first place or by choosing an anonymous or cryptic identifier. Once you post at all you forfeit a quantum of privacy (meaning, just a little).  Let's not forget @Glen_b's notional right not to have his answer deleted too, although clearly forum rules allow deletion of an answer which hasn't been upvoted, which was the original trigger for this thread." CreationDate="2016-01-24T16:17:19.727" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9041" PostId="2911" Score="0" Text="Why a red herring? Yes, some privacy was lost just from asking the question. But does that mean my question stays up in a public place, after I try to take it down? At the outset, the questioner didn't agree not to delete his question. If later he feels *strongly* about it, why not let him take it down? He's not necessarily being perverse, uncooperative or ungrateful. Maybe he feels ridiculed in a public place. I think it is this that triggers his right to privacy." CreationDate="2016-01-24T16:45:06.347" UserId="101490" />
  <row Id="9042" PostId="2911" Score="1" Text="Well, by asking a question you're contributing to a communal work; your proprietary rights to the foundation are the more attenuated the more others have built on it. Nevertheless there is a mechanism for you to dissociate yourself from the whole thing should you feel strongly about it, as discussed in @gung's answer." CreationDate="2016-01-24T21:22:13.780" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9043" PostId="2911" Score="1" Text="This makes sense: &quot;your proprietary rights to the foundation are the more attenuated the more others have built on it.&quot; Is it sufficiently captured by the rule that upvoted answers are not deletable, since an upvote signals significant progress on the foundation? Conclusion 4 in @gung's answer also sounds fair, but I think the exact words or images in the original question don't need to be used after un-deletion, and can be summarized to protect OP's anonymity and choice to withdraw question." CreationDate="2016-01-24T21:53:55.773" UserId="101490" />
  <row Id="9045" PostId="2911" Score="0" Text="The basic fact is that you give up ownership of your work when you use the site (read the agreement!). The system *allows* users to delete in certain circumstances, which grants them the ability (rather than the right) to delete the work of others. However, the post is not theirs - the post may be undeleted (and on some other SE sites, often is). The question is not over a poster's right to expect that their own posts will stay deleted (they don't own the post); ... ctd" CreationDate="2016-01-25T00:48:17.140" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9046" PostId="2911" Score="1" Text="... (ctd) the question is the extent to which they should be able to delete *another* person's content. Presently they *can* do it, but should they? (Conversely, I *can* undelete it... but should I?)" CreationDate="2016-01-25T00:49:04.513" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9047" PostId="2911" Score="1" Text="I doubt that Glen_b was deliberately being patronising, but I can easily see how his answer could be interpreted that way. In particular, &quot;Well, *no*, it's not done&quot;, especially with the italics, appears to me to be talking down to the question-asker. But even if the question-asker was offended, I don't think that should be a justification for allowing a question to be deleted. My preference would be that a question can only be deleted if there are no answers and no comments." CreationDate="2016-01-25T01:08:10.313" UserId="3835" />
  <row Id="9055" PostId="2911" Score="0" Text="@iko: Of course there are other options: when the person who asked the question explains the problem, I'm sure we could usually work up a solution acceptable to everyone. But we are sometimes faced with cases when users post a question, wait for an answer, delete their question without explanation, then never come back to the site." CreationDate="2016-01-25T14:43:07.153" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9048" PostId="2913" Score="0" Text="[Vaguely related](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1992/whats-the-site-policy-on-removing-text-such-as-thankyou-or-this-question-is)" CreationDate="2016-01-25T08:11:58.550" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9049" PostId="2913" Score="8" Text="Personally I never post such messages, not out of a wish to be or seem impolite, but because I do other things. But I don't object at all to other people doing it and I would never flag such a message. As we are so often accused of poor treatment of new posters (e.g. http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2903/to-what-extent-should-the-deletion-by-the-op-of-answered-questions-be-acceptable )  I say leave them be as signs of goodwill. One-sentence comments are only worth flagging if people turn offensive." CreationDate="2016-01-25T09:29:23.643" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9050" PostId="2913" Score="1" Text="Also http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2177/should-we-make-it-clearer-that-theres-no-need-to-apologize/2188#2188" CreationDate="2016-01-25T09:33:47.143" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9051" PostId="2913" Score="8" Text="Once the OP noticed such welcome messages (or after a few days), I usually remove them because comments were long considered as [second class citizens](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/214173/why-do-i-need-50-reputation-to-comment-what-can-i-do-instead) on SE. However, other sites may have different policies (e.g., on tex.SE)." CreationDate="2016-01-25T10:20:14.543" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="9052" PostId="2913" Score="3" Text="@chl thanks -- the &quot;remove after a few days&quot; is an option worth considering. It's a pity [there's no way to leave a reminder to pop up in say 48 hours](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/257565/allow-moderators-to-leave-themselves-reminder-notes)" CreationDate="2016-01-25T10:32:23.473" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9056" PostId="2913" Score="7" Text="Whenever I get a chance, I review all my actions from a day or two ago.  I have been surprised by how many follow-up actions this suggests!" CreationDate="2016-01-25T14:44:27.043" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="9053" PostId="2914" Score="2" Text="Sensible as always, but who does the clean-up removing old messages? If the implication is whoever posted the Welcome comments, I think that is a good policy, but I've not seen it before and it will be hard work getting that news spread among people who need to know. If the implication is that moderators should do it, I think they've all got more crucial things to do." CreationDate="2016-01-25T14:35:50.597" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9054" PostId="2914" Score="1" Text="@NickCox, reasonable points. I suppose in the last case, I would just decline the flag. If it's reflagged later &amp; meets either of the former conditions, then it would be deleted. I recognize this is a somewhat haphazard approach, though." CreationDate="2016-01-25T14:42:13.583" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9057" PostId="2914" Score="1" Text="Sorry to be unclear: I mean who is to check on users' accesses by looking at their pages. So far as I can see every Welcome message requires at least one check: that could be several every day." CreationDate="2016-01-25T14:46:04.943" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9058" PostId="2914" Score="0" Text="The mods would have to check, @NickCox." CreationDate="2016-01-25T14:58:10.630" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9059" PostId="2914" Score="2" Text="Thanks for the clarification. It's therefore me proposing that &quot;Welcome&quot; messages are fine but **if** the consensus is that they are regarded as transient, **then** it's the job of the person putting them up to remove them. That's a conditional. As already commented, I don't object to them myself." CreationDate="2016-01-25T15:07:08.570" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9060" PostId="2915" Score="11" Text="I certainly appreciated the &quot;welcome to the site&quot; comment that I received when I first asked a question. It probably came from you. It was accompanied with further detail about what made my question good (well posed), which was affirming and useful at the time. There's not much chattiness on this site, so I don't see the harm in a welcome note, especially when it has some additional feedback." CreationDate="2016-01-25T17:46:50.200" UserId="14188" />
  <row Id="9064" PostId="2917" Score="2" Text="I voted to close since you got an answer to your questions on other sites. I agree that it is difficult to gather opinions from different communities, but that's the way SE works actually (see, e.g., this [meta thread](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/64068/150510), among others). However, you can post your question on one site and join chat rooms on other sites if you like. Ours is [Ten Fold](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/18/ten-fold)." CreationDate="2016-01-26T09:56:24.473" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="9065" PostId="2917" Score="0" Text="@chl that's right. I needed answers from different points of views. If you go and check the answers, some suggested a least square solution, some mvlr, some Kalman filters, some an EM algorithm etc. Chat might be interesting, but not really what I need. I would like to actually post a question on different sites, which is not possible as the other meta post thread was mentioning. &#xA;Of course, SE is an amazing place, but we should try to keep improving it to make it even better, right?" CreationDate="2016-01-26T10:01:15.840" UserId="100372" />
  <row Id="9066" PostId="2917" Score="5" Text="Some related discussion [here](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1880/is-the-help-misinformed-on-the-question-of-cross-posting/)" CreationDate="2016-01-26T10:33:25.060" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9072" PostId="2918" Score="6" Text="This is the essence of the matter: it's explicit SE policy to ask people not to do this. But here's a simple key point. Cross-posting usually gets noticed because many people are active in several forums, for precisely the same reason as the OP's, namely that their interests straddle those several. That's a positive really." CreationDate="2016-01-26T14:06:30.780" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9086" PostId="2923" Score="4" Text="I'm adding this an an answer because links away from CV don't show in the &quot;Linked&quot; list at the top right, &amp; I think these deserve more prominence than they'd have buried in comments." CreationDate="2016-01-27T12:14:40.710" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9330" PostId="2925" Score="2" Text="I agree with #3 and #4. Unfortunately really bad questions from new users are most likely to be those that deserve downvotes and a downvote can be part of a strong signal that the question (not the user) is in very poor shape. Also, although ideally someone should explain why something is being downvoted, downvotes in agreement usually don't merit an extra comment. Being nice is wider than being positive and welcoming to new users; it includes the public service of reacting to the poor questions that would just mess up the forum. Ideally, they should be improved; otherwise deleted." CreationDate="2016-02-15T08:09:29.083" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9331" PostId="2925" Score="2" Text="&quot;does not show any research effort&quot; remains a criterion for downvoting; if anything it is underused." CreationDate="2016-02-15T08:10:59.190" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9332" PostId="2925" Score="1" Text="Sometimes the signal &quot;you should really do some reading first&quot; really **is** a fair signal, but some wordings are much more tactful and gentle than others. We are not obliged to meet the expectations of some that we can do their work or understanding for them. (Lest this be misread as typical condescension to non-statisticians, let me stress that I am not a statistician myself.)" CreationDate="2016-02-15T09:39:00.480" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9342" PostId="2925" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Can we close questions to keep the site free of weeds without down voting, simply voting to close, and giving an explanation? Otherwise, I always appreciate the thought in your comments, and don't disagree with anything in particular." CreationDate="2016-02-15T21:32:32.890" UserId="67822" />
  <row Id="9343" PostId="2925" Score="1" Text="Yes, we can do that; and by and large we do. But downvoting remains a way of expressing strong disapproval. For example, and uncontroversially, downvoting is a way to flag spam to each other, although moderator flags are even better. Occasionally downvoting is a way to send a signal, e.g. to some long-term users who persist in asking totally cryptic questions, or to people asking the same questions repeatedly. There are other reasons but detail or examples would be invidious. But it's simple: you are evidently a nice guy most unwilling to downvote and no-one will discourage you from that!" CreationDate="2016-02-15T21:52:14.363" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9344" PostId="2925" Score="0" Text="[Here is an example](http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/196740/67822). I know for a fact that this is one of the test questions in the Coursera course on Inferential statistics, because that's where I started learning approximately one year ago. It's about breathing disturbances during sleep in people with COPD. The poster probably won't reply, because he/she knows it's true, and at that point the question will probably be closed... or it should." CreationDate="2016-02-15T22:40:19.880" UserId="67822" />
  <row Id="9346" PostId="2925" Score="1" Text="The example is evidence for all stances. You were as nice as could be. OP didn't get they wanted, didn't expand, didn't apologise, as you say probably won't come back. The thread is of zero future value to anyone so far." CreationDate="2016-02-16T17:05:08.653" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9446" PostId="2925" Score="0" Text="I generally agree, but two comments: (1) Users with less than 3k rep. don't have the privilege to vote for closing a question; down-voting is what they're given by the SE system to &quot;indicate when questions and answers are not useful&quot;. (2) It can be tricky to tell someone their question's not up to scratch in a way they appreciate when you don't know them personally; when English isn't your first language, or theirs; when your culture favours getting straight to the point &amp; theirs tactfully beating around the bush; &amp;c." CreationDate="2016-02-26T16:51:17.057" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9089" PostId="2926" Score="9" Text="See e.g. http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2810/editing-original-posts-dos-and-donts The suggestion there was that you don't correct conceptual errors. Trivial notation slips could be fine, but confused notation that suggests confusion of ideas remains part of the problem. Suggesting a better notation is then part of a good answer. At most, add a separate EDIT to the question with different notation, but my preference remains putting that in an answer and explaining why." CreationDate="2016-01-27T21:10:33.313" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9090" PostId="2926" Score="0" Text="@NickCox thanks for the pointer." CreationDate="2016-01-27T21:18:17.857" UserId="36229" />
  <row Id="9091" PostId="2926" Score="0" Text="@NickCox, it could make sense to turn you comment into an answer." CreationDate="2016-01-29T09:22:20.257" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="9092" PostId="2926" Score="1" Text="@RichardHardy Thanks, but I think this looks more like a duplicate." CreationDate="2016-01-29T09:29:59.800" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9093" PostId="2928" Score="8" Text="Look in the comments to the top answer in the thread you linked to: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/269/what-should-our-logo-and-site-design-look-like/459#comment840_458. It represents 5-fold cross-validation (green squares are test sets). I never knew until you asked." CreationDate="2016-01-30T00:35:27.680" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9094" PostId="2928" Score="0" Text="Thank you, but other than &quot;it is represents 5-fold cross-validation scheme,&quot; I am unenlightened. In what way does it do so? (Apologies if I am not being clear: imagine the logo is a box plot, and I ask &quot;what does a box plot represent&quot; An answer I would like would explain graphical representation of median, IQR, etc.) That the actual logo *does* represent CrossValidated in some way is just something I assumed. :)" CreationDate="2016-01-30T00:46:09.677" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="9095" PostId="2928" Score="0" Text="@amoeba when I started my answer I didn't see you had answered in comments; if you want to post an answer, that would probably be a good thing." CreationDate="2016-01-30T01:32:47.877" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9096" PostId="2928" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b: No problem at all; your answer includes everything I would have written and more. +1. It's funny, I never realized that our logo actually represents cross-validation; never thought about its meaning really. So great question, +1 to Alexis too." CreationDate="2016-01-30T19:58:47.407" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9097" PostId="2929" Score="2" Text="+1. Any idea why the colors are different within the sides of the green diagonal? If I am not mistaken there are two tons of blue." CreationDate="2016-01-31T11:49:02.020" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="9098" PostId="2929" Score="5" Text="@Andre They're both the same *hue* (127), just slightly on the blue side of blue-green but with different saturation (color intensity/greyness) and luminance (lightness/darkness of shade). I don't think there's anything intended by that difference in intensity and brightness. If you look at the prototype versions they don't have that change across the diagonal. I expect it was done simply because it looks better that way." CreationDate="2016-01-31T12:18:27.430" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9099" PostId="2929" Score="1" Text="It occurs to me that an interesting question is why cross validation is customarily depicted this way. I think of data by default as being arrayed vertically (going down the rows of the data matrix). So it would seem most intuitive to me for cv to have columns w/ a diagonal of test sets, not rows." CreationDate="2016-02-01T04:12:12.820" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9100" PostId="2929" Score="4" Text="@gung Perhaps because in the diagram, moving down represents successive steps in the cross-validation algorithm. People also tend to think of steps in an algorithm or recipe being written list-like down the page rather than across the page and it's easier to transpose the expected direction with data than it is with algorithms." CreationDate="2016-02-01T04:38:00.623" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9105" PostId="2929" Score="2" Text="Thank you, Glen_b... so the image represents a visual schema or plan, more than a visual analysis. Cool." CreationDate="2016-02-01T18:59:17.543" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="9106" PostId="2929" Score="1" Text="@Alexis I wish I could have thought of such a succinct description - I'd like to have opened with that." CreationDate="2016-02-01T20:43:27.280" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9130" PostId="2929" Score="2" Text="@gung Perhaps it's a long shot, but in addition to what Glen_b says, the horizontal bar motif is common in stack exchange logos (e.g., serverfault, code review, stack exchange, personal finance and money, *almost* stackoverflow). Or maybe this pattern is simply noise I'm mistaking for signal." CreationDate="2016-02-02T21:23:32.553" UserId="59319" />
  <row Id="9132" PostId="2929" Score="0" Text="@buckminster Oh, there's definitely a horizontal bar motif in a number of logos -- including the StackExhange logo itself" CreationDate="2016-02-02T22:49:06.073" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9224" PostId="2929" Score="0" Text="The logo could also represent a variance-covariance matrix that's been flipped around (assuming the green squares represent the variance values)." CreationDate="2016-02-08T15:56:43.750" UserId="13634" />
  <row Id="9115" PostId="2931" Score="2" Text="I think one must consider the subject and the audience of the book. Mi Yodeva is truly revolutionary thing in many aspects. I am not Jewish and sometimes I browse it out of encyclopedic curiosity as I would otherwise never know this stuff. Also their audience does not often have access to this information. Our main niche and audience are... what..? With the exception of some expert opinions (yours included) we reproduce standard undergraduate Statistics courses to a great extent. Similarly our audience has access to a wealth of free authoritative resources (eg. ESEL)." CreationDate="2016-02-02T07:13:05.637" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="9116" PostId="2931" Score="0" Text="(I do not aim to come across nihilistic; I am just stating what I see as an obvious issue in undertaking such a task.)" CreationDate="2016-02-02T07:19:22.023" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="9117" PostId="2931" Score="0" Text="In fact I think just above elementary level is where a book would have the most value. (I don't see your comment as nihilistic; in any case you should feel free to express your thoughts)" CreationDate="2016-02-02T08:01:53.203" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9123" PostId="2931" Score="2" Text="That sounds very interesting. Some/quite a few of our answers are fairly directly adapted from other sources/textbooks. Would a book, rather than the posts here, be more likely to be seen as selling others' work under a different title?" CreationDate="2016-02-02T10:38:45.287" UserId="67799" />
  <row Id="9124" PostId="2931" Score="2" Text="@Christoph There would need to be the usual care over copyright in the process of editing,  but many works offer occasional short quotes of other works; note that anything that would contravene copyright law if we put it in a book *already does so by being on site* - and should be removed. (However, just by way of clarification -- we wouldn't be selling anything -- at least that's not my intent; making a book doesn't mean selling a book; under the terms of the site, people must be allowed to copy it freely and even reuse it for their own works if they follow the rules)" CreationDate="2016-02-02T11:14:57.160" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9129" PostId="2931" Score="7" Text="I think the real value of CV, at least to me, is that it collects together some of the subtle-but-important results from statistics/ML that are often just beyond the coverage of introductory material. I'm most familiar with my own posts, so please don't take this as self-promotion, but my answers on disadvantages to ROC AUC and why RF is not well-suited for GLM feature selection stand out as posts that would benefit folks with undergrad backgrounds in statistics -- important results that wouldn't make the cut for a first course in the topic." CreationDate="2016-02-02T15:44:36.807" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="9134" PostId="2931" Score="5" Text="@user777 I point people to your random forest feature selection answer all the time at work." CreationDate="2016-02-03T05:39:36.647" UserId="74500" />
  <row Id="9101" PostId="2932" Score="6" Text="Related: [Why is our answer rate so low?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1538/why-is-our-answer-rate-so-low). There are perhaps some other peripherally related questions." CreationDate="2016-02-01T12:35:28.667" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9107" PostId="2932" Score="8" Text="I don't have statistics, but I think a bigger problem is that many questions are just too unspecific to answer. For example, many approach the limiting cases &quot;what is the best analysis for my data which I am not showing you?&quot; or &quot;what should I do in my project?&quot; which are too difficult to answer. Also, in human terms, many transient visitors here have a short-term interest in doing an analysis now and minimal longer-term interest in mastering statistics otherwise. That's inevitable, and not necessarily a problem, as CV exists for such people too, but it drives down answer rates." CreationDate="2016-02-01T21:45:39.253" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9155" PostId="2932" Score="2" Text="I rarely feel qualified to uptick answers to &quot;unanswered&quot; questions - sometimes because the material is technically beyond me (not that rare, and unsurprising since low-attention questions tend to be rather more specific, but hopefully *someone* can assess the quality of these answers) and sometimes because the original question is vague or poorly worded and I'm not actually sure that the answer addresses the question (not that rare either but I suspect many of these questions are lost causes)." CreationDate="2016-02-04T12:24:37.610" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9169" PostId="2932" Score="3" Text="@Silverfish If the question is obscure but the answer looks useful I am generally happy to upvote the answer. The key is whether it might help any user of the site in future. Many answers improve considerably on rather poor questions. (Gross irrelevance can always be an exception.)" CreationDate="2016-02-04T20:11:49.897" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9172" PostId="2932" Score="1" Text="I come in, sometimes years after the fact and answer some that are in my areas.  I have earned &quot;necromancer&quot; for it.  I also have a few revival badges.  I like having the chance to do it." CreationDate="2016-02-04T21:59:48.267" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="13811" PostId="2932" Score="0" Text="There are also too few eyes---more than 10% of the Qs on the site have got the tumbleweed bount! (low vies, no votes in a week after posting)" CreationDate="2017-07-16T13:48:39.523" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="9102" PostId="2934" Score="3" Text="Thanks. Well, at least I voted for that answer." CreationDate="2016-02-01T12:55:10.677" UserId="81056" />
  <row Id="9108" PostId="2934" Score="0" Text="@Dan I wouldn't worry too much -- your answer was actually a bit different (different enough to be worth posting I think), and clearly preferable to the OP. The other answerer does seem somewhat bothered by it but I don't see all that much to be bothered about, personally." CreationDate="2016-02-01T22:28:56.927" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9109" PostId="2934" Score="1" Text="@Dan I have devised a solution to the splitting problem in this particular instance." CreationDate="2016-02-02T01:05:28.673" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9110" PostId="2934" Score="0" Text="That's great, Glen. What is the solution?" CreationDate="2016-02-02T06:40:50.100" UserId="81056" />
  <row Id="9111" PostId="2934" Score="0" Text="It has already been applied: http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/189833/how-to-check-for-the-distribution-stability/ ... but it will take a day" CreationDate="2016-02-02T06:41:42.753" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9112" PostId="2934" Score="0" Text="Oh, you gave bounty to the same answer and you'll give the points to the other answer? It is both clever and nice. Thanks you very much!" CreationDate="2016-02-02T06:44:20.147" UserId="81056" />
  <row Id="9113" PostId="2934" Score="0" Text="I placed a second bounty on the question, yes; I wouldn't have done so ordinarily (it doesn't quite meet my usual standard for a bounty), but since you sought to share it, and I could make something similar happen, I figured I would do so." CreationDate="2016-02-02T06:45:59.557" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9114" PostId="2934" Score="0" Text="It is indeed quite unusual. Thanks again! ;-)" CreationDate="2016-02-02T06:47:46.383" UserId="81056" />
  <row Id="9119" PostId="2935" Score="1" Text="Hi @Tim -- that's fine even if it doesn't motivate people, since that's not my prime motivation for the bounties on answers (which is mostly better visibility); however, it may motivate early participators a bit more -- I know bounties made a difference to my perception of reward-per-effort when I otherwise found points hard to come by. It could be the case for pulling in answers on questions that lack answers (I already put plenty of bounties on questions regularly -- I know already that it's not always effective). ... ctd" CreationDate="2016-02-02T09:34:42.633" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9120" PostId="2935" Score="1" Text="@Tim ctd ...  Anyway, worst case is I spend a thousand or so points; I've already spent about 8 times that on bounties, it's not like I don't know what I'm getting into." CreationDate="2016-02-02T09:36:12.800" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9122" PostId="2935" Score="16" Text="Even if it just makes people feel happier about being on site that would be a good thing, I think." CreationDate="2016-02-02T10:14:18.430" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9125" PostId="2935" Score="1" Text="@Tim: would you say that active users on other SE sites are relatively more motivated by points? I can say for myself that they do motivate me - I tend to answer a lot more questions when a recent answer of mine seems to have been appreciated than if I put effort into one that was largely ignored (as measured by upvotes)." CreationDate="2016-02-02T13:12:52.210" UserId="67799" />
  <row Id="9127" PostId="2935" Score="0" Text="@Tim Whether you're right or not, the exercise is the same here; if you don't wish to nominate any posts, you're free not to. It won't cost you a thing. If you don't think it will do any good, but for some reason want to suggest a post anyway, go ahead; it still won't cost you anything." CreationDate="2016-02-02T13:52:27.797" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9128" PostId="2935" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b forget it, it was just an off-topic comment, in general I like your idea :)" CreationDate="2016-02-02T14:06:42.977" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="9145" PostId="2935" Score="8" Text="I wish I could apply the *featured* tag to this post. I think it has huge benefits for the community and could do with more attention." CreationDate="2016-02-03T16:20:59.650" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="9211" PostId="2935" Score="3" Text="@user777: flagged for mod attention, requested tagging this as [tag:featured]. Let's see what the mods think." CreationDate="2016-02-07T02:56:55.770" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="9212" PostId="2935" Score="0" Text="One might consider an indicating metric like question upvotes to answers ratio as an initial way to select a good question/good answer rich sample." CreationDate="2016-02-07T13:52:44.073" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="9369" PostId="2935" Score="3" Text="I reviewed many Q&amp;A that I find good and interesting and I must say that it seems that the common power-law rule is true for them: vast majority of the good answers are made by small minority of answeres from the CV's top-50." CreationDate="2016-02-18T08:14:47.223" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="9710" PostId="2935" Score="0" Text="It looks like 1000 points of bounty were started by the end of March (a little under 9 weeks from the initial post), of which 850 was successfully awarded to a post. I'm very pleased with the way that worked out." CreationDate="2016-04-03T01:44:41.367" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="17759" PostId="2935" Score="0" Text="Glen: bounty this: https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/410543/805" CreationDate="2019-05-29T02:27:35.120" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9135" PostId="2939" Score="5" Text="Some possibly relevant posts re minor edits [1. Editing posts...](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2747/editing-posts-protocol-please-help-and-trivial-edits) [2. spelling edits](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1638/spelling-edits-do-em-or-not) [3. editing abbreviation in title](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2408/editing-abbreviation-in-the-title) [4. removing thankyou or...](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1992/whats-the-site-policy-on-removing-text-such-as-thankyou-or-this-question-is) ... ctd" CreationDate="2016-02-03T08:47:41.240" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9136" PostId="2939" Score="3" Text="ctd ... [5. single character edits in formulas](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1977/single-character-edits-in-formulas) [6. editing ... dos and don'ts](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2810/editing-original-posts-dos-and-donts)" CreationDate="2016-02-03T08:47:48.773" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9137" PostId="2939" Score="1" Text="Thanks for the references. I understand it is OK to fixed typo. However I don't understand how should I fix a single letter typo, avoiding that minimum change length script." CreationDate="2016-02-03T09:01:35.117" UserId="81056" />
  <row Id="9141" PostId="2940" Score="4" Text="I spent several hours over a couple of days working on an answer to that before life intervened and I forgot about it. I think it's a soluble problem." CreationDate="2016-02-03T09:58:58.233" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9142" PostId="2940" Score="0" Text="I think so, too, but I also suffer from this condition called &quot;life&quot;. I'd love to see one of your nice answers on this question." CreationDate="2016-02-03T10:08:33.183" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="9144" PostId="2940" Score="0" Text="In any case, in the meantime it could definitely stand to have a bounty." CreationDate="2016-02-03T10:39:38.820" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9604" PostId="2940" Score="0" Text="I've been pondering about how to get an answer on that question. If one doesn't arise from the bounty, rather than wait until I have a full answer, I might later post some thoughts on a partial solution as a CW-answer in the hopes that others will improve it." CreationDate="2016-03-27T01:42:08.010" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="17058" PostId="2940" Score="0" Text="Stephan Kolassa, you might appreciate my modest contribution to Anscombe's quartet https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/89547/what-is-the-purpose-of-precision-variables/337129#337129" CreationDate="2019-01-05T17:45:07.017" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="9143" PostId="2941" Score="3" Text="Yes, though this thread (the Q and both answers) has staggering amount of views and upvotes already." CreationDate="2016-02-03T10:26:40.537" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9139" PostId="2942" Score="1" Text="Thanks. Hell, one cannot even reply in &quot;Thanks&quot; since it is less than 8 characters ;-)" CreationDate="2016-02-03T09:43:57.250" UserId="81056" />
  <row Id="9140" PostId="2942" Score="0" Text="You're welcome! (With the exclamation mark that just reaches the required length - there's no privilege allowing anyone to write shorter comments.)" CreationDate="2016-02-03T09:52:07.187" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9236" PostId="2942" Score="1" Text="&quot;...avoid the review queue's being filled...&quot; -&gt; queues" CreationDate="2016-02-09T10:14:00.997" UserId="71428" />
  <row Id="9238" PostId="2942" Score="1" Text="@stan: Well, that'd be the tiniest of edits! But I wasn't trying to tempt anyone into making one: there's just one queue I wanted to refer to (that for suggested edits) &amp; &quot;being&quot; is a gerund here." CreationDate="2016-02-09T10:20:54.410" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9243" PostId="2942" Score="2" Text="I believe it is more about bumping questions to the active page than flooding the review queue." CreationDate="2016-02-09T18:44:08.070" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="9235" PostId="2943" Score="1" Text="I agree with @Dan Levin that it's a bad policy and should be changed. Changing &quot;their&quot; to &quot;there&quot; desperately needs to be done and is not at all trivial or minor! But maybe (new around here and don't know much about how it works) the underlying rationale is to take pressure off people who approve edits. I would be annoyed by constantly having to approve small edits, so it would make sense to winnow out those." CreationDate="2016-02-09T10:07:37.273" UserId="71428" />
  <row Id="9151" PostId="2945" Score="2" Text="Doesn't community user only bump questions with non-upvoted answers (but does not bump questions with zero answers) -- i.e. *de facto* answered but *de jure* unanswered questions?" CreationDate="2016-02-03T22:29:33.007" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9152" PostId="2945" Score="0" Text="Interesting question, @amoeba. I thought, they could be any unanswered Q (w/ or w/o non-upvoted answers). However, scanning through the last dozen, all had answers, so you may be right." CreationDate="2016-02-03T22:45:37.193" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9153" PostId="2945" Score="4" Text="Yes, see http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/217884." CreationDate="2016-02-03T22:49:29.157" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9189" PostId="2945" Score="4" Text="This is exactly my personal activity policy to help with the site statistics: pay attention on community bumped questions, and try to either upvote the answer, or flag the question for closing (not always possible, though). Once in a while I also risk writing an answer." CreationDate="2016-02-05T20:31:50.860" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="9148" PostId="2946" Score="5" Text="At a purely selfish level, I have little doubt *I* would benefit from such a document." CreationDate="2016-02-03T21:41:35.607" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9149" PostId="2946" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b Yeah, I would, too. I mean, maybe such a book doesn't in the same way that mathematics can prove the nonexistence of certain objects. But I'm contrarian and enjoy charging at windmills, so..." CreationDate="2016-02-03T21:55:49.920" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="9157" PostId="2946" Score="2" Text="I do like your idea, but also think that we've plenty of stuff at an introductory level that would complement textbooks nicely. In particular: posts addressing common mistakes &amp; misconceptions (which may be passed over, or even promulgated, by textbooks); &amp; those tidbits that broaden rather than deepen knowledge, e.g. [How to find a good fit for semi-sinusoidal model in R?](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/60500/how-to-find-a-good-fit-for-semi-sinusoidal-model-in-r/60504#60504)." CreationDate="2016-02-04T12:30:22.007" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9158" PostId="2946" Score="3" Text="@Scortchi That's true. I think that my biases are showing here -- I tend to work on the kinds of problems discussed in the post, so I'm inclined to think they're important. At the same time, there's no reason we have to stop at 1 book!" CreationDate="2016-02-04T13:35:05.277" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="9159" PostId="2947" Score="2" Text="I see it working above." CreationDate="2016-02-04T13:35:40.010" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9160" PostId="2947" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi: So is it something wrong with my local setup, by the way, using firefox now ... but now, after switching to chrome (this is windows), it works ..." CreationDate="2016-02-04T13:40:33.833" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="9161" PostId="2947" Score="0" Text="Sorry, no idea, though it certainly sounds like it." CreationDate="2016-02-04T13:44:04.740" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9162" PostId="2947" Score="0" Text="I am using Firefox and it's working for me." CreationDate="2016-02-04T15:12:58.993" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9163" PostId="2947" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b: do you have any extensions installed?" CreationDate="2016-02-04T15:17:42.310" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="9164" PostId="2947" Score="0" Text="@kjetilbhalvorsen it also works for me in Fx. Reboot? This always help for 99% IT problems ;)" CreationDate="2016-02-04T15:20:57.870" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="9165" PostId="2947" Score="0" Text="I just turned off everything but noscript but it still shows up okay. (I really doubt the couple of things noscript is blocking would have any effect on mathjax.)" CreationDate="2016-02-04T15:27:57.473" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9166" PostId="2947" Score="0" Text="I had the same issue w/ `\binom{N}{K}` (&amp; also w/ `{N \choose K}`) a week or two ago. Then it started working again. I have no idea what the issue was." CreationDate="2016-02-04T15:51:39.057" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9167" PostId="2947" Score="0" Text="Try changing the math renderer you're using: right click on the image &amp; choose Math Settings ... Math Renderer ... HTML-CSS" CreationDate="2016-02-04T16:18:46.120" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9258" PostId="2947" Score="1" Text="What sometimes helps is to clear the browser's cache. Can you try that and see if it helps?" CreationDate="2016-02-11T17:27:52.323" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9259" PostId="2947" Score="1" Text="Yes! thanks, it did work now.  I saw is on multiple machines, though. Will se tomorrow on the other machines." CreationDate="2016-02-11T17:38:45.367" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="9260" PostId="2947" Score="0" Text="Cool. Please report after you test it further. I will then write an answer so that we have a standard reference for this problem. But I want to make sure that it works." CreationDate="2016-02-11T17:41:48.303" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9262" PostId="2947" Score="0" Text="Also, when it did not work, what symptoms did you experience? Did you see some error message instead of the formula or the dollar signs and latex code in between in plain text?" CreationDate="2016-02-11T18:19:07.507" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9263" PostId="2947" Score="1" Text="What I see is just an error message (&quot;Math error&quot; or similar) in red." CreationDate="2016-02-11T19:07:50.093" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="9267" PostId="2947" Score="1" Text="Now, in firefox on the other machine, cleared cache, worked here too." CreationDate="2016-02-12T08:41:45.263" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="9168" PostId="2948" Score="3" Text="[Chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/18/ten-fold) is intended for that.  BTW, this is the first time I have seen our community referred to as a &quot;hole&quot; :-)." CreationDate="2016-02-04T20:01:43.563" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="9170" PostId="2948" Score="0" Text="@whuber is it better to post this question in ten-fold, create my own room for it, or...?" CreationDate="2016-02-04T20:27:22.587" UserId="98920" />
  <row Id="9171" PostId="2948" Score="0" Text="Nobody would visit a private room!  Try starting a conversation in tenfold.  Be prepared to wait a few days for responses.  You might also get some friendly advice about how to generate focused, answerable questions while you are reading a paper like this." CreationDate="2016-02-04T20:29:53.100" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="9173" PostId="2948" Score="4" Text="If anyone gives you substantive help with a research problem that leads to publication, they should normally be a co-author (e.g. made actual contribution to the way you did things for example, in a way that things would have been clearly different had they not helped). If they give you more minor help (perhaps suggesting a more appropriate analysis) they should usually at least get an acknowledgement. [At best it's very bad manners when effusive thanks and praise for lots of free help don't even correspond to a half dozen words of acknowledgement in a footnote.]" CreationDate="2016-02-05T01:08:27.193" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9190" PostId="2948" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b I just realized you have an open bounty that is highly related to my question here! Want to be my co-author? ;)" CreationDate="2016-02-05T20:47:10.200" UserId="98920" />
  <row Id="9200" PostId="2948" Score="0" Text="Having an open bounty wouldn't be a reason to make me a coauthor; but in any case the rules for using material that's on site here are already spelled out" CreationDate="2016-02-06T01:34:37.757" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9201" PostId="2948" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b I was merely kidding around, as indicated by the good only winky ;)" CreationDate="2016-02-06T01:43:35.347" UserId="98920" />
  <row Id="9202" PostId="2948" Score="0" Text="I considered that you might be, but figured it was better to assume you weren't, just in case. I'll probably delete the last three comments (counting this one) soon" CreationDate="2016-02-06T01:45:35.193" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9318" PostId="2948" Score="1" Text="why is the title of the question really general but the discussion not? I think what matters is not this particular example that might have an easy answer, but to know who questions that are boundary research should be handled." CreationDate="2016-02-13T20:14:00.313" UserId="28986" />
  <row Id="9320" PostId="2948" Score="0" Text="I have a quite cool and novel metric that I use for outlier detection.  We would have to talk be email." CreationDate="2016-02-13T22:12:21.340" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="9322" PostId="2948" Score="0" Text="@EngrStudent sure that would be fine by me.  However, I am curious to know why you would think outlier detection would solve this problem." CreationDate="2016-02-14T05:13:25.423" UserId="98920" />
  <row Id="9324" PostId="2948" Score="0" Text="@RustyStatistician - It is a metric, and while it was derived using log-likelihood ratio's and symbolic genetic algorithms built around outlier detection, it is really a data transformation that optimizations are able to be built around.  It is a continuous transform so it gives &quot;distance&quot; from in, and not just a binary in vs. out." CreationDate="2016-02-14T12:52:49.667" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="9325" PostId="2948" Score="0" Text="@EngrStudent sure let's talk." CreationDate="2016-02-14T14:49:20.890" UserId="98920" />
  <row Id="9174" PostId="2950" Score="3" Text="This is most likely not a SE problem, but something in your browser. Try rebooting the computer and/or reopening the browser." CreationDate="2016-02-05T12:57:01.170" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9181" PostId="2950" Score="0" Text="@amoeba That might be it. For now I posted from a different browser..." CreationDate="2016-02-05T17:07:22.177" UserId="36515" />
  <row Id="9175" PostId="2951" Score="2" Text="+1, especially for #2. I meant to include that in my answer, but I seem to have forgotten. You &amp; I also discuss this issue here: [Etiquette for answering old questions addressed in comments?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/2641/7290)" CreationDate="2016-02-05T16:20:14.903" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9182" PostId="2953" Score="3" Text="I believe I made mine CW from the start. It clearly seems like a CW question to me. This is a good question, though." CreationDate="2016-02-05T17:21:04.103" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9183" PostId="2953" Score="3" Text="(+1) I think this is a good issue to discuss; thank you for bringing it up.  Please note that I have been tracking the Frequentist-is-better question since its inception and converted it to CW only when *the answers posted there* compelled me to make the change.  This is the kind of question that very well could be suitable as non-CW, *depending on how people reply*. At this point, the alternatives appear worse to me: close the thread as off-topic or selectively delete the more opinionated answers. BTW, I'm not going to pay any attention to what they do on Academia: that's irrelevant." CreationDate="2016-02-05T17:21:06.340" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="9184" PostId="2953" Score="1" Text="@gung I see. By the way I have just found out that it is not possible anymore to make questions CW when asking them (this has been changed some time ago). Currently only moderators can turn questions into CW." CreationDate="2016-02-05T17:24:04.023" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9185" PostId="2953" Score="0" Text="I either marked it from the start or flagged it to be converted at the moment I posted it." CreationDate="2016-02-05T17:26:11.383" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9191" PostId="2953" Score="0" Text="@whuber: Frankly, I don't quite see how the decision about whether a question should be CW or not can depend on the answers. You mention closing as off-topic too; but surely being on-topic or off-topic is a property of the *question*, not the answers? I am confused. If there are bad (very opinionated) answers they should either be deleted or, in my opinion, rather downvoted. But the presence of bad answers should not take the reputation points away from the good answers." CreationDate="2016-02-05T21:46:43.147" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9193" PostId="2953" Score="1" Text="In general I would agree, but there are a small number of questions whose nature is unclear until answers appear. Have you noticed that a crucial part of the *definition* of CW is in terms of the *answers*? Specifically, a thread definitely should become CW when it has multiple, clearly distinct, objectively valid answers. In this particular case I (perhaps over-generously) initially imagined that it could be answered in a unique, dispositive, best way. After two days and many answers it has become clear that will not be possible." CreationDate="2016-02-05T23:45:54.997" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="9194" PostId="2953" Score="1" Text="@whuber: I would encourage you to write an answer here elaborating on the policy you are using (I cannot find any guidelines on that! what *is* a definition of CW?). If the policy is *a question that cannot be (or is not being?) answered &quot;in a unique, dispositive, best way&quot;* then I don't quite understand why e.g. the question about Monte Carlo approximations of $e$ as well as the other examples that I gave in my question are not CW (just to be clear: I would be hugely disappointed if the result of this discussion is that they are going to become CW). Can you help me appreciate the difference?" CreationDate="2016-02-05T23:59:20.377" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9195" PostId="2953" Score="0" Text="@whuber: [cont.] I carefully read [What are “Community Wiki” posts?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11740) FAQ on meta.SE but it does not say *anything* about when moderators should convert threads to CW. In a [related post on meta.SE](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/227290) a moderator says that &quot;there's a lot of different idealogies across the network about this&quot;. So what is ours?" CreationDate="2016-02-06T00:02:46.613" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9196" PostId="2953" Score="0" Text="You're right--the approximating $e$ question really needs to be CW." CreationDate="2016-02-06T00:02:48.383" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="9197" PostId="2953" Score="2" Text="The definition, criteria, and uses of CW have been evolving.  Nevertheless, much of the previous dialog here on Meta is applicable. The best posts seem to be at http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/290, http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/409, http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/931, http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1298, http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1474, http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1593, and http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2300 (in chronological order)." CreationDate="2016-02-06T00:08:32.993" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="9198" PostId="2953" Score="3" Text="@whuber: This is awful :-( That people stop getting reputation points after a thread is converted to CW looks like an enormous disadvantage to me and I cannot see what advantages could possibly outweigh it. What *are* the advantages, actually? I can understand CW status on a post about jokes or quotes (why should people get 100s of rep points for posting an xkcd cartoon), but e.g. in the case of approximating $e$ question we are talking about carefully crafted and elaborate answers." CreationDate="2016-02-06T00:12:20.023" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9199" PostId="2953" Score="2" Text="I agree.  I think it's worth discussing." CreationDate="2016-02-06T00:13:33.577" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="9230" PostId="2953" Score="2" Text="As the person who asked the &quot;When (if ever) is a frequentist approach substantively better than a Bayesian?&quot; question, I'll volunteer that I am torn. On the one hand, I appreciate that it is/was difficult to tease some answers apart from others on the basis of quality, both at the low and high-quality end of the spectrum. And when it came down to it, there were two answers that I felt were really good. But losing out on the rep for a 40+ up-voted question was a major bummer and I don't understand why my question was considered CW when the similar Bayesian-focused questions were not." CreationDate="2016-02-08T23:07:43.013" UserId="53456" />
  <row Id="9231" PostId="2953" Score="1" Text="@jsakaluk: Thanks for joining in. In my experience, it is often very difficult to choose the best answer even for the most concrete and mundane non-CW questions imaginable." CreationDate="2016-02-08T23:18:15.507" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9232" PostId="2953" Score="1" Text="Yea, it was especially difficult because there were a few really high-quality responses (I felt). But yeah, even though I acknowledge there is some subjectivity in terms of what constitutes a question that can be definitely answered, and questions that cannot, I feel as though my frequentist-focused one had very many (dis)confirmable answers, so I'm left unclear what the identifiable parameters for a non-CW-worthy question are." CreationDate="2016-02-08T23:21:55.453" UserId="53456" />
  <row Id="9186" PostId="2954" Score="3" Text="NLP? Neuro-linguistic programming?" CreationDate="2016-02-05T18:04:26.067" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9187" PostId="2954" Score="0" Text="Sorry, natural language processing" CreationDate="2016-02-05T18:12:50.363" UserId="8874" />
  <row Id="9188" PostId="2954" Score="3" Text="I have no idea what your example question about Obama.jpg means, but we have a [natural-language](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/natural-language) tag so presumably natural language processing questions should be on topic." CreationDate="2016-02-05T18:28:46.250" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9213" PostId="2955" Score="1" Text="Paying actual money is a radical suggestion! But thanks for the update, I removed my downvote." CreationDate="2016-02-07T14:46:52.163" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9227" PostId="2955" Score="2" Text="I think the idea of actual monetization is short-sighted both in theoretical as well as practical terms. From a practical stand-point: Amazon's Mechanical Turk had problems taking off even within the USA; to expect something like this will work with a globally distributed work-force is *naive*. (I don't even touch on pricing /work regulations questions) From a theoretical stand-point: The main reason most users come here is: [pride and fun](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/974/what-motivates-people-to-answer-questions). Fun and pride mix really bad with putting price-tags on them." CreationDate="2016-02-08T21:23:13.797" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="9229" PostId="2955" Score="0" Text="Well, @user11852, feel free to come with another reward! I was just suggesting that something other than brownie points might motivate better. What that something is, I don't know." CreationDate="2016-02-08T21:29:03.007" UserId="71428" />
  <row Id="9204" PostId="2957" Score="4" Text="This is a well-written and well-constructed argument, I downvoted only because I happen to disagree with it. I know it can be disheartening to &quot;miss out&quot; on reputation for CW posts (it happens to me too) but it doesn't stop me posting on CW posts either - there is more to incentives than the rep system on here, although that is a powerful tool. However, I don't think rep is appropriate on opinion-driven threads, because they tend to have opinion-driven upvotes. I think that serves to stop people &quot;gaming&quot; such threads, and so the alternatives are arguably worse." CreationDate="2016-02-06T21:38:13.903" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9205" PostId="2957" Score="1" Text="@Silverfish: I can see your point about &quot;opinion-driven&quot; threads (and I encourage you to post an answer elaborating on it). But what makes the approximate-$e$ question opinion-driven?!" CreationDate="2016-02-06T21:40:04.097" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9206" PostId="2957" Score="1" Text="I do think there is a *benefit* to CW, which goes to the most important people on our site - the audience. CW threads are clearly marked as being different to our normal ones, and for good reason. A large part of the point of ticks and upvotes was to serve as communication *to our readers* of what (hopefully) educated and informed folk thought the &quot;best&quot; answer, and let these &quot;float to the top&quot;. We mark out on CW threads that here we find rankings subjective and the order should be taken with a much greater pinch of salt than usual." CreationDate="2016-02-06T21:42:29.073" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9207" PostId="2957" Score="0" Text="I will wait and see if whuber writes a response - if he does so, I suspect I'll have little to say. I agreed with all his comments above, including about how the nature of a thread evolves, particularly as answers come in... particularly since until, answers come in, the question is often quite susceptible to editing/clarification which may make it more or less suitable for CW. On the other hand, I do think you have put the &quot;case against&quot; very clearly." CreationDate="2016-02-06T21:49:19.660" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9209" PostId="2957" Score="1" Text="Roughly speaking, I felt the e-simulation Q invited different approaches to reach different end-points, which it would be hard to describe as objectively better/worse. Most probability questions, by contrast, could have answerers taking quite different approaches but to reach a common end-goal: there's clearly some subjectivity in deciding if a certain approach was &quot;neater&quot; or &quot;avoided unnecessary algebra&quot; or &quot;showed great insight into a wider range of problems&quot; but those are still useful criteria that answers could be ranked on." CreationDate="2016-02-06T22:17:08.127" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9210" PostId="2957" Score="0" Text="...on the other hand, &quot;tell me a really counterintuitive/unusual fact about this probability distribution&quot; or &quot;show me a way of generating this distribution&quot; or &quot;where does this distribution occur in real life&quot; questions invite answers that are not really objectively comparable by such metrics." CreationDate="2016-02-06T22:18:44.743" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9214" PostId="2957" Score="3" Text="It's my understanding that CW's used to keep open questions that aren't a good fit for our site's Q&amp;A format - &quot;every answer is equally valid&quot; - , can't be made to fit, &amp; therefore ought really to be closed; but which we like for some reason &amp; want to keep open despite our rules. So not necessarily just &quot;rather opinion-based&quot;. Are you proposing we should be stricter or laxer about closing? Or decide one way or the other without resorting to this CW business?" CreationDate="2016-02-07T20:15:30.450" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9217" PostId="2957" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi: I am happy with your interpretation of what the purpose of CW is but I find that only very few questions (such as the one about jokes or quotes) really fit it. I don't find the approximate-$e$ question any less fit for our Q&amp;A format than any other question here. I don't see any reason *whatsoever* to close it and hence, according to your interpretation, I don't see any reason to make it CW. So yes, I propose that questions like that should be seen as okay and on-topic. CW should be reserved for rare big-list-like questions that we for some reason want to keep; they are not many." CreationDate="2016-02-08T10:40:13.933" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9218" PostId="2957" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi and all: I actually find myself in a strange situation. I see many many good and popular questions that are not CW but that should be CW according to the current policy (the one that I find misguided). Pointing this out here is likely to lead to these questions becoming CW which I find grossly unfair and unhelpful. So I guess I should rather shut up." CreationDate="2016-02-08T10:46:32.097" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9219" PostId="2957" Score="1" Text="I agree with you about the approximate-$\mathrm{e}$ question; probably because, though many answers are possible, there are clear criteria for what an answer should be. I'm less happy with saying [When (if ever) is a frequentist approach substantively better than a Bayesian?](http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/194035/17230) is fine because it's hard to see the difference from &quot;Bayesian vs frequentist methods - what do you think?&quot;.  On the other hand it doesn't seem right to close such a popular question - especially as after several opinionated answers other people ..." CreationDate="2016-02-08T11:05:03.637" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9221" PostId="2957" Score="3" Text="... might well think it unfair that they shouldn't be allowed to add their own opinions. So CW is a kind of compromise: a signal that it's all right to get on your soap box &amp; ride your hobby horses *here*, but it's not really what the site's *for*." CreationDate="2016-02-08T11:07:27.820" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9222" PostId="2957" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi. I will post one further example nevertheless. Why is [How would you explain Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) to a layperson?](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/165) CW but [How would you explain covariance to someone who understands only the mean?](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/18058) not CW? The top accepted answer in the latter brought its author well-deserved 142 upvotes, while the top accepted answer in the former did not bring its author anything despite 96 upvotes. **How does that make any sense?!** Note that making the second one CW now will not make it fair." CreationDate="2016-02-08T11:07:47.333" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9223" PostId="2957" Score="1" Text="I lean towards thinking neither of those need be CW - that is I can't see the benefit, though perhaps I'm over-looking something." CreationDate="2016-02-08T11:39:08.653" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9225" PostId="2957" Score="1" Text="Agree. CW should be used only for old popular off-topic questions. Nowadays, big lists, book recommendation, asking for data, subjective questions should be closed; including that one first cited in the question." CreationDate="2016-02-08T17:06:14.373" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="9226" PostId="2957" Score="0" Text="@Andre: I actually disagree with that quite strongly. I'd prefer the advantages-of-the-frequentist question to be open and would rather it were CW than closed. But your point of view is a possible and consistent one, so let me encourage you to post an answer elaborating on it! This thread needs more answers. (To clarify your position, please mention there what you think about the approximate-$e$ question too.)" CreationDate="2016-02-08T19:53:01.080" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9228" PostId="2957" Score="0" Text="I'll try to contribute posting an answer within a couple of days." CreationDate="2016-02-08T21:26:28.757" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="9233" PostId="2957" Score="1" Text="So I'm obviously biased because I wrote the Frequentist question, but I have a hard time understanding why you would want to close a question that has generated 44 upvotes, &gt;3000 views, and 11 thoughtful answers in less than 5 days. I'm new to the meta aspect of the site, so such a question could technically end up being &quot;inappropriate&quot; for CV, but I would seriously question the motivation underlying a mandate for a stats Q&amp;A site to shut down a question generating such broad interest. I legitimately learned several things--some which seem not a simple matter of opinion. Isn't that the point?" CreationDate="2016-02-09T04:05:35.097" UserId="53456" />
  <row Id="9234" PostId="2957" Score="2" Text="My inquiry here is clearly motivated by my question being under discussion, but I mean that for other questions that might fall under the purview of this discussion too. If people are asking thoughtful questions, the community is providing thoughtful answers, and people are learning, isn't that kind of the reason for this site existing? Sometimes there isn't a clear-cut unambiguous answer. But as long as people are providing references for the positions they espouse--and maybe that's' what we need to encourage more--then it's on the reader to decide what evidence is more convincing for them." CreationDate="2016-02-09T04:10:23.690" UserId="53456" />
  <row Id="9239" PostId="2957" Score="0" Text="@jsakaluk, I meant 'opinion-based' questions. It seems that one was not opinion-based. As soon as I have some time, I will try to explain better my point of view. Don't worry so much with comments; they are second class citizens in Stack Exchange." CreationDate="2016-02-09T11:06:20.410" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="9241" PostId="2957" Score="5" Text="@jsakaluk: But mightn't it be that among the reasons CV's become what it is - a place where you can ask a question like that &amp; get thoughtful answers rather than ill-informed rants - is that we have rather strict rules on what sort of questions we deem appropriate for the site? Whenever the success of the Stack Overflow model is discussed, the contribution of insisting on specific, objectively answerable questions is emphasized." CreationDate="2016-02-09T17:08:46.010" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9242" PostId="2957" Score="2" Text="@Scortchi: Sure--I'm not proposing abandoning all rule and order on CV. But if the intent of CW-related-rules is to prevent thoughtless, ill-informed rants/questions/answers, then I submit that the technical details of the rules need to be reviewed when posts containing thoughtful questions/answers are being mistakenly and/or inconsistently categorized as CW. And while I am wholly supportive of the need for specific, objectively answerable questions, I'm not onboard with a definition of &quot;objectively answerable&quot; that leaves no room for different interpretations of empirical evidence." CreationDate="2016-02-09T17:19:54.337" UserId="53456" />
  <row Id="9245" PostId="2957" Score="0" Text="@Silverfish: Don't you think that making Approximate-$e$ CW but your follow-up question non-CW is double standards? Your question already has three answers with three different proofs. Hard as I try, I fail to see why different proofs deserve any different status than different algorithms. I am curious if you maintain that you see the difference *and* this difference is so very important that it justifies all the unfairness of CW status. I have updated this answer with several more examples." CreationDate="2016-02-10T11:48:52.727" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9246" PostId="2957" Score="1" Text="I can't see why &quot;how do we prove X&quot; or &quot;how do we get this result&quot; or  &quot;how do we solve this question&quot; should be CW, if they were CW then virtually ever self-study Q here would be CW and that's clearly not what CW is designed for. For me, that's quite distinct from &quot;what's a cool example of X&quot;, &quot;where can I see phenomenon X in real life&quot;, &quot;what's a surprising fact about X&quot; which would all be strong candidates for CW (though far from the only kind of CW question)." CreationDate="2016-02-10T12:54:25.540" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9247" PostId="2957" Score="1" Text="As to why I felt the MC-e example fell closer to the second branch, it's to some extent about the breadth of approaches. For comparison (I appreciate this Q would be a computational science one, not a stats one on CV) imagine &quot;How is e calculated to high precision, say trillions of decimal places? Is Euler's factorial expansion optimal?&quot; That could still invite multiple answers taking different approaches (e.g. discussing recent trends in methods used for computational attempts, or weighing up pros and cons of different methods, or explaining why the factorial can be beaten)..." CreationDate="2016-02-10T12:59:34.757" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9248" PostId="2957" Score="1" Text="... but the question is essentially &quot;objective&quot;, and the answers would share a greater unity of purpose and approach. The answers would be more objectively comparable (an answer that discussed the latest papers on the topic would &quot;beat&quot; one that discusses the state of the art ca.1990, so long as it was clearly written and insightful for the OP)." CreationDate="2016-02-10T13:03:26.987" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9249" PostId="2957" Score="1" Text="If we look at the *substance* of the MC-e question, it was basically asking &quot;are there any cool MC simulations which just so happen to involve the number e, and which we could therefore use to estimate e?&quot; where &quot;cool&quot; means &quot;not doing direct computation, and ignoring 'boring' solutions like using MC to estimate obvious integrals&quot;. Those constraints effectively render the question a bit &quot;silly&quot; (by which I mean &quot;fun-silly&quot; rather than &quot;stupid-silly&quot;, it's still a great question). A &quot;proper&quot; answer would be really dull. A &quot;nice&quot; answer would enter the &quot;spirit of the question&quot;." CreationDate="2016-02-10T13:08:50.573" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9250" PostId="2957" Score="2" Text="Apologies for the verbosity. For the TLDR, perhaps **if we are rating answers by their &quot;coolness&quot; or measuring how well they enter the &quot;spirit of the question&quot; then there's a case for considering CW** ... think that roughly expresses my intent" CreationDate="2016-02-10T13:10:59.873" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9237" PostId="2959" Score="2" Text="Should this thread maybe be merged into the other one so that the answer gets moved there? I always find it unfortunate and unhelpful when there is a really good answer in a thread closed as a duplicate." CreationDate="2016-02-09T10:19:08.680" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9244" PostId="2959" Score="1" Text="It has been merged, thanks @whuber. http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/172761." CreationDate="2016-02-10T00:28:15.880" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9251" PostId="2959" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b, the answer I meant was &#xA;Soren Havelund Welling's. Your comment to the bounty names RUser4512's. I don't know if you want to / can change that." CreationDate="2016-02-10T21:30:20.417" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9252" PostId="2959" Score="0" Text="@gung Thanks for pointing it out. That appears to have been a hiccup with my browser as I scrolled down to see who the author was -- there was a short delay as I scrolled and it seems to have jumped from somewhere in the middle of the answer you linked to the middle of the next one as I scrolled (the similarity of some of the plots helped me to think nothing was amiss). I can't change the message. I'll roll back the edit to your post so that I also place a bounty on the one you wanted; Soren's answer will get a 200 point bounty as a result." CreationDate="2016-02-10T21:55:54.733" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9264" PostId="2959" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b: Just to see if I understand it correctly: so after you wrote an erroneous bounty description message you considered yourself morally obliged to award it RUser4512? You could still have awarded it to Soren, despite the message." CreationDate="2016-02-12T00:02:55.843" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9265" PostId="2959" Score="1" Text="@amoeba I could have, but as you say, I felt a moral obligation to do as I had said. It's decent post though, I'd happily have given it 50 anyway. If it had not been a good post I'd have awarded it where it should have gone and posted an apology in comments under the other answer." CreationDate="2016-02-12T00:06:07.757" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9364" PostId="2959" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b, by the &quot;Now awarded&quot;, are you indicating I should delete?" CreationDate="2016-02-17T23:56:04.300" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9365" PostId="2959" Score="1" Text="@gung No. I'd actually prefer you didn't delete." CreationDate="2016-02-18T00:07:53.300" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9240" PostId="2960" Score="5" Text="I have to say that when I'm reading in a foreign language, even &quot;trivial&quot; spelling errors cause me a lot of confusion (is this a different word I haven't seen before? Does he really mean this other word? Am I right to &quot;correct&quot; this in my head, or am I misunderstanding?). Something like &quot;their/there&quot; probably isn't too confusing generally, but say &quot;they're/there&quot; - a common autocorrect issue - might easily cause a sentence to be misconstrued. I think the clarifying effect of small corrections can be underestimated, but I'd encourage people to fix anything else they can at the same time." CreationDate="2016-02-09T12:26:59.510" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9363" PostId="2961" Score="2" Text="I agree that this is a worthy answer, but I've already awarded David a bounty (to another already-highly-upvoted) answer in this round, so I may leave a bit of a gap before awarding another to a similarly upvoted post." CreationDate="2016-02-17T23:34:53.760" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9367" PostId="2961" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b ok, this policy makes sens :)" CreationDate="2016-02-18T08:10:09.160" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="9368" PostId="2961" Score="0" Text="Even if it's only a week or so perhaps -- I only just awarded the other in the last day or so." CreationDate="2016-02-18T08:13:37.320" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9254" PostId="2963" Score="0" Text="See this [related post](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/2947/930)." CreationDate="2016-02-11T16:47:17.730" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="9255" PostId="2963" Score="0" Text="@chl how this related post woudl help me? I still can't see the formatted equations. I'm wondering if there a plugin to use, or I should be able to see the formatted equation yet?" CreationDate="2016-02-11T16:52:42.520" UserId="89021" />
  <row Id="9256" PostId="2963" Score="3" Text="Whatever problem you are having is unlikely to be related to this site: it must be specific to some unusual configurations or limitations on your end.  Such problems, whenever reported, seem to have been temporary." CreationDate="2016-02-11T17:06:10.360" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="9257" PostId="2963" Score="2" Text="Try to close the browser and open it again. Did it help? If not, try to clear your browser's cache and reload the page. Did it help?" CreationDate="2016-02-11T17:26:48.747" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9261" PostId="2963" Score="1" Text="Just found out what was! The proxy of network's company (I'm at work) is blocking this feature somehow. Thanks for the attention! @amoeba" CreationDate="2016-02-11T18:16:23.710" UserId="89021" />
  <row Id="9268" PostId="2963" Score="0" Text="@AlvaroJoao: This is bizarre. So the company proxy is blocking mathjax.org where the JS scripts are located? How did you find out? Can you access mathjax.org in your browser?" CreationDate="2016-02-12T14:40:43.233" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9269" PostId="2963" Score="1" Text="@amoeba I found out when I used the network tool in Chrome's Developer Tools. Blocked this script: &#xA;**http://cdn.mathjax.org/mathjax/latest/MathJax.js?config=TeX-AMS_HTML-full**. Afterward, I allowed the `UltraSurf plugin` and worked as expected." CreationDate="2016-02-12T14:48:31.670" UserId="89021" />
  <row Id="9270" PostId="2963" Score="0" Text="Thanks, this makes sense. I think it would be better if this thread is reopened and you posted an answer yourself explaining how to diagnose and circumvent the problem, it might be helpful for future readers." CreationDate="2016-02-12T15:10:07.840" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9271" PostId="2964" Score="7" Text="There is some confusion here. Your question about data scientists has currently 51 upvotes and is a very likely candidate to be converted to CW (in fact, I am surprised that it did not happen yet; I would of course prefer that it remains non-CW, see my answer). If this happens, then your 51*5=255 reputation points **will not be taken away from you.** But you will stop receiving any reputation points for any further upvotes." CreationDate="2016-02-12T17:15:13.807" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9272" PostId="2964" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Awwwwwwww that makes perfect sense.  I thought everything was revoked. In that case, should I delete this answer?" CreationDate="2016-02-12T17:16:15.633" UserId="98920" />
  <row Id="9273" PostId="2964" Score="1" Text="I think you should keep this answer up. Regardless of whether all total, or all future rep is lost, I agree with you; if nothing else, a heads-up to the effect of, &quot;so, by the way, your post is going to be turned into CW...&quot;, would be nice. Or perhaps even better: could moderators provide a comment on what would generally need to change in a post for it to be kept non-CW?" CreationDate="2016-02-13T06:07:42.167" UserId="53456" />
  <row Id="9274" PostId="2964" Score="3" Text="The spirit is right but you could make a general case that all actions by moderators should be directly flagged to the individuals most concerned. Even if this were automated, I am unhappy about the principle and unclear where you should draw the line. Do/should spammers, posters of rude or intemperate comments, posters  of questions put on hold, etc. get direct notification? While individuals' rights and sensitivity deserve complete respect, ultimately all moderators' actions are on behalf of the community. (For myself, I really don't mind any loss of reputation contributing to CW threads.)" CreationDate="2016-02-13T11:34:09.437" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9311" PostId="2974" Score="1" Text="I've answered by example. It's fine to edit questions for poor presentation (or, as the case may be, to suggest such edits). But there are many questions here on Meta about editing questions and I'm voting to close yours as duplicate. If I'm missing the point and you have a new question please do tell us what it is." CreationDate="2016-02-13T15:20:20.937" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9314" PostId="2974" Score="0" Text="@Nick, don't we have a better thread on editing? The one you found is very old and is quite poor. Perhaps this one is a better fit: [Editing Original Posts - Dos and Don'ts](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2810)? Your own answer there is very good." CreationDate="2016-02-13T15:59:17.253" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9316" PostId="2974" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I was one person answering that one but I am happy to be told that it's better." CreationDate="2016-02-13T16:01:41.130" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9329" PostId="2975" Score="0" Text="Thanks for all the references. I have read and aware of all of those and indeed I am trying to come up with a new acquisition function. But really, I guess that is the hardest part..." CreationDate="2016-02-15T05:51:58.757" UserId="98920" />
  <row Id="9333" PostId="2975" Score="4" Text="This no doubt is helpful on the original specific question, but it doesn't address the Meta question here." CreationDate="2016-02-15T09:47:09.897" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9335" PostId="2975" Score="0" Text="(+1) Good point @Nick, thanks -- I am a new user to Meta.&#xA;Perhaps -- and please take this as a Meta comment to improve Meta -- you should apply the same standard to all users. I wrote and spent time on my answer because I saw another answer from a very experienced user which addresses the original question; this seemed to be fine and nobody pointed out its off-topic-ness. This is confusing for new users.  (It might be formally incorrect, but looking at what more experienced members do, e.g. what look like acceptable answers, is a common way human beings learn the rules of a community.)" CreationDate="2016-02-15T16:00:53.760" UserId="80479" />
  <row Id="9337" PostId="2975" Score="0" Text="Sorry, but I don't follow what you are suggesting here. In practice, despite being a frequent and keen user of this forum, I don't have time to look at more than a very few threads. So, that is unfortunately a more than sufficient explanation if you are suggesting that I am being inconsistent. It's not too late to add the suggestion that your reply might belong to the other thread, except that I have not studied it carefully." CreationDate="2016-02-15T16:16:37.437" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9338" PostId="2975" Score="0" Text="My comment was addressed to you but more in general to other users of Meta I suppose (that's why I meant it as &quot;a Meta comment to improve Meta&quot;). I appreciate that you personally cannot read all answers -- from the upvotes to your comment I reckoned that other people were following this. However, the other answer is in this very thread, so I (erroneously) assumed you (or other users) had read it, but this was a wrong assumption on my part. Thanks again for your clarification." CreationDate="2016-02-15T16:33:59.540" UserId="80479" />
  <row Id="9340" PostId="2975" Score="0" Text="You're right. Indeed I am now also puzzled by the answer from the redoubtable @gung, which addresses the substantive question, not the Meta question, as far as I can see. Comment added above for symmetry." CreationDate="2016-02-15T18:14:59.273" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9341" PostId="2975" Score="0" Text="@NickCox (lacerbi), basically it was a comment that was too long to fit as a comment, so I posted it as an answer. This is an admittedly boundary-pushing practice that people sometimes engage in, but probably shouldn't. I will delete my answer. I agree that this post isn't really a meta answer either, but I am indifferent to whether or not it stays. Ie, my deletion is not meant to suggest that this post should be deleted as well." CreationDate="2016-02-15T18:22:44.117" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9345" PostId="2975" Score="0" Text="I would suggest this answer stay as I think, although it does not answer my original question of where can we post things, it is a valuable answer in its own right to the secondary topic at hand of optimization of acquisition functions." CreationDate="2016-02-16T03:55:38.703" UserId="98920" />
  <row Id="9362" PostId="2975" Score="0" Text="Thanks all for your answers. I agree with you all that my answer is off-topic here (although it might be of interest for the non-Meta question). I'd be happy if it was moved somewhere else more appropriate. (Perhaps if at some point @RustyStatistician opens a related thread in CrossValidated it could be moved there.)" CreationDate="2016-02-17T22:32:54.347" UserId="80479" />
  <row Id="9347" PostId="2977" Score="9" Text="**It is not obvious.** People closing your question as a duplicate were acting in good faith (and note that in case of your second question three people voted to close it as a duplicate and none of them is a moderator). However, I agree with you that none of the answers in the linked questions provides an *explicit* answer to your question, and I would say that your question has the full right of staying open. This is an unfortunate but normal situation. If this happens, you should explain in the comments why the duplicates do not help you and edit your question accordingly. [cont.]" CreationDate="2016-02-17T11:25:02.890" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9348" PostId="2977" Score="3" Text="[cont]. If you feel that it still does not work, you can ask on meta (like you do now) or in chat. But please **do not** ever re-post your question again: this is very unhelpful and can only alienate other users. Now there are two almost identical questions, closed as duplicates of different threads, and the whole thing is a mess." CreationDate="2016-02-17T11:27:05.780" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9349" PostId="2977" Score="0" Text="Re &quot;mess&quot;: I don't know if anyone has the power to do this - but perhaps my first question could be zapped altogether?" CreationDate="2016-02-17T11:29:01.877" UserId="96274" />
  <row Id="9350" PostId="2977" Score="1" Text="Hmm, can't you delete it yourself?" CreationDate="2016-02-17T11:29:21.773" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9351" PostId="2977" Score="0" Text="I just clicked delete... but I don't think its actually gone... maybe delete just gives a vote to delete and more are needed." CreationDate="2016-02-17T11:32:12.117" UserId="96274" />
  <row Id="9352" PostId="2977" Score="4" Text="It *is* gone. Thanks. Meanwhile, I have edited your second question, upvoted, and voted to reopen. An appropriate term (missing from your questions) is &quot;an *explicit* solution&quot;." CreationDate="2016-02-17T11:35:53.630" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9353" PostId="2977" Score="7" Text="People can make mistakes in good faith. But you don't change people's minds just by asserting that a decision was wrong, obviously or otherwise. The detailed, specific reasons why something else is not the same question are what are needed." CreationDate="2016-02-17T13:46:21.060" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9354" PostId="2977" Score="0" Text="IMHO, the text after the word &quot;EDIT&quot; explains why the decision is wrong. I fail to see how the suggested duplicate answer satisfies the request made." CreationDate="2016-02-17T14:48:35.740" UserId="96274" />
  <row Id="9356" PostId="2977" Score="3" Text="Although it's unhelpfully alleged otherwise in the thread you cite, moderators and high-reputation users are not in my experience being difficult on purpose in voting to close. Note that if there is a duplicate, it's in your interests too to be told about it, as you can go straight there." CreationDate="2016-02-17T15:48:06.430" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9357" PostId="2977" Score="3" Text="You have a fair point, but (1) as far as possible questions on Meta should be self-contained, i.e. they should not depend entirely on reading something else; (2) there is a grey area all the way to &quot;I don't understand that answer because it is phrased in different terms&quot;. To be clear, I think you have a good case here, but it's best to be a little more diplomatic and not to (appear to) assume or assert that people are being high-handed in closing your question. No user has the ability or power &quot;to stop people marking my question as duplicate&quot;, which were your words." CreationDate="2016-02-17T15:51:26.687" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9358" PostId="2977" Score="0" Text="I have had similar issues in the past on related forums and my biggest frustration is not necessarily getting the question marked as duplicate, but more the time/effort needed to get the verdict changed. Even now the question is still marked as duplicate despite 39 views of this thread and at least three forum users agreeing that I have a good case. In future I suspect my best bet would be to delete my original post and then re-post with the words &quot;please do not mark as duplicate because...&quot; right at the top." CreationDate="2016-02-17T15:59:53.533" UserId="96274" />
  <row Id="9359" PostId="2977" Score="4" Text="I would recommend against any such flag &quot;please do not mark as duplicate&quot;, which if anything raises a doubt about whether you are pushing against advice given in good faith. A question should stand on its own two feet; if a community isn't convinced, then no such wording will immunize it against downvoting. I can't comment on your experience elsewhere in other forums, which is in any case must run themselves." CreationDate="2016-02-17T16:09:20.277" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9360" PostId="2977" Score="1" Text="I could put it more diplomatically, like &quot;I have seen similar questions and answers, e.g here and here... but those answers are no good to me because...xyz&quot;." CreationDate="2016-02-17T16:13:16.440" UserId="96274" />
  <row Id="9361" PostId="2977" Score="2" Text="That's better. &quot;no good to me&quot; would be even better as &quot;not precisely what I seek here&quot;." CreationDate="2016-02-17T16:23:48.777" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9381" PostId="2979" Score="1" Text="+1 Good suggestions all over. Especially the [tag:Wilcoxon] is necessary because it clearly misleading users substantially. Would you make [rank] and [ranking] synonyms?" CreationDate="2016-02-18T19:25:48.827" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="9383" PostId="2979" Score="0" Text="Given the confusion generated by `[wilcoxon]`, I wonder if it would be better not to make it a synonym, but just to destroy it. I don't know. My thought is that someone might still come along later &amp; type that &amp; automatically get the one synonym, when they had meant the other." CreationDate="2016-02-18T19:49:08.707" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9388" PostId="2979" Score="3" Text="@gung, I think we should treat [wilcoxon] similar to [student-t]. I would create two new tags [wilcoxon-ranksum] and [wilcoxon-signed-rank], then go through all threads in [wilcoxon] and sort them out into these two, and finally make [wilcoxon-ranksum] a synonym of [ranksum] (together with [mann-whitney-u-test]; the master thread name can be discussed though) and [wilcoxon-signed-rank] a synonym of [signed-rank]. I don't think we will need to blacklist [wilcoxon] after that." CreationDate="2016-02-18T21:26:56.260" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9389" PostId="2979" Score="2" Text="@usεr11852, I *guess* that [rank] can be a synonym of [ranking], but somebody has to look at these tags in more detail to see if it makes sense. I am not sure we need a ranking tag on questions about ranksum test or spearman's correlation; this seems superfluous. So I have a feeling that in many cases it can be removed altogether (or replaced by a more specific tag). But there probably are some general questions on ranking or rank-based methods for which the tag would make sense." CreationDate="2016-02-18T21:30:29.227" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9402" PostId="2979" Score="0" Text="Some good suggestions here. If I recall correctly, &quot;Spearman rho&quot; and &quot;Kendall tau&quot; are far from the only type of rank correlation though, so I don't think it is so easy to get rid of &quot;rank correlation&quot; so easily." CreationDate="2016-02-19T19:53:30.317" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9403" PostId="2979" Score="4" Text="Would you say that these tags are... *rank*?" CreationDate="2016-02-19T21:28:48.957" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="9404" PostId="2979" Score="1" Text="@user777 Had to consult the dictionary to get the joke :-) Thanks." CreationDate="2016-02-19T22:36:02.353" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12671" PostId="2979" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, voted." CreationDate="2017-03-02T13:21:42.340" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12773" PostId="2979" Score="0" Text="I am working my way through rank-correlation. I have done all the easy ones. One thing I notice is that there are some about rank biserial correlation. We have no tag for biserial correlation and there are about 35+ questions about it. Shall I create it and tag them? Should I do this as a separate proposal?" CreationDate="2017-03-12T12:16:46.507" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="12777" PostId="2979" Score="0" Text="@mdewey To be honest, I've never heard about &quot;biserial correlation&quot; before. Do you mean this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point-biserial_correlation_coefficient? The article says &quot;The point-biserial correlation is mathematically equivalent to the Pearson (product moment) correlation&quot;. If this is true, then I guess the existing [pearson-r] tag is enough, isn't it?" CreationDate="2017-03-12T20:31:33.083" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12796" PostId="2979" Score="0" Text="`ranking` is the task for a respondent to rank stimuli (i.e. it is distinquished from `rating`  or `labeling`/`categorizing`. `ranks` are transformed, ranked values." CreationDate="2017-03-13T13:38:03.350" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="12798" PostId="2979" Score="0" Text="@mdewey By the way, what are you doing with rank-correlation questions that do not mention any specific type of rank correlation (Spearman/Kendall/etc)? Are there many questions like that?" CreationDate="2017-03-13T20:37:12.043" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12799" PostId="2979" Score="1" Text="I am doing them on an ad hoc basis. Some of them are not really about rank correlation at all. There will be a few left which have totally defeated me and I will let you lnow when I have to show the white flag." CreationDate="2017-03-13T21:25:33.653" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="12802" PostId="2979" Score="0" Text="I think that `rank-correlation` tag has rights to exist. There are rank-based correlations apart from Spearman or Kendall. Perhaps, we might consider to rename that tag to more general but close `nonparametric-correlation` tag." CreationDate="2017-03-14T07:40:30.973" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="12803" PostId="2979" Score="0" Text="@ttnphns It's just the usual problem with the subset tags... We have 250 Qs in spearman-rho, around 80 in kendall-tau, 3 questions in goodman-kruskall-gamma, so it's 300+ questions *about* rank correlation *without* rank-correlation tag. So having a separate general rank-correlation tag with only a few threads (currently only 10) is just not very helpful for navigation." CreationDate="2017-03-14T08:04:24.017" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12806" PostId="2979" Score="1" Text="I have now reduced rank-correlation to a handful. These are ones where I really do not see what the best course of action might be and would welcom someone else having a go. The ones I eliminated were mostly spearman-rho, some kendall-tau, and a mixture of other statistics which were not really rank-correlation at all IMHO. In the process I created a tag somers-d with a wiki. There are a few more Somers'  D questions which I shall find and tag but they did not have rank-correlation." CreationDate="2017-03-14T12:48:53.730" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="12807" PostId="2979" Score="0" Text="@ttnphns you are of course right but if people ask about those other methods then they can either use both the tags correlation and nonparametric together or create a new tag (for instance for Spearman's footrule)" CreationDate="2017-03-14T12:50:35.290" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="12815" PostId="2979" Score="1" Text="@mdewey There are only 2 closed questions left in rank-correlation, so it should disappear after the questions are deleted (I think it's 9 days after closure so still in a couple of days). Now we will have to sort out [wilcoxon]..." CreationDate="2017-03-15T20:02:43.663" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12816" PostId="2979" Score="0" Text="I was wondering what was still left on the agenda" CreationDate="2017-03-15T20:26:55.387" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="12958" PostId="2979" Score="0" Text="Is there an update on [wilcoxon] progress and hints about what help is needed at this stage?" CreationDate="2017-04-02T16:16:06.993" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="12959" PostId="2979" Score="0" Text="@mdewey I don't know. I was not working on it (I am not doing much here these days). I see that it has 215 Qs now, so quite a bit has been eliminated but I am not sure by whom. In any case, the plan is still (as per #5) to manually re-tag everything about ranksum test (Mann-Whitney / Wilcoxon ranksum) into wilcoxon-mann-whitney." CreationDate="2017-04-02T17:40:05.210" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12960" PostId="2979" Score="1" Text="I think most of them are due to me. I will have a look at some of the others starting from the oldest." CreationDate="2017-04-02T20:18:36.353" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="9370" PostId="2980" Score="0" Text="You make some valid points here. For the record, it is not a homework question." CreationDate="2016-02-18T15:31:04.680" UserId="96274" />
  <row Id="9371" PostId="2980" Score="0" Text="Re: &quot;The desired form for the answer can easily be got by Googling&quot; - I don't believe this to be true. I can find plenty of worked examples of solving 3 simultaneous equations, but they always use nice whole numbered constants which cancel neatly. I failed to find a link via google which gave an generalised answer." CreationDate="2016-02-18T15:44:14.817" UserId="96274" />
  <row Id="9372" PostId="2980" Score="2" Text="The search terms `linear regression two independent variables` give http://faculty.cas.usf.edu/mbrannick/regression/Reg2IV.html as the 2nd result, &amp; this page contains algebraic expressions for each individual coefficient estimate." CreationDate="2016-02-18T15:52:19.207" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9373" PostId="2980" Score="0" Text="Touche - though in my defence, I did not know the right keywords to type in. I was typing variations of &quot;solve three simultaneous equations&quot;." CreationDate="2016-02-18T16:00:46.670" UserId="96274" />
  <row Id="9374" PostId="2980" Score="5" Text="That's a good point - knowing the right search terms matters. I've removed &quot;easily&quot;." CreationDate="2016-02-18T16:09:11.767" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9397" PostId="2981" Score="0" Text="I didn't get what the difference between `pearson-chi-squared` &amp; `[pearson-goodness-of-fit]` is supposed to be? Is the first the test for independence/homogeneity? And then why create two tags only to map them both to one?" CreationDate="2016-02-19T12:22:07.973" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9398" PostId="2981" Score="1" Text="I had a cursory look at the [pearson] tag to see what it is used for apart from the obvious correlation usage. I see that sometimes people write smth like &quot;I am doing Pearson's goodness of fit test&quot;  and sometimes &quot;I have problems with Pearson's chi squared test&quot;. Of course it is the same thing (that's why I suggest to map both to [chi-squared]) but I thought that perhaps some people would not know that and so might be confused about which tag to use when they start typing &quot;pearson...&quot; in the tag window. But if we think that this is uncommon then it's enough to have [pearson-chi-squared]." CreationDate="2016-02-19T12:57:25.127" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9399" PostId="2981" Score="2" Text="We could re-tag existing questions with just one of the two, say `pearson-chi-squared`, but still map both to the synonym `chi-squared`." CreationDate="2016-02-19T13:35:10.523" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9400" PostId="2981" Score="2" Text="Yes, this makes sense. In fact, if one is re-tagging anyway then one can directly retag into [chi-squared]. But we would need synonyms for future convenience anyway. And what do you think about [pearson-r] vs. [correlation]? I think most of the [correlation] questions refer to Pearson's correlation, so it is a bit strange to have 10-times-less-used [pearson-r] separately. On the other hand, &quot;correlation&quot; as a term can certainly refer to more things than Pearson's correlation." CreationDate="2016-02-19T13:48:19.170" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9401" PostId="2981" Score="0" Text="Meanwhile, I edited the Q based on your suggestion." CreationDate="2016-02-19T14:33:02.900" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12357" PostId="2981" Score="0" Text="I just tried to create a synonym suggestion for `[pcs]` &amp; `[pgof]`, but it won't let me. It says the tags have to exist first. Do you think we should add them onto a Q so that we can make the synonym suggestions, or just drop the issue?" CreationDate="2017-02-12T14:33:14.123" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12359" PostId="2981" Score="0" Text="@gung Yes, one needs to create them first (put on any suitable Q). I still think it's worth doing, at least for [pcs]." CreationDate="2017-02-12T15:26:08.430" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12430" PostId="2981" Score="1" Text="OK, I just created the 2 tags ([here](http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/81238/7290), &amp; [here](http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/181953/7290)), &amp; made the synonym suggestions [here](http://stats.stackexchange.com/tags/chi-squared/synonyms)." CreationDate="2017-02-14T14:09:28.083" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12454" PostId="2981" Score="0" Text="@gung Cool, I voted myself and have pinged a couple of people to vote." CreationDate="2017-02-15T09:47:26.023" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12555" PostId="2981" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi It's been some time, but I followed up on that. Take a look at the update to my answer here. I think [pearson] tag is ready to be renamed [pearson-r]. Can you help here?" CreationDate="2017-02-22T09:36:59.450" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12560" PostId="2981" Score="1" Text="@amoeba: Thanks! Done." CreationDate="2017-02-22T12:54:57.363" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="12561" PostId="2981" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi Great, thanks! Could you also take a look at the similar situation with [permutation]: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/a/4461" CreationDate="2017-02-22T13:00:11.267" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12563" PostId="2981" Score="1" Text="@amoeba: Done too." CreationDate="2017-02-22T13:32:47.893" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="12564" PostId="2981" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi Thanks! I noticed that there was a shuffle-&gt;permutation synonym that is now pointing permutation-test. I am not sure it's helpful (?). Perhaps we should rather delete this synonym and see if [shuffle] reappears?.." CreationDate="2017-02-22T13:34:54.367" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12565" PostId="2981" Score="1" Text="@amoeba: I've removed it." CreationDate="2017-02-22T13:36:35.607" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9405" PostId="2982" Score="6" Text="There's much truth in all that - for discussions on internet forums, the equivalents of which here are chat &amp; comments. But when you're posting a question on a Q&amp;A site the polite thing to do is to make it as concise as possible, shorn of unnecessary thanks, apologies, &amp; personal details; out of consideration for the people who are going to read it now, to answer it, &amp; in the future, to find an answer. :P" CreationDate="2016-02-20T14:18:24.127" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9406" PostId="2982" Score="6" Text="Thanks for adding a different perspective. It's interesting to have the issue placed in the context of other SE sites (which I have little experience with). I think there are a couple of issues that might be specific to this site. The overwhelming majority of new posters here say something like 'sorry this is a dumb question, I don't know much statistics' etc. These statements are painful for me (I don't know much statistics either). They might be more informative if some posters knew a lot &amp; some knew a little, but nearly all new questions are basic." CreationDate="2016-02-20T14:35:17.770" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9407" PostId="2982" Score="6" Text="We can tell the OP's sophistication from the question, so it's redundant. Moreover, to answer a statistical question, we need certain information, possibly a good deal of it, about your situation, but OTOH the longer a Q is, the less likely people will fight through it; so there is a tension there. We want to get the right information, all of it, but only the needed information, as quickly &amp; easily as possible. What is best for us to answer the Q, &amp; thus best for the OP (&amp; best for future readers who come across the thread), is to minimize the number of extra comments." CreationDate="2016-02-20T14:44:48.053" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9408" PostId="2982" Score="4" Text="@gung: Sometimes it can be useful for the OP to say they're familiar with such &amp; such a method but don't know how to extend it to this situation; or to ask for an answer that illustrates something graphically, &amp; not just with equations, or without matrix algebra - it's &quot;I don't know much statistics&quot; &amp; the like that can be rather off-putting because they seem to want to impose some sort of constraint on the answer while being vague as to what it consists of." CreationDate="2016-02-20T14:52:37.147" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9409" PostId="2982" Score="1" Text="@Scortchi Would specificity help? If instead of saying &quot;I don't know much statistics,&quot; the writer says exactly which types of stats they're unfamiliar with, so that the responders can try alternate means of explanation? Something like, &quot;I grasp matrix explanations well but don't understand tensors&quot; or &quot;I'm good with geometry but have a tough time with calculus.&quot; etc." CreationDate="2016-02-20T20:19:49.993" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="9410" PostId="2982" Score="3" Text="@gung I have quite an axe-wielding approach to what I regard as extraneous comments. Having said that, I quite often leave &quot;Thanks for giving a full answer&quot; or &quot;Thanks for pointing me in the right direction&quot; (where the thanks are meant in anticipation) because they give a sense of the type of answer that the OP expects (rough intuition vs step-by-step explanation). Other than something that gives a signpost as to what kind of answers are expected, I tend to chop it out." CreationDate="2016-02-20T22:32:20.267" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9411" PostId="2982" Score="2" Text="I enjoy participating on this site &amp; maths. Compared to other stack exhanges sites this one isn't open so much to short quick-fire answers, which perhaps goes a little way to show why it has a different feel; although most of the credit has to go to the users who most frequently contribute to and help moderate the site. I don't agree with you about the benefits of retaining thankyous. (In case it happens, note that a question can be downvoted on meta because people don't agree with your suggestion, rather than it being a &quot;bad question&quot; as on the main site.)" CreationDate="2016-02-21T15:03:08.827" UserId="25936" />
  <row Id="9412" PostId="2982" Score="1" Text="@SQLServerSteve: Exactly! When relevant - as gung says, it's often not necessary at all." CreationDate="2016-02-21T16:38:52.970" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9413" PostId="2982" Score="3" Text="Part of this interesting and thoughtful answer seems to boil down to: There isn't really a problem with civility here on CV, but there would be if we had the sort of aggressive behaviour that you have seen on some other sites; so we should not do that. That's welcome good news, but it is perhaps self-cancelling. Pedantic note: nemesis doesn't mean antagonist." CreationDate="2016-02-21T16:52:39.040" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9414" PostId="2982" Score="4" Text="I'm an aggressive editor in respect of personal or dispensable fluff, as I see the goal here as building up a repository of concise, precise, technical questions well answered. We don't need &quot;thank you&quot; or similar padding any more than encyclopedia articles begin with &quot;Hi&quot; and end with &quot;We hope you find this useful&quot;." CreationDate="2016-02-21T16:53:03.167" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9415" PostId="2982" Score="1" Text="@Nick I'd like to see that too. My main contention is that there's a tricky point where zero tolerance can **paradoxically** increase the text and/or decrease the # of quality answers. Judicious thanks/specific disclaimers of technical level can prevent mixups/fruitless discussion paths that are not just testy but lengthy. In such cases, they reduce the overall text. There's 1 key difference from an encyclopedia: the public entries come from 1,000s of strangers with varied personalities &amp; expertise. A slight allowance can be made for this slight difference &amp; can aid in brevity in the long run." CreationDate="2016-02-21T22:17:41.283" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="9416" PostId="2982" Score="1" Text="I agree with the spirit of the majority that such comments are typically extraneous ;I just wanted to illustrate that there's a boundary on the other side, where zero-tolerance editing sometimes leads to more text in the long run. **It's like a greedy algorithm getting stuck in a local minima.** I saw this happen often in journalism when editors chopped out detail that ended up requiring follow-up articles to set straight. A similar dynamic applies in forums like these too: cut in the wrong place &amp; conciseness declines. 9 times out of 10 that won't apply, but there's always that 10th time." CreationDate="2016-02-21T22:21:59.287" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="9417" PostId="2982" Score="3" Text="In one sense I am much more optimistic than you. Elementary or confused questions usually are self-evident. You don't need a poster to say &quot;I am no good at statistics&quot; if they are asking something very basic. Occasionally people get deeper answers than they want or need, but that's where others step in, and the deeper answers can help others.   So, I don't think I've met a case where editing out fluff really obscured the technical question. Meeting the immediate and idiosyncratic needs of each OP is not the long-term goal of the forum, in any case." CreationDate="2016-02-22T09:39:25.413" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9420" PostId="2982" Score="2" Text="It is worth looking from the perspective of the OP. They are used to being flamed on internet forums and so they try to deflect that by stressing (a) that they know they are inept (b) they are grateful. In a perfect world that might not be necessary but we do not live in a perfect world. What they think when they find their post has been edited I do not know." CreationDate="2016-02-22T16:04:38.137" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="9418" PostId="2983" Score="3" Text="Similar incident in the past: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2775." CreationDate="2016-02-22T10:28:50.363" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9419" PostId="2983" Score="2" Text="Contrariwise, the answer does focus on R code and is really not out of place on SO. Note that SO people are capable of bouncing questions back. On some questions, which forum is better is hard to call. That doesn't undermine the principle of sending questions where they best belong (including nowhere sometimes; someone sent in something about relationship guidance not so long ago)." CreationDate="2016-02-22T10:41:53.997" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9421" PostId="2983" Score="1" Text="I agree with @NickCox (and whuber, +1 to each) that migration is not necessarily problematic - certainly the questioner was really after R code, and that was what was supplied, which makes migration to SO reasonable - I can see Tim's point that the solution *made use of* a statistical property of the time series. I think if the question had been phrased in a different way, with less software-specific orientation, I think it would have made a good question on CV also." CreationDate="2016-02-22T16:05:15.403" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9423" PostId="2983" Score="2" Text="(Something worth bearing in mind when math-heavy posts are migrated to SO is that it messes up the Latex, as it isn't supported over there.)" CreationDate="2016-02-22T19:17:40.180" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9422" PostId="2984" Score="0" Text="As for me the main point of the answer was about the nature of process generating the series - after noticing it the coding issues are obvious." CreationDate="2016-02-22T16:16:02.087" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="9424" PostId="2985" Score="6" Text="Would a higher or lower Gini score tell you whether 7K users were more reliable? My own thought would be to consider not just reputation but also net reputation per post; you can compute the second by clicking through to the user's page. [That's somewhat confounded by things like reputation cap and bounties given -- I've lost (/spent, respectively) in total about 5 reputation *per answer* on those -- but it shouldn't have much impact in general.] ... http://data.stackexchange.com/stats/ provides the ability to query the data base and some existing queries may partly answer your question." CreationDate="2016-02-22T20:33:28.347" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9425" PostId="2985" Score="3" Text="However, reputation per post is difficult to compare cross-site because some sites upvote more on average; you'd probably want to scale for that too. You also may want to take a account of the fact that some queries include deleted or migrated answers in the answer total but not in the reputation total (so someone that answers a lot of R questions may look worse on those queries than they should). A carefully considered query will probably give good information and it can be done by user." CreationDate="2016-02-22T20:41:34.927" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9426" PostId="2985" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b - that link is one of the sexiest things I have seen today.  :)" CreationDate="2016-02-22T22:10:56.887" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="9427" PostId="2985" Score="1" Text="This is the [answer per person ECDF](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/a/2086/1036) comparison for a few sites. I imagine it will be close to the same for reputation." CreationDate="2016-02-23T13:29:19.100" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="9428" PostId="2985" Score="3" Text="Well I wasted a few minutes getting the SQL as close as I could for the data explorer to calculate the GINI index. See [here](http://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/440285/gini-based-on-reputation)." CreationDate="2016-02-23T14:32:58.483" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="9429" PostId="2985" Score="3" Text="You would also need to consider that different tags get differing numbers of views &amp; upvotes. Ie for some tags, people contribute very high quality information, but get few upvotes. This will just be a very difficult question to answer. (Cf: [How should performance answering questions best be evaluated](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/1218/7290).)" CreationDate="2016-02-23T15:18:44.460" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9444" PostId="2985" Score="0" Text="A very-easy to compute measure (that sure does have its limitations) would be just to look at the reputation it takes (at least for the sites that are about equally old) to get into, say, position 100, 200, etc. in the all-times rankings." CreationDate="2016-02-26T15:46:40.623" UserId="67799" />
  <row Id="9432" PostId="2986" Score="1" Text="Muahahaa.  Yay, new term: [nerdsniping](https://xkcd.com/356/). Btw, the probplot of reputation indicates the oligarchy has 4 members with Id's of 686,805,919,and 7290.  They have cumulative reputation greater than the lowest 15,452 users, or 370,859 points.   It is also ~2870x more than the average user.  There should be a threshold of &quot;expert&quot; that is a function of GINI metric.  For CV the minimum reputation to indicate superior quality might be, consistent with observation, lower than for SO." CreationDate="2016-02-24T17:13:34.837" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="9435" PostId="2986" Score="0" Text="Note that the name Corrado Gini is honoured by at least three different coefficients in current use. That associated with the Lorenz curve is typically associated with positive values only as fractions of a total are key." CreationDate="2016-02-24T21:06:36.780" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9436" PostId="2986" Score="5" Text="An associated user who doesn't do anything on a site will actually have a rep of 101. In fact, CV has 13k users with rep = 101, and 9k with more than that, so your numbers based on &gt;100 rep are 59% users who've associated and nothing else (well, plus some who happen to have earned exactly 101 rep on CV alone). Your query for CV changes from .54 to .67 with a cutoff of 101; presumably, other sites change too, though I didn't check." CreationDate="2016-02-24T22:57:29.647" UserId="9964" />
  <row Id="9439" PostId="2986" Score="0" Text="@Dougal - yes, those who have rep on other sites get a 100 boost. Nice point about eliminating 101 and the GINI measure goes up, so it is not monotonically decreasing due to selection. I don't know whether it is reasonable to include them or not - presumably some of those browsers could legitimately answer questions. (And the one and done people it seems you are reasonable to keep as well in the metric.)" CreationDate="2016-02-25T18:59:15.090" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="9440" PostId="2986" Score="0" Text="@NickCox - I can't say I am familiar with any other coefficient than the one presented (citations added). There are quite a few different formulas floating around the produce that same statistic - but yes it ranges between 0 and 1." CreationDate="2016-02-25T19:03:14.657" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="9441" PostId="2986" Score="1" Text="It's much more than there being several recipes for the measure you use, which can be related to the Lorenz curve. There are other quite different measures with the same label of Gini," CreationDate="2016-02-25T19:05:38.350" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9447" PostId="2986" Score="3" Text="When a 30k user on CV gives an answer - their answers tend to be &quot;the mutant offspring of Clint Eastwood and Yoda&quot; - they take the problem down with severe prejudice.  I was surprised to see other fora where they can answer pretty bad.  The number means different things in different contexts.  If you can get a &quot;high&quot; reputation from a cracker-jack box, then your typical answers are likely to deserve less credibility.  I am curious about the human physics behind that." CreationDate="2016-02-26T19:08:26.493" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="9452" PostId="2986" Score="0" Text="In regards to the Gini coefficient, it is occasionally calculated with negative values (in regards to wealth, debt is a negative value). For the sake of describing CV, SO, etc. scores, it's not clear that you want use the raw scores: as you note, such a high percent of users have scores &gt;= 101. They get their scores for &quot;free&quot;, so we might be more interested in the distribution of &quot;earned scores&quot;, ie score - 101. This would greatly affect the estimated Gini coefficient." CreationDate="2016-02-27T02:49:00.870" UserId="76981" />
  <row Id="9455" PostId="2986" Score="2" Text="The SO user rankings start tracking at 200 points, I suspect that is the value they came up with for an &quot;engaged user&quot;. That is the cutoff I would sugest." CreationDate="2016-02-28T09:53:31.550" UserId="69240" />
  <row Id="9443" PostId="2987" Score="5" Text="If I feel unsure that an original author would have agreed with the addition (that is, the addition is non-trivial, and perhaps expresses a different slant than what the author may have intended) I tend to decline the suggested edit, then paste the suggestion into the comments so that readers can see it, and the author (if still active) can action it if they so desire." CreationDate="2016-02-25T23:01:21.593" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9437" PostId="2988" Score="1" Text="OK, I agree with you. Including a URL or fixing a reference list is not substantial, that is not what I had in mind. What I am concerned about is amplification." CreationDate="2016-02-25T12:55:45.677" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="9438" PostId="2989" Score="0" Text="OK, that makes sense." CreationDate="2016-02-25T17:28:27.193" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="9448" PostId="2989" Score="2" Text="For my own opinion, I am mixed about this, &amp; in particular making it a policy. I can see the argument, &amp; how it may be worth doing under unusual circumstances. I would trust your judgment (&amp; that of other regulars here who are well-steeped in CV) to do this reasonably, but I suspect it would ultimately get out of hand if more widely adopted &amp; lead to charges of inconsistency / favoritism ('but so &amp; so did it here')." CreationDate="2016-02-26T19:57:25.333" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9449" PostId="2989" Score="2" Text="@gung, yes, I fully agree and I think I was very explicit in my answer that our general policy should not allow such major edits; they can sometimes (rarely) be a useful and a good thing to do but with much caution and only when one is willing to take full responsibility. I am not sure if the very presence of my answer here might make it seem as this is allowed more often than it really should be; perhaps it's better if we say that it is not allowed, period (leaving a possibility for anybody to transgress this rule if it seems *really* necessary). Do you think I should rather delete my answer?" CreationDate="2016-02-26T20:58:42.803" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9450" PostId="2989" Score="0" Text="... If I delete it, it will only be visible for people with over 10k rep, which is perhaps a reasonable threshold for having demonstrated good judgment :)" CreationDate="2016-02-26T20:59:47.043" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9451" PostId="2989" Score="1" Text="I don't think you should delete. I might change your last sentence to be less ambiguous. Eg: **'I do agree that our policy should remain that such edits are not allowed**'. Of course, it's *your* answer, so I'm not going to change it ;-)." CreationDate="2016-02-26T21:22:36.777" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9493" PostId="2989" Score="0" Text="I would suggest that one can always post a comment, and in so doing, either the original author will edit the text, or not, but the comment can help signal others where a correction may be a consideration, so, I do not see any upside to editing someone else's text." CreationDate="2016-03-07T08:22:25.290" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="9494" PostId="2989" Score="0" Text="@Carl, if there are many comments there already, some of them upvoted, practically nobody will ever see such a correction." CreationDate="2016-03-07T09:59:15.033" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="19968" PostId="2990" Score="0" Text="Why did you ask this on stats se meta and not maths se meta? Just wondering" CreationDate="2020-06-26T07:50:15.760" UserId="44339" />
  <row Id="19972" PostId="2990" Score="2" Text="Wella, this Is my Main siste of activity ..." CreationDate="2020-06-26T14:17:58.000" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="9453" PostId="2991" Score="1" Text="I created the tag and tagged a couple of the oldest and most pertinent questions." CreationDate="2016-02-27T20:21:53.367" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="9454" PostId="2991" Score="2" Text="Thanks @whuber. I think [`[coupon-collector-problem]`](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/coupon-collector-problem) was probably the best choice of name." CreationDate="2016-02-27T20:24:47.420" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9456" PostId="2993" Score="0" Text="But it would be good if you write a wiki excerpt for this tag &amp; apply it to other relevant questions, @Silverfish." CreationDate="2016-02-28T21:14:46.287" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9457" PostId="2993" Score="1" Text="I plan to drip feed some other questions into it" CreationDate="2016-02-28T22:44:50.920" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9458" PostId="2993" Score="0" Text="I think there probably is a minimum number of threads criterion as well, but &quot;has a wikipedia entry&quot; is an interesting approach. Hadn't thought of it that way but can see the logic" CreationDate="2016-02-28T22:46:10.823" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9459" PostId="2993" Score="2" Text="I unilaterally made a tag for the Hauck-Donner effect a while back, and the move appears to have been accepted by the community. I don't see why we can't do the same here." CreationDate="2016-02-29T15:25:08.310" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="9460" PostId="2993" Score="1" Text="[I have written a wiki and excerpt now](http://stats.stackexchange.com/tags/coupon-collector-problem/info). Thanks for the suggestion." CreationDate="2016-02-29T15:36:32.340" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9461" PostId="2994" Score="8" Text="I have located the problem post and rolled it back for you.  I have also edited it to address the problem pointed out by your persistent revisionist; namely, that the image was large.  There's a nice trick: append &quot;s&quot;, &quot;m&quot;, or &quot;l&quot; to the base name of the imgur URL to change the size automatically.  I appended &quot;m&quot; to shrink it to a readable but hardly objectionable size.  I could also &quot;lock&quot; the post to prevent changes for a specified period of time, but since that also prevents voting, I hesitate to do that to you." CreationDate="2016-03-01T20:39:03.430" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="9462" PostId="2994" Score="1" Text="@whuber Thanks for your diligence. I'm afraid that you'll get an unnecessary flag from me in a few seconds, since I flagged it as per your answer. Great tip about resizing images! I'll keep that mind in the future. Thank you. Locking the post for 24 h wouldn't harm me on this particular day, since I've already hit the rep cap. We can see what happens and adapt accordingly." CreationDate="2016-03-01T20:41:08.843" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="9479" PostId="2994" Score="5" Text="While this was resolved, I'd like to add that the editor concerned, not myself, appears to have been attempting in entirely good faith to improve the presentation as they saw it. The editing was not in any sense malign. Competent and conscientious posters here can disagree amicably on what is acceptable and what should be omitted in a presentation." CreationDate="2016-03-03T17:22:05.730" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9464" PostId="2996" Score="3" Text="#3 is exactly the situation. People with enough reputation **can vote for migration**. In your case the vote was just for closing as off-topic. The case for migration is strongest when a question is focused on very specific code and a reproducible example. Rather open questions asking for code or coding strategy are not good for SO." CreationDate="2016-03-02T10:34:23.320" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9465" PostId="2996" Score="2" Text="Further, questions asking for recommendations of software are not treated warmly in any forum, not because they don't arise (we all want to know which software, packages, commands, functions are &quot;best&quot;) but because they often just  lead to exchanges of opinion or plugs for people's own programs." CreationDate="2016-03-02T10:37:45.973" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9466" PostId="2996" Score="0" Text="@NickCox So I take it you think the question would be inapropriate even on SO? Because I don't see my question as &quot;asking for recommendation&quot;, nor as a &quot;rather open question&quot;. I believe my question is quite specific in explaining what exactly I want to do." CreationDate="2016-03-02T11:42:27.103" UserId="31914" />
  <row Id="9468" PostId="2996" Score="0" Text="I wasn't involved in the voting. I don't know what you can see, but four people, one a moderator, voted that it was off-topic, when as said one option was certainly for migration. My own point of view,  since you press me, is that such a vote was reasonable and FWIW that your question is rather open, but often such decisions are a close call. Yet you don't have to persuade me, You can post your question on SO and if you are right it has a good chance of being answered, My comments above are generic and try to identify when a vote is most likely to be for closure rather than migration," CreationDate="2016-03-02T13:26:05.100" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9469" PostId="2996" Score="0" Text="@NickCox I wasn't persuading you, I was just asking you. I asked three questions in my post and you basically ony answered one, so I reiterated my other questions. I did in fact post my question on SO, and it so far has an upvote and no close votes, so I suppose it is appropriate. Thanks for your oppinion!" CreationDate="2016-03-02T13:28:08.987" UserId="31914" />
  <row Id="9470" PostId="2996" Score="0" Text="Understood, but the reason I replied in comments was precisely that I was not purporting to answer your whole question, not least because I don't understand how it all hangs together. But I addressed #3 directly; it follows that I don't think migration was the better option, which was #2. No matter; if your question gets good answers on SO, that would clearly be good all round. But having asked a question on SO, we ask that you delete the CV question." CreationDate="2016-03-02T13:37:10.443" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9471" PostId="2996" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Agreed." CreationDate="2016-03-02T13:38:50.013" UserId="31914" />
  <row Id="9472" PostId="2996" Score="7" Text="Re (2), I would have voted to migrate that question had I been aware of it.  In fact, recently I have re-opened similar questions that had been closed and I migrated them. I feel that **if a question looks like it would be appropriate on another site, then migrating it, rather than just closing it, is more friendly, constructive, and helpful to _both_ that site and ours.** The difficulty is that such decisions must be based on the standards of both sites: if we start migrating many questions that are seen as bad or off-topic on the target sites, we start getting complaints." CreationDate="2016-03-02T15:13:25.450" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="9473" PostId="2996" Score="0" Text="@whuber I understand. It's not really that big of a deal, I &quot;manually migrated&quot; it myself." CreationDate="2016-03-02T15:15:00.693" UserId="31914" />
  <row Id="9474" PostId="2996" Score="3" Text="@NickCox there's a stack exchange for software recommendations -- [softwarerecs.stackexchange.com](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/). They do have somewhat restrictive norms about what, exactly is on topic, but it's perhaps too strong to say that software recommendation questions aren't treated warmly in any forum. ." CreationDate="2016-03-02T22:34:58.723" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9476" PostId="2996" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b Thanks for that correction." CreationDate="2016-03-03T06:51:39.900" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9659" PostId="2997" Score="0" Text="I just added a [Community Promotion Ad](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/a/3056/36678) for the proposal." CreationDate="2016-03-31T16:38:47.590" UserId="36678" />
  <row Id="17609" PostId="2997" Score="1" Text="Update 27 April 2019: Neither proposal got airborne, but see the similar proposal referred to  by @Marcus Ritt." CreationDate="2019-04-27T17:26:02.107" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9477" PostId="3000" Score="3" Text="You don't have enough reputation yet to edit other people's questions. So you can only suggest edits and see if they get approved by the community. If such edits repeatedly get approved then you are doing a right thing. In general, adding tags is often a good idea. In some cases the tags can only relate to answers and not to the question itself (e.g. when the author of the question was not aware of the relevant concept and only the answers point it out to him/her)." CreationDate="2016-03-03T17:06:11.100" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9480" PostId="3000" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Thank you." CreationDate="2016-03-03T17:38:53.430" UserId="1047" />
  <row Id="9481" PostId="3000" Score="1" Text="@amoeba I'd make that an answer. I think it covers all bases." CreationDate="2016-03-03T18:49:06.517" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9478" PostId="3001" Score="3" Text="Strongly agree. It's a major feature of SE that later thoughts can be added and mistakes or infelicities corrected or improved. As clearly implied, it is good to consider which comments or cross-references are rendered incorrect or meaningless by major edits. At the same time, posting comments implies that the poster deems them dispensable or secondary, or is deliberately just encouraging a fix or an extension. I've often been happy to delete my comments when the answer was improved (and unhappy not to delete my comments when the poster walked away from the thread)." CreationDate="2016-03-03T17:18:40.870" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9482" PostId="3004" Score="2" Text="&quot;Note that adding the tag carries a degree of implication that the OP sought (or should have sought) a Bayesian answer -- if a non-Bayesian approach is just as reasonable, then I would not add the tag, because it could imply other answers (including answers that have not yet been offered) have mistakenly taken a non-Bayesian approach.&quot; I'm not sure about this. The Bayesian tag is there to help searchers track down relevant Qs (and more generally, As). If someone wants to see a Bayesian approach to a problem, then putting the tag there may help them even if not all answers to the Q are Bayesian" CreationDate="2016-03-04T20:28:47.013" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9483" PostId="3004" Score="1" Text="On the flip side, the absence of a Bayesian tag isn't an indication that a question *can't* be dealt with in a Bayesian way, nor is it likely to be used as a search-strategy pointer for someone trying to avoid a Bayesian approach. I generally interpret the tags liberally when reading and searching - issues which a thread raises, not necessarily a unique approach to a problem. I do agree with your last paragraph though - asking the OP is often a good idea." CreationDate="2016-03-04T20:30:59.810" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9499" PostId="3004" Score="1" Text="Contrary answers are given in: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1525/should-tags-refer-to-the-answer-as-well-as-the-question This thread argues that sometimes questions can be re-tagged to fit the answers topic-scope." CreationDate="2016-03-08T14:17:59.847" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="9500" PostId="3004" Score="1" Text="@Tim, actually this thread seems to be a duplicate of that one! I vote to close as a duplicate (and perhaps you will want to join?), but given that Glen_b seems to have a somewhat different opinion from the accepted answer there, I would suggest that he either posts another answer there or merges the threads so that both answers appear next to each other." CreationDate="2016-03-08T20:25:29.657" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9484" PostId="3005" Score="5" Text="**I think both threads should be re-opened and I have now voted for that.** Real life examples is one thing, simple examples is another thing, and a question clarifying some technical confusion about one particular case is yet another thing. There is probably a good case for making the real-life and the simple-examples questions community wiki (my recent Meta question about CW notwithstanding). I have now edited the simple-examples Q to make it more explicitly CW-like (so that it asks about &quot;some simple examples&quot; and not about &quot;the simplest example&quot;)." CreationDate="2016-03-05T00:46:12.203" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9485" PostId="3005" Score="0" Text="As a general remark, whenever I see some question closed as a duplicate of another question that is closed as a duplicate, I try to sort this situation out (usually by flagging for moderator attention and suggesting some more reasonable solution as a flag comment). I think it should not happen." CreationDate="2016-03-05T00:47:40.337" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9486" PostId="3005" Score="2" Text="Real life examples are much harder to find than mathematical justifications and for many people are convincing and interesting,  so, if I knew how, I would vote for the real life one to be reopened." CreationDate="2016-03-05T16:06:03.497" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="9491" PostId="3005" Score="0" Text="@mdewey: You cannot vote because you don't have enough reputation for that (yet). I think you need 2k rep to get access to voting." CreationDate="2016-03-05T22:52:53.077" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9495" PostId="3005" Score="0" Text="@mdewey, actually, it is 3k. http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/close-questions" CreationDate="2016-03-07T20:37:10.330" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="9531" PostId="3005" Score="1" Text="Update: simple examples thread got reopened &amp; made CW (by whuber)." CreationDate="2016-03-17T10:33:53.103" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9532" PostId="3005" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Thanks. This rather changes things; in particular, it raises the question of whether the &quot;real life examples&quot; be merged with the &quot;simple examples&quot; one?" CreationDate="2016-03-17T11:09:15.927" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9550" PostId="3005" Score="0" Text="I still think that the threads are quite clearly distinct enough to remain open. I don't really care about this specific case but it saddens me that decisions like that are so unbelievably difficult to discuss here. We are very fast to close but to reopen anything is a nightmare." CreationDate="2016-03-21T10:07:26.733" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9551" PostId="3005" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I feel you. I think that CV is just slightly not big enough to get that kind of responsiveness - if there were about 20-30 regular Meta participants, then I think proposals would gain traction faster (in particular, it'd be easier to reach 5 reopen votes). A question I don't know the answer to, is whether a Mod would be open to implementing a &quot;decision&quot; reached through Meta discussion on this issue, rather than the reopen vote procedure." CreationDate="2016-03-21T11:43:52.293" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9552" PostId="3005" Score="0" Text="Have you seen a recent similar thread, by the way? http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/3017" CreationDate="2016-03-21T11:48:49.303" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9553" PostId="3005" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I did and I note it came to a similar lack of resolution! (In that case, my Bayesian knowledge is too rusty for me to see how well the proposed duplicate worked. Perhaps it was a good choice but if so, it was not entirely obvious to me. This thread here is rather different, in that it seems so much more a matter of judgment but the issues involved are not very technical." CreationDate="2016-03-21T15:36:33.713" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9597" PostId="3005" Score="0" Text="I have difficulty understanding how &quot;real life examples&quot; can demonstrate any mathematical assertion, much less this one. I am reminded of Hotelling's criticism of a similar effort: &quot;To &quot;prove&quot; such a mathematical result by [a large number of real-life examples] ... is analogous to proving the multiplication table by arranging elephants in rows and columns, and then doing the same for numerous other kinds of animals. The performance, though perhaps entertaining, and having a certain pedagogical value, is not an important contribution either to zoology or to mathematics.&quot;" CreationDate="2016-03-26T23:05:03.030" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="9598" PostId="3005" Score="1" Text="@whuber Thanks for the comment. I don't think the question was demanding a mathematical proof: at least, I didn't interpret it as such. Practical examples have more and better uses than providing technically incomplete proofs. &quot;Real world&quot; examples are pedagogically valuable because they are **motivating** (why do or should we care about the distinction between &quot;independent&quot; and &quot;uncorrelated&quot;?) and grant us **intuition** (eg by demonstrating some of the &quot;failure modes&quot; of the incorrect statement *uncorrelated implies independent*, which purpose the answers in that thread serve admirably)" CreationDate="2016-03-26T23:45:01.793" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9599" PostId="3005" Score="0" Text="Okay, I can accept that. What still isn't clear is why the criteria of *motivation* and *intuition* distinguish &quot;real-world&quot; from &quot;theoretical&quot; examples. It also seems to me that existing answers miss that mark because they fall short of showing what errors ensue from failing to distinguish the appearance of correlation from the appearance of independence in datasets. I'm not suggesting these are bad answers, only that they don't seem to accomplish any of the &quot;pedogogically valuable&quot; things you list. That in turn makes me wonder whether the question itself might have multiple interpretations." CreationDate="2016-03-26T23:51:50.467" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="9600" PostId="3005" Score="0" Text="@whuber It's a common misconception that if X and Y are uncorrelated, their scatter plot is the classic &quot;blob&quot; (essentially a joint normal distribution with $\rho=0$). Since that's also the scatter plot that they'd draw if asked to produce a plot showing independence, it's no wonder people conflate the two. Peter Flom's &quot;U shaped curve&quot; knocks that misconception squarely on the head. I think Adrian's answer is also nice: it illustrates a different (perhaps less obvious) &quot;failure mode&quot; of *uncorrelated implies independent*, with very clear obvious &quot;real world&quot; (&quot;why should I care&quot;) implications" CreationDate="2016-03-26T23:59:51.437" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9601" PostId="3005" Score="0" Text="I've come across Hotelling's comment before, and admire it, but I do wonder if it downplays the importance of intuition. A relatively small proportion of readers of this site (if we judge by questions asked here) are technically adept enough to follow formal mathematical proofs, but many would benefit from the intuition. Sometimes that's a precursor and they'll grok the formalism later; regardless of whether they do or don't, it's more likely in day-to-day life (for instance, when interpreting results) that they'll reach for intuition than formalism." CreationDate="2016-03-27T00:13:30.627" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9602" PostId="3005" Score="0" Text="Every time a reader, quite possibly who doesn't even know what a &quot;random variable&quot; is and can't read a proof, happens to find a correlation near-enough zero in their work, and - recalling a comprehensible, vivid, practical illustration - says &quot;but still, this doesn't mean my variables are unrelated&quot;, then that's a win. A little victory, by no means enough for them to pass an undergraduate stats exam, say, but there's a different kind of value in it." CreationDate="2016-03-27T00:15:54.687" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9603" PostId="3005" Score="0" Text="It seems that Scortchi has reopened the thread in question." CreationDate="2016-03-27T01:01:57.407" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9608" PostId="3005" Score="0" Text="Given that both threads are reopened now, do you maybe want to mark the corresponding A as accepted?" CreationDate="2016-03-27T21:14:36.167" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9610" PostId="3005" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Yes, that seems reasonable. Done." CreationDate="2016-03-27T23:20:38.733" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9611" PostId="3005" Score="0" Text="By the way, the last remaining thread finally got reopened only because I raised a flag for moderator attention yesterday (this is probably what initiated the last comment exchange with whuber too). I updated my answer with a status update." CreationDate="2016-03-27T23:45:28.593" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9487" PostId="3006" Score="0" Text="Are you asking about adding answers to an existing thread or about asking [a] new question[s]? This seems ambiguous / both-ish." CreationDate="2016-03-05T21:41:18.053" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9488" PostId="3006" Score="0" Text="I'm asking what to do next.  The first part of the answer is complete, but the next part is just as long.  This would be pretty big.  The first part is ~5 pages.  The next part would likely be as long." CreationDate="2016-03-05T21:53:56.207" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="9489" PostId="3006" Score="1" Text="I just looked at the link. I think I see now. You asked a question &amp; proffered an answer, both of which are long. But now you want to add more information &amp; you're wondering if you should add more to your existing answer, or put together a series of Qs &amp; As to present the material, since it will end up being so much. Is that the gist of it?" CreationDate="2016-03-05T21:58:34.177" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9490" PostId="3006" Score="2" Text="@gung - very much correct.  I think that I am working toward excessive and want to avoid that.  I will take direction and want to work within the guidelines of this community." CreationDate="2016-03-05T22:01:48.957" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="9496" PostId="3006" Score="2" Text="It's hard to comment on questions you _might_ write. Both question and answer were up-voted, so precedent is encouraging. Only writing similar questions (best done one at a time) will gauge the strength of interest." CreationDate="2016-03-07T21:21:50.033" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9497" PostId="3006" Score="0" Text="@NickCox - I just don't want to get hated on for writing 100 pages of content.  I also don't want to get hated on for writing 10 articles in the same theme but with specific differences that are 5 pages long each." CreationDate="2016-03-07T22:39:51.523" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="9498" PostId="3006" Score="1" Text="Same advice: write one at a time. Or should you be writing journal papers about this work?" CreationDate="2016-03-08T00:33:06.373" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9492" PostId="3007" Score="8" Text="Why not ask them? Otherwise -- if they don't reply -- I can't see that any one can answer this. Present and past employees are presumably bound by legal or ethical constraints; the overwhelming majority, the rest of us, can't know what isn't documented.  Whether it's on-topic is trickier. I just can't see that it is answerable. I do think it could be too broad even in principle." CreationDate="2016-03-06T09:20:22.600" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9503" PostId="3011" Score="4" Text="To me, `[p-value]` &amp; `[statistical-significance]` are closer to synonyms. I think of `[hypothesis-testing]` as indicating the question is about the underlying logic of HT. But I agree that they overlap a lot &amp; especially in people's usage of them on CV." CreationDate="2016-03-10T19:35:16.360" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9504" PostId="3011" Score="1" Text="@gung, I am all in favour of having a tag that is about the logic/principles/controversies behind HT/p-values, but I am afraid none of these tags is currently doing this job. With 3.4k questions, [hypothesis-testing] certainly includes hundreds/thousands of questions about particular tests on particular datasets. Given the sheer amount of questions, I think realistically there is no chance of sorting this all out in any meaningful way, hence we might (?) be better off giving up and merging all three tags. Re [p-value] you have a point, I will edit." CreationDate="2016-03-10T20:17:14.477" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9505" PostId="3011" Score="1" Text="I'm not taking a strong stance here. The above is just my opinion. To really figure this out would take a good deal of work. For my part, I would be OK with either merging or leaving separate, as the community prefers." CreationDate="2016-03-10T20:39:28.450" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9529" PostId="3011" Score="2" Text="I think [hypothesis testing] is a much broader domain than [p-value], incorporating the articulation of null and alternative hypotheses, selecting a distributional model of the parameter being hypothesized about, constructing a test statistic given that model, **finding the *p*-value for that statistic and interpreting it**, making a rejection decision **based on the *p*-vlaue**, drawing a substantive conclusion following the decision to reject or not. Merging [p-value] with [statistical-significance] ostensibly makes sense." CreationDate="2016-03-15T22:09:25.113" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="9530" PostId="3011" Score="0" Text="Thanks, @Alexis. This makes sense and also agrees with what gung wrote." CreationDate="2016-03-15T22:33:48.830" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9708" PostId="3011" Score="2" Text="(this is mere opinion here) but I tend to somewhat agree with gung and Alexis in that I see `[hypothesis-testing]` as clearly distinct, and the other two as substantially closer, but nevertheless I see statistical significance and p-values as still distinct concepts. One can ask questions about p-values without having a significance level (so significance doesn't really enter into it) and one can ask about significance without *ever having heard of a p-value* (using only a pure critical value approach). We might need to identify whether they're effectively synonyms here in practice." CreationDate="2016-04-03T01:30:22.250" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9709" PostId="3011" Score="1" Text="To expand on my previous comment ... If I wanted to ask a question about why p-values are uniform under the null, I'd want a &quot;p-value&quot; tag on my post (and wouldn't see `statistical-significance` as much of a substitute), but if I had a question about how to find a critical value in a chi-square test, I might find the mapping of `statistical-significance` to `p-value` to be baffling to say the least. On the other hand if they're nearly always not distinct, perhaps there's an argument for combining them. If we were to merge them, which would merge into which?" CreationDate="2016-04-03T01:34:17.007" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9736" PostId="3011" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b Thanks for joining the discussion. To tell the truth, I was sort of convinced here that it's better not to do anything about these tags. It seems to be one of the cases of largely intersecting but nevertheless separate tags. I would accept such an answer if somebody posted it." CreationDate="2016-04-06T21:53:40.630" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9506" PostId="3013" Score="0" Text="Thank you Glen, I'll probably post it here tomorrow." CreationDate="2016-03-11T02:10:16.517" UserId="10416" />
  <row Id="17059" PostId="3015" Score="0" Text="Since Wikipedia, like CV, is made up of popular contribution, Wolfies loses my vote for pointing out the error, but not editing (or even linking to!) the Wikipedia article." CreationDate="2019-01-05T18:10:40.307" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="9516" PostId="3016" Score="1" Text="I think one solution might be to edit the title of the first (old) Q. It is concerned with one specific quote by one specific author and it has an *accepted* answer that does not talk about &quot;alternatives to p-values&quot;, but instead criticizes the quote. I think that thread is fine and can stand on its own if we change its title to reflect its actual content. (I suggested it [here in the comments](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/200500/#comment380982_200500) a couple of days ago but did not have time to think about it further, partially because I had a child born in the meantime)." CreationDate="2016-03-12T21:58:51.633" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9517" PostId="3016" Score="0" Text="Yes I think in retrospect that your comment was sensible, although I can't at the moment think what a better title would be. And congratulations!" CreationDate="2016-03-13T22:45:40.647" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9518" PostId="3016" Score="0" Text="Thanks! How about &quot;Ziliak (2011) opposes the use of p-values and mentions some alternatives; what are they?&quot;" CreationDate="2016-03-13T23:04:15.087" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9519" PostId="3016" Score="0" Text="@amoeba: Congratulations! And I think that's a good suggestion for the title." CreationDate="2016-03-14T12:11:29.300" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9524" PostId="3016" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I agree with Scortchi it would differentiate the questions nicely, I suggest you post this as an answer and I'll accept it." CreationDate="2016-03-14T23:56:36.670" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9533" PostId="3017" Score="0" Text="I voted to reopen." CreationDate="2016-03-17T20:41:06.000" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9534" PostId="3017" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Myself as well." CreationDate="2016-03-17T20:51:20.973" UserId="28462" />
  <row Id="9525" PostId="3020" Score="1" Text="Duly edited, I couldn't think of a way to improve on the suggested title." CreationDate="2016-03-15T00:02:33.373" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9549" PostId="3024" Score="4" Text="This is an issue we've remarked on here before, but I don't recall if it had its own thread or arose in the discussion of other matters. You're asked to make a decision but the information you need isn't there, you have to go looking, and the whole thing is clunky. At least if the reason was visible it would sometimes save further clicking (&quot;unclear? looks clear enough now&quot;)" CreationDate="2016-03-20T23:56:32.417" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9557" PostId="3025" Score="0" Text="I'm currently getting the post is locked so I cannot edit it (which I believe is necessary to prompt a re-open vote)." CreationDate="2016-03-23T13:02:32.097" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="9558" PostId="3025" Score="2" Text="Even on re-inspecting the thread, it primarily looks like a 'how do I use SPSS' question. If you can edit it to make it more overtly statistical / more software-neutral along the lines you discuss above, I would happily vote to reopen. I do see that the edit link is not working. Perhaps the moderators can fix that." CreationDate="2016-03-23T13:56:40.503" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9559" PostId="3025" Score="0" Text="@gung Apparently the &quot;Community&quot; bot automatically locked this question because it had been migrated in to our site and then rejected.  I have removed that lock." CreationDate="2016-03-23T14:15:47.823" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="9560" PostId="3025" Score="1" Text="I don't agree @gung. The poster stated `is method 1 or method 2 correct` after describing how to do each procedure. I agree that the nature of the procedures should be clarified (so closing for unclear and *asking* the op for clarification would be reasonable) - but that wasn't the reasoning given for its closure." CreationDate="2016-03-23T15:15:03.677" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="9568" PostId="3025" Score="0" Text="&quot;How to incorporate weight into linear regression in SPSS&quot; seems to clearly frame an SPSS coding issue. Most such questions are closed. The underlying statistical issue is on topic and if it was framed to focus on that, it might go quite well." CreationDate="2016-03-23T22:30:35.457" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9579" PostId="3025" Score="2" Text="@Glen_b - you have to read the whole question. After asking that the OP then goes on and describes two separate procedures and then asks which one is correct. (If you looked at the comments, I had already provided code in a prior question by the OP.) We help people better formulate questions all the time - I think the same steps should have been taken in this case besides closing outright. None of the people closing the question left a comment." CreationDate="2016-03-24T11:50:57.267" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="9561" PostId="3027" Score="2" Text="Many of us are quite sympathetic to this question and the concerns it expresses.  It's not a new conversation, though, by any means!" CreationDate="2016-03-23T19:17:34.957" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="9562" PostId="3027" Score="1" Text="Perhaps I should change the question to why do so many questions ***continue*** to be left unanswered? :p.  (Actually, in fact, the % of questions answered has *worsened* since that previous post!)" CreationDate="2016-03-23T19:23:37.323" UserId="80624" />
  <row Id="9563" PostId="3027" Score="2" Text="If you were to modify this question slightly to ask us to focus on what might have changed in the three years since this issue was last discussed, we might be able to justify reopening it.  For instance, I could supply information about changes in the kinds of questions we are attracting.  E.g., throwaway homework questions have contributed to substantial growth in the rate of closed posts.  I believe a large minority of all posts currently coming in are duplicates--but it takes tremendous knowledge and effort to identify them as such and close them." CreationDate="2016-03-23T19:23:40.960" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="9564" PostId="3027" Score="2" Text="BTW, your data may be misleading in two ways.  (1) They cover almost six years, not just recent activity. Our answer rate has gone down, so these figures are surely (substantial) overestimates of the answer rate.  (2) They appear to include *closed* questions among those that are unanswered!  Currently, we are closing 20% of all questions. The net effect is that recently we are answering 66% of all *open* questions. Note also that (3) it's meaningless to compare us to SE sites focusing on games, cooking, etc. where no special expertise is needed to answer (and nobody posts homework)." CreationDate="2016-03-23T19:30:04.750" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="9565" PostId="3027" Score="1" Text="@whuber I've updated the question to focus more on why the problem *continues* to exist. Will that suffice to re-open it?" CreationDate="2016-03-23T19:33:30.270" UserId="80624" />
  <row Id="9566" PostId="3027" Score="0" Text="@whuber all fair points. Still 66% isn't so great. Feel free to incorporate your points (or otherwise underlying knowledge about the site) succinctly in my question if you feel it would improve the overall point." CreationDate="2016-03-23T19:33:40.193" UserId="80624" />
  <row Id="9567" PostId="3027" Score="7" Text="There are a lot of unanswered questions because you didn't answer them yet. The reasons why you haven't are probably fairly common reasons for other readers of the site. There's a lot more call for high levels of statistical expertise than there are experts with the time to give it, in a way that few other areas experience; it's not like the econometricians are bugging the chemists or the astronomers are bugging the psychologists so they can do their research/job or understand an article --  ... ctd" CreationDate="2016-03-23T22:26:41.177" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9569" PostId="3027" Score="6" Text="ctd ... -- but those areas all want to analyze data, they mostly want different procedures, and even when they're not different they want to call them different things and know different things about them. To answer even a modest fraction of the posts on site you have to know large amounts of stats but also a little about everything else. I've answered quite a few questions on other sites, and none of them require the level of study\* it takes to give a good answer here, *and yet this is the area I've been working in for decades*.$\quad$ \*(a good answer can take a very long time to construct)" CreationDate="2016-03-23T22:35:55.630" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9570" PostId="3027" Score="8" Text="Indeed, often 80% of the work is simply trying to get to the point of having an answerable question. If I have a problem in cooking, I can probably clearly explain the exact issue in 5 or ten lines ... and often the answer takes less than twice that. Here, a typical poster starts by asking a completely different question to the one they need answered, they begin from false (but rarely stated) premises, and include almost none of the necessary information ... by the time you figure out what the actual issue is -- three days later -- several hundred more questions have posted." CreationDate="2016-03-23T22:44:37.043" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9577" PostId="3027" Score="2" Text="... because they are unanswerable is unfortunately the best first approximation. There could be a taxonomy of reasons why questions are too difficult to be able to answer or be worth trying an answer. More positively, don't underestimate the extent to which **comments** convey information to the OP and to others (even if it is not the information sought). My impression is that comments are more important here than in many other forums." CreationDate="2016-03-24T10:06:33.423" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9580" PostId="3027" Score="3" Text="I wonder if users at other sites are more prone to closing &amp; down-voting questions they judge not up to scratch, &amp; less prone to using comments to try to improve them. A question with zero up-votes will be deleted automatically only after a year (if it wasn't closed or commented on more than once), &amp; a couple of comments are enough for it to linger on indefinitely." CreationDate="2016-03-24T14:26:30.190" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9571" PostId="3028" Score="1" Text="Well, you've posted here so the support request should get noticed at least... but I don't see any actions on your account between feb 21 and now ..." CreationDate="2016-03-24T03:36:11.490" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9572" PostId="3028" Score="1" Text="That's really strange, because I've posted several questions recently and four answers so far in March and have voted on 14 other threads this month. For example, there's the question [What are the Practical Applications of Chaos Theory in Data Mining](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/201737/what-are-the-practical-applications-of-chaos-theory-in-data-mining) I put up just 9 days ago. Perhaps the Feb. 21 date is just for Meta, not for the rest of CrossValidated? I'm certain I checked in a few times before and after midnight last night as well. Thanks." CreationDate="2016-03-24T04:13:10.800" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="9573" PostId="3028" Score="1" Text="My apologies for being unclear -- I meant &quot;actions other than posting questions or answers&quot;, like comments, flags, suggested edits etc." CreationDate="2016-03-24T04:27:56.437" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9574" PostId="3028" Score="1" Text="No problem - I *have* commented in that time frame though, including 1 on a Fuzzy Textbooks thread I wasn't otherwise involved in. I haven't suggested edits or flags yet because I don't yet feel competent enough to do so. Either way, the Enthusiast Badge is supposed to be earned by coming to CrossValidated 30 days in a row, so none of that really matters. I wouldn't care, except that I noticed I was close, made a point of coming in the last few days, and saw the counter mysteriously reset to 1. I plan to ratchet up my participation anyways, but I'd hate to see another reset next time I near 30" CreationDate="2016-03-24T05:35:01.410" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="9575" PostId="3028" Score="2" Text="Yes, I understand the frustration; did you notice the whether the site was actually different each time? I'm wondering if you were perhaps on the most recent times looking at a locally cached copy of the site  (either cached by your provider or even further downstream) rather than a newly generated one that SE would see." CreationDate="2016-03-24T06:05:54.430" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9576" PostId="3028" Score="1" Text="Oh, yes, you were right, by the way I was looking at meta; I am a goose." CreationDate="2016-03-24T06:09:19.453" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9578" PostId="3028" Score="4" Text="I think I got to 98 or so days out of 100 and missed one and had to start all over again. I was a frustrated non-Fanatic. Be warned! These little things can ruin your life, so don't miss a single day." CreationDate="2016-03-24T10:59:22.877" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9581" PostId="3028" Score="4" Text="These badges don't count mere *visits* (despite the description of the badge itself)--they look for definite *activities,* such as posts, comments, votes, and other undocumented things.  Mods do not have access to records of all of these activities, so there's little we can do to check.  Note, too, that a &quot;day&quot; is counted from midnight to midnight GMT, not local time.  It is likely the system has not erred, but you're always welcome to contact the SE team with a request to look into it." CreationDate="2016-03-24T15:26:22.870" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="9582" PostId="3028" Score="0" Text="Thanks Glen B for pointing out the locally cached copy thing, I didn't think of that. I was coming in several times a day, but to check the same pages, either for comments on my own posts or to mull over how to answer other people's questions (I like to think long and hard before going out on a limb, even on rare topics I know a little something about). Your explanation is probably the culprit." CreationDate="2016-03-24T19:30:58.210" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="9583" PostId="3028" Score="0" Text="Whuber - That's also helpful to know. I've been planning on ramping up my participation here over the next year or so in order to learn more and am now in the habit of checking it daily along with my mail etc. At that rate I'm sure that eventually I'll get that Enthusiast badge without even thinking about it - it's no big deal anyways, it's just an icon - but I figured I'd better get to the bottom of this problem, in case a year from now I somehow get near that gold badge for a year straight of participation...then see it mysteriously reset again...*then* I'd be upset." CreationDate="2016-03-24T19:37:04.373" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="9584" PostId="3028" Score="0" Text="It occurred to me last night that this occurred immediately after I deleted a huge cache of old Temporary Internet Files. If I do that again a few times and it resets the counter back to 1, then I have my smoking gun. Whuber - it would be helpful to know how to contact the SE Team about this in case I do identify that (or something else) as the culprit. I can't find any links on how to contact them - Thanks." CreationDate="2016-03-24T19:40:25.083" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="9613" PostId="3028" Score="1" Text="You get the gold badge not for a year, but for only 100 consecutive days. It's only three months. Not that difficult once you are addicted." CreationDate="2016-03-28T21:21:16.957" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9614" PostId="3028" Score="2" Text="You posted here, so you got our attention (SE developer here). If you do find a smoking gun, post a new question here with all the details and use the [meta-tag:bug] tag - we will see it. The likeliest explanation though is what whuber posted - visits don't count - you have to have made an action on that day (where a day is a UTC day - not in local time)." CreationDate="2016-03-29T07:57:15.143" UserId="24254" />
  <row Id="9615" PostId="3028" Score="1" Text="@Oded Consider posting this as an answer because your comment does answer the main question which is *How to report a [potential] error in badge stats?* The answer is to post here with a [bug] tag to attract attention of SE developers. Without your answer the thread appears unresolved, whereas it is in fact resolved." CreationDate="2016-03-29T11:02:57.647" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9591" PostId="3029" Score="5" Text="You can only ask [50 questions per month](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/89217/301021) on certain high use sites. You can review the [Rate Limiting Guide](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/164899/301021) for more limits if interested." CreationDate="2016-03-25T17:37:49.083" UserId="89026" />
  <row Id="9592" PostId="3029" Score="0" Text="@Erik Thanks for these links; the Blankman's meta thread is hilarious. Checking the Guide, the limit is 50 Qs per month and 6 Qs per day." CreationDate="2016-03-25T21:07:55.630" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9593" PostId="3029" Score="2" Text="@amoeba yeah those are the limits but the Guide implies that those limits might not be in effect here. The Blankman thing is amazing and hilarious. They have &gt;55k rep and less than 20 answers (on SO)....  That ratio is baffling to me. I'd think after +1k questions they'd learn enough to give a bit more back to the community in the form of answers." CreationDate="2016-03-25T21:11:34.767" UserId="89026" />
  <row Id="9594" PostId="3029" Score="3" Text="@Erik Yes, 55k rep earned exclusively by asking questions, most of them apparently pretty dumb, is, well, *weird*. But then StackOverflow is kind of crazy: Blankman has 1200+ upvotes for a trivial [one-line question](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3437059) with a trivial one-line answer (that has 1800+ upvotes itself)." CreationDate="2016-03-25T21:16:03.437" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9619" PostId="3029" Score="1" Text="@Erik Asking (decently good) questions is a great contribution to the community." CreationDate="2016-03-29T18:40:50.900" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="9620" PostId="3029" Score="0" Text="@amoeba One-line questions are sometimes very useful to ask.  The question you gave as example has almost 1 million views so far. Doesn't it show it was useful to ask?" CreationDate="2016-03-29T18:42:06.057" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="9621" PostId="3029" Score="0" Text="@FranckDernoncourt I agree. Questions are clearly essential, but answers are essential to bringing in more questions. Which leads to a chicken and the egg relationship to the two. All that being said I personally feel that [people should strive to do more than ask questions](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/2704/89026)" CreationDate="2016-03-29T18:46:10.927" UserId="89026" />
  <row Id="9624" PostId="3029" Score="2" Text="@Franck: Yes, it is useful (in some sense). But my &quot;kind of crazy&quot; referred to the amount of upvotes, not to the amount of views. The fact that one can get ~20k reputation on StackOverflow for answering one single trivial question with (more or less) one line of code, is in my opinion quite crazy. 20k rep unlocks all privileges accessible to non-mods and in general appears very respectable and hard-earned (at least on CV)." CreationDate="2016-03-29T18:59:41.693" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9625" PostId="3029" Score="0" Text="@Erik I recall Quora used to limit the number of question users could ask by using some credit system, but they have removed it. The seeder vs leecher is a tricky question indeed. My view is one learns more by seeding than leeching, so up to the users to do what they feel." CreationDate="2016-03-29T19:02:08.127" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="9626" PostId="3029" Score="0" Text="@amoeba sometimes I wish there was an option to hide all the SE gamification, just focusing on content :) well, at least, one would hope the highly voted answer to work ok." CreationDate="2016-03-29T19:02:41.673" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="9587" PostId="3031" Score="5" Text="I welcome this thread. The correct SE-term for tag deletion is &quot;burnination&quot;. Mods do not have power to burninate a tag (i.e. to automatically remove it from all threads without pushing them to the front page), so the protocol for burnination is that mods should let SE admins know and the admins do it. As far as I know, no tag has *ever* been burninated this way on CrossValidated." CreationDate="2016-03-25T15:25:22.547" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9589" PostId="3031" Score="4" Text="One more thing: before burninating a tag, one should better make sure that there are no threads where this is the only tag. If there are, then those should be edited to add some more relevant tags. I'd suggest that whoever proposes a tag deletion should take the responsibility of doing that first. After checking that this tag is never alone, please mention it in the corresponding answer." CreationDate="2016-03-25T15:34:11.343" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10303" PostId="3031" Score="1" Text="Related meta meta thread: [What should be our protocol for tag burnination?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/3147)" CreationDate="2016-08-02T11:33:02.200" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12339" PostId="3031" Score="0" Text="http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2612/" CreationDate="2017-02-09T23:39:51.757" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13368" PostId="3031" Score="0" Text="Note for myself: write an answer explaining why [methodology] should be burninated. Also, [analysis] in the link above." CreationDate="2017-04-25T22:12:30.610" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13739" PostId="3031" Score="1" Text="I sometimes see new tags that are obvious typos for existing tags, I just nuke them immeadiately." CreationDate="2017-06-14T12:29:57.163" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="14164" PostId="3031" Score="0" Text="Congratulations with the diamond, @Tim! I've been away during the final stages of the election and saw the results only today. I'm wondering if you have plans to get some tag burnination going." CreationDate="2017-09-02T21:52:23.247" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14165" PostId="3031" Score="0" Text="@amoeba thanks! First I'd need to learn how exactly mod can burinate a tag and then I'd do something with it." CreationDate="2017-09-03T09:47:54.343" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="14166" PostId="3031" Score="0" Text="@amoeba FYI: I just got informed that a moderator *can't* delete a tag, it can be done only by removing it from all the questions associated with it." CreationDate="2017-09-03T11:26:23.200" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="14167" PostId="3031" Score="2" Text="I am aware that mods cannot delete tags themselves; however, they can request SE admin team to delete a tag (this is called &quot;burnination&quot;) and it is routinely done on other SE sites. So your information is not complete: there *is* a way that a mod (e.g. you) can make a tag be deleted. See https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/burninate-request/info and links there." CreationDate="2017-09-03T14:31:46.527" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14168" PostId="3031" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I went through the tags, in most cases it is not so many questions tagged by them, so we could probably deal with them by un-tagging the questions. I'm not sure if it is worth to ask CMs for this." CreationDate="2017-09-04T13:32:20.157" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="14169" PostId="3031" Score="2" Text="That is fair enough, but e.g. [basic-concepts] has 200+ threads (see https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2854) and manually untagging is not very attractive." CreationDate="2017-09-04T15:14:23.197" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14190" PostId="3031" Score="0" Text="@Tim, shall I delete my answer below, as the tag is now gone? (That is how I've handled the related thread on tag synonyms.)" CreationDate="2017-09-10T01:46:49.680" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14195" PostId="3031" Score="0" Text="@gung There are eight implemented answers already deleted here so I assumed we are following the same principle as in the synonym thread." CreationDate="2017-09-11T07:49:58.287" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9628" PostId="3042" Score="1" Text="Oded - I know that those actions aren't always required, because I've seen my totals for the Enthusiast badge go up consistently even on days when all I did was read threads on the forum. I'm testing various things right now to see what resets the counters, such as Glen_b's suggestion above about stale cached webpages. I've eliminated cookie clearing as a culprit. I'll post here when I get it narrowed down, probably within the next few weeks. Thanks for the reply - I'll probably select yours as the answer once we get that secondary issue settled." CreationDate="2016-03-29T19:40:50.797" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="9629" PostId="3042" Score="2" Text="It could be visiting anything more than just the homepage is enough - I don't recall exactly." CreationDate="2016-03-29T19:51:45.327" UserId="24254" />
  <row Id="9630" PostId="3042" Score="0" Text="I was visiting the same threads day after day when it was reset, so that would fit with Glen_b's explanation if the webpages were cached. I'll do a few more experiments over the next week or so to get to the bottom of it." CreationDate="2016-03-29T20:03:28.853" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="9634" PostId="3042" Score="1" Text="Let us know once your p value is significant ;)" CreationDate="2016-03-29T20:21:19.000" UserId="24254" />
  <row Id="9790" PostId="3042" Score="0" Text="I haven't forgotten about this thread - I'm still experimenting to try and narrow down the culprit(s), after which I'll take Oded's advice above and start a separate thread &amp; answer my own question (unless it turns out to be stale webpages, in which case I'll let Glen_b answer it as he did above). For now though I'll accept Oded's answer to my main question, about how to report forum issues. That'll knock one more item off the forum's list of unanswered question,s LOL." CreationDate="2016-04-12T16:07:45.200" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="9622" PostId="3043" Score="6" Text="Yes, but it is *not humanly possible* to ask 10 good questions per hour. The specific fellow whom OP has in mind has probably one half of their questions downvoted or closed (and another quarter has zero upvotes). Some occasional questions are quite good, to be fair." CreationDate="2016-03-29T18:52:51.870" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9623" PostId="3043" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Then indeed -&gt; banned. It's hard to set a threshold though on number of questions per hour (e.g., the user may a draft many questions throughout a day, then dump all at once during his SE time), but easier on when to (temporarily) ban. In other words, question throughput is question different from question quality." CreationDate="2016-03-29T18:57:07.413" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="9627" PostId="3043" Score="3" Text="The wording &quot;too many questions&quot; is already an evaluation, and raises the question of who decides and on what grounds. (No criticism there as these are the words in the title.)  As with everyone else who has commented, I am in the odd situation of being totally aware of why this question arises now, but do not want to personalise discussion. The bigger question is what happens when there are many downvotes, many questions closed or on hold, and many flags, all triggered by one member." CreationDate="2016-03-29T19:32:13.523" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9631" PostId="3043" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Then the OP gets a [post ban](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/post-ban), right?" CreationDate="2016-03-29T20:10:59.377" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="9632" PostId="3043" Score="1" Text="Yes, at some point behaviour deemed antisocial triggers a ban; it's just that most of us don't know where that point is, apart from moderators using their powers." CreationDate="2016-03-29T20:12:56.557" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9633" PostId="3043" Score="0" Text="@NickCox The algorithm to decide the ban is indeed not public. http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/60294/178179 No idea what purpose it serves to keep it private, sounds like this gives room for Stack Exchange employee's arbitrary decisions." CreationDate="2016-03-29T20:17:57.173" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="9635" PostId="3043" Score="7" Text="I suspect a much, much better reason is to stop some people making calculated decisions on what bad behaviour they can get away with. Statistical people should not be surprised about outliers among the members here; it's just hard to know how to deal with them." CreationDate="2016-03-29T20:32:58.113" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9685" PostId="3043" Score="4" Text="@Franck It's valid to have a suspicion like that.  However, the bar appears to be an exceptionally low one.  The automatic ban is rarely triggered on this site, and *never* for very active people no matter how bad their posts have been (perhaps because they always manage to get a few upvotes here and there in the same way the roomful of monkeys will occasionally type a line of Shakespeare).  That leaves the onus on us to make such decisions as a community.  Your moderators tend to act conservatively, taking action only when its need is blatantly obvious. That's intentional." CreationDate="2016-04-01T19:03:26.513" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="9686" PostId="3043" Score="0" Text="@whuber if the bar is too low, how about setting a CV-specific bar?" CreationDate="2016-04-01T19:05:50.847" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="9687" PostId="3043" Score="3" Text="I don't think we have that power, Franck, but the present circumstances have me thinking about starting a conversation with the SE team about it.  I just don't know what to request: exactly what criteria would we want to apply?  In the meantime, a little judicious downvoting by just a few more people might trigger existing criteria. That needs to be a personal decision. It takes extreme circumstances before I would publicly recommend downvoting any particular post and I would never recommend focusing one's downvoting on an individual: treat the posts on their own merits." CreationDate="2016-04-01T19:15:23.223" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="9726" PostId="3043" Score="0" Text="@whuber I noticed that OP's account has been &quot;temporarily suspended&quot;. Can you say if if it finally happened automatically or via some moderator action?" CreationDate="2016-04-06T08:09:32.447" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9728" PostId="3043" Score="0" Text="@amoeba The suspension was a moderator action unrelated to the issue raised here." CreationDate="2016-04-06T13:44:59.637" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="9960" PostId="3043" Score="0" Text="@whubber please do not disclose personal information. this is against the rules and regulations." CreationDate="2016-05-27T12:39:59.727" UserDisplayName="user46925" />
  <row Id="9636" PostId="3047" Score="2" Text="Well that's the best, clearest and most complete answer I've ever received on SE, thanks.  Pity it's only on Meta..." CreationDate="2016-03-30T01:01:13.060" UserId="109510" />
  <row Id="9641" PostId="3047" Score="0" Text="Looking at the query you linked to, it seems that selection criteria of 50+ upvotes and 10k+ rep are commented out; it's only looking for accepted answers posted on the same day as the question (unless you were looking at some modified version of this query)." CreationDate="2016-03-30T09:12:51.770" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9644" PostId="3047" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Ah, yes, of course that's commented out. Well now I have no good explanation for how less than 5% of the posts show up in it. Maybe there's something wrong with that query." CreationDate="2016-03-30T11:26:29.943" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9649" PostId="3047" Score="1" Text="I posted some questions on Easter holidays and they seemed poorly received, so probably it might also be smart to avoid (if you want to maximize the yield of your questions), evident periods of holiday or leave." CreationDate="2016-03-30T14:24:57.703" UserId="107799" />
  <row Id="9690" PostId="3047" Score="4" Text="@Giuseppe Biondi-Zoccai - More to the point, it might be better to take a holiday yourself.  Occasionally. ;-)" CreationDate="2016-04-01T19:31:34.047" UserId="109510" />
  <row Id="9637" PostId="3048" Score="3" Text="I like the idea, or at least the intention, but isn't it easier, more flexible and effective for the responder to add precise wording to explain any caveats, for example: &quot;I'm not sure about this last bit, but the theory I explained above is well established&quot;?" CreationDate="2016-03-30T01:46:10.087" UserId="109510" />
  <row Id="9638" PostId="3048" Score="4" Text="I think this could not done unilaterally by CV. Is it a good idea? Modesty beats arrogance, but if you have an idea you can rate no higher than &quot;little confidence (just started thinking)&quot; perhaps it should get more thinking. It's not a good use of the forum to post diffident and tentative answers. Anything wrong or misdirected will usually be queried, but energy is dissipated dealing with such answers. Conversely, expertise should just be self-evident. If I see &quot;I am an expert on X&quot; it usually diminishes my respect. If you are, then you can give a good answer directly without self-promotion." CreationDate="2016-03-30T02:04:10.973" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9642" PostId="3048" Score="6" Text="I downvote because by I don't like the proposal (and fully agree with @NickCox). Please don't take it personally, up/downvotes on Meta mainly express agreement/disagreement and are not related to the quality of the question." CreationDate="2016-03-30T09:16:08.693" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9643" PostId="3048" Score="3" Text="I think this just won't run as it's quite contrary to SE ethos, but the surrounding issues deserve reflection and discussion. SE is keen to give signals on how far you should be inclined to trust members (that's a major purpose of reputation) and also that no answer is immune to criticism or improvement. There's no contradiction there. SE already allows you to add words of diffidence, although they are subject to edits by others. Although this idea is meant to encourage caution, it could lead to people being tempted to deflate others who describe themselves as expert but do not appear so." CreationDate="2016-03-30T09:34:32.363" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9639" PostId="3049" Score="14" Text="I say no. Clear and interesting questions are what we seek. Jazzing them up is not a good idea. Good writing and good presentation generally and some evidence of research are among the important qualities of a good question. No spin, no shocker headlines, no electioneering please." CreationDate="2016-03-30T02:10:14.193" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9640" PostId="3049" Score="2" Text="OK, thanks.  It feels better to be straight up, even if it's not as effective." CreationDate="2016-03-30T02:54:54.613" UserId="109510" />
  <row Id="9680" PostId="3049" Score="2" Text="@Kelvin Effective to what end, though? A snappy title invites a snappy reply, and you might be surprised how politely CV users can put someone in their place." CreationDate="2016-04-01T17:36:33.443" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="9751" PostId="3049" Score="0" Text="If your goal is to attract attention from specialized people able to answer in a very specific way, you may keep your specific but not-controversial formulation and open a [bounty](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/bounty)." CreationDate="2016-04-08T10:11:47.637" UserId="92952" />
  <row Id="9779" PostId="3049" Score="1" Text="http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/206592/why-arent-multiple-hypothesis-corrections-applied-to-all-experiments-since-the serves as an interesting example. Some reservations from myself (with +s from others) on style, but the question has attracted a lot of attention and upvotes and a range of views. Naturally, we don't have a controlled experiment to see how much of that is due to the way it was presented." CreationDate="2016-04-12T08:29:07.380" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9794" PostId="3049" Score="0" Text="@Nick Cox - that question wasn't intended to be phrased controversially, and indeed I don't think it is, but I do agree there is a degree of hyperbole in the statement &quot;from the dawn of time&quot;.  Even so, it does convey what I meant it to convey, and has certainly attracted a lot of upvotes, while that one question has tripled my official reputation score (not that I pay much/any attention to that).  More importantly it has generated a lot of really good quality, thoughtful answers, which is what counts." CreationDate="2016-04-13T07:39:30.263" UserId="109510" />
  <row Id="9795" PostId="3049" Score="0" Text="If that's not controversial, I would like an example that is: &quot;the whole of science has become one big fishing expedition based on false or weak hypotheses&quot; is an example. My own preference is for moderate wording. If there were many more postings of the same kind, I think we'd need to think again about policy. As it is, the occasional question like that can be positive rather than problematic. I'm just asking you to recognise a range of views here on good style, and most crucially the answers below which to me imply that your question would have even better toned down." CreationDate="2016-04-13T08:01:30.403" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9796" PostId="3049" Score="0" Text="... would have been even better ..." CreationDate="2016-04-13T08:16:54.197" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9797" PostId="3049" Score="0" Text="I note that you chose to remove the context from my quote: &quot;It seems that ...&quot;, as in my own perception.  Perhaps think about that when considering policy?" CreationDate="2016-04-13T08:28:12.980" UserId="109510" />
  <row Id="9798" PostId="3049" Score="1" Text="That's part of my argument, on a meta level. If being controversial and making points in the strongest possible form is fair in a question, then why not in discussion too? Selective quotation is a standard rhetorical move. It's one thing to say &quot;I have a serious question, but I am allowed to pose it controversially&quot; but you are then not so convincing if you object to others acting similarly in debate. (I don't think I was unfair in choosing that example, by the way; nowhere was I claiming or implying that every sentence is of that form or has that tone.)" CreationDate="2016-04-13T10:28:12.127" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9799" PostId="3049" Score="0" Text="No worries. In any case I have already agreed with other comments here that controversially phrases questions run the risk of alienating some readers, but I don't see any problem in stating my opinion in what science *seems* to have become.  If you do, then indeed I also agree that you have a right to say so.  Personally, I would prefer to focus on asking and answering good questions, but I understand now that some people may care more about style.  I guess we all just have to learn to compromise a little." CreationDate="2016-04-13T12:08:56.290" UserId="109510" />
  <row Id="9800" PostId="3049" Score="0" Text="Indeed. The distance between stimulating and exaggerated is short, and to change the image, people don't agree where those places are." CreationDate="2016-04-13T15:46:14.267" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9803" PostId="3049" Score="1" Text="For what it's worth, I think &quot;since the dawn of time&quot; is a legitimate way to spice up the question - where *does* the argument for multiplicity corrections stop? But the various assertions &amp; opinions in the body of the question about the state of Science detract from its clarity in my opinion." CreationDate="2016-04-14T14:00:18.553" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9645" PostId="3050" Score="0" Text="All good points, thanks.  I do wonder, though, about your last statement:  If phrasing questions controversially generates better, more helpful answers (which has been my experience based on a sample size of just 1), then why isn't this serving the purpose to generate &quot;a repository of high quality questions and answers&quot;, given that the question can always be rephrased later to match the quality of the answer(s) given?  Doesn't the end justify the means?" CreationDate="2016-03-30T11:36:12.860" UserId="109510" />
  <row Id="9646" PostId="3050" Score="2" Text="@Kelvin Glen_b can speak for himself but the idea of a sensational title to be deflated later is disrespectful to the forum, no doubt unintentionally. It implies that we need the inducement of icing on top, but that it can be scraped off when we've performed as wanted.  (Incidentally I don't trust these promises to edit later, particularly on behalf of anyone else you can't control.) You don't have the answer you wanted; pushing it again makes the whole idea seem even more inappropriate. Being straightforward with the forum in one's postings is essential as a matter of trust all round." CreationDate="2016-03-30T11:53:42.150" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9647" PostId="3050" Score="0" Text="@NickCox As a man of integrity, I do agree.  But as a scientist I also like to challenge assumptions, hence this question.  Anyway, the question has been answered, and the answer sits well with me.  Thanks." CreationDate="2016-03-30T11:58:13.903" UserId="109510" />
  <row Id="9648" PostId="3050" Score="4" Text="@Kelvin There's something to be said for an interesting or engaging title; at least, as long as it still serves as a suitable title. The examples in my answer will hopefully help us distinguish engaging from sensational." CreationDate="2016-03-30T12:45:20.237" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9651" PostId="3052" Score="0" Text="Are you sure that was the reason your question was bumped? Not edits to the question?" CreationDate="2016-03-30T15:36:39.320" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9652" PostId="3052" Score="6" Text="I... don't think upvoting comments bumps the question. I don't think I ever saw that happening. Either it was edited, as @Scortchi suggested, or maybe the community user bumped your questions, as it does to random (not entirely, but not worth going into specifics) questions every once in a while?" CreationDate="2016-03-30T15:38:58.280" UserId="72321" />
  <row Id="9653" PostId="3052" Score="5" Text="In any case, see [Is there a polite /accepted way of “bumping” up questions?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/735/17230)." CreationDate="2016-03-30T15:42:52.823" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9657" PostId="3057" Score="6" Text="How many questions do we need on any topic? I'm not sure I see anything special here. Certainly when you have a duplicate, we can close it as such. Writing a canonical Q on a given topic does seem like a good idea. Regarding the new Q that overlaps the previous, the OP needs to clarify what they learned from those Qs &amp; what is still ambiguous. I think you're right that at present, that Q is not going to lead to greater clarity." CreationDate="2016-03-31T14:55:33.440" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9658" PostId="3057" Score="0" Text="To ansewr your question, if we understand a &quot;topic&quot; to be narrowly construed, I would say that we only need on thread per topic. What I was trying to emphasize is that with regards to basic concepts around cross-validation, there seems to be a large overlap among those threads, whereas with other &quot;basic concepts&quot; questions, we have done a better job of reducing duplication." CreationDate="2016-03-31T15:03:06.363" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="9660" PostId="3057" Score="14" Text="To put it obliquely, we are not Wikipedia and that's the problem here. The mechanisms to catch duplicates do exist but they require omniscience and eternal vigilance to work well. We're always being frustrated by members who do little or no research, even within the forum, and just post any question that occurs to them.  In principle, a thread consolidating several would be an **excellent idea**, but almost certainly far more work than you should want to do. It could be best to write a paper, debug a program, work on your thesis, mow your lawn instead." CreationDate="2016-03-31T17:01:33.747" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9661" PostId="3057" Score="9" Text="@NickCox Every time I think I'm the grumpiest CV user, Nick Cox reminds me that the British are uniformly better at it. Cheers!" CreationDate="2016-03-31T17:06:27.577" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="9662" PostId="3057" Score="7" Text="I guess that's a compliment on balance. I did say **excellent idea**, so if you have the energy and enthusiasm to do it go ahead with my blessing and good wishes. Someone close to me suggested that variations in statistical terminology should just be sorted out by reading all the books, tabulating what people use and then suggesting the right terms that everyone should adopt henceforth. My mind boggled at the amount of work entailed and I was reduced to speechlessness. Consolidation is not easy, in short." CreationDate="2016-03-31T17:15:30.840" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9702" PostId="3057" Score="1" Text="I think you should do a cross-validation study to determine the optimal number of questions about cross-validation. If you don't know how to set up such a study, perhaps you're having trouble determining the optimality criterion, data sources, or whatever, then you can post a question asking how." CreationDate="2016-04-02T14:22:15.577" UserId="78964" />
  <row Id="9703" PostId="3057" Score="1" Text="@MarkL.Stone While I'm at it, I'll perform a regression analysis using gradient descent." CreationDate="2016-04-02T14:23:49.177" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="9705" PostId="3057" Score="1" Text="No problem, as long as you cross-validate." CreationDate="2016-04-02T14:34:10.480" UserId="78964" />
  <row Id="9706" PostId="3057" Score="1" Text="Actually,do you remember that this website's name is &quot;Cross Validated&quot;?  That in itself might tend to attract questions pertaining to cross validation. Potentially, it could have been called &quot;Probability and Statistics&quot;, which is what seems to be its scope." CreationDate="2016-04-02T19:47:58.097" UserId="78964" />
  <row Id="9707" PostId="3057" Score="1" Text="I see what you mean. Likewise, Twitter is a terrible ornithological guide." CreationDate="2016-04-02T20:34:12.860" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="9669" PostId="3059" Score="11" Text="Do you really think this is a better answer than every other answer provided to the thread?" CreationDate="2016-04-01T13:42:19.727" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="9670" PostId="3059" Score="1" Text="yes, it is much more precise and condensed" CreationDate="2016-04-01T13:49:49.357" UserDisplayName="user46925" />
  <row Id="9672" PostId="3059" Score="0" Text="why the -1? i gave a perfectly good answer" CreationDate="2016-04-01T13:54:56.533" UserDisplayName="user46925" />
  <row Id="9673" PostId="3059" Score="3" Text="The tooltips to the downvote arrows provide clues in the case of  downvoting without comment. You can see the tooltips by hovering your mouse over the icon. On meta, the tooltip reads &quot;This answer is not useful.&quot;" CreationDate="2016-04-01T13:58:02.330" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="9683" PostId="3059" Score="6" Text="I agree with the sentiment of this answer--but it appears in the present instance that it is more honored in the breach than the observance.  Many community members are aware of that (and have begun expressing their annoyance) and accordingly view both the question and this reply as disingenuous or worse.  Whether this guess is correct or not, it still might be constructive to interpret the downvotes in this light and act accordingly in the future." CreationDate="2016-04-01T18:56:35.623" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="9961" PostId="3059" Score="0" Text="=(, I can't believe we live in a world where freedom of speech gets public tormentation." CreationDate="2016-05-27T12:54:36.920" UserDisplayName="user46925" />
  <row Id="10008" PostId="3059" Score="4" Text="@Phil https://xkcd.com/1357/" CreationDate="2016-06-15T13:54:22.273" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="9667" PostId="3060" Score="0" Text="i agree. we should make sure users know this" CreationDate="2016-04-01T12:27:15.347" UserDisplayName="user46925" />
  <row Id="9668" PostId="3060" Score="3" Text="Good point - I'd add actually *performing* data analysis." CreationDate="2016-04-01T13:30:35.213" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9671" PostId="3060" Score="0" Text="Do you mean that data analysis can only be learned by practice?" CreationDate="2016-04-01T13:51:00.437" UserDisplayName="user46925" />
  <row Id="9676" PostId="3060" Score="4" Text="I meant just to put data analysis on a par with reading, lectures, bookwork, &amp;c, as important things this site can't substitute for. All the same, I'd be happy to say that." CreationDate="2016-04-01T14:10:59.587" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9681" PostId="3061" Score="3" Text="One thing you could do to help whenever you have some time - even on questions you can't quite do yourself - is help identify duplicates or near duplicates. Flag the ones that are essentially the same question as one previously asked and answered, especially if it's accepted or has a couple of upvotes. Link to any that you think may help but don't exactly answer that question." CreationDate="2016-04-01T18:21:03.983" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9682" PostId="3061" Score="12" Text="Sure it's an idiosyncrasy: what other community would routinely field questions on time series in the first place?  A quick scan of the bottom third of these questions (in terms of votes) shows a variety of complicated, highly technical, and frequently poorly posed questions.  It seems to be a popular subject: many people have time series data and want to make forecasts but appear to have little or no statistical background.  It's a difficult mix of conceptually accessible questions being asked out of lack of knowledge but requiring extensive knowledge to be answered well." CreationDate="2016-04-01T18:28:44.747" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="9688" PostId="3061" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b I'll try to do that. ;)" CreationDate="2016-04-01T19:20:25.133" UserId="40252" />
  <row Id="9689" PostId="3061" Score="0" Text="@whuber You're right, but I wonder if the same could not be said of some other tags here. Also, even if the OP 'seems' not to have the necessary statistical foundations, I do not think this should hinder other users from posting an answer, since the questions are viewable by everyone in the community. And as such, they are a 'public good'." CreationDate="2016-04-01T19:30:23.807" UserId="40252" />
  <row Id="9699" PostId="3061" Score="5" Text="I did not mean to suggest that people ignorant of a statistical technique ought not to ask questions!  I was only pointing out that a significant portion of the posts tagged with [tag:time-series] tend to be exceptional in some ways that make it unusually difficult (and unrewarding) to answer them. The problems I noted create a tendency for questions to be vague, ambiguous, and incomplete.  They require extensive interaction to get clarification. But unilaterally posting answers to such questions, before they have been clarified, is not a good idea." CreationDate="2016-04-01T21:07:31.380" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="9711" PostId="3061" Score="2" Text="&quot;About 16.2% of CV questions are related to Time-Series, so I would think that only a negligible part of these would not get answered.&quot; - I don't quite grasp the logic here. Why would a tag that is applied to 16.2% of questions correlate with a higher (or lower) probability of getting an answer? Could you explain this a bit? (And: in the light of our overall low answer rate, is 42.7% *significantly* lower than for other tags?)" CreationDate="2016-04-04T13:16:13.330" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="9739" PostId="3061" Score="0" Text="@StephanKolassa Usually this type of communities are tracked in some statistics, right? for example, in area51. If one tag, which composes a great part of the asked questions, is being neglected, then it can be used as evidence that there's a lot of room for improvement." CreationDate="2016-04-07T14:51:20.840" UserId="40252" />
  <row Id="9740" PostId="3061" Score="0" Text="@whuber could the following question be described as you've had?&#xA;&#xA;http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/201062/partial-autocorrelation-function-a-doubt-on-a-property" CreationDate="2016-04-07T14:54:04.467" UserId="40252" />
  <row Id="9741" PostId="3061" Score="0" Text="But (especially considering that we have an *overall* low answer rate, which we regularly discuss here on Meta), to intelligently discuss whether a tag is *neglected*, we would need to compare its answer rate to the answer rate of other frequent tags. Do you have any data on that?" CreationDate="2016-04-07T14:57:58.790" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="9748" PostId="3061" Score="0" Text="@StephanKolassa Tag R has 35%,  tag Regression has 37%. I don't have much time to dedicate to this discussion. If you would like to do a deeper study on this, you're welcome" CreationDate="2016-04-07T23:25:18.837" UserId="40252" />
  <row Id="9750" PostId="3061" Score="0" Text="Perhaps an autoregressive model for each tag to forecast changes in answer rate over time?" CreationDate="2016-04-08T08:20:12.447" UserId="8515" />
  <row Id="9752" PostId="3061" Score="4" Text="whuber listed the problems of time-series tag quite clearly. I would add that time series field requires a certain specialist knowledge, which does not generalise well in other fields of statistics. Thus there are less people who can answer time series questions. Your own question illustrates this problem quite succintly. It is a basic textbook question, but it misses important definitions, so it is hard to answer without knowing context of this question." CreationDate="2016-04-08T12:48:58.287" UserId="2116" />
  <row Id="9753" PostId="3061" Score="1" Text="@mpiktas An excellent point. I regularly see some of our most prolific answerers on CV - extremely knowledgeable, highly qualified, professional statisticians - comment that they can't help very much because time series isn't their thing. I suspect, as a distinctive sub-community of expertise, it's similar to Bayesian and ML. A large proportion of the Bayesian questions we get, though, are standard textbook stuff, and get eaten for breakfast by the knowledgeable folk here. ..." CreationDate="2016-04-10T11:21:13.620" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9754" PostId="3061" Score="0" Text="... If we had an *à la mode* influx of &quot;I've just collected masses of data, which I'm not going to show you, for some poorly specified objective. Bayes is cool right now, so show me how to do Bayes on it?&quot; type questions then I imagine the answer rate on Bayesian questions would drop dramatically. Come to think of it, I wonder whether our answer rate on Machine Learning shows signs of a similar problem." CreationDate="2016-04-10T11:22:13.733" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9755" PostId="3061" Score="0" Text="@mpiktas which resources would you recommend for learning time-series?" CreationDate="2016-04-10T13:53:30.853" UserId="40252" />
  <row Id="9801" PostId="3061" Score="2" Text="I can only strongly agree with @whuber (fwiw). Given my own background, answering questions on cointegration, unit roots and the like should be my biggest relative strength, and yet I hardly ever do so as these &quot;questions&quot; are often phrased very poorly. Indeed, they often reflect a deeper lack of understanding of statistics so that properly answering them would take quite long. Also, an above-average part of such questions seems to be by drive-by users, which additionally reduces the incentive to work on an answer." CreationDate="2016-04-14T06:04:04.327" UserId="67799" />
  <row Id="9691" PostId="3063" Score="3" Text="Oh yes, how many times did I wish it were implemented." CreationDate="2016-04-01T19:39:44.670" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9692" PostId="3063" Score="1" Text="Hmm. It has status-declined here: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/77394. Jeff Atwood himself answered that this would not be done and his answer has score -49 whereas an answer saying it should be done has +76. Wow. Quite a discrepancy between the public opinion and the official position." CreationDate="2016-04-01T19:41:04.567" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9695" PostId="3063" Score="2" Text="Well, according to Mr. Atwood, it's just a question of database load. It's a plausible explanation, so it would appear that people aren't frustrated with Jeff so much as with the state of databases? In any case, when you VTC a question as a dupe, the title *is* displayed -- so there must be something else afoot. I don't understand why whatever magic is used when VTC-ing a question can't also be used when linking outside of the VTC interface." CreationDate="2016-04-01T19:51:41.217" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="9696" PostId="3063" Score="0" Text="A lot of things aren't done as nicely in the comments as elsewhere. HTML code doesn't work properly (eg, &amp;mdash; doesn't render &quot;—&quot;)." CreationDate="2016-04-01T20:15:35.913" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9697" PostId="3063" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, it's also interesting that it was given a +500 bounty! How many -49 / +500 posts do you think there are in the SE system?" CreationDate="2016-04-01T20:18:53.443" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9698" PostId="3063" Score="1" Text="@gung I'd wager precisely 1. But that must be an artifact of when rep was recorded separately across meta and main communities." CreationDate="2016-04-01T20:20:31.007" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="9700" PostId="3063" Score="3" Text="I sometimes construct a title-link when putting links in comments myself by pasting int the title into a `[...](...)` -style link: `[question title here](url-here)`." CreationDate="2016-04-02T01:02:50.780" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9701" PostId="3063" Score="0" Text="@user777 note that meta.SE doesn't have a &quot;main site&quot;" CreationDate="2016-04-02T01:04:23.160" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9704" PostId="3063" Score="2" Text="@Glen_b, I think he's thinking about when there was only meta.SO (before they made a separate meta.SE)." CreationDate="2016-04-02T14:27:05.653" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9715" PostId="3065" Score="2" Text="There is also [tag:scores]. I came across these tags before and find them very confusing." CreationDate="2016-04-05T09:39:11.353" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9716" PostId="3065" Score="2" Text="@amoeba &quot;scores&quot; is almost like &quot;numbers&quot;..." CreationDate="2016-04-05T09:45:43.933" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="9723" PostId="3065" Score="3" Text="If we can't figure out a reasonable use for it, we might add it to the [burninate list](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/3031/7290). There are too many garbage tags on the site now for optimal organization, IMO." CreationDate="2016-04-05T14:49:12.103" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9725" PostId="3065" Score="0" Text="I would think procedures like [Kemeny-Young method](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemeny%E2%80%93Young_method) would be the focus of this topic. This appears to disagree with most of the other votes I have seen so far, which implies it would not have the highest score as dictated by the Kemeny Young method." CreationDate="2016-04-05T23:17:25.900" UserId="76981" />
  <row Id="14797" PostId="3065" Score="2" Text="The answer of @amoeba can be accepted to close this thread now." CreationDate="2017-11-19T12:24:32.483" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="9717" PostId="3066" Score="2" Text="+1. If you want to expand your post with tips to enhance and power the user experience about searching within SE (not only searching by tags), this [post](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/258415/search-within-my-answers-questions-favorites/258417#258417) can help. It is illustrating where the 'advanced search tips' are and a little bit about how to use them." CreationDate="2016-04-05T12:34:00.637" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="9718" PostId="3067" Score="0" Text="On the statistical issue see e.g. http://stats.stackexchange.com/a/151305/17230." CreationDate="2016-04-05T13:46:15.987" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9719" PostId="3067" Score="1" Text="Perhaps mbq's idea was to use some weak regularization (e.g. L2) to fit the full model? This could work then." CreationDate="2016-04-05T14:20:11.413" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9720" PostId="3067" Score="2" Text="Also, I don't see a &quot;factual error&quot; that you can &quot;correct&quot;. How do you want to edit this answer? To strike everything through and to append &quot;This is wrong&quot; in big letters on top? That does not sound like a good edit." CreationDate="2016-04-05T14:21:38.250" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9721" PostId="3067" Score="0" Text="@amoeba: Yes - that would apply even if it were CW &quot;proper&quot;." CreationDate="2016-04-05T14:23:05.407" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9722" PostId="3067" Score="0" Text="@amoeba: I added a comment to the question that might help." CreationDate="2016-04-05T14:41:20.537" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9724" PostId="3067" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi: I guess you meant &quot;to the answer&quot;. I upvoted." CreationDate="2016-04-05T15:53:28.490" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14740" PostId="3070" Score="2" Text="@mdewey Thanks a lot for taking care of this issue!" CreationDate="2017-11-14T20:18:05.230" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9738" PostId="3072" Score="0" Text="Yes, that's an excellent suggestion." CreationDate="2016-04-07T09:49:17.193" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="16541" PostId="3072" Score="0" Text="agreed that answer saved my a while back" CreationDate="2018-09-05T16:31:21.200" UserId="192854" />
  <row Id="9757" PostId="3075" Score="0" Text="I don't understand your question. For custodian &amp; reviewer, there are 7 types; for steward, there are 6 types. If I go to badges &gt; custodian &amp; then scroll to the [end](http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/badges/109?page=32), I don't see what you're saying." CreationDate="2016-04-10T14:16:56.810" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9758" PostId="3075" Score="0" Text="From CV -- not Meta -- if you click on &quot;review&quot; in the upper right, it will take you to a screen that displays the current status of the review types -- &quot;First Posts,&quot; &quot;Late Answers,&quot; etc. For each type, there's a button for &quot;recent reviews &gt;&quot;  If you click on that button for each review type and then click, e.g., on the &quot;gold&quot; badge for &quot;Steward&quot; to display the information about how many times that badge has been awarded, who's received it and when, the information displayed is the same for all of the review types...at least on my screens." CreationDate="2016-04-10T14:17:41.797" UserId="78229" />
  <row Id="9759" PostId="3075" Score="0" Text="@gung  You are correct but I'm not as senior as you guys so I can view only 4 types..." CreationDate="2016-04-10T14:18:27.537" UserId="78229" />
  <row Id="9760" PostId="3075" Score="0" Text="So, if you go to reviews &gt; recent reviews [first posts] &gt; steward, you see the same thing as if you go to reviews &gt; recent reviews [late answers] &gt; steward. Is that what you mean?" CreationDate="2016-04-10T14:22:54.200" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9761" PostId="3075" Score="0" Text="Exactly...again, on my screens. You guys may have different information displayed as a function of your status." CreationDate="2016-04-10T14:23:37.377" UserId="78229" />
  <row Id="9763" PostId="3075" Score="0" Text="-1 because there is clearly no bug: it's just that you land on the same page whether you go through e.g. &quot;first posts&quot; or &quot;late answers&quot;. Even the url is the same. And this page does indicate who got the steward badge for what." CreationDate="2016-04-10T20:45:44.100" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9764" PostId="3075" Score="0" Text="@amoeba  It's possible to disagree on this. If the badges are tracked and tallied separately for each type of badge, then it makes sense that the summaries should be separate for each type of badge. Call it what you will -- a bug, a conflation, a blurred summary -- but it's clearly not &quot;no bug.&quot;" CreationDate="2016-04-10T22:25:26.773" UserId="78229" />
  <row Id="9765" PostId="3075" Score="0" Text="You could make a [feature-request] suggesting to display these tags separately for each type of review task. This might make sense, I have no opinion on that. But this would be a *feature request*, not a bug report. You wrote that it is a bug because &quot;it looks like -- across all 4 review types -- that the &quot;First Post&quot; badge information is being reported for all.&quot; If this were true then indeed it would be a bug. But as the screenshot posted by @whuber clearly shows, for each badge award one can see what type of review it was awarded for! Some are for First Posts but some are not. So no bug." CreationDate="2016-04-10T22:28:56.863" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9768" PostId="3077" Score="4" Text="Predictions can be about unknown past values; forecasting can't. Clarifying the tag excerpts / wikis may be appropriate, though." CreationDate="2016-04-11T15:01:12.050" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9772" PostId="3077" Score="1" Text="It's funny that even though [forecasting] would seem me to a subset of [prediction], the former tag has almost twice as many threads as the latter one." CreationDate="2016-04-11T17:20:04.790" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9773" PostId="3077" Score="2" Text="@amoeba, that need not be surprising as it seems natural to use specific in place of general tags. I do not use `time-series` tag when I post something specific only to ARIMA or GARCH, even though both are time series models." CreationDate="2016-04-11T18:37:48.900" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="13734" PostId="3077" Score="0" Text="As this is directly related to the newer Meta thread about wikis and that one is resolved, do you want to mark the answer here as accepted too?" CreationDate="2017-06-14T09:47:51.450" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13736" PostId="3077" Score="1" Text="@amoeba, thanks for the heads-up. Done." CreationDate="2017-06-14T10:02:24.943" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="9766" PostId="3078" Score="7" Text="I agree. Although I tend to enjoy fussing over definitions as an acceptable blood sport, to me the argument is intensely practical. Imagine abolishing either of these tags. That would be futile. There are many, many time series people who would feel deprived without &quot;forecasting&quot; and many, many others who would feel entirely uncomfortable without &quot;prediction&quot;." CreationDate="2016-04-11T14:54:10.800" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9767" PostId="3078" Score="0" Text="Fine. Then perhaps we should make the distinction between the two clearer? So far `forecasting` seems to be a subset of `prediction`. (I am making things a bit simpler than they are, but I want to highlight a point.)" CreationDate="2016-04-11T14:58:24.410" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="9769" PostId="3078" Score="3" Text="I just read the tags. &quot;Prediction is concerned with assessing the probability of unknown values from known values and inferred relationships.&quot; I don't think that matches prediction as widely used at all. Prediction is about predicting [sic] the unknown, but there need be no probability explicit. If I predict systolic blood pressure from body weight in some model, the prediction is (to me) just the fitted value. Some probability is at most implicit." CreationDate="2016-04-11T15:09:32.313" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9770" PostId="3078" Score="0" Text="But in asserting that typically fitted and predicted are one and the same, I may be starting more hares and clashing with usages in particular fields of statistical science (to say nothing of machine learning)." CreationDate="2016-04-11T15:09:43.767" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9771" PostId="3078" Score="2" Text="Naturally I am not in denial about prediction intervals and so forth. But they are part of how prediction is often done, not an essential part of the definition." CreationDate="2016-04-11T15:16:30.617" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9776" PostId="3078" Score="0" Text="@NickCox, &quot;in asserting that typically fitted and predicted are one and the same, I may be starting more hares&quot;: indeed you are. [Here is your first hare.](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169207010000063)" CreationDate="2016-04-12T06:31:23.057" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="9777" PostId="3078" Score="1" Text="@StephanKolassa Thanks for the reference. My premise is that forecasting and prediction overlap but are not identical. The comment  cited is how I see the mundane practice at elementary or intermediate level of working with regression-like models. I tend to use fitted values and predicted values more or less interchangeably and find that in reading. I am sympathetic to anyone who wanted to introduce a precise distinction, but that would be flying in the face of much relaxed usage. This still leaves the Wiki text, which I find unsatisfactory, while being shy of trying to rewrite it." CreationDate="2016-04-12T06:53:33.943" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9791" PostId="3078" Score="1" Text="@NickCox I just happened upon a definition in a textbook I am reading, and thought you might be interested." CreationDate="2016-04-12T18:19:06.170" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="9792" PostId="3078" Score="0" Text="I like it. Presumably &quot;porceses&quot; was a typo. If borrowing for Wiki, correct &quot;either be&quot; to &quot;be either&quot;." CreationDate="2016-04-12T18:24:38.400" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9778" PostId="3079" Score="5" Text="MAD is often used to denote _median_ absolute deviation from the median. In literature I see, that's more common than your usage. In fact I see sometimes mean absolute deviation from the mean but not IIRC the mean absolute deviation from the median. Yet further, there are some conventions to apply multiplicative factors to make estimates comparable with SDs (the multiplier coming from the normal distribution) and these factors are sometimes not even mentioned in reports!  So, I tend to trust no one on MAD unless I can see their precise definition or their code." CreationDate="2016-04-12T07:16:49.947" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9780" PostId="3079" Score="1" Text="Note also a long-standing idea of &quot;probable error&quot;, now generally superseded by standard deviation or standard error, depending  on what is fed to it." CreationDate="2016-04-12T08:48:57.100" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9781" PostId="3079" Score="1" Text="It's cool that you are doing that but what is the question?.." CreationDate="2016-04-12T10:27:40.093" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9782" PostId="3079" Score="1" Text="Indeed, cleaning up tags is much valued. (It's perhaps fortunate that the question &quot;Who wrote _that_?&quot; is not, so far as I know, answerable.)" CreationDate="2016-04-12T10:33:55.100" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9783" PostId="3079" Score="1" Text="@NickCox: you are completely right about MAD usually standing for a *median absolute deviation*. (It was early, and I had to catch a train.) In forecasting accuracy measurements, &quot;MAD&quot; invariably stands for the *mean* absolute deviation. Yet another potential source of confusion." CreationDate="2016-04-12T10:43:17.523" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="9784" PostId="3079" Score="0" Text="@amoeba: you have a point. I have edited my post to say that there is indeed no question here, more a PSA." CreationDate="2016-04-12T10:45:02.863" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="9785" PostId="3079" Score="4" Text="Okay. Consider &quot;answering&quot; this &quot;question&quot; in some way yourself and perhaps accepting your answer too -- to mark this thread as resolved, both visually and formally." CreationDate="2016-04-12T10:57:11.820" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9804" PostId="3081" Score="0" Text="Bounties can help, but unfortunately the &quot;hit rate&quot; for bounties isn't especially high; on a good question it seems like it's somewhere in the vicinity of 50-50. On the plus side, the most likely time for an answer is when it bubbles to near the top of the bounty list .. i.e. in the last day or so..., so you may well still get an answer on it (indeed many of the best answers have appeared in the last day or so); one I awarded actually came just *after* the end of the bounty period (but before the end of the 24 hour grace period to award the bounty - ..." CreationDate="2016-04-15T00:51:14.290" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9805" PostId="3081" Score="0" Text="... in effect a bounty lasts an extra day where it's not in the list but someone who saw it might still answer and can still be awarded the bounty). I wish I felt competent to give it an answer, but I don't think I have enough of a handle on that." CreationDate="2016-04-15T00:56:04.987" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9806" PostId="3081" Score="0" Text="By now it's the second most upvoted unanswered question by the way. (Why does *the* most upvoted unanswered question have so many upvotes I don't understand.)" CreationDate="2016-04-15T09:44:16.170" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9817" PostId="3081" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, I see it as the 3rd (although #2 is a closed question). I also note that even this meta-Q doesn't seem to be getting much attention." CreationDate="2016-04-16T14:15:10.177" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9819" PostId="3081" Score="0" Text="I see it as the second on http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=unanswered. I don't think closed questions are shown on this page at all, so I am wondering which page you were looking at." CreationDate="2016-04-16T21:00:01.310" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9820" PostId="3081" Score="0" Text="Honestly, I am not very surprised that clarpaul's question does not get a good answer; I am rather surprised that it gathered 21 upvotes." CreationDate="2016-04-16T21:01:29.250" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9821" PostId="3081" Score="0" Text="[Here](http://stats.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&amp;q=is%3aquestion%20answers%3a0) is the search (sorted by votes). I guess the unanswered tab doesn't list closed Qs, which makes sense. Why are you surprised / not, @amoeba?" CreationDate="2016-04-16T21:10:20.460" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9822" PostId="3081" Score="1" Text="I am not following mixed-model questions but my impression was that this is one of the topics that are not very well represented on CV; we don't have many active people here with detailed knowledge of the mixed model theory. (Perhaps there is nobody at all.) So I am not surprised that a difficult, long, and technical question remains unanswered. Have you tried to ping @BenBolker somehow? He is (by far) the top answerer in the [mixed-model] tag and I remember coming across very good answers of his." CreationDate="2016-04-16T21:37:11.920" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9823" PostId="3081" Score="0" Text="I guess I'm wondering how appropriate that would be, @amoeba. I'm sure he's aware of it, &amp; he is one of the authors on the paper the Q is asking about. The silence is deafening." CreationDate="2016-04-16T22:12:05.300" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9824" PostId="3081" Score="1" Text="Oh, I did not realize he was one of the authors! Perhaps he doesn't have time for it now, but I don't see why it would not be appropriate to ping him." CreationDate="2016-04-16T22:28:11.627" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9807" PostId="3085" Score="0" Text="I think your suggested excerpt is too long, and the second sentence can be removed from it. I would also remove scare quotes around &quot;true&quot; in the first sentence. Just write &quot;The error of an estimate or prediction is the deviation between this value and the true value&quot;. You can then place your full suggested excerpt into the wiki." CreationDate="2016-04-15T13:54:36.213" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9808" PostId="3085" Score="0" Text="Also, I would replace &quot;Do NOT use this tag for SOFTWARE ERROR messages&quot; with &quot;Use [error-message] tag to ask about software errors&quot;." CreationDate="2016-04-15T13:55:24.687" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9809" PostId="3085" Score="2" Text="Apart from that, I would not use (the nonexisting until now) [error] tag on Meta to ask about [error] tag on the main site; why not using our generic [tags] tag instead? +1, by the way." CreationDate="2016-04-15T13:57:12.367" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9810" PostId="3085" Score="0" Text="I agree w/ @amoeba. I added some relevant tags. I'll let  you decide if you want to delete the `[error]` tag. If you think it is important for meta.CV's organization &amp; want to keep it, you should probably add a tag excerpt &amp; wiki for it." CreationDate="2016-04-15T14:20:20.763" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9818" PostId="3085" Score="0" Text="I am not sure how relevant this is, but [here](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/206020/measuring-forecast-accuracy-of-the-conditional-mean) is a related question pointing out that observed forecast errors (defined as differences between forecasts and realizations) may be imperfect measures of unobserved forecast errors (defined as differences between forecasts and unobserved population quantities)." CreationDate="2016-04-16T15:44:10.070" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="9811" PostId="3086" Score="0" Text="+1 but perhaps either use comma after &quot;eg&quot; both times or not at all :) Also, why &quot;eg&quot; and not &quot;e.g.&quot;?" CreationDate="2016-04-15T14:31:50.433" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9812" PostId="3086" Score="0" Text="I just missed it, @amoeba. In comments, I use &quot;eg&quot; rather than the correct &quot;e.g.&quot; to save 2 characters. Tag excerpts are analogous to comments with respect to trying to shave characters." CreationDate="2016-04-15T14:34:55.573" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9813" PostId="3086" Score="1" Text="I see. Personally, I would prefer the version with dots in the wiki excerpts." CreationDate="2016-04-15T14:38:49.870" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9814" PostId="3086" Score="0" Text="+1, but I would not remove the 'Do NOT use this tag for SOFTWARE ERROR messages'. Doing the way you and @amoeba propose is better guidance about using the correct tag, but also sounds like encouraging such type of questions." CreationDate="2016-04-15T17:48:36.380" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="9815" PostId="3086" Score="1" Text="This looks nice. I'll watch this for now, in case someone has an even better idea and/or you do propose a nice full wiki. (Perhaps put that in a separate answer?) I'd include the periods, though, or I'd feel tempted to also remove vowels, nd w ll knw y cn rd txt wtht vwls jst fn, rght, nd t wld sv vn mr chrctrs." CreationDate="2016-04-15T18:17:53.523" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="9816" PostId="3086" Score="2" Text="@Andre Unless we think that all questions referring to [error-message] are off-topic, I think it's fine to redirect people to this tag. I mean, this tag does exist." CreationDate="2016-04-15T21:27:32.590" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9825" PostId="3086" Score="0" Text="I have edited the tag wiki excerpt as per your suggestion and have left the wiki alone for now. Any thoughts on that?" CreationDate="2016-04-20T06:29:46.533" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="9826" PostId="3086" Score="0" Text="@amoeba actually I'd consider whole `[error-messages]` tag off-topic..." CreationDate="2016-04-24T19:08:44.037" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="12976" PostId="3086" Score="0" Text="Hi @StephanKolassa, just came across this old question of yours; do you still consider this issue unresolved? You did not accept gung's answer..." CreationDate="2017-04-04T09:17:36.793" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12986" PostId="3086" Score="1" Text="@amoeba: thanks for the ping! I accepted the answer." CreationDate="2017-04-04T16:45:44.550" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="9827" PostId="3089" Score="0" Text="thanks for the answer! I tried looking for the post I was talking about using your suggestions, but I couldn't find it, so probably it was deleted. Both yours and @gung 's answer were great, but finally I chose his, because I'm going to follow his advice :) PS a small addition to your question. Finding your User id was actually a bit tricky...if I click on your icon in the Users page, I'm redirected to your User profile...continued" CreationDate="2016-04-29T11:51:56.673" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="9828" PostId="3089" Score="0" Text="...continued. Now, in this page, the User id is not inside the white part of the page, containing your icon, your profile description, tags, posts, etc..it's actually the only info about yourself which is written in light grey inside the search toolbox, in the upper-right corner of the page. Took me quite some time to find it :)" CreationDate="2016-04-29T11:54:04.013" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="9830" PostId="3089" Score="3" Text="@DeltaIV: you can see the id in the URL address." CreationDate="2016-04-29T13:43:11.393" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9831" PostId="3089" Score="0" Text="@amoeba right! I didn't notice it. Looks like I also didn't have a look at the upper-left corner of the screen :)" CreationDate="2016-04-29T13:50:07.547" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="9829" PostId="3090" Score="0" Text="you're right, I'll write a new question! Thanks for the suggestion." CreationDate="2016-04-29T11:55:02.250" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="9833" PostId="3091" Score="3" Text="As far as I know, there exists no way of mass-retagging-without-bumping that you envisage. The only existing type of mass-retagging-without-bumping is removing a tag; it's called tag burnination and can be done by SE admins (not by mods)." CreationDate="2016-04-30T21:32:36.103" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9835" PostId="3091" Score="4" Text="Creating the tag is pretty uncontroversial; I think there's clearly some point to having the tag. You can create it and the tag wiki (but the rest of your question about how to deal with the existing cases would remain after that creation). To my recollection, in the past the advice has been to add it to the few most important posts immediately, then a few at a time after that." CreationDate="2016-05-01T00:01:35.353" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9832" PostId="3092" Score="2" Text="This is not possible!" CreationDate="2016-04-30T21:31:50.083" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9834" PostId="3093" Score="1" Text="+1. I have created several tags that I felt could be applied to many (dozens or even hundreds) of existing questions. What I did then was to look through these questions, find the most important ones (perhaps one or two dozens) and add the new tag to those." CreationDate="2016-04-30T21:35:26.303" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9836" PostId="3094" Score="0" Text="The people who ask the question, presumably." CreationDate="2016-05-01T06:10:11.727" UserId="17072" />
  <row Id="9838" PostId="3095" Score="3" Text="The user is doing this massively (right about now)! Someone should stop him before we are sure how to deal with the two tags." CreationDate="2016-05-01T20:09:59.390" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="9839" PostId="3095" Score="8" Text="I have made the two tags into synonyms.  (This is a reversible action, in case answers here suggest some other course is advisable.)  In the meantime the system has automatically blocked additional edit suggestions by that user.  The motivation for these changes appears reasonable; the problem is that a wholesale manual change of hundreds of threads is not the way to go about making them!" CreationDate="2016-05-01T21:17:39.293" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="9840" PostId="3095" Score="7" Text="@whuber I found the user in question and looked at his edit comments. I agree with him that &quot;Bayesian network&quot; is the preferred term in the literature, so I think your synonym [bayes-network]$\to$[bayesian-network] is correct and can safely be merged (perhaps after a day or two, just in case somebody protests here)." CreationDate="2016-05-01T21:38:31.677" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9841" PostId="3095" Score="2" Text="I have put in a tag wiki for `Bayesian networks` and fully agree that `Bayes network` should be a synonym." CreationDate="2016-05-03T14:27:39.287" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="9842" PostId="3095" Score="4" Text="Sorry for being that user haha - I still don't understand the tagging process. I will avoid making any more similar edits in the near future. I'm just really interested in Bayesian networks and was frustrated that the separation of questions related to them was being split into two tags arbitrarily, making the interest on Cross Validated seem smaller than it was. Any suggestions for how to better approach such a problem in the future would be appreciated." CreationDate="2016-05-04T01:20:06.937" UserId="113090" />
  <row Id="9843" PostId="3095" Score="5" Text="@William: no problem, and thank you for helping to organize the site. The problem with edits (like retags) is that edited posts are automatically pushed to the top of the active questions list - so each retag pushes off one *actual* new question, which receives a lot less attention once it's off the first page..." CreationDate="2016-05-04T07:20:36.790" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="9844" PostId="3095" Score="5" Text="@William: ... the preferred way to deal with a situation like this is to propose a *tag synonym*, as was done here: the tag &quot;bayes-network&quot; will now automatically point to &quot;bayesian-network&quot;. You can either propose such a synonym yourself once you hit 2,500 rep, or simply open a question here on Meta, and we will discuss it (or [just post here](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/1200/1352)). If you want to help organize the site, you are most welcome, and I'd recommend you browse a bit through Meta to get a feeling for how the community likes to do things. Welcome aboard!" CreationDate="2016-05-04T07:25:08.673" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="9845" PostId="3095" Score="4" Text="@William, StephenKolassa is right. Your idea was good and helpful, but re-tagging is a somewhat special process. But your actions ultimately led to a better outcome!" CreationDate="2016-05-04T07:25:27.387" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="9846" PostId="3095" Score="0" Text="@whuber: this appears to be resolved to everyone's satisfaction. Do you want to add the [tag:status-completed] tag?" CreationDate="2016-05-04T19:54:07.263" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="9847" PostId="3095" Score="1" Text="@RichardHardy, consider posting an answer stating that the issue is resolved and accepting it, to mark this thread as resolved (otherwise your question remains both officially and visually &quot;unanswered&quot;)." CreationDate="2016-05-05T21:09:08.580" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9848" PostId="3097" Score="2" Text="I couldn't see either (from web site). Minor off-topic note: I think that question should not be migrated to SO (lack of research, no reproducible example; probably it would be smashed there)." CreationDate="2016-05-07T15:10:07.817" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="9849" PostId="3097" Score="0" Text="Same for me, looks like our off-topic close reasons have changed. This is news to me!" CreationDate="2016-05-07T16:29:32.893" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9850" PostId="3098" Score="2" Text="at least it's on-topic there!" CreationDate="2016-05-07T18:22:51.170" UserId="36229" />
  <row Id="9851" PostId="3099" Score="3" Text="If you start typing cronba... in any tag window, [cronbachs-alpha] will pop up as a suggestion. So I am not sure I see a problem." CreationDate="2016-05-12T13:58:18.360" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12531" PostId="3101" Score="0" Text="What's the reason not to add the tag to all relevant threads at once? Does this advice hold for new tags that will be added to just some tens of questions?" CreationDate="2017-02-20T12:24:24.133" UserId="123561" />
  <row Id="12532" PostId="3101" Score="2" Text="@Pere, threads primarily get noticed by being at the top of the main page. When you edit (eg, retag) a thread, it gets bumped to the top of the main page. So if you did all of them, you would flood the main page &amp; all the new / current threads would be pushed down or off." CreationDate="2017-02-20T13:16:06.340" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12549" PostId="3101" Score="0" Text="(+1) I copied these points into http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/tags/tag-proposal/info." CreationDate="2017-02-21T12:58:39.860" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9852" PostId="3103" Score="1" Text="OK I found this:  http://optunity.readthedocs.io/en/latest/" CreationDate="2016-05-15T19:50:54.153" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="9853" PostId="3103" Score="0" Text="Do you want to post your comment as an answer? Or to delete your question? Do you still suggest to remove the tag? It is unclear if you consider this question solved or not." CreationDate="2016-05-15T22:49:43.013" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9854" PostId="3103" Score="0" Text="I dont know what should be done. Should I jusy make a tag wiki with that link and leave IT?" CreationDate="2016-05-15T23:04:57.917" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="9855" PostId="3103" Score="8" Text="I'd say yes but we can wait to see if there are other opinions. Tag wiki excerpt would be good in any case. The lead developer of Optunity is our very own [@MarcClaesen](http://stats.stackexchange.com/users/25433/marc-claesen), by the way." CreationDate="2016-05-15T23:11:10.357" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10496" PostId="3103" Score="0" Text="Consider accepting @GeneralAbrial's answer, Kjetil, if you think it resolves the issue." CreationDate="2016-08-19T16:31:34.093" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9870" PostId="3104" Score="3" Text="The problem with that question is *how* it asks for information: &quot;I have this **procedural** (vice statistics) problem, and I need you to solve it.&quot; In OP's case, the answer may very well be to call `recommendationEngine.update(new_data)`. Or it might be a **policy** question about how new information should be incorporated to provide the best value to the customer. The question bears SVD tags, but nothing else in the question suggests that there's any statistical or mathematical content." CreationDate="2016-05-18T14:12:20.777" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="9962" PostId="3104" Score="1" Text="Update: the linked question was closed on May 17 as &quot;off-topic&quot; with zero votes and no answers. Accordingly, it was auto-deleted by @Community ten days later, on May 27. Users with less than 10,000 rep won't be able to see it any more. (Believe me, you are not missing out on much.)" CreationDate="2016-05-30T14:52:22.677" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="9856" PostId="3105" Score="7" Text="Agreed. Note that researchers are also &quot;people who are clearly employees at some company asking how to do their job&quot; with only small elasticity on what precisely is a &quot;company&quot;." CreationDate="2016-05-17T11:54:49.267" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9864" PostId="3105" Score="0" Text="Stephan, you make a good point. The key issue for me is where the questions would be Googleable for someone with the necessary competence. There a policy on solving routine homework questions. Why provide solutions for routine business problems?" CreationDate="2016-05-18T09:12:22.957" UserId="16663" />
  <row Id="9865" PostId="3105" Score="0" Text="Nick, to push the analogy with researchers: I'm talking about the equivalent of someone asking &quot;Could you come up with an idea for a paper for me, and show me how to do it?&quot;" CreationDate="2016-05-18T09:13:16.257" UserId="16663" />
  <row Id="9866" PostId="3105" Score="3" Text="[I don't think that the Googleabilty of a question should be a hard criterion.](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/67/1352) Apart from that, I fully agree that routine [tag:self-study] questions should be treated according to our homework help policy. But that doesn't hinge on the question coming from business. The key point is that we need people to have at least an elementary understanding of statistics, since a) we can't provide that here, and b) answering &quot;business homework&quot; questions may give people just enough rope to hang themselves." CreationDate="2016-05-18T09:18:49.587" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="9887" PostId="3105" Score="2" Text="@conjectures Homework questions do raise related issues. If someone copies an assignment verbatim I really won't play, but I don't know how many carefully disguised questions I have answered positively. Similarly, if someone evidently wants to be given the idea for an entire project, then I won't play on those grounds alone, even though their question is usually unanswerable. But I am unhappy at the idea that there can be a policy based on whether the motives behind a question are honourable, because we can't tell that at all consistently. In essence, we exist to be exploited by others...." CreationDate="2016-05-20T11:42:18.480" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9917" PostId="3105" Score="1" Text="@NickCox: Students'll need to have at least read &amp; understood a homework question to carefully disguise it, so even then our policy's doing some good." CreationDate="2016-05-22T18:34:10.170" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9857" PostId="3106" Score="1" Text="I think that the rate at which you are tagging old questions is fine. I know that does not directly answer your question, but after 10 hours, perhaps nobody knows." CreationDate="2016-05-17T20:34:22.250" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="9858" PostId="3106" Score="3" Text="+1. I'd love to see a plot that shows the average number of new posts (or answers, or edits, or whatever) as a function of GMT hour." CreationDate="2016-05-17T20:44:11.037" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9859" PostId="3106" Score="1" Text="@amoeba, if you go to `tools` -&gt; `stats` -&gt; `site analytics`, you can see such plots." CreationDate="2016-05-18T02:05:49.803" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9860" PostId="3106" Score="0" Text="Really, you can just look at the main page. Sometimes, new (answered / modified) questions just keep popping up; other times, it might be 5 or 10 minutes before the list is bumped." CreationDate="2016-05-18T02:08:02.143" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9861" PostId="3106" Score="3" Text="@gung: [access to site analytics unfortunately only happens at 25,000 rep](http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/privileges)." CreationDate="2016-05-18T07:05:40.663" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="9867" PostId="3106" Score="1" Text="@gung and Stephan, oh I was sure that 20k is the maximum rep unlocking all existing privileges (that's partially why I started regularly giving bounties: I thought I don't need any additionally rep anymore). Turns out that it was a false impression and it still makes sense to reach 25k :-)" CreationDate="2016-05-18T10:04:47.717" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9862" PostId="3107" Score="4" Text="Thank you! I took the liberty of turning that query into a plot. Will accept unless something unexpectedly better comes along." CreationDate="2016-05-18T07:16:21.767" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="9863" PostId="3107" Score="8" Text="I like how Friday  on this plot starts as a weekday but ends as a weekend." CreationDate="2016-05-18T07:41:20.953" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9868" PostId="3107" Score="2" Text="@Stephan Thanks for adding the plot" CreationDate="2016-05-18T10:32:14.933" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9872" PostId="3111" Score="1" Text="Okay, I can see this reasoning. I appreciate that there seem to be two rather distinct meanings of &quot;hyperparameter&quot; (HP): roughly speaking, Bayesian HP and ML HP, and that Qs #1 and #2 ask about Bayesian HPs, whereas #3 seems to be asking about ML ones. However, the answers are all over the place. DikranMarsupial's answer (which has max number of upvotes in all these threads) to #2 talks mostly about ML HPs, even though it mentions both meanings. And the most upvoted answer to #3 seems to talk about Bayesian HPs. My suggestion was driven by this confusion." CreationDate="2016-05-18T16:11:26.877" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9873" PostId="3111" Score="1" Text="If we want to keep them separate, then we should edit the titles of the Qs to make it clear that they are asking about different things. And live with the fact that some of the answers are assuming different meaning. This can also work &quot;tolerably well&quot;, but it still seems to me that there will be less confusion if everything is merged together and then perhaps some of the answers edited to make the distinction very clear." CreationDate="2016-05-18T16:13:17.700" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9879" PostId="3111" Score="0" Text="@amoeba If we keep the questions separate, I would not lean toward changing the titles (since the titles people chose may be similar to the titles people use to search) but would make the distinction clear when linking the posts. Specifically, people searching won't know about the distinction in usages." CreationDate="2016-05-18T22:02:01.460" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9881" PostId="3111" Score="1" Text="If we combined them, some editing would seem to be necessary to avoid confusing the reader with the answers relating to different meanings without highlighting that there are different meanings. If done well, the combine-and-edit would probably end up with a result that is more useful to later readers, since explanation of the existence and meaning of the different interpretations would all be explicit and in one place." CreationDate="2016-05-18T22:06:37.610" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9874" PostId="3112" Score="4" Text="I don't see a problem with your having created a tag given the situation &amp; your reasons. However, the tag has no wiki excerpt to guide usage. That isn't good. If you create a tag, you should (immediately) add an excerpt at a minimum (a full wiki would be nice too). Also, aren't you changing your name a bit much?" CreationDate="2016-05-18T16:13:38.543" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9875" PostId="3112" Score="2" Text="The name change thing is quite confusing indeed." CreationDate="2016-05-18T16:16:34.937" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9876" PostId="3112" Score="0" Text="Fine, I'll revert my name -- or, at least, I will once I'm allowed to again." CreationDate="2016-05-18T17:33:40.907" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="9877" PostId="3112" Score="1" Text="Its up to you. At least this is pronounceable. I just find it curious, is all." CreationDate="2016-05-18T20:32:27.370" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9886" PostId="3112" Score="1" Text="Thanks, I approved your edits, it awaits anther reviewer's approval to go through." CreationDate="2016-05-19T18:15:57.987" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14945" PostId="3112" Score="0" Text="@Sycorax, would you mind taking a look at the discussion [here](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5082/7290), especially the bottom answer?" CreationDate="2017-12-03T14:04:19.770" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9878" PostId="3113" Score="0" Text="See http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts." CreationDate="2016-05-18T21:54:27.400" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="9880" PostId="3113" Score="0" Text="@whuber  Ah! Didn't realize it had been tagged as &quot;community wiki.&quot;" CreationDate="2016-05-18T22:04:57.400" UserId="78229" />
  <row Id="9882" PostId="3113" Score="5" Text="That's understandable, because we don't have the ability to make a thread CW at the outset: a moderator has to come across the question and convert it to CW.  More often than not, that occurs after one or more replies have been offered (CW questions tend to be &quot;softball&quot; questions and quickly collect answers).  Reputation is accrued by votes applied before CW status is applied and is not reversed afterwards: you get to keep any ill-gotten gains! :-)  This issue of CW's effect on reputation has been [somewhat controversial](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2953)." CreationDate="2016-05-18T22:07:11.953" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="9883" PostId="3114" Score="2" Text="Context: see some early meta posts - for example [here](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/119/the-7-essential-meta-questions) [here](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/21/what-should-our-site-be-called-what-should-our-domain-name-be), and [here](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/357/how-to-make-second-round-of-voting-for-the-site-name)" CreationDate="2016-05-19T17:05:48.377" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9894" PostId="3116" Score="2" Text="The problem here, as I see it, is that our standards for what is considered on-topic have gotten much stricter since then. I'm not sure the question your suggesting would be considered on-topic today." CreationDate="2016-05-20T18:53:26.093" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9895" PostId="3116" Score="5" Text="@gung: I'd take a chance on it. I'd say the question is still on-topic, because [&quot;it needs *statistical expertise* to understand or answer&quot;](http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic). But I'd now certainly include this little argument to stave off closure, if I do post such a question." CreationDate="2016-05-20T19:55:20.943" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="9896" PostId="3116" Score="2" Text="Yeah, I recognize that. I'm OK with grandfathering in the existing questions. I honestly think it's borderline &amp; I'm not sure which way I lean, but my impression is that others have become more hard line than I am, &amp; I suspect people would vote to close. I am actually in the process of formulating a meta.CV Q about our close voting." CreationDate="2016-05-20T20:03:16.297" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9906" PostId="3116" Score="5" Text="Have you thought putting a bounty on the 2013 question? There is a notice box where you can explain what you are looking for in the newer answers." CreationDate="2016-05-21T02:39:21.007" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="9912" PostId="3116" Score="4" Text="I'd be quite ok with this type of question, for essentially the reasons that @StephanKolassa cites.  Software and programming are an essential part of doing statistics and machine learning, I wish our line was a bit softer." CreationDate="2016-05-21T16:34:37.097" UserId="74500" />
  <row Id="9914" PostId="3116" Score="3" Text="I think these questions, &amp; others like them, show that software recommendations should be on topic." CreationDate="2016-05-21T22:43:36.437" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9905" PostId="3117" Score="1" Text="Don't know the answer, but nowadays, it seems a lot of work, considering CV has grown, so as the required maintenance." CreationDate="2016-05-21T02:29:47.800" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="9889" PostId="3118" Score="0" Text="I could ask a question &quot;When does LASSO fail?&quot; and mark it as a duplicate of the other one, but I guess this is not the best way. I could add a nonsense answer to the other thread including the phrase &quot;When does LASSO fail&quot; to make it searchable, but that does not seem like a good idea either." CreationDate="2016-05-20T16:39:49.507" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="9890" PostId="3118" Score="4" Text="This is such a good idea you ought to consider (re-)proposing it on the [SE meta site](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/21285)." CreationDate="2016-05-20T16:47:28.310" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="9891" PostId="3118" Score="0" Text="@whuber, I trust your experience on meta, so I will follow your suggestion. Oh, but the thread you link to covers that already..." CreationDate="2016-05-20T16:57:05.357" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="9893" PostId="3118" Score="2" Text="OK, I guess just posting a new question and marking it as duplicate is acceptable, judging by [this post](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/05/linking-duplicate-questions/) (scroll towards the end, there is an explicit citation of relevance to this question)." CreationDate="2016-05-20T17:02:08.557" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="9897" PostId="3119" Score="11" Text="+1 The motivation expressed in the introductory paragraph is a little unclear. If a post *ought* to be closed, then there can be no such thing as &quot;too quickly&quot;: we are doing a favor to the OP to take action as soon as possible. Thus, one measure of whether there actually exists a problem is to examine how many posts are acted on in some way (close, delete, etc.) but the action had to be reversed because it was incorrect. I am aware of extremely few such threads. The problem with merely commenting is that there is no mechanism to help us follow up later, so commenting really means &quot;do nothing.&quot;" CreationDate="2016-05-20T21:13:13.170" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="9898" PostId="3119" Score="1" Text="@whuber, for me, commenting means 'alert the OP to the issue &amp; give them a chance to fix it'. You're right that there isn't a good method to follow up. I sometimes check back later, but sometimes don't. Nonetheless, sooner or later *someone* will see the thread, see that there was a problem &amp; that nothing was done about it, &amp; can vote to close then. The downside to this would be that the thread remained open in the interim. A related question I've thought about, but didn't explicitly ask here, is how bad that would be." CreationDate="2016-05-20T21:22:32.933" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9899" PostId="3119" Score="1" Text="Not all of my points here are about commenting, so we could always focus on the others. But to make the commenting issues more stark, imagine we had the power to instantly close a question as unclear w/o needing 4 more votes. So a question is posted &amp; closed as unclear w/i a minute or 2, w/o any comment specifying *what* was unclear, or how to fix it. What is the OP supposed to do? What impression of our site will result? Etc." CreationDate="2016-05-20T21:28:47.763" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9900" PostId="3119" Score="9" Text="(1) You write as if closing a question precluded the OP from having a chance to fix it, but (as you know) that's not correct.  In fact, if a reasonable request for a fix has been made, would it not be *better* for the question to be on hold as an indication to readers that a change will occur? (2) The system displays a clear, albeit general, message when questions are put on hold for being unclear or too broad, etc. In cases where that message suffices (such as unresearched homework questions), why should we feel a need to add any comments?" CreationDate="2016-05-20T21:33:00.340" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="9901" PostId="3119" Score="1" Text="@whuber, I didn't intend to imply that the OP couldn't fix their post. You are right that they can. I suppose it seems to be that there are gradations of the level of (say) unclarity in a Q; w/ higher levels, closing is better, but w/ lower levels, a comment may be enough. A line must be drawn somewhere. Surely a post shouldn't be closed if it is missing a single comma. I am wondering if the line should be loosened somewhat from its current location. I am opening the topic for discussion. The answer may be 'no', &amp; that would be fine, too." CreationDate="2016-05-20T22:12:51.090" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9902" PostId="3119" Score="0" Text="My concern w/ the system's messages is that I think they are typically too broad &amp; unclear to be useful, in that they are *unspecific*. Here is the 'unclear' message: &quot;Please clarify your specific problem or add additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it’s hard to tell exactly what you're asking.&quot; What 'additional details' need to be added? W/o a comment to the OP, they may not be able to tell. The additional details needed are likely to vary from post to post." CreationDate="2016-05-20T22:16:11.263" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9903" PostId="3119" Score="0" Text="The current close -&gt; edit -&gt; reopen process isn't necessarily bad, but it certainly isn't very agile. It can take hours or days to play out. OTOH, I've had cases where I left comments to the OP, they edited, &amp; I deleted my comment or retracted my close vote w/i 15 minutes." CreationDate="2016-05-20T22:19:42.313" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9904" PostId="3119" Score="7" Text="&quot;Nonetheless, sooner or later someone will see the thread, see that there was a problem &amp; that nothing was done about it, &amp; can vote to close then.&quot; - A lot of our lingering unanswered questions haven't been automatically deleted because there are comments on them (that haven't been responded to) &amp; yet they haven't been closed." CreationDate="2016-05-20T22:34:45.270" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9907" PostId="3119" Score="0" Text="You're right, @Scortchi. That's the other side of this. So a follow up question is, how bad is that state of affairs? How much does it hurt us that we have lingering, unanswered questions that should be closed at this point but haven't been? It does seem to bother people (every so often, someone takes to meta.CV to complain about it), but why does it actually matter that much? Do we lose credibility with the SE power structure as a result?" CreationDate="2016-05-21T03:00:14.880" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9908" PostId="3119" Score="8" Text="It's not so bad; &amp; we shouldn't be changing what we do just to improve the site statistics. Still, if a question's not likely to get a decent answer because it's flawed, closing it sends a strong message to the OP that it needs improvement, &amp; the automatic deletion of closed questions after some time removes clutter. And the quicker the better." CreationDate="2016-05-21T08:46:49.353" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9929" PostId="3119" Score="0" Text="The square root Q was migrated to Math.SE which seems to make sense. So I am not sure it's a good example (or perhaps I misunderstood your point)." CreationDate="2016-05-23T19:10:00.343" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9930" PostId="3119" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, I don't object to it having been migrated to math.SE. I do object to it being closed as off topic -&gt; homework." CreationDate="2016-05-23T19:18:02.533" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9931" PostId="3119" Score="0" Text="@gung But it wasn't! How can you object to something that did not happen?" CreationDate="2016-05-23T19:20:37.540" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9932" PostId="3119" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, someone voted to close the question as off topic -&gt; homework, even though the question stated that it was an assignment, had what the OP understood / had tried, &amp; had the tag. It is an example of people voting to close threads that in no way need to be closed. The fact that it was later migrated is a different issue." CreationDate="2016-05-23T19:30:30.280" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9933" PostId="3119" Score="0" Text="I guess I was confused by looking at [its revision history](http://stats.stackexchange.com/posts/213987/revisions) where it seems that all the off-topic votes were actually migration votes, but I now realize that it might only look like that." CreationDate="2016-05-23T19:52:03.153" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9934" PostId="3119" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, someone flagged it in between revision #2 &amp; 3. It doesn't seem to show up in the revision history." CreationDate="2016-05-23T19:59:25.540" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9956" PostId="3119" Score="5" Text="FWIW, recent (last month's) statistics show that the site moderators (a) close (queued) questions at substantially lower rates than most people and (b) spend slightly more time with each decision than most people.  I suspect both are because we tend to act cautiously and conservatively, letting the community lead concerning the gray areas.  Thus, this thread is of particular value both for the moderators and to help the community see where it's going and to reflect on that." CreationDate="2016-05-26T20:17:56.553" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="9957" PostId="3119" Score="0" Text="Thanks, @whuber, that's good information." CreationDate="2016-05-26T20:35:42.277" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9970" PostId="3119" Score="2" Text="on whuber's comment -- I know I'm much more hesitant to mod-hammer closure than when I was just one vote among many. If it seems quite obvious it should close, then I might do it alone, but often I'll wait for several votes first. I'm happiest if I can come in as the last needed vote (reducing my impact to that of an ordinary high reputation user). I'd vote to close with something nearer to my old frequency if I could turn off the diamond." CreationDate="2016-06-02T01:43:45.377" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9971" PostId="3119" Score="1" Text="I dunno, @Glen_b. I voted for you. I'm perfectly happy for you to close those threads you believe clearly should be closed, or to leave open those threads you believe clearly merit it. More recently, I have started voting (in the close vote queue) more like a moderator, in that I abstain from voting. However, I still vote 1 way or another on more than half. I would be comfortable w/ those votes if they were final." CreationDate="2016-06-02T01:50:09.903" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9974" PostId="3119" Score="0" Text="@gung it's the ones where I go &quot;I *think* this should close.&quot; that are the biggest problem. If I'm one of five votes it doesn't matter much if ten percent of those votes weren't great judgement, since a couple more voters will still get it there. If I am a moderator acting alone, I don't have that safety net -- I'd better be more than 99% sure... and I don't always have time to be sure." CreationDate="2016-06-02T02:14:20.843" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9909" PostId="3120" Score="1" Text="I was thinking about an answer but I agree with almost all of this one. The only thing I disagree with is the inclusion of *self study* among close reasons that usually benefit from being accompanied by specific guidance in comments - surely the automatically generated text is clear enough. Trying to cajole someone into making more than a half-hearted attempt to do their own homework is tedious &amp; usually unsuccessful, whereas helping someone to clarify a real question is useful &amp; rewarding." CreationDate="2016-05-21T13:41:35.583" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9910" PostId="3120" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi Yes I can understand that there is a cost/benefit thing to posting a comment beneath a question of any kind (one often ends up, over the day or so, engaged in a comment ping-pong that one might have been better without) and if the question is likely to be closed, and particularly if the automatically generated text is clear once closing is complete, one might be better off without it." CreationDate="2016-05-21T15:07:04.757" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9911" PostId="3120" Score="3" Text="On balance I still prefer engagement in this case (though, for the reasons you give, this isn't so clear-cut as for unclear/too broad)  because (a) I like gung's suggested comment text ([the one he links to](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/2468/22228)), (b) I have found - as gung does - that quite a few OPs are quite receptive and responsive to it, and this avoids the close-edit-review cycle (which, as gung says in the comments above, is not very agile), (c) if the OP is confused about the requirements they now have a chance of human interaction via the comments thread." CreationDate="2016-05-21T15:10:10.117" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9913" PostId="3120" Score="2" Text="I like @gung's text for *self study* better than the close reason text. Perhaps we could change the latter. I don't know if we can edit the *duplicate* close reason text - gung's text is better for that too, as it does encourage editing when needed." CreationDate="2016-05-21T18:24:22.290" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9915" PostId="3120" Score="1" Text="About the close as duplicate notice, if my memory does not fail there is a message which will appear only to OP with guidance about what to do next." CreationDate="2016-05-22T13:54:38.833" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="9921" PostId="3120" Score="0" Text="@AndreSilva: I didn't know that. Anyone know what it is?" CreationDate="2016-05-22T19:33:19.047" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9922" PostId="3120" Score="1" Text="@Scortchi: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/199838/why-are-there-two-different-duplicate-post-notices/199839#199839" CreationDate="2016-05-22T19:59:10.603" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="9923" PostId="3120" Score="1" Text="@AndreSilva: Thanks. That seems good enough." CreationDate="2016-05-22T21:54:30.180" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9919" PostId="3121" Score="6" Text="I find your fourth bullet point most important: closing unclear questions prevents users from posting answers that may be worse than no answer at all." CreationDate="2016-05-22T18:45:51.243" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="9920" PostId="3121" Score="0" Text="@StephanKolassa: Perhaps the third gives it a run for its money." CreationDate="2016-05-22T19:32:43.873" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9916" PostId="3122" Score="4" Text="The SE system is largely self-governing. Site policies are primarily determined by the community, not by the moderators. We respect their opinions because we have very good moderators who are knowledgeable about the subject matter &amp; heavily involved in the site, but they aren't really a form of government. They are more like sheriffs (implementing policy) than legislatures (creating policy)." CreationDate="2016-05-22T16:54:03.610" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9918" PostId="3122" Score="1" Text="@gung: A flattering as well as apt simile!" CreationDate="2016-05-22T18:39:38.883" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9924" PostId="3123" Score="7" Text="Part of the problem I have with the re-open interface is that the comments discussion is not visible -- so on a post on some obscure topic, precisely 0% of the question is clear **to me**, but if the comments say &quot;please clarify these three issues,&quot; I can usually figure out whether those points have been clarified. Absent those hints, I usually just Skip." CreationDate="2016-05-23T12:58:05.573" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="9925" PostId="3123" Score="1" Text="@GeneralAbrial agree that it is a problem with flawed un-close mechanism -- it was rised multiple times on meta-meta (e.g. http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/125/how-about-a-vote-not-to-close-option-to-counter-the-vote-to-close)" CreationDate="2016-05-23T13:12:05.820" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="9926" PostId="3123" Score="2" Text="@GeneralAbrial, if you click the tab in the upper left corner, you can switch the view to see the thread as displayed on the main site. Then you can view the comments. I always read through them (including clicking the 'see more comments' link) to ensure I understand the issues before I vote on reopening." CreationDate="2016-05-23T13:34:15.480" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9950" PostId="3123" Score="2" Text="(+1) I &quot;skip&quot; an awful lot of reopen discussions, sadly, partly because of how clunky the interface is but more often because I'd rather the people who have voted to close have a look at whether the points they raised (or felt, without explicitly writing down!) had been sufficiently addressed. Sometimes I feel perfectly capable of judging that for myself, but other times I get the feeling there's something more subtle going on." CreationDate="2016-05-24T21:02:56.153" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9955" PostId="3124" Score="3" Text="It drives me completely nuts when apps destroy my whitespace and end of lines." CreationDate="2016-05-26T19:25:42.697" UserId="74500" />
  <row Id="9937" PostId="3125" Score="1" Text="You have managed to air the issue. The Catch-22 here is that we can't advise on precisely what looks like spam (but isn't) because it was rejected as looking like spam and is not visible (unless to moderators). Can you give any hints about anything specific that might have been misread as spam in terms of either style or content? If not, the only advice I can give is to try again but reword somewhat. Your style here seems perfectly straightforward." CreationDate="2016-05-24T07:46:11.823" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9939" PostId="3125" Score="0" Text="Can you copy-paste your entire rejected post (if you still have it somewhere) in your question here?" CreationDate="2016-05-24T09:10:20.007" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9940" PostId="3125" Score="0" Text="Here is the text, which I saved as a separate text file. I thought maybe because I composed it outside my browser in kwrite, and then pasted it, that this caused the problem. Well, here it is below: ... Sorry, I am getting a too long error message." CreationDate="2016-05-24T12:48:32.127" UserId="79262" />
  <row Id="9941" PostId="3125" Score="2" Text="I don't think you're able to post links due to your low reputation. **Please edit your question to include the text of the question, not a hyperlink.** Your hunch may be correct -- usually the SE interface thinks that people who compose a question too fast are robots. One experiment would just be to paste the text, set a timer for 30 minutes, and hit post when it dings." CreationDate="2016-05-24T12:52:16.167" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="9943" PostId="3125" Score="0" Text="@GeneralAbrial, sorry, I am a bit confused by part of your comment. I don't have a hyperlink in the question.  The suggestion to paste and wait 30 min sounds like a great idea. I will try it later today, in case I am not understanding your reference to a hyperlink and you have the opportunity to clarify. Thanks" CreationDate="2016-05-24T13:44:03.917" UserId="79262" />
  <row Id="9944" PostId="3125" Score="0" Text="@Joe I wrote the comment before you had appended the statistical question to your question. Before you edited it, your previous comment stopped at &quot;here it is below&quot;: and I assumed you had pasted a hyperlink which had been removed by the robots. Additionally, new users often paste hyperlinks as critical components of their questions, and I wanted to short-circuit any headaches around that by being explicit that hyperlinks are generally unhelpful (links going stale, access problems, etc)." CreationDate="2016-05-24T13:50:38.723" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="9945" PostId="3125" Score="0" Text="@GeneralAbrial, Thanks. Currently this discussion, which includes the full post now, is in the meta section. I assume that I should now try the (30 min pause technique) post in the normal stats section. Is that correct?" CreationDate="2016-05-24T14:10:51.173" UserId="79262" />
  <row Id="9946" PostId="3125" Score="2" Text="30-minute pause might work. If it's not a question of timing, I don't know what it is, but this thread may be helpful in identifying the cause. It certainly seems that this question is squarely on-topic, and if you are a spam robot, you're very good at pretending to be human and have only the most circuitous way of hocking your wares. ;-p" CreationDate="2016-05-24T14:18:35.943" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="9947" PostId="3125" Score="0" Text="@GeneralAbrial, Well, I tried the 30 minute, more like 50 minute pause and that did not work. Now I will try posting a few paragraphs at a time. I will try to break it up at logical break points." CreationDate="2016-05-24T18:46:51.303" UserId="79262" />
  <row Id="9948" PostId="3125" Score="1" Text="@GeneralAbrial, Success!! I posted half the comment, then immediately edited the posting to add the rest of the post. I also, eliminated, the &quot;Thanks so much, Joe&quot; at the end. Perhaps the bot that thought I was spam does not like polite people. (-:" CreationDate="2016-05-24T18:56:42.050" UserId="79262" />
  <row Id="9949" PostId="3125" Score="0" Text="@Joe &quot;thanks&quot; goes against the style guide, FWIW. As does &quot;hi&quot; and so on. We just want to focus on questions." CreationDate="2016-05-24T18:57:43.793" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="9958" PostId="3125" Score="0" Text="Joe, perhaps your last comment could fit as an answer here (it was probably what you said, the amount of text within short period of time and/or something from the signature)." CreationDate="2016-05-26T21:03:38.800" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="9959" PostId="3125" Score="0" Text="@AndreSilva I think it most definitely has nothing to do with the signature. But I can imagine that a HUGE block of text coming from a user with 0 reputation can trigger some spam filter. (It's good to have a [bug] tag here by the way because it should cause one of the SE mods to come by and take a look.)" CreationDate="2016-05-26T22:55:31.787" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9942" PostId="3127" Score="2" Text="I think this is an excellent answer. And the penultimate paragraph and final paragraph are very sensible." CreationDate="2016-05-24T13:26:28.713" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9951" PostId="3127" Score="2" Text="@Silverfish Thanks. I'd add that gung's set of already written comments  strike a very good balance between gentle and firm, but I find it quicker to write something than to find his list and copy and paste the best one. There should be a smarter way to add comments that mostly come from about ten reasons why a question is not going to work in its present form." CreationDate="2016-05-25T06:07:49.840" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9952" PostId="3127" Score="0" Text="I think @glen_b uses a browser extension that lets him add predefined comments without having to go and look them up then do a copy-and-paste job." CreationDate="2016-05-25T08:09:00.107" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="9953" PostId="3127" Score="0" Text="@Silverfish +1. NickCox is definitely my favourite answerer on Meta." CreationDate="2016-05-25T09:50:49.053" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9954" PostId="3127" Score="4" Text="I'm the Darth Vader of CV?" CreationDate="2016-05-25T10:39:49.790" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9972" PostId="3127" Score="1" Text="@Silverfish I do [indeed](http://stackapps.com/questions/2116/autoreviewcomments-pro-forma-comments-for-se). I find it has dramatically sped up my ability to leave comments -- it offers about half a dozen slots of question-comments and about half a dozen slots for answer comments.  The default ones aren't bad but I've edited or replaced several of them based on a answers to a question here on meta plus my own thoughts. What happens is once it's installed in your browser, ...ctd" CreationDate="2016-06-02T01:58:22.180" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9973" PostId="3127" Score="1" Text="ctd ... if you click &quot;add a comment&quot;, at the right side of the edit-box, next to the usual &quot;help&quot; link under the &quot;Add Comment&quot; button is a new link, &quot;auto&quot;, that will pop up the application. If you're commenting under a question it offers the options for questions (conversely for answers), You click one of the choices, press the &quot;Insert&quot; button and it pastes the whole thing (replacing any text you typed so copy anything you already typed into your clipboard if you still want it). You can then edit the auto-text before clicking &quot;Add Comment&quot;. In most cases, it's a few clicks and I've moved on" CreationDate="2016-06-02T01:59:24.447" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9963" PostId="3132" Score="0" Text="This post has a statistical question as well, so I'd not close it for that reason (though possibly as unclear)." CreationDate="2016-05-31T09:12:34.517" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9964" PostId="3132" Score="1" Text="@Scortchi yes, it has, so I did not vote to close it but rather use it as example for discussion." CreationDate="2016-05-31T09:54:20.917" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="9965" PostId="3132" Score="2" Text="FWIW, such questions might also be on topic on the [academia.SE] or [cogsci.SE] sites." CreationDate="2016-05-31T20:55:18.260" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9966" PostId="3132" Score="0" Text="@gung aren't such questions more on-topic on &quot;Academia&quot;?" CreationDate="2016-06-01T09:36:44.313" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="9967" PostId="3132" Score="0" Text="I'm not active there, so I don't know for sure. But they might be." CreationDate="2016-06-01T12:52:07.413" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10818" PostId="3132" Score="0" Text="@Tim, what do you think of Scortchi's answer here? Do you want to mark is accepted, or do you disagree with it?" CreationDate="2016-09-17T23:16:11.160" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9968" PostId="3134" Score="9" Text="I've sometimes pointed people to @PeterFlom's blog post, [&quot;How to ask a Statistics question&quot;](http://www.statisticalanalysisconsulting.com/how-to-ask-a-statistics-question/). There's also [What makes a good Cross Validated Question?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/a/1483/17230). Picking or making up a model question might be an idea." CreationDate="2016-06-01T16:51:53.070" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9969" PostId="3134" Score="9" Text="How can we get posters to do this is the key here; beyond doubt it is highly desirable. I think it's unfortunate that our Help Center is full of negatives whereas posts laying out models for emulation are mostly within Meta threads or elsewhere. But that's true across several fields: it's easy to list common specific errors in any language, but hard to explain how to write engagingly." CreationDate="2016-06-01T17:50:58.220" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="9975" PostId="3135" Score="2" Text="Like that: [en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Theodicy&amp;oldid=682868551#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Theodicy&amp;oldid=682868551#History) ?" CreationDate="2016-06-02T09:51:52.080" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9976" PostId="3135" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Ah, I should have though to try it that way, even though it looks weird to my eye. I was essentially doing &quot;...Theodicy#History&amp;oldid=682868551&quot;" CreationDate="2016-06-02T10:12:12.483" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9977" PostId="3135" Score="2" Text="Everything before `#` specifies the url and goes to the server to request the HTML output. All the parameters separated by `&amp;` have to be part of that (`oldid` in this case). Everything after `#` is used by the client browser to scroll down the resulting HTML page and so has to follow the url itself. Ergo: first `&amp;` then `#`." CreationDate="2016-06-02T10:14:34.347" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9978" PostId="3135" Score="0" Text="Yeah, it's easy if you know what you're doing. Thanks again." CreationDate="2016-06-02T10:33:36.500" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="9980" PostId="3138" Score="1" Text="Because they're on different domains. You should automatically be logged in to every site on the `stackexchange.com` domain, though." CreationDate="2016-06-06T11:40:51.127" UserId="72321" />
  <row Id="9981" PostId="3138" Score="0" Text="@JNat However, I can see that I login automatically to ubuntu.stackexchange, but not tex.stackexchange (or CV) when first logged to stackoverflow. Is there like a «team»  of sites in a common domain, where other do not share access?" CreationDate="2016-06-06T12:22:27.017" UserId="117782" />
  <row Id="9982" PostId="3138" Score="0" Text="Wait, let me clarify, since I missed a few important words on that previous comment. You should automatically be logged in to every site on the `stackexchange.com` domain _after you've logged in to CV, though. Is that not what you're describing? Do you need to log in to CV _every single time_ you come here, even if you didn't log out, and use the same machine?" CreationDate="2016-06-06T12:39:15.833" UserId="72321" />
  <row Id="9983" PostId="3138" Score="0" Text="[This post](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/260153/global-auth-is-dead-long-live-universal-login) may also be of help in understanding how the log in system works." CreationDate="2016-06-06T12:40:31.730" UserId="72321" />
  <row Id="9984" PostId="3138" Score="0" Text="No. The part I don't understand is: I need to login to CV *even though I am first online at stackoverflow*, **but** I *do not* need to login to stackoverflow if I am first online at CV. In all cases I speak from being completely offline (logged off from all sites: upper-left menu)." CreationDate="2016-06-06T12:42:41.410" UserId="117782" />
  <row Id="9985" PostId="3138" Score="0" Text="@JNat Thanks for the link! It seems like the important part for my question is&#xA;&gt; stackoverflow.com, superuser.com, and other Q&amp;A sites with their own domains will still use the old flow." CreationDate="2016-06-06T13:59:59.493" UserId="117782" />
  <row Id="9986" PostId="3138" Score="1" Text="I'm not entirely sure, so I've asked Adam to have a look at this post himself. He should be able to clarify any withstanding doubts." CreationDate="2016-06-06T14:02:25.450" UserId="72321" />
  <row Id="9989" PostId="3138" Score="0" Text="Can you walk me through the exact steps you're taking, please? Including which domain you're on when you do. e.g. when you say &quot;log in to StackExchange&quot;, do you mean you log in on stackexchange.com or on a q&amp;a subdomain like stats.stackexchange.com?" CreationDate="2016-06-06T21:35:29.427" UserId="8588" />
  <row Id="9990" PostId="3138" Score="0" Text="@Adam I edited the question to try and be more precise, hope it's clearer now." CreationDate="2016-06-07T08:44:17.340" UserId="117782" />
  <row Id="9987" PostId="3139" Score="2" Text="This has happened before.  People have (speculatively) provided many possible explanations: see http://meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=vote+limit+answer+25  The answer at http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/279730/166924 is particularly clear concerning the (twisted) voting logic." CreationDate="2016-06-06T14:23:17.097" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="9988" PostId="3139" Score="0" Text="@whuber It seems twisted to me, indeed. So I reckon I could undo a couple of non-question-votes and see what happens? Or «stuff is set in stone» already for today?" CreationDate="2016-06-06T14:32:49.303" UserId="117782" />
  <row Id="9991" PostId="3142" Score="2" Text="These are really questions for the [main Meta site](http://meta.stackexchange.com/), not here, because they affect all of SE.  The answer to the first bullet is *evolution*: some badges have been replaced by others or found not to be productive." CreationDate="2016-06-10T21:05:40.437" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="9992" PostId="3142" Score="0" Text="OK, but badges can be different for SE subsites, right? Couldn't the CV community introduce a badge that does not exist on (all) other sites? It could also semantically make sense to have different badges IMHO." CreationDate="2016-06-10T21:14:14.013" UserId="112731" />
  <row Id="9993" PostId="3142" Score="3" Text="I believe the badges (except of course tag badges) &amp; the criteria for being awarded them are the same across Stack Exchange: see:[Do we have different badges in different SE sites](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/268497/225179)." CreationDate="2016-06-10T21:50:30.823" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="9994" PostId="3143" Score="0" Text="OK, now that makes things a bit clearer. Taking the &quot;Unsung Hero&quot; as example, which only 4 people earned so far on CV: my gut feeling would tell me that this is very low for such requirements, but it seems to be wrong: this badge has been awarded last time on 4. June this year, right?" CreationDate="2016-06-10T22:19:47.430" UserId="112731" />
  <row Id="9995" PostId="3143" Score="0" Text="@geekoverdose, yes, it appears it was last awarded June 4. It is a very hard badge to 'earn'. Many OPs ask questions &amp; don't accept answers. Most answers that are worthy get at least 1 upvote. You need a topic that most people don't pay attention to so that good answers aren't upvoted &amp; you need OPs who do accept but don't have enough reputation to upvote themselves. It's a strange situation (&amp; a rather strange badge)." CreationDate="2016-06-10T22:34:32.967" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="9996" PostId="3143" Score="0" Text="Yes, thinking about the requirements of &quot;Unsung Hero&quot; again, I might have underestimated them at first. OPs are likely even more frequent on SO, which would explain why it was earned &gt;10K times there. Thanks for clarifying - it's good to know that &quot;gamification is still on at its brightest&quot; at CV ;)" CreationDate="2016-06-10T22:46:25.880" UserId="112731" />
  <row Id="14293" PostId="3143" Score="0" Text="@gung I am now an unsung hero myself and currently there have been 16 awarded. The requirements are more stringent than at first blush and there is software for checking on progress on that. The badge is not so strange for people who direct their answers to helping newbie OPs with simple questions with answers edifying for the newbie but boring for the expert. I like helping. Makes me feel good." CreationDate="2017-09-23T01:09:43.523" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="14294" PostId="3143" Score="0" Text="Congratulations, @Carl. It's good that there are users like you who are helping such OPs. Not all questions have to be enticing to be of concrete value." CreationDate="2017-09-23T02:01:41.743" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10047" PostId="3144" Score="0" Text="Ah, so that's why I got that bounty; thanks!" CreationDate="2016-06-20T13:42:47.527" UserId="830" />
  <row Id="10048" PostId="3144" Score="0" Text="You're welcome! cheers" CreationDate="2016-06-20T13:44:32.627" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="10001" PostId="3145" Score="0" Text="On the basis that, sadly, nobody reads the documentation splitting it seems more likely to achieve anything." CreationDate="2016-06-13T21:06:23.533" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="10003" PostId="3145" Score="0" Text="Clarifying never hurts. You could also go through the threads &amp; remove it from those not about SEM. (A few at a time, during slow periods, etc., as usual.)" CreationDate="2016-06-14T02:34:12.147" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10006" PostId="3145" Score="0" Text="@Gung - I've been doing that when the questions appear for a while. I feel a little bad that I don't have a tag to replace it with." CreationDate="2016-06-14T16:50:19.610" UserId="17072" />
  <row Id="10007" PostId="3145" Score="0" Text="I think it's fine to just delete an inappropriate tag &amp; replace it with nothing." CreationDate="2016-06-14T17:22:11.530" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10051" PostId="3145" Score="0" Text="Although it may not be used this way at the moment, it's also worth noting that SEM is commonly used as an abbreviation for &quot;standard error of the mean&quot; (e.g. [Wikipedia does so](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_error)) which is another potential source of confusion for people adding a tag." CreationDate="2016-06-21T00:12:23.553" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="14509" PostId="3146" Score="0" Text="By now I think that [algorithms] and [numerics] are meaningfully different (we should edit the excerpts though), and [computational-statistics] is a rather useless tag that could in principle be burninated but most likely will stick around forever because we've never ever been able to burninate any tags here anyway." CreationDate="2017-11-02T10:24:21.287" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9997" PostId="3147" Score="1" Text="The answer at http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/239191/166924 looks particularly helpful: it explicitly outlines the steps.  &quot;Approval&quot; is the last (and easiest)." CreationDate="2016-06-13T19:29:55.107" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="9998" PostId="3147" Score="0" Text="@whuber I have seen that answer. It suggests that most burninate requests (presumably on SO) are simply bad suggestions. I am not sure this applies to our suggestions: we don't have many of them, not a single one (!) has been downvoted, and almost none has been disputed in comments. However, if you think some (or all) of our suggestions are bad, please say so! Next, the answer you linked to says that the edges should be cleaned up. This makes sense but I think at least in most cases has been done." CreationDate="2016-06-13T19:34:26.373" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="9999" PostId="3147" Score="2" Text="I was almost put off by the claim that these requests are bad suggestions--which is not something I am intimating--but I kept reading.  The rest of the post outlines a process the *community* can follow to fix up posts with tags-to-be-burninated.  It's not just closing or answering some questions, but also retagging some and possibly improving others.  One of the very first things to consider is creating or improving the tag wikis so that they steer people away from use of a deprecated tag. A quick spot check suggests there is a lot that still could be done." CreationDate="2016-06-13T19:38:40.403" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="10057" PostId="3147" Score="2" Text="@whuber (Sorry for the delay in replying) I think I am not sure I understand exactly what you mean. Let's take the two top-voted suggestions in the linked thread: [statistical] (53) and [dataframe] (39). The first has no wiki excerpt, the second does. You suggest to add/edit the excerpts so that they mention that the tag is deprecated. I can certainly do it, but I don't see how it brings us closer to the resolution of the issue. Other suggestion in your linked thread is to manually remove the tags from all threads. Is it something you'd prefer (over burninating) in these cases?" CreationDate="2016-06-22T09:14:28.160" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10086" PostId="3147" Score="1" Text="Following @amoeba's comment: it can be done, but this will make us &quot;bump up&quot; multiple questions (e.g. 50 R questions after removing `data.frame` tag -- I see no point in bumping them, since they are rather off-topic using current standards on CV...)" CreationDate="2016-07-01T10:04:50.933" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="10302" PostId="3147" Score="1" Text="@whuber As a follow-up to my above comment, I have now provided tag wiki excerpts for [tag:statistical] and [tag:dataframe] steering people away from these tags. How do you think we should proceed in these two specific cases?" CreationDate="2016-08-02T11:31:40.400" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10947" PostId="3147" Score="1" Text="Apart from the labour of doing it slowly over time presumably we could gradually remove the offending tags by hand? Or does that not solve the problem?" CreationDate="2016-09-27T20:52:42.973" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="10948" PostId="3147" Score="2" Text="@mdewey: This is clearly one possible solution. Another solution is for mods to let the tag be burninated. My question is what is the preferred solution and why. The downsides of manual deleting are: (1) considerable amount of effort, (2) long time needed to implement a full deletion, (3) regular spamming of the front page with bumped old threads." CreationDate="2016-09-27T21:04:13.090" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17803" PostId="3147" Score="4" Text="I think this thread would still benefit from an answer; I'm unclear on what the consensus is." CreationDate="2019-06-26T15:35:52.533" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="10000" PostId="3148" Score="1" Text="Can you give 3-5 examples of such existing threads? Just curious." CreationDate="2016-06-13T20:58:15.763" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10002" PostId="3148" Score="1" Text="@amoeba I've added a few examples, and some other remarks." CreationDate="2016-06-13T21:22:36.923" UserId="99484" />
  <row Id="10004" PostId="3148" Score="0" Text="2 of those are the same. Are there really many threads that fit under this category?" CreationDate="2016-06-14T02:39:48.143" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10005" PostId="3148" Score="1" Text="@gung Corrected. There are not many, but some." CreationDate="2016-06-14T08:21:28.867" UserId="99484" />
  <row Id="10062" PostId="3148" Score="3" Text="That might attract some neural network questions, e.g. LSTM, MemNet, etc." CreationDate="2016-06-25T18:36:37.110" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="10937" PostId="3148" Score="0" Text="There is not many threads and `[long-memory]` is pretty ambiguous name, so I'd vote **against** it." CreationDate="2016-09-24T19:50:49.513" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="10938" PostId="3148" Score="1" Text="@Tim The concept of long memory is well defined and not ambiguous (see e.g. the books from Jan Beran, Samorodnitsky and others). Maybe there are too few posts, but the tag could invite more." CreationDate="2016-09-24T22:07:05.050" UserId="99484" />
  <row Id="10939" PostId="3148" Score="0" Text="@MassimoOrtolano concept maybe is but the tag name isn't. I'd say it's too specific. Maybe [long-memory-in-time-series] would be better, but it's a horrible tag..." CreationDate="2016-09-25T06:06:12.970" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="21849" PostId="3148" Score="0" Text="@Tim This is a very old question, but I’ve just noticed that now there is the tag [tag:long-range-dependence]. So, this could be probably tagged as status-completed." CreationDate="2023-02-05T09:58:33.860" UserId="99484" />
  <row Id="10009" PostId="3151" Score="7" Text="Thanks for this post, and all my best wishes to @mbq and @cardinal! I hope I will have the opportunity to learn more from them. This was really a rewarding adventure. Congrats to you, guys, and this particular promotion, whuber! Cheers" CreationDate="2016-06-15T21:23:55.057" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="10010" PostId="3152" Score="4" Text="There's also a page that summarizes election results on the main site: http://stats.stackexchange.com/election" CreationDate="2016-06-16T02:25:52.117" UserId="4454" />
  <row Id="10012" PostId="3152" Score="1" Text="@Shog9 Thank you for that: I have incorporated your information as the lead to this answer." CreationDate="2016-06-16T13:46:46.920" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="10013" PostId="3154" Score="1" Text="I know very little of these topics, except a little bit about financial applications, so I am not volunteering." CreationDate="2016-06-16T19:13:37.720" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="10014" PostId="3154" Score="2" Text="The tag has been used 74 times, so it's just about feasible to do some kind of split, if that's the consensus. Did you pick up any sense of the relative numbers?" CreationDate="2016-06-16T23:28:05.757" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10017" PostId="3154" Score="3" Text="We have *a lot* of ambiguous tags. Experience tells me that nothing happens about them until there appears a person who takes the responsibility and burden on themselves to do the whole sorting thing. We have had several such sortings, including some tags with several hundreds posts. Mostly though nobody is volunteering and nothing gets done; ambiguous tags remain ambiguous. Simply raising the issue on Meta does not tend to help at all (still, +1 and thanks for raising it)." CreationDate="2016-06-17T00:52:42.123" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10018" PostId="3154" Score="1" Text="@amoeba, I get it. I checked the [top users](http://stats.stackexchange.com/tags/risk/topusers) of the tag, no one seems particularly active there, so perhaps getting their attention to this question would not help much either." CreationDate="2016-06-17T06:24:04.340" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="10015" PostId="3155" Score="4" Text="Would there be a way to rename the [risk] tag to make it obvious that it refers to the &quot;expected loss&quot; (or whatever you think is appropriate)? Maybe some adjective next to the &quot;risk&quot; noun?" CreationDate="2016-06-17T00:31:56.933" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10016" PostId="3155" Score="4" Text="@amoeba good thought. &quot;risk-function&quot; probably." CreationDate="2016-06-17T00:33:55.070" UserId="8013" />
  <row Id="15082" PostId="3155" Score="2" Text="I think renaming [risk] into [risk-function] should be part of this answer (rather than just a comment). Also, if you type &quot;risk&quot; here https://stats.stackexchange.com/tags you will see that there are actually 4 other tags containing &quot;risk&quot; in them. Relative-risk, absolute-risk, and risk-difference are all about biomedical applications and I am wondering if they should be merged into one single tag (but I don't know what name for it would be most appropriate). What is competing-risks, I don't know. In any case, I think we need to take these tags into account when deciding how to deal with risk." CreationDate="2018-01-05T23:08:40.313" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15083" PostId="3155" Score="1" Text="@amoeba good points again; makes my suggestion a little less obvious... my subjective preference is RR, AR, and RD are better left as separate tags since they are very different (in my narrow field) in terms of modeling approaches, and I would say the same of competing risks. If they were to be merged, `time-to-event` would perhaps be the right grandfather. I shall edit the answer." CreationDate="2018-01-05T23:43:37.990" UserId="8013" />
  <row Id="15084" PostId="3155" Score="2" Text="OK, +1 for the first paragraph, but the 2nd paragraph does not agree with us having all these other tags for RR, AR, RD. I guess many questions from [risk] should be retagged into one of these tags. (BTW, if you know what &quot;competing-risks&quot; is, maybe you could provide a wiki excerpt for that tag?)" CreationDate="2018-01-05T23:55:22.750" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15086" PostId="3155" Score="1" Text="@amoeba i have made a first pass at a wiki entry for competing risks." CreationDate="2018-01-07T16:10:02.827" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="10019" PostId="3156" Score="0" Text="There is absolutely no objections to your opinion. I worry about counting an action not be realized . For example, If I voted my own question, I might have got Supporter badge." CreationDate="2016-06-17T09:53:40.357" UserId="119029" />
  <row Id="10020" PostId="3156" Score="4" Text="You can't vote your own question. Also - this isn't opinion - I checked (I am a developer at Stack Exchange - I have access to all things...)." CreationDate="2016-06-17T09:54:40.620" UserId="24254" />
  <row Id="10021" PostId="3156" Score="0" Text="Sorry, I hadn't noticed additional tag. I was relieved to hear that it's in the specifications. Thank you for your support !!" CreationDate="2016-06-17T13:45:22.430" UserId="119029" />
  <row Id="10022" PostId="3157" Score="3" Text="There is no built-in mechanism for that, but you can draw user's attention  by commenting under one of their answers. Try to choose an answer that you like and that is related to the Q you are asking; then you can comment something like `+1, I really liked this answer. I have asked a related question here &lt;LINK&gt; and would be really happy to see your answer there.` Alternatively, if this user is using chat, you can ping them in chat. Many people never used chat though, and then they will not receive your ping." CreationDate="2016-06-17T14:12:04.460" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10023" PostId="3157" Score="2" Text="@amoeba That method can backfire.  Active users are likely already to have seen the question. Imploring them to take a look at it is (at best) an annoyance and may have the opposite of the intended response.  That is one of many reasons the site limits free-form interaction and controls the tools that allow it.  (For instance, moderators can ping anybody into a chat room, whether or not they have ever used chat.)" CreationDate="2016-06-17T14:14:45.463" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="10024" PostId="3157" Score="1" Text="@whuber I agree. One should do something like that only with hesitation and with full understanding that this can be seen as annoyance. But I did use this method once or twice myself and it worked well." CreationDate="2016-06-17T14:19:22.497" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10027" PostId="3157" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, In some Chinese version of the CV, people can invite a specific person to answer. Seems we do not have that." CreationDate="2016-06-17T14:40:59.827" UserId="113777" />
  <row Id="10028" PostId="3157" Score="0" Text="There is a Chinese version of CV? Is it good?" CreationDate="2016-06-17T14:42:48.957" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10029" PostId="3157" Score="0" Text="@amoeba not CV per say but a general Q and A platform. In there people asking not so good questions but get excellent answers.." CreationDate="2016-06-17T14:49:39.967" UserId="113777" />
  <row Id="10034" PostId="3157" Score="1" Text="It's not part of the StackExchange model (the idea is you get to post questions, and any people who have both the time and the inclination get to post answers) -- and I think that absence of the ability to directly ask an individual to answer happens with good reason. Occasionally I get people nudge me for an answer (either in some other thread or via chat) on a particular question but unless there's a very specific reason - such as it's a follow on question to one I answered, for example - then I usually don't like to be prompted in this manner. ... ctd" CreationDate="2016-06-18T01:36:41.970" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10035" PostId="3157" Score="1" Text="(ctd) ... I don't mind people pointing out (say in chat) that they've asked a question they'd like me to read, perhaps because it's a topic I have expressed interest in (though there's a reasonable chance I will have seen it anyway), but I generally dislike the implied obligation in a request to answer." CreationDate="2016-06-18T01:36:47.800" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10036" PostId="3157" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b I totally agree with you and know what a high reputation user would feel. (some questions are low quality and asked again and again without prior search) However, sometimes when I read some really awesome answer and the way the person answer it. I really want directly talk to the user because I know my question will be good and the user will like my question and will answer it perfectly. Is that possible that we have some limits on this behavior, say,  you can only direct contact a person 1 times a week?" CreationDate="2016-06-18T19:42:51.890" UserId="113777" />
  <row Id="10081" PostId="3157" Score="2" Text="There's a [feature-request](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/tags/feature-request/info) tag for new feature requests.  Bear in mind you'd be asking Stack Exchange Inc to invest time &amp; money in implementing a new feature, &amp; that they don't seem keen to do anything further in that direction (see e.g [Any way to send a personal message to another user?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/431/225179)). (For what it's worth I tend to agree with the reasons against doing so.) Consider @amoeba's suggestions." CreationDate="2016-06-30T15:44:17.907" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="10055" PostId="3158" Score="2" Text="[Scortchi placed a bounty on the post mentioned here]" CreationDate="2016-06-21T08:54:04.907" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10037" PostId="3159" Score="2" Text="closely related: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2798/drive-by-questions-should-answers-be-accepted-by-proxy" CreationDate="2016-06-19T00:03:14.733" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10038" PostId="3159" Score="1" Text="Also somewhat relevant: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1956/what-to-do-if-an-accepted-answer-is-wrong-but-author-of-accepted-answer-and-op-a" CreationDate="2016-06-19T00:14:08.960" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10040" PostId="3159" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b check my comment to the answer of your first link. The answer gives wrong links to support its negative answer." CreationDate="2016-06-19T00:38:18.277" UserId="40252" />
  <row Id="17111" PostId="3159" Score="2" Text="Just wanted to be explicit: I downvoted against the proposal, but appreciate the question. :)" CreationDate="2019-01-15T06:01:19.517" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="10043" PostId="3160" Score="0" Text="Maybe I've expressed myself poorly. I'm not talking about whether the highest voted answer is accepted. I'm proposing a method to solve the ever increasing unanswered number of questions (e.g. those by 1 rep users done 3years ago) that keep 'ruining' the stats of the CV community. I'm not saying that the community should superimpose on the user. I'm saying the community should be able to accept dead questions, or delete them, since they are nothing but clutter in the site. If I try to search for certain things, those questions pop up, and they don't help me at all." CreationDate="2016-06-19T13:57:57.987" UserId="40252" />
  <row Id="10044" PostId="3160" Score="4" Text="@Anoldmaninthesea., an &quot;unanswered question&quot; isn't a question w/ an answer that isn't accepted, it is a question that doesn't have any answers that are either upvoted or accepted. If there is a question w/ an answer that you think is reasonable, if you upvote it, that thread is no longer counted as &quot;unanswered&quot; &amp; won't affect our stats. In addition, threads that are closed don't count as &quot;unanswered&quot;. So if you find an old thread that seems unclear etc, you can vote / flag to close it. If it becomes closed, that's the end of it." CreationDate="2016-06-19T14:57:59.610" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10045" PostId="3160" Score="0" Text="@gung Ok, I'll try to follow your recomendation" CreationDate="2016-06-19T15:00:24.107" UserId="40252" />
  <row Id="10049" PostId="3163" Score="0" Text="The domain encompassed by `self-study` can include self-learning if you're doing &quot;routine bookwork&quot;." CreationDate="2016-06-20T23:44:51.853" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10050" PostId="3163" Score="0" Text="I don't follow any books usually. I just try to tackle real life problems that I face, but because they are fun to me I also try to think of more appropriate ways than simply using some quick hacks/heuristics." CreationDate="2016-06-20T23:48:20.900" UserId="100507" />
  <row Id="10052" PostId="3163" Score="2" Text="Some potentially useful/related questions: [How to ask a &quot;good&quot; question on CrossValidated?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1479/how-to-ask-a-good-question-on-crossvalidated) and [Aside from a bounty how can I give incentive to users to answer my question?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2736/aside-from-a-bounty-how-can-i-give-incentive-to-users-to-answer-my-question) and perhaps [How can we best help to improve the questions asked on our site?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1282/how-can-we-best-help-to-improve-the-questions-asked-on-our-site)" CreationDate="2016-06-21T00:52:00.740" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10056" PostId="3164" Score="0" Text="Thank you Glen_b, highly appreciate the time you assigned to measure the statistics of my questions/tags and measure them against those of the Cross Validated." CreationDate="2016-06-22T01:10:46.813" UserId="100507" />
  <row Id="10058" PostId="3168" Score="1" Text="When I saw it in the queue, the user numbers were the same. So the idea is that the accounts were merged in between when the edit was suggested &amp; it was reviewed, but that merging didn't kick it back out of the queue?" CreationDate="2016-06-23T18:16:48.923" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10059" PostId="3168" Score="3" Text="@gung Right. This is a very rare case and there's no actual harm from leaving the edit still in the queue." CreationDate="2016-06-23T18:19:35.140" UserId="8588" />
  <row Id="10064" PostId="3170" Score="1" Text="It's not completely clear what you're saying. Which badges in particular are you referring to? Are you suggesting adding a reputation bonus to some badges, or are you suggesting that with certain badges (like Good Question and Good Answer, for example) since the poster has already gained reputation for that answer or question that a badge as well is unnecessary?" CreationDate="2016-06-27T14:37:44.573" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10065" PostId="3170" Score="0" Text="The latter. Thanks" CreationDate="2016-06-27T14:39:26.660" UserId="113777" />
  <row Id="10066" PostId="3170" Score="0" Text="Could you edit your question to be more specific and/or explicit, please?" CreationDate="2016-06-27T14:40:22.850" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10067" PostId="3170" Score="0" Text="Sorry for unclear question, I am new to CV and have a lot of questions in mind. When I ask this question I did not thing though." CreationDate="2016-06-27T14:52:27.110" UserId="113777" />
  <row Id="10068" PostId="3170" Score="1" Text="While there's not much issue with discussing these things, note that changes to the system would be network wide, so if your intent is to propose some change this would probably be better placed on the network meta (meta.stackexchange.com). If that's what you're trying to achieve, once your question is polished up it would be possible to migrate it. (Though I expect this has probably already been raised there, so check for duplicates first.)" CreationDate="2016-06-27T14:53:05.600" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10069" PostId="3170" Score="0" Text="Your title still seems to be asking the former (it appears to be a request for additional reputation for earning a badge) rather than the latter (questioning whether both badges and reputation are necessary)" CreationDate="2016-06-27T15:35:43.847" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10070" PostId="3170" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b Yes, I think myself is not clear what is the question, but your answers explains my confusion 100% in detail in both ways. If you think it is necessary to make it more clear, please feel free to edit my question." CreationDate="2016-06-27T15:40:53.373" UserId="113777" />
  <row Id="10071" PostId="3172" Score="0" Text="This question is good--but the example is not quite apt.  First, your post has been up for only six hours! Second, that question is unclear: the purpose of the grouping of the factors has not been disclosed. It is a borderline thread that probably ought to be closed as unclear until the OP explains the situation better. The lesson to learn is that jumping ahead and answering a poorly formulated question is rarely a good response.  (There are always exceptions: if you are confident about your interpretation, *and explain that interpretation clearly*, then such an answer can be helpful.)" CreationDate="2016-06-28T16:34:08.717" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="10072" PostId="3172" Score="0" Text="@whuber Thanks. I am still tying to find what is CV. So you think CV should be a slowly updated more formal tutorial blog instead of a quick QA platform? Most questions are not that good, and good questions are already have good answers. How can I contribute?" CreationDate="2016-06-28T16:52:48.807" UserId="113777" />
  <row Id="10073" PostId="3172" Score="0" Text="See http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1390 ." CreationDate="2016-06-28T17:17:32.817" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="10074" PostId="3172" Score="0" Text="So, may be I should stop to go though the unanswered questions to answer them? Many of them are not so good. I tried my best to answer them but seems no one cares. If I spend sufficient time to one answer, I can make it much better." CreationDate="2016-06-28T17:28:26.053" UserId="113777" />
  <row Id="10075" PostId="3172" Score="0" Text="I agree that answering old unanswered questions is usually not very rewarding: few people notice and even fewer people vote. The OP is usually not around to accept any answers, either.  But [some of us do it anyway,](http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/badges/64/revival) because there are some interesting questions lurking on this site. In the process, I find a lot of bad old questions, so I vote to close them (or sometimes try to improve them)." CreationDate="2016-06-28T17:31:46.853" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="10076" PostId="3172" Score="0" Text="How can we keep the retention of the user? If one user spend a lot of time and no one cares. He/she may leave. Also do you know in most cases, how long does a person will be &quot;active&quot; in CV? Sorry for a off topic chat." CreationDate="2016-06-28T17:35:53.003" UserId="113777" />
  <row Id="10077" PostId="3172" Score="0" Text="There are various ways to explore the data to assess activity, but one easy way to gauge how many are currently active is to look at the [&quot;reputation leagues&quot;](http://stackexchange.com/leagues/19/week/stats). Anyone with a modest reputation or higher who is currently gaining substantial reputation is likely active and has been around a long time. That's several hundred people." CreationDate="2016-06-28T17:40:22.800" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="10078" PostId="3172" Score="0" Text="thank you very much to spend time with me to chat. I do plan to spend more time and write better question and answers to CV. But back to my original question, can we encourage user (especially high reputation ones) to give more feedback?" CreationDate="2016-06-28T17:49:28.797" UserId="113777" />
  <row Id="10079" PostId="3172" Score="0" Text="hxd -- I can't have voted or commented on answers you post when I am asleep, until after I am awake and had time to look through the posts -- let answers be up for a couple of days before you conclude they get no response.  Additionally if you answer a question I don't feel competent to answer, I also might not vote on an answer I am unsure about the value of.  [I have quite a few answers nobody has voted up/down, nor commented on/accepted - maybe 70 or so, not counting the ones I deleted (which are mostly my earliest posts - it took me time to learn how to give answers people would upvote).]" CreationDate="2016-06-28T22:54:08.610" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10080" PostId="3172" Score="0" Text="[This query](http://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/110381/users-with-most-badges-of-a-certain-name) (and then search for `Revival`) can be used to help identify people who spend lots of time answering old unanswered questions. One way of drawing attention to others is to vote for their posts. About all you can do for your own posts is make them as good as you can." CreationDate="2016-06-28T22:59:50.203" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10089" PostId="3172" Score="0" Text="Unfortunately in many cases you can't... Editing title and re-tagging question if it has wrong tags and misleading title may draw some more attention to the Q and your A. You can answer when there is many users online (http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/a/3107/35989). However in many cases upvotes are a little bit random and number of upvotes do not have to say anything about quality of your answer (plainly wrong answers get few upvotes from time to time)." CreationDate="2016-07-02T15:37:02.510" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="10083" PostId="3174" Score="2" Text="This presumably alludes to http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/221484/in-a-r-markdown-statistical-analysis-report-is-it-appropriate-to-encapsulate-tr I have two quite different comments.I can't see that the answer credited was itself in question form. The word *maieutic* strikes me as so unusual that making it a tag would have zero effect.   Who would remember to use it? Who would recognise what it means? On the broad issue, people asking questions should feel free to accept whatever answer is most helpful! It will often be in straight answer form, but it may be more indirect." CreationDate="2016-06-30T19:03:07.203" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="10084" PostId="3174" Score="1" Text="@NickCox Check the comments for the question. - The criticism of maieutic being unusual is valid -  On the broad issue - A maieutic question indicates higher level of mastery than direct criticism.  Direct criticism from an expert is valuable, but it can frustrate those struggling to formulate a question who are new to a field.  For people new to a field a question leading to the right answer may be more valuable than the actual answer because it encourages a person to think for themselves. Maybe a way to recognize such questions may encourage this type of response over direct criticism." CreationDate="2016-06-30T19:41:10.570" UserId="92353" />
  <row Id="10085" PostId="3174" Score="6" Text="Tagging comments seems too subtle ever to get off the ground. The SE philosophy is that comments are transient and trivial, although my personal view is that comments on CV can be very interesting and useful as partial answers and as expressing all sorts of ideas, encouraging, blunt, expository, serious, frivolous and even wacky. But SE-wide we aren't even allowed downvoting for comments, which is immensely more tempting." CreationDate="2016-06-30T20:34:41.800" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="10115" PostId="3174" Score="1" Text="Such tag would be also example of meta-tag and such tags are inconsistent with general SE policy: https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/" CreationDate="2016-07-05T08:07:21.347" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="10090" PostId="3175" Score="8" Text="This could also be extended to &quot;How to ask question that will never be answered?&quot;." CreationDate="2016-07-02T17:32:54.773" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="10114" PostId="3175" Score="0" Text="@Tim Yeah, would be a good post.  I'd never answer a [question whose solution can be easily googled](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/222039/random-forest-graph-interpretation-in-r#comment419965_222039).  Shows a significant lack of effort on the OP's part :)" CreationDate="2016-07-05T04:48:46.793" UserId="84191" />
  <row Id="11117" PostId="3175" Score="3" Text="I would love to see a variation on this question that is about &quot;how to turn something that looks bad, but isnt, into something good&quot; with emphasis on the transformation.  If the &quot;how to write a good question&quot; was all powerful then ....   ... perhaps effective reduction of bad questions could come from &quot;how to transform&quot;." CreationDate="2016-10-13T15:04:15.403" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="21454" PostId="3175" Score="1" Text="I have contributed to this thread, enjoyed doing so, and enjoyed reading other answers. I fear, however, that its main function is for experienced members to share horror stories of poor questions with each other, rather than as something that explains well and directly to naive or misguided questioners what they are doing wrong." CreationDate="2022-08-25T11:18:46.400" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21455" PostId="3175" Score="0" Text="@Nick The latter was the original intention, so I apologize if that wasn't clearly communicated.  How would you suggest we fix things?" CreationDate="2022-08-25T13:28:23.460" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21456" PostId="3175" Score="2" Text="I think the intention was utterly clear; no fault there. The problem lies in the tension between goals: it is all too easy to be wickedly humorous, but whether the result is friendly to people the other end is not so clear. As everyone contributing knows, it is not easy to distinguish between those who just want us to do their work for them and those out of their depth for some  reason that deserves sympathy and support, whether statistically, scientifically, in terms of Stack Exchange or technical forum protocol, or even in elementary social skills.  (I lack some of those too....)" CreationDate="2022-08-25T13:53:31.360" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="10087" PostId="3176" Score="31" Text="As a legally blind guy, I really wish it were more commonly known that text should always be provided as text, not an image." CreationDate="2016-07-02T13:48:43.437" UserId="14076" />
  <row Id="10088" PostId="3176" Score="3" Text="There is also some information about using our mathjax / $\LaTeX$ markdown options here: [Reviewing questions and applying LaTeX format](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/a/1605/7290)." CreationDate="2016-07-02T15:27:03.330" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10101" PostId="3176" Score="16" Text="@Kodiologist Thanks -- it's *very* useful when visually impaired users identify themselves. I used to put at least briefly descriptive alt text on almost all images I put in my posts but I got the distinct impression nobody ever saw them -- so since it was taking time I could spend on other activities, I stopped doing it. You're the second user I'm aware of that it could possibly matter to, so I'll try to get back in the habit of doing it. When editing posts I sometimes try to convert images of text to text as well (but they're often poor self-study posts -- if it's likely to close, I won't)." CreationDate="2016-07-03T01:08:24.913" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10128" PostId="3176" Score="13" Text="That image is meta as meta gets... :)" CreationDate="2016-07-07T09:41:53.263" UserId="830" />
  <row Id="11940" PostId="3176" Score="3" Text="@J.M. It's even posted on the meta forum!" CreationDate="2017-01-19T01:21:28.470" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="14971" PostId="3176" Score="3" Text="I do love it when they at least type the question verbatim on the site, but add nothing more. The question is often phrased as a command (e.g. &quot;find the value of $w$ that has the highest probability of generating $x$&quot;). I often interpret it as a command by the OP, and I'm tempted to comment, &quot;Yes sir!&quot;" CreationDate="2017-12-05T18:31:41.860" UserId="73531" />
  <row Id="15752" PostId="3176" Score="2" Text="Which flag should be used on such questions? (after OP refuses to make the changes himself)" CreationDate="2018-05-16T08:02:41.957" UserId="67042" />
  <row Id="15763" PostId="3176" Score="1" Text="@Jim That is an interesting point. There is an &quot;off-topic&quot; close reason for self-study questions that show insufficient effort which usually would cover such questions." CreationDate="2018-05-18T17:37:36.727" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="20712" PostId="3176" Score="1" Text="Fun fact: [China apparently blocks imgur-hosted images](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/407423/452096), so users in China can't even see photographs." CreationDate="2021-05-05T07:49:59.683" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="10095" PostId="3177" Score="5" Text="Re the final paragraph - some abbreviations are okay (ANOVA for instance is rarely written unabbreviated!) so perhaps the best guidance is slightly more subtle than a blanket preference for everything to be written in full" CreationDate="2016-07-02T19:17:55.007" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="10096" PostId="3177" Score="5" Text="(Of course, if you're someone who doesn't know much about statistics, or you've only seen an idea once, you may have no idea if the &quot;usual&quot; way it is written is abbreviated or not! So I can sympathise with posters who struggle with such conventions. But since so many [TLAs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-letter_acronym) are [ambiguous](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TLA), encouraging to write acronyms and abbreviations in full when in doubt, at least at their first mention, is sensible advice.)" CreationDate="2016-07-02T22:34:33.043" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="10099" PostId="3177" Score="0" Text="@Silverfish I took a shot at making your point in my answer.  Feel free to edit to better capture your intent!" CreationDate="2016-07-02T23:10:08.147" UserId="74500" />
  <row Id="10100" PostId="3177" Score="0" Text="That looks good to me! But if I can come up with a more elegant way to rephrase it, I'll come back to it." CreationDate="2016-07-02T23:12:21.760" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="10092" PostId="3178" Score="4" Text="I am voting to migrate this to Meta. Are you aware of the information at http://stats.stackexchange.com/users? Define &quot;active&quot;, &quot;prolific&quot;, etc." CreationDate="2016-07-02T17:21:41.377" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="10093" PostId="3178" Score="0" Text="Ah, not aware of that at all. Will look into it. Thks guys." CreationDate="2016-07-02T17:24:21.013" UserId="98646" />
  <row Id="10094" PostId="3178" Score="0" Text="hey Nick, how to view posts on meta?" CreationDate="2016-07-02T17:29:13.177" UserId="98646" />
  <row Id="10097" PostId="3178" Score="0" Text="@horaceT If you click through to look at this comment, you're reading meta" CreationDate="2016-07-02T22:51:39.140" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10098" PostId="3178" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b Got it, thank you. But I still like to see if someone has already come up with these statistics. Save me some work......" CreationDate="2016-07-02T23:03:24.150" UserId="98646" />
  <row Id="10126" PostId="3178" Score="0" Text="@horaceT, please consider accepting Glen_b's answer if you think that it answered your question (it sure seems that it did)." CreationDate="2016-07-06T15:00:33.583" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10130" PostId="3178" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Pls tell me how to &quot;accept&quot; the answer. Being a newbie, I'm not sure if that's the same as upvoting?" CreationDate="2016-07-07T20:42:44.060" UserId="98646" />
  <row Id="10131" PostId="3178" Score="0" Text="No, it's not the same. There is a tick sign to the left of Glen_b's answer. Click on it &quot;accept&quot; (click again to de-accept)." CreationDate="2016-07-07T20:46:45.317" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10132" PostId="3178" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Ah, got it. Is accepting just a book keeping thing, or does it serve any other purpose?" CreationDate="2016-07-07T21:13:36.610" UserId="98646" />
  <row Id="10133" PostId="3178" Score="0" Text="On the main forum it brings 15 reputation points to the author of the accepted answer person and also 2 reputation points to the author of the question (for the act of accepting). On the Meta forum (where we are now) there is no reputation gained or lost, so it's more of a book-keeping." CreationDate="2016-07-07T21:15:40.863" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11116" PostId="3179" Score="1" Text="My problem when folks ask questions like this is that they come across as an amazingly passive/half-dead request for help.  In terms of effective response (think Gladwell/Outliers) the most effective response can be elicited from the most complete, direct, and non-passive approach." CreationDate="2016-10-13T15:01:23.130" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="16379" PostId="3179" Score="0" Text="@EngrStudent I don't disagree, but cultures vary in how they see this - and in some, being outspoken can be perceived as aggressive or obnoxious. Definitely agree that these need to be closed, though." CreationDate="2018-08-13T14:04:44.237" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="10105" PostId="3180" Score="0" Text="+1 That's comprehensive!" CreationDate="2016-07-04T08:13:28.963" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="10135" PostId="3180" Score="2" Text="Totally off topic here. i suspect CV and to a greater extent stackoverflow have taken &quot;mind share&quot; from other statistics/programming forums. One that I follow is the R list, which has a blend of programming and stat Qs and As. At its peak couple yrs ago, there were &gt; 200 posts a day; I just look at it today, and it's about 20." CreationDate="2016-07-07T23:30:26.700" UserId="98646" />
  <row Id="14274" PostId="3181" Score="1" Text="OMG [***YES***](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/125498/which-stats-tests-to-use-bee-flight-activity-quantified-during-an-eclipse/125538#125538)." CreationDate="2017-09-20T19:30:06.840" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="10106" PostId="3184" Score="8" Text="(+1). I would still add that, while not a reason for immediate closing as English is indeed not most users' native language, an excessive number typos reflects that little effort has gone into the question, which increases the chances that nobody will make the effort to provide an answer either (maybe we need a sister thread &quot;Top Ten List of Reasons not to Get an Anwswer on Your Question&quot;?)." CreationDate="2016-07-04T08:17:47.387" UserId="67799" />
  <row Id="10108" PostId="3184" Score="3" Text="@ChristophHanck +1 for planting a typo in the the suggested thread title." CreationDate="2016-07-04T09:09:07.497" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10109" PostId="3184" Score="1" Text="Oh, that is embarrassing in this context :-)." CreationDate="2016-07-04T09:13:06.797" UserId="67799" />
  <row Id="10110" PostId="3184" Score="2" Text="That's OK @ChristophHanck, in another answer someone has an unexplained abbreviation. We are all human." CreationDate="2016-07-04T10:51:20.187" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="10118" PostId="3184" Score="2" Text="Well, it gets worse than that - as it happens, my comment on the sister thread is a duplicate of @Tim's under the original post, while my answer suggested there should be fewer...duplicates on CV." CreationDate="2016-07-05T11:46:27.910" UserId="67799" />
  <row Id="10127" PostId="3184" Score="1" Text="&quot;in the early days of the internet, typing in ALL CAPS was the visual equivalent of screaming&quot; - interesting, I see it used in many forums in this way to this day and I interpret it this way - and I am not old enough to remember early days of the internet. Though maybe some interpret &quot;before FB&quot; as &quot;early days of the internet&quot;, for me it would be &quot;before Internet search was useful&quot;." CreationDate="2016-07-06T22:05:33.350" UserId="107776" />
  <row Id="10129" PostId="3184" Score="10" Text="&quot;In the age of geocities and angelfire, before the great googleing...&quot;" CreationDate="2016-07-07T16:42:09.623" UserId="74500" />
  <row Id="17253" PostId="3184" Score="2" Text="I certainly interpret all-caps as shouting. I can't read it any other way. Since it's likely to be interpreted by many as rude, it's best avoided." CreationDate="2019-02-13T00:19:13.750" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="21189" PostId="3184" Score="1" Text="TROMP TROMP TROMP is too close for comfort..." CreationDate="2022-01-28T18:51:04.547" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="10107" PostId="3185" Score="6" Text="(+1) And if there's a subtle difference between your question &amp; others that might be seen as duplicates, it helps to point it out." CreationDate="2016-07-04T09:02:04.090" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="11999" PostId="3185" Score="4" Text="We receive about a question a day on how to do basic work with ratings (often incorrectly called &quot;Likert ___&quot;).  I'm going to try to weed these out, voting to close and listing duplicates:  http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/97/what-are-good-basic-statistics-to-use-for-ordinal-data, http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/203/group-differences-on-a-five-point-likert-item, &#xA;http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/10382/general-advice-on-forming-an-index-of-attitude-to-the-environment-from-a-set-of/10522#10522  - Anyone that wants to join me in my noble quest is welcome." CreationDate="2017-01-25T16:51:02.837" UserId="2669" />
  <row Id="12541" PostId="3185" Score="2" Text="I'm suprised -- I took care of several of these in late January, and then I stopped seeing them come in." CreationDate="2017-02-20T22:08:17.003" UserId="2669" />
  <row Id="10113" PostId="3186" Score="6" Text="If the question can't be readily edited into shape you can always ask a better question (and even answer it). It may be that the original closes as a duplicate (if not already closed for other reasons)... (but see my additional comment below)" CreationDate="2016-07-04T17:22:03.760" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10116" PostId="3186" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b I was thinking about the same solution but was unsure about creating a duplicate question... Posted it: http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/222179/how-to-know-that-your-machine-learning-problem-is-hopeless" CreationDate="2016-07-05T08:23:14.210" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="10117" PostId="3186" Score="2" Text="if it would be close enough to close as a duplicate you should probably be editing instead. On the other hand, see [this post](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/3187/how-can-a-new-user-with-not-enough-rep-comment-on-a-question-that-the-same-user) which warns about overly heavy editing that risks changing the question. It can be a difficult course to steer between avoiding exact duplication and avoiding changing the sense of the question." CreationDate="2016-07-05T08:42:42.067" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10111" PostId="3187" Score="4" Text="I believe that somebody, in a comment, pointed you to the [form for merging your accounts](http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/merging-accounts).  After you do this, you will be able to manage all your posts." CreationDate="2016-07-04T16:38:17.733" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="10125" PostId="3187" Score="0" Text="Robert, please accept gung's answer if it solved your problem." CreationDate="2016-07-06T14:59:21.673" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10154" PostId="3189" Score="1" Text="Congratulations on writing a [Great Question](http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/badges/22/great-question)!" CreationDate="2016-07-08T19:54:30.617" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="10142" PostId="3192" Score="1" Text="Thanks, I've followed your suggestion." CreationDate="2016-07-08T11:51:45.207" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="10143" PostId="3193" Score="2" Text="I think &quot;the implementation of an algorithm&quot; more clearly expresses what we want to get across: [&quot;In computer science, an implementation is a realization of an algorithm as a program, software component, or other computer system through computer programming and deployment&quot;](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implementation)." CreationDate="2016-07-08T12:06:23.117" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="10134" PostId="3194" Score="1" Text="Several previous threads on editing e.g. http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2810/editing-questions-dos-and-donts" CreationDate="2016-07-07T23:07:13.803" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="10136" PostId="3194" Score="1" Text="I'd say your example is too heavy an edit. In the original it's clear that being 3 SD above the mean is considered a criterion or definition of outliers; it's not so clear in the revised version, which is at least ambiguous: were there other points also considered outliers? Naturally aiming at clearer, more concise text is otherwise good in itself." CreationDate="2016-07-07T23:50:20.803" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="10137" PostId="3194" Score="4" Text="If you find the question worth asking, but the one that you seen is hopeless, then you can always ask your own one that re-phrases it: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/3186/can-interesting-question-be-rescued-from-unnoticeability" CreationDate="2016-07-08T07:21:00.003" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="10214" PostId="3194" Score="1" Text="Always ask yourself if it is worth your time to do so. Often such questions are rather basic stuff, that is answered by Wikipedia and may have several duplicates already - I don't think we need such questions then." CreationDate="2016-07-16T19:39:54.907" UserId="7828" />
  <row Id="10139" PostId="3196" Score="2" Text="Good question! This example, though, really wants an answer explaining how to make the choice between different approaches. Note the application - prediction of volume from distance measured with the same sensor. I think it may be a duplicate, as I seem to remember some very good post on this." CreationDate="2016-07-08T09:56:21.783" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="10158" PostId="3196" Score="1" Text="Since the OP seems to have some idea about what s/he is doing but is missing a crucial pointer in this case a link to some reliable source like Wikipedia might well be enough. If they seemed less clued up then you may need to give some basic detail in your reply as well as the link. I do not think there is a one-size-fits-all answer to your question which is why this is a a comment not an answer." CreationDate="2016-07-09T09:29:41.380" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="10161" PostId="3196" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi, thanks for the input. Not sure I got your point about prediction  of volume with distance from same instrument - could you elaborate here or in that question?" CreationDate="2016-07-09T11:47:01.560" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="10162" PostId="3196" Score="0" Text="@mdewey thanks for your suggestion. I will start with a link in the comment." CreationDate="2016-07-09T11:52:58.767" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="10163" PostId="3196" Score="0" Text="On second thoughts, the OP question might be much more complicated than I thought. Maybe I'll have to ask a question on CS myself ☺" CreationDate="2016-07-09T14:13:58.047" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="10173" PostId="3196" Score="0" Text="Just that it's important to distinguish between estimating the relationship between the unobserved 'true' variables &amp; predicting observations of one from observations of another." CreationDate="2016-07-11T08:45:57.413" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="10180" PostId="3196" Score="0" Text="Ouch! The question has been deleted...maybe it was a duplicate, as @Scortchi suspected. Is there a way to know who the OP was? I would like to see if she/he posted a different question, or find out which is the post this question was a duplicate of." CreationDate="2016-07-13T09:42:12.550" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="10181" PostId="3196" Score="0" Text="With enough reputation, one can see who the OP was. I checked: he does not have any other posts on CV (neither Qs nor As)." CreationDate="2016-07-13T11:42:31.713" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10184" PostId="3196" Score="0" Text="thanks @amoeba ." CreationDate="2016-07-13T12:02:27.037" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="10138" PostId="3197" Score="4" Text="Include 'Facebook' in the title." CreationDate="2016-07-08T09:47:41.110" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="10141" PostId="3197" Score="6" Text="If you want upvotes, spellchecking your title always helps" CreationDate="2016-07-08T11:31:25.603" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10145" PostId="3197" Score="1" Text="For those who would like to research their answers, consider [appropriate site searches](http://stats.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&amp;q=views%3a100000%20is%3aquestion)." CreationDate="2016-07-08T13:25:21.330" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="10146" PostId="3197" Score="0" Text="@whuber actually, from this list it appears that we can add &quot;ask off-topic question (preferably R or python related)&quot;..." CreationDate="2016-07-08T13:27:24.607" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="10147" PostId="3197" Score="1" Text="Tim, you might want to screen out very old questions (from the first few months of this site's life) as well as questions that were migrated here from [SO]. (Some of the latter had huge numbers of upvotes before they arrived, due to the much greater size of SO.)" CreationDate="2016-07-08T13:32:41.160" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="10150" PostId="3197" Score="2" Text="We do already have [How to ask a “good” question on CrossValidated?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/1479/7290) Although this thread may be distinct in looking for silly answers." CreationDate="2016-07-08T16:24:08.627" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10151" PostId="3197" Score="1" Text="[Re-write](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/222179/how-to-know-that-your-machine-learning-problem-is-hopeless) a [badly asked question](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/222023/when-have-i-to-stop-looking-for-a-model), with [prior-discussion](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/3186/can-interesting-question-be-rescued-from-unnoticeability) here on meta ;)" CreationDate="2016-07-08T17:12:58.880" UserId="7486" />
  <row Id="10157" PostId="3197" Score="1" Text="Buy 1000 Twitter followers^W^W upvoters *here* for just $10 !!!!1!!eleven!!" CreationDate="2016-07-09T01:48:40.843" UserId="7828" />
  <row Id="10144" PostId="3199" Score="4" Text="I need to hesitate not to immediately accept your answer :)" CreationDate="2016-07-08T13:25:19.417" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="11118" PostId="3199" Score="1" Text="I like how @whuber once showed how to turn your own plots into XKCD style.  If you ask about what Randall did, you can imitate his artistic form for your own plots." CreationDate="2016-10-13T15:05:55.093" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="10159" PostId="3201" Score="1" Text="This is actually one of the reasons I created this thread. It's pretty crazy how the upvotes work. &gt;100 upvotes and &gt;10000 views n 4 days?! But most of the threads that were refereed to at meta (&quot;why nobody votes on my Q&quot; kind) did not get much attention." CreationDate="2016-07-09T10:04:59.003" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="10160" PostId="3201" Score="1" Text="@Tim I was quite astonished (and more than a little jealous). I agree that threads referred to in meta don't get much added attention (presumably for the reason they didn't get much attention in the first place). But I do wonder how much more attention (and upvotes) your new question got as a result of the discussion first in meta ? I feel this should be investigated in a controlled experiment haha :)" CreationDate="2016-07-09T10:18:28.803" UserId="7486" />
  <row Id="10165" PostId="3201" Score="2" Text="@RobertLong I wonder if the question got just enough question from the original meta post to get onto the &quot;Hot Network Questions&quot; sidebar, and took off from there (questions I've asked that reached HNQ had very noticeable spikes in traffic). Definitely can't get 10k views from metaCV alone! But you do need some initial impetus to get onto HNQ." CreationDate="2016-07-10T00:46:56.193" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="10166" PostId="3201" Score="1" Text="Clearly Tim's own answer here was based on that post too. It perhaps serves as a useful lesson in how to write a question that attracts attention. I hope to be able to use it to help me figure out how to improve my own question-asking skills. Titles in particular can be tricky." CreationDate="2016-07-10T02:37:10.870" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10168" PostId="3203" Score="1" Text="Sympathies, and I suspect most of the active people  here experience this some of the time,  but there is no obvious solution here. I hadn't noticed any of these questions: we're **all** doing this in our &quot;spare time&quot; and pick and choose threads to study capriciously. But if there's a common element it's OPs new to the site being clueless and/or casual about closing threads and accepting questions. Short of superhero(ine) powers to freeze their computers until and unless they show more courtesy, what can be done?" CreationDate="2016-07-10T10:48:42.073" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="10169" PostId="3203" Score="7" Text="One day you will log on Robert and find you have been awarded the http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/badges/50/tenacious tenacious badge. If your luck holds you will qualify for the http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/badges/51/unsung-hero unsung hero badge. You can then join the International CV unsung heroes association which holds its convention in a dimly lit cellar where to a thernody on an alto saxophone mouldy cheese is eaten whil the bread is salted with tears." CreationDate="2016-07-10T11:06:19.023" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="10164" PostId="3204" Score="4" Text="I don't use SEM and don't know SEMNET but your description that it's &quot;very popular&quot; seems to be the answer to your own question. Extended discussions can be highly informative and even entertaining.  More generally, a forum can have downsides for some people in the field, but nevertheless be the most obvious first port of call. More positively, the existence of a dedicated forum can be a real magnet. In one case I know a lot about, a dedicated Statalist seems to attract more Stata questions than all other forums put together. Not everyone likes its policies and styles, but what else is new?" CreationDate="2016-07-09T17:24:53.713" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="10167" PostId="3204" Score="1" Text="It feels to me like we get a lot of posts about structural equation models (though I don't know that they all use the tags you looked for). Maybe they don't get enough attention here to attract more questions." CreationDate="2016-07-10T03:09:52.300" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10170" PostId="3204" Score="2" Text="I would say that we have lots of questions about latent variables but they aren't tagged in any consistent way. As about SEM, I guess it is simply not that popular approach -- it is in some areas but not in general (like IRT modeling is something very popular in some branches of psychometrics but not in general and there is not that much IRT questions on CV)." CreationDate="2016-07-10T18:06:58.767" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="10172" PostId="3204" Score="0" Text="There are software specific resources too, for instance for MPlus and OpenMx, so maybe the questions go there?" CreationDate="2016-07-11T08:40:42.687" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="10175" PostId="3204" Score="2" Text="I don't know if it's the sole reason, but I'd certainly second the point made by @mdewey. Bengt and Linda Muthen, both influential figures in the SEM world, are very active on the message boards for MPlus, one of the most widely-used pieces of SEM software. In fact, I'd suspect that for some users SEM and MPlus are synonymous." CreationDate="2016-07-12T13:20:02.033" UserId="29532" />
  <row Id="10176" PostId="3204" Score="0" Text="@Ian_Fin while I agree that the statmodel forum can be good, it can also be very frustrating with many threads ending in &quot;please email us your data and we'll take a look and reply privately&quot;" CreationDate="2016-07-12T17:28:09.913" UserId="7486" />
  <row Id="10177" PostId="3204" Score="1" Text="I take on board all the comments but I just feel that a forum for talking about SEM outside the confines of any software-specific forum is needed. Semnet is supposed to be that but I know several people who have left due to  acrimonious exchanges." CreationDate="2016-07-12T17:31:41.500" UserId="7486" />
  <row Id="10213" PostId="3204" Score="0" Text="There are a lot of questions on it indirectly." CreationDate="2016-07-16T15:04:55.000" UserDisplayName="user46925" />
  <row Id="10178" PostId="3205" Score="9" Text="+1 but given that not a single tag has ever been burninated on CV so far (despite many good suggestions) and given that [dynamic] has merely 18 threads, it might be an easier solution to eliminate it manually. Blacklisting is usually not necessary: it is unlikely to get recreated soon, given that we have three other tags with the word &quot;dynamic&quot; in them (that will pop up as suggestions when somebody is tagging a question)." CreationDate="2016-07-13T08:59:00.097" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10179" PostId="3205" Score="4" Text="By the way, deleting &amp; blacklisting $\ne$ burninating. Burninating means silent mass-deletion. Blacklisting means deprecating future use." CreationDate="2016-07-13T09:00:19.853" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10182" PostId="3205" Score="3" Text="Unrelated to the main question, but regarding the [online] tag wiki excerpt. (1) Italics are not displayed in excerpts so `*...*` is only disturbing. (2) Tag links are not displayed in excerpts, so the same goes for `[tag:...]`. (3) I feel the new excerpt is too long and can benefit from some shortening, see http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2848." CreationDate="2016-07-13T11:47:06.423" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10183" PostId="3205" Score="2" Text="@amoeba: thank you. I wish, I wish info like this were available when editing a tag wiki excerpt." CreationDate="2016-07-13T11:53:50.393" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="10185" PostId="3205" Score="0" Text="I agree with the observations made by @amoeba. The best solution would seem to be (1) create a short wiki excerpt for [tag:dynamic] that explains how it should (not) be used and then (2) manually retag the 18 threads that have been affected." CreationDate="2016-07-13T13:27:59.993" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="10186" PostId="3205" Score="0" Text="@whuber: I'll happily delete the tag, but I don't see how a wiki (excerpt) would ever make sense. There simply is no &quot;overall&quot; use for &quot;dynamic&quot;, apart from the three more specific tags. Or am I overlooking something?" CreationDate="2016-07-13T14:13:33.057" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="10187" PostId="3205" Score="1" Text="The point of the excerpt is to inform people that the tag should not be used and to suggest alternatives." CreationDate="2016-07-13T14:15:13.970" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="10188" PostId="3205" Score="1" Text="I wrote such a wiki excerpt." CreationDate="2016-07-13T15:05:11.527" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10190" PostId="3205" Score="1" Text="@whuber, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the tag will disappear in 24 hours once it is removed from all threads, so the excerpt won't be seen by anyone / make any difference." CreationDate="2016-07-13T17:43:07.503" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10191" PostId="3205" Score="0" Text="@gung There are two unknowns.  The first is whether the tag really ought to be removed from all questions.  Even if it is, I do not know whether the excerpt is truly removed from the system: possibly it would reappear the next time somebody tried to tag a thread with &quot;dynamic.&quot;" CreationDate="2016-07-13T17:45:49.713" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="10208" PostId="3205" Score="2" Text="@whuber After Stephan eliminated the tag and it was removed from the system, I posted a test question with the same &quot;dynamic&quot; tag. The tag wiki excerpt (that I wrote before the tag was eliminated) did *not* reappear. See comments below Stephan's answer." CreationDate="2016-07-15T09:52:41.697" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11563" PostId="3207" Score="4" Text="If we keep getting these then it might be worthwhile to duplicate, in some form, the [*A Very Lucky Wind*](http://www.radiolab.org/story/91686-a-very-lucky-wind/) story by RadioLab as a canonical answer and dupe all of the others. That way we don't need to answer all of these questions and the asker can get something useful." CreationDate="2016-11-30T21:05:23.490" UserId="89026" />
  <row Id="14902" PostId="3207" Score="0" Text="True story: I met a man in Chile , he told this true story: many years ago, in his youth, he was in la Serena and had booked a flight to Santiago. He had some important business in Santiago, so was angry when it showed at the airport there was overbooking. Everybody busy, he lost. Angry looking at the plane taking off, disappearing at the horizon --- just to fall down in flames, no survivors.  Not so angry then ... I use this story when teaching probability ..." CreationDate="2017-11-27T17:37:43.957" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="16693" PostId="3207" Score="1" Text="@kjetilbhalvorsen [According to Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeronor_Flight_304), that plane crashed while *landing* in la Serena, not after the departure." CreationDate="2018-09-19T13:35:32.160" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16694" PostId="3207" Score="0" Text="@amoeba: Interesting, but I told the story as I remember I was told it ... I could have messed up details in my head. Would not be the first time." CreationDate="2018-09-19T13:39:33.217" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="17834" PostId="3207" Score="1" Text="Well, that was actually a very good question indeed!" CreationDate="2019-07-05T10:41:37.467" UserId="238499" />
  <row Id="10194" PostId="3208" Score="1" Text="Starting the protocol. The [tag:dynamic] tag page still exists, shows tag wiki excerpt and zero threads." CreationDate="2016-07-14T16:23:13.967" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10206" PostId="3208" Score="1" Text="The tag seems to have disappeared now." CreationDate="2016-07-15T08:23:17.623" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="10207" PostId="3208" Score="1" Text="I have posted [a test question with &quot;dynamic&quot; tag](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/223894). The tag wiki excerpt did not come back, see [tag:dynamic] page. I will delete this question after some minutes." CreationDate="2016-07-15T09:40:11.243" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10210" PostId="3208" Score="1" Text="I erased the test question. The [tag:dynamic] tag page still exists, showing empty tag wiki excerpt." CreationDate="2016-07-15T10:31:38.037" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10216" PostId="3208" Score="1" Text="(Forgot to check earlier.) The tag is gone again, for good. End of protocol." CreationDate="2016-07-19T00:15:14.010" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10195" PostId="3209" Score="4" Text="Press the &quot;image&quot; icon (in the controls above the answer box) and follow the directions." CreationDate="2016-07-14T18:43:48.893" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="10196" PostId="3210" Score="2" Text="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-moment ?" CreationDate="2016-07-14T19:08:49.640" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10202" PostId="3210" Score="2" Text="It looks like this tag was created by @Kjetilbhalvorsen. He may be able to provide the most appropriate excerpt." CreationDate="2016-07-14T21:13:19.937" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10916" PostId="3210" Score="1" Text="No problem. This is just about keeping Meta tidy." CreationDate="2016-09-22T15:40:26.513" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10199" PostId="3211" Score="4" Text="I've tried clicking on the upvote, but it just takes me to the image ;-)." CreationDate="2016-07-14T21:00:05.680" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10234" PostId="3211" Score="0" Text="@gung Yes it does. Just checked the answer." CreationDate="2016-07-19T18:15:59.747" UserId="98646" />
  <row Id="10241" PostId="3211" Score="0" Text="+1 for professional artwork (I'd use MS Paint for it) ;)" CreationDate="2016-07-20T15:01:15.840" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="10197" PostId="3212" Score="4" Text="That's an excellent question." CreationDate="2016-07-14T19:57:57.630" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10198" PostId="3212" Score="3" Text="Part of the reason might be that this particular question is from 2010... The customs have changed a bit since then." CreationDate="2016-07-14T19:58:47.867" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10200" PostId="3212" Score="8" Text="I personally wonder if we have moved a little too far in ruling out general / high level questions (cf, [Are we closing questions too fast?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/3119/7290)). There are undoubtedly questions that are too broad, but there can be questions that are broad but nonetheless valuable." CreationDate="2016-07-14T21:04:02.827" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10201" PostId="3212" Score="0" Text="To motivate the discussion here, it might help to give an example or two of general questions you would like to ask." CreationDate="2016-07-14T21:09:03.510" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10203" PostId="3212" Score="1" Text="It seems to me that questions concerning basic concepts in statistics *have* to be considered on topic.  What's &quot;too broad&quot; about asking for a definition, explanation, or examples of a random variable (or a PDF, or a statistic, or a probability space, or expectation, ... etc.)?" CreationDate="2016-07-14T21:13:30.020" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="10204" PostId="3212" Score="1" Text="@whuber Well, `What do they mean when they say &quot;random variable&quot;?` (being the entire question) might not be too broad, but exhibits some glaring lack of research, which is one of the officially recommended reasons for downvoting." CreationDate="2016-07-14T21:44:23.320" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10205" PostId="3212" Score="3" Text="Sometimes it's luck - a less inspiring question will happen to get a good answer. Sometimes the question is better than it might first seem, especially if it asks something fundamental in a way that gives an opening for a good exposition on the matter." CreationDate="2016-07-15T00:54:32.477" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10212" PostId="3212" Score="0" Text="@gung I made another attempt here, see if I can get good answer. http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/224005/why-symmetric-positive-definite-matrix-spd-is-so-important" CreationDate="2016-07-15T19:14:22.877" UserId="113777" />
  <row Id="10211" PostId="3213" Score="1" Text="I would prefer to reference a high quality answer on CV compared to an article on wikipedia.  I would, however, check scholarpedia for answers." CreationDate="2016-07-15T13:28:27.020" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="10215" PostId="3216" Score="3" Text="And you can always permalink to a particular revision of a Wikipedia article if you want." CreationDate="2016-07-16T19:59:27.683" UserId="14076" />
  <row Id="10218" PostId="3217" Score="1" Text="We *can* migrate questions to SU, (and [have](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/222261/dynamic-yearly-monthly-charts-in-excel), quite recently)." CreationDate="2016-07-19T10:55:28.820" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10219" PostId="3217" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b it is not available in `off-topic because... -&gt; This question belongs on another site in the Stack Exchange network`" CreationDate="2016-07-19T10:55:37.860" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="10220" PostId="3218" Score="0" Text="For me only the first three options are available, so I guess it needs some additional privileges." CreationDate="2016-07-19T11:10:20.893" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="10221" PostId="3218" Score="0" Text="@Tim Probably diamond-mod. You can always close as off-topic and flag." CreationDate="2016-07-19T11:13:19.720" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10222" PostId="3218" Score="2" Text="I remember getting that when becoming a mod. Think we have to ask SE devs to include it in the list - if it's a frequent enough migration path to merit that (&amp; there might be something like you're only allowed 3)." CreationDate="2016-07-19T11:13:22.843" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="10223" PostId="3218" Score="0" Text="Even if we could justify (and get) an additional site to migrate to, I wouldn't think SU would be our next most common site." CreationDate="2016-07-19T11:14:30.053" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10224" PostId="3218" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b it wouldn't for sure, but Excel is (unfortunately) pretty common software, from time to time such questions appear and this would make migration smoother -- as with questions dealing with other software." CreationDate="2016-07-19T11:19:29.063" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="10225" PostId="3218" Score="3" Text="I am above 20k and I do not see this option so @Scortchi must be right." CreationDate="2016-07-19T11:46:11.373" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10230" PostId="3218" Score="0" Text="I always thought it was strange that we have a comment that Open Data is a place to ask for data, but can't auto-migrate -- I guess that is a consequence of the limitation on the number of migration destinations." CreationDate="2016-07-19T15:06:00.127" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="10231" PostId="3218" Score="1" Text="@GeneralAbrial Isn't it also because OpenData is in beta? I recall that only mods can migrate to betas, as a general rule." CreationDate="2016-07-19T15:26:28.797" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10232" PostId="3218" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b What *would* be our next most common migration destination, then?" CreationDate="2016-07-19T15:27:32.563" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10233" PostId="3218" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Ah, crap, yes, you are right. I think this is the second time someone has pointed that out to me. Oops." CreationDate="2016-07-19T15:28:08.550" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="10235" PostId="3218" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Well I'd have guessed Economics or Open Data, with SU competing with Software Recommendations for third (among those not already in the list)... however, I am no longer confident that's an accurate impression." CreationDate="2016-07-19T21:36:53.703" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10236" PostId="3218" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I found [this query](http://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/70419/post-migrations-by-destination-volume) but I don't think it can be right. It would seem to suggest there's only been a little over 100 migrations altogether -- and there have certainly been more than 2 to SU" CreationDate="2016-07-19T21:43:08.827" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10237" PostId="3218" Score="0" Text="A second query with the same result [here](http://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/113952/of-posts-migrated-away-by-destination)... still don't believe it can be accurate" CreationDate="2016-07-19T21:46:26.187" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10238" PostId="3218" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b I found this one http://data.stackexchange.com/meta.tridion/query/472000/find-all-questions-sucessfully-migrated-away-from-a-site it says 2358 posts were migrated to SO; isn't it too many?.." CreationDate="2016-07-19T21:55:49.777" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10239" PostId="3218" Score="0" Text="By the way, both OpenData and Economics are in beta so I don't think they can be targets for routine (non-mod) migration." CreationDate="2016-07-19T21:57:14.387" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10240" PostId="3218" Score="0" Text="@amoeba correct... though fact that they're roughly ll in the same ballpark for volume would also suggest that there's no strong urgency for adding SU to the list - it wouldn't save much. I wonder if we have any regular SU users here -- it might help us get more sense of what we could successfully migrate" CreationDate="2016-07-19T22:16:23.173" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10227" PostId="3219" Score="0" Text="Out of curiosity - and what is this limitation? Is it 3?" CreationDate="2016-07-19T13:56:21.463" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10228" PostId="3219" Score="0" Text="@amoeba That's my recollection." CreationDate="2016-07-19T13:57:22.640" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="10229" PostId="3219" Score="5" Text="@amoeba, I don't believe it's 3.  On [SO] 5 default sites are listed (including us). There isn't really room for more than 5 to be listed. Moreover, I think there was some meta.SO discussion of changing what the options were, implying that something needed to be removed to add something else. It's possible the limit for SO is different than for us, though." CreationDate="2016-07-19T14:51:17.913" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10242" PostId="3220" Score="4" Text="See http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/2888/17230. I think it's hard to give a general answer to this: it depends whether the edits leave your answer making any sense or not, &amp; on whether your answer to the older version would lose worth something preserving if you changed it. Most OP's will see the point in not making a moving target of their q. &amp; collaborate in coming up with a satisfactory solution." CreationDate="2016-07-20T16:20:37.613" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="10243" PostId="3220" Score="1" Text="Leaving it untouched seems contrary to the goals of CV. I would be inclined to delete the answer rather than get involved in toing-and-froing with the OP." CreationDate="2016-07-20T17:43:31.343" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="10244" PostId="3220" Score="0" Text="I've deleted an (upvoted) answer on SE because the OP changed the question to something quite different. That left the question referring negatively and cryptically to an answer that almost no-one can see, but life is short. But this is exceptional: many more times OPs have improved their questions by giving more detail and clarifying obscurities, which is more than fine." CreationDate="2016-07-20T19:27:38.040" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="10245" PostId="3220" Score="0" Text="It's a personal rule of thumb never to rollback a rollback, even if you are convinced that it is wrong or misguided. At most leave a firm comment disagreeing. In short, edit wars must be avoided." CreationDate="2016-07-20T19:31:49.437" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="10247" PostId="3220" Score="0" Text="Meta SE has some discussion about it: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/43478/exit-strategies-for-chameleon-questions" CreationDate="2016-07-21T18:24:14.033" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="10248" PostId="3220" Score="0" Text="@NIckCox: With regard to roll-backs - It's perhaps worth pointing out that moderators can lock posts if the OP's unco-operative &amp; won't accept any version of the q. that preserves the sense of existing answers. That's rather a last resort, &amp; I've done it just once, as I remember, for one hour." CreationDate="2016-07-22T11:42:59.977" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="10249" PostId="3220" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi That's helpful. (In the most recent personal experience I improved, as I thought, the OP's style, syntax, spelling and punctuation, but that was reversed. It was evident that the OP wasn't fluent in English. It's possible that they were sensitive or indifferent to such points, so I registered a mild protest and left it there.)" CreationDate="2016-07-22T11:48:28.950" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="10246" PostId="3222" Score="0" Text="Speaking for myself, I found it a fairly obvious transformation to consider, but he's right that people are unaware of it (for reasons that aren't really clear to me -- do people not do hyperbolic trig in school any more, or do they just never look at the function?). On the other hand, I think some reasons why it's not used more widely among people who are aware of it aren't so hard to guess at.  In any case, I agree it's a very good answer, and indeed, I had considered putting a bounty on it before. I have done so now, thanks." CreationDate="2016-07-21T18:22:07.477" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10258" PostId="3222" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b Thanks! I totally studied hyperbolic functions during secondary school, but when I started studying machine learning during my undergrad I didn't really associate both. I of course knew the tanh was useful for data transformation, but I was completely oblivious to how the asinh could be applied similarly to a log transformation." CreationDate="2016-07-27T11:16:23.943" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="13674" PostId="3222" Score="0" Text="$\sinh$ is odd, like $x$ near 0 and goes to $\frac12 e^x$ for large $x$; its inverse is therefore going to be odd, look like $\log(x)-\log(\frac12)$ for large $x$ and like $x$ for $x$ near $0$. This led me to try it as a transformation for data that's both positive and negative and heavy-tailed in both directions as an undergrad, way back when. It sometimes works fairly well but it's not easy to explain to people." CreationDate="2017-05-28T23:40:42.147" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10251" PostId="3224" Score="5" Text="(+1) Good points.  I have always made an effort to include at least a perfunctory description of images in my posts, but I confess that in most cases they aren't terribly descriptive.  But perhaps that's because I believe it's important to describe and explain one's figures in the body of the text, just to make sure readers are interpreting them as intended." CreationDate="2016-07-25T13:52:19.477" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="10252" PostId="3224" Score="3" Text="You don't need a screen reader to see the alt text; for example in Firefox, right click on the image and choose &quot;View Image Info&quot;. The info window that pops up includes the alt text in the &quot;Associated Text&quot; entry." CreationDate="2016-07-25T17:04:49.427" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10253" PostId="3224" Score="2" Text="This would really be more of a `[feature-request]` but I wish that the alt-text were used as hover-text too. That might also encourage more people to write it." CreationDate="2016-07-25T19:11:39.467" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="10254" PostId="3224" Score="1" Text="Perhaps also a plea for people not to use colour to make important distinctions in their graphs as people with colour vision anomalies have difficulty with this." CreationDate="2016-07-25T19:36:52.840" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="10274" PostId="3224" Score="0" Text="Honestly, I almost never include alt text but almost always describe what in going on the plot in the body of my answer - is there any problem with such approach?" CreationDate="2016-07-29T09:03:09.437" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="10275" PostId="3224" Score="2" Text="@Tim Anyone using a screen reader gets a dose of &quot;Enter image description here&quot; which must be a bit annoying, particularly if there are several images. Even cutting this down to &quot;Plot&quot; would be an improvement, I'd imagine" CreationDate="2016-07-29T10:45:07.450" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="10255" PostId="3226" Score="7" Text="Your question is not a statistical one.  Here it is, *verbatim*: &quot;What happens in the the cells in the conditions studied?&quot;  That's not on-topic on this site." CreationDate="2016-07-26T15:04:00.760" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="10256" PostId="3226" Score="0" Text="That's the question I am trying to answer on my study, not the question I am asking here on CV" CreationDate="2016-07-26T15:17:09.257" UserId="105234" />
  <row Id="10257" PostId="3226" Score="7" Text="Interpreting the results of a statistical analysis demands a degree of subject matter knowledge. In the case of your question on CV we cannot see any statistical questions left over and above the genetics questions." CreationDate="2016-07-26T16:00:52.323" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="10263" PostId="3229" Score="8" Text="I would start by commenting to see if you can engage the OP &amp; get the Q to the point where it would be answerable. Although I don't follow forecasting, eg, I sometime see them, &amp; my impression is you are trying that already &amp; doing a good job of it." CreationDate="2016-07-27T21:00:11.753" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10277" PostId="3229" Score="1" Text="What I do with this kind of questions is either provide brief comment or answer pointing some *general* direction to go (where to start, references), or vote to close as too broad. In many cases I do both." CreationDate="2016-07-29T11:08:45.633" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="10278" PostId="3229" Score="0" Text="@gung, thanks. This takes a lot of work and therefore makes the question less attractive from an answerer's point of view." CreationDate="2016-07-29T11:29:39.447" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="10279" PostId="3229" Score="1" Text="@Tim, that sounds fine, it is just that I am not sure whether the reason for closing is sound." CreationDate="2016-07-29T11:29:43.197" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="10280" PostId="3229" Score="2" Text="It *is* a lot of work--I do a fair amount of it myself--but you do a good job of it &amp; it's important." CreationDate="2016-07-29T12:10:22.783" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10281" PostId="3229" Score="0" Text="@gung, fair enough. I appreciate the encouragement." CreationDate="2016-07-29T12:15:32.430" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="10265" PostId="3230" Score="0" Text="My apologies... I initially misunderstood your linked question, even after reading it several times. My answer is being modified. It may take me a while. I'll undelete when it's better. (Now done)" CreationDate="2016-07-28T09:58:04.970" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10270" PostId="3230" Score="2" Text="I don't really follow your question there. I can make some educated guesses as to what it is about, but you would be better off trying to clarify your situation, your data, the models, why you want &quot;relative error&quot; (&amp; what exactly you mean by that), etc. It can also be better tagged; neither `[mathematical-statistics]` nor `[estimation]` seem really appropriate." CreationDate="2016-07-28T15:56:38.823" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10282" PostId="3230" Score="2" Text="Certainly, some hints [here](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1479/how-to-ask-a-good-question-on-crossvalidated) will help. Good luck." CreationDate="2016-07-29T19:58:10.847" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="10322" PostId="3230" Score="0" Text="4. Offer a bounty (http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/no-one-answers)" CreationDate="2016-08-05T12:38:02.820" UserId="27276" />
  <row Id="10327" PostId="3230" Score="0" Text="@hplieninger I meant 3 options I'm able to choose from." CreationDate="2016-08-05T14:12:45.773" UserId="119024" />
  <row Id="10331" PostId="3230" Score="0" Text="Sure, I know. But you may earn reputation, and others may come across this thread." CreationDate="2016-08-05T14:37:02.437" UserId="27276" />
  <row Id="10264" PostId="3231" Score="7" Text="&quot;*In obvious cases I started re-tagging the questions*&quot; ... excellent." CreationDate="2016-07-28T08:59:25.340" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10266" PostId="3231" Score="9" Text="The [media] tag has a wiki excerpt. It says `Questions related to statistics in the media`. It has a wiki too. It says `Apply this tag to questions specifically about the use of statistics within the popular media.` Both were written by whuber in 2011. So I think it's pretty obvious that it is not a misspelled &quot;median&quot;." CreationDate="2016-07-28T12:07:41.710" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10267" PostId="3231" Score="1" Text="(On the other hand, one might reasonably worry that it's too confusing name for a tag and we should rather get rid of it.)" CreationDate="2016-07-28T12:07:47.990" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10268" PostId="3231" Score="2" Text="@amoeba I don't know how I missed it... But I also think it's confusing and you can easily misspell &quot;median&quot; (seems it already happened few times)." CreationDate="2016-07-28T12:17:19.773" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="10273" PostId="3231" Score="1" Text="Yes. I think we should either rename the tag (can be done manually by replacing it on all threads) or get rid of it altogether. It does not seem to be used a lot and I am not sure it's useful. If, however, people think it *is* useful, let's rename it into something less similar to [median]. Perhaps [mass-media]?" CreationDate="2016-07-29T00:09:57.710" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10276" PostId="3231" Score="5" Text="@amoeba the question is: do we need it at all?" CreationDate="2016-07-29T10:46:11.707" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="10291" PostId="3231" Score="2" Text="@Tim Personally I think the tag brings together some threads in a useful manner. I think questions about statistical claims in the media are a distinct category of query - in particular I think it is likely that by reading a couple of other threads in that category, people may find the answer to their own problem (how to interpret a poll result or some other claim), which I think ultimately determines whether the tag is useful." CreationDate="2016-07-31T12:19:22.223" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="10292" PostId="3231" Score="1" Text="@Silverfish Any ideas then on the most appropriate tag name (something that is less likely to be confused with &quot;median&quot;)?" CreationDate="2016-07-31T13:50:39.140" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10295" PostId="3231" Score="0" Text="@amoeba No brainwaves here. Best I have at the moment is `[statistics-in-media]` which is at least unambiguous but downside is not easily &quot;discoverable&quot;. I don't think `[press]` works so well as it excludes broadcast media, and `[news]` sounds like it might include &quot;news about statistics&quot; or &quot;new developments in statistics&quot;" CreationDate="2016-07-31T14:41:32.870" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="10296" PostId="3231" Score="0" Text="@Silverfish And `[mass-media]`?" CreationDate="2016-07-31T14:43:38.443" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10297" PostId="3231" Score="2" Text="@amoeba I think `[statistics-in-media]` is probably clearer in function. One thing about `[mass-media]` is that it sounds like it wouldn't include e.g. discussion of statistics in a popular blog which `[statistics-in-media]` might." CreationDate="2016-07-31T14:48:58.177" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="10299" PostId="3231" Score="1" Text="@Silverfish it always could be book-index style `[media-statistics-in]` but I don't know if it makes sense..." CreationDate="2016-07-31T15:23:24.610" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="10773" PostId="3231" Score="0" Text="Tim, I have implemented @Silverfish'es suggestion (see update). You might want to accept his answer now." CreationDate="2016-09-15T00:30:47.960" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10269" PostId="3232" Score="0" Text="I meant math, just confused it. Thanks for your enlighting answers (both here and in the original question), I will try to look for additional sources and do a little work so I can post a satisfying answer. I also want to thank you for explaining why calling an own question &quot;simple&quot; is no good idea, I wasn't aware of this :-)" CreationDate="2016-07-28T13:21:05.377" UserId="119024" />
  <row Id="10271" PostId="3232" Score="1" Text="@GreenThor &quot;Math Overflow&quot; strikes me as rather poorly named, when so many users of Stack Exchange are primarily used to &quot;Stack Overflow&quot; and are quite liable to confuse, or simply assume, &quot;Whatever Overflow&quot; is for the non-programming stuff rather than &quot;Whatever SE&quot; (which is far less memorable). It's clear why there need to be separate &quot;Math Overflow&quot; and &quot;Math SE&quot; sites but the naming is very easy to confuse!" CreationDate="2016-07-28T23:12:41.810" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="10272" PostId="3232" Score="2" Text="@Silverfish mathoverflow started pretty early (2009, when SE consisted of only the SO/Server Fault/Super User trilogy -- all computing-related), not as part of the SE network but as its own site, using the stackexchange software; it joined SE in 2013 (when even OpenData had already begun). This early start may explain the naming choice (indicating it was like SO is for programmers, but for professional mathematicians). Had it started later (say in 2013 ... or even as early as late 2010) as an SE site no doubt a different name would have been selected." CreationDate="2016-07-28T23:47:19.950" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10283" PostId="3234" Score="0" Text="I'm seeing the same thing. Revolution Analytics is (was?) a private company. They may have sold themselves to Microsoft." CreationDate="2016-07-30T13:44:31.007" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10284" PostId="3234" Score="0" Text="@gung It appears to be the case. Not having positive feelings towards Microsoft right now :(" CreationDate="2016-07-30T13:50:42.827" UserId="68622" />
  <row Id="10285" PostId="3234" Score="9" Text="This (the purchase of revolution analytics by Microsoft) happened quite a while ago." CreationDate="2016-07-30T14:04:39.270" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10290" PostId="3234" Score="0" Text="Here is a reference: [A message from our CEO David Rich on joining Microsoft](https://web.archive.org/web/20150408234423/http://www.revolutionanalytics.com/a-message-from-our-ceo-david-rich-on-joining-microsoft)." CreationDate="2016-07-30T15:36:32.517" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10435" PostId="3234" Score="0" Text="Curiously, it seems you can still access the blog directly (e.g., [here is the post for August 10, 2016](http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2016/08/in-case-you-missed-it-july-2016-roundup.html)--i.e., today), but the *Revolution Analytics* heading does not display." CreationDate="2016-08-11T02:10:54.363" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10286" PostId="3235" Score="0" Text="Ok @Glen_b , should I close the question?" CreationDate="2016-07-30T14:17:16.470" UserId="68622" />
  <row Id="10287" PostId="3235" Score="5" Text="@mickkk This question? No, the opening paragraph (about what's on topic on the main site) is on topic for meta." CreationDate="2016-07-30T14:33:44.210" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10288" PostId="3235" Score="0" Text="ok, thanks for your help." CreationDate="2016-07-30T14:37:01.987" UserId="68622" />
  <row Id="10300" PostId="3237" Score="0" Text="If I recall correctly, there was discussion on Meta that this tag *is* actually useful (but I can't find it now). See also here for pourpose of creating it: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/441/what-should-be-rules-for-making-and-using-tags/442#442" CreationDate="2016-08-02T11:25:46.717" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="10301" PostId="3237" Score="1" Text="Well, that comment is from 2010 and does not seem very relevant to me anymore. Take a moment to look at the threads tagged with [theory] and you will see that this tag can be removed from any of them without any loss; there is *always* a better more specific tag(s)." CreationDate="2016-08-02T11:27:56.273" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10307" PostId="3238" Score="1" Text="How many such typos have there been?" CreationDate="2016-08-03T16:13:49.967" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10308" PostId="3238" Score="2" Text="@gung Tim would know that. If he found several instances of misclassification in a tag with only ~10 members that is quite a large percentage." CreationDate="2016-08-03T17:16:44.290" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="10317" PostId="3239" Score="3" Text="I tend to use code formatting for tables of values that might be further processed and, when I have the time, $\TeX$ formatting to present certain kinds of information in a clearer manner.  A good example of that is the table in http://stats.stackexchange.com/a/225403/919 which benefited from omitting details in the middle: it was intended to illustrate a pattern, not to convey results.  In effect, that table served more as a *graphic constructed from text and numbers.*" CreationDate="2016-08-04T18:09:16.463" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="10318" PostId="3239" Score="3" Text="Note that you don't need the dollar signs (`$$ ... $$`) when your MathJax starts &amp; ends with `\begin{} ... \end{}`." CreationDate="2016-08-04T20:15:51.557" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10309" PostId="3240" Score="0" Text="Thanks. Any specific suggestions would be welcome." CreationDate="2016-08-03T21:26:57.440" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10310" PostId="3240" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b (1) [This one](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/89945/meaning-of-a-convergence-warning-in-glmer) takes a deep dive into some FORTRAN code. (2) [This one](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/179185/explain-how-eigen-helps-inverting-a-matrix/179222#179222) is some useful linear algebra." CreationDate="2016-08-03T21:52:38.537" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="10377" PostId="3240" Score="0" Text="Placed a bounty on the second, since the first already had one." CreationDate="2016-08-09T18:48:44.013" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10311" PostId="3241" Score="3" Text="Absolutely, plus it must be much harder to copy-paste a MathJax table into a script." CreationDate="2016-08-03T22:06:03.217" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10312" PostId="3241" Score="5" Text="In general, nice presentation beats nasty, but a lot of work doesn't beat a little. Hence I agree with this line. I'd add that to me tables of numbers that aren't aligned in columns on the decimal point are unattractive, not to say innumerate, even in some flavour of TeX or LaTeX.  Three fields, before, the decimal point and after, are one way to do that. You may know a better way." CreationDate="2016-08-04T06:28:05.630" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="10313" PostId="3242" Score="1" Text="+1. Excellent advice." CreationDate="2016-08-04T11:42:59.207" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10314" PostId="4242" Score="8" Text="+1 This is a great idea.  The single, software-only tag has always been a clear indicator of a problematic question.  Others include bizarre formatting; inclusion of standard text from our site at the beginning (from a bad cut-and-paste operation); extensive typographical and spelling errors; image-only questions; and certain strange combinations of tags (such as including [tag:mathematical-statistics] attached to elementary problems)." CreationDate="2016-08-04T14:43:21.800" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="10315" PostId="4242" Score="6" Text="I think this is a good idea, but I'm guessing we catch many of those folks as they are asking Q's for the first time." CreationDate="2016-08-04T15:50:23.690" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="10316" PostId="4242" Score="0" Text="@AndyW That's very plausible, and certainly is the motivation of the first-time poster question. Two questions (1) Do you think the marginal value of the additional filter would be worthwhile (I do) and (2) Does the first-time post queue capture the first questions from users granted 101 rep by association bonus?" CreationDate="2016-08-04T16:22:44.557" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="10319" PostId="4242" Score="0" Text="At a minimum, you'll need to add `[spss]` &amp; `[sas]` to your list. I see 17 single-tag `[matlab]` threads, 9 for `[jags]`, 2 for `[c++]` , 2 for `[stan]`, 1 for `[minitab]`, 1 for `[eviews]`, etc." CreationDate="2016-08-04T20:34:41.120" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10324" PostId="4242" Score="0" Text="I couldn't figure out how to search for only a single tag @gung on the main site, so I wrote queries in the data explorer. [This counts up the questions](http://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/521107/questions-that-have-a-single-tag) with a single tag, and this [searches for questions](http://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/521110/questions-with-only-a-single-tag?TagName=r) with a single tag and returns the full info to see." CreationDate="2016-08-05T13:10:39.130" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="10325" PostId="4242" Score="0" Text="@AndyW, I used your query (from chat) to get the counts listed above." CreationDate="2016-08-05T13:22:36.530" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10343" PostId="4242" Score="0" Text="Individual package tags are another common culprit eg `[ggplot2]`. You probably also want to catch questions with multiple tags, if each tag is either a language or a package e.g. `[ggplot2]` with `[r]` is still likely to be off-topic." CreationDate="2016-08-05T21:22:36.110" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="10344" PostId="4242" Score="2" Text="These are all good points, but I think we've assumed away the question in my post, which is whether it's even feasible for us to do this with the current software." CreationDate="2016-08-05T22:27:10.527" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="10359" PostId="4242" Score="4" Text="I'm pretty sure this is not something we can do ourselves; it would require the SE developer team to create a custom path for populating the queue." CreationDate="2016-08-08T16:46:48.687" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10320" PostId="4243" Score="6" Text="Smarter users would be a great start." CreationDate="2016-08-05T01:45:41.327" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="10333" PostId="4243" Score="1" Text="@GeneralAbrial, ouch. FWIW, I can't see who the users are." CreationDate="2016-08-05T15:14:43.120" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10335" PostId="4243" Score="10" Text="@gung To clarify -- I still don't understand how the Data Science SE got green-lighted when it has about 80% overlap with Stats.SE, and the remaining 20% being composed of stats-specific computing questions. To my mind, AI is either an intractable computational goal (make a computer that can learn arbitrarily complex tasks without human intervention) or is entirely a subset of contemporary machine learning. But either greenlighting decision totally makes sense if one does not really understand what stats.SE does." CreationDate="2016-08-05T15:19:34.287" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="10336" PostId="4243" Score="7" Text="It's not up to us to &quot;avoid&quot; it or not. My guess is that what isn't on topic already here, &amp;/or at [datascience.SE], is likely to be on topic on [cstheory.SE] (eg, they have a tag for [ai.artificial-intel](http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/ai.artificial-intel) w/ 53 questions). I'm not sure if SE (or the larger information-seeking world) is ultimately benefited by increasingly narrow SE sites. I would think many of these would be better combined into a smaller number of stronger sites until there was really critical mass for a split." CreationDate="2016-08-05T15:20:26.710" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10337" PostId="4243" Score="15" Text="Honestly, I think that the strength of SE is that it groups together these things -- so I can contribute to questions about things that I know about and learn about things that I don't know about. Splintering SE sites into narrowly-focused topics makes that more challenging to do: following the goings-on in 3 or 4 places, rather than 1 or 2. I don't see any upside to splintering SE topics." CreationDate="2016-08-05T15:28:47.040" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="10338" PostId="4243" Score="2" Text="@gung Perhaps &quot;avoid&quot; isn't the right word, but if a new SE is created and has a 80% overlaps with stats, it might mean some users aren't aware of what is on-topic on stats.  On http://meta.ai.stackexchange.com/q/4/4 I listed different SE that has an AI tag." CreationDate="2016-08-05T16:15:01.703" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="10339" PostId="4243" Score="0" Text="@FranckDernoncourt, that seems like a good thing to do. Note, however, that I cannot see the thread b/c I am not a member there." CreationDate="2016-08-05T16:20:14.140" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10340" PostId="4243" Score="0" Text="@gung I think you can join through http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/93481/artificial-intelligence" CreationDate="2016-08-05T16:25:34.190" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="10341" PostId="4243" Score="0" Text="@FranckDernoncourt, meh. On a different topic, you are probably aware that we have a [tag:artificial-intelligence] tag. However, it had no excerpt / wiki. I have added [one](http://stats.stackexchange.com/tags/artificial-intelligence/info), in case you want to check / tweak it." CreationDate="2016-08-05T16:47:27.647" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10342" PostId="4243" Score="0" Text="@gung Thanks. In the feedback from the AI site, it looks like the name &quot;CV&quot; isn't explicit enough to designate statistics / machine learning / optimization / AI. I agree." CreationDate="2016-08-05T18:44:52.657" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="10346" PostId="4243" Score="5" Text="I think all the problems around these new websites would can be solved by changing the site name to something like &quot;data science and statistics&quot;. CV is clearly too obscure to signal what's on topic." CreationDate="2016-08-06T14:49:29.000" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="10348" PostId="4243" Score="0" Text="I don't see Stats name anything to do with AI. And Cross Validation is a very bad name." CreationDate="2016-08-06T18:19:59.547" UserId="12989" />
  <row Id="10349" PostId="4243" Score="1" Text="@GeneralAbrial &quot;CrossValidated&quot; (which I think is a *great* name) is just a name. As a comparison, the SE site on cooking is called &quot;Seasoned Advice&quot;. Its url address is `cooking.SE` and ours is `stats.SE`. I recall that SE does not allow site names to differ from their topics anymore, btw. Are you suggesting that we should rather get rid of our &quot;custom name&quot; too?" CreationDate="2016-08-06T23:35:09.197" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10350" PostId="4243" Score="5" Text="@amoeba I realize that the correspondence between the name and what is on-topic is, essentially, arbitrary. CV.SE could be called &quot;bacon&quot; and we'd still be able to moderate the forums to the same standards. The name is cute and clever for people who understand the field. But the proliferation of increasingly narrow SE sites which are, otherwise, on-topic elsewhere is precisely counterproductive. User kenorb doesn't see any relation between AI and statistics, which is clearly preposterous! Either AI is a farce or statistical concepts are paramount -- I know what side I'm on." CreationDate="2016-08-07T01:34:38.813" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="10360" PostId="4243" Score="0" Text="@GeneralAbrial: one thing to keep in mind about changing the name to &quot;data science and statistics&quot; is that we turn down questions that are of the data science realm but not of statistical nature (coding, database management, etc)." CreationDate="2016-08-08T16:52:00.003" UserId="76981" />
  <row Id="10361" PostId="4243" Score="1" Text="@CliffAB I actually think that statistical coding questions should be on topic but I'm pretty much alone there. Database questions have their own forum." CreationDate="2016-08-08T17:19:17.780" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="10362" PostId="4243" Score="0" Text="You should give it some time to brew. Currently the questions seem to be predominantly of a &quot;too broad&quot; kind by CV standards. If they keep doing this, then the site will die on its own. There's got to be sufficient sustainable number of new specific questions arriving for it survive." CreationDate="2016-08-08T17:20:04.813" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="10363" PostId="4243" Score="0" Text="@Aksakal amongst the non too broad questions, a good amount would be on-topic here." CreationDate="2016-08-08T17:33:40.980" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="10365" PostId="4243" Score="3" Text="The problem with the massive overlap between CV &amp; the Data Science forum is that &quot;data science&quot; is to some extent just a buzz word of recent origin, not with CV's catchy name. It's a broad, fuzzy term whose meaning drifts from person to person. The same is true to a lesser extent of the definition of A.I. I'd rather see the D.S. forum closed to avoid such confusion, unless it survives as a mere adjunct of CV strictly for statistics-related coding questions. Until a clear definition of A.I. becomes widespread, I see no point in adding even more confusion with another overlapping site." CreationDate="2016-08-09T11:29:45.690" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="10378" PostId="4243" Score="1" Text="@SQLServerSteve, I agree on DS, it's a marketing fad, but A.I. is different. It tries to build a thinking machine. It happens so that lately statistical methods are popular in the field, but that's just a phase in the development of a field." CreationDate="2016-08-09T20:11:17.877" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="10403" PostId="4243" Score="0" Text="@Aksakal I agree to an extent. A.I. is definitely more well-defined than DS. It still gets used as a buzz word and catch-all term and its meaning also drifts, although not to the same degree. It is still difficult though to pin down exactly where statistics/machine learning etc. transition into A.I. Furthermore, &quot;intelligence&quot; is itself is not a simple thing to define, even biologically. Does is mean the use of abstract reason? Or any nervous system activity at all? If we could find a way to set crisp boundaries on these things I'd have fewer misgivings (I already have far fewer than with DS)" CreationDate="2016-08-10T01:51:09.950" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="12121" PostId="4243" Score="0" Text="So if you would like to avoid having another Stack Exchange website with a large overlap with CV, you may want to cast some votes: [Technical questions are not getting closed](http://meta.ai.stackexchange.com/q/1279/4)" CreationDate="2017-01-31T18:16:56.780" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="10323" PostId="4244" Score="3" Text="I wouldn't be surprised if there is a canonical answer somewhere on the main site that at least partially accomplishes this (maybe one of the suggested reading material)." CreationDate="2016-08-05T13:04:12.750" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="10326" PostId="4244" Score="2" Text="Why not put such a thread on the main site?" CreationDate="2016-08-05T13:25:35.310" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10332" PostId="4244" Score="3" Text="I agree with @gung. In fact, Richard can ask and self-answer a question calling it &quot;A Primer on Forecasting Techniques&quot; (or a survey). If done well, this thread can become popular and we can use it to close other questions as duplicates. That's the benefit of having it on the main cite. [Disclaimer: I am not following our forecasting questions at all, so have no idea how feasible/useful this will be in practice.]" CreationDate="2016-08-05T14:41:51.080" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10345" PostId="4246" Score="0" Text="now on reflection, my question is in the comparison of the algorithms. Wether if the difference is in statistical nature, its still unknown to me. Maybe it would have been fine here in stats overflow?" CreationDate="2016-08-06T02:01:55.773" UserId="28986" />
  <row Id="10351" PostId="4246" Score="0" Text="@Charlie with some edits to focus on the algorithms themselves rather than implementation in code, and without discussion of error messages, it's possible that it would be seen on topic (depending on how it was presented)." CreationDate="2016-08-07T02:00:25.493" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10352" PostId="4246" Score="1" Text="@Charlie, if you are talking about this question http://stackoverflow.com/questions/38799205 then it would have been completely fine here on CV." CreationDate="2016-08-07T22:31:50.047" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10353" PostId="4246" Score="0" Text="thanks! @amoeba would it have been better in CV? just curious (trying to learn)." CreationDate="2016-08-07T22:42:23.330" UserId="28986" />
  <row Id="10354" PostId="4246" Score="0" Text="@Charlie What is &quot;better&quot; in this context? Having higher probability of a good answer? I don't know. It would probably get answered here, but I am not following SO and can't say if questions like that get good answers there. I suggest that if you don't get a satisfactorily answer there after some time (a week?), you can re-post it here. [I have even less of an idea about scicomp.SE.]" CreationDate="2016-08-07T22:46:46.980" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10355" PostId="4246" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I've seen more nearly on-topic/ and less &quot;why do I get this error&quot; type questions close here for being of a similar form. I don't think it's survival here as is would be at all clear cut without some edits to alter the emphasis." CreationDate="2016-08-08T01:43:42.467" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10356" PostId="4246" Score="0" Text="Perhaps.  On the other hand, I've seen far more off-topic questions staying open." CreationDate="2016-08-08T09:44:17.093" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10357" PostId="4246" Score="0" Text="However an off topic staying open is easy (people fail to notice or fail to act); one closing requires one or more people to conclude it's actually off topic and act on it, so the closed ones give relatively more information about what's considered off topic." CreationDate="2016-08-08T10:05:36.913" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10358" PostId="4246" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b Agreed. But in this specific case there might actually be some misunderstanding: the linked question is not at all of the &quot;why do I get this error&quot; type; OP is not mentioning any software errors *at all*. There is an &quot;error&quot; mentioned in the question text, but it refers to the &quot;reconstruction error&quot;." CreationDate="2016-08-08T11:54:28.457" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10406" PostId="4246" Score="0" Text="Thanks; I think you're right." CreationDate="2016-08-10T11:50:26.850" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10347" PostId="4247" Score="3" Text="There have been some SE merges in the past e.g. http://meta.video.stackexchange.com/q/353/2117 or http://meta.academia.stackexchange.com/q/1904/452." CreationDate="2016-08-06T16:32:56.113" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="10401" PostId="4248" Score="0" Text="As I said, I think [weighted-data] is a fine tag name for datasets with datapoint weights." CreationDate="2016-08-09T23:00:23.110" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10404" PostId="4248" Score="7" Text="I think I speak for all CV users when I say that we've weighted a long time for this discussion." CreationDate="2016-08-10T02:10:31.000" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="12175" PostId="4248" Score="0" Text="It's a pity that you never finished cleaning this up @StasK. I know this is a lot of work... Any chance of you getting back to it at some moment? Consider this a gentle nudge :-)" CreationDate="2017-02-02T12:04:08.997" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12318" PostId="4248" Score="0" Text="Well as soon as I get fired from the main paying job of working with `weighted-data`, @amoeba... Also, I should have put a bookend pointer to where I stopped." CreationDate="2017-02-08T17:48:56.377" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="10395" PostId="4249" Score="0" Text="+1 Definitely too generic and unclear." CreationDate="2016-08-09T22:24:05.787" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10402" PostId="4250" Score="0" Text="Can you give us some idea about how many of the ~150 threads tagged with [weithed-sampling] fall into which category? There is only one single question that I get when I search for `[weighted-sampling] monte carlo`. If so, do we need this Monte Carlo related tag at all?" CreationDate="2016-08-09T23:04:44.840" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10407" PostId="4250" Score="0" Text="About a third of these can be rerouted to [tag:survey-sampling]. Many just don't seem to fit anything reasonable... may be [tag:weighted-data] until a better resolution is found." CreationDate="2016-08-10T12:51:55.883" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="10409" PostId="4250" Score="0" Text="Most questions are abandoned -- there are many unanswered requests for clarification that have been dead for a few months." CreationDate="2016-08-10T13:16:18.533" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="10416" PostId="4250" Score="0" Text="I am presently not sure we need a tag for that. I mean, we have a [monte-carlo] tag already. And [importance-sampling]. Perhaps it is enough?" CreationDate="2016-08-10T15:21:18.310" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10419" PostId="4250" Score="0" Text="Should be enough, I agree. I am trying to clean up that tag at the moment. I am back in time to early 2016 at this point." CreationDate="2016-08-10T15:28:59.863" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="10420" PostId="4250" Score="3" Text="You are doing great job." CreationDate="2016-08-10T15:32:00.627" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10391" PostId="4251" Score="1" Text="[weighted-mean] seems to be exactly equivalent to [mean] + [weighted-data], but it might still make sense to keep it as a separate tag, given that it has been used 100+ times." CreationDate="2016-08-09T21:57:42.143" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10392" PostId="4251" Score="0" Text="Disagree on strict equivalence. Sometimes, [tag:weighted-mean] refers to some ingenious methods, such as rolling averages in time series. That does not fit **my preferred** definition of [tag:weighted-data] where there is one and only one weight attached to an observation." CreationDate="2016-08-09T22:00:15.847" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="10393" PostId="4251" Score="0" Text="Hmm, so you yourself are against the suggestion expressed in this answer of yours? That's confusing." CreationDate="2016-08-09T22:05:35.823" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10398" PostId="4251" Score="0" Text="I have been trying too hard on this, apparently. May be this suggestion is too strong, in the first place, so feel free to downvote. There may be another way to manage that tag, too." CreationDate="2016-08-09T22:37:37.633" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="10394" PostId="4253" Score="3" Text="+1 but *are there* any questions that talk about &quot;regression weights&quot; meaning &quot;coefficients&quot; and have weight-related tags? Is there many? Which tags are used?" CreationDate="2016-08-09T22:23:39.330" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10399" PostId="4254" Score="6" Text="To prevent confusion in the future, we can think of creating a [neural-network-weight] tag and mapping it to [neural-networks] as a synonym.  Upvote this comment if you think it's a good idea." CreationDate="2016-08-09T22:58:21.490" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10421" PostId="4255" Score="1" Text="Related discussion: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/4243" CreationDate="2016-08-10T15:35:52.083" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10410" PostId="4256" Score="11" Text="I think you have a reason to complain, but please don't characterize five years of moderating more than 100K questions by eight people on the basis of a single experience at one time with one moderator!  You can easily learn about our policies, practices, and vision by looking through relevant posts on this meta site." CreationDate="2016-08-10T13:45:00.460" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="10411" PostId="4256" Score="6" Text="I voted to re-open. I'm a high rep user and I've seen some decisions that irk me as well -- it happens. Fortunately the way the site is built almost anything can be reversed." CreationDate="2016-08-10T13:45:35.417" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="10413" PostId="4256" Score="2" Text="@whuber I didnt mean to generalize, my title was intended on that specific type of moderation, not to mean that all moderators are &quot;trigger happy&quot;. As for the tone in the body, I might have failed in masking my frustration, not a good day at the office as days go... Sorry if I came across brash" CreationDate="2016-08-10T14:12:03.347" UserId="3014" />
  <row Id="10414" PostId="4256" Score="4" Text="We all have days like that.  As a general proposition, no matter how you might feel about a situation, you will usually get a faster and more satisfactory response by keeping it impersonal and framing it in terms of issues rather than individuals.  That avoids the distraction of defending against personal attacks (whether real or imagined) and helps keep people focused on resolving the situation.  In this case you have legitimate questions about what procedure(s) might have been followed and what you might be expected to do in response to the closure of your question." CreationDate="2016-08-10T14:29:23.820" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="10415" PostId="4256" Score="4" Text="I have to agree with whuber on the matter of approach. I certainly encourage our users to raise issues with moderation, but it's a difficult task at the best of times, and it's not hard to come to different views of questions (and even when two different people might come to the same view, it's also easy to miss something or to read something the wrong way and make a choice you may not have made otherwise). As far as I can see, all the moderators try their best to help keep the site running as it should and it's generally much more productive to avoid making queries that you raise personal." CreationDate="2016-08-10T15:06:26.370" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10425" PostId="4256" Score="5" Text="If you didn't mean to generalize or be &quot;brash&quot;, perhaps you should edit the text of this Q to make &quot;it impersonal and framing it in terms of issues rather than individuals&quot;, as @whuber suggests (&amp; delete your personal comment on the referenced thread). It is certainly understandable that you are frustrated &amp; had a bad day--that happens to all of us (maybe it was even happening to Peter here)--but now that everybody has had time to cool down, you have a chance to rectify it." CreationDate="2016-08-10T21:12:24.480" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10436" PostId="4256" Score="0" Text="@gung good call... edited the question here. The comment I dont have the rep to edit" CreationDate="2016-08-11T08:15:24.703" UserId="3014" />
  <row Id="10447" PostId="4256" Score="3" Text="You only get five minutes to edit comments.  After that your only way to alter them is either (a) delete and post a new one or (b) flag a moderator, who can edit them." CreationDate="2016-08-11T12:44:44.823" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="10422" PostId="4257" Score="0" Text="Can you please provide a couple of short examples of such questions?" CreationDate="2016-08-10T17:02:09.860" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10423" PostId="4257" Score="0" Text="@amoeba added~~" CreationDate="2016-08-10T17:10:11.447" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="10451" PostId="4257" Score="1" Text="I am somewhat confused by this question. You give three examples but all of them are not closed (and some are highly upvoted and have a lot of answers from high rep users). I conclude that they on-topic. What makes you think that they might be off-topic? (Myself, I have no idea what &quot;non-statistical artificial intelligence&quot; is, so I am simply judging by your three examples.) [Initially, I was expecting you to copy-paste some Qs from AI.SE in order to discuss if they would be on topic here.]" CreationDate="2016-08-11T21:13:04.350" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10452" PostId="4257" Score="2" Text="@amoeba sometimes rules aren't applied." CreationDate="2016-08-11T21:17:18.233" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="10603" PostId="4257" Score="0" Text="The example questions linked in the OP sound pretty statistical to me,. For example http://ai.stackexchange.com/questions/15/ http://ai.stackexchange.com/questions/1348/ http://ai.stackexchange.com/questions/1768/ are more clearly non-statistical AI questions (and off-topic here, I would say)" CreationDate="2016-08-30T12:51:36.717" UserId="24669" />
  <row Id="11695" PostId="4257" Score="2" Text="Fuzzy logic is a different way to mathematical describe uncertainty.  But it is different from probability.  Does that make it off topic?" CreationDate="2016-12-31T22:41:30.973" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="10428" PostId="4258" Score="4" Text="On reading the original question I agree with the tone and the content of this. I'd add that (at least in my browser/machine/OS combination) the graphs are too faint for me to read at all. It's too difficult for me to estimate whether I would have voted to close the original." CreationDate="2016-08-10T22:39:50.647" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="10429" PostId="4258" Score="0" Text="But -- my main point -- note that this kind of critical discussion is much more than any high-reputation user (meaning those with enough reputation to vote to close) or moderator is obliged to give even when agreeing with a vote to close. While no comment at all is inevitably disappointing to any OP, the tough love of SE votes to close means &quot;Sorry, we can't understand what this is about. You'll need to rewrite it if you want to persist&quot;.  A question has to come up to scratch to be accepted." CreationDate="2016-08-10T22:40:40.787" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="10430" PostId="4258" Score="4" Text="I think that meta is precisely the place to ask &quot;why was my question closed?&quot; and that is plausibly the underlying concern of OP's meta question (though that's meeting OP more than halfway). I didn't *have* to write this, and no one *had* to provide an explanation for why the post was unclear, but since the question has (implicitly) been raised, i thought it was worth taking the time to address" CreationDate="2016-08-10T22:47:33.600" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="10431" PostId="4258" Score="1" Text="Yes indeed; my second comment was perhaps more aimed at @posdef." CreationDate="2016-08-10T22:52:40.877" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="10437" PostId="4258" Score="0" Text="Let me start by saying that I appreciate the time you took to write these comments, especially the bits about potential clarifications, I'll come back to them separately. I strictly disagree with the &quot;Tough Love of SE&quot; rhetoric you seem to be pushing however. I have been a member on SE sites for almost twice as long as you guys, and my experience is that the sites strive to be **constructive** rather than _destructive_. In practical terms, if you think something isn't right, you _tell the person how to do it right rather than tearing down what they have done_..." CreationDate="2016-08-11T08:24:50.423" UserId="3014" />
  <row Id="10438" PostId="4258" Score="0" Text="... If you don't have the time or patience to do that, you refrain from acting. This is especially true for mods who are supposed to be a role model for the community. That's been the code I was thought on SO and that's the rhetoric I went by, which explains why I don't have several hundred thousand rep or a thousand edit badges; i.e. I try to contribute where I can, as much as I can." CreationDate="2016-08-11T08:28:33.630" UserId="3014" />
  <row Id="10439" PostId="4258" Score="5" Text="The principle you expound is admirable. The practice is that if anyone does not understand a question, they often can't even say how it should be rewritten. And if X's question is quite unclear to Y, it's not Y's job to rewrite it.  BTW I have ~20K reputation both here and on SO and in my small experience moderators here behave less capriciously than on SO, and lean over backwards in dealing with difficult members, so candour about personal experience is something we can all exercise." CreationDate="2016-08-11T08:54:03.700" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="10440" PostId="4258" Score="2" Text="http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/228242/nonlinear-regression-statistica-or-any-recommended-software could be cited as an counter-example to your thread, which builds entirely on one example in making a general case. Here several people tried in various ways first to indicate that a question was unclear and then to get the OP to improve it. In the end people gave up one by one but there was no lack of effort in trying. In short, it is unfortunate that you got no specific guidance on improving your post, but that example does not indict the forum generally or moderation in particular." CreationDate="2016-08-11T09:03:03.933" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="10441" PostId="4258" Score="0" Text="Update to my first comment above: The graphs in the original post are now better. The lines still look faint, but thanks for editing." CreationDate="2016-08-11T09:20:09.157" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="10442" PostId="4259" Score="2" Text="Thanks for the expansion of your comments. Abstraction versus detail is always a difficult trade-off.  On a second reading of your question I tripped up on DBSCAN, which is not at all familiar to me. But that is just why I (still) can't answer your question and is not a personal reason for closing it." CreationDate="2016-08-11T09:32:00.563" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="10443" PostId="4259" Score="7" Text="The more abstract you make a question, the harder it becomes to define your terms with sufficient precision; even if you succeed it's still not necessarily an easy read. I find this question hard to follow because I struggle to keep track of the observations, variables, values, stimuli (at different levels &amp; of different types), responses, samples, &amp; copy numbers. When people &quot;get stuck on details&quot;, what they want is something concrete to latch on to, as @GeneralAbrial said, to help them understand what's going on,  &amp; to fill in any gaps in the information you've supplied." CreationDate="2016-08-11T12:20:40.443" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="10444" PostId="4259" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi fair point... I'll try to reformulate the question when I have a bit of time on my hands, with more details and hopefully more consistent terminology" CreationDate="2016-08-11T12:22:03.363" UserId="3014" />
  <row Id="10445" PostId="4259" Score="0" Text="Making up a context is one option, not without its drawbacks, but perhaps worth considering." CreationDate="2016-08-11T12:25:58.757" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="10449" PostId="4259" Score="7" Text="&quot;In mathematics context obscures structure.... In data analysis, context provides meaning.&quot; (George W. Cobb) https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Design-Analysis-Experiments-George/dp/047041216X" CreationDate="2016-08-11T14:26:11.373" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="10450" PostId="4261" Score="1" Text="This is a good point, but is there a specific recommendation here that we are up/downvoting for?" CreationDate="2016-08-11T20:46:44.067" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="10453" PostId="4261" Score="0" Text="+1. You have over 2k rep so you should be able to directly edit any post, including adding or removing tags." CreationDate="2016-08-12T20:19:56.947" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10493" PostId="4261" Score="1" Text="I have now done this. I left one of the weighted regression ones as I was not sure whether that was in fact more relevant than meta-analysis" CreationDate="2016-08-19T12:16:39.680" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="10454" PostId="4263" Score="2" Text="I know *nothing* about either arch or garch, but I see that among the 41 [arch] questions, 30 are tagged with [garch]. So there is only 11 questions tagged with [arch] only. It sounds like a reasonable merge case, so I +1, but again, I know nothing about this subject." CreationDate="2016-08-13T21:07:49.757" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10455" PostId="4263" Score="0" Text="One can either manually retag all arch to garch (with 41 threads it is a bit annoying but feasible) or make a synonym arch-&gt;garch (usually takes a lot of time to implement)." CreationDate="2016-08-13T21:09:10.293" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10456" PostId="4263" Score="0" Text="For people less familiar with these terms, merging `arch` into `garch` is essentially the same kind of proposal as one suggesting merging `autoregressive` into `arma` (both of which currently exist, by the way, as do `moving average` and `arima`)" CreationDate="2016-08-13T23:02:35.867" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10457" PostId="4263" Score="4" Text="@amoeba, retagging will not stop the [tag:arch] tag from being recreated when a new user enters it. So making it a synonym of [tag:garch] is the better option, or not?" CreationDate="2016-08-14T06:26:09.023" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="10484" PostId="4263" Score="1" Text="The moderators make tag synonyms, but we have a list of them ([here](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/1200/7290)) &amp; there doesn't seem to be much enthusiasm for it." CreationDate="2016-08-18T14:14:45.330" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10497" PostId="4263" Score="0" Text="Vote [here](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1200/current-tag-synonym-candidates/4270#4270) in the thread for suggested synonyms." CreationDate="2016-08-20T10:39:50.540" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="10458" PostId="4264" Score="4" Text="Why not, sounds good to me. Not sure if this is much better than just `garch`, though, but I see your point." CreationDate="2016-08-14T12:58:14.117" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="10498" PostId="4264" Score="1" Text="Vote [here](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1200/current-tag-synonym-candidates/4270#4270) in the thread for suggested synonyms." CreationDate="2016-08-20T10:39:56.870" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="10460" PostId="4265" Score="1" Text="In this case, as you now know, it comes down to a trivial difference in how binary results are coded.  Finding such things out (especially when you're reading textbooks) is analogous to the expectation on [SO] that you carry out some basic debugging (which means consulting your sources for their definitions and formulas), reduce your problem to a minimal reproducible example, and search for similar situations on the site (as one user commented in your question). If, after going through that research you still have a question, you will likely be able to formulate it clearly." CreationDate="2016-08-15T17:34:22.647" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="10461" PostId="4265" Score="0" Text="@whuber so your suggestion would be holding immature questions? Sometimes I want to try to ask. since may be there are other people suffer from the same problem can give me answer." CreationDate="2016-08-15T18:01:36.833" UserId="113777" />
  <row Id="10462" PostId="4265" Score="4" Text="Ultimately I would like to suggest following all relevant advice for formulating *good* questions.  Whether they are &quot;mature&quot; or not, advanced or not, difficult or not, makes little difference." CreationDate="2016-08-15T19:54:36.367" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="10463" PostId="4265" Score="6" Text="I would say, 'do your best', &amp; go ahead and ask. It's OK (or should be) if it turns out that the question was based on a misunderstanding of some type. We should be sufficiently forgiving of people trying to ask questions that they might be mixed up." CreationDate="2016-08-15T21:17:12.753" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10464" PostId="4265" Score="4" Text="hxd I take whuber's advice not to be to &quot;hold&quot; such questions but simply to do the appropriate kinds of research first in order to be able to formulate the ideas properly. This is simply part of the necessary process to ask suitable questions. This process will often answer the question along the way (since you gain some of the understanding necessary to answer a question at the same time you gain the necessary understanding to formulate it). Many questions I think to ask I answer in this fashion (but sometimes I still ask them anyway, often because it's useful to have a good answer on site)." CreationDate="2016-08-15T22:38:09.780" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10465" PostId="4265" Score="3" Text="Asking good questions is a nontrivial exercise - I find it often takes more mental effort to formulate a good question than to construct a good answer; it's a skill that takes thought and practice." CreationDate="2016-08-15T22:42:39.043" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10466" PostId="4266" Score="3" Text="+1. Would you be willing to do the job?" CreationDate="2016-08-16T12:23:29.503" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10467" PostId="4266" Score="1" Text="Not willing to commit any significant time but if this is agreed upon, I may process some questions every now and then" CreationDate="2016-08-16T12:32:50.527" UserId="24669" />
  <row Id="10468" PostId="4266" Score="3" Text="While going through the meta-analysis thread removing tags to do with weighting I noticed some questions tagged [combination]. This is tautologous, what is m-a after all except combination? When I get time I will delete the tags unless you get there first." CreationDate="2016-08-16T15:05:29.183" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="10469" PostId="4266" Score="0" Text="There is also a stray tag [combinatorial] with three threads." CreationDate="2016-08-16T19:14:03.700" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10471" PostId="4266" Score="0" Text="All 3 [combinatorial]-questions seem to be about combinatorial optimization, perhaps that tag should be renamed combinatorial-optimization" CreationDate="2016-08-16T19:24:02.090" UserId="24669" />
  <row Id="10487" PostId="4266" Score="3" Text="I supplied a tag wiki excerpt saying `DO NOT USE THIS TAG: it is ambiguous and has no meaning. Use more specific tags instead (usually [combinatorics]).`" CreationDate="2016-08-18T23:08:51.130" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10495" PostId="4266" Score="3" Text="I have removed all (the handful) of [combination] tags from meta-analysis. Note that there is a tag [combining-p-values] which is distinct and valuable." CreationDate="2016-08-19T14:47:56.847" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="10500" PostId="4266" Score="0" Text="Somewhat related issue: There is a [tag:permutation] tag (261 threads) which is mostly used to refer to permutation-based hypothesis tests, but sometimes refers to combinatoric problems related to permutations. Perhaps it would make sense to remove it from the latter ones (replacing with [combinatorics]) and then rename the tag to [permutation-test]. I realize it is a separate issue, we can raise it on Meta once this one is resolved." CreationDate="2016-08-20T12:58:55.033" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10501" PostId="4266" Score="0" Text="@amoeba There would be some synergy benefits from deciding the fate of [permutation] now, however.  While going through [combination] one could either  i) sometimes kill two tags with one stone or ii) sometimes add [permutation], depending on what was decided." CreationDate="2016-08-20T17:12:04.440" UserId="24669" />
  <row Id="10512" PostId="4266" Score="1" Text="My own opinion is that [permutation] is as superfluous as [combination]; questions about permutations and combinations can be tagged with [combinatorics]. Questions about permutation tests should be tagged with [permutation-test]. I might raise it on Meta at some point, but for now I would simply remove [permutation] from combinatorics threads that you are editing." CreationDate="2016-08-21T22:07:54.893" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10518" PostId="4266" Score="1" Text="Question posted: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/4280." CreationDate="2016-08-22T13:47:24.860" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10924" PostId="4266" Score="0" Text="@mdewey Thanks for your continuing effort in eliminating the [combination] tag. Don't forget to post an answer here announcing that this task is over once you are done." CreationDate="2016-09-23T12:35:06.320" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10925" PostId="4266" Score="0" Text="@mdewey and Juho: By the way, I noticed that you are now using [linear-combination]. I am not convinced that it is a useful tag; do you think it is? Don't we have hundreds (or thousands) of threads on linear combinations without this tag? Can't we use [linear-algebra] when needed, which is an often used existing tag?" CreationDate="2016-09-23T12:37:54.983" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10927" PostId="4266" Score="1" Text="@amoeba I am perhaps over-reluctant just to delete [combination] without a replacement. Perhaps I should be more ruthless." CreationDate="2016-09-23T13:12:59.203" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="11324" PostId="4266" Score="1" Text="Juho, please see the updates to @mdewey's answer. [Combination] tag does not exist anymore, and the small sister tags have been cleaned up as well. Consider accepting his answer to mark this issue as resolved." CreationDate="2016-11-08T12:00:20.377" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11336" PostId="4266" Score="1" Text="@amoeba Answer accepted, thanks for notifying me" CreationDate="2016-11-08T18:06:47.300" UserId="24669" />
  <row Id="10470" PostId="4267" Score="2" Text="Your search finds many answers too; `bayesian frequentist is:question` yields 287 questions." CreationDate="2016-08-16T19:15:23.543" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10472" PostId="4267" Score="11" Text="Personally, I'm not sure if I'd want such a tag. I tend to have mixed feelings on those questions. A lot (but not all) of them are unproductive spats." CreationDate="2016-08-16T20:10:32.487" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10474" PostId="4267" Score="3" Text="@gung I agree with you, but still, they seem to get much attention and upvotes so maybe for some users they are important." CreationDate="2016-08-16T20:34:35.563" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="10502" PostId="4267" Score="2" Text="I usually make a tag whenever I get tired of searching for things to close as dupes. Perhaps this is one such case?" CreationDate="2016-08-20T17:31:56.290" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="10503" PostId="4267" Score="2" Text="I agree that there would be use for such a tag -- I don't really enjoy arguing about the topic, but as a novice in statistics, the difference for me is really confusing, so I have a lot of questions about differentiating the two, and I always feel bad when I tag a question as &quot;Bayesian&quot; when I really mean &quot;can you compare/explain to me what the difference is between Bayesian and frequentist&quot;? I have a lot of difficulty identifying what is supposed to be a frequentist method or what is supposed to be a Bayesian method or why they aren't compatible, and I think such a tag would be useful." CreationDate="2016-08-20T17:39:45.797" UserId="113090" />
  <row Id="10506" PostId="4267" Score="2" Text="@William: While it is indeed a question that pops up frequently, I am afraid there is no satisfying answer to what a frequentist method is and even less to the comparison between those and the huge range of Bayesian answers. If there were, the debate would be closed by now!" CreationDate="2016-08-21T06:58:28.943" UserId="7224" />
  <row Id="10473" PostId="4268" Score="4" Text="I'm not seeing that right now. How long has this been going on? What browser, etc, are you using? What happens if you restart your browser or your machine?" CreationDate="2016-08-16T20:12:48.063" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10476" PostId="4268" Score="0" Text="@gung Hmm for an instant I thought it had gone after the browser restart, but nope. I noticed it today during work break and I'm using Firefox 48.0. Can't restart the PC right now. And now it happens outside CV too haha. But not all icons are affected." CreationDate="2016-08-16T20:49:48.297" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="10478" PostId="4268" Score="0" Text="@Andre I wonder if there's a word missing in your comment. Do you mean that it is happening to you also, or that it isn't happening to you either?" CreationDate="2016-08-16T23:17:01.810" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10479" PostId="4268" Score="1" Text="Relevant questions on meta.SE: [1. Same question; not answered yet](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/283497/hot-network-questions-website-icons-scrambled) ...&#xA;&#xA;[2. Possibly related](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/283428/icons-of-meta-se-and-stack-apps-have-gone-missing)" CreationDate="2016-08-16T23:20:22.953" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10480" PostId="4268" Score="0" Text="Oh, and it's everywhere. When I click the recent inbox messages, I see the SuperUser icon for notifications here on CV." CreationDate="2016-08-16T23:34:00.083" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="10481" PostId="4268" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b I see Nick Craver mentioned there was some sort of test on the image path code today, in the second thread. That must be it then." CreationDate="2016-08-16T23:36:27.310" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="10483" PostId="4269" Score="5" Text="The underlying issue is still not fixed, just the symptom, at this time. We are working on our deployment process in order to resolve it for good, but that's still a ways away." CreationDate="2016-08-17T15:11:42.327" UserId="24254" />
  <row Id="10489" PostId="4274" Score="3" Text="In the context of reinforcement learning I expect it's likely to be on topic (it doesn't seem to want to show me your post unless I sign up to the beta). However, there's also economics.SE as an alternative possibility, depending on the emphasis" CreationDate="2016-08-19T02:17:49.837" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10490" PostId="4274" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b thank you, i'll take a look" CreationDate="2016-08-19T02:20:15.657" UserId="95569" />
  <row Id="10491" PostId="4274" Score="2" Text="math.SE also takes game theory questions" CreationDate="2016-08-19T04:58:30.440" UserId="24669" />
  <row Id="10492" PostId="4274" Score="0" Text="@JuhoKokkala thanks!" CreationDate="2016-08-19T06:13:14.467" UserId="95569" />
  <row Id="10494" PostId="4274" Score="4" Text="Consider copy-pasting your question here (if it's not too long). Then we can say if it is on-topic or not." CreationDate="2016-08-19T13:26:21.773" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10514" PostId="4274" Score="1" Text="@amoeba thanks, I've already posted it on this site :P http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/230619/95569" CreationDate="2016-08-22T11:15:31.543" UserId="95569" />
  <row Id="10526" PostId="4274" Score="0" Text="@amoeba thanks for your help" CreationDate="2016-08-23T01:34:21.393" UserId="95569" />
  <row Id="10530" PostId="4274" Score="0" Text="Too bad there is still no answer..." CreationDate="2016-08-23T17:55:46.997" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10527" PostId="4277" Score="0" Text="I do not agree with the argument about &quot;confrontational&quot; nature of such tag. In general such questions confront the two approaches so such tag would have descriptive meaning." CreationDate="2016-08-23T07:30:32.377" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="10528" PostId="4277" Score="0" Text="But do you agree with my &quot;main&quot; argument, @Tim?" CreationDate="2016-08-23T13:55:51.790" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10529" PostId="4277" Score="0" Text="I neither agree, nor disagree :) On one hand, you are right that it is redundant. On another, it could help with finding the relevant threads." CreationDate="2016-08-23T14:00:33.103" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="10595" PostId="4277" Score="1" Text="There is a difference between &quot;compare and contrast&quot; and &quot;confront&quot;. But on balance I'd concur that the intersection of the existing tags probably suffices for now. I can, though, imagine a point in the future at which we want to distinguish &quot;threads where both frequentist and Bayesian methods are mentioned&quot; (which may be great in number) and &quot;threads where the juxtaposition and contradistinction of frequentist and Bayesian methods forms the very heart of the question&quot; (which may be a minority of the aforementioned cases). In that case a separate tag may become desirable." CreationDate="2016-08-29T21:11:30.417" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="10596" PostId="4277" Score="0" Text="@Silverfish That's a good point. I am not strongly against such a tag; if somebody were to create it and curate it thoughtfully (write a wiki excerpt, populate it with relevant questions, etc.), I would not mind at all. (However, I guess that after my answer got 6 upvotes, it would make sense to first post this more explicitly here as an alternative answer; otherwise such an action might seem as going against the popular vote.)" CreationDate="2016-08-29T23:11:00.110" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10515" PostId="4278" Score="5" Text="The asker needs to explain what they learned from the duplicate &amp; what they still need to know. Then we can provide the information they need without just duplicating the material from elsewhere that already didn't help them." CreationDate="2016-08-22T12:05:23.860" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10516" PostId="4278" Score="4" Text="A remark: we cannot normally close a Q as a duplicate of another Q that has no answers; only mods can perform such a closure." CreationDate="2016-08-22T12:48:47.127" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10517" PostId="4278" Score="0" Text="@amoeba you're right, I should have written more precisely &quot;flag the question for closing as a duplicate&quot; instead than &quot;close&quot;. After writing the post I realised that it might be misinterpreted, but since I thought the intended meaning was clear from context, I didn't bother to edit. I will do it now." CreationDate="2016-08-22T13:17:04.267" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="10519" PostId="4280" Score="0" Text="(+1) About the proposed way forward: I would propose editing [permutation]-&gt;[permutation-test] manually in step 4 (instead of leaving them as is and then merging). This is not much extra work since all [permutation] threads need to be checked anyway to see what they are about. Furthermore, this way we would know that the process of checking all [permutation] threads is over when none of them exist anymore. Otherwise, wouldn't this require either some extra bookkeeping system or someone being responsible for going through all the questions?" CreationDate="2016-08-22T13:54:52.113" UserId="24669" />
  <row Id="10520" PostId="4280" Score="6" Text="@Juho It's indeed not much extra work, but it's 150-200 questions pushed to the front page... I can look through 50 questions in half an hour, i.e. in one evening, but everybody will hate me if I push 50 questions to the front page in one evening." CreationDate="2016-08-22T13:56:56.920" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10521" PostId="4280" Score="0" Text="I did mean that somebody would be personally responsible for going through all the questions, yes." CreationDate="2016-08-22T13:58:41.100" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10522" PostId="4280" Score="0" Text="Ok, I retract my alternative proposal." CreationDate="2016-08-22T14:01:09.993" UserId="24669" />
  <row Id="10523" PostId="4280" Score="5" Text="&quot;Hate&quot; seems rather strong. *Grimace menacingly at the screen* seems more likely." CreationDate="2016-08-22T14:58:28.367" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10524" PostId="4280" Score="0" Text="@gung By the way, sometimes I think we are being too strict here. If there is a good retagging suggestion, discussed &amp; approved on Meta, and if somebody has the energy to work through 50-100 threads in one sitting, then why not. I mean, the disadvantages are obvious, but perhaps the advantages outweigh them." CreationDate="2016-08-22T15:15:34.840" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10549" PostId="4280" Score="0" Text="What would the advantages of mass-retagging-and-bump-flooding-the-landing-page be, compared to slower retagging over a period of days or weeks? (+1, anyway - this exact issue is one I have been wanting to dig into.)" CreationDate="2016-08-25T18:59:23.813" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="10550" PostId="4280" Score="0" Text="@Stephan &quot;Mass retagging&quot; via a tag merge happens *without* flooding the front page; when tags are merged, all threads get retagged &quot;silently&quot; without bumping. That is the advantage. Do you want to help taking care of the permutation tag? We could somehow coordinate it between us. It's actually not one of the tags I follow or particularly care about, so I am only happy if somebody else takes charge." CreationDate="2016-08-25T21:16:30.983" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10553" PostId="4280" Score="0" Text="Confusing tags should not be removed. If they are, new users will create and populate them again. When I work on un-confusing whatever, I first edit [confusing-tag] to say in the excerpt, &quot;This tag is ambiguous. Please use [blah] when asking about this, and [bluh] when asking about that&quot;." CreationDate="2016-08-26T14:01:29.713" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="10554" PostId="4280" Score="0" Text="@StasK Not sure I understand. Once your [confusing-tag] has 0 threads it will be automatically deleted within 24 hours." CreationDate="2016-08-26T14:12:50.513" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10555" PostId="4280" Score="0" Text="@amoeba My point exactly. If it is deleted, the text about this tag being confusing is gone, too. So at least one question would have to say for the tag to survive and display the wiki as being confusing. May be I am missing something about how the site operates though." CreationDate="2016-08-26T14:30:52.827" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="10556" PostId="4280" Score="3" Text="@StasK Keeping one old question seems to me to be a really ugly solution. One solution is to get the tag blacklisted, this can be done by our mods asking SE admins. But usually if confusing tag [bla] is de-confused into [bla-foo] and [bla-bar] then nobody will use [bla] anymore because typing &quot;bla&quot; in the tag field will make bla-foo and bla-bar pop up as suggestions." CreationDate="2016-08-26T14:41:15.117" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10531" PostId="4281" Score="0" Text="Could you explain what you mean by &quot;question icon&quot;?  (Do you see any green backgrounds when you click on the [unanswered](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=unanswered) questions link?)" CreationDate="2016-08-23T18:01:36.480" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="10532" PostId="4281" Score="0" Text="No, but they are not shown as icons in the unanswered context. Just as a number of people who like/dislike that question. See icons above that appear in the related category or on the users home page." CreationDate="2016-08-23T18:16:40.540" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="10533" PostId="4281" Score="3" Text="It indicates a question for which one of the answers has been *accepted* by the original poster." CreationDate="2016-08-23T19:52:11.737" UserId="2970" />
  <row Id="10534" PostId="4281" Score="0" Text="@cardinal For the questions on the left in the second figure above, I think you are correct, but that is not the whole story, see new text." CreationDate="2016-08-23T20:24:03.560" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="10535" PostId="4281" Score="1" Text="Does your question boil down to &quot;why does the same question ('*On round robin...*') have a green box under 'Questions' but a white box under 'Reputation' &quot; ?" CreationDate="2016-08-23T21:42:06.287" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10536" PostId="4281" Score="0" Text="I would like to know that, yes." CreationDate="2016-08-23T23:32:52.403" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="10538" PostId="4282" Score="0" Text="I still do not understand how I can have two different colors at the same time for the same question, see above, without their being somehow  treated differently," CreationDate="2016-08-23T23:42:55.067" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="10539" PostId="4282" Score="0" Text="@Carl, what are you referring to, the reputation case? You can see that there were 2 events that led to increases in reputation: your answer was upvoted &amp; your answer was accepted. The former earned you 10 points &amp; the latter earned you 15 more points. The line that lists the acceptance is filled green, but lines that list upvotes aren't." CreationDate="2016-08-24T01:10:40.640" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10540" PostId="4282" Score="0" Text="Yes, I know. Your home page seems to be formatted differently than mine. Glen_b asked the right question &quot;why does the same question ('On round robin...') have a green box under 'Questions' but a white box under 'Reputation' &quot; ? I am still in the dark." CreationDate="2016-08-24T01:43:18.103" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="10541" PostId="4282" Score="3" Text="*On round robin* is green under *questions* because it is a question with an accepted answer. The square isn't green under *reputation* because you didn't earn that 5 points of reputation by having an answer accepted (but by having your question upvoted)." CreationDate="2016-08-24T01:54:48.613" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10542" PostId="4282" Score="1" Text="Good answer, please include your last comment into your answer posted above so I can accept it as being &quot;THE ANSWER.&quot;" CreationDate="2016-08-24T02:11:02.147" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="10543" PostId="4282" Score="1" Text="I accepted the answer anyway as you did indeed answer my question, and you have been very polite to do so." CreationDate="2016-08-24T02:17:16.630" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="10544" PostId="4283" Score="7" Text="The advantage of doing what you did is that different answers can be up-voted (or down-voted) separately so people can see which approach the community favoured. They would need to be really distinct for that to be an issue of course." CreationDate="2016-08-25T08:01:04.123" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="10545" PostId="4283" Score="6" Text="Also see this meta post: [What is the official etiquette on answering a question twice?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/25209/what-is-the-official-etiquette-on-answering-a-question-twice) which makes some of the same points Scortchi has, but also mentions (in specific circumstances) the reason mdewey has given." CreationDate="2016-08-25T09:58:51.347" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10546" PostId="4283" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b: Thanks! - I hadn't seen that. Seems to be a lot of support for splitting answers, but IMO Statistics is more like cooking than programming: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/25209#comment809593_25210 cf. http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/25209/#comment578216_25210." CreationDate="2016-08-25T10:39:52.940" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="10547" PostId="4283" Score="0" Text="It makes a lot of sense to me in questions asking about methods or solutions, when more than one is available. It's easier to see something like that in programming and mathematics sites, but it can also happen here." CreationDate="2016-08-25T12:33:06.367" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="10548" PostId="4283" Score="4" Text="Normally, when I have several answers to offer I will unify them within one post explaining them all (*e.g.*, http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/41467 or http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/117689). On occasion I later found a completely different answer. Rather than make a huge edit, it seemed better to post a second reply. I have done this two or three times, such as at http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/74468." CreationDate="2016-08-25T12:37:49.377" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="10552" PostId="4284" Score="0" Text="OK, good to know. I kind of thought my first answer was really pretty weak for a general answer, but reasonable if the goal was 2-3 dimensions vs. high d. The second answer I was thinking that the reference actually exactly answers the question, but is hard to summarize briefly (and the Google Scholar link is probably stable)." CreationDate="2016-08-26T03:43:22.423" UserId="127790" />
  <row Id="10557" PostId="4284" Score="1" Text="I have now updated my second answer to include context and  explanation for the reference." CreationDate="2016-08-27T03:03:03.210" UserId="127790" />
  <row Id="10558" PostId="4285" Score="0" Text="Related discussion is in the comments to this answer http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/a/1625/28666." CreationDate="2016-08-27T14:32:10.797" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10559" PostId="4285" Score="2" Text="I think when I did all the various `[fisher*]` tags, I did them 5 at a time." CreationDate="2016-08-28T13:21:57.843" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10560" PostId="4285" Score="0" Text="Thanks, @gung. It seems that 5 is currently winning, but I'd like to get more opinions; hopefully more people will vote after the weekend." CreationDate="2016-08-28T14:05:11.953" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10561" PostId="4285" Score="1" Text="I don't think it has to be a hard rule. 5 is more of a rule of thumb. I also don't necessarily think waiting half a day needs to be a hard rule. IMO, it's mostly about gaging what won't be disruptive." CreationDate="2016-08-28T14:14:50.640" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10562" PostId="4285" Score="0" Text="@gung, of course; I am only asking about a rule of thumb." CreationDate="2016-08-28T14:16:34.670" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10563" PostId="4285" Score="0" Text="Community bumps once an hour. I seldom see him more than four or five times on the front page so five or six hours should clear a batch off that page (if that is what is the concern)." CreationDate="2016-08-28T14:40:58.733" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="10564" PostId="4285" Score="2" Text="(1) It's not just that edited threads are pushed to the front page - e.g. users' favourites lists are affected. (2) There's perhaps an advantage to a batch re-tagging's being recognizable as such, which it isn't if it's too spread out." CreationDate="2016-08-28T14:49:24.220" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="10565" PostId="4285" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi I don't think I understand your #1: how are favourites affected?" CreationDate="2016-08-28T14:52:08.897" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10569" PostId="4285" Score="0" Text="Recently edited posts are highlighted in your favourites list. And you may sort it by activity to see what's new." CreationDate="2016-08-28T16:09:12.440" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="10577" PostId="4285" Score="0" Text="Related question: is it better to do it at quiet times on the site, to be less disruptive (I tended to do the kernel tag cleanup late nights in US-Eastern time, after U.S. evening activity wore off and before Europe morning began), or is it actually better to do it during more active times because things are moving anyway and it won't be a huge block?" CreationDate="2016-08-29T00:50:19.460" UserId="9964" />
  <row Id="10579" PostId="4285" Score="2" Text="Also, I know nobody here can do anything about it, but an SE feature like http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/122567/allow-non-bumping-minor-edits-but-review-them-on-review, or simply not bumping posts on tag-only edits, would help this drastically." CreationDate="2016-08-29T00:53:36.950" UserId="9964" />
  <row Id="10612" PostId="4285" Score="0" Text="@Dougal, that would be better as a new question (but note this: [When is traffic slow on CrossValidated?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/3106/7290), eg)." CreationDate="2016-08-30T19:31:53.753" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10618" PostId="4285" Score="0" Text="@Dougal I think the idea behind not editing too many questions at once is to maximize the time new questions spend on the front page. From this point of view, slow/quiet times are definitely better." CreationDate="2016-08-30T20:33:27.923" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10665" PostId="4285" Score="0" Text="How long is a &quot;time&quot;?" CreationDate="2016-09-06T00:13:34.760" UserId="36229" />
  <row Id="10672" PostId="4285" Score="0" Text="@ssdecontrol It seems I misunderstood your question in the comment above. (Previous comment erased now). What &quot;time&quot; did you ask about?" CreationDate="2016-09-06T13:36:21.433" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10673" PostId="4285" Score="0" Text="You have &quot;at a time&quot; in a lot of the answers. What's the cooldown period you have in mind?" CreationDate="2016-09-06T14:32:57.690" UserId="36229" />
  <row Id="10674" PostId="4285" Score="0" Text="@ssdecontrol As written in my Q, &quot;This assumes that &quot;sittings&quot; are separated by at least half a day.&quot; In general I'd say once the previous retags disappeared from the front page." CreationDate="2016-09-06T14:33:49.140" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10675" PostId="4285" Score="0" Text="@amoeba missed that, thanks" CreationDate="2016-09-06T15:03:58.137" UserId="36229" />
  <row Id="10801" PostId="4285" Score="2" Text="+1. For me the main drawback of editing lots of posts at a time and bumping them to the active tab, is that it removes attention from new **answers** and posts with substantial edits. Because new questions will still be visible in the newest tab. (I had missed this post and took a good laugh when I read it :)." CreationDate="2016-09-16T16:39:51.503" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="10566" PostId="4288" Score="2" Text="So yeah that's why I never completed retagging CNN :(" CreationDate="2016-08-28T15:06:48.847" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="10657" PostId="4288" Score="0" Text="I accept this answer on Sep 5. It has 7 upvotes, no-more-than-ten answer has 2 upvotes (plus my support), and no-limit answer has 6 upvotes. So 10 people prefer **limit of five to ten** while 6 people prefer no limit at all." CreationDate="2016-09-05T13:08:55.697" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13292" PostId="4288" Score="0" Text="Update: it's now 12 vs 6." CreationDate="2017-04-18T11:20:52.973" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10658" PostId="4289" Score="0" Text="I would upvote this option if I could upvote my own answer. Please count my personal vote in addition." CreationDate="2016-09-05T13:09:44.597" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10567" PostId="4292" Score="3" Text="No reason for a limit: better tags -&gt; better website. We should be grateful people are willing to do it free of charge. The overhead of having to come back several days or weeks in a row is unnecessary." CreationDate="2016-08-28T15:07:29.083" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="10571" PostId="4292" Score="3" Text="Agree with this, as long as the community is in agreement beforehand - such as via a meta thread discussion." CreationDate="2016-08-28T19:20:19.777" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="10578" PostId="4292" Score="3" Text="The problem with this is that people who don't participate in meta or whatever might come to ask a real question and be drowned out in the retagging noise." CreationDate="2016-08-29T00:52:18.673" UserId="9964" />
  <row Id="10611" PostId="4292" Score="2" Text="Unlimited is clearly too much, IMO. 5 is mostly a reasonable, round number that shouldn't be taken too literally." CreationDate="2016-08-30T19:30:15.977" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10619" PostId="4292" Score="3" Text="The core of the issue is that it makes no sense to bump to the front page retagged questions." CreationDate="2016-08-31T01:30:37.280" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="10620" PostId="4292" Score="4" Text="@FranckDernoncourt SE admins have always said that all edits, however minor, should go to the front page for (potential) community review. But we desperately need more tools for retagging, see http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/277076." CreationDate="2016-08-31T01:45:14.117" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10574" PostId="4293" Score="0" Text="Note that the thread is listed in the *Related* list to the right." CreationDate="2016-08-28T21:35:25.847" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10575" PostId="4293" Score="3" Text="Yes, but these are two different lists; Related is populated automatically with threads that SE software judges most similar to the given one, whereas Linked is populated with *all* threads that either link to the given one or are linked from it. At least that is what I used to think." CreationDate="2016-08-28T21:37:14.670" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10580" PostId="4293" Score="0" Text="I wonder if it's because the link is of the form `http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/51520`, rather than the more typical `http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/51520/9964` (from the share button) or `http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/51520/specifying-the-error-term-in-repeated-measures-anova-in-r` (from the URL bar)." CreationDate="2016-08-29T01:13:47.083" UserId="9964" />
  <row Id="10581" PostId="4293" Score="0" Text="@Dougal I doubt it. I mostly use this first form (by copying the URL from the address bar and deleting the unnecessary final part of it) and it always worked." CreationDate="2016-08-29T08:55:37.447" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10583" PostId="4296" Score="2" Text="Seems like a great idea to me !" CreationDate="2016-08-29T11:33:15.847" UserId="7486" />
  <row Id="10584" PostId="4296" Score="0" Text="@RobertLong Would you prefer merges into [nlme] and [lme4] or a full merge into [nlme-lme4]?" CreationDate="2016-08-29T11:40:07.067" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10585" PostId="4296" Score="0" Text="I think the important, broader, question here is how we should deal w/ nested tags. Should they all be used when appropriate, or only the deepest level? Etc." CreationDate="2016-08-29T11:56:42.083" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10586" PostId="4296" Score="5" Text="I'd prefer the full merge because all too often questions where the OP used `nmle` are not actually specific to `nlme` at all." CreationDate="2016-08-29T13:09:13.743" UserId="7486" />
  <row Id="10592" PostId="4296" Score="0" Text="I wonder whether the first term in the new mega-tag should start with lme as I think that is possibly what more people may start typing." CreationDate="2016-08-29T15:02:22.697" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="10593" PostId="4296" Score="1" Text="@mdewey So `[lme4-nlme]`? Or `[lme4-etc]`? My personal favourite is `[lme4-and-all-that]`." CreationDate="2016-08-29T15:06:50.790" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10594" PostId="4296" Score="0" Text="I rather like the and-all-that variant but it might be thought too flippant for serious people like statisticians. No real preference otherwise." CreationDate="2016-08-29T15:09:13.020" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="10598" PostId="4296" Score="0" Text="@mdewey In fact, whether the new tag starts with lme or has lme in the middle should not really matter because tag suggestions appear based on full text search across tag names (try it). That said, lme4 is a more common package, so it can have the priority." CreationDate="2016-08-30T00:53:50.700" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10602" PostId="4296" Score="3" Text="I'd vote for `[lme4-nlme]` since the rest of &quot;all that&quot; is much less used than the two main packages. lme4 is nowadays more popular, but nlme is still popular. Moreover, &quot;all that&quot; can be ambiguous and I imagine that many people could consider very different things as &quot;all that&quot; (e.g. anything related to mixed-effect models)." CreationDate="2016-08-30T12:24:35.573" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="10605" PostId="4296" Score="0" Text="+1. Some years ago one of these tags intrigued me a bit. http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1689/tags-that-have-broad-concept-but-also-address-a-specific-software-function" CreationDate="2016-08-30T15:51:05.950" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="10668" PostId="4296" Score="0" Text="Possible duplicate of [Redundant tags: mixed effects and related models](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1369/redundant-tags-mixed-effects-and-related-models)" CreationDate="2016-09-06T11:57:03.500" UserId="9249" />
  <row Id="10669" PostId="4296" Score="1" Text="@smillig This Q is definitely **not** a duplicate of that one. This one raised a new (albeit related) specific issue, it was discussed, and the solution has already been implemented." CreationDate="2016-09-06T12:40:48.400" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10587" PostId="4297" Score="0" Text="+1 for merging everything together, see also @RobertLong's comments (supporting this) above. He has been contributing quite a bit to these tags." CreationDate="2016-08-29T13:11:26.800" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10589" PostId="4297" Score="0" Text="By the way, it would be good to have @BenBolker's opinion (who is by far the most prolific answerer in [mixed-model]), but it seems he never visits Meta." CreationDate="2016-08-29T13:43:29.403" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10610" PostId="4297" Score="2" Text="I agree that this is reasonable." CreationDate="2016-08-30T18:02:56.680" UserId="2126" />
  <row Id="10615" PostId="4297" Score="1" Text="Tim, do you want to edit your answer to change [nlme-lme4] to [lme4-nlme] as per your comment to the OP?" CreationDate="2016-08-30T19:47:49.213" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10616" PostId="4297" Score="0" Text="@amoeba done, it seems I treat them so much as synonyms that I exchanged the names :)" CreationDate="2016-08-30T20:01:15.620" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="10622" PostId="4297" Score="2" Text="I've created the six mappings to `lme4-nlme`. I'll wait a little before merging (changing tags on existing questions) in case I messed up or in case anyone has second thoughts." CreationDate="2016-08-31T13:10:36.947" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="10625" PostId="4297" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi Thanks a lot! I see the synonyms created, but I see zero threads when I go to http://stats.stackexchange.com/tags/lme4-nlme. Why is that? I am confused. That's not how un-merged tag synonyms usually work." CreationDate="2016-08-31T19:42:05.820" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10626" PostId="4297" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi I edited one thread to add [glmer] to it and it was automatically changed into [lme4-nlme]. So the synonym works, but the new tag still appears with only 1 thread now, it's very strange." CreationDate="2016-08-31T20:03:04.753" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10627" PostId="4297" Score="0" Text="@amoeba now it works, it seems it needed to refresh." CreationDate="2016-08-31T20:04:08.957" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="10629" PostId="4297" Score="0" Text="@amoeba: 1397 posts now with the new tag" CreationDate="2016-09-01T09:51:04.423" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="10599" PostId="4298" Score="0" Text="Thanks a lot, @m0sa!" CreationDate="2016-08-30T08:38:27.990" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10623" PostId="4300" Score="5" Text="There is good advice in the [help]." CreationDate="2016-08-31T13:32:39.863" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="10624" PostId="4300" Score="1" Text="You can also check: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/124450/what-is-the-definition-of-a-list-question" CreationDate="2016-08-31T13:46:46.323" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="10630" PostId="4301" Score="2" Text="At a minimum, *joint-distribution* strikes me as broader than *bivariate*, in that JD can apply to &gt;2 variables." CreationDate="2016-09-01T15:16:15.470" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10633" PostId="4301" Score="3" Text="I don't think they're interchangeable. Bivariate is a subset of joint (that adds specific, useful information)" CreationDate="2016-09-01T15:51:15.890" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10711" PostId="4301" Score="1" Text="When people start in statistics, they commonly work in R. But then they move on to $R^2$, and finally to $R^n$. Does that sound right?" CreationDate="2016-09-09T03:27:04.117" UserId="127790" />
  <row Id="10802" PostId="4301" Score="0" Text="@GeoMatt22 Snuck that pun past the censors, didn't ya?" CreationDate="2016-09-16T16:54:49.970" UserId="6633" />
  <row Id="10631" PostId="4302" Score="1" Text="My first thought is *yes*. I wonder if there is value in having a tag to pick out questions that are specific to updating, as opposed to other aspects of Bayesianism, but updating seems pretty central to B. I'm not sure if B is terribly meaningful w/o U; if not, I see no reason to have a separate tag." CreationDate="2016-09-01T15:20:20.293" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10632" PostId="4302" Score="6" Text="My first thought on seeing &quot;updating&quot; was Choleski updating, then Kalman filter updating ... Bayesian updating didn't occur to me. I'm not quite sure merging it with Bayesian makes sense to me, though, since &quot;Bayesian updating&quot; is more specific -- it conveys infomation. Can we rename a tag? I'd prefer not to have such an ambiguous tag as &quot;updating&quot; without qualifying it." CreationDate="2016-09-01T15:50:15.647" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10634" PostId="4302" Score="2" Text="I agree with Glen_b that [updating] is so ambiguous that we should not make it a synonym of anything; the tag has to be removed altogether, or renamed. I'd agree with @gung that simply replacing it with [bayesian] is fine. Renaming it into [bayesian-updating] is another alternative, but then one should look at what other bayesian threads deserve such a tag. [This search](http://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=bayesian+updating+is%3Aquestion+-%5Bupdating%5D) suggests that quite a bit." CreationDate="2016-09-01T18:50:25.613" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10635" PostId="4302" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b I recall that tag can be renamed via the tag merge interface. If not, then in any case one can merge A into B and then remove the synonym mapping, thus effectively renaming A into B without leaving any traces." CreationDate="2016-09-01T18:51:23.297" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10636" PostId="4302" Score="3" Text="With only 18 questions, we could also just remove them all &amp; let the tag die." CreationDate="2016-09-01T18:55:44.357" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10637" PostId="4302" Score="0" Text="@amoeba thanks, yes. That's what I get for posting when I should be asleep" CreationDate="2016-09-01T23:17:19.227" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10664" PostId="4302" Score="1" Text="I would be in favor of eliminating the updating tag. Note that there in addition to the bayesian tag, there is also a posterior tag, which is perhaps also relevant as a mapping-target? (On Glen_b's comment, I agree there are other meanings for updating, e.g. for matrix factorizations. However I believe &quot;Kalman filter updating&quot; is just a particular instance of bayesian updating.)" CreationDate="2016-09-06T00:06:35.150" UserId="127790" />
  <row Id="10638" PostId="4305" Score="1" Text="I had a somewhat similar impression but when I first noticed this I saw that the first sentence of the [wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tikhonov_regularization) suggests it's the same as ridge regression and I left it at that." CreationDate="2016-09-02T06:43:11.603" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10639" PostId="4305" Score="1" Text="If the more general form is never discussed on CV (even if by another name), then the point is moot for practical purposes. My question was not intended to promote pedantry!" CreationDate="2016-09-02T07:16:40.730" UserId="127790" />
  <row Id="10640" PostId="4305" Score="5" Text="I don't think we need a tag for it at all. It's basically a specialized math topic. I don't see what it contributes that the plain &quot;regularization&quot; tag does not." CreationDate="2016-09-02T09:21:59.787" UserId="36229" />
  <row Id="10646" PostId="4305" Score="1" Text="@ssdecontrol that is reasonable to me. I was really half interested in this, and half on the &quot;Where is the more general form used here?&quot; aspect. For example, Tikhonov regularization with a spatial derivative matrix on a grid is very similar in many ways to Gaussian process regression with a kernel-type covariance function (i.e. both give a smoothness prior). But the Tikhonov version is in some ways more flexible, e.g. the $L_1$ variant will give an edge-preserving smoother. (I can consider asking a question on the main site about this.)" CreationDate="2016-09-02T15:40:03.533" UserId="127790" />
  <row Id="10712" PostId="4305" Score="1" Text="Actually a related tag issue is perhaps [sparse coding](http://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=sparse+coding) should be a synonym for LASSO? (Currently though there is no tag for sparse coding, though ~170 questions for it. Probably not worth adding it, though it perhaps would draw some Machine Learning folks to LASSO?)" CreationDate="2016-09-09T05:38:24.780" UserId="127790" />
  <row Id="11059" PostId="4305" Score="0" Text="The synonym mapping has been removed, see Update to my answer. You might want to mark it as accepted." CreationDate="2016-10-08T00:04:49.343" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11039" PostId="4306" Score="1" Text="I upvoted the question. I'm not sure what I think the answer should be. The problem is that &quot;nested&quot; isn't an noun phrase, it's an adjective. So we either end up with as many different `[nested-____]` tags as can exist, or we have a single `[nested]` tag that means something different depending on the other tags applied." CreationDate="2016-10-05T23:45:31.847" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11044" PostId="4306" Score="0" Text="@gung That's an interesting perspective. Do you know any other adjective-like tags that can be combined with various other tags to refer to different concepts? I am wondering if this is something that can work well, or should rather be avoided." CreationDate="2016-10-05T23:53:47.447" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11045" PostId="4306" Score="0" Text="I don't know. It really needs some hard thought, but I've never really had a chance to work though it." CreationDate="2016-10-05T23:55:36.953" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11274" PostId="4306" Score="2" Text="Bumped again ;-)." CreationDate="2016-11-04T14:09:34.483" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12969" PostId="4306" Score="1" Text="@gung After it was bumped *again*, I made an update with some usage statistics." CreationDate="2017-04-03T21:28:04.257" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10643" PostId="4307" Score="4" Text="British to American translation: two pennorth = two pennyworth = two bits worth." CreationDate="2016-09-02T13:45:17.447" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="10645" PostId="4307" Score="1" Text="@NickCox, [wiktionary](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/two_penn%27orth) suggests it's *two-cents worth*. '[Two bits](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/two_bits)' is 25 cents, or approximately the cost of a [shave and a haircut](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxU-SgOtVSM) somewhere, at some point in history." CreationDate="2016-09-02T15:39:55.637" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10647" PostId="4307" Score="0" Text="I am trying to translate on similar metaphorical meaning, not currency equivalent. Is two cents' worth used to mean my little contribution? I suggest that these are alternative translations. Tuppenceworth (to use yet another word) is not usually anything that you get for two pence." CreationDate="2016-09-02T17:19:16.327" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="10648" PostId="4307" Score="0" Text="@NickCox, Yes. '[Two cents worth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_two_cents)' means 'my thoughts on this (but they may not be exactly right)'. At any rate, the above was mostly meant as tongue in cheek." CreationDate="2016-09-02T17:40:43.077" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10649" PostId="4307" Score="0" Text="@gung Thanks. I wasn't being entirely serious either." CreationDate="2016-09-02T17:50:11.373" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="10644" PostId="4308" Score="0" Text="I did not see any threads currently where I would put this tag, though I have not looked extensively. I have no objection to deleting the tag. (At most there could perhaps be a note on the Ridge Regression info page that this is sometimes a synonym.)" CreationDate="2016-09-02T15:32:09.567" UserId="127790" />
  <row Id="10650" PostId="4308" Score="1" Text="@GeoMatt22 It's better not to accept answers on Meta until the corresponding suggestion is implemented. If you want the synonym mapping deleted then wait with accepting this answer until it's deleted." CreationDate="2016-09-02T18:42:43.823" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10706" PostId="4308" Score="0" Text="I do not agree. Ridge regression is much more limited than Tikhonov regularization. There are unnecessary features in ridge regression, the normalization of the smoothing factor being one. Granted, ridge regression is more commonly used than the more general case, but this is probably more the result of a lack of understanding than a valid reflection on applicability. If you really need examples, I will dig some up. But really, that should not be difficult." CreationDate="2016-09-08T03:42:57.870" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="10707" PostId="4308" Score="1" Text="@Carl You do not agree *with what*?" CreationDate="2016-09-08T08:14:07.667" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10708" PostId="4308" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I do not agree with the idea of deleting the Tikhonov-regularization tag." CreationDate="2016-09-08T15:49:46.950" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="10709" PostId="4308" Score="1" Text="@Carl But you do agree with the idea of deleting the synonym mapping from tikhonov-regularization to rigde-regression? That is how it is at the moment. If the synonym mapping is removed, tikhonov-regularization will stay without a single tagged thread and will be automatically deleted." CreationDate="2016-09-08T21:37:32.807" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10710" PostId="4308" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Tikhonov regularization is an infinite set compared to ridge regression. Right now, there is no separate tag for Tikhonov regularization, only one for the small subset; ridge regression. It is not a synonym, it is the super set. If anything, ridge regression should redirect to Tikhonov regularization, not the other way around. I understand why it is backwards, ridge regression was invented independently in the west in the 1970's by a statistician, and it was later on pointed out as being a subset of Tikhonov regularization published by the Soviet Academy of Sciences during WW II." CreationDate="2016-09-09T00:27:17.147" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="10727" PostId="4308" Score="0" Text="Due to this meta thread, I could not resist adding a Tikhonov regularization comment to [this answer](http://stats.stackexchange.com/a/234197/127790)!" CreationDate="2016-09-09T16:01:59.500" UserId="127790" />
  <row Id="10728" PostId="4308" Score="0" Text="@Carl I am fine with the two being separate, I just did not want think they should be mapped as synonyms. I think it would be sufficient for the connections to be noted on their respective [tag wiki](http://stats.stackexchange.com/tags/ridge-regression/info) pages. Question: If the tags are separated, would you be interested in drafting an info page for the new tikhonov-regularization tag?" CreationDate="2016-09-09T16:06:13.067" UserId="127790" />
  <row Id="10729" PostId="4308" Score="0" Text="Side note: Taxonomy is commonly based on two alternative approaches, external characteristics (phenotype) or lineage (phylogeny). I think it is fine to recognize the de facto difference in lineage (use communities) for ridge regression vs. Tikhonov regularization." CreationDate="2016-09-09T16:09:59.337" UserId="127790" />
  <row Id="10730" PostId="4308" Score="0" Text="Can do, but it may take a few days to find the time. I think I have that privilege (barely). But not sure how to. Also, the explanation for ridge regression may be a bit flaky." CreationDate="2016-09-09T16:18:40.510" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="10731" PostId="4308" Score="0" Text="@Carl I am not quite certain how the tag revision process works, but nothing will need to happen until we come to a community consensus on this meta question. So at this point I was just asking to assess your interest level (to provide information for the community)." CreationDate="2016-09-09T17:15:43.693" UserId="127790" />
  <row Id="10737" PostId="4308" Score="0" Text="@GeoMatt22 OK,  I have never seen the difference spelt out, so, here is my stab at it, as an answer, it is too long for a comment. Check it for me dear community." CreationDate="2016-09-10T04:21:39.690" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11058" PostId="4308" Score="1" Text="I've removed the mapping." CreationDate="2016-10-07T23:44:23.127" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="11065" PostId="4308" Score="0" Text="Thanks, @Scortchi. I have made a corresponding update." CreationDate="2016-10-09T21:04:05.760" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10651" PostId="4309" Score="0" Text="Hmm, nested-data might actually be a better name for my point #1 (nested-design or nested-effects). Nested-anova is anova with nested factors (isn't it?), so it's the same thing. What is nested-analysis? If you mean analysis of nested data, then it's the same thing too. Can't say anything about &quot;nested sampling&quot; because I don't know what that is..." CreationDate="2016-09-02T23:21:07.873" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10653" PostId="4309" Score="0" Text="I think [nested-data] can cover nested ANOVA, nested ANCOVA, nested factors, nested experimental design, nested random effects in mixed models, and also &quot;nested analysis&quot; (whatever it is). Don't you think?" CreationDate="2016-09-05T12:49:59.253" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10654" PostId="4309" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I think [tag:nested-data] is a bit too data-centric: if you do not like  [tag:nested-models] or [tag:nested-analysis], perhaps [tag:nested-processing]? I do not fear the confusion with parallel processing as we are on SE.stat" CreationDate="2016-09-05T12:56:15.887" UserId="83945" />
  <row Id="10655" PostId="4309" Score="0" Text="Wait, I do like nested-models, see point #2 in my answer. But when one has nested factors in anova, it is because the dataset is nested itself; it's not a choice that an analyst does, the analysis *has* to incorporate nested factors if they are nested; that's why I like nested-data." CreationDate="2016-09-05T12:59:00.613" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10663" PostId="4309" Score="0" Text="@amoeba The choice of the grouping, the depth of nesting can be user dependent, isn't? I tend to believe that the act of choosing data, the way they will be processed, is a part of the processing (as it involves interpretation), but one could call that an opinion" CreationDate="2016-09-05T13:46:13.690" UserId="83945" />
  <row Id="10722" PostId="4311" Score="1" Text="I want to accept your answer, the excerpts were clarified. I hope questions will be tagged more properly from now on. The synonym suggestion, which I agree, seems to not have received enough support. If this post collects more upvotes with time, we can think of (re)bringing this issue. What do you think?" CreationDate="2016-09-09T15:07:18.000" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="10732" PostId="4311" Score="0" Text="Agreed, @AndreSilva." CreationDate="2016-09-09T19:26:23.253" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10676" PostId="4312" Score="3" Text="This can help answering the title of your question: http://sese.evbpc.com/Sites/Detail?SiteId=5c9d37da-6dff-e511-80c0-00155d918203. Perhaps you could use it to narrow the question." CreationDate="2016-09-06T20:34:49.033" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="10677" PostId="4312" Score="0" Text="Me like it. I may be right" CreationDate="2016-09-06T20:42:02.640" UserId="24515" />
  <row Id="10678" PostId="4312" Score="3" Text="I am very new, so do not have a good sense of the trend. However I have noticed a common tendency for questions to be &quot;answered&quot; in their comments. Quite frequently these answers seem sufficient, but they are never codified into an official &quot;Answer&quot;." CreationDate="2016-09-06T21:14:51.850" UserId="127790" />
  <row Id="10679" PostId="4312" Score="1" Text="This has been discussed several times, notably here: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2242 (this was almost two years ago though)." CreationDate="2016-09-06T21:50:58.567" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10692" PostId="4312" Score="3" Text="@Geomatt About the tendency to answer in comments, where often a reasonably adequate answer is given: I agree -- it's an ongoing problem we have." CreationDate="2016-09-07T10:46:58.680" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10697" PostId="4312" Score="2" Text="@Glen_b do we have a protocol for basing an answer on someone else's comments? I would not mind doing it occasionally but it feels dangerously close to plagiarism." CreationDate="2016-09-07T11:47:28.447" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="10698" PostId="4312" Score="5" Text="@mdewey It's an issue that has been discussed; I'll see if I can find the question. [My personal opinion was if someone posts an answer in a comment it's fair game (if they didn't want someone else to write an answer based on it, they should have done so themselves). The main requirement would be to credit the author of the comment; quoting them if you're quoting them or otherwise crediting them if you paraphrase]" CreationDate="2016-09-07T11:52:02.320" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10699" PostId="4312" Score="2" Text="@Glen_b: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/a/2642/17230 ?" CreationDate="2016-09-07T12:02:50.747" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="10701" PostId="4312" Score="5" Text="@mdewey It's not plagiarism to quote and acknowledge somebody else's work. Neither is it plagiarism to explain somebody else's idea in your own words (although acknowledgment of the source of the idea is expected). This site, and SE in general, encourage people to convert comments into actual answers." CreationDate="2016-09-07T13:26:08.410" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="10702" PostId="4312" Score="1" Text="Perhaps relevant: I noticed [this new question](http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/233788/127790) today, which is essentially the same as an [earlier question](http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/230860/127790) that is unanswered. An authoritative answer to one of these would allow future instances to be closed as duplicates (or reduce future queries, if found). The new question is from a user who just joined, but the earlier one is from a longer-time user (7 months), so an authoritative answer to the earlier one *might* be accepted." CreationDate="2016-09-07T14:05:32.150" UserId="127790" />
  <row Id="10703" PostId="4312" Score="1" Text="@Scortchi That's the question I meant to point to, thanks (rather than just my own answer)" CreationDate="2016-09-07T15:14:30.657" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10796" PostId="4312" Score="1" Text="It's also worth noting that some Coursera videos recommend sending questions to CV. Trying to hold my opinions to a minimum, but I would guess that this leads to surge in questions that don't get answered." CreationDate="2016-09-15T18:08:45.890" UserId="76981" />
  <row Id="10828" PostId="4312" Score="0" Text="From my experience, answering old unanswered questions usually yields little reputation compared with answering recent questions. Therefore, there is little incentive to answer old questions and unanswered questions are likely to remain unanswered forever. It would be good to incentive such answers, although I don't know how - I know we have a couple of badges about it, but it doesn't seem enough." CreationDate="2016-09-19T15:50:41.187" UserId="123561" />
  <row Id="10687" PostId="4313" Score="1" Text="(-1) See my edit. (On Meta, if you're not already aware, a down-vote means &quot;I disagree with this&quot;, not &quot;This isn't a useful answer&quot; - of course this is useful.)" CreationDate="2016-09-07T09:01:10.283" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="10700" PostId="4314" Score="6" Text="+1.  It might be worth noting that there is a strong seasonal component to the rate of questions (and not much seasonality in the rate of answers).  The &quot;seasons&quot; are, as one might guess, academic ones: a gradual increase throughout the fall; a sudden drop in late December; a gradual increase in the spring; and a month-long drop in May. Recently, then, people would be observing the beginning of the first semester of the 2016-17 academic year. It is also true that about half the growth in the gap between Q's and A's is due to Q's that get closed." CreationDate="2016-09-07T13:23:26.383" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="10704" PostId="4314" Score="0" Text="I have been wondering whether it would make any sense to have a separate SE board dedicated to machine learning and try to exclude the topic from CV. There are good reasons not to do this of course. Indeed ML does statistics, but it usually assumes very, very large samples (or it assumes you have seen the whole population). So this is the major difference to classical statistics. Also there are other SE boards that share a communality with CV, like the stackoverflow or mathematics boards and a board dedicated to ML would outsource computer science topics beyond the scope of this board." CreationDate="2016-09-07T16:12:28.900" UserId="24515" />
  <row Id="10705" PostId="4314" Score="6" Text="@tomka I think ML and statistics share a a great deal more than you seem to (ML tends to be used on larger samples, but that doesn't make the issues of classification, prediction etc non-statistical) -- and splitting would just move the large group of ML-learners questions away from a pool of experts able to answer many of them, making it someone else's problem; it wouldn't produce more people capable of answering those questions. [I actually think ML is better here, where the various kinds of statisticians / ML people can bring their overlapping expertise to these problems - it's fruitful.]" CreationDate="2016-09-07T22:34:04.727" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10713" PostId="4314" Score="2" Text="@tomka: There's already [Computer Science](http://cs.stackexchange.com/), as well as [Data Science](http://datascience.stackexchange.com/) &amp; [Computational Science](http://scicomp.stackexchange.com/) in beta. And there used to be a machine learning SE site too, the questions from which were all migrated over here when it shut down. See &#xA;[ML questions: here or at Data Science?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/2760/17230) &amp; links." CreationDate="2016-09-09T09:15:18.243" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="10714" PostId="4314" Score="2" Text="I'm also tempted to suggest we get a higher proportion of poor ML questions than of poor trad stats questions: vague appeals for help - [&quot;My classifier is bad&quot;](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/30674103#30674103) -, reams of uncommented, inscrutable code that &quot;doesn't work&quot;, &amp; that sort of thing." CreationDate="2016-09-09T10:50:51.243" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="10715" PostId="4314" Score="2" Text="@Scortch I think that's so, and again due to the increase in people learning ML - especially via MOOCs and such" CreationDate="2016-09-09T10:55:02.373" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10755" PostId="4314" Score="2" Text="@Glen_b I recently saw a comment on Reddit that went something like &quot;data science is what engineers call statistics when they don't know enough statistics to realize they're doing statistics&quot;. I think you could swap out &quot;machine learning&quot; for &quot;data science&quot; in this case." CreationDate="2016-09-13T05:04:39.203" UserId="36229" />
  <row Id="10693" PostId="4315" Score="7" Text="Except for the part an OP should upvote an answer to his/her question regardless of quality, agree with the other points made. Because sometimes the answer does not answer the question; it is wrong; is a link-only-answer, etc. And upvoting these will send a message that it is ok to respond like that, when it is not. Perhaps when you used the word &quot;nearly&quot; you wanted to disregard such situations?" CreationDate="2016-09-07T11:09:30.757" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="10694" PostId="4315" Score="2" Text="Exactly. Thanks for making this more explicit!" CreationDate="2016-09-07T11:11:04.227" UserId="24515" />
  <row Id="10718" PostId="4316" Score="3" Text="I think the q. sends mixed messages: asking for an explanation of what's going on when you try to use RBF with 5 centres is on-topic; but &quot;I need an answer which uses R&quot; - &quot;gimme teh codez&quot;! - is a clear off-topic flag. A slight edit to favour the former reading will probably improve the chances of its being re-opened." CreationDate="2016-09-09T14:16:30.890" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="10719" PostId="4316" Score="2" Text="while I like your angle, I don't think my question is a polite way of writing &quot;gimme teh codez&quot; :) I would just need an hint on how to fix my code, or whether to use another package in case `RSNNS` is buggy. I cannot actually ask &quot;which package should I use for RBF interpolation in R&quot; because that's against the policy. So I tried to 1. find a package myself, looking on the Internet, 2. learn the documentation, 3. make some tests myself. I think this can be considered &quot;due diligence&quot;...If you still don't agree, I will make the update you suggest." CreationDate="2016-09-09T14:33:34.793" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="10720" PostId="4316" Score="0" Text="ps note that nowhere in `RSNNS` documentation there's a hint to the fact that function `rbf` cannot be used for interpolation. As a comparison, `lm` will happily fit a model with `N` parameters to a dataset of size `N+1`, and simply warn you that you have zero residual degrees of freedom." CreationDate="2016-09-09T14:37:23.550" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="10721" PostId="4316" Score="4" Text="Sorry - I was being rather flippant, but wanted to describe how the question might be *perceived*. It's often the case that once the statistical question's answered, how to implement a solution is the easy part." CreationDate="2016-09-09T14:49:39.367" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="10723" PostId="4316" Score="3" Text="I would agree that you have done your due diligence. Reading the question again, it still doesn't sound like you are asking about how interpolation or RBFs work, or some other statistical / ML question. It sounds to me like you are having trouble with the code. It really seems like an on-topic question for [SO]. I would not have voted to close there." CreationDate="2016-09-09T15:23:44.597" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10724" PostId="4316" Score="2" Text="@gung: I think there's a statistical (or computational) question in there - why doesn't adding enough centres to an RBF fit result in interpolation, as adding enough polynomial terms does in regression? Depends what DeltaIV really wants answering." CreationDate="2016-09-09T15:32:09.043" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="10725" PostId="4316" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi, that would be on topic here, IMO. I didn't recognize that that was the question. If that were clarified, I'd be happy to vote to reopen." CreationDate="2016-09-09T15:38:01.763" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10726" PostId="4316" Score="3" Text="I will make the modification suggested here and hope that the questions will be answered, but frankly the moderation by @PeterFlom leaves a lot to be desired. If he really believed the question was a programming question, he should have had that coherently migrated to Stack Overflow. And that would have been a lot of fun, given the precedent..." CreationDate="2016-09-09T15:38:23.690" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="10733" PostId="4316" Score="2" Text="+1 here, there, and voted to reopen, but to be precise: your Q was closed 42 seconds after it was posted, not 1 second after." CreationDate="2016-09-09T20:08:01.693" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10734" PostId="4316" Score="0" Text="Setting aside debates about this particular thread, I can say I've been pretty happy with Peter's moderation." CreationDate="2016-09-09T20:27:43.013" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10735" PostId="4316" Score="3" Text="The question hit the reopen queue very quickly after closure (I assume you edited it) -- and in turn a number of our high rep users voted to keep it closed. As a result, *even if the decision were later widely regarded to be a mistake* (&amp;it is not at all clear that it is), it's not reasonable to lay that at Peter's feet; a number of people able to reverse the choice agreed with him, and would presumably have closed it themselves if he had not. As a result, while it's reasonable to discuss the merits of the decision, I don't think it's okay to make it about one person, since clearly it was not." CreationDate="2016-09-09T23:08:53.760" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10736" PostId="4316" Score="5" Text="In addition, the best thing to do from your post on SO would be wait for the post to be migrated, not to post a second copy. One advantage of that is that if SO voters are mistaken about it being on topic here, there's at least *some* signal of it back to SO." CreationDate="2016-09-09T23:14:12.850" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10745" PostId="4316" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b, I moved the question myself because according to [this answer](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/334198/1711271) it would need &quot;time and effort&quot; for the moderators to migrate the question, and I wanted to save them some time, since it already received 3 closing votes. So it was not at all clear that &quot;the best thing to do&quot; would have been to leave it there. Of course, in hindsight, it's easy to say what was best and what not." CreationDate="2016-09-11T09:43:00.503" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="10746" PostId="4316" Score="0" Text="If it was so trivial than the best thing to do was to leave the question there,   then both options (delete &amp; leave and wait for migration) wouldn't have been indicated as viable on the Stack Overflow Meta." CreationDate="2016-09-11T09:50:12.470" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="10747" PostId="4316" Score="1" Text="See the third-last paragraph [here](http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic). The advantage of migration is that you don't end up with a closed question at the source site waiting for improvements that won't happen (since it's deleted after migration). The &quot;time and effort&quot; to migrate is a few clicks, and it doesn't take a moderator to do it if there are high reputation users. Small sites (where only the mods can do it) generally don't find it a burden. If you delete the original yourself it's not a big deal either way, but most people don't  ... ctd" CreationDate="2016-09-11T09:59:09.040" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10748" PostId="4316" Score="1" Text="ctd ... and then when the high rep users migrate the original, we end up with *both* copies. Getting two copies is more of a hassle because then you have to *notice* the duplicate before closing one. And if the first one gets answers on the original site before it migrates, while the second posted copy on the new site gets answers, you then have to worry about merging. One the whole, migration is a lot less hassle than dealing with that." CreationDate="2016-09-11T10:16:19.297" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10751" PostId="4316" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b, ok, understood. I couldn't have known all that. If I'm told it takes time and effort, I try to be of help. Hey, about the third-to-last paragraph you link, if that's an invitation to let communities migrate questions, then ok, I got it. But since that paragraph also mentions cross-posting, I want to make it clear that I rigorously _did not cross-post_. I know it's frowned upon on Stack Exchange, so I deleted the question on the source site _before_ posting on Cross-Validation." CreationDate="2016-09-11T10:29:37.483" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="10753" PostId="4316" Score="2" Text="Yes, you didn't cross post (and thank you for that); hence my explicit &quot;If you delete the original yourself it's not a big deal [...] but most people don't&quot; (I wouldn't have included that if you had not done so). And I agree you weren't necessarily to know all that stuff, which is why I tried to explain it -- that was the original purpose of my comment about migration... to give more information. It's not that you did the wrong thing there." CreationDate="2016-09-11T10:56:49.833" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10749" PostId="4317" Score="0" Text="To be clear, when you say that &quot;it just happens&quot;, you mean that it just happens that a question about to be migrated to another site, is closed on the new site, right? You are not talking simply about questions being closed. Because of course here the problem wasn't simply that the question was closed. I had questions closed on single sites in the past, and I didn't have a problem with that." CreationDate="2016-09-11T10:19:49.190" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="10752" PostId="4317" Score="1" Text="I didn't notice you already edited my question. Yes, I think it's ok." CreationDate="2016-09-11T10:35:17.320" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="10742" PostId="4318" Score="1" Text="(Note: I deleted my old comments, as they're no longer relevant to the *meta* question here; the 2nd part of this question could be ditched too now that it's on CV main) I think objections to the &quot;pure&quot; approach are more for practical reasons. For *many* users, they may have only the vaguest idea of the linear algebra underlying even OLS. So while the idea of &quot;prevent overfitting by shrinkage&quot; may have *some* meaning for them, a wall of math will be &quot;TL;DR&quot;. This is a reasonable concern to me. (Tikhonov gets more than enough love from the inverse-modeling community, so his legacy will be OK.)" CreationDate="2016-09-10T05:15:07.123" UserId="127790" />
  <row Id="10743" PostId="4318" Score="1" Text="@ameoba What is your pleasure on this? GeoMatt22 seems to be waffling a bit. I just think it is silly not to have both. Let me put it this way, there needs to be more attention paid to cross-pollination. I note for example, that stats sometimes looks completely ridiculous to people with physics training, sometimes for very good reasons, and vice-versa. In my case, I rewrote pharmacokinetics and had a heck of a time getting it published with one reviewer saying things like, &quot;I have a PhD in this, and you do not. Therefore, I am right and you are wrong.&quot; There are no words." CreationDate="2016-09-10T05:29:16.403" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="10744" PostId="4318" Score="1" Text="to be clear, this is my position: I agree *wholeheartedly* with your statement &quot;We should really have both tags if we want to appeal to people looking for answers.&quot;. I think that is sufficient, and the two tag-wikis could point out the connections." CreationDate="2016-09-10T05:40:24.477" UserId="127790" />
  <row Id="10757" PostId="4318" Score="0" Text="@amoeba There are 38 threads with Tikhonov regularization in their content somewhere. If we recreate the tag and edit those posts to include it, would that be worthy?" CreationDate="2016-09-14T03:16:21.970" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="10758" PostId="4318" Score="1" Text="you should edit this last comment into your answer. I would phrase your suggestion as a concrete course of action and offset it to make it visually obvious. If your answer gathers more upvotes than amoeba's, then the community will have spoken. (As I understand it, you should make your case to the CV community, rather than to amoeba, who is not the arbiter.)" CreationDate="2016-09-14T04:04:09.303" UserId="127790" />
  <row Id="10764" PostId="4320" Score="1" Text="Can you please give several examples of threads where you think this tag would be most appropriate?" CreationDate="2016-09-14T09:54:07.197" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10774" PostId="4320" Score="0" Text="This thread for example on the main site. That is because if all one is interested in is ridge regression, then this thread isn't all that interesting, except in some vague theoretical sense. [Another](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/208648/generalized-tikhonov-regularization-in-glmnet) and [Another](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/205891/tikhonov-regularization-in-the-context-of-deconvolution) do not mention ridge-regression at all, and I'm going through in search order, but, I am running out of comment space." CreationDate="2016-09-15T01:46:14.467" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="10775" PostId="4320" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Most threads that mention Tikhonov regularization do not mention ridge regression, some do. 2/3 to 1/3 or something like that. This isn't a burning issue, I would think if someone like me is looking, I would find what I want, but, having both tags might have advantages, for me, it just seems more professional to have both. I would never suggest, for example, that ridge regression be eliminated as a tag just because it is a subset of Tk. But, it seems awkward to redirect a superset to a subset." CreationDate="2016-09-15T02:05:48.810" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="10776" PostId="4320" Score="1" Text="Carl, we agreed that redirection will be removed. After that, [tikhonov-regularization] will automatically disappear. So the only question is, is it worth re-creating it afterwards, or not. As a rough thumb rule, I would say that if we can find at least 5 questions where it would clearly fit then it might be worth it. I suggest you update your answer (this one) listing 5 such questions if you can find them. There are [only 14 questions containing word &quot;tikhonov&quot;](http://stats.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&amp;q=tikhonov%20is%3aquestion); most of them would not need this tag but some could." CreationDate="2016-09-15T09:03:18.523" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10798" PostId="4320" Score="0" Text="@amoeba There are now some listed in the answer above, in some tikhonov-regularization is a more appropriate tag than ridge-regression but I note that some just use the more general tag regularization, probably because Tikhonov regularization was not an available tag." CreationDate="2016-09-15T19:27:21.560" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="10832" PostId="4320" Score="0" Text="Another interesting questions is [this one](http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/81740/127790), which asks for &quot;an online (recursive) algorithm for Tikhonov Regularisation&quot;, but there case is actually ridge regression (though they do not mention it, i.e. this is a &quot;considered a synonym&quot; case). However I found it interesting because perhaps the most common form of Tikhonov regularization *and* online least squares is in Kalman filtering. (Though that community does not typically use *either* of those terms!)" CreationDate="2016-09-19T18:33:41.737" UserId="127790" />
  <row Id="10834" PostId="4320" Score="0" Text="@GeoMatt22 Yes, they may be using ridge regression, but do not mention the second ridge regression condition namely conversion of $X^TX$ to be a correlation matrix. So, maybe regularization should be the parent term. Some of the regularization tags questions look more like [Tikhonov than ridge](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/228763/regularization-methods-for-logistic-regression)" CreationDate="2016-09-19T19:43:42.847" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="10835" PostId="4320" Score="0" Text="@Carl I actually just updated the [regularization](http://stats.stackexchange.com/tags/regularization/info) tag wiki to generalize *beyond* the typical m-estimator style penalty terms. (Which themselves include Tikhonov/Ridge as the $L_2$-norm flavor, and LASSO/sparse-coding/TVD/etc. as the $L_1$ flavor.) So I would certainly not absorb either of these into the parent. (They could be mentioned/linked in its wiki, though. Just like Tikhonov could link to Kalman, i.e. OK to be related but not synonym or subsumed in terms of tags.)" CreationDate="2016-09-19T21:38:49.777" UserId="127790" />
  <row Id="10836" PostId="4320" Score="0" Text="@GeoMatt22 Gee, imagine that, set theory. If I can help, let me know." CreationDate="2016-09-19T21:54:03.670" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="10837" PostId="4320" Score="0" Text="@Carl I finished that one. The take home is that sometimes an appropriate tag wiki edit can be used to address incompleteness. ([This chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/34658/discussion-on-question-by-gung-current-tag-synonym-candidates) has some discussion of concerns about overly specific tags, for example.)" CreationDate="2016-09-19T22:01:15.887" UserId="127790" />
  <row Id="10769" PostId="4323" Score="0" Text="Thank you for the clarification. I guess I will ask about cross validation in here and for technical details in the stack overflow. Thank you again." CreationDate="2016-09-14T21:30:56.427" UserId="130174" />
  <row Id="10777" PostId="4324" Score="1" Text="Ok, I will flag the oldest one for closure. Just to be sure, you are suggesting I flag it as a duplicate, right? I ask because in the &quot;duplicate&quot; option, it specifically states that the duplicate is a copy of an older question. In this case, it would be a (bad) copy of a newer question. I agree with your point of view that we don't need to respect the older thread just because it's older. I just want to be sure I'm clicking on the correct flag option." CreationDate="2016-09-15T09:42:36.760" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="10779" PostId="4324" Score="1" Text="Yes. Indeed, it says `This question has been asked before and already has an answer` but I find this misleading, and I have voted to close multiple older questions as duplicates of newer questions and this never was a problem and has always (or at least mostly) been approved by the community and other voters." CreationDate="2016-09-15T10:59:43.877" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10780" PostId="4325" Score="2" Text="After reaching 20k you can consider yourself as [&quot;trusted user&quot;](http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/privileges) ;) More serious comment: I'm afraid that this site it not enough to learn about statistics and data analysis - you need to interact with real data to learn it. Moreover, it is good to be familiar with both academic and commercial data analytics since in both cases you approach problems a little bit differently." CreationDate="2016-09-15T11:21:54.937" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="10782" PostId="4325" Score="6" Text="I'll let you know when it happens. I think we're all still learning. I don't think there's any particular milestone that counts as having become an expert. For every topic I feel I have something of a handle on there's a dozen more I'm still definitely a beginner at." CreationDate="2016-09-15T11:40:21.240" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10783" PostId="4325" Score="3" Text="Are you asking about being a &quot;newbie&quot; on this forum or about being a &quot;newbie&quot; in statistics in general (in real life)?" CreationDate="2016-09-15T12:16:00.880" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10786" PostId="4325" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Newbies are mostly people with statistical dilemmas they want answers to, i.e., topics that do not usually come up at typical family dinners. So, yes, I am talking about the site experience, which has its own learning curve." CreationDate="2016-09-15T14:49:31.633" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="10787" PostId="4325" Score="0" Text="@Tim Fair enough, but who gets to 20k on this site without knowing statistics, data analysis, higher mathematics and software?" CreationDate="2016-09-15T14:58:58.637" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="10788" PostId="4325" Score="1" Text="@Carl this was an insider joke :)" CreationDate="2016-09-15T15:01:56.457" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="10789" PostId="4325" Score="0" Text="So are you just asking when someone tends to know the ins and outs of the site?" CreationDate="2016-09-15T16:27:38.157" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10790" PostId="4325" Score="0" Text="@gung Well, I suppose it is a bit like asking &quot;When do people stop feeling that the car they bought is new?&quot; If you crash into a tree, that could happen rather quickly, and I suppose if one has survived having a few unpopular questions on this site it could have a similar effect. So, it goes to self-confidence in using the site, which implies not only the mechanics of site usage, but, for this site, some statistical prowess is implied as well." CreationDate="2016-09-15T16:40:16.737" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="10791" PostId="4325" Score="0" Text="My point was to clear up that the &quot;car&quot; (I suppose) is feeling comfortable with site usage / culture, not statistics / machine learning." CreationDate="2016-09-15T16:53:57.830" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10792" PostId="4325" Score="0" Text="@gung In my life, I have noted that a feeling of &quot;security&quot; or alternatively &quot;self-confidence&quot; in one's abilities comes from accepting a personal challenge that seems daunting, and by following that challenge to a successful resolution. The more daunting the challenge, the greater the self-confidence we extract from the achievement. So, in context, the newbie who is not a statistician (e.g., me) would likely get more of a &quot;kick&quot; out of making an impression on this site than someone with a PhD in stats, for whom such things are of course, well, expected." CreationDate="2016-09-15T17:16:52.740" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="10793" PostId="4325" Score="3" Text="(Nb, I don't have a PhD in stats.) I'm still trying to clarify if you want to know when a person stops feeling like a &quot;newbie&quot; with respect to the **site's features** vs. **statistical expertise**." CreationDate="2016-09-15T17:22:14.680" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10795" PostId="4325" Score="0" Text="Newbie feeling is probably related to a mixture of unfamiliarity with the site's features and statistical inexperience, which are positively correlated to certain degree and which feeling likely mitigates with experience gained in either or both types of uncertainty." CreationDate="2016-09-15T17:56:17.867" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="10781" PostId="4326" Score="3" Text="You might want to look at some of the related questions in the sidebar, like [Is there a way to 'undo' a mistaken review?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1850/is-there-a-way-to-undo-a-mistaken-review?rq=1) and [Review queue and skip button](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2581/review-queue-and-skip-button?rq=1) for example" CreationDate="2016-09-15T11:32:31.273" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10778" PostId="4327" Score="2" Text="Thanks! This sure makes the reviewing activity easier and more robust." CreationDate="2016-09-15T10:13:17.340" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="10867" PostId="4329" Score="0" Text="Please don't take downvotes badly here on Meta: they are not meant to be critical, but rather expressions of utility or agreement." CreationDate="2016-09-20T23:01:39.363" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="10876" PostId="4329" Score="1" Text="@Carl downvotes on meta don't necessarily indicate a bad answer." CreationDate="2016-09-21T08:00:19.353" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10794" PostId="4330" Score="8" Text="I'd also add that it's often helpful to me to see a couple of sentences at the start of the new posting clarifying that you've previously asked a somewhat similar question (include a link) but now realize that you need to ask a different question. I think that gives pause to someone who searches and finds an apparently duplicate question -- by you no less -- so that they see you're not just one of those guys who asks the same question again and again." CreationDate="2016-09-15T17:40:38.923" UserId="1764" />
  <row Id="10797" PostId="4331" Score="0" Text="There are first time user newbies who are statistical genius level, and start off saying, &quot;I am just a newbie, but...&quot; I would venture they do not stay newbies for very long. Then there are those who ask what variance means, who will be newbies for a very long time, if they even get to &gt;+1. They probably give up when they cannot parse the English on the site. Let's face it, this site can be fairly intimidating. Or to put it another way, statisticians make people feel that their brains have been put through a meat grinder because having one's brain ground up is how one trains in statistics. :)" CreationDate="2016-09-15T18:11:37.140" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="10806" PostId="4331" Score="0" Text="Eh? I am a newbie (or maybe &quot;journeyman&quot; is fair). I read Wayne's answers to gain insight (particularly on subtleties of interpretability...)." CreationDate="2016-09-17T02:27:22.740" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10799" PostId="4333" Score="0" Text="Thanks, this answers it. I should have searched on Meta.SE... (Your link also mentions that the Post Your Answer button might never become disabled in a mobile app, so perhaps that is what Kodiologist was using.)" CreationDate="2016-09-15T20:54:52.800" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10800" PostId="4333" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I was using plain old Firefox on a Linux PC. I didn't notice the closure till after I submitted my answer, though." CreationDate="2016-09-15T21:36:04.403" UserId="14076" />
  <row Id="10809" PostId="4335" Score="1" Text="I voted to re-open and it got re-opened. Does anybody know how one can access the history of this Q to see who voted to close it and who voted to open? Usually this information is accessible in the revision history but in this case the Q has never been edited and so there is no revision history link." CreationDate="2016-09-17T13:45:52.957" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10810" PostId="4335" Score="0" Text="Ah, here it is: http://stats.stackexchange.com/posts/234809/revisions." CreationDate="2016-09-17T13:46:49.117" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10811" PostId="4335" Score="0" Text="@amoeba FWIW [this was the Reopen review](http://stats.stackexchange.com/review/reopen/116714), I don't know how one can access the reviews themselves though (I only can see that through my review history because I took part in it). I don't know if there were any &quot;leave open&quot; votes during the close review, for example." CreationDate="2016-09-17T13:48:18.440" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="10812" PostId="4335" Score="1" Text="Thanks. Your link contains one piece of information that my link does not: it shows who voted to Leave Closed. I notice that Peter has lately been getting quite a bit of attention on Meta for his tendency to close things :-)" CreationDate="2016-09-17T13:52:57.260" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10813" PostId="4335" Score="2" Text="@amoeba When a question is voted-closed by five experienced users, and then enters the reopen queue without being edited, I suppose it's probably not that surprising it picks up at least one &quot;leave-closed&quot; in the reopen queue! I do think a (surprisingly controversial) question like this might benefit from a bit more discussion and a bit less voting, but the nature of our review queue mechanism (even the interface itself) tends to favour voting over discussing." CreationDate="2016-09-17T14:02:35.103" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="10817" PostId="4335" Score="0" Text="I tried to find relevant Meta discussions in the last one-two years, and found this one: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2775. Any other relevant discussions?" CreationDate="2016-09-17T22:53:58.060" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10819" PostId="4335" Score="0" Text="@amoeba There's http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/3116/22228 but the discussion about topicality there was mostly in the comments." CreationDate="2016-09-17T23:54:31.167" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="10820" PostId="4335" Score="0" Text="@Silverfish, I'm not sure who can see this page, but the close vote history can be seen [here](http://stats.stackexchange.com/review/close/116623). There was 1 leave open vote." CreationDate="2016-09-18T00:32:23.903" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10821" PostId="4335" Score="1" Text="Speaking for myself, I did not vote on closure (for or against) b/c even after reading the Q, I just couldn't tell which side of the line it fell on. (Among other things, I don't have sufficient expertise on the topic.) Later, based on reading the answer &amp; the comment arguing for reopening, I voted to reopen. It isn't clear to me if it was especially ambiguous, or if the topic was sufficiently esoteric that it was hard for people to adjudicate. I think discussing it on meta.CV is a fine idea, but I'm not sure if it will lead to better outcomes in future cases for that reason." CreationDate="2016-09-18T01:26:35.043" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10823" PostId="4335" Score="0" Text="@gung I believe I also skipped the original review for a similar reason, but found Gavin's arguments convincing for reopening on closer inspection. I'm also unsure what about this question led to the difficulty for the community in reaching a decision; both things you suggested are plausible! I'm hoping there are some learning points here, but &quot;hard cases make bad law&quot; in terms of setting a precedent. It might be interesting to know how people judged a case which lay outside their domain of expertise - all reviewers need to do this sometimes" CreationDate="2016-09-18T01:38:06.820" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="10822" PostId="4337" Score="3" Text="FWIW, it is (was) not as clear to me as it seems to have been for you. Also, to the extent that votes were cast after Gavin's answer was posted, note that you cannot see the answers from the review queue, which is where I suspect the votes were cast." CreationDate="2016-09-18T01:34:34.330" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10825" PostId="4337" Score="2" Text="Let me also mount a small defense of Peter. When voting in the review queue, you cannot see who has previously voted or how many reopen / leave closed votes have been cast so far. (This is for the best, IMO.) The thread was ambiguous (IMHO), had been closed by 5 high-rep users, &amp; was in the reopen queue w/o having been edited or improved in any way. That could leave the impression of the losers of the previous close queue process re-litigating the same issue. Since I voted to reopen, I clearly disagree w/ Peter's decision here, but then, I disagree w/ everyone from time to time. (cont)" CreationDate="2016-09-18T01:41:53.170" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10826" PostId="4337" Score="3" Text="(I am rather disagreeable.) As you mentioned in your comment above, Peter has been coming under fire of late. I think that reasonable people will disagree occasionally, mistakes will be made every now &amp; then, even by people working in good faith, &amp; I agree w/ the bulk of Peter's decisions. Peter does a certain amount of necessary work in keeping the review queues clear. The fact is, there are a lot of reviews that need to be done &amp; there really aren't enough experienced, dedicated reviewers. If it weren't for Peter, our review queues would be steadily growing. I hope he continues." CreationDate="2016-09-18T01:50:19.973" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10827" PostId="4337" Score="1" Text="@gung Thanks, +1 to all your comments. I did not quite realize that when reviewing, one does not see existing answers or already cast votes. In any case, I did not want to attack Peter and I am also happy with his moderation most of the time and hope that he keeps up the good job he is doing." CreationDate="2016-09-18T10:25:52.913" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10833" PostId="4337" Score="1" Text="@gung I think it's a good point that the review screen doesn't show the answer, which clearly casts the question in a more statistical light. (The poor arrangement of the review screen has been a bugbear of mine for some time...) I think your comments under this answer but also under the main Q are actually insightful enough to be worth converting into an answer if you have time." CreationDate="2016-09-19T19:42:54.973" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="10844" PostId="4338" Score="3" Text="It is important to fix unclear questions as fast as possible, so yes, I'd say such edits should be approved. I have never seen an attempt to vandalize a post by suggesting a resonably-looking edit (and unreasonable edits will not pass the queue anyway)." CreationDate="2016-09-20T15:08:09.203" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10845" PostId="4338" Score="1" Text="@amoeba, perhaps this comment of yours could be converted into an answer?" CreationDate="2016-09-20T15:14:34.430" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="10856" PostId="4338" Score="0" Text="@amoba there aren't bounds to the extent an edit is considered legitimate duplicate-account updating. A person could simply change the meaning or focus of the question without the OP consent and it would pass in the queue." CreationDate="2016-09-20T16:40:47.827" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="10841" PostId="4339" Score="3" Text="I would say, [sample-variance] should be removed and replaced by [variance], and unless somebody protests here, you can go ahead and do the edits." CreationDate="2016-09-20T15:04:12.923" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10842" PostId="4339" Score="3" Text="I am not sure but perhaps we could consider merging [sample-mean] into [mean]. I don't immediately see what it adds, and lots of the questions tagged with [mean] are presumably about sample means." CreationDate="2016-09-20T15:05:29.077" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10843" PostId="4339" Score="2" Text="Finally, why did you mention [estimation]? I don't understand your 2nd paragraph. What does it have to do with sample-variance?" CreationDate="2016-09-20T15:06:04.400" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10851" PostId="4339" Score="0" Text="So, apparently we have 3 options regarding [sample-variance] and [sample-mean]: i) do nothing; ii) make them synonyms of [variance] and [mean], respectively; iii) manually edit posts to remove them (burninating)? Is that it?" CreationDate="2016-09-20T15:32:27.390" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="10855" PostId="4339" Score="2" Text="@amoeba I mean double tagging [tag:variance] and [tag:estimation] as a substitution for [tag:sample-variance]" CreationDate="2016-09-20T16:38:16.540" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="10859" PostId="4339" Score="2" Text="@AndreSilva sample-variance has 6 threads and can be taken care of in two minutes. In contrast, sample-mean has 100+ threads, that's why I suggested to make a synonym instead of manual retagging." CreationDate="2016-09-20T17:10:07.660" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10853" PostId="4340" Score="0" Text="it's probably [support], not [discussion]." CreationDate="2016-09-20T15:35:31.087" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10854" PostId="4340" Score="0" Text="[support] is more for help on understanding features of the site; I think discussion is more appropriate here. (but could be both)." CreationDate="2016-09-20T15:38:33.843" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="10868" PostId="4340" Score="0" Text="It was flagged; while I don't agree with the specified reason, it might have been legitimately flagged as obsolete if the user you replied to had been on since you posted it, so I'd still have had a look at whether it could be deleted. While personally I try to leave sensible comments alone for at least a day or sometimes two (some flaggers are very proactive), I do mostly tend to act on comment flags after that sort of time, or if I am otherwise happy it served its purpose (which action would usually be to delete the comment). ...ctd" CreationDate="2016-09-20T23:46:30.943" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10869" PostId="4340" Score="1" Text="ctd... So if it had been me looking at it, and I was satisfied the person to who it was addressed had had seen it (or had very likely seen it), I might well have deleted it." CreationDate="2016-09-20T23:51:07.423" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10870" PostId="4340" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b I think other readers might find the comment useful as well." CreationDate="2016-09-20T23:58:48.893" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="10871" PostId="4340" Score="1" Text="@Franck no doubt, but if that's the case you can always edit your answer to include that information (by rephrasing the question you responded to as a statement affirming the thing it was asking). Comments are not guaranteed to remain, but stuff in an answer is unlikely to be deleted. That's the way to make sure later readers get the benefit." CreationDate="2016-09-21T00:09:39.620" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10846" PostId="4341" Score="0" Text="Thanks. I'm not a native speaker. Why is &quot;right&quot; ambiguous?" CreationDate="2016-09-20T15:25:10.880" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="10847" PostId="4341" Score="0" Text="Because it most frequently is used as a casual acknowledgment that a post or statement has been received, without necessarily indicating anything else." CreationDate="2016-09-20T15:26:16.037" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="10848" PostId="4341" Score="0" Text="Even if the comment to which I replied to ended with &quot;Right?&quot;?" CreationDate="2016-09-20T15:27:17.543" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="10849" PostId="4341" Score="1" Text="I don't see that in the quotation you have posted.  I *do* see it now in the thread itself.  The comment to which you responded actually said &quot;So to summarize the link: there results on which method is better are inconclusive, and it is easier to use the under/over-sampling. Right?&quot;  Your &quot;right&quot; *does* respond to that.  I apologize for the confusion.  (I was processing a flag and did not see the entire context of the exchange.)  I have restored your comment." CreationDate="2016-09-20T15:27:50.650" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="10850" PostId="4341" Score="1" Text="Looks like I had copy pasted the wrong comment :) I updated the question." CreationDate="2016-09-20T15:28:54.427" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="10852" PostId="4341" Score="2" Text="Thanks no worries." CreationDate="2016-09-20T15:34:27.580" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="10866" PostId="4341" Score="1" Text="Thank you.  We don't worry too much about comments--we all know they could disappear at any time--but I am alerted to be a little more cautious in processing flags in the future." CreationDate="2016-09-20T19:10:33.130" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="10858" PostId="4342" Score="2" Text="Thanks for the input, sounds like that's the consensus then. I'll start to do it like that." CreationDate="2016-09-20T17:10:01.110" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="10862" PostId="4342" Score="1" Text="(+1) Editing questions on editing in Meta raises metaphysical questions." CreationDate="2016-09-20T18:08:08.167" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="10863" PostId="4342" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Thanks for the copy-editing, that is satisfyingly clearer. You might enjoy casting your editorial eye sometime over [the list of stock comments](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/a/2486/22228) (mostly inherited from gung, though with several other contributors) that I borrowed this comment from." CreationDate="2016-09-20T18:55:59.407" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="10864" PostId="4342" Score="0" Text="Thanks; they seem very well worded to me. I suspect @gung has refined them more than once." CreationDate="2016-09-20T19:07:25.817" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="10865" PostId="4342" Score="0" Text="@NickCox I appreciate your time, thanks." CreationDate="2016-09-20T19:08:38.223" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="10881" PostId="4343" Score="3" Text="speaking personally (i.e. as a user) I'd lean toward having it" CreationDate="2016-09-21T09:49:38.217" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10883" PostId="4343" Score="3" Text="Sounds like a good idea." CreationDate="2016-09-21T09:57:51.760" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10880" PostId="4344" Score="1" Text="Is this choice necessarily a dichotomy? A valid opinion might perhaps be &quot;we use whichever one seems to work best for the circumstances, perhaps sometimes including combining questions after the fact&quot;" CreationDate="2016-09-21T09:48:34.953" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10882" PostId="4344" Score="4" Text="Should meta-meta questions be off topic on meta? Shouldn't we get a meta.meta.stats.stackechange.com?  (sorry, I'll show myself out)" CreationDate="2016-09-21T09:54:00.620" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10885" PostId="4344" Score="1" Text="http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1934/are-half-of-tag-synonyms-questions-duplicative-of-current-tag-synonym-candida" CreationDate="2016-09-21T11:34:31.137" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="10886" PostId="4344" Score="0" Text="@AndreSilva I think that question is *horrible* (it has my downvote as the most horrible question on Meta.CV). Personally, I would prefer to discuss this again here and then to close that one as a duplicate of this one." CreationDate="2016-09-21T11:41:35.460" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10887" PostId="4344" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I marked my question as duplicate but if you wish we may reopen it - it starts being meta-meta-meta issue :))" CreationDate="2016-09-21T11:56:08.070" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="10888" PostId="4344" Score="2" Text="Let's see if people share my attitude towards that old thread. I do agree with gung's answer though, which basically says that aggregate threads should be used for routine and likely non-controversial suggestions whereas standalone threads should be used for potentially controversial suggestions that might require some discussion." CreationDate="2016-09-21T12:01:11.300" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10889" PostId="4344" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, no problem having a cleaner post for discussing this issue. Actually, I was trying to link a related question to take advantage of existing answers and debate on the matter." CreationDate="2016-09-21T12:22:10.840" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="10890" PostId="4344" Score="1" Text="Tim, as you closed the Q yourself, then if you want it reopened at certain moment you should probably flag for mod attention and explain the situation." CreationDate="2016-09-21T12:34:11.880" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10892" PostId="4345" Score="0" Text="This is an interesting perspective. Do you think such frequent-editing-without-account-merging it is a real danger?" CreationDate="2016-09-21T13:42:00.943" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10895" PostId="4345" Score="0" Text="@amoeba the combined concerns of that issue and of the account never being merged between them worry me more than the possibility that the edit is not applied as quickly as possible." CreationDate="2016-09-21T15:47:25.703" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10896" PostId="4345" Score="0" Text="Do we have any evidence of people continuing to operate without merging their accounts? (You may well be more party to that information than me. I've generally seen people either merge their accounts in the end, or they seem to disappear entirely once the edit goes through. But I'm not seeing the full picture of course.) Also, do we have evidence on holding up a user's edit encouraging them to register/merge properly? (On their end, they see the edited version with a &quot;pending&quot; notice after they write the edit. And I wonder how many people check to see comments on edit rejection.)" CreationDate="2016-09-21T16:11:41.233" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="10897" PostId="4345" Score="0" Text="Previous comment looks rather critical but I'm basically curious what the workflow looks like from the point of view of a user who doesn't go through the account merge process and whose edit gets rejected. Presumably once the edit is rejected, the &quot;pending&quot; notice is removed and the question goes back to looking like it did before to them. Do they get any particular notification of the rejection?" CreationDate="2016-09-21T16:13:16.373" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="10899" PostId="4345" Score="0" Text="It's been a while but I believe suggested edit rejections are notified. [On the previous comment -- I don't mind the critical nature of the question ... that's kind of what discussion is for. As long as it's reasonably polite (and it was) there's no problem. To address the question you raised there, I don't think that it's particularly common, but it does still concern me]" CreationDate="2016-09-21T16:23:27.510" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10929" PostId="4345" Score="0" Text="I have a feeling, but I'm not 100% sure, that rejected edit suggestions might not be notified. But I might be misremembering something that happened to me." CreationDate="2016-09-23T20:29:08.490" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="10932" PostId="4345" Score="0" Text="@Silverfish Your memory is more likely to be accurate than mine." CreationDate="2016-09-23T23:36:11.877" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10933" PostId="4345" Score="0" Text="Ahh, things have changed anyway: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/120624/decision-on-rejected-edits-should-be-displayed-as-a-notification-to-the-editor - but still not given as a notification." CreationDate="2016-09-23T23:42:23.490" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="10934" PostId="4345" Score="1" Text="Incidentally the problem here is for people who have not yet mastered our system of accounts, and some of them are presumably making a new account each time they visit or attempt to interact. So I guess it doesn't matter to them whether the rejection is notified or not - they won't see it either way!" CreationDate="2016-09-23T23:44:27.353" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="10907" PostId="4351" Score="0" Text="(+1) Too bad the tags cannot have upper-case letters (or serif fonts). I just hope we never have to compute L-moments for [moments of intertia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moment_of_inertia) $I$!" CreationDate="2016-09-22T03:49:02.897" UserId="127790" />
  <row Id="10901" PostId="4352" Score="7" Text="The &quot;Community&quot; bot posts a warning to mods whenever the number of edits made by a user exceeds a certain threshold.  It's sufficiently high that few people exceed it unless they are working on lengthy and controversial posts." CreationDate="2016-09-21T20:18:54.870" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="10923" PostId="4352" Score="0" Text="I didn't have the foggiest that editing changed anything but what was being worked on. I frankly would not use that to get attention, and, I edit things sometimes intensively not because I know what I doing, but when I do not, which is when I am making mistakes. The one good question that I do for teaching has gotten the most attention, and there is not necessarily a healthy relationship between editing and getting scores, and most of the stuff I edit intensely gets unsympathetic attention. So, maybe the attention for editing is what needs looking at, not the editing itself." CreationDate="2016-09-23T03:36:50.937" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="10926" PostId="4352" Score="0" Text="I have added some relevant tags." CreationDate="2016-09-23T12:41:06.893" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10942" PostId="4352" Score="1" Text="Improvement of one's posts is something to encourage and not to ban, even if the improvement is small. If small edits draw too much visibility to posts and it's seen as unfair to contributors working harder, then we should change the system not to put minor edited posts on top of the main page, but we shouldn't prevent people to improve posts." CreationDate="2016-09-26T16:48:59.667" UserId="123561" />
  <row Id="10945" PostId="4352" Score="1" Text="I just noticed that when an answer gets edited, it gets moved to top of answers with the same number of votes in the question page. I think thins behaviour should be changed because it only encourages the kind of spam editing we are talking about here." CreationDate="2016-09-27T09:45:14.000" UserId="123561" />
  <row Id="10949" PostId="4352" Score="1" Text="@Pere: Good point, &amp; it's been much discussed on SE Meta, e.g [Is there a way to edit a question without bumping it to the front page?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/23241/225179). If there were a way to detect automatically that a small edit had not or barely changed the *meaning* of a sentence, I daresay something of the sort would've already been implemented. But as it is we *do* encourage improvements; while imploring people to try &amp; make them in as few edits as they can, &amp; moaning sometimes at those who seem to be making rather more than necessary. It doesn't work too badly in practice." CreationDate="2016-09-28T11:08:35.130" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="10902" PostId="4353" Score="6" Text="I generally concur but I'd personally disagree with the last paragraph: from the point of view of a reader, the activity page is meant to show us activity. Many edits (including by users with privileges) are quite substantial. I think I'd be happy with minor edits being filtered out from the queue (below a certain number of characters?) but not more than that - I've often clicked on a thread due to an edit, even one I've seen before, and been glad I did." CreationDate="2016-09-22T00:07:44.397" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="10903" PostId="4353" Score="3" Text="@Silverfish Yeah, fair enough - with a sufficiently substantive change it should still be there. I think users with full edit privileges ought to be able to judge when it's large enough to make an edit (e.g. one thing I think is important to fix even if it's the only change is fixing spelling of keywords in titles) but minor enough not to bother the queue with (&quot;yes, I changed *autoregersive modles* to *autoregressive models* ... will anyone care to see that?&quot;). Perhaps a button would serve. But anyway I don't expect any such thing to happen, I believe similar ideas have already been suggested" CreationDate="2016-09-22T00:35:58.753" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10905" PostId="4353" Score="0" Text="@amoeba funnily, I'd want to keep it when editing other people's posts -- and not just because even tag edits to other people's posts may still need review -- but because the original author might get some upvotes out of it. I think you and Silverfish have given some reasons why it's probably just me that would want it this way." CreationDate="2016-09-22T01:12:52.750" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10950" PostId="4353" Score="0" Text="One device to screen out edits &quot;unworthy&quot; of a bump could be those where the user has not bothered to explain the edits in the designated field. I, for example, often edit my own posts when I spot a typo because I am too vain to have my posts to contain these, but I would totally support that this does not bump them to the top of the queue." CreationDate="2016-09-28T11:56:24.917" UserId="67799" />
  <row Id="10909" PostId="4354" Score="2" Text="+1. See here: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/a/3101/28666 for some useful advice about creating new tags." CreationDate="2016-09-22T10:36:52.543" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10928" PostId="4354" Score="1" Text="Cool. Now you can accept your own answer :)" CreationDate="2016-09-23T18:46:22.880" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10959" PostId="4354" Score="0" Text="(+1) The birthday &quot;paradox&quot; is not of major importance in probability as well as in statistics, so I do not see much incentive in creating this tag. It is called a paradox because of the counter-intuitive exponential decrease of the probability of no coincidence of rare events." CreationDate="2016-09-29T19:59:22.830" UserId="7224" />
  <row Id="10910" PostId="4355" Score="4" Text="You can &quot;favorite&quot; a question. See the meta.SE FAQ [How do favorite questions work?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/53585/how-do-favorite-questions-work)" CreationDate="2016-09-22T11:54:43.550" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10911" PostId="4355" Score="0" Text="I tried to post that as an answer but it autoconverted it to a comment as &quot;trivial&quot;. Interesting." CreationDate="2016-09-22T11:55:36.110" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10912" PostId="4355" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b Wow. Does it only happen on Meta?" CreationDate="2016-09-22T12:40:33.677" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10913" PostId="4355" Score="2" Text="I knew about the 'Favorite' feature. But it doesn't give notifications. In a day, I probably 'favorite' 10 to 20 questions. It would be nice to not have to  check all 'favorited' questions everyday for updates." CreationDate="2016-09-22T13:29:43.553" UserId="34645" />
  <row Id="10919" PostId="4355" Score="2" Text="It's unfortunate it doesn't notify you, but it's something. If you get in the habit of checking it can be useful. I realize it's not exactly what you want but lots of people don't really understand favorites or realize that they can see which ones changed" CreationDate="2016-09-22T23:06:33.077" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10922" PostId="4355" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Ah, that makes sense. I don't know, it never happened to me before!" CreationDate="2016-09-22T23:10:10.290" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10930" PostId="4359" Score="6" Text="[UTC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinated_Universal_Time)." CreationDate="2016-09-23T20:33:10.620" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10935" PostId="4359" Score="4" Text="The whole SE network operates by UTC. Indeed you may have noticed that if you hover over things that say &quot;3 hours ago&quot; or whatever, most will give a time with &quot;Z&quot;  at the end (e.g. you asked this Q at `2016-09-23 20:25:52Z` -- stands for &quot;Zulu time&quot;, which means almost the same thing as UTC and its abbreviation is sometimes used as a shorthand for UTC). However, many things that update once per day on site happen at times other than 0:00 Z (e.g. some things like checking for whether you achieved a particular badge might happen at a more-or-less random time between about 2:00Z and 3:00Z)." CreationDate="2016-09-24T00:18:37.383" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10936" PostId="4359" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b Wow, I have been wondering about this &quot;Z&quot; for a long time. Zulu time!" CreationDate="2016-09-24T17:15:30.833" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10940" PostId="4361" Score="1" Text="Great job. There is a couple of other minor tags starting with &quot;combin&quot;, many of them without excerpts and of unclear usefulness. [combinatorial]  with 7 Qs and no excerpt; [combining-predictions] with 5 Qs and no excerpt; [combining-estimates] with 4 Qs; [combining-models] with 1 Q and no excerpt. I did not look at them, but I have a feeling most of them are not useful. What do you think?" CreationDate="2016-09-25T21:38:04.943" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10941" PostId="4361" Score="1" Text="@amoeba I will have a look and perhaps report back." CreationDate="2016-09-26T15:52:18.343" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="10996" PostId="4361" Score="0" Text="Have you had a chance to take a look? Somebody just posted a suggestion on Meta to delete [combining-models], so perhaps we should finish up this tidying..." CreationDate="2016-10-04T17:08:07.703" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10999" PostId="4361" Score="0" Text="@amoeba yes, I have been having a siesta. I will have a look tomorrow." CreationDate="2016-10-04T20:00:35.260" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="11021" PostId="4361" Score="0" Text="@amoeba what is the protocol for this? Do I need to post another question or, for instance, is it OK just to remove the tag from [linear-combination] which would not really affect any of them?" CreationDate="2016-10-05T17:09:11.210" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="11028" PostId="4361" Score="0" Text="With [linear-combination] you can definitely go ahead already now (nobody objected since Sep 25, see your answer). With other mentioned tags, I'd say you can also go ahead; or perhaps edit your answer to announce what you are going to do unless nobody objects. This is not worth a separate thread." CreationDate="2016-10-05T19:10:30.087" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11052" PostId="4361" Score="1" Text="@amoeba I have now removed [linear-combination] from all 8 and in one case replaced it with [contrasts]" CreationDate="2016-10-06T15:33:13.140" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="11228" PostId="4361" Score="0" Text="(1) Consider updating your answer accordingly. (2) Do you have any opinion on the other `combining-` tags that I listed in the first comment above?" CreationDate="2016-10-27T20:57:03.493" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11231" PostId="4361" Score="1" Text="[combinatorial] is no more." CreationDate="2016-10-29T20:22:14.080" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11232" PostId="4361" Score="1" Text="Now removed [combining-models] in one case replacing with [model-averaging]" CreationDate="2016-10-30T15:11:52.413" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="11341" PostId="4361" Score="0" Text="Thanks for taking care of it, @mdewey." CreationDate="2016-11-09T14:16:06.253" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10963" PostId="4362" Score="0" Text="Actually, I can see that people who use Excel (and some calculators and some elementary texts) would go &quot;But the *average squared deviation* means an $n$ denominator. Excel says that's the '*population standard deviation*' ... but I want *sample* standard deviation. Why isn't there a tag for it??&quot; ... While we might all realize that the $n$ vs $(n-1)$ denominator thing *isn't* what makes a calculation a sample SD or a population SD, I think we should expect a large fraction of beginners to think otherwise." CreationDate="2016-09-29T23:55:04.967" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10965" PostId="4362" Score="0" Text="Do you think this concern can be addressed with some appropriate edit of the wiki excerpt?" CreationDate="2016-09-30T22:34:44.213" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10966" PostId="4362" Score="0" Text="Yeah -- at least to the extent that users read them, I think it would help." CreationDate="2016-10-01T00:59:18.203" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="10969" PostId="4362" Score="0" Text="@amoeba and what about `[sample-mean]`..? The argument is actually the same, as you noted." CreationDate="2016-10-02T18:42:29.663" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="10970" PostId="4362" Score="1" Text="@Tim I posted it as a suggestion in our tag synonyms thread. Can you upvote it there? http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/a/4363/28666" CreationDate="2016-10-02T18:56:41.420" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10971" PostId="4362" Score="0" Text="@amoeba right, I see that I actually did it already..." CreationDate="2016-10-02T18:57:56.093" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="10973" PostId="4362" Score="0" Text="___ @Tim :-) ___" CreationDate="2016-10-02T18:59:21.673" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10951" PostId="4365" Score="5" Text="Apart from misspellings that are synonyms of other tags, how would we determine which ones have no value?  How would we distinguish those that might grow in use from those that will never be used again? What is the problem with rare tags, anyway?" CreationDate="2016-09-28T14:26:32.350" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="10952" PostId="4365" Score="0" Text="@whuber those are the questions that I (implicitly) wanted to rise. Finding the rare ones would be an easy (while naive) method for finding the &quot;strange&quot; tags." CreationDate="2016-09-28T14:28:40.917" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="10953" PostId="4365" Score="5" Text="I still don't see why there's any problem that needs to be addressed." CreationDate="2016-09-28T14:29:28.347" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="10958" PostId="4367" Score="0" Text="Agreed. If I search for something, the fact that a tag has been used rarely is part of the results. I really don't want a search on tags to reveal nothing unless the tag has not been used. Zoos don't get rid of single specimens as a matter of principle...." CreationDate="2016-09-29T08:44:19.193" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="10960" PostId="4369" Score="3" Text="You can find the answer on the SE Meta site: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/234259/asking-days-badges.  In general, *our* meta site is for questions about *our* site specifically.  Issues that would likely pertain to many other sites, too-such as badge requirements--usually already have answers on SE meta and if not should be discussed there." CreationDate="2016-09-29T20:56:10.883" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="10961" PostId="4369" Score="2" Text="@whuber Thank-you for the information. The information about badges I did not know was a common feature to all SE sites, I had assumed that the criteria for badges were site dependent. I had also searched the SE meta site for the answer prior to asking it here, and did not find the link you were so kind as to provide here. Perhaps there is a lesson to be learned from my ignorance. That would be how somehow provide for better information retrieval." CreationDate="2016-09-29T21:15:02.760" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="10962" PostId="4369" Score="3" Text="I found the information by going to the [Meta site](http://meta.stackexchange.com/) and searching on [curious badge](http://meta.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=curious%20badge) and sorting the results to see the newest first." CreationDate="2016-09-29T21:38:57.090" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="10997" PostId="4369" Score="0" Text="Hi @Carl. Why don't you accept Andre's answer here? Does it not resolve your question?" CreationDate="2016-10-04T17:12:17.863" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10998" PostId="4369" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Because I did not see it. Thanks for the heads-up, I see it now." CreationDate="2016-10-04T17:20:20.010" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="10977" PostId="4372" Score="1" Text="Flagging seems reasonable here, but I also see an argument for leaving some of these. I'm not sure they're fully obsolete, IMHO." CreationDate="2016-10-03T23:55:23.873" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="10978" PostId="4372" Score="2" Text="Whatever the policy, CV practice is notably more indulgent than that at some other SE sites. Rude or unpleasant comments are quickly excised but many CV people, including at least some of the moderators and some of the high-rep users, are fairly chatty and conversations are often allowed to linger. A positive reason for that is there is often more room for discussion about helpful and unhelpful views of a topic, and not just statements of technically correct answers. Another reason is that a string of comments doesn't do much harm and can just be ignored." CreationDate="2016-10-04T08:01:25.543" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="10979" PostId="4372" Score="0" Text="What does often happen is that anything that looks like an overextended conversation may be moved en masse to chat." CreationDate="2016-10-04T08:01:30.077" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="10980" PostId="4372" Score="0" Text="An interesting example is http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/73613/does-the-presence-of-an-outlier-increase-the-probability-that-another-outlier-wi with 0 upvotes for the question, 8 answers and 70 comments. My own summary is a lack of consensus on whether the OP had a clear and sharp question, but the comments are in no way superfluous and (biased opinion) contain much of the more interesting and thoughtful  material." CreationDate="2016-10-04T08:18:22.637" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="10981" PostId="4372" Score="1" Text="FWIW I think it was a combination of @gung's edits and mine that turned the title first from &quot;Any example of (roughly) independent variables but extreme dependent&quot; to &quot;Any example of (roughly) independent variables but extreme that are dependent at extreme values?&quot; to its current one - but &quot;my&quot; edit was simply me amending a suggesting edit by another user (to also add the &quot;correlation&quot; tag). And I'm still not convinced the title is entirely &quot;correct&quot;, or in keeping with the actual question text. So discussion about the title still seems pertinent. Albeit comments re the old title may mislead!" CreationDate="2016-10-04T10:55:11.647" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="10982" PostId="4372" Score="0" Text="@Silverfish I had just looked the last edit, that's why I thought you did the changes haha. So, are the comments in any way related to the current form of the question? I think they are not, and should be deleted, from Aksakal to mine, at least." CreationDate="2016-10-04T11:56:05.550" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="10983" PostId="4372" Score="2" Text="I think that most of the comments, certainly including Aksakal's, still serve to indicate some of the confusion in the question. The OP wants something that is inherently paradoxical - two variables that are essentially independent, but turn out to be dependent if we restrict to a particular subset (of extreme values). I'm not actually sure whether the current answers quite achieve this, though the OP seems to have been satisfied with them and they do meet some suggested criteria in the Q text. The comment by Batman may be obsolete. Perhaps even Chris Haug's, though I'd venture not." CreationDate="2016-10-04T12:06:51.070" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="11639" PostId="4372" Score="1" Text="@AndreSilva I mentioned that post in my question. The question is why the flag was declined in my specific case, not if we should or not flag comments." CreationDate="2016-12-27T13:41:00.113" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="10985" PostId="4373" Score="2" Text="Are you asking if there is a way (your last sentence)? Then the answer is no. Or are you asking why there is no way (your title)? Then the answer is that that's just how SE works and this is unlikely to change. Or are you asking what to do instead? Then see http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1525 and also http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/3000 and also http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2618." CreationDate="2016-10-04T13:54:34.943" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10994" PostId="4373" Score="1" Text="After your edit I am even more confused about what you are asking. `What is the way to add a tag in an answer [...] without editing the asked question?` -- there is no such way, period." CreationDate="2016-10-04T15:47:59.187" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11005" PostId="4373" Score="0" Text="Sometimes it would be nice to be able to tag an answer, but you can't. In some situations it may be reasonable to add a tag to the question, but I suggest a degree of reflection and restraint (especially if it changes the original intent of the question) in applying it (e.g. adding the tag may suggest that the scope of the question is more restricted than it really is. That would be a concern). Aside from the consideration of author intent, I think the main consideration is whether it's likely to help others find a good solution to their problem." CreationDate="2016-10-04T21:30:37.457" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11014" PostId="4373" Score="0" Text="I try to &quot;channel the intent of the author&quot; and if I have even a small doubt, then I do not (not not not) edit the work of another person.  I would rather add 10 comments than one edit that changes the original question in a lossy way." CreationDate="2016-10-04T23:23:53.523" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="10984" PostId="4374" Score="3" Text="FYI I believe it only works when the user pinged has visited the chat room not too long ago." CreationDate="2016-10-04T13:48:51.320" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="10988" PostId="4374" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi I was not aware of the &quot;not too long ago&quot; part." CreationDate="2016-10-04T14:00:46.377" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="10990" PostId="4374" Score="4" Text="I don't think we need rules for everything. If someone wants to communicate that way, they'll reply; if not, they'll ignore you or ask you to ask a question directly or communicate otherwise. More importantly to me, I don't mind too much one-to-one conversations, but the purpose of chat in my view is to supplement the main site, not act as a medium for personal exchanges better carried out in some other way (e.g. email). A little related, but I am not keen on people who I've answered on the forum contacting me privately for further help (yes, I know, I should make myself less identifiable)." CreationDate="2016-10-04T14:37:57.020" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="10991" PostId="4374" Score="2" Text="Otherwise put, a positive principle for chat is that you should be able to imagine that whatever you say could be of interest to others, even if it is only as a joke or a grumble. That principle makes marginal _some_ exchanges of the form: Dear X: I would value your advice on Y." CreationDate="2016-10-04T14:39:36.730" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="10992" PostId="4374" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Your views are always insightful, and I couldn't agree more with the danger of stifling spontaneity. Please note my emphasis on etiquette. The question is more about using the resources on the site at large with propriety... I missed initially the second part of your comment. What do you mean by 'makes marginal'?" CreationDate="2016-10-04T14:42:10.113" UserId="67822" />
  <row Id="10993" PostId="4374" Score="1" Text="@AntoniParellada Thanks. Here is a blunter (or perhaps sharper) version.  I don't want to see others' essentially _private_ conversations as part of CV chat." CreationDate="2016-10-04T14:57:26.697" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11015" PostId="4374" Score="1" Text="@amoeba: I recollected hearing of some recency criterion: [here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/268002/receiving-stack-overflows-chat-notification) it's said to be 48 hours." CreationDate="2016-10-05T08:29:02.747" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="11006" PostId="4377" Score="0" Text="Because $T^-$ (meaning &quot;test negative&quot;) was read by me as $TN$ (&quot;true negative&quot;), I felt a sense of urgency to correct what (under the light of this misunderstanding) seemed like an outrageous (&quot;accepted&quot;)  mistake, reflecting poorly on CV, precisely because of its basic nature. And I couldn't think of a more authoritative voice to correct an issue on epidemiology than Professor Harrell." CreationDate="2016-10-04T22:24:41.840" UserId="67822" />
  <row Id="11007" PostId="4377" Score="0" Text="@Antoni Yes, I understand this in retrospect (I was talking about it in my answer). In that light it made some sense to do what you did, but I didn't interpret the situation that way at the time. That's the different understanding of the circumstances I was discussing above." CreationDate="2016-10-04T22:28:10.953" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11009" PostId="4377" Score="0" Text="If you want to delete this question, I have no problem. If you can't, because my answer has an upvote I can delete my answer. (If the upvote is yours you may be able to remove it and delete on your own). Or it can stay, if you prefer, I don't mind either way." CreationDate="2016-10-04T22:30:21.757" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11010" PostId="4377" Score="0" Text="I just &quot;accepted&quot;, and upvoted your answer! I truly was curious about what was on your mind..." CreationDate="2016-10-04T22:32:31.827" UserId="67822" />
  <row Id="11011" PostId="4377" Score="1" Text="Less than you might guess. I was a little distracted at the time." CreationDate="2016-10-04T22:33:09.520" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11016" PostId="4377" Score="0" Text="@AntoniParellada: You've 3 deleted questions on Meta - all worth asking IMO." CreationDate="2016-10-05T09:23:25.910" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="11033" PostId="4377" Score="1" Text="@Antoni downvotes on meta don't normally indicate a poor question (though they can, they often don't). They tend indicate disagreement with a suggestion / proposal (and even when you're not proposing something, people may seen it as an implicit proposal). If you delete such questions because *someone* disagrees, you remove the chance for people to come along a few minutes later to *agree*, and perhaps in greater numbers. Not everyone has to agree, and in any case suggestions in questions with which people express disagreement are valuable resources." CreationDate="2016-10-05T21:55:30.150" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11054" PostId="4377" Score="0" Text="@Antoni If I understood your comment correctly, I just deleted it. It contributes nothing of any ongoing merit." CreationDate="2016-10-07T01:09:47.910" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11022" PostId="4378" Score="0" Text="@gung Best leave discussion here in meta, rather than confuse Novice further." CreationDate="2016-10-05T18:08:52.130" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11025" PostId="4378" Score="1" Text="It used to be called [homework] by the way, which is currently a synonym for [self-study]." CreationDate="2016-10-05T19:03:27.093" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11029" PostId="4378" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Student-question, formal-instruction, didactic, course-work, whatever. All of those would work better than self-study in practice. Remember, the challenge is to get a student to self identify formal didactic work, and, that is not happening right now. In it's place, we are playing a silly cat and mouse game, consisting of &quot;If you do not self-identify with our semantically challenged tag, we will dump your question.&quot;" CreationDate="2016-10-05T19:17:57.480" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11030" PostId="4378" Score="4" Text="It relates to any routine textbook-style question (consider the trope &quot;*A train leaves New York at 9 am...*&quot;). If you still don't have any sense of what that is, you could always read a few dozen posts with the tag and the manner in which they're distinct from the other questions on site should become clear. (reading say 25 posts of this kind really doesn't take very long)" CreationDate="2016-10-05T21:33:55.110" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11031" PostId="4378" Score="7" Text="In particular, the tag describes a type of question, not the type of person posting it. &quot;Formal instruction&quot; is too narrow because that doesn't include questions from informal/self-instruction. Same with &quot;course-work&quot; (*but I'm not enrolled in a course*) and &quot;student question&quot; (*I'm not a student, I'm just trying to answer this question in my book*). While 'didactic' might just about work (assuming we make it clear it includes autodidactic questions), I don't actually see how 'didactic' is better than 'self-study' unless your aim is to catch out people who don't know what 'didactic' means" CreationDate="2016-10-05T21:45:37.120" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11032" PostId="4378" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b I guess `[textbook-style-problem]` gets quite close to what this tag is about but is way too cumbersome." CreationDate="2016-10-05T21:50:07.740" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11034" PostId="4378" Score="0" Text="@amoeba yes, that encapsulates it very well, and so would in a sense make for a better tag, but as you say, is probably too cumbersome. I'd prefer a different tag to `self-study` myself, but I just have never thought of a good one to propose." CreationDate="2016-10-05T21:58:24.927" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11035" PostId="4378" Score="3" Text="@Carl I should be clear, I don't oppose renaming it, but finding a good name that really conveys what is required is nontrivial." CreationDate="2016-10-05T22:01:11.673" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11037" PostId="4378" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b So, we keep trying until we hit semantic pay-dirt.     Newbie-problem ? We need something that is newbie bait to put this away so it doesn't haunt us." CreationDate="2016-10-05T23:15:56.577" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11038" PostId="4378" Score="1" Text="*Haunt us*? I don't think it haunts us. But a routine textbook problem may not be a &quot;newbie&quot; problem and vice-versa; e.g. I might post a question from Kendall &amp; Stuart or Feller or Casella &amp; Berger say that is beyond anyone you could call a newbie but is clearly self-study. [In any case, I object to tags like &quot;newbie&quot;, &quot;beginner&quot; or even &quot;basic question&quot;  since they needlessly denigrate problems (and in turn, their posters) that may nevertheless be conceptually difficult -- beginners already feel somewhat overwhelmed, and needlessly apologize for their questions]" CreationDate="2016-10-05T23:37:53.260" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11040" PostId="4378" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b Haunt as in be a recurrent issue. Published-problem?" CreationDate="2016-10-05T23:46:57.760" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11041" PostId="4378" Score="3" Text="In many ways, &quot;homework&quot; was a better name, but I think some people took exception to it, &amp; the idea was &quot;self-study&quot; softened the blow." CreationDate="2016-10-05T23:50:56.847" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11042" PostId="4378" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I like textbook-style-problem. It has going for it that it is crisp, it says it like it is." CreationDate="2016-10-05T23:51:47.003" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11043" PostId="4378" Score="4" Text="The problem doesn't have to be *published* -- a teacher could write a textbook-style problem on a whiteboard and say &quot;for those of you who get through the set exercises, try this at home&quot;. (I don't see any *pressing* issue here. You don't understand the tag and would like a clearer one - that's okay to discuss... but we've had this tag for a number of years; the main issues I see don't stem from failing to understand what the tag *means* but simple unwillingness to follow the guidelines on the tag wiki - and the related comments under *homework* in the on-topic help - once they're pointed out)" CreationDate="2016-10-05T23:52:30.213" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11046" PostId="4378" Score="0" Text="... A better name for the tag would help a bit. But I really don't see misunderstanding the tag as a problem that is recurrent enough to refer to it as haunting." CreationDate="2016-10-05T23:58:12.223" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11047" PostId="4378" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b My apologies, perhaps I exaggerated. I take it back, it is not haunting us. We are, however, considering the matter judiciously." CreationDate="2016-10-06T00:02:29.900" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11069" PostId="4378" Score="1" Text="The Oxford English dictionary defines self-study to be, &quot;The devotion of time and attention to gaining knowledge of an academic subject *without assistance from a teacher or tutor.*&quot; Using self-study to refer to professor or teacher assigned homework questions seems somewhat bizarre, stackexchange specific jargon. @gung my initial inclination was to suggest homework as well, but then the overall site has moved away from a homework tag? http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/147100/the-homework-tag-is-now-officially-deprecated" CreationDate="2016-10-10T18:26:51.977" UserId="97925" />
  <row Id="11074" PostId="4378" Score="1" Text="@MatthewGunn, I don't think our HW / SS policy has much to do w/ the analogous SE policies elsewhere. There are a couple discussions on meta.CV of how we are distinct (see, eg, [1](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/2843/7290), &amp; [2](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/1556/7290)). We changed the name based on [@whuber's answer](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/a/1569/7290) to 2 &amp; the subsequent discussion in the comments below it." CreationDate="2016-10-10T20:48:29.713" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11075" PostId="4378" Score="1" Text="@gung Thanks for these links. Actually, `[exercise]` (discussed there in 2012/2013) sounds like a great tag name to me, much better than &quot;self-study&quot;. It suggests precisely the idea of a &quot;routine textbook-style question&quot;, be it from a textbook or from a class, published or not, etc." CreationDate="2016-10-11T00:31:08.250" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11077" PostId="4378" Score="1" Text="@amoeba It's an interesting thought. I can't think of substantive objections outside people caviling about whether something was &quot;really&quot; an exercise.. If that was the general feeling, I think I could live with that one. But the idea to call it self-study was in place before I was a regular so there may be issues that haven't occurred to me. Perhaps older hands will also weigh in." CreationDate="2016-10-11T01:42:42.040" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11079" PostId="4378" Score="0" Text="@MatthewGunn What do you think about `[exercise]`? See the comments above." CreationDate="2016-10-11T12:50:01.933" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11155" PostId="4378" Score="2" Text="@amoeba `Exercise` makes sense to me, but I'm even newer here than many people in this thread (i.e. I don't know all the issues). And there's the whole qwerty keyboard argument for `self-study` that perhaps it's a sub-optimal system but it's a sub-optimal system that many are familiar with :P" CreationDate="2016-10-17T12:27:21.947" UserId="97925" />
  <row Id="11692" PostId="4378" Score="0" Text="I think self study is too broad.  The past few weeks a new user has come to the CV site asking several very specific questions about time series.  The questions look like homework but all he does is label them self study.  Several of us have been giving him hints and as he makes comments on each question we seem to make stronger hints. Today he ask a question about determining a model based on the acf and pacf. I interpreted it and told him one of the possible models that was parsimonious.  To help more we asked for the raw data.  At that point he admits this is a quiz problem!" CreationDate="2016-12-31T20:10:53.573" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11693" PostId="4378" Score="0" Text="So all the while he has been taking a time series course.  I fell like I have been played and others may feel that way too. I think the self study tag is partly responsible.. We need a way to know when a question is a quiz, test or homework problem. I think this information is too easy to hide using the self study tag." CreationDate="2016-12-31T20:16:33.507" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11694" PostId="4378" Score="0" Text="@MichaelChernick I agree, and especially do not like it when we are answering quiz questions for students on who knows, maybe a take home quiz or exam. Comments on how to go forward with acceptable semantics seems to be an unrequited need." CreationDate="2016-12-31T22:01:45.620" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11048" PostId="4379" Score="2" Text="Maybe we should create `[textbook-problem]` synonym for it and simply **leave** `[self-study]` alone? I like the current tag, IMHO it has a clear name, we already got used to it. Creating synonym would make it easier to find when tagging your question while not disrupting the current tag." CreationDate="2016-10-06T11:03:55.730" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="11070" PostId="4379" Score="2" Text="A new tag would have to be *sufficiently* better than self-study to justify switching to a new name and trying to re-educate hundreds of users. Self study is problematic imho (prof assigned homework covering class material isn't dictionary definition self-study), but all the alternatives to self-study I've read so far also have problems!" CreationDate="2016-10-10T18:35:45.247" UserId="97925" />
  <row Id="11072" PostId="4379" Score="0" Text="@MatthewGunn The problem is not that old hands like us do not know what the self-study tag means, but that it takes about a year to figure it out. The concern here is the first time user who is not familiar with the very local jargon. And, jargon is a bad idea. So, my opinion is not that one needs an extra-special replacement for the self-study tag, just a synonym that is not a misrepresentation of the English language." CreationDate="2016-10-10T19:35:12.583" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11049" PostId="4381" Score="2" Text="+1. I checked - I have only 17/209 declined comment flags. I flag relatively often (209 flags) but only in what seems like obvious cases: e.g. somebody asking to edit a post for something minor and then a replying comment saying that the post was edited. Such an exchange is usually useless from that point on." CreationDate="2016-10-06T12:57:48.113" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11050" PostId="4381" Score="1" Text="This is bad design: there's a flag option for obsolete comments, there are guidelines for it hinted both at meta.SE and at meta.stats.SE. If it's so much burden to delete obsolete comments, then don't give the users the option, nor the guidelines to do it. I'm totally not wasting my time anymore flagging comments." CreationDate="2016-10-06T15:11:36.223" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="11321" PostId="4381" Score="2" Text="Personally, I flagged 4 comments and got 3 rejected. Never flagged any comment ever after. Seems to be a pointless exercise." CreationDate="2016-11-07T19:40:19.977" UserId="26338" />
  <row Id="11056" PostId="4383" Score="0" Text="There has been some initiatives in other communities: see the smokedetector bot in the [tavern on meta chat](http://chat.meta.stackexchange.com/rooms/89/tavern-on-the-meta); and a chat room specifically created to detect low quality questions: http://chat.meta.stackexchange.com/rooms/773/low-quality-posts-hq" CreationDate="2016-10-07T19:39:07.057" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="11057" PostId="4383" Score="2" Text="@Andre you pointed at where SmokeDetector rents, not where it/he/she owns. [Charcoal HQ](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/11540/charcoal-hq) is Smokey's headquarters. You can pay us a visit and see what we do." CreationDate="2016-10-07T19:54:11.217" UserId="133913" />
  <row Id="11060" PostId="4383" Score="1" Text="I'm not sure this is really something *we* can do. It seems more like something the SE developers would have to work up &amp; implement." CreationDate="2016-10-08T01:15:19.897" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11061" PostId="4383" Score="1" Text="SE does already have their own spam protection; it already catches thousands of posts per day. Also, in case you were wondering, SmokeDetector does check all posts that are [bumped](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/48578/what-can-cause-a-question-to-be-bumped) from all sites (including this one), and as such most spam is deleted in a matter of minutes." CreationDate="2016-10-08T05:15:07.417" UserId="124404" />
  <row Id="11234" PostId="4383" Score="0" Text="I suggested something similar here http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/4242/customize-criteria-for-automatic-population-to-review-queue" CreationDate="2016-11-01T13:44:56.717" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="11062" PostId="4384" Score="2" Text="Delta function is a standard mathematical object and corresponding tag exists on Math.SE (with 500+ questions). But does it have any particular relevance for statistics to warrant a tag here?" CreationDate="2016-10-08T19:35:21.967" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11063" PostId="4384" Score="3" Text="@amoeba it is used in statistics and probability and seems to cause some confusion for those who first encountered it. Moreover, in probability it can be regarded as a degenerate *distribution* and understood as it it provokes on-topic questions." CreationDate="2016-10-09T08:26:59.033" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="11148" PostId="4384" Score="1" Text="The Dirac delta is implicit to many stochastic processes as it is the identity function for convolution. However, it would not be used alone, but always in conjunction with something else. I do not personally see any particular reason for it to appear as a stand alone tag." CreationDate="2016-10-14T23:33:02.943" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11066" PostId="4386" Score="2" Text="That sounds like a reference to the GEE." CreationDate="2016-10-10T12:29:27.697" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11067" PostId="4386" Score="2" Text="@gung maybe, but it's a guessing game..." CreationDate="2016-10-10T12:32:11.593" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="11078" PostId="4388" Score="2" Text="+1; It seems that this tag is confused with &quot;population MEAN&quot;, though the info clearly states that it means population average models. Searching &quot;population average&quot; (with quotes) in Google shows the correct results." CreationDate="2016-10-11T05:24:27.177" UserId="21599" />
  <row Id="11081" PostId="4388" Score="0" Text="@JiebiaoWang, can you think of a name that might be more distinct / less confusable for novices?" CreationDate="2016-10-11T14:17:25.347" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11082" PostId="4388" Score="1" Text="How about &quot;population average model&quot;? I also agree to remove this tag if it is easier to do so." CreationDate="2016-10-11T15:22:10.160" UserId="21599" />
  <row Id="11086" PostId="4388" Score="3" Text="How about &quot;marginal model&quot;?" CreationDate="2016-10-11T17:14:16.370" UserId="5829" />
  <row Id="11087" PostId="4388" Score="1" Text="@JiebiaoWang, would you be OK with `[marginal-model]`? That doesn't seem likely to be picked by novices accidentally." CreationDate="2016-10-11T17:58:55.990" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11088" PostId="4388" Score="1" Text="Seems perfect for me!" CreationDate="2016-10-11T19:05:08.843" UserId="21599" />
  <row Id="11090" PostId="4388" Score="1" Text="[tag:marginal-model] is not really a *new* tag; it exists already. I don't know anything about this topic, so I have no idea how it is related to [gee], and tag excerpts do not help me here. There is also [marginal-estimate] without an excerpt and also simply [marginal]; the latter is probably way too ambiguous and might require some attention." CreationDate="2016-10-11T20:24:11.767" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11091" PostId="4388" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, hmmmm. I'm don't have as much expertise here, but I wouldn't think of marginal models being synonymous w/ the GEE; I would say the GEE is the most prominent case of MMs (eg, see the end [here](http://stats.stackexchange.com/a/68753/7290)). The excerpt / wiki could probably some attention. W/ that done, MM might still be the best option." CreationDate="2016-10-11T20:45:46.303" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11093" PostId="4388" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, there are MMs that are not GEE, but they are uncommon. Using `[gee]` alone is probably appropriate most of the time. We could even put in the excerpt 'for MMs that are not GEEs', or some such. We again have the issue here that is analogous to all [t-test] is a subset of [regression] is a subset of [gen-lin-mod], etc." CreationDate="2016-10-11T20:52:48.310" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11068" PostId="4390" Score="0" Text="Ah, thanks. Missed that. :)" CreationDate="2016-10-10T17:22:47.107" UserDisplayName="user11284" />
  <row Id="11101" PostId="4391" Score="1" Text="I think [random-effects-model] is fine. Random-effects model can be used to refer to mixed models, see Laird and Ware (1982) &quot;Random-effects models for longitudinal data&quot;." CreationDate="2016-10-12T01:48:28.823" UserId="21599" />
  <row Id="11102" PostId="4391" Score="3" Text="I think the ambiguity in these tags on this site reflects real terminological ambiguity in the statistical literature, broadly defined. My impression is that outside of econometrics, many people (including often me) really do use the terms &quot;mixed model&quot; and &quot;random-effects model&quot; interchangeably. So I'm not sure I agree that *&quot;[random-effects-model] and [fixed-effects-model] tags should only be applied to questions about econometrics.&quot;* I do however agree that the phrase &quot;fixed-effects model&quot; is used primarily in economics only." CreationDate="2016-10-12T02:16:08.380" UserId="5829" />
  <row Id="11103" PostId="4391" Score="0" Text="Thanks @JakeWestfall and Jiebiao. So it seems that I was mistaken and in fact &quot;random effects model&quot; *is* used in literature and in real life to refer to &quot;mixed models&quot;. But do you guys think that &quot;random effects model&quot; in mixed models (MLE) and &quot;random effects model&quot; in econometrics (GLS) are two sufficiently different concepts that it would be beneficial to separate the tags? Or do you rather think it's *good* that it is the same tag? I find it confusing because the first one is basically the synonym of [mixed-model] but the second one is not really." CreationDate="2016-10-12T09:28:12.337" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11109" PostId="4391" Score="0" Text="I would say, the models are the same (except that one usually has only random intercept), but the main difference is just in the estimation. In other words, the two you refer to are indeed &quot;random-effects model&quot;. The difference can be found from other tags like [panel-data] used together in the question and the context of the question." CreationDate="2016-10-12T14:07:54.360" UserId="21599" />
  <row Id="11111" PostId="4391" Score="0" Text="I can see your point @JiebiaoWang. My biggest problem is that if not for econometrics, I would argue that [random-effects-model] should be a synonym of [mixed-model] (as both you and Jake implied above). I am however hesitant to suggest this synonym now, because it could be very confusing for all the econometrics people. What do you think? The current situation is unsatisfactory because navigating [random-effects-model] does not make a lot of sense: huge amount of [mixed-model] questions do not carry this tag." CreationDate="2016-10-12T14:26:32.063" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11112" PostId="4391" Score="0" Text="I agree that we do not suggest [random-effects-model] as a synonym of [mixed-model]. People have their own preference for the terminology. That's why I set both [random-effects-model] and [mixed-model] as my favorite tags. :) But I am also curious how popular random-effects model is in econometrics, since people would worry about the correlation between X and the random intercept." CreationDate="2016-10-12T16:04:57.643" UserId="21599" />
  <row Id="11083" PostId="4392" Score="1" Text="+1 and I think I would vote for [exercise] to become the master tag and not merely a synonym. But I am afraid too few people will see this, now that another option already got 8 upvotes..." CreationDate="2016-10-11T16:01:38.790" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11085" PostId="4392" Score="0" Text="Dear @amoeba , you are entitled to your opinion. Do not worry so much about prior voting, The keep the current tag vote was the first to be put on the website, so a lot more people have seen it. The voting will have to go on for a long time to be fair." CreationDate="2016-10-11T16:29:45.547" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11196" PostId="4392" Score="1" Text="&quot;Exercise&quot; as the master, with &quot;textbook-problem&quot;, &quot;homework&quot;, &quot;self-study&quot; (&amp; perhaps &quot;problem&quot; &amp; &quot;bookwork&quot;) all pointing to it, *does* seem like a good idea - if it's worth the trouble to change something many people are used to." CreationDate="2016-10-21T12:50:22.513" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="11089" PostId="4393" Score="0" Text="Yes, and I would also format the copy-pasted exercise as a quote. I don't really know why Tim rolled your edit back. Would be good if he comments here himself. In this particular case it does not seem to matter though, as the Q is downvoted and closed by now anyway." CreationDate="2016-10-11T20:15:03.637" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11094" PostId="4393" Score="3" Text="For one thing, the tag wiki says not to so it's not surprising that someone would edit it out. At the least, I would encourage you to *first* ask the OP to add it themselves, at the same time as asking them to read its tag wiki as that will encourage the correct understanding and behaviour. If the OP doesn't do so within a reasonable time (I'd suggest at least 24 hours or at least an hour of the next site activity by the user, whichever comes first), then follow what you see as the consensus position." CreationDate="2016-10-11T20:56:59.577" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11096" PostId="4393" Score="3" Text="@Glen_b I don't really see why one should wait 24h/1h for the *blatantaly obvious* copy-pasted textbook exercises. Can you explain why you (or our wiki) consider this preferable to editing straight away plus posting an explanation comment? I do understand that in less obvious cases one should give OP a benefit a doubt." CreationDate="2016-10-11T21:03:53.210" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11100" PostId="4393" Score="3" Text="Among other things (which concerns I have already addressed in a couple of places, I think) I think one burning issue is that changing the treatment of the tag (that the OP places it) may lead to people closing many fewer questions that should probably close until the OP understands the expectations and edits the question" CreationDate="2016-10-11T23:40:08.253" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11108" PostId="4393" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b (sorry, I noticed your comment only now): I am not sure I understand this argument correctly. Are you saying that you would prefer &quot;blatantly obvious&quot; self-study Qs without a self-study tag to be closed (right away?) rather than to be edited to add the self-study tag?" CreationDate="2016-10-12T13:55:22.510" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11110" PostId="4393" Score="3" Text="The ones that don't follow the requirements and/or that the OP doesn't fix (if they happen to be asked to when asked to add the tag and read the wiki and follow the guidelines) should close. If we're no longer asking, they'd more usually have to close immediately as off topic, wouldn't they?" CreationDate="2016-10-12T14:14:48.863" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11115" PostId="4393" Score="3" Text="I agree w/ @Glen_b here. I think the best course of action is to leave a comment (&amp; possibly vote to close &amp;/or downvote if egregious) immediately. There is sample text [here](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/a/2486/7290). Whether the tag is present is a very salient cue regarding whether the OP is familiar w/ our policies &amp; is trying to comply. If the tag is not added w/i a reasonable period of time, the thread can be voted to close, even if it did not seem particularly egregious at first." CreationDate="2016-10-12T20:17:40.693" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11125" PostId="4393" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b: I see. My only problem with waiting for 24h is that after 24h it is likely that nobody will start voting to close anymore. If, however, one leaves a comment asking to add self-study and *simultaneously* votes to close as gung seems to suggest, it can be a viable strategy. If this turns out to be the new consensus though, we should revisit those old Meta threads." CreationDate="2016-10-13T16:15:37.713" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11127" PostId="4393" Score="1" Text="@gung Just to be clear: so you have changed your opinion since [that comment of yours](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1904/is-it-okay-to-add-the-self-study-tag-through-an-edit-instead-of-asking-op-to-d?noredirect=1&amp;lq=1#comment5190_1904) from Jan 2014, where you said: &quot;I don't have a problem w/ people editing questions to add the [self-study] tag, &amp; I do it myself&quot;? That was the most upvoted comment (8 upvotes, including mine) in that 2014 thread." CreationDate="2016-10-13T16:18:56.613" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11128" PostId="4393" Score="2" Text="It seems I have changed my opinion, @amoeba. In truth, I don't really remember the version here. The rationale for not adding the tag, but having the OP do it, is that (1), it is more likely the OP will be familiar w/ our policies, &amp; (2) a concrete action on the OP's part represents some buy-in from them." CreationDate="2016-10-13T16:54:23.720" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11142" PostId="4393" Score="1" Text="Isn't it a **copyright violation** to do so, and thus the question needs to be removed?" CreationDate="2016-10-14T16:41:02.900" UserId="7828" />
  <row Id="11143" PostId="4393" Score="0" Text="@Anony-Mousse Probably yes, specially if they don't give credits, but does it change the fact that it's a self-study question? For the record I'd add the tag AND flag as off-topic (self study questions motif)" CreationDate="2016-10-14T17:00:55.710" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="11144" PostId="4393" Score="4" Text="@Anony-Mousse: It's not our job as CV users to try to act as some sort of copyright police, but quoting without attribution does contravene our policy on plagiarism." CreationDate="2016-10-14T18:05:33.643" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="11156" PostId="4393" Score="2" Text="The self-study tag was created in response to a discussion at http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1556/should-the-homework-tag-be-deprecated.  It includes a long, useful comment thread which bears on the present question." CreationDate="2016-10-17T15:24:39.853" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="11097" PostId="4397" Score="0" Text="Wow, cool, thanks @whuber. Had I known that, I would have simply pinged you in chat instead of starting this whole meta thread. I imagined it's something that SE admins would have to take care of." CreationDate="2016-10-11T22:40:39.593" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11098" PostId="4397" Score="1" Text="I think you did the right thing, because maybe there are other tags that community members would like to nominate for syntax highlighting.  Meta might be a good place to request it. To avoid cluttering this site with requests, though, consider just flagging any thread that bears the tag you care about and make the suggestion there." CreationDate="2016-10-11T22:42:14.983" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="11099" PostId="4397" Score="0" Text="Can multiple tags be associated with the same language? E.g. [python] is clearly associated with Python, but [scikit-learn] is not associated with it. So I usually edit to add [python] just to make the syntax highlighting work. Would it make sense to associate such package tags (at least the prominent ones) with the respective languages? The same goes e.g. for [r] and [lme4-nlme], etc." CreationDate="2016-10-11T22:46:52.257" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11105" PostId="4397" Score="0" Text="Yes.  But only one language can be associated with any given tag." CreationDate="2016-10-12T12:47:12.727" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="11106" PostId="4397" Score="0" Text="I see. So do you think it's a sensible idea to associate prominent package tags with respective languages?" CreationDate="2016-10-12T13:15:26.597" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11107" PostId="4397" Score="1" Text="Sure! It could be quite a task to go through all our tags looking for those that should be associated with a language, but any time you encounter one that obviously has an associated language, consider raising a flag." CreationDate="2016-10-12T13:23:13.793" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="11114" PostId="4397" Score="0" Text="We could have a meta thread (or partially convert this one) to serve as a dictionary of tags -&gt; languages. I don't know if that appeals (cc @amoeba)." CreationDate="2016-10-12T20:07:34.267" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11235" PostId="4398" Score="14" Text="And a lot of our Python questions are to machine learning what SPSS is to statistics." CreationDate="2016-11-01T13:47:36.993" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="11120" PostId="4400" Score="0" Text="(+1) I can get behind that opinion, it's just that at the time it seemed right to add self-study tag to a question that's obviously fit (as in asking for help in an exercise of a textbook), and flag it at the same time. I flagged it as off-topic (**self-study questions** motif)." CreationDate="2016-10-13T15:25:52.323" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="11121" PostId="4400" Score="0" Text="So the argument is copy-pasted questions aren't self-study in your opinion? While I think they could show some effort, these questions still sound self-study to me." CreationDate="2016-10-13T15:27:22.307" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="11122" PostId="4400" Score="0" Text="The argument is that question can be either `[self-study]` (and on-topic) or copy-and-pasted homework that are off-topic. What would be the reason for tagging the questions that are to be closed as off-topic?" CreationDate="2016-10-13T15:28:37.207" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="11123" PostId="4400" Score="0" Text="They might not be closed if further clarification is added, and the self-study tag would remain there. I often do try to edit and improve questions that I flag to be closed, after all they might not be closed if the person asking makes the effort to clarify the question is the meantime." CreationDate="2016-10-13T15:30:39.607" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="11124" PostId="4400" Score="0" Text="Right. This is the reason why I prompted OP to read the self-study tag info page and adapt his/her question to it (what leads to adding self-study tag). Adding the tag yourself does not solve it. Sorry if you felt rolling your edit as overreacting - I rather wanted to make a point to OP that he/she should read about our policy." CreationDate="2016-10-13T15:35:06.057" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="11129" PostId="4400" Score="0" Text="No need to worry Tim, you and me are just trying to improve the site, no resentment (and for the record it didn't strike me as overreacting, just need clarification here on meta)." CreationDate="2016-10-13T23:05:33.503" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="11131" PostId="4400" Score="0" Text="(In editing your question for style I've tried not to import my own views, which are not identical.)" CreationDate="2016-10-14T11:08:48.393" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11132" PostId="4400" Score="0" Text="@NickCox What *are* your views? Would you perhaps consider writing an alternative answer here? I think we need to try to bring this discussion forwards somehow." CreationDate="2016-10-14T12:30:46.310" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11133" PostId="4400" Score="1" Text="I'm with @Glen_b. Self-study tags should show self-awareness of the kind of question being asked and the expectations attached." CreationDate="2016-10-14T12:56:11.607" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11134" PostId="4400" Score="1" Text="@NickCox I am not sure I understand then why you don't agree with Tim. Tim argues that we should not add [self-study] to other people's questions, which is Glen_b's position too. Also, just to clarify: didn't you have a different opinion [expressed in this 2014 comment](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1904/is-it-okay-to-add-the-self-study-tag-through-an-edit-instead-of-asking-op-to-d?noredirect=1&amp;lq=1#comment5205_1904)?" CreationDate="2016-10-14T13:01:10.960" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11135" PostId="4400" Score="1" Text="@amoeba Ouch. I must have changed my mind. This is politics, not science. I'll vote for anything well argued according to mood." CreationDate="2016-10-14T13:05:09.243" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11145" PostId="4400" Score="1" Text="Just to jump the gun on amoeba finding people holding different opinions in the past, ... if you look hard enough no doubt you can also find me expressing a different opinion to my current one. The fact that a number of us have changed our mind over time should be enough to give us *some* degree of pause here." CreationDate="2016-10-14T21:19:58.583" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11146" PostId="4400" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b: Just to prevent possible misunderstandings: I am certainly not blaming anybody for changing opinions and am not at all implying that this should somehow cast doubt on any of the changed opinions. All of us change opinions sometimes (it'a good thing, not a bad thing). I hope I did not create a different impression. What you mentioned certainly *does* give me a pause. (Perhaps I should say that I personally do not  care much about it either way; I am not active in the [self-study] tag anyway and am not very familiar with its issues.)" CreationDate="2016-10-14T22:33:24.760" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11153" PostId="4400" Score="0" Text="(+1) I have some nuances but found it too long to fit into a comment, hence another answer has been posted. But I like this answer, particularly for the succinctness which eluded me!" CreationDate="2016-10-15T23:56:16.443" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="11161" PostId="4400" Score="0" Text="After reading the comments above, I think we should **pay attention to possible copyright infringement** and resolve this problem by **requiring that the original textbook problem be paraphrased to the extent that it is not an infringement**." CreationDate="2016-10-17T23:19:59.450" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11189" PostId="4400" Score="0" Text="@Carl: Our site policy requires only that quoted material is clearly demarcated as such &amp; a reference supplied attributing it to its author." CreationDate="2016-10-19T15:52:52.993" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="11190" PostId="4400" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi So? The context here is that we do not answer textbook questions entirely, only that we provide guidance. Currently, not only do the students attach images of their textbook questions, they do not admit that it is homework, and they do not cite sources. My point is that we would be better off if they did not ask &quot;What is the SD of {1,2,3,4,5}?&quot; without saying &quot;My teacher stinks and won't teach me. This is from my stupid text but I won't tell you which, etc.&quot; but asked, &quot;How do I calculate the SD of 5 numbers? In specific, I do not understand dividing by 4 under the radical.&quot;" CreationDate="2016-10-19T17:56:10.170" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11195" PostId="4400" Score="1" Text="My point is that we shouldn't be trying to adjudicate or advise on potential copyright infringement by other users. SE has a procedure for copyright holders to assert their copyright &amp; allege infringement; &amp;, presumably, a legal dept competent to decide the appropriate response: this is a quite separate matter from site moderation." CreationDate="2016-10-21T08:57:37.770" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="11197" PostId="4400" Score="0" Text="Anyway, though I agree that it might sometimes be a good approach for a student to post the statistical question suggested by their struggling with an exercise, rather than posting the exercise; sometimes the clue to the solution's in a detail of the wording that the student may not have attached any importance to. I can't see any positive harm in their giving the exercise verbatim &amp; explaining what they've tried &amp; where they're stuck." CreationDate="2016-10-21T15:16:46.647" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="11136" PostId="4402" Score="2" Text="One small difference is that if you add pca as a tag you do not expect the OP to do anything about it but with self-study you do." CreationDate="2016-10-14T15:20:09.970" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="11137" PostId="4402" Score="2" Text="What would you expect OP to do, @mdewey?" CreationDate="2016-10-14T15:24:50.767" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11138" PostId="4402" Score="3" Text="Assuming the OP has not taken the advice in the wiki then to give us that information about progress so far, where stuck, and so on." CreationDate="2016-10-14T15:31:30.087" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="11139" PostId="4402" Score="6" Text="@mdewey: If the OP hasn't taken that advice then their q. should be placed on hold (regardless of whether the self study tag's been applied, &amp; by whom.) +1 to this answer by the way. I'm not very keen on any suggestion that people should be routinely returning to posts to check if simple guidelines have been followed." CreationDate="2016-10-14T15:33:11.133" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="11140" PostId="4402" Score="0" Text="Precisely. I fully agree with @Scortchi." CreationDate="2016-10-14T15:38:53.500" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11141" PostId="4402" Score="2" Text="I agree with both you and @Scortchi so I think I must have expressed myself badly." CreationDate="2016-10-14T16:18:35.870" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="11175" PostId="4402" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi, if the concern is checking back, it seems to me the optimal choice is not to add the tag &amp; vote to close. Voting to close now or checking back later strikes me as orthogonal to whether we should add the tag for the OP, or the OP should add the tag for themselves." CreationDate="2016-10-18T16:03:53.957" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11176" PostId="4402" Score="0" Text="The problem w/ this argument is that the SS tag is not like `[pca]` or any other. Whereas `[pca]` describes the content of what the OP is asking about, SS is a meta tag. The OP isn't asking about SS, they are asking about the content of their HW problem. The SS tag marks the Q as different in character from all others, &amp; to which special conditions apply. The OP adding the tag indicates some minimal familiarity w/ our policies &amp; intention to comply. The question for this thread is whether its better for us to add the tag for them or them to add it for themselves. W/ pca there is no difference." CreationDate="2016-10-18T16:13:04.183" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11191" PostId="4402" Score="1" Text="@gung: Quite agree on the orthogonality of the closing vs leaving open decision &amp; the adding the tag vs prompting the OP to add the tag decision. I had the (mis?)understanding that mdewey was suggesting adding the tag or prompting the OP to add the tag, then waiting to see if they comply with its requirements before doing anything else, which would involve checking back later - [I don't like that idea](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/a/3121/17230)." CreationDate="2016-10-20T10:27:44.100" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="11192" PostId="4402" Score="0" Text="Fair enough, @Scortchi. But I gather amoeba believes [you think the SS tag should be added by others through edits](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/4405/if-rejecting-an-edit-that-adds-the-self-study-tag-what-reason-should-be-given#comment11169_4405)." CreationDate="2016-10-20T14:02:25.110" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11193" PostId="4402" Score="0" Text="@gung That was my impression of Scortchi's opinion, yes (but I would say &quot;could&quot; instead of &quot;should&quot;), because of his +1 to this answer. It would be good if Scortchi clarifies." CreationDate="2016-10-20T14:07:06.947" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11194" PostId="4402" Score="1" Text="@gung: I do think the SS tag *could* be added by others through edits. In the case of a q. that's clearly going to be closed anyway I don't think it matters very much, &amp; you make the good point in your answer that adding it to a closed q. pointlessly moves it to the re-open queue." CreationDate="2016-10-20T14:41:22.230" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="11150" PostId="4403" Score="0" Text="exactly, thanks for the correction." CreationDate="2016-10-15T12:30:17.977" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="11151" PostId="4403" Score="1" Text="Possibly http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1905/what-happens-to-the-bounty-if-theres-no-answer?rq=1 might help you." CreationDate="2016-10-15T12:52:51.003" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="11154" PostId="4404" Score="3" Text="+1. I agree with almost everything here. I understood Tim such that he is against *ever* adding [self-study] tag (as are Glen_b and gung, who both explicitly said so in the comments under OP); that's why I did not upvote his answer. But I certainly agree with him &amp; with everybody else that a copy-pasted exercise without any evidence of reflection is off-topic (under our policy) and should be closed as such. I feel that the main issue under discussion is whether to add a self-study tag for questions that are not off-topic (your bullet #1), at least potentially. And here you and I seem to agree." CreationDate="2016-10-16T00:19:22.043" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11160" PostId="4405" Score="2" Text="I don't see that as the status quo at all. My answer saying that adding self-study is fine in some circumstances is currently the most upvoted one. The second most upvoted one is Silverfish'es answer who also wrote that it's okay (in particular circumstances). There is not *a single* answer claiming that it's never okay (even though some people said it in the comments)." CreationDate="2016-10-17T22:37:08.763" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11163" PostId="4405" Score="0" Text="@amoeba It's surely far from consensus, but it's still the *status quo* imo, as it's based on endorsement from previous threads at meta." CreationDate="2016-10-17T23:37:30.043" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="11164" PostId="4405" Score="1" Text="Heh? Which other threads? All other threads on Meta that I saw unequivocally say that it *is* sometimes allowed to add [self-study]. I cited some of these older threads in my answer. In the previous thread you wrote yourself that it was a &quot;consensus&quot;." CreationDate="2016-10-17T23:38:55.083" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11166" PostId="4405" Score="0" Text="@amoeba That's semantics, really, I don't overthink my posts, I have better things to invest my time. Fact is, [tag:self-study] even mentions we shouldn't add the tag if there's minimal possibility of doubt, that's the *status quo* I meant." CreationDate="2016-10-17T23:49:19.383" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="11169" PostId="4405" Score="4" Text="Well, there is a clear disagreement about this issue even among the moderators (e.g. Glen_b and Scortchi hold opposite opinions), and self-study wiki disagrees with the most upvoted mod answer on Meta (whuber's one), so I am not sure one can talk any about &quot;consensus&quot; or &quot;status quo&quot; here. That's all." CreationDate="2016-10-17T23:55:40.003" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11159" PostId="4406" Score="0" Text="So you don't reject the edit?" CreationDate="2016-10-17T22:25:58.573" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="11165" PostId="4406" Score="0" Text="No I do reject the edit, @Firebug. I just type a custom message for the reason." CreationDate="2016-10-17T23:45:26.237" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11167" PostId="4406" Score="0" Text="So **causes harm** motif? Sorry for my ignorance on this one, I'm not really sure where the message on that prompt ends in." CreationDate="2016-10-17T23:50:25.117" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="11170" PostId="4406" Score="2" Text="@Firebug, I don't know if the list of reasons looks different for you. For me, the last option at the bottom has a text field to supply my own reason. That is the one I use. If it doesn't show up for you, then I suppose I might use *clearly conflicts with author's intent*, I dunno, *causes harm* is probably just as defensible." CreationDate="2016-10-18T00:17:12.567" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11174" PostId="4406" Score="0" Text="Oh, I thought the textbox was associated with the **causes harm** motif, will test anytime a suggested edit appears. Thanks for the input gung!" CreationDate="2016-10-18T15:19:28.793" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="11184" PostId="4406" Score="0" Text="Confirmed, if I try to type in the textbox **causes harm** is automatically selected. You probably have more moderation privileges, or actually yours look like mine. Could you confirm please?" CreationDate="2016-10-18T18:49:09.367" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="11185" PostId="4406" Score="0" Text="I'll have to wait until I get a suggested edit to review, @Firebug." CreationDate="2016-10-18T19:04:00.137" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11186" PostId="4406" Score="1" Text="I can also confirm that the textbox is associated with &quot;causes harm&quot; option @Firebug; this option sounds like an okay choice though. &quot;Causes harm&quot; is rather unspecific, that's why there is a text field to describe how exactly the suggested edit would cause harm." CreationDate="2016-10-19T00:37:13.037" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11187" PostId="4406" Score="1" Text="OK, I saw another suggested edit, @Firebug. It does say **causes harm** by the textbox." CreationDate="2016-10-19T01:25:04.610" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11162" PostId="4407" Score="0" Text="Thanks for the input. That's exactly what I'd do, but I can also see the other argument." CreationDate="2016-10-17T23:24:46.117" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="11168" PostId="4407" Score="2" Text="@Firebug Agreed, and also see my comment above on Copyright infringement. So, I also have more than one opinion on this. This is also a real head-scratch-er for me. My one statistics course 45 years ago was &quot;Intro to stats for mathematicians.&quot;  The rest of whatever little else I know is *actual* self-study. Irony, no?" CreationDate="2016-10-17T23:53:07.140" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11171" PostId="4409" Score="3" Text="That's what happened with [homework] tag on Math.SE: it does not exist anymore -- and neither does any special policy for homework questions (AFAIK). We have had several discussions about it here on Meta and most of the people maintain that it's a good idea for us to maintain this tag and the respective policy, and that stats.SE is sufficiently different from Math.SE to warrant this difference in approaches. What I want to say is that I don't think your suggestion has any chance of going through." CreationDate="2016-10-18T14:27:42.780" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11173" PostId="4409" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, not only Math.SE but also other SE sites I participate such as [GIS SE and SO SE](http://meta.gis.stackexchange.com/questions/3427/should-the-homework-tag-be-deprecated-burninated). It has worked in my opinion." CreationDate="2016-10-18T14:43:28.223" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="11177" PostId="4409" Score="4" Text="The issue w/ Math.SE is that without the HW questions, there are essentially *no* questions. So the HW tag there was effectively equivalent to a `[question]` tag. For us, HW / SS questions are (fortunately) a minority. Eliminating the tag is one option (it is a meta tag, in truth, &amp; the only one we allow), but if we did that we should make all HW-type questions off topic here, whether the OP shows their work &amp; asks for hints or not." CreationDate="2016-10-18T16:18:59.953" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11179" PostId="4409" Score="2" Text="SS is our word for HW-type. They are essentially synonymous here; we changed the name so that it would be nicer-sounding. Our definition is given as a &quot;routine question from a textbook, course, or test used for a class or self-study&quot;." CreationDate="2016-10-18T16:33:49.520" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11180" PostId="4409" Score="0" Text="@gung, I wonder why should we make a SS/HW question off-topic, when it is not unclear, not broad, not opinion-based, not duplicate and does not fail to _indicate clearly at what step help or advice are needed_? I don't see a connection between eliminating the [self-study] tag and making all self-study questions off-topic." CreationDate="2016-10-18T17:11:30.013" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="11181" PostId="4409" Score="0" Text="I don't think they're contradictory. I'm saying they should go together. If we eliminate the SS tag, we should automatically make all SS questions off topic. FTR, I'm OK w/ the status quo, but if we eliminated the tag, that's what we should do." CreationDate="2016-10-18T17:17:54.960" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11183" PostId="4409" Score="1" Text="The tag is part of our protocol for handling these special kinds of questions. It marks them as distinct, not by content, but by character. If we cease to handle these questions specially, in accordance w/ their special nature, we would do best to stop addressing them altogether. I don't want my students getting their HW done here, &amp; I don't want to undermine others' classes in the same manner." CreationDate="2016-10-18T17:43:39.813" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11198" PostId="4409" Score="1" Text="(-1) Despite the tag's [rather inapt name](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/4378/17230), I don't think it does give us trouble. In principle we could keep the policy &amp; ditch the tag - IMO examples of questions we might really want to answer differently according to its presence or absence are few &amp; far between - but in practice it's handy to have a clear indicator (for askers &amp; answerers) of a special use case for CV. As for changing the policy: answerers already have considerable latitude in deciding how much to give away, &amp; when; &amp; I'm sure" CreationDate="2016-10-24T12:03:06.317" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="11199" PostId="4409" Score="1" Text="... no-one is really being hampered in posting any material they think helpful by having to comply with the self-study policy." CreationDate="2016-10-24T12:03:52.977" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="11670" PostId="4409" Score="0" Text="+1 from me. I added the self study tag for a first time user asking his first question.  We discussed the situation of what self study means and how to make his question more acceptable.  The question was put on hold and stayed on hold.  So my editing really didn't help as much as I hoped.  Who is the final arbiter on changes to the system.  I don't think statements like &quot;most of the discussants agreed to keep the tag&quot; really settles the issue." CreationDate="2016-12-29T21:03:33.283" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11201" PostId="4412" Score="8" Text="How strongly are these Qs related to each other? Is it likely that if you have an answer to Q #1 it will, by itself, help you understand Q #2? (I guess you can see where this is going: if yes, then post one #1 and wait to have it clarified; maybe after that you will not need to post #2 at all.)" CreationDate="2016-10-24T14:27:02.450" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11202" PostId="4412" Score="3" Text="If you do include several in one post then please number them (or letter them) to make it easy for people to respond selectively." CreationDate="2016-10-24T15:09:41.113" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="11203" PostId="4412" Score="3" Text="Related: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/3029." CreationDate="2016-10-24T16:00:05.117" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11226" PostId="4412" Score="4" Text="Your consideration of etiquette is much appreciated! However, even from a completely selfish perspective, one factor to consider is how you can use this site most effectively. In this context, it might be wise to post fewer questions at first, and be **adaptive** based on the response you get. For example, as a new user it may take some time to get the hang of crafting &quot;good questions&quot; (i.e. that get a good response). Or perhaps this week the super-user with all your answers is on vacation, but next week will be back!" CreationDate="2016-10-25T22:14:27.183" UserId="127790" />
  <row Id="11204" PostId="4415" Score="2" Text="(i) When I read the title I thought &quot;I haven't heard of the 'Bug Reviewer'  badge -- what's that one for?&quot;. (ii) This might get more traction on meta.SE" CreationDate="2016-10-24T23:57:47.150" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11205" PostId="4415" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b Bug; Reviewer..." CreationDate="2016-10-25T00:01:30.240" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11208" PostId="4415" Score="0" Text="I'd likely have said &quot;Bug$:$ *Reviewer* badge ...&quot;" CreationDate="2016-10-25T00:10:05.330" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11210" PostId="4415" Score="0" Text="Yeah, unfortunately it doesn't work in titles. But you can always do $\textit{Reviewer}$ or `Reviewer`. The point was really about the colon rather than the semi-colon" CreationDate="2016-10-25T00:12:07.617" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11211" PostId="4415" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b Gee, you are fast." CreationDate="2016-10-25T00:13:15.733" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11212" PostId="4415" Score="0" Text="Too much to do to be slow" CreationDate="2016-10-25T00:13:46.267" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11214" PostId="4415" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b BTW, I used a semicolon because it means &quot;that is&quot; as opposed to a colon that means &quot;list&quot; although you are correct in the sense that a colon looks better." CreationDate="2016-10-25T00:15:12.273" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11227" PostId="4415" Score="1" Text="Instead of an update, consider posting an answer quoting the reply you got on meta.SE and then accepting this answer." CreationDate="2016-10-27T20:54:07.973" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11229" PostId="4415" Score="1" Text="@amoeba OK, done. Now, why did I do that? What difference does that make?" CreationDate="2016-10-27T22:56:18.760" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11230" PostId="4415" Score="0" Text="Not much :-) but now the thread is marked green as containing an accepted answer. This is pleasing to the eye." CreationDate="2016-10-28T13:49:12.977" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11206" PostId="4416" Score="0" Text="Yes, I know. But, it annoyed me that it is not consistent. (+1)" CreationDate="2016-10-25T00:04:52.430" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11207" PostId="4416" Score="0" Text="I'm curious to know what happens after I get those last 4 badges I can track. Soon it will be down to three." CreationDate="2016-10-25T00:07:21.933" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11209" PostId="4416" Score="0" Text="Interesting question. I hope it doesn't cause an error. Let me know if you can remember when you get them all." CreationDate="2016-10-25T00:10:23.367" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11213" PostId="4416" Score="0" Text="Are you going for `peer pressure`? That's the one I'm tracking. (It's not clear I'll ever get legendary...)" CreationDate="2016-10-25T00:13:49.963" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11215" PostId="4416" Score="0" Text="@gung So you are. If that question was to me, I had no trouble getting `peer pressure`, all I had to do was try to clarify AIC. Since it is clear as mud to begin with, and there are armed camps within the AIC community, and an anti-BIC sub group, the mud slinging was immediate. Glen_b doesn't seem to have `peer pressure` either. Ah, you haven't lived until your colleagues throw mud at you. Wait one, *colleagues* can I even use that word? I am not a statistician by formal training. Maybe *kindred spirits.*" CreationDate="2016-10-25T00:29:56.387" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11216" PostId="4416" Score="0" Text="@gung Peer pressure is one of the four I can track (I am a single downvote off being able to delete the post in question and get it -- but nobody has given the third downvote on the post in several years. It didn't occur to me that tracking it might act as a signal. I should do that).  I'm just a few edits shy of Illuminator so I have been tracking that. I'll change that shortly. However, you appear to have deleted your few answers with fewer than 0 points so there wouldn't be much point in tracking that one for you." CreationDate="2016-10-25T01:08:01.600" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11217" PostId="4416" Score="1" Text="Carl a lot of people here are from some other area &quot;by formal training&quot; -- including several of our top users (who goes to university to try to be a statistician? Most of us end up there almost by accident). I think there's no issue saying &quot;colleague&quot;." CreationDate="2016-10-25T01:10:34.040" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11218" PostId="4416" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b, itching for a downvote? What post ;-)?" CreationDate="2016-10-25T01:11:43.167" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11219" PostId="4416" Score="0" Text="@gung If you're inclined, you can find it by sorting my answers by votes and going to the last page. It deserves deletion; I only kept it around so that it might get the third downvote first. If you want to get it you have to leave a post with a downvote or two on it undeleted. And then wait. If you delete *all* the posts that garner downvotes there's no way to get -3. Well, outside posting something terrible deliberately I guess, but I can't bring myself to that." CreationDate="2016-10-25T01:14:52.010" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11220" PostId="4416" Score="0" Text="@Carl if there was ever a bug with getting all trackable badges it would have been hit on StackOverflow dozens of times.  My guess is they considered what to do with any empty list when they first wrote it." CreationDate="2016-10-25T01:18:59.363" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11221" PostId="4416" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b, I'm [on record](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/189444/187282) stating that `Peer Pressure` is a badge people shouldn't want to get. But I'm willing to downvote you, if it will make you happy." CreationDate="2016-10-25T01:25:59.313" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11222" PostId="4416" Score="0" Text="@gung Hey, if you deleted that one you could get peer pressure you know... :P .... I wouldn't have thought about it but I had a post on -2 anyway, so I figured there was little harm in waiting to see if someone would delete it. If you find the post worth a downvote, by all means do so, but I'm not going to ask you to (nor even directly link it, though it's easily found); asking for votes - even a single downvote - would be abusive I think." CreationDate="2016-10-25T01:32:58.290" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11223" PostId="4416" Score="0" Text="I have no interest in deleting that (I'm not sure if it works for questions anyway); I put a lot of effort into raising the issue, researching it, laying out my arguments cogently, etc. That clearly isn't valued on MSE. The comments are mostly obnoxious, &amp; the primary answer is a complete non-sequitur. Perhaps someday someone will bother to actually think about what I said, but I'm not holding my breath." CreationDate="2016-10-25T01:37:42.360" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11224" PostId="4416" Score="0" Text="It was meant as a joke (poking fun at myself, in fact); I can see the care that went in." CreationDate="2016-10-25T02:09:15.620" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11225" PostId="4417" Score="2" Text="I don't necessarily have a problem w/ the growth of the number of tags, or having tags that are only applied to a few threads. I think tags should be intrinsically meaningful, have excerpts, &amp; not be duplicates / synonyms. If you think it would be useful, you should make the tag." CreationDate="2016-10-25T19:00:21.990" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11493" PostId="4417" Score="0" Text="So, we promote the identity function for convolution to tag status, but not the identity http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/4440/what-do-you-think-of-the-new-tag-identity. So, we name individual leaves, and ignore their tree. What, I muse, would we do with a whole forest? LOL." CreationDate="2016-11-19T06:38:56.010" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11233" PostId="4420" Score="0" Text="How many user hours per day are put into question quality?  How do you measure the value of &quot;the amount of marginal benefit it would provide&quot;?" CreationDate="2016-10-31T15:15:14.880" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="11236" PostId="4421" Score="2" Text="Is the question at issue `[self-study]`? Can you link to the question?" CreationDate="2016-11-01T16:06:30.343" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11237" PostId="4421" Score="0" Text="Oops, forgot to add the link. The question here isn't self-study and it is debatable now if a direct answer wouldn't have been better here. But in general: does such a 'Socratic approach' belong in the comments or in the chat?" CreationDate="2016-11-01T16:11:34.077" UserId="135069" />
  <row Id="11245" PostId="4421" Score="1" Text="A few guiding comments can be useful in particular circumstances (e.g. where you feel that the best answer might come from the asker), but outside of self-study (which is really for that kind of question - and which the linked question probably should be seen as) it's probably not the usual case. However, when it turns into an extended one-on-one it's heading more into &quot;chat item&quot; territory. The aim should be to end up with some form of answer, either from the OP or from the person giving guidance and hints (or failing that, from a third party)." CreationDate="2016-11-01T20:57:05.807" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11275" PostId="4421" Score="1" Text="+1 for asking; but my opinion is you shouldn't,because comments were designed to be temporary: i) they clutter the site (visually and statistically, the latter because some questions end up getting answered within comments leaving the Q officially unanswered), ii) remove attention from answers; and iii) can't be downvoted. It is much more important that a Q/A to be helpful for a broad set of the community than a specific user. The Stack Exchange site is about building a high quality repository of information, so we generally don't want to fragment it." CreationDate="2016-11-04T14:31:22.470" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="11276" PostId="4421" Score="0" Text="If one still wants to provide a step by step approach the chat would be more appropriate, because the **process** of getting there would be very specific to OP, not the community." CreationDate="2016-11-04T14:33:09.863" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="11238" PostId="4422" Score="4" Text="I agree with this. Such comments shouldn't be in chat, they should be in the comments to the question. FWIW, I don't usually &quot;clean up&quot; the comments afterwards; I leave them as a permanent record of the process." CreationDate="2016-11-01T16:35:50.567" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11239" PostId="4422" Score="2" Text="@gung: I don't usually clean them up either - I was thinking in this case that if dimpol or the OP is going to write an answer it might consist of an idealized account of the process (no need to trawl through correction of typos &amp; c.). But I was forgetting that only mods can see deleted comments, or even that comments have been deleted - so it's probably best to avoid giving the impression that [tag:self-study] questions should be answered straight off." CreationDate="2016-11-01T16:48:41.943" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="11240" PostId="4422" Score="0" Text="OK, given dimpol's special circumstance (not SS), it makes more sense." CreationDate="2016-11-01T16:59:09.373" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11241" PostId="4422" Score="0" Text="FWIW, around the time you posted this answer, all the comments in the linked thread have been &quot;moved to chat&quot; by whuber. Cc to @gung." CreationDate="2016-11-01T18:41:39.000" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11242" PostId="4422" Score="1" Text="@amoeba, I think the chat room gets frozen over time, but isn't deleted. So there is still some sense of a 'permanent record'. It's just less immediately visible to future visitors (which isn't quite as good, IMO)." CreationDate="2016-11-01T18:57:40.490" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11243" PostId="4422" Score="2" Text="I've often been reluctant to move to chat, on various grounds: (1) if the discussion gets that long, it's typically unlikely that the discussion will converge at all (e.g. one or more parties remains stubborn on some point or other)  (2) the discussion becomes much less visible and usually degenerates into a chat between two people. My disinclination is sometimes over-ruled by moderators, but a lengthy series of comments -- even if it doesn't converge -- often shows aspects of a thread not summarized or developed in any answer." CreationDate="2016-11-01T20:34:16.347" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11244" PostId="4422" Score="0" Text="I agree with this answer, including the deleted parts... Sometimes there's comments that are less useful to later readers (or later become less useful in the light of the discussion's development). I think comments should be tidied up wherever, and as far as it makes sense to do so, for the discussion to be folded into an answer (or the outline of an answer, where it makes sense to continue to only give guidance and hints)." CreationDate="2016-11-01T20:53:40.777" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11251" PostId="4423" Score="3" Text="This is just to mention that &quot;your&quot; answers can include others' edits. Perhaps this is usually a trivial complication, but not always." CreationDate="2016-11-02T16:20:59.990" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11253" PostId="4423" Score="2" Text="Also, how is anyone to prove that they are the author?! Matthew looks pretty identifiable, and so am I, but there are many pseudonyms or single names here that look utterly ambiguous,  A quick scroll through users with highest reputation suggests that the fraction is of the order of a half. I suppose that being coy about who you are -- perfectly allowed, and a few times I've regretted laying myself open to emails from helpless people -- goes with not wanting to claim posts as your intellectual property in any sense. People give freely, in short." CreationDate="2016-11-02T18:37:20.800" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11268" PostId="4423" Score="0" Text="An interesting question is whether you can sell your answers. For instance, you put them all into a book, publish and sell it on amazon. Or use an idea to build a product, and sell it. Or use other people's posts to build services and products and sell them. etc." CreationDate="2016-11-03T13:33:36.410" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="11277" PostId="4423" Score="0" Text="Good question. The responses provided seem to allow a wide leeway in how you choose to use your content but waffle on the specific question of ownership, specifically wrt anonymous posts. Another grey area is the use and/or quotation of posts external to SE. So, for instance, is an anonymous contributor to SE required to quote for attribution a post made anonymously on another blog when incorporating that external post into an SE response?" CreationDate="2016-11-04T18:34:51.110" UserId="78229" />
  <row Id="11401" PostId="4423" Score="0" Text="@Aksakal: See [A book using some of our content?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/2931/17230)." CreationDate="2016-11-12T19:47:41.753" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="11402" PostId="4423" Score="0" Text="@DJohnson: (1) Bear in mind I'm a statistician, not a lawyer, but on reading the terms of service I came across nothing that I could imagine being construed as agreeing to transfer to SE the copyright of anything I posted. And, where I live at any rate, anonymous &amp; pseudonymous writings are covered by copyright. (2) &quot;Is an anonymous contributor to SE required to quote for attribution a post made anonymously on another blog when incorporating that external post into an SE response?&quot; - Yes.  A sufficient reason is that other users will ..." CreationDate="2016-11-12T20:15:30.480" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="11403" PostId="4423" Score="0" Text="... typically have no means of confirming an alleged identity of posters on different websites. And as I said to @NIckCox, it's a courtesy to readers - they may be interested in looking up the original context (just as  when the writers are different). I really can't think of any arguments against the requirement. (Whether the blog requires attribution, or indeed allows re-use at all, of course depends on the terms according to which material is submitted to it.)" CreationDate="2016-11-12T20:16:15.643" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="11413" PostId="4423" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi, I don't know how to feel about this" CreationDate="2016-11-13T01:02:29.263" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="11414" PostId="4423" Score="0" Text="@scortchi  Thanks for your response. Based on the range of answers, it sounds like there is a lot of latitude in how one can choose to deal with attribution, i.e., there are no hard and fast rules as to how attribution -- particularly anonymous -- is &quot;enforced,&quot; if it's enforced at all. To me, this is a statement about the blurry nature of online publishing and is obviously *quite* different from how citations and references for attribution are handled in scientific, peer-reviewed outlets." CreationDate="2016-11-13T20:01:19.923" UserId="78229" />
  <row Id="11247" PostId="4424" Score="0" Text="Thanks. I was curious whether my charitable contribution of writing answers goes in the public domain or is actually going into some company's privately owned portfolio. :P" CreationDate="2016-11-01T23:01:03.980" UserId="97925" />
  <row Id="11248" PostId="4424" Score="11" Text="@Matthew  *Neither*. The Creative Commons license isn't placing it in the public domain (which would allow anyone to use it for essentially any purpose in any manner they like), but it allows people to use it if they follow the license (which is roughly along the lines of recognizing your authorship and requiring people using text that's quoting you to do the same). It's *better* than placing it in the public domain (because it protects it) but makes it available to others. (The information about user contributions being under creative commons is actually at the bottom of this very page.)" CreationDate="2016-11-02T03:49:49.063" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11249" PostId="4424" Score="6" Text="But (having asked about it myself), the thinking at StackExchange seems to be that your own stuff is still yours to use, without expecting you to quote the license -- it's a requirement they place on us when we use *other* people's stuff. So if you wanted to write a book with some of your own text in it, it seems you wouldn't have to quote the licence -- but that wouldn't extinguish the licence that already exists, so other people could still use the text you wrote here because you granted a licence when you posted it (as part of your agreement with StackExchange)." CreationDate="2016-11-02T03:51:32.583" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11250" PostId="4424" Score="3" Text="A while back they said they would change to a similar license that they felt would work better for us (I don't see how the proposal would make any substantive difference to StackExchange, so I believe the claim that it was intended to make things better for us in some way, though I don't recall the details) but there were a number of objections to various aspects of the proposal and that intended change is currently on hold, apparently for an indefinite period." CreationDate="2016-11-02T04:04:18.840" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11254" PostId="4424" Score="5" Text="A license is an exemption to copyright that the copyright owner grants.  When you license your work to someone else (e.g. Stack Overflow via CC by-sa), you give them permission to use it under certain circumstances.  You are still the copyright owner, so you can give anyone else permission to use it in any other way, including yourself." CreationDate="2016-11-03T00:59:58.647" UserId="37067" />
  <row Id="11252" PostId="4425" Score="1" Text="I think this is relevant http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/183407/how-does-the-twitter-bot-work" CreationDate="2016-11-02T16:56:02.260" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11255" PostId="4426" Score="2" Text="Why do you say it's not off-topic? - what's the statistical aspect of the question? It does *seem* to be just a coding question." CreationDate="2016-11-03T08:40:43.250" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="11256" PostId="4426" Score="0" Text="`seaborn` is used to visualize your results, same as `ggplot` in `R`." CreationDate="2016-11-03T08:49:27.847" UserId="67447" />
  <row Id="11257" PostId="4426" Score="0" Text="Thus, it as &quot;off-topic&quot; as all of these results : http://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=ggplot" CreationDate="2016-11-03T08:50:33.917" UserId="67447" />
  <row Id="11258" PostId="4426" Score="5" Text="Well, many of the posts returned by your search have indeed been closed for being off-topic. Many merely illustrate something using  `ggplot`, without being *about* it. Others have a statistical aspect to them, &amp; others were posted when our site policy was different. I'd imagine you could find *some* recent ones that are just coding questions if you looked, just as you could find some unclear or overly broad questions. The help page says &quot;if it needs statistical expertise to understand or answer, ask it here&quot; - else SO or ..." CreationDate="2016-11-03T09:08:01.280" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="11260" PostId="4426" Score="2" Text="... [one of these sites](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/793/17230) is appropriate. This one will be fine for SO, I think, if a [minimal complete verifiable example](http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve) is added." CreationDate="2016-11-03T09:10:29.550" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="11261" PostId="4426" Score="2" Text="@amoeba: You'll notice some are already locked: &quot;This question exists because it has historical significance, but it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site, so please do not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here. This question and its answers are frozen and cannot be changed.&quot; Others should be closed for other reasons - e.g. http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/209407/17230, which the OP never made clear enough for us to tell if there was a statistical issue in there." CreationDate="2016-11-03T09:17:14.687" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="11262" PostId="4426" Score="0" Text="Seriously? there is a tag `ggplot2`, that is very active, with almost exclusively visualization related questions" CreationDate="2016-11-03T10:25:53.663" UserId="67447" />
  <row Id="11263" PostId="4426" Score="0" Text="http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/ggplot2" CreationDate="2016-11-03T10:25:59.573" UserId="67447" />
  <row Id="11264" PostId="4426" Score="0" Text="I can't see why visualization questions by `python` users who are using `matplotlib` or `seaborn` should be off topic in `cross-validated`" CreationDate="2016-11-03T10:29:03.430" UserId="67447" />
  <row Id="11265" PostId="4426" Score="4" Text="The general policy is set out here http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic (see **Programming**)." CreationDate="2016-11-03T10:47:55.470" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11266" PostId="4426" Score="0" Text="&quot;data visualization&quot; is listed there, whether you consider &quot;data visualization tools&quot; as &quot;on-topic&quot; or  &quot;off-topic&quot; is not my concern. However you should be consistent with `R` tools as well as `python` tools, and this is clearly not the case." CreationDate="2016-11-03T10:57:21.943" UserId="67447" />
  <row Id="11267" PostId="4426" Score="3" Text="That's the policy. It's hard to answer an assertion based on a personal impression that it's not being followed consistently  I can assure you from personal experience that many people with voting powers try to follow it. I have very often voted to close R-focused questions as off-topic." CreationDate="2016-11-03T12:30:28.697" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11269" PostId="4426" Score="2" Text="Not your question, but the original question is unclear any way: where on a box plot do missing values belong???" CreationDate="2016-11-03T13:53:34.973" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12664" PostId="4429" Score="0" Text="As Nick mentioned in the comments on the question, this license is granted *from all contributors* to a question/answer. You have copyright of your contributions only. So you can't license any of your content that has been edited by other people to a third party under a different license (but you can license the original, un-edited content)." CreationDate="2017-03-02T01:10:55.387" UserId="9007" />
  <row Id="11278" PostId="4430" Score="1" Text="You can find out most of these things by accepting an answer to one of your own questions and exploring the options that entail." CreationDate="2016-11-04T19:05:12.617" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="11279" PostId="4430" Score="0" Text="@whuber  I accepted an answer to a question I asked and no additional options appeared. Would it be possible for you to be more specific as to what these options are and how they address this question?" CreationDate="2016-11-04T19:25:09.943" UserId="78229" />
  <row Id="11280" PostId="4430" Score="1" Text="Simply click on the same acceptance tick again." CreationDate="2016-11-04T19:29:07.463" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11281" PostId="4430" Score="0" Text="@amoeba  Apologies for being a pest but &quot;simply clicking&quot; on the acceptance tick generates a pop-up label which says, more or less, &quot;click again to undo&quot; the acceptance. It must be the case that, as a moderator, your pop-ups are more informative than mine as my pop-up addresses none of my questions." CreationDate="2016-11-04T19:34:02.580" UserId="78229" />
  <row Id="11282" PostId="4430" Score="0" Text="No problem in asking (I am *not* a moderator, by the way). Pop-up label should appear if you mouse over the acceptance tick. If you *click* on it, it will undo the acceptance, exactly as it says in the pop-up label. Does it not work for you? You click and click and nothing happens?" CreationDate="2016-11-04T19:40:09.070" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11283" PostId="4430" Score="0" Text="@amoeba  Sure, it undoes the acceptance but does this address my questions? Unless with this demonstration, you're suggesting that the OP retains total control over the acceptance of a response and no one else can exercise this option?" CreationDate="2016-11-04T19:49:26.957" UserId="78229" />
  <row Id="11284" PostId="4430" Score="4" Text="Your question is formulated such that I was under impression that you do not know how to undo the acceptance. Now you say &quot;sure it undoes the acceptance&quot;. I guess I have misunderstood your question. As to your last question in the comment: clearly as only OP can accept an answer, only OP can undo the acceptance (and yes, it can be done any time and any number of times)." CreationDate="2016-11-04T19:52:37.567" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11285" PostId="4430" Score="0" Text="@amoeba  Ah! Now it's clear. Thanks." CreationDate="2016-11-04T19:54:43.113" UserId="78229" />
  <row Id="11286" PostId="4430" Score="0" Text="@amoeba  After some thought, I'm still confused insofar as I've seen my questions accepted by people other than myself. How is it, then, that &quot;only&quot; the OP can accept and/or undo an answer if people other than myself have accepted an answer to a question I posed?" CreationDate="2016-11-04T20:27:35.670" UserId="78229" />
  <row Id="11287" PostId="4430" Score="2" Text="This is not possible. You cannot have seen it." CreationDate="2016-11-04T20:33:15.250" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11288" PostId="4430" Score="0" Text="@amoeba  Ok...if you say so. I don't have a specific example in support of this observation but will try to keep this issue in mind going forward in the extremely unlikely event, assuming you are correct, that it happens again." CreationDate="2016-11-04T20:37:19.610" UserId="78229" />
  <row Id="11289" PostId="4430" Score="2" Text="Well - everything can happen - but if you do encounter it, it's a bug, so certainly do report it as such." CreationDate="2016-11-04T20:43:45.810" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11290" PostId="4430" Score="1" Text="Even moderators cannot accept questions on behalf of others.  I am curious what you might be referring to, since you have asked few questions and (until today) accepted none of them--could you be talking about experiences on other sites?  Maybe they weren't SE sites?" CreationDate="2016-11-04T23:14:30.763" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="11291" PostId="4430" Score="0" Text="@whuber  Ah! So you noticed that I accepted Mpitkas' response as the answer *today* here ... http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/205386/pooled-time-series-models-and-hac-residuals  This is what I'm referring to, someone other than me &quot;checked&quot; his response as the answer several months ago. It was only today that I also &quot;checked&quot; it as the correct response." CreationDate="2016-11-04T23:37:44.130" UserId="78229" />
  <row Id="11292" PostId="4430" Score="0" Text="I can confirm, based on personal observation, that earlier today (when I posted the first comment) that question did *not* have an accepted answer.  The timeline shows that an answer was first accepted four hours ago." CreationDate="2016-11-04T23:44:37.187" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="11293" PostId="4430" Score="0" Text="@whuber  Ok...what did the green checkmark next to Mpitkas' response *prior* to my accepting it as an answer indicate?" CreationDate="2016-11-04T23:58:06.913" UserId="78229" />
  <row Id="11294" PostId="4430" Score="0" Text="Are you really sure it was green?  (Unless someone took a screen shot earlier, there's no way we can really tell...)" CreationDate="2016-11-05T00:00:15.610" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="11295" PostId="4430" Score="0" Text="@whuber  &quot;We can tell&quot; indicating a question as to the reliability of my observation? It was green but more to the point, doesn't a checkmark of any color indicate acceptance of a response?" CreationDate="2016-11-05T00:02:25.133" UserId="78229" />
  <row Id="11296" PostId="4430" Score="0" Text="I don't question the reliability of your observation, but only make a comment about the impossibility of independently confirming it now. I did not actually look at the thread--I only looked at the summary page of your user profile, which clearly indicated you had *not* accepted any of the questions you had asked. I accept the possibility that when the system presented the actual page with the thread to you, it could have shown a green check next to the only answer. I do not see how anyone could take any useful action based on your recollection, except to watch for such behavior in the future." CreationDate="2016-11-05T00:10:01.753" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="11297" PostId="4430" Score="0" Text="@whuber  Mpitkas' answer was checked long before I formally accepted it today. Doesn't a check *of any color* next to a response indicate it's acceptance as the answer? Someone other than me made this check. Does this contradict the statements made by both you and Amoeba that this is &quot;impossible.&quot;" CreationDate="2016-11-05T00:24:36.357" UserId="78229" />
  <row Id="11298" PostId="4430" Score="4" Text="A green check is only supposed to appear next to an answer if the *asker* clicks to accept it. Nobody else normally *has* any way to do it other than the asker (well, the site admins could literally alter the database, but they won't, at least not for this). It's not supposed to happen and I've never seen it happen. I will hold some doubt about the accuracy of your recollection, since the most likely explanation is that you're mistaken in some fashion (whether seeing the grey tick as green or seeing an upvote as a tick or seeing some other tick on another question and confusing the two, ...ctd" CreationDate="2016-11-05T01:10:49.743" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11299" PostId="4430" Score="4" Text="ctd..  or in some other manner).  If it had ever been accepted prior to 5 hours ago, it should show on the timeline. It doesn't. The timeline is the nearest thing we have to a complete, accurate record of what actually happened, and the most likely explanation is that what the timeline shows is what happened (i.e. that it was not previously accepted until you recently did it). There are other possibilities (such as some previously unencountered bug) but they're relatively unlikely in this instance." CreationDate="2016-11-05T01:13:22.690" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11303" PostId="4432" Score="0" Text="+1. You chose an interesting example for your exhibit #2." CreationDate="2016-11-05T22:48:27.157" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11304" PostId="4432" Score="0" Text="Yeah, a little unusual I suppose, @amoeba. I just searched for questions w/ 2 answers &amp; an accepted one. This is just the first one that met my needs." CreationDate="2016-11-06T00:23:39.143" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11306" PostId="4432" Score="0" Text="Interesting. I am the OP on this thread and just checked an existing checkmark to your response. The checkmark immediately went from grey to green on my screen. However, based on your comments, I don't see an explanation as to why a checkmark appeared next to your answer *at all* and, specifically, in the absence of any activity from me, the OP. In other words, how does a checkmark appear when an OP hasn't indicated, one way or the other, that a response represents the answer?" CreationDate="2016-11-06T16:56:34.513" UserId="78229" />
  <row Id="11307" PostId="4432" Score="0" Text="@DJohnson, only the OP can ever see the gray check mark. Others will see nothing (when the check mark is gray for the OP), or a green check (when the OP clicks it). No check mark should be visible to others until the OP has accepted an answer." CreationDate="2016-11-06T18:20:50.910" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11308" PostId="4432" Score="0" Text="@gung  Ok...why is there *ever* a checkmark of any color prior to an OP accepting a response? How does this happen?" CreationDate="2016-11-06T18:49:54.420" UserId="78229" />
  <row Id="11309" PostId="4432" Score="2" Text="@DJohnson, for those who are not the OP, there should never be a check mark visible until the OP accepted an answer. For the OP, the gray check mark is there as an option you can select (even if you've already accepted an answer, because you can always switch)." CreationDate="2016-11-06T19:30:46.983" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11310" PostId="4432" Score="0" Text="@gung  Ah! So, it's automatically added. Why? The logic behind this fails me, particularly when there are multiple responses." CreationDate="2016-11-06T19:42:47.280" UserId="78229" />
  <row Id="11311" PostId="4432" Score="0" Text="@DJohnson, I'm really not following these questions. I don't know what you mean by &quot;added&quot;. The check mark becomes visible to others after the OP clicks it. Otherwise it's invisible except to the OP. I don't know what &quot;multiple responses&quot; you are referring to." CreationDate="2016-11-06T20:01:26.483" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11312" PostId="4432" Score="1" Text="Gung, I think @DJohnson is asking why there is a grey checkmark visible to OP near every answer (i.e. why it is &quot;automatically added&quot; to &quot;multiple&quot; answers). The reply to this is that this is the user interface of StackExchange; grey check mark shows to the OP that it can potentially be clicked and turned into a green check mark. I never thought that it can be confusing, but apparently it can." CreationDate="2016-11-06T20:04:34.983" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11313" PostId="4432" Score="0" Text="@gung  Sorry, I thought these questions were clear. Suppose a question receives a single answer. If I'm understanding you correctly, a &quot;check&quot; is placed next to this answer that is visible *only* to the OP. If (and only if) the OP checks this single response as the &quot;correct&quot; response, this turns a grey check to green. As amoeba notes, this is now clear to me. My followup question (above) concerns the situation where a question receives multiple answers. Does each of these responses get a grey checkmark visible to the OP, pending the OPs selection of the &quot;correct&quot; response?" CreationDate="2016-11-06T20:08:06.107" UserId="78229" />
  <row Id="11314" PostId="4432" Score="4" Text="@DJohnson, I see. (FWIW, I don't think of someone &quot;placing&quot; the check marks beside answers--the checks are just there automatically as part of the site design.) If there are multiple answers, there will be multiple [gray] checks next to them, just as there are multiple vote totals w/ up- &amp; downvote normal pdfs even if no one has voted on any of the answers yet." CreationDate="2016-11-06T20:15:03.320" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11423" PostId="4432" Score="1" Text="@DJohnson It is simply this: The grey check marks are &quot;buttons&quot; for the asker to click on, so that the asker has a means to accept an answer. They must be visible to the asker so they know *where to click* to accept this answer. Every answer you get on a question comes with a grey check mark so you can accept that answer. The check marks remain after you have accepted one so you can change your mind (grey check marks are still &quot;buttons&quot; you can click on). .... [the word *check* in this context is not idiomatic for my version of English but I used it for consistency with the foregoing]" CreationDate="2016-11-14T22:15:57.150" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11424" PostId="4432" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b, you don't call that thing a &quot;check mark&quot;? What do you call it?" CreationDate="2016-11-14T22:17:51.330" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11427" PostId="4432" Score="0" Text="@gung A [tick](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E2%9C%93#Usage_notes) ( Also see [here](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tick#Noun_2) -- item 5). And [here](http://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/67697/tick-vs-check-the-box)." CreationDate="2016-11-14T23:14:28.763" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11428" PostId="4432" Score="0" Text="Hmmm, how odd. I would use the phrase &quot;tick marks&quot; to mean what [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tally_marks#Clustering) evidently calls *tally marks* (far left), @Glen_b." CreationDate="2016-11-14T23:27:44.417" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11301" PostId="4433" Score="8" Text="I have just made them synonyms.  [tag:zero-inflation] was far more popular than [tag:zero-inflated], so I made the former the target (that is, the default value)." CreationDate="2016-11-05T20:21:00.907" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="11305" PostId="4433" Score="5" Text="Wow, fast turnaround, @whuber. Could you take a look at our [Current tag synonym candidates](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/1200/7290) thread &amp; see if there is anything actionable there? We still have `[unbalanced]` &amp; `[imbalanced]`, eg." CreationDate="2016-11-06T00:31:09.470" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11320" PostId="4436" Score="10" Text="Confession: one time I clicked on close in the review queue &amp; there were four separate reasons checked. I actually agreed w/ one of the checked reasons, but I clicked the remaining unchecked reason for the novelty of it. (I don't recommend that as an ongoing practice, of course.)" CreationDate="2016-11-07T16:11:50.290" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11329" PostId="4439" Score="0" Text="Thanks for the extra info about the majority. I accepted Nick's to close the question but yours was also helpful in reassuring me." CreationDate="2016-11-08T15:54:16.510" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="11339" PostId="4439" Score="0" Text="@mdewey If I asked it, I'd have accepted Nick's answer as well." CreationDate="2016-11-08T22:19:22.670" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11323" PostId="4440" Score="4" Text="Personally, I do not see how this tag should be useful or helpful. Do you intend to create [equality], [inequality], [formula], [expression] as well?" CreationDate="2016-11-08T08:46:22.810" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11330" PostId="4440" Score="1" Text="@amoeba Summarizing, you do not find `identity` to be an unusually important concept, nor do you differentiate `identity` from the other search terms you mockingly put forward.  I do not intend to create `equality`, `inequality`, `formula`, or `expression`. The importance of identities has become more apparent to me the more I have explored hitherto uncharacterized distributions and physically relevant novel statistical physics. I would suggest that if you were to do likewise, you would understand better why I hold identities in high esteem." CreationDate="2016-11-08T16:31:24.673" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11331" PostId="4440" Score="0" Text="Well, I'd say let's wait and see if people are going to support your new tag. Until then I'd suggest you do not do much re-tagging." CreationDate="2016-11-08T16:37:55.817" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11333" PostId="4440" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Not at all. My thought was &quot;Wow, how many important identities there are in statistics, for example for expected value; we should have a tag for that; it would be very useful.&quot; I am not trying to convince you. Each to his own." CreationDate="2016-11-08T16:46:56.847" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11334" PostId="4440" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Sorry, I put the tag on the main site. My creating it on the Meta site was carelessness on my part." CreationDate="2016-11-08T16:48:59.157" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11335" PostId="4440" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I took `identity` off the Meta site" CreationDate="2016-11-08T16:50:03.517" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11337" PostId="4440" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Why do you not answer that you do not like the tag, so I can vote it down?" CreationDate="2016-11-08T19:37:22.263" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11338" PostId="4440" Score="3" Text="Like @amoeba, I don't see any value in having an `[identity]` tag. One thing that might help is if you made a tag excerpt for it. It isn't remotely clear to me what the tag is supposed to be for, or how to decide if it picks out anything of value about a question. Is the idea that it should be on any thread that includes an equals sign?" CreationDate="2016-11-08T21:18:23.420" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11344" PostId="4440" Score="0" Text="@gung Hardly. I gave an example in the question. I find it astounding that I am getting so little support on this. This tag already exists on the http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/identity?sort=newest&amp;days=30, was used 5 times this month on that site and also has no description on that site. Why? It is obvious to a student mathematician (the http://math.stackexchange.com/ site is not http://mathoverflow.net/; the professional site) what it is and why it is so important. I can make a tag description here, only if our site expresses a student's level appreciation of the identity." CreationDate="2016-11-09T20:37:38.177" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11345" PostId="4440" Score="0" Text="@gung I put in more information about identities in my question. Seriously, if all one does with statistics is learn what others have done, then 90% of the fun goes la-la. The real fun is making up completely new stuff, and for that you need identities." CreationDate="2016-11-09T21:17:18.067" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11346" PostId="4440" Score="0" Text="Re Math.SE: the [identity] tag there was used 5 times *ever*; it seems it's a stray tag that was only created this month, perhaps accidentally. It lacks a tag description *not* because its meaning is obvious for users of that site but because it's a tag that nobody cares about (and nobody cared to create until this month)." CreationDate="2016-11-09T21:34:14.550" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11347" PostId="4440" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Well, it was not I who created it. And if it were a &quot;stray&quot; tag, which I take to be mean something like &quot;lost doggie,&quot; it would not be finding usage at all. Seriously, do you so little development work that you do not need to find identities as one of your most helpful activities? I would think that someone of your high reputation would be automatically supportive of this. I am disappointed, a bit, nothing I will lose sleep over, but still." CreationDate="2016-11-09T21:42:37.130" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11348" PostId="4440" Score="0" Text="The problem with this tag is simply that its scope is unclear, as @gung wrote. For example, we don't have a [theorem] tag; nobody will say that theorems are not helpful -- of course they are. But a [theorem] tag would be too unspecific, would have an unclear scope, and so it does not exist. I think the same can be said about [identity]." CreationDate="2016-11-09T21:49:11.383" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11349" PostId="4440" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I agree with you, I wouldn't suggest a `theorem` tag either, just an `identity` tag. Theorems are not something I would search for, but equivalent things I would note. My reason for this is that proofs are intuitive, if you know the rather non-intuitive identities you will need to make them, and if you do not, then you will be stuck like a plum in pudding. Identities are an organizational heading for functions on Wikipedia, Mathematica and most sites where math is to be used creatively. They are listed because the odds of coming up with one by accident or intent is small." CreationDate="2016-11-09T22:01:16.917" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11350" PostId="4440" Score="2" Text="As a general rule, *every* tag should have an excerpt, no matter how obvious it seems to you. If you create a tag, you should add an excerpt. Consider that novice users will possibly end up adding `[identity]` on questions like 'how to add an ID variable to my panel data since it's in long format', or some such." CreationDate="2016-11-09T22:05:27.420" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11351" PostId="4440" Score="0" Text="@gung OK, I have made one. It is now &quot;under review,&quot; since, for whatever reason, I do not have the authority to do that without review. If you have any other suggestions or comments, please do not hesitate to communicate them. I am keeping in mind that we are all trying to make thing better." CreationDate="2016-11-10T00:08:01.710" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11352" PostId="4440" Score="0" Text="Thanks, that's a real improvement. No one can edit tag wikis w/o going through the review until their rep is &gt;20k, or they are elected as a moderator." CreationDate="2016-11-10T00:39:28.837" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11369" PostId="4440" Score="2" Text="The excerpt is helpful, so I'll remove my downvote." CreationDate="2016-11-10T14:04:15.420" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11463" PostId="4440" Score="1" Text="&quot;An identity is a generally non-intuitive equivalence between two mathematical expressions.&quot; This excerpt definitely helps a lot." CreationDate="2016-11-16T18:50:28.953" UserId="92235" />
  <row Id="11464" PostId="4440" Score="2" Text="But I am still not 100% convinced...I somehow agree with @amoeba, that the concrete, complete scope of this tag would seem unclear to me." CreationDate="2016-11-16T18:53:55.507" UserId="92235" />
  <row Id="11342" PostId="4441" Score="3" Text="Self-plagiarism is, in my view, a misnomer. There are plenty of contexts where repeating material is not considered acceptable, and other contexts where it is fine. As a teacher I don't expect anything difficult to be obvious on one explanation. As a researcher I am disconcerted if I come across the same paper in different journals. But as a researcher  too I find it difficult to write another paper on a topic without some repetition. These are difficult areas, but the term &quot;self-plagiarism&quot; doesn't help, because there is no question of stealing your own property." CreationDate="2016-11-09T18:50:42.480" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11343" PostId="4441" Score="1" Text="To the point here, anything I have written on CV is to me fair game for inclusion in a paper. Does anyone think a reference to CV is compulsory?" CreationDate="2016-11-09T18:52:05.800" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11394" PostId="4441" Score="2" Text="@NickCox: I was reading a book only last night in which the author, in a footnote, pointed out sections that were extracted almost verbatim from his previous writings &amp; where to find them. I think that's simply a courtesy to readers, &amp; usual practice. Of course there's not the need for the same care in distinguishing quoted material from new material when the words are all your own. (My understanding, though, is that in this case a reference to CV wouldn't be *compulsory* under the terms of the licence.)" CreationDate="2016-11-11T13:20:14.233" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="11395" PostId="4441" Score="2" Text="@Scortchi I vote for courtesy too. An orthogonal dimension is that some reviewers of scientific journals might react negatively to any idea that one was just writing up postings from the internet, regardless of any merits of clarity, cogency or originality. The positive converse is that many postings here, especially from esteemed moderators, are much higher in quality than much peer-reviewed and formally published material on the same topics." CreationDate="2016-11-11T13:37:18.627" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11325" PostId="4442" Score="0" Text="Here? $\quad\quad$" CreationDate="2016-11-08T13:40:31.360" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11326" PostId="4442" Score="0" Text="@amoeba - how would I know that? That is cool, and I will start asking my question here.  How many formatting related questions are asked here?  It isn't something that I have seen, seen a link for, or seen a tag for." CreationDate="2016-11-08T13:45:28.640" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="11327" PostId="4442" Score="2" Text="E.g. http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/math-display or http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/formatting" CreationDate="2016-11-08T13:50:09.773" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11328" PostId="4442" Score="0" Text="I am surprised that there are only ~30-ish questions ever on those topics.  Thanks amoeba.  That answers the question.  I will ask here in meta, but without being an advanced user (I'm not) or without being an asker of strange questions (I'm that), I would never have known where to go." CreationDate="2016-11-08T13:56:44.290" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="11340" PostId="4442" Score="2" Text="For additional help with MathJax (besides just reading help on LaTeX I guess), math's meta offers [this tutorial &amp; quick reference](http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/5020/mathjax-basic-tutorial-and-quick-reference#)" CreationDate="2016-11-08T22:24:00.173" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11491" PostId="4442" Score="1" Text="Hello EngrStudent. Do you maybe want to mark one of the answers as accepted (in order for this thread to appear &quot;resolved&quot; as I think it is)?" CreationDate="2016-11-18T21:29:56.807" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11508" PostId="4442" Score="0" Text="@amoeba - I don't like the answers.   Essentially nobody asks that stuff here. I was afraid to ask that here, but I did it anyway.  I don't believe there is any answer because I really think it is considered a non-issue by &quot;the powers that be&quot;.  The next time I run into a &quot;how do I &quot; which I do when I'm answering or asking a few questions per day, I will test and see if it works.  If it does work then I can mark this as closed." CreationDate="2016-11-21T14:21:41.623" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="11354" PostId="4445" Score="8" Text="In general, it's probably best to avoid it in titles." CreationDate="2016-11-10T03:17:14.660" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11355" PostId="4445" Score="0" Text="Why is it so bad?" CreationDate="2016-11-10T05:53:00.583" UserId="103407" />
  <row Id="11356" PostId="4445" Score="7" Text="Abusing TeX markup to write italic text is $really$ awful - primarily because the font does not match, but more generally because syntactically it does not make sense: `$$` denote a mathematical expression and nothing else." CreationDate="2016-11-10T07:27:52.193" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11357" PostId="4445" Score="1" Text="My question asks about the preferred method of italicizing text in titles. I'm not advocating dollar sigms. The previous comments indicate that italics in titles are bad style. Why?" CreationDate="2016-11-10T07:56:37.107" UserId="103407" />
  <row Id="11358" PostId="4445" Score="3" Text="http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/237125/can-we-get-markdown-support-in-questions-title-field" CreationDate="2016-11-10T08:29:41.847" UserId="103407" />
  <row Id="11359" PostId="4445" Score="0" Text="I see that you found it by yourself, but: indeed, we don't support markdown in titles, sorry." CreationDate="2016-11-10T08:38:22.927" UserId="138084" />
  <row Id="11360" PostId="4445" Score="2" Text="@amoeba: In addition, compare e.g. *effect* &amp; $effect$ - the spacing's all wrong in the latter if it's supposed to be a word." CreationDate="2016-11-10T09:03:36.607" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="11362" PostId="4445" Score="0" Text="@Konamiman right,  so should asterisks/dollars for italics be removed in titles? Should we edit qs and delete the asterisks/dollars that were intended for emphasis/italics? Same question for other unsupported markup eg bold." CreationDate="2016-11-10T10:18:13.497" UserId="103407" />
  <row Id="11363" PostId="4445" Score="3" Text="@Scortchi That's right, even though one could circumvent it with `$\textit{effect}$`: $\textit{effect}$. This would of course look horrible when un-rendered as e.g. in any google search." CreationDate="2016-11-10T10:38:35.670" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11364" PostId="4445" Score="2" Text="One could of course argue that the unrendered `*mathematical*` (or `_mathematical_`) is nevertheless following a common convention for showing emphasis in plain text. On the other hand, even in print there seems to be a widespread aversion to using italics in titles." CreationDate="2016-11-10T10:59:10.140" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="11365" PostId="4445" Score="0" Text="I'm a bit confused with the responses and downvote. I'm not recommending using italics, or any particular implementation of italics, in titles. I'm asking about the preferred implementation if a question  uses italics in the title, and whether we should edit titles with markup to conform to our preferred style." CreationDate="2016-11-10T11:47:34.223" UserId="103407" />
  <row Id="11366" PostId="4445" Score="2" Text="As you perhaps know, on Meta the convention's that a down-vote indicates disagreement with a proposal rather than a low opinion of the question's quality. All the same I can't tell exactly what proposal the down-voter's disagreeing with. The comments are germane - they don't fully answer your question, but that's not the role of comments." CreationDate="2016-11-10T12:27:11.360" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="11367" PostId="4445" Score="3" Text="See also [Are the questions with TeX markup in titles excluded from Hot Network Questions?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/237475/are-the-questions-with-tex-markup-in-titles-excluded-from-hot-network-questions). (The answer's &quot;yes&quot;.)" CreationDate="2016-11-10T13:09:54.097" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="11368" PostId="4445" Score="0" Text="Note also that `&lt;i&gt;word&lt;/i&gt;` (*word*) doesn't work in titles either. I'll say that I am not personally opposed to italics in titles, but it doesn't seem to be done &amp; people seem to abhor the very idea of it, so maybe it's best to just go along to get along here." CreationDate="2016-11-10T13:58:21.513" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11370" PostId="4445" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi The answer is &quot;no&quot;: I have personally seen TeX markup in titles in the Hot Network Questions; at least twice. It is not rendered (i.e. displayed as `$blabla$`) and looks pretty awful especially if the formula is complicated. I remember it very well because I was wondering if I should write a Meta.SE question suggesting to turn TeX rendering on there. In the end I did not report it, but I am *positive* that I have seen it more than once. The questions were, I believe, from Math.SE." CreationDate="2016-11-10T20:06:43.553" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11371" PostId="4445" Score="0" Text="Innisfree, I cannot be sure but I guess that you are getting downvotes because you posted your question as a bug report (there is a [bug] tag). Perhaps people are downvoting because they want to say that it's not a bug (cc to @Scortchi). Your question is good (+1) but it would probably have been better off as a [discussion] question." CreationDate="2016-11-10T20:09:05.453" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11374" PostId="4445" Score="0" Text="Oops, @Scortchi, I think I might have been mistaken above. What I saw was actually *the opposite*: questions from some finance-related SE with some `$` signs in the title getting into the Hot Questions and displayed on our site as if it was TeX markup. That is what I wanted to report as a bug (but did not). Sorry for the confusion. I will delete the above comment some time soon." CreationDate="2016-11-10T23:06:59.750" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11393" PostId="4445" Score="0" Text="@amoeba: I'm not sure myself now: http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/229366/225179" CreationDate="2016-11-11T10:51:10.057" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="11490" PostId="4445" Score="0" Text="Hello innisfree! Have you seen my answer? Do you think, based on the discussion above, that it's represents some kind of a consensus? I am asking because if you do, consider accepting it (to mark this thread as &quot;resolved&quot;). If you don't then feel free to raise your concerns." CreationDate="2016-11-18T21:28:46.400" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11375" PostId="4448" Score="2" Text="&quot;That is people with at least 3000 reputation points, or a gold badge&quot; ... do you mean something like &quot;a gold badge in a relevant tag&quot; or &quot;any gold badges at all&quot; there? [*Edit*: from the linked post, it's gold tag badge; aside from Anony-Mousse (19.4K) every other gold tag badge holder here (me, gung whuber, Peter Flom completes the entire list I think) has at least 50K reputation. So 3K reputation includes everyone who can do it here.]" CreationDate="2016-11-11T03:54:20.513" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11376" PostId="4448" Score="1" Text="Also, are these assessed by multiple reviewers (we don't always agree! Far from it) or is it one assessment per pair of potential dupes?" CreationDate="2016-11-11T03:56:01.200" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11377" PostId="4448" Score="0" Text="Wow, it's glacially slow. Hmm. Will there be rendering of Mathjax? I haven't hit one yet" CreationDate="2016-11-11T03:59:08.140" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11378" PostId="4448" Score="1" Text="The first three I saw weren't even *remotely* close to duplicates." CreationDate="2016-11-11T03:59:57.720" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11379" PostId="4448" Score="1" Text="Also, date of posting may sometimes be a relevant consideration if one is trying to work out which one is to be treated as canonical --  other things being equal, choosing the older one as canonical (essentially to break the tie) seems to be common." CreationDate="2016-11-11T04:09:29.857" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11380" PostId="4448" Score="0" Text="I'm looking into the slowness. That's far from ideal for annotating of course, so hopefully I can fix it. Yes, some questions will be very far from duplicates. Unfortunately I don't have a method to filter those out yet. This is exactly why we are doing this project! I left out the date to avoid a bias towards choosing the older one as the canonical one, but let me discuss this again with the other researchers. I'll get back to you on that." CreationDate="2016-11-11T04:18:46.783" UserId="136419" />
  <row Id="11381" PostId="4448" Score="0" Text="Mathjax should be rendered correctly, but let me know if you have issues." CreationDate="2016-11-11T04:19:59.297" UserId="136419" />
  <row Id="11382" PostId="4448" Score="5" Text="Ah, well, if you want to avoid people relying on the date, perhaps that could be mentioned on the first screen. I'm not sure why that should be a problem since it's one of the criteria used in practice." CreationDate="2016-11-11T04:27:15.223" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11383" PostId="4448" Score="0" Text="True, I could add that. Let me discuss it. :)" CreationDate="2016-11-11T04:28:11.273" UserId="136419" />
  <row Id="11386" PostId="4448" Score="1" Text="Is it intentional to offer closed questions for consideration?" CreationDate="2016-11-11T06:26:15.280" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11387" PostId="4448" Score="0" Text="Yes. We can use that information to learn to recognise bad questions and questions that will never be duplicates of anything." CreationDate="2016-11-11T06:59:49.117" UserId="136419" />
  <row Id="11396" PostId="4448" Score="6" Text="Regarding gold tag badges, it's worth remembering that it takes 1k upvotes to earn them. Even if a user had never done anything else, that's 10k rep. In theory, someone could have given away &gt;70% of their rep through bounties, but I'll bet it's never happened. If the idea is just people w/ vote to close privileges that's fine, or if it's that there is a 2-tiered system w/ additional credence given to the ratings of gold tag badge holders, that should be clarified." CreationDate="2016-11-11T13:44:19.150" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11404" PostId="4448" Score="0" Text="Hi gung, the idea is just people with vote to close privileges. Maybe I should've said that instead of mentioning the nr of reputation points and gold badge." CreationDate="2016-11-12T23:46:27.620" UserId="136419" />
  <row Id="11407" PostId="4448" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b, sorry, I missed one of your questions: yes, the idea is to get multiple annotations per question pair. As many as possible actually." CreationDate="2016-11-13T00:16:30.190" UserId="136419" />
  <row Id="11409" PostId="4448" Score="0" Text="Cool. The reason I ask is if you were only seeking one for each, I'd probably avoid doing more than 10%-15% of the total (so my judgement wouldn't dominate), but if you need as many as you can get for each decision then it makes sense to just do as many as I can reasonably manage." CreationDate="2016-11-13T00:25:14.363" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11412" PostId="4448" Score="2" Text="There appears to be almost no relationship between the any pair of questions that I've reviewed. For each pair, I've been trying to sort out what the common thread might be -- in case the relationship is non-obvious -- but the best I can tell is that the *narrowest* commonality between the questions is that both merely are on-topic." CreationDate="2016-11-13T01:01:32.510" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="11418" PostId="4448" Score="1" Text="@Sycorax, that's completely fine. I'm getting the impression that many people think they are presented with the output of a system, and therefore expect to see many duplicate pairs. This is not the case. The annotated pairs will be used to build such a system. You will be presented with many more non-duplicate pairs than duplicate pairs, but both types are useful for us." CreationDate="2016-11-13T23:06:12.220" UserId="136419" />
  <row Id="11420" PostId="4448" Score="7" Text="Perhaps &quot;we have applied several filters to make sure we only show you questions pairs with a high likelihood of being duplicates&quot; is creating that expectation - it might help to edit your question to clarify the point." CreationDate="2016-11-14T09:30:57.670" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="11421" PostId="4448" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b, thanks for being so helpful!" CreationDate="2016-11-14T22:15:17.433" UserId="136419" />
  <row Id="11422" PostId="4448" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi, good suggestion. I'll change it." CreationDate="2016-11-14T22:15:36.337" UserId="136419" />
  <row Id="11425" PostId="4448" Score="0" Text="@Monozygotic As far as I can tell you're trying to make our lives easier. That's a great motivator." CreationDate="2016-11-14T22:18:22.850" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11429" PostId="4448" Score="0" Text="I can't participate, but I'm curious. Why couldn't you simply use historical data from Stack Exchange? Over-representation of actual duplicates in the review queues?" CreationDate="2016-11-14T23:49:01.927" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="11430" PostId="4448" Score="2" Text="@Firebug, we do use historical data from Stack Exchange, but after doing a manual analysis we found out that there are quite a few duplicate question labels missing. Improving this is essential for building a better system. So what we're doing now is showing people about 0.0003% of all question pairs to annotate manually, which will result in an estimated 45% increase in the number of duplicate question labels. Looking at the review queues is a good suggestion. I'm not sure if I have access to those, but it's worth having a look." CreationDate="2016-11-15T00:29:51.073" UserId="136419" />
  <row Id="11449" PostId="4448" Score="1" Text="@Monozygotic I find myself unsure of what the desired boundary between &quot;related&quot; and plain &quot;not duplicates&quot; should be. A number of pairs on broadly the same topic have come up, but I have been marking as not duplicate on the assumption that &quot;related&quot; would be for cases where I'd want to link the two (i.e. where answers might be somewhat helpful even if they're not directly answering the question), but it occurred to me that this might be stricter than you want. Can you clarify?" CreationDate="2016-11-16T05:03:38.217" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11450" PostId="4448" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b, actually that sounds good to me. The questions all come from the same site, so many of them will have some topical connection. For most this will not be enough to annotate them as related though. Your criterion of answers to one question needing to be somewhat helpful to the other sounds like exactly the sort of relation I am after." CreationDate="2016-11-16T06:09:31.693" UserId="136419" />
  <row Id="11569" PostId="4448" Score="0" Text="Unless there's some compelling reason not to, I plan to remove the featured status from this post in a few days. Hopefully it helped to get what was needed" CreationDate="2016-12-01T22:38:22.650" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11570" PostId="4448" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b, the project will be running at least until the end of the month. Would that be a reason to keep the featured status?" CreationDate="2016-12-01T23:50:48.593" UserId="136419" />
  <row Id="11571" PostId="4448" Score="0" Text="You're asking for it to remain featured until the end of December? Okay, that can be done. Note, however, that  it will be Winter Bash very shortly, so the effect of keeping it featured is likely to be fairly small once *the hatting* descends on us, and that will run until roughly the end of the first week of January." CreationDate="2016-12-02T00:05:06.267" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11572" PostId="4448" Score="0" Text="True. I'll be away myself during those two weeks too. We might keep the project going just a little bit longer after that, but that hasn't been decided yet. If everyone has stopped annotating by the time, then it might be a good time to end it anyway. Thanks for keeping it featured for a bit longer though!" CreationDate="2016-12-02T06:01:08.723" UserId="136419" />
  <row Id="11576" PostId="4448" Score="0" Text="How are you selecting questions to show? Are they random? Active learning? I think the stats forum at least would be interested in your sampling  methodology ;)" CreationDate="2016-12-06T23:48:51.917" UserId="36229" />
  <row Id="11578" PostId="4448" Score="1" Text="@ssdecontrol, haha I'm sure they would be! A combination of two simple methods is used to do the selection. You can find the details in this paper: http://people.eng.unimelb.edu.au/tbaldwin/pubs/sigir2016-webqa.pdf The motivation behind it is threefold: 1. we wanted to use fast methods which would result in a relatively high percentage of duplicate questions in the set; 2. we wanted the set to include pairs that standard IR methods fail on; and 3. we wanted to catch the low hanging fruit. Let me know if you have questions about the paper!" CreationDate="2016-12-07T22:05:59.487" UserId="136419" />
  <row Id="11384" PostId="4449" Score="0" Text="I fixed this problem, but now I have created a different issue: overlapping text in inline MathJax. I'll keep working on it." CreationDate="2016-11-11T05:07:29.567" UserId="136419" />
  <row Id="11385" PostId="4449" Score="0" Text="Yep I experienced some of that now. Not enough to stop one from figuring out if it was a duplicate but it would be a lot easier without it." CreationDate="2016-11-11T06:06:51.747" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11392" PostId="4449" Score="0" Text="I managed to fix some of it, but strangely enough not all it seems. I'm gonna need more time for this.." CreationDate="2016-11-11T07:18:32.350" UserId="136419" />
  <row Id="11388" PostId="4450" Score="0" Text=":) I'm aware of some posts showing up much more often than others. In the selection process I have filtered out some that really showed up a ridiculous number of times. They will have to be investigated separately. The others are actually interesting. I'm hoping to find out why they show up so often. Such cases will appear in the system we'll build too, so more annotations for these are good to have, to see if we can avoid identifying them as duplicates all the time." CreationDate="2016-11-11T07:03:51.867" UserId="136419" />
  <row Id="11389" PostId="4450" Score="0" Text="Not sure what happened to the link to the paper, but I think I may leave that for now. I don't think it's a problem that will show up often, and I don't think it will affect people's annotations. It just shows I'm not actually a web developer. ;)" CreationDate="2016-11-11T07:05:00.947" UserId="136419" />
  <row Id="11390" PostId="4450" Score="0" Text="Yeah, it's not a critical problem, but I thought I'd point it out." CreationDate="2016-11-11T07:06:59.410" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11391" PostId="4450" Score="0" Text="I do appreciate that!" CreationDate="2016-11-11T07:11:01.343" UserId="136419" />
  <row Id="11399" PostId="4451" Score="0" Text="Yeah, I found myself missing some of the usual cues, but the information page indicates they're deliberately not linking to the originals, presumably so we avoid using cues the AI won't have access to." CreationDate="2016-11-11T23:40:31.893" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11400" PostId="4451" Score="3" Text="@Glen_b, I think of this as trying to get the true labels that can be used to train a model subsequently. I don't think it should matter if we have access to more or different information than the AI will." CreationDate="2016-11-12T00:54:41.500" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11405" PostId="4451" Score="1" Text="Glen_b, that's exactly why we left them out, but gung, you do have a point. I'll discuss it again with the other researchers." CreationDate="2016-11-12T23:47:52.457" UserId="136419" />
  <row Id="11406" PostId="4451" Score="1" Text="@Monozygotic, from a machine learning standpoint, it doesn't matter where the labels come from; the algorithm will simply take them as a given. There is no reason for us to be limited in some way.  Moreover, if I'm going to rate these, I'm probably going to look at the original pages one way or another to figure it out, so there isn't much point in trying to obscure it. (Also, for Glen_b to be notified, you need to ping him by putting &quot;@&quot; before his username as I did for you at the beginning of this comment.)" CreationDate="2016-11-13T00:01:08.543" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11408" PostId="4451" Score="0" Text="@gung, interesting, I didn't know the @ triggered a notification. Thanks for telling me! We had some initial ideas about obscuring the URLs, along the lines of giving people minimal information to mimic somewhat what a computer has to deal with. After getting a lot of feedback from people we came back from that and added tags, comments and answers. We may have to take it further even and add URLs too. I'll discuss and will get back to you." CreationDate="2016-11-13T00:24:39.707" UserId="136419" />
  <row Id="11410" PostId="4451" Score="0" Text="You don't need the &quot;@&quot; for the author of a post (question / answer) when the comment is below the post at issue. (Thus, eg, you don't need it for me here.) But you do need it to notify other commenters. (So you would need it for Glen_b to be notified here, or for me to be notified regarding my comment to the question post at the top.)" CreationDate="2016-11-13T00:31:25.873" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11411" PostId="4451" Score="4" Text="Regarding the AI, there is really no reason (at all) that we should try to mimic the conditions the computer has to deal w/. If you had true labels already, you could do this as an experiment to compare how well your algorithm performs relative to how well a person can do w/ the same information. However, you need the true labels in advance (that's what *we're* doing here), &amp; that is an empirical study in cognitive science to investigate an entirely different issue. It really makes no sense in this context. If you wanted, you could ask about this on the main site or on the [cogsci.SE] SE site." CreationDate="2016-11-13T00:35:13.267" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11417" PostId="4452" Score="0" Text="Thanks! Edited as suggested verbatim" CreationDate="2016-11-13T22:33:42.117" UserId="132971" />
  <row Id="11419" PostId="4452" Score="2" Text="This would be a system-wide change that would need to be implemented by the SE developers. The place for such requests is [meta.SE]--we have no say over the issue. That said, I'm pretty sure this has been asked on meta.SE already. My solution would be for OPs to automatically have the privilege of upvoting answers to their own questions, even if they can't upvote otherwise. That has also been raised before, &amp; has been declined emphatically based on the reasoning that it would be inappropriate for new users to award 10 points (but it is OK for them to award 15), to inhibit cheating." CreationDate="2016-11-13T23:58:17.713" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13371" PostId="4452" Score="2" Text="Declining for the reasons listed by animuson. Vote early &amp; vote often!" CreationDate="2017-04-26T04:03:23.010" UserId="4454" />
  <row Id="11431" PostId="4454" Score="1" Text="(+1) I'd go so far as to say we should try to avoid LaTeX in titles altogether. Unlike on [Mathematics](http://math.stackexchange.com/), there are few questions here that really call for it. [I've just looked through some that do use it: the majority introduce variables that aren't defined till the body of the question (if they're ever defined); &amp; most of the others are really maths questions.]" CreationDate="2016-11-15T09:24:10.367" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="11432" PostId="4454" Score="1" Text="I agree that we should &quot;try to avoid&quot; LaTeX in titles, but I think sometimes it's really the most clear and concise way to formulate the title, and so can be tolerated. I have posted some questions with some TeX in the titles and would not want to edit it out (I checked now). These are indeed often &quot;maths questions&quot;, but we have a lot of maths questions that are on topic here." CreationDate="2016-11-15T11:53:11.490" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11433" PostId="4454" Score="0" Text="Yes - in fact I changed &quot;avoid&quot; to &quot;try to avoid&quot; for just that reason. (And I didn't mean to imply that maths questions were off-topic; rather that they're the only ones for which the variables don't need to be defined.) Taking a couple of your questions as examples: (1) &quot;What exactly does $\dot\sim$ notation mean?&quot; is a case where LaTeX is more than warranted. (2) &quot;What measure of effect size in ANOVA has mode at zero under the null (unlike $\eta^2$ that does not)?&quot; makes me wonder if &quot;eta-squared&quot; mightn't be easier for search engines to find as well as to preview." CreationDate="2016-11-15T12:41:42.853" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="11453" PostId="4454" Score="0" Text="I'd add that $\TeX$ does not display properly in titles and comments on the mobile app, yet another reason to avoid it." CreationDate="2016-11-16T13:04:57.597" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="11434" PostId="4455" Score="0" Text="That's not part of my expertise or interests and so I have no opinion, but I note that [econometrics] tag has 1k+ threads. That's a lot. Whatever you suggest should take this into account, e.g. even to look through all these threads is *a lot* of work, let alone doing some re-tagging. Also, it could help if you make a specific suggestion about what [econometrics] excerpt should say, and also a specific suggestion about what to do with the threads that would not fit this new description (and some estimate about how many of them there are)." CreationDate="2016-11-15T19:39:45.010" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11435" PostId="4455" Score="1" Text="@amoeba, When writing the question I did not think about doing any actual work in changing things in the existing threads (even though this is a very valid question); I though first about what to do with new question being tagged with [tag:econometrics]. Working on 1k+ existing threads certainly does sound complicated." CreationDate="2016-11-15T19:42:46.720" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="11443" PostId="4455" Score="4" Text="I find the econometrics tag very useful because it changes my interpretation of the intent of particular words (since econometricians tend to use some statistical terms - like *fixed effects* for example - in distinct ways), and it changes what approaches I might recommend (since the audience expects particular things and the common problems tend to be of particular kinds), for example. It may at least be worth considering whether the tag wiki could use an edit, though." CreationDate="2016-11-15T23:15:30.937" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11452" PostId="4455" Score="4" Text="I have nothing against the tag itself, but it is often *used* to tag anything. I have a feeling that people often use it like &quot;my econometrics book mentions regression, so regression = econometrics&quot;, &quot;it mentions time-series as well, so time-series = econometrics&quot; etc. literally everything becomes scope of econometrics." CreationDate="2016-11-16T13:00:50.203" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="11454" PostId="4455" Score="2" Text="@Glen, I agree that the tag is useful for interpretation, especially if the tag were used less broadly (which does not always happen -- see Tim's comment). For me attaching the tag to an applied economics problem that does not require specific econometric ways of thinking (models and techniques) does not help. **Tim**, I totally agree." CreationDate="2016-11-16T13:18:25.290" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="11465" PostId="4455" Score="0" Text="Richard and @Tim, why don't you try to suggest a more suitable tag excerpt?" CreationDate="2016-11-16T19:12:24.957" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11466" PostId="4455" Score="2" Text="It is perfectly reasonable to provide guidance in a tag wiki about how *not* to use a tag." CreationDate="2016-11-16T21:58:09.323" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11436" PostId="4456" Score="10" Text="If you take the narrow sense of &quot;reputation&quot; as being total points, it might help to understand that it compresses many variables onto a single scale, including activities to maintain the site, quality and number of questions, giving of bounties, and pure number of answers.  As such, it is practically worthless--and maybe even deceptive--as a measure of any aspect of statistical capabilities.  If you take &quot;reputation&quot; in a wider sense as comprising all the statistics about an individual's activity, then *possibly* some rough sense of their capabilities can be gleaned from those." CreationDate="2016-11-15T22:46:45.527" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="11437" PostId="4456" Score="7" Text="I really don't think there's much of a reliable relationship; there's some relationship because obviously it's easier for a skilled person to write an upvoted answer than an unskilled one but the relationship may be very weak -- it's possible to accumulate a large amount of reputation through answering a lot of questions while armed with mediocre skills; on the other hand a lot of highly skilled and knowledgeable people on site have low reputations, because they don't spend much time here." CreationDate="2016-11-15T22:51:38.677" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11438" PostId="4456" Score="4" Text="On the other hand some of the information available can be a bit more informative, by removing the raw effect of answering a lot -- reputation per answer (though this can be a bit noisy - actual upvotes per answer will be better, if harder to get) , proportion of accepted answers, and so on. If you really want to look at total contributions rather than relative ones, choose something that's harder to get than upvotes -- number of &quot;Good Answers&quot; may be a semi- useful measure for example." CreationDate="2016-11-15T22:55:24.623" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11439" PostId="4456" Score="3" Text="This question appears to be a duplicate of one asked four years ago by Michael Chernick at http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1218.  Related threads include http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2107 concerning the value of CV participation in job hunting." CreationDate="2016-11-15T22:56:19.340" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="11440" PostId="4456" Score="0" Text="@whuber Macro's criterion (number of silver badges) would suit me well for the same reason he suggested it but I don't know that it's all that reliable a measure." CreationDate="2016-11-15T22:57:51.890" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11441" PostId="4456" Score="4" Text="@Glen_b Maybe--after subtracting the badges for site participation. That count is a proxy for the number of very highly upvoted posts, with a component for speedy answers. When I evaluate people on unfamiliar sites in order to ascertain who knows their stuff and can communicate it well, I look for quality and consistency as measured by relatively high votes per answer, high acceptance rate per answer, extremely few posts with zero or negative net votes, a broad range of tags (without undue specialization in any one), and more than one very highly voted post. E.g., cardinal, chl, glen_b." CreationDate="2016-11-15T23:02:07.677" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="11442" PostId="4456" Score="0" Text="Yes, those criteria  collectively come close to conveying some sense of skill (ah, an accidental alliteration)" CreationDate="2016-11-15T23:08:55.920" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11444" PostId="4456" Score="0" Text="Hey. How about actually using the data on the CV site to figure this out? There is lots of it. Some people give their educational level well enough to dope out what a rep means, and if anyone can figure this out, GUESS WHO THAT IS!" CreationDate="2016-11-15T23:22:02.763" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11445" PostId="4456" Score="4" Text="Some have tried. There's too much noise: you have to factor in degree of activity, time elapsed since joining, effects of all non-answer forms of reputation, and so on. You would also have to control for the thousands of different tags (it's easier to get reputation in some tags and harder in others), the time of day a question was answered, how many people were active on the site shortly thereafter, whether a post was promoted, etc.  Even then you wouldn't be measuring statistical skill, but some combination of knowledge, ability to write and illustrate, perseverance, and luck." CreationDate="2016-11-15T23:49:42.297" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="11446" PostId="4456" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b By the criteria you have outlined, answering a lot - reputation per answer - actual upvotes, and so on - I would probably rate as an absolute dummy. But, I have only been active this last quarter of a year, and my objective has been largely to learn, not to acquire reputation necessarily. That means that I have answered a lot of dumb questions from people who do not know as much as I do overall, but, they do ask questions about things I have to look up. If all I want to do was impress people, then I would ask and answer questions most people wouldn't have a clue about." CreationDate="2016-11-15T23:53:54.563" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11447" PostId="4456" Score="3" Text="The point I was trying to get at before was that I don't think &quot;answering a lot&quot; (and things that depend on that most heavily) indicates anything of much value. Relative measures like reputation per answer (especially if they relate to more than a handful of answers) is more of an indication. I agree with the criteria whuber indicates. But it's hard to compare newer users with people who have been answering for years because it can take a while to learn what works for the site -- even if you're used to answering questions in other fora." CreationDate="2016-11-15T23:57:57.963" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11448" PostId="4456" Score="1" Text="@whuber The reward system we have is very quantitative, lots and lots of numbers in a profile. You may deprecate this, but frankly, compared to getting a grade in a statistics course, it is probably rather more information rich. In fact, my participation on this site brings back memories of my schooling more than anything else I have done recently. And when I was studying at the undergraduate level, many years ago, much of what I did were &quot;reading courses&quot; because I frankly did not belong in a classroom. So, there is something very familiar about this site, for me." CreationDate="2016-11-16T00:02:55.917" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11451" PostId="4456" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b Why don't you combine your comments into a single answer?" CreationDate="2016-11-16T12:17:01.127" UserId="122650" />
  <row Id="11460" PostId="4456" Score="6" Text="The short answer is evidently very weak at best. In addition to points excellently made, I add: please don't underestimate what reputation measures any more than you should overestimate it. Some reputation here is earned with much difficulty trying to help confused people asking not very good questions. Those people often don't even accept answers; the answers may not be general or good enough to gain many upvotes; they may even be pedestrian by the highest standards because they just give banal or basic advice. But the effort is all intended to help, if only the people asking the questions." CreationDate="2016-11-16T17:52:25.583" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11461" PostId="4456" Score="5" Text="Hinting darkly that many reputations are inflated and not to be taken that seriously isn't positive. It's true, but it's also unduly disparaging to those who just want to help build and maintain the site." CreationDate="2016-11-16T17:54:15.977" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11467" PostId="4456" Score="1" Text="@Nick Many reputations are hard earned from  giving valuable advice, and well-deserved, so much is clear (indeed many high-value contributors have a much lower reputation than their contributions deserve).  The difficulty is in trying to go the other way -- to associate some particular reputation with some level of attainment in statistical understanding (see the question's proposal of some level of reputation as a &quot;pseudo-PhD&quot;). If someone were compare me to cardinal on reputation alone, they'd be led to *entirely* the wrong conclusion -- a broader set of measures would lead to a better sense" CreationDate="2016-11-16T22:21:53.163" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11468" PostId="4456" Score="1" Text="There are possibly a few people with high reputations who have gotten them without knowing that much. There are also some PhD's who have gotten them without knowing much. They could even be the same people. I am not sure that would even modify a correlation between rate of accrual of reputation and educational level." CreationDate="2016-11-16T22:29:40.953" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11469" PostId="4456" Score="1" Text="@Carl you may have something of a point there -- that there's something of the same potential for misjudging knowledge if all you know is that someone has a PhD. But I don't think the point here is that you *can't* make any judgement, only to beware using reputation by itself, because it's at least as much a reflection of enthusiasm as knowledge. If you want to get a sense of how knowledgeable someone is there's a lot more information available, and using it can lead to a considerably more robust judgement. It might be interesting to attempt to construct some reasonable measure." CreationDate="2016-11-16T22:37:51.730" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11470" PostId="4456" Score="1" Text="To that end, several of [Martijn Pieters' data.SE queries](http://data.stackexchange.com/users/5824/martijn-pieters) seem to be aiming at getting at different aspects of this kind of measure." CreationDate="2016-11-16T22:41:35.153" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11471" PostId="4456" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b Yes. Let us consider the the statements &quot;Carl is a statistician,&quot; versus &quot;Carl is not a statistician.&quot; Note, Carl doesn't care what he is, as a person, with respect to things statistical, but he is curious as to how much of a statistical ladder he has yet to climb.  Quite a bit, I think. So asking what reputation is worth in real world terms is intensely interesting. I know someone (unnamed here) who is using this site to train for a job, and this site is useful to some. So the question as to CV's &quot;currency conversion&quot; as it were is a practical one." CreationDate="2016-11-16T22:55:34.657" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11472" PostId="4456" Score="1" Text="The site is certainly useful to many of us (myself included) as one of a number of learning tools." CreationDate="2016-11-16T22:57:56.333" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11473" PostId="4456" Score="3" Text="@Carl It's difficult to say what value anybody outside CV places on CV reputation. I can believe anything from a record of posting lucid and penetrating answers helping a job application a little to it being regarded totally negatively in some universities, where only papers in top journals and/or top conferences are of interest (and any dissipation of energy elsewhere is a distraction at best). My first approximation is that it's a game you play because you find it challenging and rewarding (as many do with chess, bridge, sudoku, ....) and hope that some others benefit too." CreationDate="2016-11-16T23:08:50.560" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11474" PostId="4456" Score="0" Text="@NickCox For myself, I cannot think of a better way of checking things to include in a journal article than posting a question here. Getting beaten up for half-baked language, and incorrect ideas is quite instructive, and the feedback cycle is minutes compared to months for a journal." CreationDate="2016-11-16T23:18:39.717" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11476" PostId="4456" Score="0" Text="@Carl Perhaps, but how much reputation gain do you get for posting a lousy question? You're flagging a feature of CV that others will appreciate too, but I'd rather people post good questions in the first instance!" CreationDate="2016-11-17T08:31:00.330" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11481" PostId="4456" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Actually, things that confuse me have answers that are either publishable by themselves or in the direction of clarification of data for publication, and if they were simple, I wouldn't ask." CreationDate="2016-11-17T17:36:06.353" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11482" PostId="4456" Score="0" Text="@Carl Me too! But I don't see what that has to do with what reputation does or doesn't imply." CreationDate="2016-11-17T17:51:58.697" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11483" PostId="4456" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Well it does because what confuses other people can confuse me as well. If I can see a bit more clearly into an issue than others, rest assured there is some elbow grease involved and that combination is what garnishes the most reputation points. The obverse, what confuses me, also confuses some other people, and when I work such things out I generally get less increased reputation points, but still substantial reputation, than from &quot;clarifying general confusion.&quot;" CreationDate="2016-11-17T18:08:49.303" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11495" PostId="4456" Score="3" Text="Simply going by the fact answering a popular question is much more worthy than answering an actually challenging question goes miles towards understanding what reputation reflects. It's a sign that a person can answer questions that helps the community most. In StackOverflow this is more blatant, often the highest ranked answers on a programming language are utterly basic, but that's where the community concentrates, and these are the questions that help the most members." CreationDate="2016-11-19T16:23:13.707" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="11496" PostId="4456" Score="1" Text="Now, tag badges are a clearer sign towards &quot;statistical prowess&quot;, imo." CreationDate="2016-11-19T16:23:36.370" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="11499" PostId="4456" Score="7" Text="One other point that seems to be ignored in the discussion above (except by Firebug recently) is that some areas of statistics and some types of questions are more popular than others. If you happen to be knowledgeable in these popular areas, you will have high reputation without a need for much statistical knowledge. So reputation to a large degree indicates how well in tune one is with the popular fields and question types rather than how good one is in statistics or in explaining statistics." CreationDate="2016-11-20T10:07:25.833" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="11500" PostId="4456" Score="4" Text="And then there are users here with high reputation that know essentially only one thing and just keep promoting it again and again in all their answers (regardless of how relevant or irrelevant they are), and somehow (to my surprise) they still get rewarded relatively nicely (perhaps mainly by new users, but I do not have the data to support this assertion). In conclusion, I would say that no simple measure like reputations points, badges, points per answer, proportion of accepted answers etc. would indicate statistical prowess with much accuracy. All they show is how well you &quot;fit in&quot; at CV." CreationDate="2016-11-20T10:07:36.217" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="11501" PostId="4456" Score="1" Text="@RichardHardy Would you not hire an actuary for insurance rate calculations? Specialization in stats is just like in medicine, engineering, and other fields. Sure, broad knowledge has its uses, and I sympathize with your POV, in fact, I agree entirely, and I am way out of my professional scope of practice on this site and one of those rare birds to publish and review for disciplines in which I hold no formal qualifications. However, not everyone has *deep* understanding, and those who learn by rote and do not leave their comfort zone often do better than us 'generalists' monetarily as well." CreationDate="2016-11-20T15:36:51.730" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11502" PostId="4456" Score="4" Text="I think @RichardHardy really means what he says; the phenomenon for a just a very small number of users is far more pronounced than a question of specialisation, but to make the point concrete would be indiscreet!  There are examples of users supplying essentially the same answer again and again. If it is really off target the community does deal with it." CreationDate="2016-11-20T17:31:15.673" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11503" PostId="4456" Score="1" Text="@NickCox A really unpopular PhD student, who did not get hired by his university as an instructor and had very few publications, and who said the same kooky things again and again, was named Albert Einstein. There are still lots of people who love to hate him and his work. People become famous not because they know everything, but because they impact everything. The question here goes to impact, not knowledge." CreationDate="2016-11-20T18:56:11.930" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11504" PostId="4456" Score="3" Text="Sure, but for every crank who turned out to be Einstein (or Galileo), thousands more really were cranks -- or monomaniacs -- in this case hammer fans to whom everything is a nail." CreationDate="2016-11-20T19:05:11.420" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11505" PostId="4456" Score="0" Text="From my [answer](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/a/4462/99274) on a different topic, democracy (as in voting) is a really good at upvoting, and lousy at downvoting. The downvoters are more often more nutcases that the authors whose opinions they dislike. Sure you can find cranks, but for every crank, there are 10 monomaniacs attacking them, and the monomaniacs are not the cranks. Monomaniacs tend to hide themselves in difficult to detect narcissism." CreationDate="2016-11-20T19:23:20.627" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11506" PostId="4456" Score="2" Text="@Carl How can you remotely psycho-analyse downvoters? Unless they declare themselves as downvoting and explain why, your assertion is just wild speculation.  My comment about cranks etc. is historically well-informed: we can be confident retrospectively that most very odd-looking ideas turn out just to be very odd. There are good reasons for downvoting which the SE system explains; that's not to say that some unknown fraction of downvotes are not for reasons not intended by SE." CreationDate="2016-11-21T08:42:14.327" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11509" PostId="4456" Score="1" Text="@NickCox How can I? I sympathize with you POV and understand it. [Confirmation bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias) gives people a false sense of ownership of the truth which makes them very bad scientists, i.e., bad adjudicators of assumptions they do not share. Einstein was regarded as a crank, and I have been as well (for less earth shattering things). Some of this skepticism is healthy, as you are fond of pointing out, and, some of it is not meritorious. Truly new ideas have an uphill battle being accepted;" CreationDate="2016-11-21T18:58:58.283" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11510" PostId="4456" Score="1" Text="@NickCox cont.  relativity, [radioimmunoassay](https://www.chemheritage.org/historical-profile/rosalyn-yalow-and-solomon-a-berson), or my own [variable drug volume theory](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0158798). This latter took ten years to get published, before I found a scientist to review it. A scientist is someone who is prepared to discard all preconceptions in order to explain data, and science is never learned, it is only explored." CreationDate="2016-11-21T19:02:53.717" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11511" PostId="4456" Score="2" Text="@Carl I am more than happy to agree when we do, but you're not answering my last point, and my fault if I didn't make it clear enough. You said &quot;downvoters are more often more nutcases that the authors whose opinions they dislike&quot;: neither the content of that comment nor its tone is helpful or appropriate here in my view." CreationDate="2016-11-21T19:08:29.563" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11512" PostId="4456" Score="0" Text="@NickCox My apologies with respect to tone, it was excessive. Downvotes are typically given when the downvoter sees a single issue with which he disagrees. A downvote is often a needle in a haystack of considerations, and may have nothing to do with the truth. It takes much more of a scientist to correctly downvote than to upvote. I am not inventing this, this has been looked at." CreationDate="2016-11-21T19:27:09.053" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11513" PostId="4456" Score="2" Text="Thanks for that. I am interested in seeing that evidence. I am simple-minded: I downvote principally on &quot;doesn't show any research effort&quot; and/or &quot;unclear and not useful&quot;; I freely confess that I sometimes downvote when I think someone is being obnoxious. In the latter case, almost always the case is so severe that a moderator intervenes promptly. Otherwise I would like to know how -- on CV, which is the focus -- one determines which vote is &quot;correct&quot;. Downvoting is a matter of judgment at all levels. No independent judgment of which decision is correct seems possible or relevant." CreationDate="2016-11-21T19:41:13.303" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11515" PostId="4456" Score="0" Text="Correction: the criteria are unclear **or** not useful and votes against obnoxious behaviour are defensible as &quot;not useful&quot;." CreationDate="2016-11-21T20:21:38.943" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11516" PostId="4456" Score="0" Text="@NickCox No argument from me on obnoxious behaviour. However, 1) such activity should be flagged for removal by the moderator. 2) If treated by downvoting, which I would not suggest as such behaviour is intolerable, that would constitute a minority of downvoting. I am not suggesting that downvoting is always incorrect, just that the minority of incorrect downvoting as opposed to commenting is not a corrective, scientific behaviour, and is a real impediment to the propagation of science and improvement of CV." CreationDate="2016-11-21T20:47:37.867" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11517" PostId="4456" Score="1" Text="I always flag too if I think behaviour is obnoxious. Downvoting is a signal to others &quot;Look at this thread and see if you agree!&quot; and people can dissent (even vote up!). In scanning recent posts if you see multiple downvotes, then you can go to look to see what is going on! Chat is some times used to the same purpose. Sure, this could be denigrated as herd or gang behaviour, but it's not violent and typically nothing happens without a moderator action. It's house-cleaning and in a few senses sordid, but that too is needed in science, e.g. in calling out fraud or plagiarism." CreationDate="2016-11-21T20:58:59.283" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11518" PostId="4456" Score="0" Text="Let us [continue this discussion in chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/48905/discussion-between-carl-and-nick-cox)." CreationDate="2016-11-21T21:00:28.030" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11519" PostId="4456" Score="0" Text="Thanks for the invitation, but I think I have said too much already." CreationDate="2016-11-21T21:05:19.720" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11736" PostId="4456" Score="0" Text="`Show 32 more comments`. Really? (Sorry, I had to meta-comment that!)" CreationDate="2017-01-03T23:03:07.210" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="11455" PostId="4457" Score="5" Text="Note that the question has since been re-opened by @Scortchi. I agree that this does not seem to have anything to do w/ programming." CreationDate="2016-11-16T15:42:36.153" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11456" PostId="4457" Score="0" Text="Yes, but I am unsure if I should post my own answer here on meta explaining that another moderator have found it shouldn't be closed. Thanks for the edits @gung." CreationDate="2016-11-16T16:00:39.587" UserId="105234" />
  <row Id="11457" PostId="4457" Score="0" Text="I don't know. I don't really have an opinion. Someone should probably do that, so this isn't officially 'unanswered'. We could let @Scortchi, if he wants, or you could answer your own question. I could write something, but I'm not sure what to put beyond my comment above." CreationDate="2016-11-16T16:50:37.597" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11475" PostId="4458" Score="1" Text="It currently has new close votes on it so it's possible it may close again." CreationDate="2016-11-16T23:42:44.033" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11480" PostId="4458" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b, it is no longer in the close vote review queue. Someone had voted to migrate it to [SO]. I don't know why." CreationDate="2016-11-17T12:36:28.713" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11748" PostId="4459" Score="1" Text="When I recommend a source I found using Google I know what key words I used to find it and I convey that to the OP.  Also I sometimes give the URL as a direct link.  I am not really adept at it but many experienced users on the site are great at it." CreationDate="2017-01-04T01:04:06.273" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11484" PostId="4461" Score="0" Text="Just to clarify: you are saying that you have looked through all [permutation] questions and retagged all of them (around 60 from around 260 initially) that were not about permutation tests, is that right?" CreationDate="2016-11-17T21:50:04.670" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11485" PostId="4461" Score="1" Text="That is correct. All that are left are, I believe, about permutation tests." CreationDate="2016-11-17T22:05:16.907" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="11486" PostId="4461" Score="0" Text="I see. You might want to edit your answer so that it says so explicitly. In any case, only moderators have power to move [permutation] questions into [permutation-test] (by declaring it a synonym, merging it, and then deleting the synonym mapping; or something like that). Unless one of the mods comments here in a day or two, I will ping some of them in chat to draw their attention." CreationDate="2016-11-17T22:17:36.463" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11487" PostId="4461" Score="0" Text="@amoeba edited to clarify as you suggested." CreationDate="2016-11-18T09:12:46.613" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="11488" PostId="4461" Score="1" Text="Note that despite the tag saying do not use this people are still using it. I just caught one a few moments ago" CreationDate="2016-11-18T17:21:46.673" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="11489" PostId="4461" Score="0" Text="I took a brief look at the remaining [permutation] questions and I think I see some that are not about permutation tests. E.g. the first and the fourth newest ones: http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/243522 and http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/226583. Most seem to be about permutation tests though. I think this tag requires maybe one more look through to double-check before tag is renamed/merged. I might be able to do it, but not right now." CreationDate="2016-11-18T21:25:07.780" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11492" PostId="4461" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I took the view that if they said they were doing a test and it involved permutation in some way then it was a permutation test even if it was not the classical permutation test. I would be delighted if someone checked my decisions of course." CreationDate="2016-11-18T22:04:06.440" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="11574" PostId="4461" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I see that people are still using the tag despite the warning message so perhaps I need to have another go. Perhaps I should manually rename the ones where I am absolutely sure so there are fewer for someone else to check." CreationDate="2016-12-02T14:43:57.900" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="12382" PostId="4461" Score="0" Text="It took me some time, but I have started looking at it. Hopefully we will manage to close this issue soon." CreationDate="2017-02-13T11:01:11.660" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12401" PostId="4461" Score="0" Text="@amoeba OK I will try re-tagging some of the ones where I am 100% sure it is a permutation test and see what we have left." CreationDate="2017-02-13T13:49:24.647" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="12403" PostId="4461" Score="0" Text="That's not what I meant! If it's the majority of 200 Qs then I'd say it doesn't make sense. I was rather going to look through the threads and retag those that are *not* about permutation testing. I know you did the first pass, I can do the second, and hopefully this should be enough." CreationDate="2017-02-13T13:57:04.860" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12406" PostId="4461" Score="0" Text="@amoeba OK, you are right of course." CreationDate="2017-02-13T14:03:25.923" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="12407" PostId="4461" Score="0" Text="If you want, you can take a look at the [randomization] tag and try to figure it what to do with it... It does not have a wiki excerpt, is probably ambiguous, and many Qs are about permutation test aka randomization test. I suspect we need randomization-test tag mapped to permutation-test, and also randomized-experiment tag or something similar." CreationDate="2017-02-13T14:15:44.927" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12470" PostId="4461" Score="0" Text="@amoeba you are right that some of the [randomization] questions are about randomization tests. Shall I create a new tag for this, or tag them [permutation-test] even though they are not strictly the same, or ask a new question here about whether we need both, or let you ask the question?" CreationDate="2017-02-16T15:41:56.137" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="12471" PostId="4461" Score="1" Text="Just tag them with [permutation-test]. Some sources make a distinction between &quot;permutation test&quot; and &quot;randomization test&quot; (whether all possible permutations are used or only a subset of them), but IMHO it's irrelevant: in practice everybody uses only a subset of possible permutations and both names are used for that without distinction. We will make a synonym later. This was discussed in chat some time ago and nobody protested." CreationDate="2017-02-16T16:02:34.043" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12566" PostId="4461" Score="1" Text="I accepted your answer because this has been implemented!" CreationDate="2017-02-22T14:03:13.367" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11494" PostId="4462" Score="2" Text="(+1) Nice points. But Wikipedia is not that bad. It has many *very* high quality articles (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_distribution), moreover, it's a great source for searching for references (the part of Wikipedia article I usually check before reading the article itself, often the only part I check), etc. Moreover, it's open-sourceness often leads to non-mainstream but important issues being described in the articles." CreationDate="2016-11-19T11:53:50.107" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="11514" PostId="4462" Score="0" Text="@Tim Wikipedia is useful, but the review policy is biased, and not necessarily truthful. That is why it requires filtering before citing it. In the usual peer review process, an editor will choose to accept or reject a reviewer's opinion, which obviates much misbehavior and poor judgement. On CV our moderators fulfill that role, on Wikipedia, that role is poorly enforced." CreationDate="2016-11-21T20:06:53.453" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="13985" PostId="4463" Score="0" Text="What I was getting at is the [identity function](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_function) of an algebra. Most people have not studied abstract algebra so would not know that the basis of any algebra is the identity function, and thus how that function is fundamental to any other manipulation made within that algebraic construct. That our readers are unimpressed with how pivotal the identity concept is, is underwhelming." CreationDate="2017-08-08T00:29:31.987" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11507" PostId="4464" Score="9" Text="If it's a _statistical_ puzzle, well yes, it's on-topic in my view. I wouldn't worry about being flooded, because if that was a problem it would have happened already. Nor do I see much difficulty in distinguishing puzzles from homework." CreationDate="2016-11-21T12:09:32.907" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11520" PostId="4465" Score="3" Text="I think that `[games]` and `[puzzle]` have different scope and shoulld not be made synonyms." CreationDate="2016-11-22T09:31:59.983" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="11524" PostId="4467" Score="1" Text="I've never heard about this &quot;typology&quot; before so had to google - and it looks like it's Steven's, not Stephen's." CreationDate="2016-11-24T16:19:59.750" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11525" PostId="4467" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Ah, thanks, I'm always doing that. I meant to double check before clicking post." CreationDate="2016-11-24T16:33:59.657" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11526" PostId="4467" Score="5" Text="@amoeba you have no idea how lucky you have been to have avoided it all this time." CreationDate="2016-11-24T16:45:08.537" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="11529" PostId="4467" Score="0" Text="@mdewey Can you elaborate? I am curious. If &quot;Steven's typology&quot; is simply distinguishing between nominal/ordinal/interval variables, then what's wrong with it? These are indeed different. I am not quite sure why this elementary distinction deserves a name." CreationDate="2016-11-24T22:08:18.470" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11530" PostId="4467" Score="1" Text="@amoeba because I agree with Glen_b that many of its disciples have an uncritical acceptance of the view that it completely determines what they should do with their problem. At least, that is what I think he said in part." CreationDate="2016-11-24T22:12:21.620" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="11531" PostId="4467" Score="0" Text="@mdewey Indeed it is. A common problem is what it leads people to do with 0-1 responses." CreationDate="2016-11-25T00:50:51.713" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13190" PostId="4467" Score="0" Text="The image that was put in in an edit (thanks @Sycorax) was a bit large. I have converted to a link for now but I may come back and figure out how to make it display smaller" CreationDate="2017-04-11T23:29:54.677" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13191" PostId="4467" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/25051/resizing-an-image-in-a-post I think this is what you're looking for." CreationDate="2017-04-11T23:37:37.740" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="13192" PostId="4467" Score="0" Text="@Sycorax Was already there, thanks (I asked some other mods). Just making sure all looked good before posting." CreationDate="2017-04-11T23:40:34.927" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13193" PostId="4467" Score="0" Text="Cool. The picture is just too good for it to get lost to the chat history." CreationDate="2017-04-12T00:22:11.803" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="11523" PostId="4468" Score="11" Text="It may be worth pointing out that these curves are not &quot;histograms.&quot;  They are log-log plots (base 10) of reputation bins (on the horizontal axis) and bin frequencies (on the vertical axis).  Also of note is that the most extreme four points for CV (at the lower right) represent just four people--implying they are highly uncertain indicators of the population characteristics--while the extreme four points for SO represent 95 people. It is also worth observing that these plots do not directly represent answer rates: they are total *reputation.*" CreationDate="2016-11-24T14:44:55.460" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="11528" PostId="4468" Score="0" Text="I would like to know it too. Ask the editor" CreationDate="2016-11-24T20:08:52.887" UserId="105234" />
  <row Id="11532" PostId="4468" Score="0" Text="@gung The table that you copied here looks very strange. What are these numbers?" CreationDate="2016-11-25T08:07:39.493" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11534" PostId="4468" Score="0" Text="I didn't put that pictures, and are created using the open data of stackexchange, which don't include legends and titles in the graphs it automatically creates." CreationDate="2016-11-25T11:13:59.310" UserId="105234" />
  <row Id="11536" PostId="4468" Score="1" Text="@AndreSilva, if you look at the revision history, you'll see that I added the figures. The original post relied on a lot of information posted elsewhere (SE data pulls) that required readers to navigate elsewhere &amp; read other materials to understand the question fully. I copied the figures to try to make the question self-contained." CreationDate="2016-11-25T13:39:35.643" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11537" PostId="4468" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, I don't know what happened with the table. I must have messed something up &amp; not noticed." CreationDate="2016-11-25T13:40:47.083" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11538" PostId="4468" Score="4" Text="For future reference, @Llopis, any question posted on the SE system (eg, on CV or meta.CV) is supposed to be self-contained. It is OK to link to other sources for context, but whatever information is necessary to understand &amp; answer the question is supposed to copied into the body of the question. We want these questions to remain valid &amp; intelligible even after the link goes dead, or the data from which the pull is drawing changes." CreationDate="2016-11-25T13:45:42.717" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11542" PostId="4469" Score="0" Text="Well, it's a classic [power law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law)..." CreationDate="2016-11-25T14:09:15.983" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="11543" PostId="4469" Score="4" Text="@Tim [So you think you have a power law?](http://bactra.org/weblog/491.html)" CreationDate="2016-11-25T21:28:29.287" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11544" PostId="4472" Score="2" Text="+1. I think we could use your answer to improve the excerpt of [puzzle]." CreationDate="2016-11-27T00:28:20.207" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="11545" PostId="4473" Score="3" Text="Would it not be better to persist with the question and answer you already have? Why not edit your question again and say explicitly which bits of the answer you are now having trouble with?" CreationDate="2016-11-28T17:16:29.093" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="11546" PostId="4473" Score="0" Text="should I remove the checkmark, indicating the question is not answered?" CreationDate="2016-11-28T17:47:32.867" UserId="83526" />
  <row Id="11547" PostId="4473" Score="3" Text="Please see http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic in relation to both cross-posting and homework-style questions." CreationDate="2016-11-28T21:37:14.567" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11691" PostId="4473" Score="0" Text="If you have checked the answer you should be satisfied with it.  I would not uncheck an answer unless you made the check inadvertently or a better answer came along that you feel now deserves the check.  But wanting more/different answers is not right.  If you think mathematics could give you better answers migrate it as Andre Silva has suggested in his answer." CreationDate="2016-12-31T18:55:38.850" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11548" PostId="4474" Score="4" Text="Were these suggested edits to their own posts?" CreationDate="2016-11-29T15:12:19.307" UserId="72321" />
  <row Id="11550" PostId="4474" Score="4" Text="Although this probably was not the case, sometimes users have their reputations reduced to 1 temporarily.  In other cases users give away many points in bounties, also lowering their reputations.  Therefore the reputation they have *now* might have no relationship with the reputation they had *at the time they took an action.*" CreationDate="2016-11-29T19:09:10.897" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="11552" PostId="4474" Score="0" Text="@JNat good point. I have no idea how to get that information." CreationDate="2016-11-30T10:06:44.577" UserId="56940" />
  <row Id="11553" PostId="4474" Score="0" Text="@whuber that's reasonable. But at the time I was writing the question for the first time, the OPs I was referring to were two new OPs." CreationDate="2016-11-30T10:08:22.013" UserId="56940" />
  <row Id="11549" PostId="4475" Score="4" Text="That's right, but let's add that it's not the only rule. For example, anyone with high enough reputation can edit a question or answer without needing the OP's approval. They in turn can roll back an edit, as sometimes happens. On occasion, I have had people reverse the whole of  a very detailed edit that focused on presentation alone. If that happens, I register a mild protest and back off. Usually the OP accepts such edits, and sometimes even thanks you." CreationDate="2016-11-29T17:46:48.263" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11551" PostId="4476" Score="1" Text="There are currently 4 reopen votes for your 2nd Q so it's almost reopened. Having said that, I struggle to see any difference between your two questions. They seem the same to me." CreationDate="2016-11-30T08:30:36.497" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11561" PostId="4476" Score="0" Text="@amoeba The first one ask for a really high-level and broad introduction text book (something like &quot;Introduction for crowdsourcing for machine learners&quot;) while the second one asks for something like a research paper on these very technical issues." CreationDate="2016-11-30T13:57:52.367" UserId="107468" />
  <row Id="11567" PostId="4476" Score="0" Text="&quot;So, is there some general reference (for example a textbook or a comprehensive journal article) on how a crowdsourcing task should be designed from a research point of view?&quot; vs &quot;So my questions is do you know any kind of reference (preferably research papers) discussing what may count as good-practice in crowdsourcing&quot; does not strike me as two sufficiently different questions. If both were open right now, I would probably be inclined to vote to close one as a duplicate of another." CreationDate="2016-12-01T10:19:55.910" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11568" PostId="4476" Score="0" Text="Agreed. I rephrased the first questions to &quot;So, is there some general reference on how to get started with crowdsourcing from a research point of view, something like a general introduction?&quot; for clarification." CreationDate="2016-12-01T10:47:23.753" UserId="107468" />
  <row Id="11555" PostId="4477" Score="0" Text="Do you mean CV rather than CS?" CreationDate="2016-11-30T10:47:30.797" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11556" PostId="4477" Score="0" Text="Make sure to read first http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1479/how-to-ask-a-good-question-on-crossvalidated if you consider editing your questions. Good luck." CreationDate="2016-11-30T11:54:57.653" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="11557" PostId="4477" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b, whooops! Yes, of course I meant CV :) my bad." CreationDate="2016-11-30T13:26:45.323" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="11558" PostId="4477" Score="0" Text="@AndreSilva, thanks for the link. I am indeed in a similar situation to that of the other user - most of my questions get answered on other SE sites, but on CV the percentage is lower (apparently, not as low as for the other user, but lower than on other sites) . Again, nothing bad with that - it could just be that here people are more well-learned, and my questions are just too boring :) anyway, I'll read the link and see if there's something I could do better." CreationDate="2016-11-30T13:31:28.760" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="11565" PostId="4477" Score="2" Text="The nature of statistics is that many questions are often considerably harder to answer (or at least answer well). When I answer on SO or on math.SE, it often takes a fraction of the time to write a pretty complete answer than it typically takes me here (if an answer takes me two minutes on SO it usually means something weird is going on, and it's rare for one to take me more than about three or four on math.SE --- but here, often I spend tens of minutes putting together a single answer)" CreationDate="2016-11-30T22:23:20.087" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11575" PostId="4477" Score="2" Text="Sort of off topic, but: After seeing this I skimmed some of your questions, which seem generally well posed. So I tried to answer a couple of them, although I do not feel fully qualified to ... on the theory that something is better than nothing! (Clarification: These answers should be &quot;not wrong&quot;, but perhaps also not complete.)" CreationDate="2016-12-05T16:53:52.987" UserId="127790" />
  <row Id="11577" PostId="4477" Score="0" Text="@GeoMatt22 thanks for your interest :)" CreationDate="2016-12-07T11:35:34.783" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="11559" PostId="4478" Score="4" Text="Agreed; I looked at @DeltaIV's questions; they're pretty good but just not tempting to me. On the rising tide of garbage, my gut agrees but I have no data. I think the essence is being perceived as a helpline. We're not Wikipedia, but certainly not a helpline either, the diagnostic of which is that all questions are answered and you lean over backwards to be supportive, positive and indeed deferential. Poor questions can't, or don't deserve to, be answered here. It's (not surprisingly) difficult for newcomers to grasp that we are much closer to Wikipedia than to a helpline." CreationDate="2016-11-30T13:35:57.510" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11560" PostId="4478" Score="2" Text="hey, great suggestions! Thanks. I will improve the last question: I only put the links because I thought they would be more complete than any description, but I didn't think that, as you correctly point out, strong contributors are overwhelmed with such a volume of questions that they cannot spend the whole day rummaging through Web pages. Concerning the book list, I indeed wrote that I was open to suggestions outside the list, as long as they are no Feller or Kallenberg. I will try to make the point more clear." CreationDate="2016-11-30T13:43:18.427" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="11564" PostId="4478" Score="2" Text="It's definitely worth having the link, but you also need to make the question stand on its own as much as you can (so that if the link died or moved it wouldn't matter); that has the coincidental effect of saving a click and page load per book (unless people actually want to look at the page for the book, perhaps to see what the cover looks like or something)" CreationDate="2016-11-30T22:20:05.660" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11566" PostId="4478" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b, sure, I agree with you, it just didn't occur to me when I wrote the question." CreationDate="2016-12-01T09:48:31.623" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="11690" PostId="4479" Score="0" Text="I think this is a really good answer." CreationDate="2016-12-31T18:50:16.130" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11573" PostId="4480" Score="0" Text="When you go to the reopen queue, you initially land on the `revision` tab. What might be best &amp; easiest would be to just initially land on the `question (revised)` tab instead." CreationDate="2016-12-02T12:40:33.583" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11739" PostId="4481" Score="7" Text="+1. I totally agree in the emotional blackmail part. I find it totally irrational." CreationDate="2017-01-03T23:53:12.983" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="13194" PostId="4481" Score="5" Text="I think there are times when &quot;I am working on my dissertation&quot; can be relevant (such as to clarify what looks as if it might be simple homework is actually something else; I've seen this with some dissertation posts where the author tries to turn their problem into some artificial situation - often obscuring necessary information out of ignorance - it often ends up looking like a mangled homework question). There are also times when it might affect the kinds of advice offered (if it's a dissertation there will typically be different expectations on the asker than if it's for a job.  ... ctd" CreationDate="2017-04-12T02:15:27.037" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13195" PostId="4481" Score="0" Text="ctd ... I agree you shouldn't ever need to lead with it. I completely agree with the rest of it and the general advice (especially about asking the statistical question clearly, concisely, and concretely)." CreationDate="2017-04-12T02:17:44.477" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13196" PostId="4481" Score="2" Text="@Glen_b I agree with you but the crucial detail is whether the answer would be better revised. Across countries and disciplines a dissertation can be for anything from first degree or diploma to doctorate. Expectations vary from using some elementary procedures to showing familiarity with frontier-research technique. I have seen many posts with the added flavour of &quot;completely new to statistics&quot; and &quot;using X&quot; where X can be zero-inflated negative binomial regression, mixed models, etc., etc. The central point for me is that whatever the personal context, what is good advice shouldn't vary." CreationDate="2017-04-12T06:25:33.657" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="13707" PostId="4481" Score="0" Text="I should make it clear that I don't think the answer requires revision; I previously upvoted it as it stood. I just sought to note the possibility of occasional relevance of it being a thesis." CreationDate="2017-05-31T23:50:01.643" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11579" PostId="4484" Score="1" Text="Different tags are differently popular. In addition, the typical amount of upvoting per view seems to differ strongly between tags. One might try to compare 2 users w/i the same tag while controlling for the number of views the threads have had since their answer was posted, but this would still measure a mishmash of things (eg, statistical insight, English proficiency, etc)." CreationDate="2016-12-08T16:46:41.773" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11580" PostId="4484" Score="1" Text="@gung True, I didn't think about the popularity of tags (and how they come and go in questions, especially here in CV)." CreationDate="2016-12-08T16:52:18.453" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="11584" PostId="4484" Score="4" Text="You can fit a two-way random effect model with tags and people, if you like." CreationDate="2016-12-09T21:59:56.253" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="11581" PostId="4485" Score="5" Text="What is the scope of [learning] tag is not clear to me *at all*, by the way. Is it supposed to be smth close to [self-study] or rather to [machine-learning]? Looks like a garbage tag to me." CreationDate="2016-12-08T17:39:07.097" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11582" PostId="4485" Score="0" Text="@amoeba same here" CreationDate="2016-12-08T17:46:03.587" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="11583" PostId="4485" Score="0" Text="Only `[teaching]` even has an excerpt. Probably we should figure out what we want the other two to mean / be used for, create excerpts, &amp; make them synonyms or destroy them, etc." CreationDate="2016-12-09T00:40:43.760" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12526" PostId="4485" Score="2" Text="Update: issue resolved (see update to Andre's answer), answer ready for acceptance :-)" CreationDate="2017-02-20T11:29:39.610" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12534" PostId="4485" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Thanks!" CreationDate="2017-02-20T15:10:57.013" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="11585" PostId="4486" Score="5" Text="I disagree with point 1.3: I think [learning] is such a confusing tag name that we should not make it a synonym of anything but rather eliminate this tag. It seems that in most cases it refers to machine learning or to &quot;learning&quot; a model; this can be removed or retagged to machine-learning if needed. A minority of threads might need to be retagged into teaching or self-study." CreationDate="2016-12-09T22:59:22.167" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11593" PostId="4486" Score="4" Text="Also, I don't quite see why e.g. [teaching] is a meta tag. Teaching of statistics is on-topic here and questions about teaching deserve their own tag. I wouldn't say it's a &quot;bad&quot; tag." CreationDate="2016-12-11T18:13:02.337" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11594" PostId="4486" Score="2" Text="I think `[education]` would be best to be removed entirely, rather than made a synonym. For `[learning]`, where it means 'learning a model', we might be able to substitute `[estimation]` or `[fitting]` (I'm not sure if those should be synonyms." CreationDate="2016-12-12T00:11:08.443" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11667" PostId="4486" Score="1" Text="I don't like the self study tag.  I think it should apply only to homework and therefore get rid of it. What is the difference between an ordinary tag and a meta tag?  Users can create their own tags regardless of what is suggested.  So isn't the process of cleaning up tags a never ending battle? I think the education tag is meaningless.  Everything we do on this site is intended to further educate.  For CV I think the learning tag is a problem since machine learning is a major topic and the learning tag can be confused with machine learning tag." CreationDate="2016-12-29T18:02:05.543" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11669" PostId="4486" Score="0" Text="@AndreSilva Thank you for answering my somewhat naive questions. I am going to read your post to see what the argument is for keeping self study." CreationDate="2016-12-29T20:40:56.917" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11671" PostId="4486" Score="0" Text="I went through that post.  It was very long with long answers and too much discussion.  But the bottom line for me is that questions that are not homework are too subjectively labelled self study.  In my recent activity on the CV site I have found that the OP does not initially label the question &quot;self study&quot; and a moderator or other user makes the judgment (very subjectively) that the question needs the self study tag. If the OP doesn't add the tag one of three things will happen (1) someone other than the OP adds the tag (2) the OP dutifully adds the tag (3) the tag never gets added." CreationDate="2016-12-29T21:14:26.517" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11672" PostId="4486" Score="1" Text="Most of the time regardless as to which of these three outcomes occur, things end up bad for the OP.  If he wanted an answer he doesn't get one. If he only gets hints they may not be helpful enough.  Otherwise he gets no satisfactory help and his question is closed or deleted.  These questions are not homework or exam questions and I think the OP deserve an answer if the question is acceptable and someone could provide a reasonable answer. If the self study tag were eliminated none of these difficulties would occur.  Someone might see pitfalls but I don't." CreationDate="2016-12-29T21:25:00.317" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11900" PostId="4486" Score="1" Text="Re your update: Five threads are going to be automatically deleted very soon because they are closed/downvoted (I have no downvoted some of the questions/answers to enable automatic deletion). If you downvote http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/180284 it will also be erased (I already downvoted). So this will be 6. The other two are closed as duplicate and I think should be edited to remove the [learning] tag." CreationDate="2017-01-17T11:47:59.257" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12000" PostId="4486" Score="2" Text="Looking at it again, why don't we make education a synonym of teaching instead of retagging?" CreationDate="2017-01-25T17:16:00.457" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12002" PostId="4486" Score="2" Text="Andre, I have no idea, I did not really look. To me the tag name &quot;education&quot; sounds like it should be synonymous with &quot;teaching&quot;, but perhaps in practice it's not always like that. One option is to retag all threads that do not fit [teaching] scope, and then to decide if we make a synonym or retag the rest into [teaching]." CreationDate="2017-01-25T19:07:16.143" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12527" PostId="4486" Score="0" Text="Well done. So do you think we should make [education]-&gt;[teaching] synonym for the future, or rather not?" CreationDate="2017-02-20T11:30:16.093" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12530" PostId="4486" Score="1" Text="Tks @amoeba (for the comment and help getting this done). What I observed was that not all questions tagged [education] were about [teaching] (they were also about learning/self-study and career). I'd suggest wait and see if [education] pops up again. If it does, we can come back to this discussion to define a synonym." CreationDate="2017-02-20T11:57:13.783" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="11586" PostId="4487" Score="2" Text="I understand your concern, and I think you've made some valid points if the current system would be replaced by a fully automatic one. I don't think that is StackExchange's plan though. As far as I know, right now they use a very simple retrieval mechanism based on content word matching, to potential duplicate questions. My goal is to improve this, which means users will get better suggestions." CreationDate="2016-12-10T23:18:48.403" UserId="136419" />
  <row Id="11587" PostId="4487" Score="1" Text="StackExchange *might* decide to automatically label duplicates with a very high confidence, but since duplicate question detection is a difficult task, I don't think this will include many cases, and so for the vast majority, human confirmation will still be necessary. The suggestions will just be better." CreationDate="2016-12-10T23:21:33.540" UserId="136419" />
  <row Id="11588" PostId="4487" Score="0" Text="Overfitting, skews in the data, differences between different sites... of course these are all things I will have to watch out for. These problems appear in many classification tasks, and so of course I will look out for them and try to minimise their impact. Your first point is a really tricky one, which I'll definitely need to think about. And your point about misspellings that are done on purpose is new to me. That's a really interesting thing, which I hadn't thought about yet. Thanks for pointing that out!" CreationDate="2016-12-10T23:24:53.387" UserId="136419" />
  <row Id="11589" PostId="4487" Score="0" Text="Does this take away some of your concerns?" CreationDate="2016-12-10T23:25:28.637" UserId="136419" />
  <row Id="11597" PostId="4489" Score="3" Text="I would rather comment on an example than discuss the principle of where to draw a boundary. Generalizing from your specifics, it can indeed be extremely difficult to answer when the post is of the form &quot;I don't understand X&quot;, which is, strictly, a statement, not a question. But here's a positive suggestion. You have a question, which you can immediately follow with your own (tentative) answers. Then other people will be able to edit, comment and vote on your answers as usual -- and they will be able to add their own answers." CreationDate="2016-12-14T22:18:32.750" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11598" PostId="4489" Score="2" Text="The example raises a different issue, which is that broad comparisons between the merits of different methods are sometimes considered to be too much a matter of opinion. But you can only try. The community has lots of ways of telling you quickly whether you have made a good start. (Then again people enjoy arguing about the messy parts of statistical science such as the importance of normality assumptions or what to do with outliers.)" CreationDate="2016-12-14T22:22:20.127" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11599" PostId="4489" Score="4" Text="The open-ended nature of such a question suggests it would not fare well in that form on any SE site." CreationDate="2016-12-14T22:29:57.617" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="11600" PostId="4489" Score="4" Text="I think it's unfortunate that this is unlikely to work (remain open / be a viable question), but I think it's unlikely to work." CreationDate="2016-12-15T03:20:52.853" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11627" PostId="4489" Score="0" Text="The &quot;Can anyone correct?&quot; part works better than &quot;Can anyone add to my understanding?&quot;, which is essentially inviting whatever people would like to add that they think might help.  Too open-ended.  But there's no hard and fast division between the two." CreationDate="2016-12-24T20:00:14.340" UserId="2669" />
  <row Id="11602" PostId="4493" Score="3" Text="The OP probably mis-remembers.  The question was posted in April, saw little activity, and then was modified in November." CreationDate="2016-12-17T16:16:47.793" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="11603" PostId="4494" Score="3" Text="This is raised here since over a year: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/a/2865/28666" CreationDate="2016-12-18T21:20:51.600" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11604" PostId="4494" Score="3" Text="That thread is largely being ignored by the mods but there are many good and well-upvoted merging suggestions there." CreationDate="2016-12-18T21:21:50.843" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11605" PostId="4494" Score="1" Text="@amoeba +1 to your linked suggestion" CreationDate="2016-12-19T00:08:51.293" UserId="127790" />
  <row Id="11606" PostId="4495" Score="0" Text="This is explicitly addressed in our help pages: please visit http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/no-one-answers.  BTW, &quot;a moderator&quot; could be any of thousands of people with enough reputation to vote to reopen." CreationDate="2016-12-19T00:37:12.607" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="11607" PostId="4495" Score="0" Text="@whuber Reopen and close votes requires a [3000 reputation](http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/privileges) of which there are 187 on this site at the moment. Look, you are a really smart guy (trying #3 above :) what are your objections to a reopen? Can you give a reason at least, please (trying #4 above :)?" CreationDate="2016-12-19T01:01:34.853" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11608" PostId="4495" Score="3" Text="Thank you for the reminder about the reputation thresholds--I should have checked them.  I haven't been able to read the entire question through.  When I last skimmed over it, it seemed like a polemic loosely disguised as a question.  There do appear to be many interesting statistical issues brought up in that post, but I just don't have the time to wade through it and sort out where the questions actually are. That made me feel that I was not in an adequate position to evaluate whether it should be reopened, so I have not voted on it." CreationDate="2016-12-19T01:37:13.520" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="11609" PostId="4495" Score="0" Text="@whuber Interesting that, &quot;a polemic loosely disguised as a question.&quot;   What then of science? Do we reject hypotheses because we do not approve of positing them, or do we posit hypotheses to disprove them? Anyway, put yourself in my position and give some advice, but, have a care that I come by my silly opinions honestly." CreationDate="2016-12-19T01:55:23.913" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11610" PostId="4495" Score="4" Text="The question has more than quadrupled in size from the original, and has almost completely changed in content, after an [answer](http://stats.stackexchange.com/a/251714/127790) was provided to the original. I would suggest rolling back to something more like the original (something where Tim's answer still applies), and then post the &quot;OLS accuracy&quot; question separately. Wherever possible, I also recommend to &quot;[taboo](https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Rationalist_taboo)&quot; any words where there appears to be semantic confusion." CreationDate="2016-12-19T06:00:45.080" UserId="127790" />
  <row Id="11611" PostId="4495" Score="3" Text="I agree with @GeoMatt22. Honestly, if that was not mine answer I would suggest rollback myself, but since it is my answer I do not want it to look like some kind of edit wars. Changing *everything* in your question *after* it already gained some attention and was answered is quite inelegant." CreationDate="2016-12-19T09:00:30.663" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="11612" PostId="4495" Score="0" Text="@GeoMatt22 My original intent was to present the inaccuracy of least squares. I was diverted from my goal by redirection to word choice. Bias is defined differently depending on which unphysical theorem is tautologized. It was so strained a discussion that I have to apologize for the hoof in mouth. I have Tim to thank about giving a care to help me sort through the nonsense of my own making. Now, what to do about it? I will do whatever makes sense." CreationDate="2016-12-19T09:05:23.570" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11613" PostId="4495" Score="0" Text="@Carl now the question is not on-hold anymore and doing things like applying more changes, posting it again etc. won't do any better." CreationDate="2016-12-19T09:30:52.410" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="11614" PostId="4495" Score="0" Text="@Tim I owe you one. Please [read](http://www.jstor.org/stable/1913323?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents) and search OLS bias. Try to answer what I was trying to ask, and I will put a bounty on it of +50 to pay you back." CreationDate="2016-12-19T09:35:05.157" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11615" PostId="4495" Score="0" Text="@whuber It says in the help section that one can put a bounty on to open a question [on hold]. However, the bounty option did not exist when the question was placed [on hold]. Now that the question is off of hold, the bounty option has appeared. Somewhere something is incorrect, probably the help section." CreationDate="2016-12-19T09:43:44.617" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11616" PostId="4495" Score="3" Text="I'm unable to find where the help states you can put a bounty on a closed question, Carl.  The relevant page is http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/reopen-questions." CreationDate="2016-12-19T18:50:57.317" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="11624" PostId="4495" Score="0" Text="@whuber Hummm, you said &quot;This is explicitly addressed in our help pages: please visit http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/no-one-answers. It is a link that you provided to me above, and mentions bounty reopening. That is where I got the idea, as well. So if it has been commutated, that text should be edited." CreationDate="2016-12-21T05:01:43.557" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="11625" PostId="4495" Score="0" Text="You're right, Carl, that help text implicitly assumes &quot;any question&quot; means &quot;any open question.&quot;  However, changing this portion of the help text is beyond the powers of any of the mods here, because it's a common part of the entire SE system.  If you would like to agitate for improvement, consider posting on Meta-StackOverflow." CreationDate="2016-12-21T14:55:30.990" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="11651" PostId="4495" Score="0" Text="Reviewing the question it seems to be the longest question I have ever seen.  It seems to me that it would be better to start over. Adding on to this would try anyone's patience." CreationDate="2016-12-28T02:03:52.360" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11619" PostId="4499" Score="4" Text="+1.  A slightly newer MetaSO post at http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/211726/166924 looks helpful, too.  The much more recent thread at http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/210373 contains some remarks indicating SO is rethinking this five-year-old policy about allowing dup answers, having recognized it's leading to a lot of junk." CreationDate="2016-12-19T22:34:20.617" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="11620" PostId="4499" Score="12" Text="Cross-Validated frowns upon fully duplicate answers. &quot;Partial duplicating&quot; that you are describing here is arguably less bad and can be acceptable. If you copy-paste parts of your own earlier answer, I'd suggest to format them as a quote and link to the original answer. As a better solution I would suggest writing a perfect answer *once* and then linking to it in other answers whenever you feel necessary (without much or even any copy-pasting): e.g. by writing &quot;See my answer here for more details&quot; or some such. I often use such cross-links." CreationDate="2016-12-19T23:07:35.623" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11621" PostId="4499" Score="2" Text="@amoeba Thanks for your comment, and I agree that it is better to have once good answer once and link rather than copy pasting or rewriting.  What I am more concerned about though are things that would never be an answer to a question on their own, but are often a good guide on how to derive an answer.  These are usually a last few sentences to paragraph at the end of another 2-3 paragraphs of answer.  It seems less appropriate to link to an answer that is 3/4 unrelated to the asker's question just for a few sentences at the end that are." CreationDate="2016-12-20T00:22:48.743" UserId="127913" />
  <row Id="11622" PostId="4499" Score="7" Text="+1 I sometimes paste **short** parts of other answers when relevant (e.g. examples, definitions) with providing link to the full answer. In my opinion this is better then needing OP to jump over multiple links to get the answer to his question. If exactly the same answer applies to different questions, then I vote to close them as duplicates rather then pasting or re-writing the whole answer." CreationDate="2016-12-20T08:50:04.547" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="11630" PostId="4499" Score="2" Text="FYI [Are there any non-trivial examples of exact-duplicate answers to non-duplicate questions?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/267318/178179) (short answer: yes)" CreationDate="2016-12-26T06:00:09.817" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="11631" PostId="4499" Score="0" Text="Hi Barker, I see your point. I think it could be useful for this discussion if you could provide an example of such &quot;last few sentences&quot; that you repeatedly feel inclined to include into your answers. This could make the discussion more specific. Can you post it here as comment?" CreationDate="2016-12-26T14:15:48.090" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11626" PostId="4500" Score="1" Text="With 6 upvotes and no critical comments, I will start implementing it now." CreationDate="2016-12-22T21:58:46.020" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11628" PostId="4500" Score="1" Text="While removing [replication] tags I noticed that some of these questions are about &quot;pseudoreplications&quot;. I considered creating a [pseudoreplication] tag but in the end decided to use [independence]/[non-independent] tags instead, because it seems that &quot;pseudoreplication&quot; terminology is largely confined to the ecology field, whereas other fields call it simply non-independent / correlated errors, or nested data, or hierarchical data, etc." CreationDate="2016-12-25T14:21:47.583" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11629" PostId="4500" Score="2" Text="By the way, if anybody is reading this, why on Earth do we have [independence] and [non-independent] as two separate tags?" CreationDate="2016-12-25T14:22:34.917" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11638" PostId="4501" Score="1" Text="Yeah sorry I couldn't find dupes when I searched. I agree w closing" CreationDate="2016-12-27T13:13:35.237" UserId="73527" />
  <row Id="11645" PostId="4501" Score="1" Text="Related discussions (thanks to @AndreSilva for finding them): http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/832, http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2641, http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2819." CreationDate="2016-12-27T19:00:36.760" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11632" PostId="4502" Score="4" Text="+1, but in my opinion, conversion to CW should only be used when one wants to invite others to edit and complete/improve a partial answer. This is what [CW was designed for](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/108136/what-is-community-wiki-for). It should not be used to avoid the 'reward', because: i) it misrepresent what CW is, can cause confusion when OP does not want radical edits in his/her post; ii) the 'reward' is fair to users helping putting the information where it should be; iii) it can help refrain experienced users answering in comments; let someone else provide an answer." CreationDate="2016-12-27T11:47:33.223" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="11646" PostId="4502" Score="0" Text="@AndreSilva &quot;invite others to edit&quot; was precisely my intent in mentioning CW above. If you're in the position of wanting to put up an answer from comments but you're not confident enough to take the responsibility for some parts of it (as when a comment-answer from a high rep user contains a claim you don't know how to prove), inviting others to edit what you put up is an obvious solution." CreationDate="2016-12-28T00:12:51.107" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11654" PostId="4502" Score="1" Text="Ok, I agree. It is that you wrote: _If you don't want the responsibility and/ **or the reward** (as meagre as it usually is), there's always the possibility to make the answer community wiki_. I understood the **or the reward** to be a stand alone suggestion of cause for converting to CW. In such cases, I think there would be no problem receiving the 'reward' because that user would be helping the site, therefore, should/could be 'rewarded'." CreationDate="2016-12-28T13:26:46.473" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="11649" PostId="4504" Score="5" Text="Its an interesting point. As a new and inexperienced user myself, i have tried to follow the rules. This has generally been a rewarding experience because searching through similar but not identical problems to my own has often led me a deeper understanding of the problem as well as pointed me on the path to a solution. On the other hand i have seen some poorly considered questions from new users where just looking at the 'Related' questions clearly provides an answer. I do think limiting new user's questions could discourage new engagement but maybe funelling them through more rigorous" CreationDate="2016-12-28T01:43:59.107" UserId="86025" />
  <row Id="11650" PostId="4504" Score="1" Text="question vetting would be worthwhile vis a vi expanding the suggestion and key word filters they have to go through before getting the option to post might work." CreationDate="2016-12-28T01:45:41.137" UserId="86025" />
  <row Id="11652" PostId="4504" Score="0" Text="@JustGettinStarted I agree with you.  It is always a good idea to encourage more strongly that the new user at least search through the site before submitting a question.  However in one of my examples the OP was submitting his first question and really did not understand how to edit his question.  Also it was Christmas day and he was being hit with down votes and having his questions put on hold.  I think situations like that call for a little compassion and some bending of the rules.  How did you feel when you submitted your first question?" CreationDate="2016-12-28T05:46:24.617" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11653" PostId="4504" Score="2" Text="&quot;The other moderator didn't think I should have edited a question that was already put on hold.&quot; I thought this was expected behavior - if I can edit a question that is on hold, and make it appropriate, I do (and I don't think I've ever been told not to). For example, a question that says &quot;How to I interpret this in Stata&quot; might be put on hold as being about Stata - but the question is more general, and can be just &quot;How do I interpret this?&quot;" CreationDate="2016-12-28T11:35:53.950" UserId="17072" />
  <row Id="11656" PostId="4504" Score="3" Text="@JeremyMiles, I would say it depends: edits will bump a closed thread into the review queue, but subsequent edits will not bump it into the reopen queue. So if the thread isn't voted to be reopened as a result of the 1st set of edits, the OP will have largely lost their chance. Thus it's important to only make edits that would result in reopening, &amp; otherwise to leave closed posts (like sleeping dogs) lie." CreationDate="2016-12-28T13:50:25.270" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11662" PostId="4504" Score="0" Text="My main intention was to get opinions about my specific actions.  Happily the discussion has broadened and a lot of the rules are being debated. I am particular glad that two moderators have already chimed in." CreationDate="2016-12-28T14:31:50.843" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11663" PostId="4504" Score="0" Text="I noticed recently that an OP tried almost any trick in the book to get a question reopened.  The post got exceedingly long and in my opinion didn't merit the length.  He went so far as to make a new question asking for suggestions as to how to get the question reopened.  That question got lengthy as well." CreationDate="2016-12-28T14:36:08.310" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11664" PostId="4504" Score="0" Text="@gung thanks for the clarification." CreationDate="2016-12-28T16:28:53.363" UserId="17072" />
  <row Id="11729" PostId="4504" Score="1" Text="See [Are we closing questions too fast?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/3119/17230). In my answer there I argue for closing - i.e. placing on hold - quickly questions that aren't up to scratch." CreationDate="2017-01-02T21:16:13.010" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="11730" PostId="4504" Score="0" Text="@Scotchi I like the thread you reference." CreationDate="2017-01-02T22:07:05.740" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11818" PostId="4504" Score="1" Text="@MichaelChernick: See for example http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/255283/comparing-percentages. I closed this one in the belief that there was a real danger of a quite inappropriate answer. It's also an example of when a comment to explain what's unclear is needed. By contrast I'd have closed http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/255304/17230 without comment, &amp; left the OP to work out for themself how to ask it better." CreationDate="2017-01-09T15:34:44.243" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="11655" PostId="4505" Score="0" Text="I agree with a lot of what you say but I still think there is judgment involved.  An experienced user could easily make a duplicate or near duplicate answer in a field he is not familiar with.  Statistics is a growth area even though it is a very developed field.  This may even more so be the case with machine learning.  What was a really good answer 2 years ago may not be so now.  I notice that the protected questions that I have seen are very long with many comments and difficult to go through. I don't have all the answers.  There are so many rules that even moderates can't keep track." CreationDate="2016-12-28T13:47:29.627" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11657" PostId="4505" Score="0" Text="I have notice lately that in the case of self study questions you are not even consistent with how you apply the rules.  I do respect your opinion because of your long experience, thoughtfulness.  You have achieved the highest reputation on this site and I know to do that requires a lot of effort.  Also you have taken on the added burden of moderator." CreationDate="2016-12-28T13:52:48.113" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11658" PostId="4505" Score="0" Text="A problem I have with the treatment of new users is that some of them feel unwelcomed and discouraged.  We do not want to lose them.  A new user can also be a very knowledgeable user," CreationDate="2016-12-28T13:55:57.093" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11665" PostId="4505" Score="5" Text="No one wants anyone to be discouraged. But as a balancing point I have to mention that old users can easily be discouraged by widespread seeming reluctance to read around the Help Center to find about the ground rules or do any work (research, meaning here finding out about the techniques being used or even dipping into a text) whatsoever. The point difficult to grasp is that CV is not a helpline; it is more nearly an attempt to build up a repository of answered questions." CreationDate="2016-12-29T10:38:24.323" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11666" PostId="4505" Score="1" Text="I'd agree with this, but I understand the problems the OP raises. It's best not to have a new user &quot;pass&quot;, but, on the other hand, I think the older users should explain more fully why something is edited or closed, and point the new user to the relevant information that helps them understand the posting guidelines (or these need to be made clearer when registering). Too often posts are edited / closed with insufficient explanation to the new user - often using terminology that they probably don't understand. This can cause frustration and I expect many don't come back as a result." CreationDate="2016-12-29T11:07:34.020" UserId="52731" />
  <row Id="11673" PostId="4505" Score="0" Text="@Mooks I agree with your remarks. Maybe a some of the new users that leave the site are right to do so but there are others possibly many who would have become great contributors and the loss the ours.  Remember we all started out as new users with no reputation privileges and little or no knowledge of the rules." CreationDate="2016-12-29T21:33:44.170" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11674" PostId="4505" Score="2" Text="@Michael Chernick It is a 2 x 2 table, with one cell the great contributors we missed. But when a question is badly presented, hopelessly broad, very unclear or signals &quot;I am clueless&quot; (several or even all of these can be true at the same time) we are unlikely to be missing a potential great contributor. Great contributors announce themselves early by posting good answers." CreationDate="2016-12-30T10:01:27.430" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11675" PostId="4505" Score="1" Text="(ctd) When there's a plea to be nicer, or to explain more, it can be backed up by such posters helping out themselves by being nicer, or explaining more. It needs only modest reputation to contribute greatly by providing good explanations of why questions are being closed or by helping with improving such questions." CreationDate="2016-12-30T10:06:04.113" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11676" PostId="4505" Score="0" Text="@NickCox I don't know how you would know that it is unlikely that we could lose a great contributor.  Even if it is unlikely it would be a shame to lose one.  Also many of us take a while to produce good questions and become comfortable with the ever changing SE rules. With your view of what makes a person worth having on the site.  I think you would probably include me and many other people that I respect." CreationDate="2016-12-30T17:21:26.817" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11677" PostId="4505" Score="0" Text="@Michael Chernick I ask that you read the whole of the pertinent sentence again from &quot;But when a question is&quot; to &quot;a potential contributor&quot;.  I don't know for certain and am not claiming otherwise.  I certainly include you as someone worth having, as you surmise. I am focusing on poor questions from people who usually disappear after a few days or weeks." CreationDate="2016-12-30T18:55:25.660" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11678" PostId="4505" Score="0" Text="@Nick Cox I think we both have good intentions.  Sometimes it is hard to articulate feelings when frustrated.  I want to make an confession.  As I look at questions on CV this week, I am finding some new members that I think are abusing the site.  We seem to be getting mostly elementary and uninteresting questions from new members,  In many of them a good moderator will suggest that the OP read specific literature or go to specific CV posts that go over the issue raised.  Sometimes the action of putting the question on hold is rightfully made.  But the OP does not take the advice." CreationDate="2016-12-30T20:51:10.530" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11679" PostId="4505" Score="0" Text="Well meaning users will then supply hints in comments (sometimes long-winded) or give long tutorial answers.  I have let myself get drawn in sometimes.  Also I have seen them take textbook problems which is for homework or an exam and they basically supply their answer either in the question or subsequently after some hints.  It seems like they are merely using the site to check their work.  I think at least most of us can agree that this is not what the site is intended for." CreationDate="2016-12-30T20:58:02.133" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11683" PostId="4505" Score="3" Text="@Michael Chernick No need for any confession that you identify some poor and/or inappropriate questions. It's unfortunate as well as undesirable, but it is a major part of the SE model that we are not a help line in which all questions and all questioners deserve equal attention. No one can answer a question that they don't understand (common) and no one is obliged to answer an off-topic question (common). The policing entailed should be done as courteously as possible, but you're echoing a consensus here." CreationDate="2016-12-31T10:37:05.673" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11659" PostId="4506" Score="1" Text="Thank you for your serious and thoughtful answers.  I think you took all or almost all of my statements and sometimes pointed out more than one side of the issue.  I noticed that several times you held back saying that you couldn't answer some statements because i didn't give examples.  I think my question was rather long and it wouldn't be wise to make it much longer." CreationDate="2016-12-28T14:12:54.603" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11660" PostId="4506" Score="0" Text="I like meta because it allows for a lot of careful discussion.  I think it is better than chat.  One can start a chat and have the other not reply and I think they tend to be too short unless both users are on at the same time and continue to stay on. Also chat tends to be one on one.  Here we can get opinions from many different people." CreationDate="2016-12-28T14:17:36.653" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11661" PostId="4506" Score="0" Text="I notice that here on meta even with discussion questions  many questions  get put on hold or considered duplicate. In fact I was worried that my question could be called a duplicate since there are so many related questions here also.  But I think it is nice that the stream of new questions is slower than on the regular CV site." CreationDate="2016-12-28T14:22:36.503" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11819" PostId="4507" Score="1" Text="sorry for the late reply. I was abroad with very limited internet access. I understand your concern. I'll try to find your particular mistake and fix it, but of course that doesn't fix the general problem you're presenting here. I'm actually not expecting big problems with this, for the following three reasons:" CreationDate="2017-01-09T22:13:38.863" UserId="136419" />
  <row Id="11820" PostId="4507" Score="0" Text="1. when multiple people annotate the same question pairs, we'll be able to find the odd annotations and review them (or discard them); 2. the data presented in this annotation project is not the only data that is used in experiments. These are the pairs that seem to confuse the standard methods most, but we'll also use the existing duplicate questions, so the error rate will be lower than the 50% you indicated; 3. 100% perfect data is not necessarily guaranteed to give you the best performing system. Having a few errors in there may result in more robust models." CreationDate="2017-01-09T22:13:55.187" UserId="136419" />
  <row Id="11821" PostId="4507" Score="0" Text="I was concerned that you may not have enough reviews that you'd have multiple responses on most of the pairs, and while I agree that a few errors among the set of what is labelled as duplicates is not a bad thing, having a high proportion would be (and it seemed to me that a proportion even remotely near that high would be a problem). If you're satisfied, then that's fine, but it would make sense to me to have at least a &quot;previous&quot; button or link so you could fix the one you just did if you knew you made a mistake (of course it won't catch the mistakes you don't notice)." CreationDate="2017-01-10T01:55:24.560" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11822" PostId="4507" Score="0" Text="However, I guess you're done collecting data now." CreationDate="2017-01-10T02:10:48.893" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11833" PostId="4507" Score="0" Text="yes, you're right, and I should've mentioned it in my reply: having a back button to allow people to fix things is a good idea! I wish I had thought of it at the start of the project. I'll stop collecting data this weekend, and will let people know either later today or tomorrow morning. Thank you so much for all your help!" CreationDate="2017-01-11T04:28:37.703" UserId="136419" />
  <row Id="11680" PostId="4508" Score="0" Text="I can't tell what you're referring to from your description. Who are &quot;they&quot;?" CreationDate="2016-12-31T04:09:58.323" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11681" PostId="4508" Score="0" Text="I am referring to the community which you can see has moved several old posts to the CV home page.  This has been going on today and all day yesterday.  Scan the home page and you will see." CreationDate="2016-12-31T04:54:46.440" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11682" PostId="4508" Score="6" Text="You mean like [this](https://i.stack.imgur.com/k3mUm.png)? That's been happening at least a few times every day that I've been on the site. A bot bumps posts that haven't got an upvoted or accepted answer to bring them to the front page. It has been happening for at least 5 years, and probably a good deal longer. When traffic is very slow it bumps more, when traffic is heavy it sometimes won't bump a post. However, what shows up on the post when it gets bumped has recently changed to make it more explicit." CreationDate="2016-12-31T06:17:00.357" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11684" PostId="4508" Score="2" Text="Also, take a look at: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/19738/who-is-the-community-user" CreationDate="2016-12-31T13:04:10.593" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="11685" PostId="4508" Score="1" Text="You might have a misunderstanding of what the &quot;Community&quot; user is: it's not any of us, either individually or collectively.  It's a &quot;bot&quot;--software that acts somewhat as if it were a very privileged user, in order to automate some useful moderation tasks." CreationDate="2016-12-31T15:08:17.590" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="11696" PostId="4508" Score="0" Text="Thanks Bill Huber.  I am not very clear on some SE terminology. So does that mean I should add &quot;bot&quot; after Community in my question. I have already gotten the answer i was looking for." CreationDate="2016-12-31T22:44:35.700" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11697" PostId="4508" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b I have not seen this before.  But it has happened a lot this week.  It doesn't seem to be a particularly slow week but maybe it is a little slower because of the holidays. I think zaq has given me the answer I was looking for." CreationDate="2016-12-31T22:55:52.677" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11698" PostId="4508" Score="0" Text="If this is an automated process it must be a complicated algorithm. Doesn't a real person need to activate it." CreationDate="2016-12-31T23:00:53.083" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11699" PostId="4508" Score="1" Text="Posting volume is definitely down from what it was say a month ago (which is why we see more bumps from the Community bot at this time of year). I think that typically it drops by about a third from end of November to end of December but I could probably find a SEDE query to get exact figures (though I think you have enough privilege to see the [site analytics page](http://stats.stackexchange.com/site-analytics) -- and then click the &quot;weekly&quot; checkbox). The script for this particular Community task would not need to be especially complex - it just needs a few conditions on when it acts." CreationDate="2017-01-01T02:38:32.437" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11701" PostId="4508" Score="0" Text="Today is New Years Day (January 1, 2017).  I guess a slow day by some standard.  I am seeing suggestions for things to do. This may be common but I have not noticed it before.  For example a list of hot questions is given for Network questions, Meta posts and even old questions from sites that include sites other than CV (e.g. Mathematics).  Is this Community bot at work and if so is it a regular thing that is done especially on slow days?" CreationDate="2017-01-01T19:57:43.777" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11720" PostId="4508" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b I went to the analytics page changed it from daily to weekly and changed the range to Jan 01 2016 - Jan 01 2017. All posts have a definite drop in December that that seems to carry through January.  All questions are not surprising lower but correlated over time with all posts. Last of all, all answers is fairly flat throughout the year." CreationDate="2017-01-02T07:52:59.020" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11721" PostId="4508" Score="0" Text="@Michael (in reply to the comment posted 2017-01-01 19L57:43Z) If you're referring to the &quot;hot network questions&quot; list in the right-hand sidebar -- that sidebar has been there continually for ages (three years, at least), and the HNQ list itself has been around for several years (at least) before it appeared in the sidebar. That element of the sidebar has been there every day you've been on site in the last couple of months. It's not actually something for you to do (other than being a list of potentially interesting questions to look at), since hot questions usually have several good ...ctd" CreationDate="2017-01-02T09:17:46.820" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11722" PostId="4508" Score="1" Text="ctd... answers already. There's certainly *a* script that puts them there but I don't think that's regarded as associated with the Community bot." CreationDate="2017-01-02T09:17:55.253" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11723" PostId="4508" Score="0" Text="Note that if you set the list to go from Jan 1 2016 to Jan 1 2017 you will have the last week having only 2 days in it (2016 having 366 days = 52 weeks and 2 days), so it will naturally be low. It would be better to do either 364 days (52 weeks exactly) or 371 days (53 weeks exactly) or to ignore the final one. That said, the low part at the end of December normally does continue into the first couple of days of January, with Dec31/Jan1 being a particularly low dip" CreationDate="2017-01-02T09:21:21.487" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11726" PostId="4508" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b All I did was to try what you suggested and I reported what I saw. It was the first time I tried it. I don't understand why you get all up in arms with your comments.  You sound defensive for no reason." CreationDate="2017-01-02T13:48:39.623" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11686" PostId="4509" Score="1" Text="Thank you for your answer.  It is very helpful.  I definitely like the intent.  I found that several of these post were several years old and some including my answers had lots of upvotes.  So it is not just bringing up post that have not been given a fair shake.  Also old questions could have answer that were excellent at the time but as statistics evolves they may seem to be obsolete. I don't think that they should get a downvote in that case. Is this the first use of this?  Is it continuing or has it just been given a short trial period?" CreationDate="2016-12-31T18:15:56.407" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11687" PostId="4509" Score="1" Text="This idea could also be used to bring back questions that received no answers and didn't get bounties or the bounties were never awarded.  Some of these questions might deserve another look. Others may not and so the readers get another crack at evaluating the question." CreationDate="2016-12-31T18:19:36.400" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11688" PostId="4510" Score="3" Text="If you add this site do we create even more redundancy than we already have?  A lot of times we get questions that should be migrated to other sites but the poor user is not sure which site is best.  StackOverflow shoots a lot of questions our way, some fit us and some do not.  Similarly we send them questions that we think are pure programming problems but some do have a statistical question and the one asking the question may be more interested in." CreationDate="2016-12-31T18:40:22.833" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11689" PostId="4510" Score="1" Text="I am a statistician who only has a passing knowledge of neural nets and I almost always avoid those questions. It seems that it would be nice not to be confronted with such questions.  But how do we draw the line?  I have done enough work on statistical classification problems to feel that I am somewhat of an expert at it.  But classification methodology is used in machine learning and neural nets are also used for classification. It is an interesting question to raise and we should evaluare the advantages and drawbacks." CreationDate="2016-12-31T18:46:42.993" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11700" PostId="4510" Score="8" Text="What would be the benefit to further fragmenting users with ML and statistics knowledge? It seems like creating this website would create lots of duplication, both in questions and answers but also for users who just want to **find** an answer. OP's unstated premise is that making a dedicated website would improve question and answer quality, but I don't see any reason that should be the case: questions about NNs are on-topic here **today.** If the questions and answers are low-quality, that means we need more specialists, not that we should send the ones we have elsewhere." CreationDate="2017-01-01T15:10:46.640" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="11712" PostId="4510" Score="1" Text="@Sycorax Maybe we should remove some redundant sites given your comments and Glen_b;'s answer." CreationDate="2017-01-02T02:23:47.413" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11714" PostId="4510" Score="2" Text="@Michael If there's some topics you wish to avoid seeing, you can set  your account to ignore their tags. While I don't exclude any tags here$^\dagger$, I do exclude a whole lot on stackoverflow via ignored tags. It's quite helpful if that's what you want to do... $\qquad$ $\qquad$ $\dagger$  (I wanted to see everything here even before I was a moderator -- at least to see what was being talked about, even on topics I didn't know well)" CreationDate="2017-01-02T02:43:38.590" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11715" PostId="4510" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b I am not sure where you got the idea that I avoid questions because of their tags.  When I have time to go through a string of new questions I will often open all of them  but if the terminology is foreign to me and I really know nothing about the subject I would feel that I have nothing to contribute and move on.  There has got to be some form of time management. Also I would hate to have the responsibility of a moderator.  It is a tough job and to do it well you have to spend a lot of time cleaning up questions and trying to decide what to do with poorly written questions." CreationDate="2017-01-02T05:22:08.397" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11716" PostId="4510" Score="0" Text="When is the right time to close?  I can vote to close but be only one vote while moderators can take the responsibility of making the decision on there own. I really think Bill Huber is the best at it.  He maintains good humor and patience and is always polite and shows respect to every OP. He tries hard to help fix questions that have promise and is a good judge of when it becomes hopeless.  Yet even while doing that he sometimes will take to providing very elaborate answers that almost everyone find them to be masterpieces. he is able to move through the questions very efficiently." CreationDate="2017-01-02T05:32:07.303" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11717" PostId="4510" Score="1" Text="He spends so much time on CV that you would think he has nothing else to do but I know he has a consulting business that he also has to attend to and a family life and hobbies.  I couldn't come close to doing that. He has touched my life in a very positive way and I am sure most members of CV feel that way too." CreationDate="2017-01-02T05:35:32.607" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11718" PostId="4510" Score="6" Text="@MichaelChernick I got the idea that you avoid neural net questions from your own words earlier in this thread where you said: &quot;*I am a statistician who only has a passing knowledge of neural nets and* ***I almost always avoid those questions***&quot;. You went on to say &quot;*it would be nice not to be confronted with such questions*&quot;. I attempted to help you avoid being confronted with them. I was suggesting that you *could* more easily avoid them by using the features already built in to the site, which includes the ability to (after a fashion) ignore questions with given tags.." CreationDate="2017-01-02T06:54:28.290" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11719" PostId="4510" Score="0" Text="@Michael The issue of the right time to close can be asked as a question of its own. It's important that our high-reputation users contribute to the closure of questions and other moderation issues (as far as it is possible to do, which is actually quite a lot) -- the mods can't be here all the time." CreationDate="2017-01-02T07:01:22.943" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11728" PostId="4510" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b I think you misinterpret me a lot.  You don't have to be so defensive. Moderator do what they can and have time for.  I am a little in awe of how well they do their job.  I help out when I can.  Most of what I commented on was how much I am impressed with Bill Huber.  All i would expect from anyone who would comment on that would be agreement;" CreationDate="2017-01-02T13:56:19.033" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11731" PostId="4510" Score="3" Text="I don't think I was being defensive at all in my previous comment. I often take the opportunity to encourage the people who may be reading a discussion to help with moderation, but the intent was just to encourage all readers of our exchange to help moderate - while one vote (or even just the ability to flag) may not seem like a lot, there are a lot more people with one vote (or with the ability to flag) than there are moderators. I should have made it clearer that the @Michael was for the 1st sentence &amp; the rest was a general comment." CreationDate="2017-01-03T03:26:32.997" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11777" PostId="4510" Score="1" Text="Good discussion. Redundancy is a problem and it does increase to burden to all involved. I was coming from an &quot;ever increasing specialization&quot; angle. I'm a MD/PhD student and we constantly joke that in the future we'll have right-hand doctors and left-hand ones. Knowledge is increasing faster than Moore's Law and, for better or for worse, specialization is inevitable and &quot;resistance is futile&quot;. From what I could gather, the main problem ANN tries to solve is an optimization one, from a mathematical perspective with very little stats involved (though we also maximize LL to estimate parameters.)" CreationDate="2017-01-04T21:11:12.767" UserId="16144" />
  <row Id="11778" PostId="4510" Score="0" Text="As such, the questions, and the expertise required to answer them, may be a little different. At least for now... Even though we all read the &quot;no free lunch&quot; theorem, ANNs, in all its flavours, seem to be the &quot;winning&quot; method in several ML competitions. Perhaps, with time, the number of experts in ANNs in CV will increase (or will migrate to it) and this point will become moot... Difficult to say, though." CreationDate="2017-01-04T21:14:53.067" UserId="16144" />
  <row Id="13718" PostId="4510" Score="0" Text="I know it would be very difficult to fit into the Q&amp;A format, but when I run across an article like this I want to have somewhere to post it.  This one is truly amazing..  Neural Translation of Musical Style  http://imanmalik.com/cs/2017/06/05/neural-style.html" CreationDate="2017-06-10T09:59:56.063" UserId="164763" />
  <row Id="11776" PostId="4511" Score="0" Text="Redundancy is sub-optimal indeed. AFAIU, ANN is &quot;simply&quot; trying to reverse engineer a complex function of which we have no idea of the correct functional form based on (lots of) empirical data. I know little about ANN myself, compared to my experience in econometrics and ML (in general), but I reckon that the problems one encounters when dealing with it are distinct to the ones we face in &quot;standard&quot; ML. I also concluded, perhaps too early and erroneously, that there is very little stats in ANN since it is, basically, an optimization problem. That is why I thought about the question." CreationDate="2017-01-04T20:57:29.223" UserId="16144" />
  <row Id="11702" PostId="4514" Score="6" Text="Upvote this sample comment." CreationDate="2017-01-01T20:33:40.617" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="11705" PostId="4514" Score="1" Text="Thanks.  I did it for your comment and one other person must have too." CreationDate="2017-01-01T22:38:43.613" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11706" PostId="4514" Score="0" Text="by the way I think you earned those upvotes." CreationDate="2017-01-01T22:39:19.687" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11710" PostId="4514" Score="3" Text="See the [FAQ for Stack Exchange sites](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7931/faq-for-stack-exchange-sites), under &quot;**Reputation, badges and voting**&quot; specifically the question [How does comment voting and flagging work?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/17364/how-does-comment-voting-and-flagging-work)." CreationDate="2017-01-02T01:26:16.693" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11711" PostId="4514" Score="0" Text="Thanks Glen_b.  Andre Silva gave me the detail I wanted about upvoting comments.  I can see why we should be able to flag comments since some people might violate policy and use bad language.  I also noticed some comments being removed because book prices were mentioned.  That was probably done by a moderator." CreationDate="2017-01-02T02:14:32.473" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11703" PostId="4515" Score="0" Text="I think it is not possible yet. http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/231492/are-the-review-queues-planned-for-the-ios-app and http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/215841/add-review-queues-to-android-app" CreationDate="2017-01-01T22:34:03.133" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="11724" PostId="4515" Score="1" Text="The mobile app (android) really needs a makeup ..." CreationDate="2017-01-02T13:15:23.980" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="11725" PostId="4515" Score="1" Text="@kjetilbhalvorsen I wholeheartedly agree. Do you know if there is any kind of process where one can propose and/or vote for new app features?" CreationDate="2017-01-02T13:42:25.343" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="11727" PostId="4515" Score="1" Text="@DeltaIV:  Maybe here:  http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/285889/lets-plan-the-second-iteration-of-the-stack-exchange-quality-project" CreationDate="2017-01-02T13:50:25.580" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="11732" PostId="4515" Score="1" Text="@kjetilbhalvorsen good suggestion, but it requires at least 10 reputation to answer that question, and the association bonus doesn't count. Thus i cannot add my suggestion." CreationDate="2017-01-03T10:51:10.073" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="11733" PostId="4515" Score="1" Text="I did discover that too ... maybe some of the people in here do have that required rep at Meta, or I will try to gain it ..." CreationDate="2017-01-03T14:02:42.520" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="11704" PostId="4516" Score="0" Text="Okay thank you.  I didn't remember clearly what I saw. There are many comments that I would like to vote for.  So it helps to know how to do it.  I make a lot of comments.  Many are helpful.  Probably if more people knew  this I might be getting more votes on comments.  I would like to try for the commentator badge.  Of course I shouldn't be able to upvote my own comments." CreationDate="2017-01-01T22:36:47.227" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11707" PostId="4516" Score="1" Text="@MichaelChernick, you are welcome. I think you are aware, but if not, see that you already have [Commentator and Pundit in the main site](http://stats.stackexchange.com/users/11032/michael-chernick?tab=badges), and have 'Commentator' here on meta. So, keep participating in meta, and will get 'Pundit' soon. Good luck." CreationDate="2017-01-01T22:57:04.270" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="11708" PostId="4516" Score="2" Text="I achieved most of my badges on my first trip to CV.  That was 2011 and 2012 when I was very active here.  I resumed activity in November 2016 and am becoming active and reacquainted with the rules.  I appreciate your politeness and patience with me.  I hadn't checked.  I think I have earned one or two badges since returning in November.  Over the years it is entirely possible that I earned some additional badges (probably not many) over those years as others reviewed my posts." CreationDate="2017-01-02T00:57:50.763" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11779" PostId="4517" Score="0" Text="I agree with your second point; I also see ANN as an engineering thing. I came to this conclusion by looking at the research record and affiliation of all the major experts in ANN (most of them trained in Canada). A little of history here: http://www.recode.net/2015/7/15/11614684/ai-conspiracy-the-scientists-behind-deep-learning. I don't quite agree with the first point. I may be immeasurably wrong, but my impression is that there's very little statistical theory in ANNs. A lot of math applications (engineering) but little stats." CreationDate="2017-01-04T21:23:52.143" UserId="16144" />
  <row Id="11780" PostId="4517" Score="0" Text="Actually, the experts I mentioned above are known for their deep learning work, yet another subdivision of ANNs." CreationDate="2017-01-04T21:26:47.230" UserId="16144" />
  <row Id="11734" PostId="4519" Score="5" Text="I'd say if there are no or very few comments under your answer, it's usually enough to upvote that comment and leave a response comment saying that you agree &amp; it's an important contribution. If there are many comments already then one might worry that future readers will not notice that important comment; then I don't see anything wrong with copy-pasting it into your answer (formatting it as a quote and certainly giving an attribution). Sometimes people update their answers elaborating on (as opposed to copy-pasting) somebody's comment. That is also fine." CreationDate="2017-01-03T17:51:59.467" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11735" PostId="4519" Score="1" Text="Ok, that's fair and along the lines of what I was thinking. Just wanted to confirm." CreationDate="2017-01-03T18:06:07.257" UserId="73527" />
  <row Id="11743" PostId="4519" Score="1" Text="But what if the person thinks that it is so relevant and different that he decides to submit a separate question.  If you include it in your answer even though you give him credit that might discourage him from submitting  the answer. Rewarding his comment with a + vote does not help his reputation." CreationDate="2017-01-04T00:03:58.523" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11791" PostId="4519" Score="2" Text="@Michael Chernick I can't see a real problem. Anyone who choses to comment rather than answer won't gain in reputation; that is correct. I can't say that ever influences my contributions.  The implication is that people should write  some good answers somewhere if they wish to gain reputation.  Anything else looks like second-guessing about what upsets or motivates people. Anyone upset by their comment being quoted but not otherwise matched by reputation gain is not going to enjoy the site for long. Reputation is only an elaborate game with some bizarre details and several positive features." CreationDate="2017-01-05T10:47:39.917" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11737" PostId="4520" Score="17" Text="I suspect most of us don't have the time to return systematically to all the questions (and answers) we have read that might deserve a vote.  Voting is supposed to be based on evidence of &quot;research effort,&quot; utility, and clarity.  If the presence or absence of those characteristics is evident, why not vote?" CreationDate="2017-01-03T23:35:21.293" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="11740" PostId="4520" Score="0" Text="@whuber Even though if you are a fast reader you may be able to assess that quickly I still think there is a possibility that you overlooked a reason to regret your decision.  I just mentioned in response to user11852 that if you make a mistake you can retract your vote.  But if the voter is in a hurry to skim through questions they might never return   to the question. Probably I shouldn't worry about such things but when I see 3 votes  come up so early it makes me suspect that the OP might have friends who vote just to raise their friends reputation.  No way to know but it is suspicious." CreationDate="2017-01-03T23:53:53.980" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11742" PostId="4520" Score="7" Text="There are systems in place to detect, track, and reverse suspicious voting patterns.  They work behind the scenes.  Most people will never be aware of them, except insofar as sometimes they get a mysterious message saying they lost a little bit of reputation because votes were reversed.  Note that you only get five minutes to retract a vote: after that, the post has to be edited before votes can be changed." CreationDate="2017-01-04T00:03:29.687" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="11744" PostId="4520" Score="0" Text="@whuber That sounds a lot like what Amazon did with their book reviewer voting system. Book reviewers are ranked according to popularity.  The idea being that viewers might weigh the opinions of the high ranking reviewers higher than others.  Cheaters often had large numbers of votes erased.  Amazon changed its ranking procedure because some reviewers particularly one famous one got top rankings due to the quantity rather than quality of the reviews." CreationDate="2017-01-04T00:22:17.037" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11749" PostId="4520" Score="1" Text="Another thing I think may be true is that longer questions are more likely to get upvotes.  When this happens at the very beginning of the post the voter may not have read the post thoroughly.  Do you think people might vote just because they are impressed by the length of the question?" CreationDate="2017-01-04T01:11:06.883" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11755" PostId="4520" Score="4" Text="I often upvote questions much faster than after 1 minute after opening. E.g. 30 seconds can sometimes suffice to see that the question is good." CreationDate="2017-01-04T09:32:52.450" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11758" PostId="4520" Score="1" Text="If you start using the site and do not upvote questions then after a while you get an auto-nag telling you that questions need votes too. If you have research effort as your main criterion then it is usually easy to see who has put their shoulder to the wheel and who has not. I pay less attention to usefulness and clarity since I think this may penalise people whose first language is not English (at least as far as clarity is concerned)" CreationDate="2017-01-04T13:15:08.830" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="11759" PostId="4520" Score="0" Text="Here is a situation that just happened to me that I think is related to the topic.  An OP asked a question about marginalization.  It went something like this.  X and Y have a joint distribution.  How do you express the marginal distribution of X?  Should it be something like f(X|Y)? A quick comment by another user pointed out that Y gets integrated out and really doesn't enter in to the marginal distribution for X.  He also mentioned that Y is a nuisance variable. I gave three comments reinforcing the point." CreationDate="2017-01-04T13:26:35.857" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11760" PostId="4520" Score="0" Text="In the last comment I I suggested f(x, .) as a notation that makes sense because it is an analog to marginal means in ANOVA.  The question was asked in a way that seemed that the OP was looking for a standard note for the marginal density.  So in the last comment I asked the OP if he liked my comment enough for me to turn it into an answer.  At that time no one was there and so I moved on to other questions. As it was late for me In went to bed. When I came back to look at the post the OP had accepted a new answer which didn't add anything to what the two of us said." CreationDate="2017-01-04T13:33:40.347" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11761" PostId="4520" Score="0" Text="It seemed that the OP went straight to the answer without looking at the three previous comments.  I am not blaming anyone for this.  The person giving the answer referred to the first person's comment and gave an answer similar to mine but not offering a notation for the density. It is frustrating for me. I think maybe I should have given my answer right away and react to the OPs response later.  Answers get more attention than comments." CreationDate="2017-01-04T13:38:11.073" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11763" PostId="4520" Score="6" Text="Michael, how are your last three long comments related to this thread at all? The thread is about voting fast. Your comments are about answering vs commenting. Heh? I find it distracting &amp; confusing, to be honest." CreationDate="2017-01-04T14:44:02.537" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11774" PostId="4520" Score="0" Text="@amoeba My opinion only but I think the example shows a situation where the OP accepted the first answer prematurely. To me accepting an answer is like upvoting.  The only difference is it awards 15 points instead of ten.  If it seems like I am ranting with my longwinded responses I am sorry.  I get really upset about it." CreationDate="2017-01-04T19:30:09.833" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11738" PostId="4521" Score="0" Text="I can see this as a reason to be inclined to want to upvote but 1 or 2 minutes after the post. These members barely have time to read the question and think about it.  I guess that even though this action may be too impetuous, I suppose the fact that you can retract your vote mitigates." CreationDate="2017-01-03T23:50:36.813" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11741" PostId="4521" Score="1" Text="@MichaelChernick: I think you cannot retract your vote after a while (unless an edit occurs)." CreationDate="2017-01-03T23:57:02.433" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="11746" PostId="4521" Score="0" Text="@user11852 That is unfortunate but maybe it makes a case for more care in voting." CreationDate="2017-01-04T00:38:18.420" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11745" PostId="4522" Score="0" Text="This is great Bill. It would almost be ideal if everyone thought the way you do.  I suspect that many possibly even a majority vote differently.  A few things I like about the system are 1) upvotes are worth 10 rep points 2) downvotes only -2 points and 3) answers accepted by OP 15 points. Unfortunately I think the check mark is underused by OPs." CreationDate="2017-01-04T00:35:07.730" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11747" PostId="4522" Score="1" Text="I will use the check mark but I am going to wait to see what other answers come up. I think that of the OPs that use the check mark many apply it too early." CreationDate="2017-01-04T00:43:28.080" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11756" PostId="4522" Score="2" Text="@MichaelChernick If you disagree with any particular pattern of voting, you can always vote the other way and add comments on why, including hints to the OP that a particular answer deserves acceptance.  What this thread  seems to reflect that you are disinclined to vote quickly. That's clearly your choice. If you aren't confident that a question deserves a vote either way, that's fine." CreationDate="2017-01-04T12:36:01.900" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11762" PostId="4522" Score="1" Text="I decided to check Bill Huber's answer.  I liked all three answers and I upvoted all three.  This was a difficult decision but one I feel I should make. With discussion questions the criteria is less clear to me than for a technical question." CreationDate="2017-01-04T14:02:44.767" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11750" PostId="4523" Score="0" Text="One person commented that after a certain period of time reversing an upvote is not possible until another edit occurs. If this is the case I think we should not be too cavalier about upvoting.  I like many of the suggestions you make particularly reminding us that if a question is improved to the point where it no longer deserves a downvote that we should reverse it. Are there any restriction about reversing downvotes?" CreationDate="2017-01-04T03:07:38.393" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11751" PostId="4523" Score="2" Text="1. I do not suggest that votes should be done carelessly! We should not vote at all if we can't be at least reasonably confident in our assessment of the value of the answer. There is a window in which you can undo a change (so misclicks either up or down can be reversed without problem). If you can plainly see a post is good (based on more than a casual glance), how will waiting change its quality?  2. as I mention already in my answer, one can reverse votes after that interval once the post has been edited (note that it makes no difference whether it was an upvote or a downvote)" CreationDate="2017-01-04T03:24:23.310" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11752" PostId="4523" Score="0" Text="I think you get defensive when I make remarks about your post.  In this case as in other I had nothing negative to say.  I wasn't implying that you would suggest that votes should be taken in a cavalier way.  I was just trying to amplify my point that careful consideration should be made and perhaps waiting a while before voting would be a good idea.  I agreed with those that said it might be okay to vote early since reversal is possible. But knowing that there are restrictions, to me means take the opportunity to vote when convinced but not too early like 2 mins. after 1st post." CreationDate="2017-01-04T05:51:12.163" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11753" PostId="4523" Score="0" Text="However where I do disagree with you and Bill Huber and possibly others is that I would not feel confident so quickly that all the criteria for a an upvote has been reached so early.  I prefer some reinforcement of my opinion by the comment of other knowledgeable members. In my view you and Bill Huber and others may be overconfident because you have been doing these things on the site for several years.  I think this is my only point of disagreement with you on this topic.  You are free to disagree and probably will and will not at all be influenced by my arguments." CreationDate="2017-01-04T06:01:57.940" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11754" PostId="4523" Score="4" Text="@MichaelChernick Saying that somebody &quot;gets defensive&quot; sounds like an accusation to me. You commented under Glen's answer that &quot;we should not be too cavalier about upvoting&quot;; I think it's perfectly reasonable to assume that you meant that Glen's attitude is too cavalier/careless, which is what he then denied in the next comment. Of course you did not explicitly say that about *his* attitude, but you did comment under *his* answer. Just saying." CreationDate="2017-01-04T09:30:35.823" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11757" PostId="4523" Score="1" Text="@amoeba I don't mean to offend anybody.  I just think I get reactions to things I write that sound like a defensive retort when I hadn't been attacking in the first place.  Sometimes I should just leave a comment without a reply because the reply only makes things worse either to the person I address or someone else." CreationDate="2017-01-04T13:11:49.880" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11765" PostId="4523" Score="2" Text="@Michael Where you write &quot;overconfident&quot; I would like to think you really meant &quot;experienced.&quot; I believe that Glen_b, like me, has read the majority of posts that have appeared on this site--along with tens of thousands on other SE sites. In each case we have elected to vote or not, knowing (as mods) that our votes determine the outcome. For the last 2000+ days we have each made dozens of decisions daily, all of which have been witnessed by the community--with rapid and clear feedback when disagreements occur. If you do not trust that experience, then you should reconsider your participation." CreationDate="2017-01-04T16:14:54.637" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="11766" PostId="4523" Score="0" Text="@whuber I am aware of all the work you and Glen_b have had and I appreciate both of you very much.  I have a difficult time choosing my words when I don't want to offend but I also want to express my view.  I realize you and Glen_b  are very experienced and that is certainly a factor in your ability to make quick and correct decision and I admit you can do that much better than I can.  Overconfident is not the right term but let me put it this way. I consider myself to be an expert in bootstrap." CreationDate="2017-01-04T17:03:11.917" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11768" PostId="4523" Score="0" Text="I have experience writing books on it, publishing journal articles on it, teaching bootstrap short courses at various venues and online, and I have been in contact with many of the real leaders in the field (Brad Efron, Peter Hall and other).  I have written summary articles on it including one in the International Encyclopedia of Statistics.  I could say that my experience with the bootstrap goes all the way back to 1982 and some knowledge of Efron's work in the late 1970s at when I was a graduate student at Stanford." CreationDate="2017-01-04T17:13:33.303" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11772" PostId="4523" Score="0" Text="Having said all this I am not trying to brag I want to make the point that inspite of all my experience I do not have the confidence to answer or comment on every question I come across about bootstrap issues on the CV site.  When I do decide to contribute I may still pause to review things that I knew and look for information on new research or terminology that I might not be aware of currently.  This is how I fight the inclination of being overconfident." CreationDate="2017-01-04T17:21:05.663" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11773" PostId="4523" Score="6" Text="Michael, there is no doubt that the breadth, depth, and vitality of the statistical sciences humble us all. I estimate that I might be qualified to answer no more than 10% of the posts well--and I have learned a great deal by attempting answers to a few of them and studying answers by experts. But the ability to recognize a well-formulated question differs from the ability to answer that question. Thus, I find it relatively easy to vote on *questions.* Voting on answers is another thing altogether: I cannot vote on answers until I understand them. That takes work--but it's rewarding work." CreationDate="2017-01-04T17:39:17.060" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="11775" PostId="4523" Score="0" Text="@whuber I went to take the trouble of putting together my answer so that you and all the others who visit this thread what my viewpoint is. This is an emotional issue.   I understand that the majority here may think that evaluating questions is relatively easy as you put it. I don't agree.  I do agree that voting on answers may be harder and I would like you take more time on that. But that doesn't change my view on questions." CreationDate="2017-01-04T19:44:04.947" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11767" PostId="4525" Score="8" Text="See http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/4485 about [learning]. It's in the process of being removed." CreationDate="2017-01-04T17:12:15.160" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11770" PostId="4525" Score="6" Text="I agree that [statistical-learning] is a bad tag. Sometimes people use it when mentioning Hastie et al. book which has &quot;Statistical learning&quot; in its title. The book is very popular and this partially explains the tag's popularity. I would either eliminate the tag entirely, or make it a synonym of [machine-learning]." CreationDate="2017-01-04T17:15:23.733" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11794" PostId="4525" Score="4" Text="Making `[statistical-learning]` a synonym of `[machine-learning]` seems like a good idea. I think in principle SL could be a valid tag, but it's very unlikely to work out--it'll just create more fragmentation instead." CreationDate="2017-01-05T13:22:28.753" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11795" PostId="4525" Score="1" Text="`[q-learning]` is a particular type of `[reinforcement-learning]`. It should probably be made a synonym." CreationDate="2017-01-05T13:23:33.130" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11823" PostId="4525" Score="1" Text="I wrote an excerpt for [q-learning]. I don't think it should be made a synonym of [reinforcement-learning] (@gung), it is specific enough &amp; important enough to stay separate. But I am not an expert." CreationDate="2017-01-10T09:46:34.823" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11824" PostId="4525" Score="1" Text="I am not sure that we need transfer-learning and representation-learning tags. I might look into that." CreationDate="2017-01-10T09:48:43.667" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11826" PostId="4525" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, I notice that there are 174 [RL], &amp; only 24 [QL], of which 22 threads have both. The other 2 could probably be differently tagged. Strictly QL is not a synonym of RL--it is more of a part-whole relation--but I suspect we could do fine w/o it." CreationDate="2017-01-10T13:22:31.960" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11827" PostId="4525" Score="0" Text="@gung Yes, it's a proper subset. We probably could do without, I agree, it's just a question of how few questions per tag we are still tolerating. To me 25 threads sounds fine. It's a shame that we have so few RL questions anyway; these days it's a super hot topic, with DeepMind winning in Go last year etc. (they used Q-learning, by the way). So I would leave this tag if only to advertise that RL is actually on-topic here." CreationDate="2017-01-10T13:29:45.920" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11828" PostId="4525" Score="0" Text="@gung I've just added RL tag to the 2 QL questions without it :)" CreationDate="2017-01-10T13:31:30.427" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11829" PostId="4525" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, per SE policy, 1 is too few. AFA I'm concerned, 2 is OK if there's an excerpt, it's w/i our purview, &amp; they are really appropriate. I've never come up w/ a good way of thinking about how to deal w/ subset relations b/t tags, but if it seems like people always feel the need to add the superset as well, I wonder if the subset tag is superfluous. I'm not 100% here, but it seems to me that we could do w/o it." CreationDate="2017-01-10T14:02:32.997" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11830" PostId="4525" Score="2" Text="@gung The issue of subset tags is tricky, I agree. Our general approach seems to be that when a smaller tag is popular enough, it is fine. For example, [bonferroni] (150) is a proper subset of [multiple-comparisons] (900), but with 150 threads it seems to me definitely useful. QL and RL are in the same kind of relationship, but with 25/175 threads. The ratios are similar, btw. I guess it is worth discussing what can be our general guideline about it." CreationDate="2017-01-10T14:54:46.123" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11831" PostId="4525" Score="1" Text="I removed [representation-learning] as unclear. I think it's basically supervised-learning/deep-learning/feature-construction/etc." CreationDate="2017-01-10T18:57:49.277" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11832" PostId="4525" Score="0" Text="`[statistical-learning]` is fine by me (i.e. the statistical angle of the machine learning algorithms, not the machine learning procedures often covered by `[machine-learning]`), but people often don't use it." CreationDate="2017-01-10T21:29:22.047" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="11850" PostId="4525" Score="2" Text="Hmm, I've been reading my sources and I can't find the distinction between `[statistical-learning]` and `[machine-learning]` anymore... it there was one to begin with. Perhaps I'm misremembering and there's no distinction whatsoever." CreationDate="2017-01-12T00:41:07.630" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="11869" PostId="4525" Score="0" Text="@gung You said SL *&quot;could be a valid tag&quot;*, could you please point out what makes it distinct of ML in my answer? The possibility of distinction is the only thing that makes me against outright merging with ML." CreationDate="2017-01-13T13:45:06.590" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="11872" PostId="4525" Score="0" Text="@Firebug, your answer below is pretty good. The quotes all dance around the idea a little bit, w/o quite ever stating it, but they get at what I have in mind. My impression is that the mindset behind ML &amp; statistics differ (cf, [here](http://stats.stackexchange.com/a/21669/7290)), w/ ML tending to focus on tractability, computational / numeric stability, temporal complexity, etc, issues, whereas statistics focuses on a data generating process that can be framed w/i the mathematics of probability. From this perspective, SL is about people studying ML algorithms from a statistical perspective." CreationDate="2017-01-13T16:25:06.993" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11874" PostId="4525" Score="2" Text="Eg, if someone wanted to ask about the standard error of an estimated splitting point in a CART model, that is a statistical way of thinking about a ML algorithm. It isn't clear to me that a typical ML researcher would much care about that. (NB, I'm not saying either field is better or worse.) So such a question could be tagged SL. But I doubt the tag would ever be really used that way; I think it is inevitable that it would end up creating more noise than clarity." CreationDate="2017-01-13T16:27:55.517" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11876" PostId="4525" Score="0" Text="@gung that's what I had in mind too, but I simply can't find references towards that. ML (coming along Computer Sciences and all) has deep interest in performance, while sometimes I get this feeling SL is the science behind the ML framework, and so it's an essential part of it. Then all questions detailing statistical details in the formal definition of ML algorithms would inevitably end tagged as SL, and perhaps that's undesirable." CreationDate="2017-01-13T16:35:10.427" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="11877" PostId="4525" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, Re [rl] / [ql] (from before), you make a good point (+1)--maybe we should keep it. I suppose what is troubling is the sense that people seem believe they need to include both tags. If that's correct, it suggests to my mind that [ql] is a bit redundant. (By contrast, no one thinks that about `[t-test]` vs `[regression]`, &amp; I'm perfectly OK w/ having both.)" CreationDate="2017-01-13T16:35:14.220" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11879" PostId="4525" Score="1" Text="@Firebug, I'm not sure I would say it's *undesirable*. My perspective is largely pragmatic: I think tags serve to organize the information on the site more effectively. If the tag stands for something that people recognize &amp; it is used to enhance the organization of the site (or it can be made so), then I would say it's good &amp; we should keep it. I think it won't be well used (perhaps the idea is too nuanced, or my understanding of the term is off somehow), &amp; so will harm the site's organization on balance." CreationDate="2017-01-13T16:39:31.677" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11884" PostId="4525" Score="0" Text="I really like your two last comment on ML/SL issue @gung. Perhaps you should combine them and post as an answer here." CreationDate="2017-01-14T00:04:37.347" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11885" PostId="4525" Score="0" Text="@gung I have also been thinking about this subset tags issue. Consider these two tags: [k-means] and [clustering]. What do you think about them? Whenever I edit a question tagged with [k-means] I always tend to add [clustering] if it's not there. But I still think that both tags are important and useful." CreationDate="2017-01-14T00:06:50.440" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11886" PostId="4525" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, I'm fine w/ a thread having only `[k-means]`. If I thought it were necessary to have both, I'd be similarly uncomfortable w/ its continued existence. I've never worked out a way of thinking through nonstandard tag relationships (although I probably haven't spent enough time trying). I remember realizing 1 time that a tag that was being discussed (I don't remember which 1) was really an adjective &amp; that was part of the problem." CreationDate="2017-01-14T00:48:11.283" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11888" PostId="4525" Score="0" Text="@gung I guess you are thinking about [nested] :-) That's the only Meta thread that keeps being pushed to the front by the Community user." CreationDate="2017-01-14T10:17:51.263" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11781" PostId="4526" Score="0" Text="What if you don't know the answer and it happens to be a nonsense question.  If you come back to visit because you are curious , you may find that others who are knowledgeable make comments that expose the nonsense. Maybe at that point you are no longer curious.  Would you remove your upvote.  What if it is too late to do that?  You say what harm could the quick vote do? Well as you say the upvote could increase visibility and draw others to it. Some of the users that came to the thread might feel that it was a waste of time. I just wanted to present the oother side of it." CreationDate="2017-01-05T01:44:13.937" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11782" PostId="4526" Score="5" Text="@MichaelChernick If others come who &quot;expose the nonsense&quot; that wasn't apparent to me, then I've learned something haven't I?  It's also good for me to draw attention to something I'm curious about — even if, as you point out, some people's time &quot;is wasted&quot; by coming to a bad question.  Although, is it really a waste of their time if they're helping me understand why someone else's question was a bad question?  Isn't that one of the reasons why people answer questions: To share their insight with other people?" CreationDate="2017-01-05T02:51:16.017" UserId="858" />
  <row Id="11783" PostId="4526" Score="0" Text="I am also thinking about those who got a vote they didn't deserve. Remember you can't always take back your vote. Also not all the users that come to the site because a vote like yours raised their interest may just come to read the post and never do comment. People do try to manage their time on the site. It may be that you don't think they are wasting their time but what do they think.  I can't read their minds but you can't either." CreationDate="2017-01-05T05:24:48.887" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11784" PostId="4526" Score="3" Text="@MichaelChernick But I don't think I need to read the minds of people users who come to the site. *I vote up questions that benefit me*." CreationDate="2017-01-05T05:28:07.763" UserId="858" />
  <row Id="11786" PostId="4526" Score="2" Text="@MichaelChernick Right, but if everyone takes that approach, then in the aggregate, the votes are meaningful.  If a question helps 100 people, it gets 100 votes.  Your proposal in this comment thread at least is that each person should guess how generally useful a question is to other people (which you admit is very hard) and vote based on that." CreationDate="2017-01-05T08:42:03.070" UserId="858" />
  <row Id="11792" PostId="4526" Score="5" Text="@MIchael Chernick This thread seems to be circling around your personal diffidence over voting because a vote might be wrong. So, don't vote then if you are unsure. Contrariwise, you can disagree privately with others' voting habits but comments such as &quot;your position is very self-centered&quot; are, I have to suggest, neither helpful nor entertaining. Already on Meta we have had several minute cycles of your making sharp comments aimed at individuals followed by later apologies or denials that you meant to upset anyone. Discussion here can and should be candid, but the pattern is repetitive." CreationDate="2017-01-05T12:29:08.147" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11793" PostId="4526" Score="4" Text="There is no Platonic state of an undeserved vote, merely personal opinions on that." CreationDate="2017-01-05T12:30:54.420" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11798" PostId="4526" Score="2" Text="@michaelchernick, what is your answer when the experts write outside of their knowledge base and simply expose their own ignorance of the topic of the question. I see this a lot with questions regarding quality statistics." CreationDate="2017-01-06T03:45:37.353" UserId="137032" />
  <row Id="11799" PostId="4526" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Maybe I worry too much.  Today I went to the queue for judging questions and answers. It was my first time doing this and I did it a lot.  I found in many cases I could decide to close quickly, especially when I am in agreement with another reviewer opinion. Using the queue allows you to navigate through the threads quickly and the options help you focus on which decision is appropriate.  I am sure that those of you who are moderators and other very experienced users probably do also." CreationDate="2017-01-06T05:46:35.780" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11800" PostId="4526" Score="0" Text="@Tavrock I don't downvote much but if the question is horrible I might downvote.  Expertise in the subject area is important.  I don't think we should be over-influenced by a person's reputation.  The same goes for an answer which is probably what you are describing here." CreationDate="2017-01-06T05:54:20.950" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="12697" PostId="4526" Score="0" Text="To me the most noteworthy line in this thread is &quot;This is an emotional issue.&quot;  That certainly was apparent in the very active related thread at http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/4567/ganging-up-with-downvotes-how-can-we-discourage-mob-behaviour.  Many of us are passionate about this field and this passion can spill over into feelings of pride or sensitivity regarding the recognition we think we or others deserve.  I'm no stranger to such reactions, but I think we are usually best served and best serve one another if we try to keep them reined in." CreationDate="2017-03-04T02:08:01.637" UserId="2669" />
  <row Id="11789" PostId="4527" Score="2" Text="I disagree strongly with the recommendation to remove comments that answer questions. That could be discussed at length, but it's sufficient to note that no one could remove comments except moderators and it's emphatically not part of their job to decide what answers a question." CreationDate="2017-01-05T10:33:49.490" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11790" PostId="4527" Score="1" Text="I agree that often it would be good if a good comment were made into an answer.  I have on occasion appreciated encouragement to do that, but sometimes also one lacks the time or the inclination." CreationDate="2017-01-05T10:36:56.360" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11796" PostId="4527" Score="0" Text="I agree with you Nick, but that has not stopped many moderators from doing just that.  I also agree that I do not have time to write strong, lengthy answers, so maybe the site's requirements of answers could be weakened a bit to encourage short, precise answers to questions." CreationDate="2017-01-05T14:24:11.600" UserId="78846" />
  <row Id="11797" PostId="4527" Score="1" Text="I don't see any examples of &quot;moderators ... doing just that&quot;. It's entirely in order for moderators acting as members here to imply personal endorsement of particular answers, but there is no such approbation implied by their role." CreationDate="2017-01-05T15:06:32.967" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11787" PostId="4528" Score="8" Text="Nothing says that you shouldn't try to be as helpful as possible while simultaneously explaining why the question is off-topic. I sometimes have no inclination to put more work in than just the policing action that goes with an off-topic question, but I am happy whenever people are nicer and their examples help my own style." CreationDate="2017-01-05T10:15:14.737" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11788" PostId="4528" Score="4" Text="It seems to follow that if a question is off-topic, then an answer to that question is too, but in practice people rarely criticize an answer that is relevant to the question. Also, if the question belongs elsewhere then any answers may be on-topic there.  Unfortunately, many of the code-based questions we get here would be poor SO questions as they lack self-contained reproducible examples. (In fact, I see many poor questions lacking self-contained reproducible examples on SO too.)" CreationDate="2017-01-05T10:18:09.317" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11805" PostId="4528" Score="4" Text="While I'm happy to see people helping each other (often I do answer questions that I flag to be closed), I can think of an argument against it, the same some people feel towards users that don't search and post duplicate questions: namely, doing so encourages some users to not look the guidelines, as they get an answer anyways." CreationDate="2017-01-07T03:43:52.343" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="11809" PostId="4528" Score="0" Text="Another POV is: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/133552/should-i-answer-off-topic-questions." CreationDate="2017-01-08T15:40:06.110" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="11803" PostId="4529" Score="8" Text="Hmm. I would fully agree as long as it is about &quot;answering&quot; in the comments. But I am not so sure about proper answering. Threads closed as off-topic are automatically deleted after some time (unless they are upvoted), but once there is an upvoted or accepted answer, they will stay forever. To me this is aesthetically disturbing." CreationDate="2017-01-06T21:54:35.670" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11804" PostId="4529" Score="1" Text="Interesting point, @amoeba. You could still vote to delete, I suppose. It doesn't really bother me that much if a closed question remains on the site, but I can see your point." CreationDate="2017-01-06T22:14:22.823" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11801" PostId="4530" Score="2" Text="I provided the links to help the OP finding an answer. I think that question was a duplicate. I did not flag it as duplicate, because I've had some flags declined recently and could not understand why. If it is not a duplicate, then the OP being aware of such links, he/she can explain why it is not a dupe (if it is the case)." CreationDate="2017-01-06T11:56:21.343" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="11802" PostId="4530" Score="1" Text="@AndreSilva sure, I wasn't criticising your approach, I think you did the right thing by taking the time to make a search &amp; post the links." CreationDate="2017-01-06T12:54:29.223" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="11806" PostId="4530" Score="0" Text="At times I have done both (not on book recommendation threads but I don't see why that would be an exception." CreationDate="2017-01-07T04:45:01.577" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11807" PostId="4532" Score="3" Text="http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/125740/dont-throw-away-all-votes-when-a-user-is-deleted" CreationDate="2017-01-08T04:28:38.473" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11808" PostId="4532" Score="0" Text="As far as I can tell all the posts were in the 2012 and 2013 time frame.  I agree that it is a complex issue. I think fraudulent votes should be removed. In the four years that past since that thread what changes have been made? @Glen_b  what is your view?" CreationDate="2017-01-08T04:55:23.993" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11810" PostId="4532" Score="5" Text="You'll drive yourself nuts fixating on reputation points. This sort of thing is sufficiently rare that I don't see why anything needs to be done about it. Who cares?" CreationDate="2017-01-09T00:13:36.797" UserId="109178" />
  <row Id="11812" PostId="4532" Score="0" Text="@gammer Some people other than me care.  Look at the answers." CreationDate="2017-01-09T00:37:06.007" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11814" PostId="4532" Score="3" Text="I guess &quot;Who cares?&quot; should be read more like &quot;Why do you care?&quot;. This is basically a one-off; it hardly ever happens. I don't see why this would be anywhere near the top of the list of priorities about what needs to be fixed about the site. You really think determining whether or not an account was a &quot;true&quot; sock puppet should be a high priority for SE? Under the current system there could be some false positive but... Big deal..." CreationDate="2017-01-09T00:40:16.760" UserId="109178" />
  <row Id="11815" PostId="4532" Score="0" Text="@gammer Read on.  I don't think it should be a high priority either.  I didn't say it was and if you read my response to Andre's answer I think you might not be so hostile toward me." CreationDate="2017-01-09T00:43:25.777" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11816" PostId="4532" Score="4" Text="Those comments weren't there when I wrote my original comment. I'm sorry you found my tone to be hostile. I was really going more for a mixture of dismissiveness and genuine curiosity about why you (the royal you) cares." CreationDate="2017-01-09T00:44:59.433" UserId="109178" />
  <row Id="12902" PostId="4532" Score="0" Text="Possible duplicate of [How do you lose reputation points by &quot;User removed&quot;?](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1254/how-do-you-lose-reputation-points-by-user-removed)" CreationDate="2017-03-28T12:36:03.647" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11811" PostId="4533" Score="1" Text="Andre I really like your answers. They are thoughtful and very informative.  I do this more to learn about the history more than anything else.  I am not going on a crusade to get it changed.  In my case I got the 40 points back in one day.  It is the principle more than the outcomes. Can we distinguish fraudulent votes from others?  I think that would eliminate an argument for not changing." CreationDate="2017-01-09T00:35:17.320" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11817" PostId="4533" Score="4" Text="I infer/speculate  from that meta post the answer is yes (at least for most cases) but, it requires a lot of work (manual inspecting). That is why it is done only when one of the thresholds exceeds. @Michael." CreationDate="2017-01-09T01:16:24.423" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="11813" PostId="4536" Score="0" Text="I like your answer too." CreationDate="2017-01-09T00:38:28.607" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11825" PostId="4536" Score="4" Text="This is a reasonable point. If there are few enough votes that it is considered not disruptive to delete them, it should be possible to let you know which &amp; where." CreationDate="2017-01-10T13:06:37.950" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11834" PostId="4537" Score="0" Text="The thread you're referring to is I think http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/251386/correlation-between-p-value-and-inverse-p-value-in-r FWIW, I didn't downvote and I don't want to give an opinion on whether the downvote was deserved." CreationDate="2017-01-11T11:49:22.930" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11835" PostId="4537" Score="5" Text="In making a much more extreme proposal that downvoting must be accompanied by a comment, I think you need to consider the following very different points. First, CV is just a part of SE and any change would need to be system-wide. Second, in many situations explaining why you downvote is superfluous because someone else has done it already. Third, a real consideration in many parts of SE (unfortunately here too) is that a signed comment leads to flak from the recipient. I've been subject to sustained abuse from people who didn't like my comments; usually moderators step in, but it's not nice." CreationDate="2017-01-11T11:53:19.183" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11836" PostId="4537" Score="4" Text="Nothing in the above detracts from a standard view that, indeed, it's best if there is explanation of what's wrong about a question. But life is short! Sometimes detailed dissection of a lousy question from someone who just isn't trying to follow advice  is a waste of my time too. (This doesn't apply to your question at all, but you're making a general case.)" CreationDate="2017-01-11T11:56:43.800" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11837" PostId="4537" Score="1" Text="Understood. But - I'm angry not because you downvote me, I'm angry because the downvote make me thirsty of the critical-yet-constructive comments that will lead me to improving the question and then my own answer to my problem (I'm still waiting for a comment/answer). It took me 3 decades to get into this point in my mind where I'm able not to waste anyone time who is kind enough to give me a piece of advice." CreationDate="2017-01-11T12:02:47.650" UserId="48279" />
  <row Id="11838" PostId="4537" Score="3" Text="I didn't downvote you and I'd thank you not to imply otherwise. It's incorrect that you have received no comments in that thread. Your question received some attention when posted (middle of December) and has got overlooked since then. That's unfortunate, and inevitably very disappointing for you, but CV is not a help line, as you should know. There is no mechanism whereby people are delegated to answer questions if they don't want to. You might be best advised to try rewriting it. The large chunk of code might not have helped, as we don't check code here." CreationDate="2017-01-11T12:08:41.693" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11839" PostId="4537" Score="0" Text="I am downvoting this answer because its proposal is in my view impractical unconvincing. Note that on Meta a downvote should mean that you disagree with the proposal." CreationDate="2017-01-11T12:12:00.953" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11840" PostId="4537" Score="0" Text=":-) I get why some sensitive people may get you flak. I'm going to rewrite the question. Also, good to know who downvote my meta-answer :-) I'll rethink." CreationDate="2017-01-11T12:19:19.027" UserId="48279" />
  <row Id="11841" PostId="4537" Score="0" Text="People who contribute repeated flak aren't really &quot;sensitive&quot;: they usually display utter indifference to forum norms and specific arguments!" CreationDate="2017-01-11T12:30:26.183" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11842" PostId="4537" Score="0" Text="I note that you've been a member for 2 1/2 years and answered 2 questions on CV. So, one way to work on the many neglected questions with no answers is to answer a few yourself!" CreationDate="2017-01-11T13:11:47.107" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11843" PostId="4537" Score="0" Text="Agree, it's true. I have my reasons about that (but it's no place to put them). Also, I don't know how I thought that it was you who downvoted. I am not able to change it :(" CreationDate="2017-01-11T13:31:28.980" UserId="48279" />
  <row Id="11847" PostId="4537" Score="3" Text="From a glass-half-full point of view, shouldn't learning that someone considers your question to show little research effort or to be unclear or not useful be better than receiving no feedback at all? (Needless to say, like everyone else I would urge people to leave a comment when down-voting, almost always.)" CreationDate="2017-01-11T14:07:53.617" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="11848" PostId="4537" Score="0" Text="Yeah, better any hint than none.. under null hypothesis that it wasn't a hand just mistakenly slipping and clicking the downvote button :/" CreationDate="2017-01-11T14:25:13.693" UserId="48279" />
  <row Id="11849" PostId="4537" Score="2" Text=":) Or pure malevolence perhaps - but in this case I think &quot;unclear&quot; would deserve serious consideration. Even in the regrettable absence of more specific guidance it's always useful to step back from the problem &amp; think that you need to get it across to people who *haven't* been thinking about it for a year, explaining it clearly &amp; precisely from the start &amp; not assuming answerers will be able to fill in the gaps. Also, state the motivation explicitly - give people a reason to be interested in answering!" CreationDate="2017-01-11T14:44:08.467" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="11851" PostId="4538" Score="6" Text="This is a moderate statement that seems to capture a consensus well. I'd add as major advice that if someone else has already posted a detailed comment explaining what is wrong, and explaining a downvote it's sufficient to add your +1 to that comment as justifying your own downvote, unless you have something substantial to add." CreationDate="2017-01-12T08:59:58.920" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11852" PostId="4538" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Indeed, this is a good point." CreationDate="2017-01-12T09:53:45.960" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15452" PostId="4538" Score="0" Text="I am troubled by this advice. First I don't think we downvote enough. Take stackoverflow as a decent control in terms of attracting professionals, academics, and hobbyists alike. I *feel* stackoverflow downvotes far more often and without rationale. Explaining &quot;why the downvote?&quot; is hard to do without insulting the OP or getting enmity/criticism from others. Perhaps it's a second question for CV-meta, but according to SE, the purpose of voting is to democratically filter-up (and down) questions and answers which are interesting." CreationDate="2018-03-12T20:10:37.857" UserId="8013" />
  <row Id="11856" PostId="4540" Score="0" Text="About 4, could we start with a synonym?" CreationDate="2017-01-13T12:49:46.437" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="11857" PostId="4540" Score="1" Text="@Firebug, sure. Merging just means making a synonym and transferring all the existing threads from child tag to the parent tag. One can make a synonym without merging or a synonym with merging. Usually the idea is that all synonyms should be merged, at least once they are &quot;well established&quot; and it's clear that nobody would want to roll it back. Because it's hard to roll back the merging." CreationDate="2017-01-13T12:53:20.177" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11858" PostId="4540" Score="0" Text="Alright, I'm not totally clear on the merging, I'm writing an answer about the (possible) distinction. Perhaps a question in the main site is warranted, but I'm under the impression it has been answered already." CreationDate="2017-01-13T12:55:45.587" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="11859" PostId="4540" Score="1" Text="If there is a case against merging, then we should not make a synonym either! Making a synonym without merging does not make sense at all (only as a temporary transition phase). So yes, do bring it up if you have concerns." CreationDate="2017-01-13T12:56:53.250" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11861" PostId="4540" Score="0" Text="Oh I'm not sure a merging shouldn't performed either! That's why I proposed you act on the synonym first, because I know that can be undone. But I'm collecting some definitions, let's see." CreationDate="2017-01-13T12:59:32.873" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="11863" PostId="4540" Score="0" Text="I'd say even [machine-learning] itself is a very vague tag and a case could even be made that we don't need it. Is regression machine learning? Is logistic regression machine learning? Is any other binary decoding machine learning? Etc. Borders are not clear. Sometimes people put this tag, sometimes not, it's very inconsistent and the scope is unclear. I guess we can't really remove it, it would be too drastic, but splitting hairs even further between ML and SL just seems too much, even if some authors make some distinction between these two terms." CreationDate="2017-01-13T13:03:17.763" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11868" PostId="4540" Score="1" Text="Alright, added an answer, please give it a read. Basically, I found no distinction yet." CreationDate="2017-01-13T13:23:30.320" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="14156" PostId="4540" Score="0" Text="Off-topic ping: amoeba, now when I'm a mod, feel free to ping me on tag issues that need action, I'll be happy to help." CreationDate="2017-08-30T08:37:05.097" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="14397" PostId="4540" Score="0" Text="@Tim Remembering your last comment here: what about synonym merging? Can you help with that? See https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2790. I think gung started doing that after he became the mod but did not finish; I asked him once why he does not continue but he did not respond, so I assume he was busy with other stuff. I don't know how the interface looks like but I am guessing that each synonym can be merged with a couple of clicks so it's a job for 10 minutes if at all..." CreationDate="2017-10-20T08:40:25.453" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14437" PostId="4540" Score="0" Text="@Tim So what do you think?" CreationDate="2017-10-25T12:26:13.903" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11853" PostId="4541" Score="8" Text="http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/bounty is basic documentation worth reading." CreationDate="2017-01-13T09:28:35.653" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11854" PostId="4541" Score="3" Text="It's just impressions but I've not got a sense that many people are much influenced by bounties at all. The main side-effect I've noticed is that a question can't be closed if there's a bounty on it. That can bite temporarily with a poor quality question, but I don't regard it as a fundamental problem." CreationDate="2017-01-13T11:40:42.403" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11855" PostId="4541" Score="1" Text="@NickCox I have never posted a bounty and I never tried to win one.  Lately I have seen a few that I didn't feel deserved pursuing.  One had a 50 point bounty awarded on the last day and it wasn't to a new post.  The other that stands out to me is currently still open for 100 points that I mentioned in my question." CreationDate="2017-01-13T12:48:57.633" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11860" PostId="4541" Score="5" Text="@NickCox: A good question tends to get more up-votes when a bounty's placed on it, &amp; then good answers to it do too. But I'm not sure how much placing a bounty on a question increases the odds of its being answered. I tend to find that questions I (1) can answer, (2) will enjoy answering,  &amp; (3) have time to answer properly aren't so common that I've the luxury of choosing between one with a bounty on it &amp; one without. I'd certainly advise anyone wondering what to do to get their question answered to improve it as much as they can before starting to think about bounties." CreationDate="2017-01-13T12:58:05.643" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="11862" PostId="4541" Score="0" Text="@NickCox I learned some important things from your link.  One had to do with conditions where half the bounty is awarded by the community.   I still wasn't sure if the bounty is unclaimed after the 7 day period plus grace period whether or not the poster of the bounty loses any reputation points." CreationDate="2017-01-13T13:00:28.883" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11865" PostId="4542" Score="2" Text="@MichaelChernick: The OP had 106 rep, meeting the requirement in (1). On posting the bounty they paid 100 rep, leaving 6, as per (2). That 100 rep is now in escrow, yet to be paid out to an answerer of the OPs choice (see 3)." CreationDate="2017-01-13T13:15:28.233" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="11866" PostId="4542" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi Thank you.  A lot of things look differently on first blush.  I posted this question so that I (and probably others) would get these puzzling things explained." CreationDate="2017-01-13T13:19:09.347" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11867" PostId="4542" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b Scortchi has satisfied me about my reservations about your answer.  I have given you an upvote on your answer." CreationDate="2017-01-13T13:21:56.030" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11926" PostId="4542" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b and amoeba gave it a downvote and apparently 2 others.  What did you think about the question?" CreationDate="2017-01-18T14:50:07.040" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11927" PostId="4542" Score="1" Text="The wording &quot;claims&quot; in the first comment should not stand uncorrected. @Glen_b's numbered points are factual statements." CreationDate="2017-01-18T14:50:54.033" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11929" PostId="4542" Score="1" Text="@MichaelChernick Why do you say that it was Glen_b and me who downvoted this question? I don't see either of us saying as much. In any case, no amount of upvotes or downvotes should prevent you from accepting an answer that resolves your question. If you feel that something is still unresolved, you can always edit to clarify." CreationDate="2017-01-18T19:58:07.623" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11933" PostId="4542" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I thought you admitted to it but I don't see that in any of the comments here. Glen_b  mentioned that 3 people upvoted.  But three also downvoted.  I was wondering how he knew that without knowing who downvoted.  But I could be wrong.  Still I think you both could consider upvoting my question." CreationDate="2017-01-18T21:31:57.120" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11934" PostId="4542" Score="0" Text="@NickCox At the time I wrote that I was not sure about all the points but I was being complimentary. I will delete the comment." CreationDate="2017-01-18T21:35:36.673" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11935" PostId="4542" Score="0" Text="@MichaelChernick You can see how many upvoted and how many people downvoted by clicking on the current question score. If you click on 0 you will see +3 and -3." CreationDate="2017-01-18T21:55:17.327" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11936" PostId="4542" Score="2" Text="Of course it doesn't tell you who down voted. Also you could still choose to upvote.  I approved Glen_b 's answer which was very good.  These discussions are very enlightening for me and I am sure for many other members also." CreationDate="2017-01-18T21:56:31.717" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11937" PostId="4542" Score="4" Text="@Michael For information how to see votes: see the **How do I view vote counts?** section on [privileges for people with 1000 reputation](http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/established-user). Please take some time to become familiar with the basic functionality of the site. Besides checking out the various menu items and subitems, and the various links on each page (including the help), and various questions here on meta, if you hover your mouse cursor over various page elements, you can find a lot of information. $\:$(NB Please stop asking amoeba to upvote you. It's inappropriate)" CreationDate="2017-01-18T22:35:29.860" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11938" PostId="4542" Score="2" Text="@Glen_b Thanks for the information.  I don't see why you should advise me how to behave." CreationDate="2017-01-18T22:38:41.137" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11939" PostId="4542" Score="4" Text="Explaining to people when their behavior is inappropriate is one part of my job as a diamond moderator, surely you're aware of that. Even if it's not obvious to you as a matter of plain courtesy, not repeatedly asking people to upvote your posts in comments is a fairly well-established norm for the network (outside some arguably established reasonable exceptions, it's not widely seen as okay to ask people to upvote you at all). If you disagree and think it is seen as okay to ask more than once for people to upvote you, feel free to post a meta question and see what the consensus is." CreationDate="2017-01-18T23:01:31.203" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11941" PostId="4542" Score="2" Text="@Glen_b I am not interested in what you think your job is.  I also don't need to find out what the majority think if I raise an issue on this.  Probably it is not appropriate for me to ask someone like amoeba to upvote my question but is it appropriate for him to ask me to accept your answer or for you to tell me what to do?" CreationDate="2017-01-19T01:39:25.923" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11942" PostId="4542" Score="3" Text="@Michael, you can hardly tell me you're not interested in responses you invited by your comment and then *ask a question that's already answered by the response you say you're uninterested in*. Yes, as already explained it *is* appropriate for me to tell you when you violate site norms. Either you can accept that's the case when I tell you that (in which case, you should attempt to stay within those norms) or you can do something to establish that I am wrong when I say what those norms are (which you do by asking a question on meta and establishing what the consensus is here on CrossValidated)" CreationDate="2017-01-19T01:55:21.303" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11945" PostId="4542" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b, serious question: where in the site rules does it say you can't ask for upvotes? &quot;Norms&quot; are nebulous--it's not uncommon to suggest someone upvote/accept your answer and, let's face it, this is pretty normal behavior for Michael and he's on here more than anyone." CreationDate="2017-01-19T02:27:35.127" UserId="109178" />
  <row Id="11946" PostId="4542" Score="2" Text="Incidentally, I can find the help section that says that what you're doing right now is wrong (**Criticisms which do not add anything constructive** and/or **Secondary discussion or debating a controversial point; use chat instead**). Maybe the diamond moderator needs to review the site rules and realize he's contributing to the problem here--@MichaelChernick isn't going to sit here and argue with himself. Generally, it seems like you spend a lot of time following Michael around and censuring him. Give the man a break! He contributes a lot to the site and he's not hurting anyone. Sheesh." CreationDate="2017-01-19T02:30:17.970" UserId="109178" />
  <row Id="11947" PostId="4542" Score="4" Text="@gammer, note that this discussion is under *my* answer. I'm hardly &quot;following someone around&quot; when they're commenting under my answer.  Nor do I &quot;follow&quot; Michael around elsewhere. I read a large fraction of the posts on site (it's my job) and comment (or take action) where I see an issue. Please identify a particular thread where you think I have &quot;followed him around&quot; rather than acting in a reasonably typical manner for a mod (finding a problem in the normal course of dealing with the site). 2. I invite you to raise this as a new question on meta so a full discussion can occur." CreationDate="2017-01-19T03:19:37.860" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11949" PostId="4542" Score="2" Text="Of course you focus exclusively on the least relevant part of my comment, and the part I have no interest in defending (i.e. searching the site and in the case that I found something, debating you about your motives). It's possible I've confused/combined you with another diamond or someone else. I just have the sense that MC gets piled here and your name is familiar. I apologize if that part of my comment was wrong. I still stick by my statement that you share responsibility for continuing this argument, and you seem to be violating the &quot;letter of the law&quot; that you claim is your job to uphold." CreationDate="2017-01-19T03:30:33.763" UserId="109178" />
  <row Id="11950" PostId="4542" Score="4" Text="Once again, a search reveals discussion on whether it is good form to ask people to accept an answer http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1741/is-it-wrong-to-ask-a-user-to-accept-an-answer and that seems the best place to continue that discussion if you dissent. Most concretely, I don't think anyone is claiming that it is a **rule** not to do this." CreationDate="2017-01-19T08:53:47.370" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11951" PostId="4542" Score="6" Text="Lack of respect for the principle of moderation I find troubling. But no moderator is outside the law: other moderators are there to consider comments and complaints about particular moderators' actions and users with minimal reputation can join in discussions. Asking separate Meta questions about particular events or (usually better) the general principles of what a moderator can/should/cannot/should not  do is a way forward. Personally I find @Glen_b's remarks here entirely reasonable." CreationDate="2017-01-19T08:57:50.640" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11953" PostId="4542" Score="2" Text="I was done with this post a long time ago but I appreciate the support I got from gammer and sometimes Nick Cox also." CreationDate="2017-01-19T23:23:47.937" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11870" PostId="4543" Score="1" Text="This doesn't seem to me to really be an answer to this question. It seems more like this should be a new question. I am not sure if I think this would be more appropriate as a meta.CV Q or a main site Q, but this does seem more like the setup for a different question than an answer to this one." CreationDate="2017-01-13T16:20:36.190" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11871" PostId="4543" Score="0" Text="@gung kinda, but I guess I'm solely disputing here the merging of SL and ML (will edit to keep on-topic). That's why I wanted your input, as you edited the SL tag." CreationDate="2017-01-13T16:22:24.773" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="11875" PostId="4543" Score="0" Text="FTR, I don't think this contribution is *bad*. I just think it is more appropriate elsewhere." CreationDate="2017-01-13T16:30:31.667" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11878" PostId="4543" Score="0" Text="@gung oh I understood." CreationDate="2017-01-13T16:36:45.490" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="11880" PostId="4543" Score="2" Text="To be honest, I don't think these distinctions are actually made in practice. For instance, I have never heard of the distinction Tibshirani makes between SL and ML. I'd assume rather that 98% of the people get &quot;imprinted&quot; on using either &quot;SL&quot; or &quot;ML&quot; and then use that term exclusively, regardless of where their specific circumstances fall in Tibshirani's classification. Reminds me of the discussion about how &quot;forecasting&quot; and &quot;predictions&quot; differ." CreationDate="2017-01-13T20:00:53.530" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="11881" PostId="4543" Score="0" Text="@StephanKolassa Agreed, perhaps the difference is simply cultural then. That's why I proposed the synonym instead of the merge. I'm elaborating a question to the main site though." CreationDate="2017-01-13T20:13:50.503" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="11882" PostId="4543" Score="0" Text="And we have this question already http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/179021/valid-references-on-origins-of-machine-learning-statistical-learning-and-data-m . Perhaps no question is needed in the main site then, but this one could still branch out into meta." CreationDate="2017-01-13T20:17:00.060" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="11883" PostId="4543" Score="0" Text="I am confused by your suggestion of making a synonym but not merging. As I said earlier, I think this only makes sense as a temporary measure, in case we decide to roll the synonym back. Otherwise this arrangement does not make sense. So do I understand correctly that you suggest to make a synonym, wait for some time (how long?), and then if nobody complains to merge? Or do you have something else in mind?" CreationDate="2017-01-14T00:02:49.033" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11887" PostId="4543" Score="0" Text="@amoeba basically that. gung already clarified what I asked earlier. But I find the idea of a tag to the statistical details of machine learning algorithms great (I've been using it these days), opposed to procedures covered by ML. Without a tag these questions are a bit harder to find (they are already hard to find because people don't use the tag).." CreationDate="2017-01-14T02:00:39.317" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="11895" PostId="4543" Score="0" Text="I am sorry, @Firebug, I am still not really getting your suggestion here. If you &quot;find the idea of a tag to the statistical details of machine learning algorithms great&quot;, then why do you advocate creating a synonym? Are you aware how tag synonyms work? After a synonym is created, nobody will be able to post a question tagged with statistical-learning anymore." CreationDate="2017-01-16T18:55:56.623" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11896" PostId="4543" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I do understand that. The keypoint is that I *think* SL means that. I'm mostly worried we might not be able to undo the change in a merge. That's why I suggest a synonym, so perhaps someone (me?) might collect enough evidence SL is not simply ML and both tags can coexist undoing the synonym. As you can see by my answer, I'm nowhere near proving SL conveys what I think it conveys." CreationDate="2017-01-16T19:06:11.000" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="11897" PostId="4543" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Basically, while I like the utility of a tag like that, I'm not sure SL is that at all." CreationDate="2017-01-16T19:06:52.417" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="11898" PostId="4543" Score="0" Text="I find it strange to advocate a synonym while hoping that it will eventually be undone, but okay. I edited my answer to focus bullet #4 on creating the synonym (and not on merging)." CreationDate="2017-01-16T19:16:46.887" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11899" PostId="4543" Score="0" Text="@amoeba it isn't like I hope it'll be undone, just that I'm in doubt it is the same thing. Under that consideration, a synonym seems like the most cautious approach." CreationDate="2017-01-16T19:33:51.267" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="11915" PostId="4543" Score="0" Text="Update: Just noticed that the synonym has been created." CreationDate="2017-01-18T10:11:07.230" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11919" PostId="4543" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Great ." CreationDate="2017-01-18T12:11:05.867" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="14134" PostId="4543" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I updated my answer, I think now I gathered enough understanding on the issue of SL vs ML, give it a look when you have the time;" CreationDate="2017-08-25T20:19:27.063" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="11892" PostId="4544" Score="3" Text="Once again see accessible documentation: http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/site-moderators" CreationDate="2017-01-16T07:50:47.510" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11903" PostId="4544" Score="0" Text="What do you think I am missing?" CreationDate="2017-01-17T13:52:50.733" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11904" PostId="4544" Score="3" Text="You seem to be asking questions when often the answers are already documented. You did this with a question on bounties, for example." CreationDate="2017-01-17T13:55:22.847" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11905" PostId="4544" Score="0" Text="I think meta is for discussion we only have so much time to devote to the site.  Others learn from these posts also." CreationDate="2017-01-17T13:58:27.220" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11906" PostId="4544" Score="3" Text="Naturally I agree that Meta is for discussion. But questions about what is factual and already documented are less useful than discussion of genuine issues. The very good accepted answer below has one weakness in implying that answers to these points are to be sought in Meta posts, but most of what you've asked recently is documented on CV's own part of the site. You would get answers faster and more efficiently by starting with http://stats.stackexchange.com/help" CreationDate="2017-01-17T14:11:52.077" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11914" PostId="4544" Score="2" Text="+1 for @NickCox'es comments and -1 to this question because it &quot;does not show any research effort&quot; (I assume the other downvote had similar motivation)." CreationDate="2017-01-18T10:06:50.563" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11889" PostId="4545" Score="2" Text="Thank you for your answer and the links.  In your last sentence did you really mean that just removing content can make a question worth reopening.  Shouldn't you consider why the post was closed in the first place." CreationDate="2017-01-14T17:16:16.447" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11890" PostId="4545" Score="6" Text="One should consider everything. And it sometimes happens that, after everything is considered, an edit that _removed_ a part of a question makes it worth reopening. One example is when a question had several parts and was closed as too broad." CreationDate="2017-01-14T17:34:55.220" UserDisplayName="user56674" />
  <row Id="11891" PostId="4545" Score="1" Text="That makes sense.  I guess regarding editing to reopen I would like to find something other than just a to change that would keep a post out of the reopen queue.  I have many questions on this topic and you answered most of them." CreationDate="2017-01-14T17:40:19.947" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="11968" PostId="4546" Score="1" Text="See update to my answer!" CreationDate="2017-01-23T10:58:53.217" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11907" PostId="4549" Score="4" Text="See: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/199860/a-question-should-not-be-deleted-by-the-user-deletion-algorithm-if-it-has-upvote. It seems when a user account is deleted their negatively voted questions are automatically deleted - even if they've got upvoted answers. We'll have to think what to do." CreationDate="2017-01-17T16:50:59.813" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="11908" PostId="4549" Score="0" Text="Ok, that answers the &quot;why&quot; portion of my question. The &quot;what should we do&quot; portion seems to be unresolved -- FWIW, I've voted to undelete the question. More broadly, I think that we should undertake a curation of this user's questions because the user asked quite a few, some of which may be of interest to posterity." CreationDate="2017-01-17T16:59:09.933" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="11909" PostId="4549" Score="3" Text="Oh! we can just undelete them. Sorry, I was for some reason thinking it'd be more complicated. I'll look to see what others there are - probably tomorrow now." CreationDate="2017-01-17T17:01:17.807" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="11910" PostId="4549" Score="7" Text="Found just a few with upvoted answers &amp; I've undeleted them. For those who don't remember, this user asked very brief, usually unclear, questions with almost no research effort at a very high rate - several a day - &amp; was often rude to anyone who suggested a different approach. Their persistence in this behaviour led to their questions' attracting plenty of down-votes; nonetheless some users were able to riff on a few of them &amp; write answers worth preserving." CreationDate="2017-01-17T17:21:54.003" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="11911" PostId="4549" Score="1" Text="@Scortchi Thank you for doing that. Since the user profile is deleted, it's not obvious to me how to go through and find the user's questions except when I answered a deleted question and lost reputation upon its deletion." CreationDate="2017-01-17T17:30:35.613" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="11912" PostId="4549" Score="2" Text="@Scortchi &quot;I remember it well&quot; !!! (Gigi 1958)" CreationDate="2017-01-17T17:56:57.623" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11913" PostId="4549" Score="1" Text="Even some of the comments in that thread are worth keeping around." CreationDate="2017-01-17T21:47:37.837" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="11918" PostId="4549" Score="0" Text="@Sycorax: http://stats.stackexchange.com/users/46925 (unless that's moderator-only)." CreationDate="2017-01-18T12:03:26.177" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="11920" PostId="4549" Score="3" Text="@Scortchi the URL doesn't work for me so I suppose it's a Mod-only feature." CreationDate="2017-01-18T12:48:30.550" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="11930" PostId="4552" Score="3" Text="+1 There are also multiple (and hugely different) meanings to &quot;interval data&quot;. Beginners know of &quot;interval data&quot; from Stevens' partial classification of measurement types (interval data are those that retain their meaningfulness under a continuous group of translations).  A totally different meaning is that some datasets consist not of individual numbers, but of entire intervals of numbers representing possible values.  One might also include a third concept of interval-censored data." CreationDate="2017-01-18T20:33:53.723" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="11931" PostId="4552" Score="1" Text="@Whuber In fact we have an [tag:interval-censoring] tag so this third meaning is covered. It seems to me that your second meaning can be described by the same tag (or am I missing something)? But what do you think of the first meaning? Should questions such as `Under what conditions should Likert scales be used as ordinal or interval data?` that currently have an [interval] tag be retagged with [interval-data]? I'd say not, it's enough to have [ordinal] there." CreationDate="2017-01-18T20:39:04.287" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11932" PostId="4552" Score="1" Text="The second meaning is different from interval censoring: it's a (small) subject in its own right, sitting at the junction of computer science and statistics.  The theory is used to prove theorems about floating-point algorithms by using intervals to represent definite bounds on the values.  It has been adopted by some as an alternative to classical statistical analyses. Concerning the second issue, how about a [data-type] or [measurement-type] tag? Regardless, we would likely have to deprecate [tag:interval] altogether and use its wiki excerpt to recommend alternatives." CreationDate="2017-01-18T20:43:00.363" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="11967" PostId="4552" Score="0" Text="An argument in defense of keeping `[interval]` in the cases where users mean `[interval-censoring]` is that often these questions are &quot;My data lies in an interval; what do I do?&quot;. In such cases, if the users were familiar with the term &quot;interval-censoring&quot;, they probably would not have this question. To be clear, I'm still for removing `[interval]`, so I don't buy that argument." CreationDate="2017-01-22T20:59:13.260" UserId="76981" />
  <row Id="15995" PostId="4554" Score="3" Text="Your answer here has been referenced in a [discussion](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5313/7290) about whether the interpretation of statistical output is on topic. My position is that in general it should be considered on topic; but I recognize that such questions could still be unclear or too broad &amp; may be closed for those reasons. I take that to be your point here. I just don't see anything specific to output interpretation questions as necessarily making them any more or less likely to be unclear or too broad than questions on any other subject." CreationDate="2018-06-22T20:45:56.153" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16002" PostId="4554" Score="2" Text="The main suggestion here is that such a question may be a bad question. If people stop at the title here and don't read further, they will miss the explanation of why. I've made some small edits to move closer to your point. (I've sometimes quoted this answer when a question on CV is essentially nothing but an output dump, but conversely there is no need to quote it if there is a clear statistical question.)" CreationDate="2018-06-23T06:40:06.230" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16003" PostId="4554" Score="1" Text="@gung Most of the answers in this thread are about asking questions the wrong way and flag elements that don't help a question while not necessarily being immediately fatal. For example, &quot;I need help&quot; usually flags a naive or unclear question. Sometimes the poster is so new to forums that it's not yet obvious that almost everyone asking needs help too. Sometimes the poster doesn't yet have a specific question. But a title starting &quot;I need help&quot; doesn't rule out a good question following. It can just be someone wanting to make their question human or opening a conversation." CreationDate="2018-06-23T07:32:47.640" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="11973" PostId="4557" Score="2" Text="(+1) The advice given is great, but a tag doesn't seem the right place for it." CreationDate="2017-01-23T14:53:03.143" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="11974" PostId="4557" Score="1" Text="I'm mixed on this. The idea that we need to have some guidance for askers seems right, whether we want that in a tag wiki or as a meta.CV thread eg is ambiguous. A tag might be useful, but I think you're right that &quot;analysis&quot; is probably not a good name for the tag, if we go w/ a tag as the solution. *Applied-assistance* might be something people are less likely to screw up. But I wonder if a special meta.CV thread, like [How to ask a “good” question on CrossValidated?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/1479/7290), which we link to from the FAQ, might be a better strategy." CreationDate="2017-01-23T16:02:54.817" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11975" PostId="4557" Score="1" Text="I am fine with deleting it, despite my valiant, er, nagging effort. As we all know, there is a problem on this forum of questions going unanswered. Reviewing many of these, the theme I found was that it often seemed to be applied researchers asking questions that were not statistical (or if they were, it was hard to suss out the actual question). The community has recently upped its effort to close such questions as off-topic which seems to be a better approach, although a bit harsh to those who are interested but untrained. Nonetheless, this isn't a consulting service. Fine by me to delete." CreationDate="2017-01-23T16:10:17.130" UserId="8013" />
  <row Id="11977" PostId="4557" Score="0" Text="@AdamO I did not want to come across as too negative; sorry. I agree with Scortchi that the tag wiki that you wrote for [analysis] contains excellent advice; perhaps we can indeed move it somewhere to Meta as gung suggested? Maybe indeed to that *How to ask a good question* thread (post another answer there?), even though I have to say that I find that thread too noisy to be very useful (the Q is very long, lots of comments, answers are too long as well). Regarding the tag, looking at it now after 1.5 years, do you think you can say that it helped?" CreationDate="2017-01-23T20:47:58.927" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11980" PostId="4557" Score="1" Text="I'm thinking a meta.CV thread would be better than a tag. I wasn't literally thinking we should add to *How to ask a good question*, though, that was just an example. I was thinking we'd have another thread dedicated to this issue. It could have 1 answer discussing how to *ask* such questions, &amp; another answer discussing how to *answer* such questions. I'm not completely opposed to the tag idea, but I think meta.CV might be better." CreationDate="2017-01-23T20:59:12.657" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="11981" PostId="4557" Score="3" Text="@amoeba you weren't overly pessimistic, and I echo whatever pessimism is there :) I can say in confidence that my tag did not help. Most of the applied researchers who come by way of this site do not tend to become active participants in any sense: they do not upvote or mark answers as correct, provide edits to their own question, or ask further questions. I think we should just accept it as a necessary evil of running such a site." CreationDate="2017-01-23T21:23:17.820" UserId="8013" />
  <row Id="11995" PostId="4558" Score="0" Text="I will add that this happened via voting and, to the best of my knowledge, this was the first ever tag synonym to be implemented via voting (instead of moderator action). By the way, Richard, did you actively ask people to vote for it?" CreationDate="2017-01-24T20:48:37.023" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11996" PostId="4558" Score="0" Text="Another remark: that was the reason why garch&lt;-arch synonym was preferred over mapping both to arch-garch; nobody was able to vote for or even suggest the latter synonyms because nobody has the necessary &gt;=5 rep points in the non-existing arch-garch tag." CreationDate="2017-01-24T20:48:56.627" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="11998" PostId="4558" Score="1" Text="@amoeba, Yes, I sent out about five invitations to vote (without specifically asking to vote *for* or *against*)." CreationDate="2017-01-25T05:39:44.777" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="12008" PostId="4559" Score="0" Text="Down to 75....." CreationDate="2017-01-27T22:30:12.603" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12173" PostId="4559" Score="0" Text="Down to 60....." CreationDate="2017-02-02T09:24:48.500" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12269" PostId="4559" Score="0" Text="Down to 45....." CreationDate="2017-02-05T17:17:06.120" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12335" PostId="4559" Score="0" Text="Down to 30....." CreationDate="2017-02-08T22:43:10.677" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12340" PostId="4559" Score="0" Text="Down to 15....." CreationDate="2017-02-10T09:37:10.487" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12018" PostId="4563" Score="26" Text="I disagree. A reader of our website does not care *when* the questions were asked and answers  were posted. If there is some old answer from 2012 that is not applicable today anymore because some software or regulations have changed since then, I believe it's okay to downvote it. Any misleading answer should be downvoted, and the fact that the answer is old does not protect it. If you have an old answer that you believe is not really applicable you can always either delete it, or revise it, or at least edit to insert a cautionary note &quot;This was written in 2012 and might not be true anymore&quot;." CreationDate="2017-01-29T21:20:32.433" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12030" PostId="4563" Score="0" Text="@amoeba But everyone who votes is aware that it was valid then and therefore it should be left alone." CreationDate="2017-01-29T22:17:29.933" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="12031" PostId="4563" Score="19" Text="Personally, I would vote based on the *today's* relevance. If it used to be valid but is not valid anymore, I don't care. (I should say that in this particular case I did not vote up or down and am not planning to, as I don't know anything about SAS/R; I am just expressing a general policy.)" CreationDate="2017-01-29T22:20:40.360" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12047" PostId="4563" Score="1" Text="In a similar question from other SE community I provided [my two cents](http://meta.gis.stackexchange.com/questions/4419/dealing-with-qas-using-deprecated-non-existent-pyqgis-api-functions/4422#4422). I think the best way to go is to edit the answer to emphasize it is outdated; no need to downvote. Moreover, upvote/post up to date questions/answers." CreationDate="2017-01-30T00:23:51.967" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="12065" PostId="4563" Score="6" Text="You could turn your answer into a community wiki.  That way, you won't lose rep if it gets downvoted.  And, it is essentially acknowledging that it isn't a response that you want to maintain as current any more and are turning over to the community." CreationDate="2017-01-30T04:07:07.917" UserId="71674" />
  <row Id="12070" PostId="4563" Score="6" Text="Although the point has been made already, there is no notion here on CV of an historic answer which should be left alone because it's out of date or written when different policies held. Besides, there isn't even a workable criterion here. 1 year old fair game, 5 years old should be left alone; so does that mean 3 years is the cut-off and that is a moving cut-off and it should be documented? It's like an old paper that in retrospect is an embarrassment (many of mine): they are visible and accessible in the literature!" CreationDate="2017-01-30T10:22:12.147" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12113" PostId="4563" Score="5" Text="I find myself downvoting a lot of old answers because quality standards today are obviously much higher than they were in ~2010 - 2012. I frequently come across questions from that time period, with a number of sparse and poorly documented answers which still garnered a fair number of up votes. A common example seems to questions like &quot;How do I do xxx in C, Java, C++, C#, or Python?&quot; and none of the answers list which language their code sample is written in, let alone explanation of what the code is doing." CreationDate="2017-01-30T22:55:53.180" UserId="123835" />
  <row Id="12114" PostId="4563" Score="0" Text="I don't think standards have changed and I don't think we should judge old  posts any differently." CreationDate="2017-01-30T22:59:55.667" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="12032" PostId="4564" Score="1" Text="You make good points.  I do think it is appropriate for people to upvote or downvote recent answers even if they are a year or two old.  But I don't think upvotes or downvotes on posts from five years ago are not appropriate.  I am human and thereforee prefer upvotes to downvotes." CreationDate="2017-01-29T22:22:27.793" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="12033" PostId="4564" Score="8" Text="It sounds like you're suggesting disallowing voting on posts after they reach a certain age, which is not how I interpreted your question. If I had to vote for or against that proposition, I would vote against it." CreationDate="2017-01-29T22:25:22.670" UserId="109178" />
  <row Id="12035" PostId="4564" Score="1" Text="That would make sense but it wouldn't be fair. I made some comments along with you on Carl's post." CreationDate="2017-01-29T22:33:35.813" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="12056" PostId="4564" Score="1" Text="@gammer I get the distinct impression that some people are trolling. I am not alone in that http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2198/is-there-a-way-to-protect-against-unreasonable-downvoting Downvoting is broken. It needs a fix." CreationDate="2017-01-30T02:08:54.397" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12057" PostId="4564" Score="2" Text="Untoward voting patterns are automatically reversed by the system (as indicated by the old post you linked). It is possible certain items were downvoted with reason. It's really impossible to tell. As my answer indicates, I've received some hard-to-understand downvotes recently (and I know who issued one of them and, no, he wasn't a troll..He was just mad at me, I think) but, the fact is, it resulted in a grand total of a 4 point loss of reputation...Hardly important...Rather than arguing that &quot;downvoting is broken&quot; and needs to be fixed, maybe some people need to get a grip..." CreationDate="2017-01-30T02:15:05.217" UserId="109178" />
  <row Id="12069" PostId="4564" Score="6" Text="Everything you said in this answer is correct and it's very true that upvotes are noisy, but I feel that your answer sidesteps the actual issue here, which is fully addressed in the Glen_b's answer. Incidentally, his answer has 4 times more upvotes, and I do not think this difference is pure noise :-) Not sure why @MichaelChernick decided to accept your answer over Glen's. But given that, it would be good if you explicitly formulated your opinion on what Glen_b wrote. Do you agree? Or do you disagree?" CreationDate="2017-01-30T09:35:27.747" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12117" PostId="4564" Score="3" Text="_&quot;his answer has 4 times more upvotes, and I do not think this difference is pure noise :-) **Not sure why** @MichaelChernick decided to accept your answer over Glen's.&quot;_ -- thanks for that. What I'm not sure about is why your uncertainties are germane to this discussion. To answer your Q: Sure, I like Glen's answer. Honestly, I didn't read it all, but I agree that downvoting old posts is fine, and that's why I upvoted it. However, I took Michael's question to be about what systemic changes should occur to combat this &quot;problem&quot; and I like my answer -- &quot;None&quot; -- better. I guess Michael did too." CreationDate="2017-01-31T04:16:45.997" UserId="109178" />
  <row Id="12149" PostId="4564" Score="6" Text="I have noticed on a recent occasion how emotional people can get about a single downvote. Getting reputation points seems to be the ultimate goal then, which could be _the_ problematic issue. When I spot an old answer to an interesting if old question and I deem it poor or inappropriate, there is no more reason for not downvoting it than upvoting other answers. Or than answering old unanswered questions. Or than calling for closing old uninteresting questions which OPs have vanished from the forum after asking this single question." CreationDate="2017-02-01T09:09:01.300" UserId="7224" />
  <row Id="12298" PostId="4564" Score="1" Text="Reputation points are the worst way of encouraging people to contribute quality content to a Q&amp;A site, apart from all the other ways of encouraging people to contribute. They *are* a reward and they do work, if imperfectly - witness the success of Stack Exchange sites where others have failed. Maybe we just don't like being confronted with the evidence of our own shallowness ;-)" CreationDate="2017-02-07T09:14:48.037" UserId="2894" />
  <row Id="12016" PostId="4565" Score="2" Text="I think the issue is real (albeit rate), but your example is not very good. Question A in your example is so bad that I think it should be downvoted for lack of research effort &amp; closed as too broad." CreationDate="2017-01-29T21:10:06.353" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12017" PostId="4565" Score="2" Text="Other than that, `Should I flag it as duplicate of one of the two questions, and leave a comment?` - that is what I usually do, yes. In fact, it *is* technically possible to close a question as a duplicate of two questions; I have seen it multiple times (but don't think I can find an example right now). I believe this can only be done via moderator intervention, perhaps one of the mods will comment to clarify." CreationDate="2017-01-29T21:12:20.997" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12048" PostId="4565" Score="0" Text="If the situation is that the current question is really two questions, then one reasonable option is link the two duplicates in comments and vote to close as too broad." CreationDate="2017-01-30T00:30:22.250" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12049" PostId="4565" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b even if one doesn't think the question is too broad?" CreationDate="2017-01-30T00:33:47.010" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="12050" PostId="4565" Score="1" Text="Example: http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/258820/ - this got closed as a dup of two questions, and actually without any mod intervention." CreationDate="2017-01-30T00:44:07.667" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12053" PostId="4565" Score="2" Text="@FranckDernoncourt If there is a post with two essentially separate questions that can stand alone (even if they're related), they should normally be asked as two questions each in their own post. If it isn't really two questions, it should probably stand on its own. We tend to often let lists of questions stay if there aren't so many of them (and just answer separate questions in one answer), but the principle is there and could be used as a way of dealing with this circumstance." CreationDate="2017-01-30T01:00:39.560" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12019" PostId="4566" Score="2" Text="wouldn't this create a lot of duplicate information?" CreationDate="2017-01-29T21:27:06.463" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="12020" PostId="4566" Score="6" Text="@FranckDernoncourt, maybe. In case you haven't noticed, there is a tremendous amount of duplicate information on this website. For example, I'm pretty new to this site, and I can already see there are only a small handful of unique questions about subjects like multicollinearity and model selection in GLMs on this site, but that doesn't stop many users (including very high rep users or moderators) from supplying essentially the same answers over and over. I don't really mind this, but let's not pretend that non-duplication is sacrosanct on CrossValidated." CreationDate="2017-01-29T21:31:53.517" UserId="109178" />
  <row Id="12023" PostId="4566" Score="1" Text="In the scenario you've described, this seems sufficiently rare (and, again, I'm new-ish so my perception may be off) that it seems like the most pragmatic solution is just to supply a combined answer to the combined duplicate question. And, just philosophically (e.g. using similar logic to that of academic research) I think of the combined question as distinct from the two individual ones." CreationDate="2017-01-29T21:44:58.790" UserId="109178" />
  <row Id="12073" PostId="4566" Score="3" Text="(-1) No point to that, unless you're adding new info. - &amp; even then I'd say there should be some benefit from the *joint* treatment of *C* &amp; *D*. To be sure, there are many extant duplicates on the site, but we needn't let the best be the enemy of the good." CreationDate="2017-01-30T11:34:49.080" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="12074" PostId="4566" Score="6" Text="One distinct question, one distinct thread remains an ideal. The more popular the topic, the more difficult it can be to track down the previous answer, even if you vaguely remember writing it yourself. Some people here have posted thousands of answers." CreationDate="2017-01-30T11:45:18.400" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12115" PostId="4566" Score="2" Text="@Scortchi, I agree with your comment. My point was just that, in many cases the joint treatment inherently adds something. This happens all the time in research.  On this site, I could imagine an answer to a question about estimating intraclass tetrachoric correlations from a mixed effects probit model being mostly constructed from a cut-and-paste job from answers to questions about a) estimating intraclass correlations in a linear mixed fx model; and b) probit regression. And that seems ok. I didn't read the OP's links so I have no idea if that applies to his example." CreationDate="2017-01-31T04:05:11.487" UserId="109178" />
  <row Id="12128" PostId="4566" Score="0" Text="(+1) I am not sure why this answer is getting downvotes. My reading of gammer's answer is that he is suggesting a &quot;joint treatment&quot; of C &amp; D, like argued in Scortchi's answer too. I almost feel that @Scortchi's downvote was based on a misunderstanding." CreationDate="2017-01-31T21:57:31.703" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12136" PostId="4566" Score="0" Text="@gammer: I feel your last comment qualifies your answer rather - you might want to edit it." CreationDate="2017-01-31T22:49:14.860" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="12142" PostId="4566" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi, I'm not sure how I can edit it to reflect that, because that's what I meant by &quot;distinct enough&quot;. Feel free to edit it or community wiki it if you want." CreationDate="2017-02-01T02:54:40.477" UserId="109178" />
  <row Id="12024" PostId="4567" Score="12" Text="Wow. Talk about dramatic. +1 because this was entertaining to read but calm down. The controversy badge sounds interesting, but getting a +5/-5 actually gives 40 points, so it seems like you already got rewarded for your troubles. And I don't know that slapping someone with a rioter badge because they were late to the party and weighed in on a terrible answer is such a great idea. Finally, how would limiting an individual's number of downvotes remedy this problem? You can only downvote an answer once and any individual's vote limit has nothing to do with this &quot;mob mentality&quot;." CreationDate="2017-01-29T21:46:16.957" UserId="109178" />
  <row Id="12025" PostId="4567" Score="3" Text="@gammer I am not sure if I should apologize for conveying emotion, or rejoice that I did. Aristotle commented that emotional speech holds a crowd's attention. Mobs are not composed of the same individual multiple times. Usually a crowd turns to a mob on a dime--and mass behaviour; a riot, is not rational. An impassioned plea for rationality is a stark contrast, but it is what it is." CreationDate="2017-01-29T21:59:26.893" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12029" PostId="4567" Score="8" Text="OK. More related to the question, my impression is that mass downvoting of questions and answers usually happens due to extremely low quality. So, similar to what I said in the other recent meta thread from today about downvoting, I'm not sure there's a real problem here to be solved. The kind of mob behavior you wrote so eloquently about does not seem to be prevalent, as far as I can tell. In general, voting behavior on this site is idiosyncratic and, ultimately, the consequences are almost non-existent, so maybe try to brush it off. I'll be interested in what other discussants say." CreationDate="2017-01-29T22:10:08.597" UserId="109178" />
  <row Id="12034" PostId="4567" Score="2" Text="I would say that you can't deny that some voters are influenced by other voters comments. When someone comments with +1 others often follow and when negative comments are made downvotes often follow.  I think some people are influenced by comments from high reputation members. But I have to agree with gammer that it would be difficult to do anything about it that would be fair." CreationDate="2017-01-29T22:31:35.270" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="12036" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@gammer My experience is that correcting mass delusion is extremely difficult due to confirmation bias. What you find as usual, poor quality, I have not experienced as frequently as unfortunately misplaced affect." CreationDate="2017-01-29T22:35:59.993" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12037" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@MichaelChernick Yes, herd behaviour can be overly idolatrous as well as demonizing. Neither is very rational. I am just asking if we can inject some rationality into the voting process. That would not be difficult if you accept the premise that it would yield a much better site, and I think that is the case because it would encourage more out-of-the-box thinking, which is where the real action is." CreationDate="2017-01-29T22:45:19.267" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12039" PostId="4567" Score="9" Text="The more you talk the more this sounds like a rant rather than actually seeking a solution. Do you have an actual suggestion, or is your question basically &quot;Can you all please stop voting like brainwashed idiots!?!?&quot;. Pun intended." CreationDate="2017-01-29T22:48:07.133" UserId="109178" />
  <row Id="12040" PostId="4567" Score="1" Text="@gammer Should we limit the number of downvotes to one per day until the user reputation is greater than 1000? Should we reward the OP or the person answering if he has a split of +5/-5 votes with a controversy badge? I am the OP, not the answer. Think about the question, not about me, please. I am not the question." CreationDate="2017-01-29T22:49:04.327" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12041" PostId="4567" Score="1" Text="How does limiting the number of downvotes do anything? You could use your one vote to pile on. Also, I strongly suspect a huge majority of votes on this site are cast by people with more than 1000 rep. Not a lot of low rep users are going around finding stuff to vote on. And I'm not thinking about you. I didn't even become aware of you on this site until you posted this question. And, reference to a 'rant' was talking about the question, not you personally." CreationDate="2017-01-29T22:50:23.270" UserId="109178" />
  <row Id="12042" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@gammer The users with the highest reps leave comments not sneak attacks. Literally it is the small people who are petty, not the most highly reputable ones, who can and do think entirely for themselves. They are the coolest heads, and the least effected by erroneous mass action." CreationDate="2017-01-29T22:55:34.937" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12043" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@gammer No offense taken re rant. Just be careful, it is a very real phenomenon, and sure, I see it constantly, and I do not like it, and find it very discouraging. I think, sincerely that it needs fixing, and, one has to accept the premise before one can think ti through." CreationDate="2017-01-29T23:00:31.527" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12045" PostId="4567" Score="3" Text="I know it's a real phenomenon. You just haven't offered any evidence that it happens on this site, or that low-rep users are to blame. Maybe you can get on the SE data explorer to get some real answers, but a very small sample of low rep (200-500 rep) and high rep (10k or so) profiles I looked at indicates an overwhelming majority of votes (and down votes) come from those with high rep. Also, I found the post that I assume sent you into this rage; most of the criticism there came from low rep users, so I guess they weren't pulling drive bys. Anyway, might as well let someone else weigh in now." CreationDate="2017-01-29T23:14:38.737" UserId="109178" />
  <row Id="12046" PostId="4567" Score="7" Text="@Carl: You mention that you &quot;*see it constantly*&quot; but actually going back about 17 weeks on your own Q&amp;A with the exception of [this thread](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/256563) you have not experienced a &quot;gang-up&quot;, where by &quot;gang-up&quot; I assume three or more negative votes. Even then I think people have voiced their opposition quite clearly (I hadn't followed that thread, I just read the comments to your post). Could you please define what you mean by &quot;gang-up&quot; more specifically? Can you please give particular examples?" CreationDate="2017-01-29T23:40:18.100" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="12054" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@usεr11852 There are people looking at and downvoting my old stuff. This behavior is documented here http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/4563/why-do-people-downvote-old-questions-and-answers. So when you ask for documentation you may be encouraging people to act inappropriately. Here is an example of gangup to close http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/4495/how-do-i-get-the-ols-linear-regression-parameter-inaccuracy-question-off-of-on-h I have no more space to show them here." CreationDate="2017-01-30T01:30:16.760" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12055" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@usεr11852 Here is an example of an answer that was downvoted so mercilessly, that it was closed while I was still editing it. http://stats.stackexchange.com/a/234662/99274. What you see now only has one downvote +7/-1, but historically it had a sum total of about -7 votes. It was downvoted with alacrity, and on a question that was a cesspool to answer and took heroic effort and lots and lots of reading." CreationDate="2017-01-30T01:50:08.707" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12058" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@usεr11852 Here is activity that looks like trolling http://stats.stackexchange.com/a/237972/99274. A downvote that appeared on an otherwise ignored post, just now. You ask for examples, it is costing me to do so. Pay me back. Downvoting is broken." CreationDate="2017-01-30T02:16:43.390" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12060" PostId="4567" Score="3" Text="@Carl, regarding the last one you linked to -- I cannot for the life of me understand that answer. I wouldn't call that downvote a terrible injustice." CreationDate="2017-01-30T02:43:19.760" UserId="109178" />
  <row Id="12063" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@gammer Hardly the only example today. But your comment to me is worth something. A downvote would not be constructive criticism, just an indication of dislike." CreationDate="2017-01-30T02:55:20.743" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12064" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="Dislike, or maybe just a lazy rebuke of the answer from someone who was not particularly inclined to debate the specifics of the question. This is actually my default interpretation of an anonymous downvote, unless I know I have an enemy and can see the change in their reputation at the moment of the downvote." CreationDate="2017-01-30T02:58:36.250" UserId="109178" />
  <row Id="12066" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@gammer Your explanation helped, I put in explanatory text, and the downvote disappeared. BTW, to return the favor, when you edit questions, do a bit more fixing up, that will get more of your edits approved." CreationDate="2017-01-30T04:31:35.650" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12078" PostId="4567" Score="21" Text="I find 114 questions w/ a net score &lt;=-3, out of 94,870 for 0.12%; &amp; 160 answers w/ a net score &lt;=-3, out of 92,626 for 0.17%. This behavior does not seem endemic to me." CreationDate="2017-01-30T13:54:56.683" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12145" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@gung Find one more above, mine. In fact, my answer below has also been deleted. You counting is not exactly unbiased. Dislikes can destroy reputation quickly, and downvoting is a conversation killer. Killing a question about downvoting with downvoting? Is that somehow &quot;fair-play&quot;?" CreationDate="2017-02-01T06:05:31.700" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12152" PostId="4567" Score="8" Text="@Carl, your answer is *not* deleted. It's downvoted because you made a specific proposal and people disagreed with it. That is what Meta discussions are for." CreationDate="2017-02-01T11:42:06.467" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12154" PostId="4567" Score="2" Text="@Carl: You're perhaps confusing the light-grey text of an answer having a score of -3 or less (which should revert to black text when you move your cursor over it) with the greyish-red background of a deleted answer: see [What do the colors on Stack Overflow mean?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/281740/what-do-the-colors-on-stack-overflow-mean). Note that down-votes on Meta don't affect your reputation at all (&amp; even on the main site a single up-vote for an answer or two for a question will balance out five down-votes). As for down-voting's being a conversation-killer, ..." CreationDate="2017-02-01T13:45:09.563" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="12155" PostId="4567" Score="5" Text="... I can't see the evidence (consider perhaps the three answers &amp; many comments on this thread)." CreationDate="2017-02-01T13:47:35.267" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="12157" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi A downvote is a dislike, it is by design a negative vote. I have seen arguments here to the effect that downvoting is a robust contributory comment as to quality of the voted on post, which is reading into the motive of a downvote, and the post a fiction of great creativity. All other characterizations I have made have been considered fictions, which disagreements were not supported by anything other that imagination. So, I must present evidence, and other opinions are exempt. I see no merit in presenting evidence if logical arguments are ignored anyway." CreationDate="2017-02-01T16:40:58.550" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12159" PostId="4567" Score="5" Text="@Carl, yes, you need to provide evidence when your opinion assigns a malicious intent. Placing opinions like that on the same footing as opinions that don't assume there are mobs out to get you leads to dangerous consequences (seemingly very similar to the kind of consequences you're railing against). I hope that the political situation in the US doesn't devolve further to &quot;provide evidence&quot; of why what I'm saying is true :(" CreationDate="2017-02-01T17:14:22.163" UserId="117710" />
  <row Id="12160" PostId="4567" Score="3" Text="@Carl, the statistics I cited pertain to the main site. FWIW, I find 17 / 1106 (1.54%) questions on meta.CV have a net score of &lt;=-3; &amp; 17 / 1975 (0.09%) answers on meta.CV &lt;=-3. As before, those rates don't seem out of control to me: it should be expected that occasionally there will be proposals that several people disagree with. Note that downvoting questions on meta.CV means something different than on the main site. Viz, here it indicates disagreement w/ a suggestion, not necessarily 'unclear', 'lack of research effort', etc. Also, I don't see how these counts would be biased or not." CreationDate="2017-02-01T17:38:22.953" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12169" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@gung On a survey, an efficient classifier would have a scale between agree and disagree that divides people into approximately equal number groups. what the numbers you quote suggest to me is that downvoting is rare and thus inefficient as a classifier. To say this is unbiased you would have to show a higher percentage of downvoting. It seems to that what you **are** showing is a clear aversion to giving and receiving downvotes. And yet you do not see a problem with downvoting." CreationDate="2017-02-02T02:01:03.093" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12179" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@not_bonferroni  I if one cannot suspend disbelief long enough to agree to a hypothesis, no matter of evidence is adequate. What would convince you, anything? Be honest." CreationDate="2017-02-03T01:17:48.597" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12198" PostId="4567" Score="3" Text="@Carl, sorry but I don't know what you're saying" CreationDate="2017-02-03T14:52:10.490" UserId="117710" />
  <row Id="12199" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@not_bonferroni Look at gung's comment above and not that the heavy bias against downvoting was intrepeted as being evidence that downvoting  is &quot;not a problem.&quot; I look at downvoting as producing erratic outliers; information destructive noise looking at the same data. The tendency is to regard data as confirming one's assumptions. If you do that, you will not understand what I am saying." CreationDate="2017-02-03T15:07:46.330" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12200" PostId="4567" Score="2" Text="@Carl, k. I don't see the connection between that and my original comment." CreationDate="2017-02-03T15:21:06.720" UserId="117710" />
  <row Id="12201" PostId="4567" Score="2" Text="I'm not following the latest comments easily either. I think there is a bias  in reporting if questions that were heavily downvoted and then deleted are no longer visible. Is there a way of quantifying that? @gung's results do imply that downvoting is relatively rare, so to that extent it is less of a problem in total, which does not rule out problems in the way it is applied (although as said elsewhere I don't personally see a real issue). Further,  I can't see how gung's results show &quot;a clear aversion ... to receiving downvotes&quot;, although there is plenty of different evidence for that." CreationDate="2017-02-03T15:30:09.587" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12208" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@NickCox If downvotes and upvotes were unbiased they would be 50-50. Voting is heavily biased in favor of upvoting because downvoting is problematic. You do not see a problem, I do, and majority opinion is not as effective in duplicating truth values for downvoting as for upvoting. High reputation downvoters do better than majority users for such things. Are you informed on this subject?" CreationDate="2017-02-03T17:49:34.810" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12209" PostId="4567" Score="6" Text="Thanks for explaining, but I fail to grasp the argument. I don't accept  that up and down should be 50:50. We don't say that 50% of people should have AIDS or red hair rather than not, given a binary classifier.  I can't tie your suggestions together. You seem to be very unhappy with the way downvoting is used, but also seem to be suggesting that there should be much more downvoting. I can only imagine that CV would just fall apart with massive downvoting. I wouldn't want to be part of a forum if I got negative signals for my posts about half of the time. Am I missing your point completely?" CreationDate="2017-02-03T18:01:12.417" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12212" PostId="4567" Score="8" Text="(I'm very reluctant to respond further, as I suspect it will just draw out more arguments of the same character. However, I will lay out the implied context for my comments above for clarity.) From the question statement, I inferred that large numbers of downvotes is considered to be a commonly occurring problem. To see how common it is, I computed the proportion of posts (on the main site) that have a net score of -3 or lower. The proportions are very small. I take that as prima facie evidence that large numbers of downvotes do not occur very often." CreationDate="2017-02-03T20:52:24.560" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12213" PostId="4567" Score="5" Text="I can honestly say that what would convince me it happened often is if the rates were high. 'High' is somewhat vague, but certainly 10% would seem high to me &amp; &lt;.2% seems low to me. The 1.5% rate for Qs on meta.CV is interesting, but downvoting on meta has a different meaning &amp; we're only referring to 17 actual Qs. @NickCox makes a good point that if downvoted posts are more likely to be deleted, these would be underestimates, but I don't see good reason to believe large numbers of downvotes happen very often. I am not trying to build a classifier, so I'm not concerned that 1 might be biased." CreationDate="2017-02-03T20:52:35.623" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12216" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@gung I say downvoting is problematic, and it is downvoted -3. Do you see the humor in that? BTW, `17 / 1975 (0.09%)` should read `17 / 1975 (0.86%)`. Small numbers are erratic, noise. Nothing useful can be read into them. I seem to lose on what is barely a popularity contest. If you want to convey information you need a better classifier. As it is, and as this post indicates there isn't any. And no, it seems that none of my arguments here are going to be accepted broadly. The site can lose some really worthless and some very worthwhile text given the downvoting, but I give up on you." CreationDate="2017-02-03T23:21:40.787" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12229" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="I apologize for the typo." CreationDate="2017-02-04T13:24:07.477" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12517" PostId="4567" Score="2" Text="The latest edit here to the question adds a cross-reference to an answer by @Carl. As I write it has received 1 upvote, 3 downvotes, and a discussion with about 20 comments. That's  a pretty small mob at worst. I see discussion  with attempts at clarity and reason. It doesn't work in so far as puzzlement seems to remain on both sides.  There is a slim net majority that the answer doesn't help. This is an example of a forum at work in which people can disagree or can fail to understand each other. That's unfortunate, but not pathological." CreationDate="2017-02-19T10:45:16.323" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12518" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@NickCox that question and its answers have all attracted downvotes for some reason so it seems to me rather unusual compared to most of the discussions I see. (Disclaimer: I am one of the answerers)" CreationDate="2017-02-19T15:18:35.320" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="12524" PostId="4567" Score="6" Text="@mdewey It's a puzzling thread. But I don't think it helps the assertions being made in this one. Unreasonable downvoting as a diagnosis would be the right diagnosis if there was e.g. lots of downvoting when an answer is agreed to be right (not always easy to establish); or people downvoting just because somebody else is (very difficult to establish). The weakest kind of example has the flavour of &quot;I think I was right in that thread; but my answer was downvoted; therefore people are being unreasonable&quot; which by itself is just assertion, not demonstration." CreationDate="2017-02-19T20:52:34.860" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12525" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@mdewey Part of the problem is that downvoting leads to erasure, which masks the problem, just like lynching someone cuts off irritating free speech. It is very hard to present unpopular truth. Would you pay attention to a vote on Einstein's theory of relativity, or, would you respect more an informed opinion of someone who can actually do the math?" CreationDate="2017-02-20T00:18:59.823" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12535" PostId="4567" Score="2" Text="To state again how the SE system works, downvoting (whether reasonable or not) does *not* lead to &quot;erasure&quot;." CreationDate="2017-02-20T16:09:26.173" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12536" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@gung There have been 115 `peer pressure` badges awarded, and, I have a badge that you do not. Stick your neck out a bit more and go get one." CreationDate="2017-02-20T16:33:47.293" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12537" PostId="4567" Score="1" Text="If it makes you feel better, I'm opposed to the existence of the peer pressure badge (cf., [Does SE have too many badges?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/189444/187282))." CreationDate="2017-02-20T16:42:37.773" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12539" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@gung Yes, and you also oppose the `unsung hero` gold badge, that a lot of others support, and that I would probably have if I deleted my one negative answer post. Taking care of things few care about, but actually may be important, is perhaps not a reprehensible activity. It is said that &quot;Everyone is the hero of his own story&quot; to which I would add that &quot;Not all of them are wrong.&quot;" CreationDate="2017-02-20T19:06:16.767" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12557" PostId="4567" Score="2" Text="@Carl as has already been mentioned in in this very comment thread, downvoting on meta has a *different meaning*. That last comment has been removed. If you persist in misrepresenting what has already been explained here, as well as being careless attribution of motives and with the tone of your comments, I'll have to begin removing all the comments that seem to be designed to do little more than stir up trouble, and if the approach taken with this question doesn't become a lot more constructive and *fast*, I'll remove the question or otherwise take suitable actions to remedy the situation." CreationDate="2017-02-22T10:05:56.973" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12558" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="Not sure if this is conveying more than I am supposed to, but I figure we should clarify the situation in relation to the post you point to where you say you had 5 downvotes at some point -- In fact you never had more than 3 at any time. You got one downvote on 10 Sept 2016 and two more on 12 Sept. These downvotes were reversed and the reputation refunded, when (it looks like) some users were removed. Whatever went on there was likely inappropriate but it looks like everything already worked as it should -- ... ctd" CreationDate="2017-02-22T12:39:04.213" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12559" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="ctd... -- there's nothing to talk about there because whatever happened was already dealt with in the strongest possible way.  Then some time after all that happened you got a single downvote (for which there's no reason to suspect something untoward), followed by a number of upvotes (you made a number of improvements along the way) and that single latest downvote is still there." CreationDate="2017-02-22T12:39:18.047" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12570" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b I know that meta downvotes and upvotes are not like those on the main site. I respect, and honor your authority and experience.  It is likely more profound than mine. I understand your point of view, and would defend your right to it. It is however different than mine, likely because my point of departure and experiences are different than yours.  I am not a 'maverick,' a troublemaker, protester, or anything like that, I just approach problems differently." CreationDate="2017-02-22T17:23:44.483" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12575" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Please, do it for me. I think that my intentions were good, but I seem to be in the minority for thinking that, and it hurts." CreationDate="2017-02-22T22:22:10.253" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12577" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@NickCox I symbolically agree. I do not remember how to do that. I stumbled on how to see prior edits at one point, but forget how to. Either tell me how to, or do it yourself and I will then re-edit to eliminate your moniker on the reedit if you so request." CreationDate="2017-02-22T22:35:05.520" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12579" PostId="4567" Score="1" Text="@Carl I didn't call you a maverick or a trouble maker --  I characterized the tone and phrasing you used in a series of comments in this thread (which I see as not conducive to productive discussion of a potential issue) rather than attempting to generalize to your personality or overall behaviour outside this particular thread (which would be inappropriate). I'd like to see well-formulated concerns aired but will not allow this to descend into what has got strong suggestions of name calling and impugning of motives." CreationDate="2017-02-22T23:00:34.023" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12580" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="Carl you can see the edit history by clicking the red &quot;edited ... ago&quot; link to the left of your avatar at the bottom of the post." CreationDate="2017-02-22T23:02:20.367" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12585" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b Yes, thanks for the &quot;edited...ago&quot; An admixture of negative personal feelings and objective findings makes for difficult text. I am regretting that I ever started this; too easy to misconstrue, and I thought I was being careful." CreationDate="2017-02-22T23:20:46.670" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12861" PostId="4567" Score="5" Text="+1 I have little interest in reading the barrage of comments to this thread. Regardless, I want to add one of my own. I have to agree with Carl about the *bandwagon* effect. It is a widespread bias across many, many online sites and blogs. CV is neither immune nor is it an exception where &quot;reason&quot; rules. There is a lot of irrational behavior here, e.g., moderators who, after losing a discussion, delete the thread reflecting their mistaken line of argument, participants who revel in baiting other participants into arguments, critical comments that do nothing to suggest a solution, etc." CreationDate="2017-03-20T23:27:10.230" UserId="78229" />
  <row Id="12862" PostId="4567" Score="1" Text="To me, the whole point of gaining points is to use them for downvoting." CreationDate="2017-03-21T02:36:48.600" UserId="34623" />
  <row Id="12876" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@StudentT Oh, I get it, a joke. Well, &quot;Ha, Ha.&quot; As Djohnson said, (people use) &quot;...critical comments that do nothing to suggest a solution&quot; is actually putting a finger on the problem. My experience has confirmed that in spades. Without naming names, one colleague recently complained some people (me probably) who know just enough statistics to cause problems." CreationDate="2017-03-24T20:00:18.763" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="15037" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="I find difficult reading this post as it is not objective, it is repetitive, and it is written fancily/philosophically. In my opinion, you make valid points in the question, but unfortunately they are also buried under an unnecessary pile of text. For example, here are two Meta SE questions related to yours written in a much simpler way: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/144557/bandwagon-effect-in-close-votes and https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1751/allow-an-edit-to-notify-downvoters-i-think-ive-fixed-the-issue-now-please-c." CreationDate="2017-12-28T16:32:32.513" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="15040" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@AndreSilva  Read [this](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0134269), then comment." CreationDate="2017-12-28T23:08:34.207" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="15042" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="SE is a place where knowledge can be created from collective intelligence. That article starts the conclusion this way: _“Our findings suggest that **simple** and highly transparent CI-rules ....”_ (the emphasis is mine). Let me ask you now to comment: i) Don’t you agree your question is repetitive; for example, couldn’t you just have edited the “new version” part (instead of repeating the introduction), since the edit history is recorded and all users have access to it?)? ii) Do you think it is easy for non native English speakers to follow up and compreheend the writing style used in this Q?" CreationDate="2017-12-29T00:45:04.483" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="15043" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@AndreSilva When I have edited content in a question without showing that an Edit has occurred I have gotten complaints that the original content has changed. This causes answers to be out of context, i.e., the new context. Subsequently to having rocks thrown at me, I now try to maintain some context out of respect for the answers. I cannot please everyone, indeed that should not be a reason for downvoting, but, reasons for downvoting are not visible. Obviously, I did not have to beg for your opinion, but am uncertain how I can help you." CreationDate="2017-12-29T01:04:42.477" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="15044" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@AndreSilva My dad used to say that it takes a genius to say something simple. When I can, I do, for example [here](https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/320192/99274). However, when I am trying to work something out, I tend to say a lot, and people sometimes don't like it; [example](https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/234662/99274). Now the difference is that without working out difficult material, I would never get to the point where I can say something short and sweet. This is one of those times." CreationDate="2017-12-29T01:15:25.010" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="15045" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="I sympathise with your last comment. About 'how you can help me' I made an edit to your question to what I consider a much simpler version of it while keeping 100% of its meaning from previous versions. If you don't like the edit, just roll it back." CreationDate="2017-12-29T01:33:06.267" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="15046" PostId="4567" Score="1" Text="@AndreSilva Edit is OK, thank you Andre from sao jose dos campos. I can barely make sense of Portuguese, and your English is just fine." CreationDate="2017-12-29T01:53:51.273" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="15591" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="Individual threads don't determine policy here, but policy is always tested by difficult threads. Sorry, but I don't think your discussion of https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/339114/99274 helps either you or your case. People must judge for themselves after reading it. (1) I don't see that anyone called the question &quot;ridiculous&quot; or implied that it was. Disclosure: I am among those who found it (find it) unclear and tried to get clarification from the OP." CreationDate="2018-04-08T08:27:38.940" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15592" PostId="4567" Score="1" Text="(2) You're in favour of &quot;be nice&quot; as a policy. That's good; we agree. Gently, I suggest that nothing in the original thread justifies wording like &quot;nasty&quot;, &quot;regurgitation of furballs&quot;, &quot;nonsense&quot;, &quot;spew negativity&quot;, &quot;clobbered&quot;. Simply, 3 people [not me] downvoted your answer as wrong and the first explained why. I am very sorry you are upset and angry about this but to me the other reactions to the thread are all polite and consistent with CV policy. It's unfortunate that the question remains unclear." CreationDate="2018-04-08T08:33:52.553" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15593" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="I am upvoting this question because it makes me realize this voting system seems even much more intriguing to me now. A large collection of internauts putting out their opinions and &quot;fighting&quot; (?) for giving the best opinion (according to others fellow internauts). It is a lot and a lot of complexity. Future artificial intelligence will harvest these databases full of discussions to find out how 'humanity' thinks and behaves." CreationDate="2018-04-09T02:28:17.317" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="15594" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@MartijnWeterings Make that &quot;current&quot; artificial intelligences are analyzing these databases, as are we &quot;naturals&quot;." CreationDate="2018-04-09T02:38:38.063" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="15596" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="No, current artificial intelligence is not intelligent yet. At best they can win a game of chess. Noway will they be able to *understand*  stackexchange." CreationDate="2018-04-09T02:48:55.760" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="15597" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@NickCox I admit to projecting. I felt horrible, I couldn't correct fast enough to stave off the downvotes, and it is not the comments that bothered me or the downvotes that were commented like Scortchi's. The ones done surreptitiously really hurt my &quot;feelings&quot; because they were *in camera.* Now I if call that &quot;sneaky&quot; &quot;underhanded&quot; or whatever it is to point up a problem that I think merits attention, not to impress people with my stiff upper lip. My writing about this is not about self-aggrandizement, or name calling, but about why this seems problematic." CreationDate="2018-04-09T02:50:50.143" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="15599" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="Why would your care being downvoted? You have more enough points to compensate the lost points. Sorry, I don't get it." CreationDate="2018-04-09T04:56:05.793" UserId="34623" />
  <row Id="15600" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@SmallChess Take a look at this [post](https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/339114/99274). I spent the better part of a day answering a question, It is the accepted answer. The OP thanked me for answering. It has 4 downvotes, none of which voices any objection. The question is now well posed as is the answer. Both the question and its answer are being unfairly treated. Why? Because it is nonsense that gets in the way of helping people, it is unhelpful, and all I can tell is that it is being done mindlessly, because no mindfulness is being expressed." CreationDate="2018-04-09T05:46:19.150" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="15601" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@Carl I think it all started by Scortchi. As a mod, when he placed -1 to you, everybody else assumed he was right and followed." CreationDate="2018-04-09T05:48:37.207" UserId="34623" />
  <row Id="15602" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@SmallChess He retracted his downvote when the answer improved. The others said nothing. Downvoting should be reserved for people, like Scortchi, who act responsibly and are very expert, for example with 5000+ points. Negative opinions are at higher risk of being incorrect than positive ones without a great deal of expertise behind them. If you want to help, upvote my answer, it is about time someone did." CreationDate="2018-04-09T05:57:59.617" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="15603" PostId="4567" Score="8" Text="@Carl It is difficult to add helpfully. But I have to suggest further that a facet here is the chicken-and-egg problem that you have done this quite often -- lash out against down-voting with colorful deprecation. These events do tend to register. Hence people may wish to keep their anonymity to avoid being identifiable  targets for your scorn. That is no more than speculation, just as are the suggestions  that anonymous downvoters were not thinking independently and/or not of very high reputation. There is, self-evidently, no evidence on that." CreationDate="2018-04-09T06:13:46.180" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15604" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@usεr11852 https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/338802/contrast-of-temperature-between-two-data-sets-in-same-time-frames/339114#339114 is one such example. I'll keep it open as long as I can, but both the question and answer risk deletion." CreationDate="2018-04-09T06:13:50.487" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="15605" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@NickCox There is scientific evidence published to the effect that negative opinions are less reliable than positive ones unless those negative opinions are generated by highly qualified experts." CreationDate="2018-04-09T06:18:38.797" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="15606" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="I don't think general patterns are the issue here! Under a different heading: There is historical evidence that most cranks in science turn out be cranks and just a few turn out to be geniuses. Is there any historical evidence that the cranks are dissuaded out of being cranks by such historical evidence? The point there, and here, is how individuals should behave." CreationDate="2018-04-09T06:53:47.707" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15607" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Did you read this [study](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0134269) about expert opinions? The peer review system relies on editors for approval critical review, and cranks often are not solicited for repeat performances. Thus, problems that would occur, like downvoting for sport, are obviated." CreationDate="2018-04-09T06:53:51.533" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="15608" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="Thanks for the reference." CreationDate="2018-04-09T07:10:01.120" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15609" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@NickCox  I want to make things better for everyone. How should I go about it?" CreationDate="2018-04-09T07:11:02.673" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="15610" PostId="4567" Score="1" Text="Grin and bear it. I get random-seeming downvotes too on some answers without explanation and without any other answer in sight. On other grounds (extending to vitriolic personal emails) I guess and/or know that some of the time I irritate a few people mightily and (more speculation) they may be  taking their small revenge. Or they may just feel that the answer isn't that good. As I don't always explain my downvotes, it's something one lives with." CreationDate="2018-04-09T08:39:45.897" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15611" PostId="4567" Score="1" Text="@Carl: It is the nature of the SE game. See it as an exercise in public speaking." CreationDate="2018-04-09T22:45:00.850" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="16822" PostId="4567" Score="2" Text="Your tenacity in the face of disagreement and discouragement is notable. In terms of your latest edit: (1) There is little point in suggesting system-wide changes here; you need to address Stack Exchange  Meta. (2) I don't worry much about differences in voting behaviour because votes from people with enough reputation still have to be combined. This has been true since whenever. (3) We could worry in principle about a rogue moderator except that members and other moderators really would notice. The crunch is how often do questions get the wrong decisions, which is for case law." CreationDate="2018-10-22T12:31:51.753" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16846" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi I annotated some of my referenced Q/A with vote tallies because they were referenced and explained as problematic in this meta post. I have not reversed your edits of my posts, I have not downvoted your posts, even when I disagree with them and have not exhibited any unprincipled behaviour. I understand your objective of keeping our site clean, it is in line with my objective of keeping this site honest." CreationDate="2018-11-01T21:09:52.170" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16847" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="Glad you understand; it's just about making sure answers stay focussed on answering people's questions - keeping the site clean, as you say." CreationDate="2018-11-01T21:26:20.750" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16895" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="OK, changed this to &quot;when inappropriate&quot; rather than &quot;ganging up&quot; because as you correctly point out, there is a larger context. Some people downvote as a strategy for personal advancement rather than impartial evaluation of the  content of a Q or A. There are users who have as much as 50% of their voting as downvotes and a search will confirm this. How much negativity is enough?" CreationDate="2018-11-13T19:37:02.723" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16910" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="Carl, your graphs with percentage of votes among users can be read differently. - It shows that the group with relatively most down votes do so on *questions*. You can see this as regular behavior in cleaning up the website. - I do so myself. I down vote questions as a means of flagging when I believe it should be deleted (and down voting will get the system to delete it). While the statistics of a query on data.stackexchange show that 6.2% of my votes are down-votes, half of my downvotes are deleted, and in my personal statistics it shows I have given 3.6% down votes." CreationDate="2018-11-16T12:14:43.460" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16919" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@MartijnWeterings I do not downvote questions. It seems like overkill. If a question or answer is inappropriate, I flag it, or close vote it. Last flag was for spam as an answer. I do not like downvoting because it is sometimes bullying. Surely those whose downvotes are greater than 50% are acting in a way you would not." CreationDate="2018-11-21T04:26:21.283" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16920" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@Carl, whether you like the voting system or not; It is actually at the *core* of the stackoverflow system, which is built on simplicity (just let a bunch of monkeys vote and something nice will come out of it) so very difficult to get rid of; Besides that point, my comment was to put some nuance in the conclusions about your graph which seems to connect the fact 'there are lots of downvotes and they are heterogeneous' to the opinion 'downvoting is bad, downvoting is used too much for bullying'. The statistic you use can at least be partially explained by the two points in my previous comment." CreationDate="2018-11-21T08:34:40.330" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16922" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="Those two point are 1) that the data.stackexchange does not allow you to see removed downvotes (eg down votes on deleted questions). You can check this in your own statistics, the actual questions on which you vote (and hence the ability to calculate votes on deleted questions or removed votes) are private and only visible by the user. https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5285 2) the heterogeneity can be explained by people that are less or more 'playing Marshall' (in the same way you have variations among users in number of flags or variations in activity of reviewing and editing)." CreationDate="2018-11-21T08:46:36.937" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16923" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@MartijnWeterings I no longer expect people to agree with me on downvoting. Downvoting is not like what a Marshall does. Marshalls answer to the public for their actions, they can arrest, but false arrest is a crime. There is no such oversight on downvoting, which is equivalent to arrest, conviction of badness, and punishment without appeal, without a defined time of sentence, but an open condemnation that cannot be appealed. Social media has been linked to suicide in younger age groups, and getting an undeserved downvote irritates the best of us." CreationDate="2018-11-21T11:34:42.087" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16924" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@Carl you can make it a semantic discussion about the meaning of marshaling (I was thinking of the badges 'patrol', 'deputy', 'marshal', 'civic duty', etc and down-voting is an integrated part of it in the system here). Here on stackexchange it does not mean you are a police officer 'arresting' people. Regarding open condemnation in the order of bullying I do not see proof based on your graph." CreationDate="2018-11-21T12:11:41.517" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16925" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="(also the difference between down votes and up votes is neither clear to me. If there is any ganging up then I would say it is much more often on up-votes, but still not occurring a lot. Why this not harmful? Should we get rid of upvotes as well? It is a bit simplistic reasoning to condemn a tool altogether just because of it's misuse. Especially when it is not occurring a lot you should address the behaviour and misuse more directly rather than the tool that is misused.)" CreationDate="2018-11-21T12:14:30.730" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16927" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@MartijnWeterings I am not suggesting getting rid of downvoting, I am suggesting that it should at least be subject to scrutiny. For example, I have seen downvoting motivated by the feeling that the downvoter would have asked a different question, which is a crazy opinion. So far I have seen this on one highly upvoted question by gung and one highly upvoted question by me, and I know this because of what the downvoters wrote as comments. We could fix or at least reduce the problems with downvoting, and I do not see why this is so complicated a thought that people have major problems with it." CreationDate="2018-11-21T18:30:25.647" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16984" PostId="4567" Score="2" Text="I am revisiting this meta question &amp; comment thread again today... I have (re)followed many of your links, &amp; my only new insight and contribution is to say &quot;Don't sweat the downvotes! (explained or not)&quot; I too get downvotes without explication, and sometimes when I have tried in very good faith to give a solid answer and to be responsive in my editing to critiques. At the end of the day, our scores on CV.SE—or any other SE don't really matter. Enjoy your time here as an asker/answerer for its own sake. *You* know you have a lot to offer, and the regulars here do too." CreationDate="2018-12-06T01:43:07.123" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="17014" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@gung Since one can delete a post, one does not see a large number of downvotes on this site. On meta stackexchange where the user cannot delete a question, there are the large numbers of downvotes you seek. What downvotes do is contribute to autodeletion of posts. Sometimes deletion is good, and sometimes it is bad." CreationDate="2018-12-09T02:30:37.960" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="17015" PostId="4567" Score="3" Text="I haven't made this thread any shorter but its complexity is now extraordinary. Deleting my answer and comments is as much as I could do unilaterally to counter-act that but would just seem negative. But despite accepting an answer, you've posted _three_ answers of your own (net total as I write: 8 downvotes) and continue to edit this. Your tenacity is remarkable but here is a &quot;double or quits&quot; proposal: summarize the problem as you see it in a new question (and suggest a solution as a new answer if you like), but in no more than say 300 words each. Concise, precise or -- excise." CreationDate="2018-12-10T15:22:09.517" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17067" PostId="4567" Score="2" Text="Strongly agree with the last comment by @NickCox plus am really annoyed that you keep bumping this thread to the top of Meta every time somebody votes on the Q (the last three edits seem to have been solely to update the counter of upvotes). Can we maybe move on?" CreationDate="2019-01-07T09:10:54.640" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17068" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I did not know what bumps what to do what, and I keep thinking about this issue. What do you think about the idea of removing negative reputation points for downvoters (not their recipients) and substituting the ability to challenge a downvote, who, while keeping his(her) anonymity would either respond with a (non-trivial) comment, or the downvote gets erased after 5 days?" CreationDate="2019-01-07T09:29:32.360" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="17069" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@amoeba No offense intended, but there are people who feel strongly about this issue. For example, Nick was recently accused of bulling because of his comment, which not everyone agrees with, and I defended him, because he means well. And, he thanked me for doing that and keeping things civil. Also, I answered Martijn Weterings' last comment after spending two hours crunching numbers to do so. I really do nothing that should be taken as an intent to irritate, but I deserve the same lack of intent to irritate from others." CreationDate="2019-01-07T09:46:56.170" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="17070" PostId="4567" Score="2" Text="I don't always agree with @Carl but I want to affirm that I think he is acting entirely in good faith. On the immediate small point I suggest that an edit to &quot;Note the approximately equal opinions on this question. (Click on the left to see numbers of upvotes and downvotes.)&quot; would remove any need to edit the top every time there is a new vote." CreationDate="2019-01-07T10:14:07.663" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17072" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@Carl, please stop bumping this thread just to update the counter. Almost anyone who would want to know the counts can access it themselves. Threads are supposed to move gracefully down the page as they get older &amp; new threads are initiated. Bumping them unnecessarily moves them back to the top." CreationDate="2019-01-07T12:18:39.993" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17073" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@gung I will do as you ask. However, viewing downvotes is established at rep 250+ and downvoting at 125+. That, is backwards. I was updating the count because of that rather inane built in feature, and that that inane feature led to another inane feature being bumped. You may be used to this site, but it is not well organized." CreationDate="2019-01-07T15:14:32.797" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="17074" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="Thank you, @Carl." CreationDate="2019-01-07T15:22:25.560" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17075" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@Carl: You need 1k rep. to see the upvote/downvote split. Apparently there's a technical reason: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/69852/225179." CreationDate="2019-01-07T21:14:42.303" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="17077" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi If that is the case, the least we can do is change it to +1000 from the current [text suggesting +250](https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/privileges). How can we verify this, and change the text if it really is +1000?" CreationDate="2019-01-08T02:11:46.940" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="17078" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@Carl: It's &quot;view close votes&quot; at 250 rep." CreationDate="2019-01-08T08:58:24.100" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="17095" PostId="4567" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi Thanks. It should be less than the rep for downvoting to make any sense," CreationDate="2019-01-10T16:49:30.483" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12299" PostId="4568" Score="1" Text="I'd say there are three mechanisms, and **edits** are more important than comments - especially on an old question or answer where the original poster may not still be around. Anyone can make an edit, it just needs a higher-rep user to approve it." CreationDate="2017-02-07T09:19:09.547" UserId="2894" />
  <row Id="12061" PostId="4569" Score="1" Text="@gammer I will take a break from this, and see how people feel. At least on meta, downvoting does not close a good question or answer, which you have to admit, can destroy a lot of work and sincere effort." CreationDate="2017-01-30T02:45:14.627" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12062" PostId="4569" Score="3" Text="Downvoting does not close an answer anywhere. It can get deleted if enough high rep people cast delete votes, but that's a whole other thing than the type of voting you're talking about. Regarding changing the cost of casting a downvote to -2, sure, why not? But I have a hard time imagining that would actually change the intent of someone dead set on trolling (which you seem to think most/all downvotes are)." CreationDate="2017-01-30T02:49:36.457" UserId="109178" />
  <row Id="12068" PostId="4569" Score="14" Text="I will just remark that we can discuss this as long as we want but any such change would require a change in the core StackExchange-wide policies and this will *not* happen, like it or not. This is not for us (as a CrossValidated community) to change." CreationDate="2017-01-30T07:55:54.530" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12082" PostId="4569" Score="11" Text="Down-voting *questions* is free: see http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/whats-reputation. -1 to this suggestion because I don't see any positive evidence of a problem that needs fixing." CreationDate="2017-01-30T14:12:29.337" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="15595" PostId="4569" Score="3" Text="I don't think that this reputation stuff will change the down-voting. A down-vote has little effect on reputation whether it is -1 or -2, or even if you would set it to -10. The much bigger impact is that a down vote equals an up vote in the 'ranking' of answers and questions. To me this is what matters much more than reputation, the gratification for having given an answer. Scortchi's answer mentioning ideas about notifications for edit's on down-voted answers would be much better in this direction. In fact, it would allow me to down-vote more since this is one reason I would not down-vote." CreationDate="2018-04-09T02:40:19.403" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="15598" PostId="4569" Score="3" Text="@MartijnWeterings I like your thinking on this because you have proposed a solution." CreationDate="2018-04-09T02:55:24.227" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12096" PostId="4572" Score="12" Text="(+1) If anything, people gang up to *upvote* questions and answers.  I have no complaints, but it's easy to find answers that clearly deserve far more upvotes than they have received.  Gosh, the world seems so unfair... ." CreationDate="2017-01-30T15:57:19.957" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="12118" PostId="4572" Score="3" Text="&quot;I find it disconcerting that some in this thread are so ready to infer people's state of mind...from...downvoting.&quot; Clearly, downvote means &quot;I do not like this.&quot; On many websites, this is &quot;dislike.&quot; One cannot read anything else into it. In fact, that is the problem, it is ignorant. &quot;I enjoy being a 'long-winded' maverick&quot; Do tell. Now, who is reading what into whom, come again?" CreationDate="2017-01-31T05:34:23.993" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12119" PostId="4572" Score="4" Text="Quite different points. (a) I (you, we) don't really know what lies behind a downvote that is not explained. (b) I think you express a lot about yourself in your many posts and that it is behind **some** of the reaction to them, including some downvotes. That's what I am trying to explain, very likely not clearly enough. You're absolutely right that &quot;dislike&quot; is used elsewhere but it's not part of the SE terminology (or attitude)." CreationDate="2017-01-31T08:24:59.220" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12120" PostId="4572" Score="5" Text="What's necessarily &quot;ignorant&quot; about a downvote? Someone downvoted this  answer and didn't post a reason why. That's their right; but why presume or imply that they don't know why they are doing that?. I am ignorant about their reason, to be sure; that's where the ignorance is. Do I misunderstand your stance here? (FWIW, I didn't downvote either your question or your answer here; you're raising issues that concern you, which is what Meta is for; I just disagree that there is a real problem.)" CreationDate="2017-01-31T08:52:32.467" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12143" PostId="4572" Score="1" Text="@NickCox  I was not personifying ignorance. A downvote is precisely one bit of information, that is, to my way of thinking, not enough information to justify the reputation damage because it **ignores** what prompted that downvote." CreationDate="2017-02-01T05:45:58.713" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12144" PostId="4572" Score="1" Text="If you can read the deleted text below which has concrete suggestions as to changes to downvoting, perhaps you will then understand why they were not given above. They were downvoted solidly, which is ironic, and an example of what I am saying about downvoting. Downvoting obviates bringing up unpopular issues, it destroys serious discussion, logic or science, it is &quot;flat-earth&quot;." CreationDate="2017-02-01T05:57:28.993" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12148" PostId="4572" Score="6" Text="I can read your answer, which is below as I write. To me -- this may be reputation-dependent -- it is not deleted, but shown in fainter type. It was, again I have to guess, downvoted because people disagreed with it. They had to be able to read it to do that. Downvoting doesn't stop people bringing up unpopular issues: you did that and people who've voted disagree with you on balance. This isn't flat-earthism but democracy in action (and I write as someone dismayed by most recent election results)." CreationDate="2017-02-01T09:05:44.957" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12150" PostId="4572" Score="8" Text="I naturally do agree that it's more informative if people give their reasons for downvoting and I often wish they had, so long as they explain in a civil manner. Whether people should be obliged to do that is a repeatedly contentious issue on SE Meta, which is where this discussion really belongs. Picky point perhaps, but I think &quot;ignorant&quot;, &quot;ignores&quot;, etc. are poor word choices for what I take to be your view here. From the data I have seen, people reacting strongly to occasional minute reputation losses tend not to last long here." CreationDate="2017-02-01T09:11:37.667" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12151" PostId="4572" Score="4" Text="Further factual detail: The answer is not currently deleted. People with high enough reputation (10000+) can vote to delete it. I won't do that; whatever the appearances, I am in no sense hostile to this issue being discussed." CreationDate="2017-02-01T09:25:19.563" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12506" PostId="4572" Score="1" Text="@NickCox You said, &quot;This isn't flat-earthism but democracy in action...&quot; I mean no offense by characterizing that as a shallow opinion reminiscent of a slogan from some uninformed civics class teaching. Democracy is functional only when population is so sparse that a mob cannot be formed in a population. Otherwise, we form representative governments as kingdoms, republics, or dictatorships so that mob rule is filtered by, optimistically put, &quot;sober second thought.&quot; Downvoting may cause me to rephrase a question or answer, but the downvotes do not tend to disappear, they persist." CreationDate="2017-02-18T18:34:57.103" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12507" PostId="4572" Score="1" Text="@NickCox con't Moreover, special interests are often represented directly to governments, which action can be both beneficial or damaging, but is also not something that can or should be obviated. The equivalent of special interests are the more expert opinions on this site, and, like it or not, those opinions are worth much more than a single democratic vote, and would not be properly weighted in an uninformed democracy. So, democracies evolve, first they allow issues to be presented by experts, and eventually those experts are elected to rule, and the democracy is then no longer pure." CreationDate="2017-02-18T18:42:04.353" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12508" PostId="4572" Score="1" Text="@NickCox Finally, let me offer my opinion on downvoting. It would be better if I could evolve my opinions by having downvotes removed subsequent to the evolution of those opinions. It is the permanence of those downvotes which force final opinions, often expressed in terms that embrace popular misconceptions to be presented as authoritarian &quot;final&quot; draft answers as contrasted to the scientific approach of floating hypotheticals for discussion and evolution. This latter is not *maverick*, it is *experimental*. The current structure supports canned wisdom without the &quot;scaffolding&quot;..." CreationDate="2017-02-18T19:05:20.080" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12509" PostId="4572" Score="1" Text="@NickCox that Carl Gauss would erect during construction of a proof to leave only the &quot;completed edifice.&quot; So, quotable but not process informative, authoritarian but uncreative, enviable but not emulatable, instructive but not instructing results. In the final analysis, current downvoting works against the construction of thought on this site and works to promote &quot;current&quot; thought. A lot goes missing in that malformed process including the joy of polishing a rough diamond, the elan of creation, the shock of discovery, and indeed, the brass ring." CreationDate="2017-02-18T19:19:03.823" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12515" PostId="4572" Score="4" Text="@Carl Describing what I said as &quot;shallow&quot; and &quot;uninformed&quot; was not a good start to encourage me to engage. You're riding your own hobby-horses in several directions: much  goes far beyond CV and far, far beyond what I think typically happens on CV. It seems over the top to me to read so much deep and far-reaching significance into the fact that people here sometimes disagree with you or just can't follow your argument to find it helpful. Naturally I mean no offence by saying that. CV is just a forum bringing together people with various statistical interests, not modern democracy." CreationDate="2017-02-19T00:20:38.477" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12516" PostId="4572" Score="1" Text="@NickCox I find you profound, informed and engaging. In context, I was not characterizing you, merely refuting the common opinion that democracy is the most viable governance. Lynching by a mob is literally democracy at work. Negative voting is sometimes destructive of the most noteworthy of our musings. This is not off topic, it is the topic." CreationDate="2017-02-19T01:32:58.923" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16892" PostId="4572" Score="2" Text="At the time of writing, 3 people had downvoted _this_ answer and none left a comment saying why. Seriously,  I  and we don't know what their argument is or objections are because they haven't declared any. More facetiously, are these people ganging up  to say that ganging up is a problem? That would be ironic, perhaps." CreationDate="2018-11-13T08:35:50.360" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16896" PostId="4572" Score="1" Text="@NickCox I had at some time down-voted your answer, long ago, I think. I am now reversing my down-vote, because it is totally inexplicable to do so in the scheme of those considerations that you have offered, and also the right thing to do." CreationDate="2018-11-13T21:16:16.223" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12127" PostId="4573" Score="0" Text="(+1) Out of curiosity, can mods add another duplicate link to a question that is already closed as a duplicate?" CreationDate="2017-01-31T21:54:58.127" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12132" PostId="4573" Score="1" Text="@Amoeba In most cases, there is no apparent way to do that." CreationDate="2017-01-31T22:29:46.353" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="12146" PostId="4574" Score="3" Text="(+1) I agree with you, and you have moved the issue forward." CreationDate="2017-02-01T06:23:02.257" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12163" PostId="4576" Score="12" Text="Elementary questions are fine. I think MichaelChernick is wrong. &quot;Too elementary&quot; is not among our closing reasons. The thread you are talking about (http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/259388) was closed as off-topic because it's a &quot;self-study&quot; question (i.e. about a routine textbook/coursework exercise) that does not conform to our guidelines. See the closing reason under that question." CreationDate="2017-02-01T18:48:37.627" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12164" PostId="4576" Score="0" Text="Yes I read the closing reason but I also know there could be multiple and one (maybe arbitrarily) gets chosen sometimes." CreationDate="2017-02-01T18:50:16.590" UserId="117710" />
  <row Id="12165" PostId="4576" Score="2" Text="I wonder what closure reason MichaelChernick chose. Because it is technically not possible to vote to close as off-topic as too elementary." CreationDate="2017-02-01T18:51:33.723" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12166" PostId="4576" Score="4" Text="@ameoba, let's not get lost in the weeds, as the question is about whether or not very elementary questions are off topic, not what criteria was selected for a specific question. Also Michael did clarify his position in that thread (see edit)" CreationDate="2017-02-01T18:52:44.773" UserId="117710" />
  <row Id="12167" PostId="4576" Score="7" Text="@amoeba, FTR, he closed as off topic &amp; added that comment as his reason. Someone else subsequently chose that as their close reason, which automatically added a +1 to the comment. I, &amp; 2 others, voted to close as a self-study question. Since that got the majority vote, it is displayed as the final reason." CreationDate="2017-02-01T18:57:04.683" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12171" PostId="4576" Score="1" Text="Let's not reduce this to the false dichotomy *&quot;Should we close it, or leave open and give complete answers?&quot;* The middle-ground is *&quot;Give hints about how to approach it, not complete answers*." CreationDate="2017-02-02T08:48:16.203" UserId="7291" />
  <row Id="12474" PostId="4576" Score="0" Text="@smci The site forces this dichotomy on us.  Either a post is closed or open.  *How* one chooses to answer is largely a separate question." CreationDate="2017-02-16T16:16:46.743" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="12168" PostId="4577" Score="10" Text="I agree. I add a side-comment. Lack of research effort is a criterion for downvoting and a really elementary question that shows no sign that someone has even tried to read about a very basic method will often be downvoted and/or ignored. The converse can be true: they are often very easy and quick to answer. But, as said, that doesn't make that question off-topic, which is the only issue here." CreationDate="2017-02-01T19:54:18.333" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12283" PostId="4577" Score="6" Text="From the perspective of a budding PhD student, I loved having access to some &quot;elementary questions&quot; on stack exchange as it gave me the ability to try to answer some questions and hone my knowledge of the material. I definitely think these should be on topic. Also, the more &quot;elementary&quot; something is the harder it can be sometimes to find a clear and concise answer to (as it is often being hand waved away as being too &quot;elementary&quot;)." CreationDate="2017-02-05T19:01:21.563" UserId="17661" />
  <row Id="12342" PostId="4577" Score="1" Text="If a duplicate so hard to find that an experienced user can't find it, readers won't find it and therefore the question has no duplicates for any practical purpose, and there is no reason to close." CreationDate="2017-02-10T21:45:10.597" UserId="123561" />
  <row Id="12472" PostId="4577" Score="2" Text="@Pere I take a different view, although I think it's in a similar spirit.  If a duplicate is hard to find but genuinely is a duplicate, then we *definitely* should close one of the two questions.  That (a) leaves both questions available for searching while (b) creating a link to the answer thread.  That is valuable information.  Leaving duplicates open in separate threads only creates a disjointed set of answers: some in one place, some in another.  One of the aims of SE is to *curate* such collections of closely related material by *unifying* it.  Closure is a key tool to do that." CreationDate="2017-02-16T16:09:23.703" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="12571" PostId="4578" Score="0" Text="Good job with the tag work. After you started participating in Meta, discussions/issues related to tags evolved a lot!" CreationDate="2017-02-22T17:57:54.303" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="12572" PostId="4578" Score="1" Text="@AndreSilva Thanks. To tell the truth, this takes a lot of time and effort. I don't think I will be doing this indefinitely, but I would like to try to push forward all the tag issues that have been pending for some time. By the way, I am happy to see that some people joined our efforts in tidying up the tags, in particular mdewey." CreationDate="2017-02-22T19:42:17.227" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12188" PostId="4579" Score="2" Text="+1 totally agree, especially with the last paragraph -- I feel exactly the same." CreationDate="2017-02-03T12:42:38.397" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="12343" PostId="4579" Score="0" Text="About Wikipedia, very often Wikipedia is not a good place to answer elementary questions about basic topics, because articles on such basic topics are not elementary." CreationDate="2017-02-10T21:48:28.730" UserId="123561" />
  <row Id="12344" PostId="4579" Score="1" Text="@Pere While some Wikipedia articles do get quite technical, often the opening few sentences of an article on a basic topic will answer many common, simple questions directly. Many times I have pointed to the first or second sentence of a Wikipedia article on the topic of a post, which contains a complete, correct answer, and which very often shows up in its entirety as the first or second hit when typing the posted question-title into google. When not answered there, they're frequently in the &quot;definition&quot; section of the article, which is often in the second screenful" CreationDate="2017-02-10T23:22:04.727" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12345" PostId="4579" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b Probably we both are right depending on the article. Most elementary questions can be answered by Wikipedia but not all of them for elementary level readers." CreationDate="2017-02-10T23:55:52.277" UserId="123561" />
  <row Id="12473" PostId="4579" Score="0" Text="@Pere It might help to distinguish between &quot;basic&quot; and &quot;elementary.&quot;  Synonyms of the former include *fundamental*, while the latter connotes *simple, routine,* and *easily answerable.*  Without question we should maintain threads on basic questions.  If a question truly is elementary, then it (by definition) has simple non-technical answers.  Technical answers to elementary questions, although possible, typically serve only as a way for experts to preen a little (or, more charitably, as a mechanism to ground abstract concepts in simple, readily-checked cases)." CreationDate="2017-02-16T16:15:13.247" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="12176" PostId="4581" Score="0" Text="This is a demonstration post to indicate how this should look when an ad is posted. It also doubles as your twitter ad, but it's up to you if you wish to promote it by voting" CreationDate="2017-02-02T14:02:48.263" UserId="5645" />
  <row Id="17835" PostId="4582" Score="0" Text="You are right! SPSS is like from 20 years ago. The hot questions now are &quot;How do I fit my neural network using Python and sklearn?&quot;" CreationDate="2019-07-05T10:43:14.670" UserId="238499" />
  <row Id="12187" PostId="4583" Score="10" Text="Excellent topic. I think the bias does exist, I can feel it too. For me it's not so much the number of reputation points that a user has though, but my own respect for them. It's well correlated, but far from perfect: there are some high-rep users whom I do not particularly respect/trust and I am not more likely to view/upvote their posts (rather less likely). Similarly there are some not-so-high-rep users whom I respect/trust very much and I will be similarly biased towards them (more likely to view their posts, more likely to upvote an answer without full scrutiny etc.)" CreationDate="2017-02-03T12:27:43.240" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12189" PostId="4583" Score="6" Text="It's an interesting question, but I don't know how you could possibly quantify the effect. You would need to measure the inherent merit of an answer to work out if it was overvoted or undervoted. It's inevitable that highly active members get noticed (usually very positively, occasionally not quite so much!). If you like people's work, you are more likely to read more of it and upvote it. What's pathological about that? I have no conscious bias against the &quot;poor&quot;; everyone with high reputation once had a very low reputation and many people will surge up through the ranks in the near future." CreationDate="2017-02-03T12:50:23.553" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12191" PostId="4583" Score="1" Text="@NickCox it's not pathological and I'm *not* suggesting anything that we should not up-vote high-reputation users or sth. I'm saying that *maybe* we should pay more attention on newcomers, since maybe there is a disproportion in the voting trends." CreationDate="2017-02-03T13:01:51.770" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="12192" PostId="4583" Score="12" Text="I am all for being generous. But speaking for myself: (a) I answer some stuff and (b) I read much more,  the latter for both personal profit and sheer pleasure. But I have enormous bias to reading answers by people I respect. It's just like reading novels; once you've identified what appeals, you read more of the same. But naturally you're also open to learning about new authors. I don't think I see a point to changing my habits by deliberately reading more answers by low-rep users just because they might deserve more reward. If they're any good, someone will notice." CreationDate="2017-02-03T13:11:08.643" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12194" PostId="4583" Score="5" Text="I think it exists. I personally get more credit than I deserve. But it also shouldn't be surprising that vote counts aren't independent of contributor; there are individual differences in statistical knowledge &amp; the ability to explain topics clearly. To test / estimate the effect, you need to control for views &amp; answer quality distinct from vote count." CreationDate="2017-02-03T13:43:46.847" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12232" PostId="4583" Score="2" Text="Many will recall that Scott Fitzgerald supposedly remarked to Ernest Hemingway, ‘You know, the rich are different from you and me.’ He replied, ‘Yes. They've got more money.’  (I Googled this for the text; there are many small variants.) In the same way, it is an easy short-hand to wave arms about the rich as if they were a qualitatively identifiable subgroup, but quantitative thinking is what we supposedly do best." CreationDate="2017-02-04T15:52:43.273" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12277" PostId="4583" Score="7" Text="**There is substantial evidence against this bias** (which doesn't mean it doesn't exist).  If it existed and were as strong as you suggest, then (after controlling for as many variables as possible, such as accepted percentage of answers and length of time posts have existed) *upvotes per post* would tend to be higher among those with high reputations.  As a matter of fact, the regression is U-shaped: there is a tendency for votes per post to decline for total post counts between 10 and 30, level off to 100, and only then increase. High-rep users get the votes *because they tend to be good!*" CreationDate="2017-02-05T18:13:25.367" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="12361" PostId="4583" Score="2" Text="@whuber but how do you assess quality? Isn't it possible that sometimes users, who don't understand very well the answer, may just upvote it if they see it has already many upvotes? Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I've done a few times, and to some of your answers, glen_b and gung. =D This was some time ago. And once in a while, I have to fight that urge. =D" CreationDate="2017-02-12T18:50:10.353" UserId="40252" />
  <row Id="12362" PostId="4583" Score="1" Text="@Anoldmaninthesea Assessing quality is controversial.  Because ultimately this is determined by people who are part of a community (even at the highest levels of research), the use of a voting mechanism can scarcely be impugned.  However, because this site allows (and practically encourages) members to vote after little or no deliberation, and all votes have equal weight, whether from newcomers or established contributors, the accuracy and even the meaning of vote totals have been challenged." CreationDate="2017-02-12T18:57:08.907" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="12190" PostId="4584" Score="2" Text="have a look [here](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/4477/my-questions-dont-get-an-answer-is-it-a-general-trend-or-am-i-doing-somethin) - I think the answers that were given to me, as well as the answers to other questions I was referred to, may be of interest to you." CreationDate="2017-02-03T12:58:11.567" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="12202" PostId="4584" Score="4" Text="@DeltaIV is right. I would try to summarize by saying that if a question perhaps is being ignored because it is not clear or not engaging, then by far the best idea is to try to improve it.  If a question is at best going to appeal to, or be intelligible by, a very small number of people, nothing much will change that. (I'd add that trivial edits to bump a question to the top are forgiveable just about once ($\pm 1$).)" CreationDate="2017-02-03T15:35:43.493" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12203" PostId="4584" Score="3" Text="Is there enough detail? Is it precise or concise enough? Is it carefully written with attention to English language, typesetting, formatting of code or data? Is there a graph that would catch attention?  (Note that these criteria can conflict.)" CreationDate="2017-02-03T15:38:24.640" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12210" PostId="4584" Score="1" Text="As a technical note, refreshing the page from the same IP address on the same day does not count towards page views, so you likely aren't responsible for half of the existing views. W/ only 17 views, it isn't surprising you aren't getting many responses (no one can w/o viewing it 1st), so you need to attract some views. From the outside, the only thing people can see is the title &amp; the tags. Your title is vague at best. Assuming it is tagged correctly, you could work on giving it a usefully descriptive title. But realize that you many not get an answer right away no matter what." CreationDate="2017-02-03T19:01:24.530" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12196" PostId="4585" Score="1" Text="It's a little early to be sure about the SO reception (2 hours since your posting on SO as I write). I am not an R user and I wouldn't vote on a question like that, but broad, discursive questions rarely succeed on SO in my experience. Conversely, the R focus of that question would make that problematic for CV. Although people are often surprised or annoyed to hear it, there can be questions that fall in a great gap between the forums. They don't share a continuous land border." CreationDate="2017-02-03T13:54:35.270" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12204" PostId="4585" Score="0" Text="@NickCox, yes, it was a bit early but my (admittedly limited) experience with SO is that a question who gets downvoted so quickly remains unanswered, and while the question has been upvoted afterwards, it looks like I was right. Back to your point, you believe the question is out of place on CV. I'm not so sure now (see [Scortchi's comment to my other question](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/4586/where-to-learn-about-r-packages)). Let's see if someone else chimes in here. I agree, though, that there can be questions which are just out of place on Stack Exchange." CreationDate="2017-02-03T17:10:01.750" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="12211" PostId="4585" Score="0" Text="IMO, a question just asking for a package is off topic here. If you want to ask about different MCMC sampling algorithms &amp; which is best for your situation, that seems potentially on topic to me--it's software-neutral eg." CreationDate="2017-02-03T19:31:51.763" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12228" PostId="4585" Score="0" Text="@gung ok, I'll try asking such a question. Let's see what happens." CreationDate="2017-02-04T11:01:27.987" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="12273" PostId="4585" Score="1" Text="@amoeba I agree this is a duplicate, and my answer there addresses this question." CreationDate="2017-02-05T17:38:52.333" UserId="36229" />
  <row Id="12275" PostId="4585" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Ok, do I delete it or are you guys going to close it?" CreationDate="2017-02-05T18:06:29.957" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="12193" PostId="4586" Score="5" Text="You ask about R. I'd like to suggest that the question is generic and that discussion could reasonably be extended to any query about what general or specific software is available for statistical purposes." CreationDate="2017-02-03T13:32:15.270" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12195" PostId="4586" Score="3" Text="Why other than R-help? As a matter of curiosity, are these questions on- or off-topic there? Are you excluding it because it is an obvious answer, or because it would be an unsatisfactory answer? (No axe to grind here; I have used R only occasionally.)" CreationDate="2017-02-03T13:46:31.350" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12197" PostId="4586" Score="7" Text="The [CRAN task views](https://cran.r-project.org/web/views/) are often a good place to start. But *are* software recommendations off-topic?  See [Are Software Recommendation Questions Off-Topic for this website?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/1680/17230) &amp; &#xA;[Redirecting “looking for package in R” to SO](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/2418/17230). @whuber's comment [here](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2007/why-was-this-question-migrated-to-so/2009#comment5549_2011) seems very pertinent." CreationDate="2017-02-03T14:16:34.150" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="12205" PostId="4586" Score="1" Text="@Scortchi thank you very much for your links, but I'm a bit confused. whuber's [answer in your first link](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1680/are-software-recommendation-questions-off-topic-for-this-website) basically says that a question specifically on R would be &quot;limiting and repetitive&quot;. I cannot however pose a general question, because I cannot learn (and/or buy) another software. On the other hand, whuber's [comment](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2007/why-was-this-question-migrated-to-so/2009#comment5549_2011) seems to indicate that a question on [1/2]" CreationDate="2017-02-03T17:23:10.757" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="12206" PostId="4586" Score="1" Text="[2/2] R packages may be ok on CV. To make a practical example, 1. do you think that [this question](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/42022917/advanced-mcmc-samplers-in-r-for-calibration-of-a-computer-model) would be on topic on CV? 2. Would it still be on-topic if instead of asking for an algorithm, I would ask for an R package? That would be much more useful, because I don't trust myself much with implementing a complicated geometric MCMC in R, but I would definitely trust the implementation in a released and tested CRAN R package." CreationDate="2017-02-03T17:27:39.707" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="12207" PostId="4586" Score="1" Text="@NickCox, you ask why I specify &quot;other than R-help&quot;. I did write the reason why in the first version of this post, but I then deleted it because I was afraid of starting a controversy. Anyway, I'll bite: the reason is that the environment is in my limited, personal experience, more welcoming on CV than on R-help." CreationDate="2017-02-03T17:30:16.817" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="12219" PostId="4586" Score="1" Text="Questions about R packages are off-topic on SO?? Don't people ask package-specific questions on SO pretty much constantly? (e.g., &quot;how do I do this thing in ggplot2&quot;)" CreationDate="2017-02-04T01:06:58.697" UserId="5829" />
  <row Id="12220" PostId="4586" Score="2" Text="@JakeWestfall - Maybe an issue with asking for package recs? (Question is too open-ended)" CreationDate="2017-02-04T02:56:57.580" UserId="35588" />
  <row Id="12226" PostId="4586" Score="1" Text="@JakeWestfall unfortunately, [asking for package recommendations is off-topic on SO](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic). Asking a question about an issue with using a specific package is on-topic, but asking &quot;which package can I use to do Bayesian inference for this complex statistical model&quot; is off-topic. [1/2]" CreationDate="2017-02-04T10:56:17.277" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="12227" PostId="4586" Score="1" Text="[2/2] Googling around, I found out that also Ben Bolker noted that packages have a bigger weight in R programming than in other languages, so he asked if [there was a way to make an R-package related question on topic on SO](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/295845/might-is-there-a-package-rather-than-whats-the-best-package-questions-be-ok), but the answer was basically no." CreationDate="2017-02-04T10:58:48.700" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="12237" PostId="4586" Score="1" Text="@NickCox when people ask for a specific package on R-help they usually get told how to use the search tools with varying degrees of politeness." CreationDate="2017-02-04T16:39:13.883" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="12252" PostId="4586" Score="1" Text="@DeltaIV I'd say that question is on-topic here. It's not really about R packages as much as it's about sampling algorithms anyway." CreationDate="2017-02-04T19:55:25.367" UserId="36229" />
  <row Id="12253" PostId="4586" Score="1" Text="@mdewey That's what I used to hear a few years ago; I wasn't clear whether it still held true. To be fair, every forum I know about that is worth anything (including here) does have an expectation that you try basic searches first." CreationDate="2017-02-04T20:40:36.883" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12267" PostId="4586" Score="0" Text="@NickCox you probably weren't talking about the question which I referred to in the comments, but just for the sake of clarity I want to stress that I *try* basic searches (and more) before asking. For example, I found that the random walk Metropolis which ships with `MCMCpack` is not efficient enough for my problem." CreationDate="2017-02-05T17:09:07.853" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="12268" PostId="4586" Score="3" Text="Quite so; it was a highly general comment; thanks for reading it that way." CreationDate="2017-02-05T17:13:14.190" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12313" PostId="4586" Score="3" Text="A question is much more likely to be well-received if it's structured as &quot;Given _a_, how do I do _x_?&quot; instead of &quot;What package can I use for _x_?&quot; Note the former requires context/data (_a_) and is answerable with a demonstration, whereas the latter would just be answered with a list. The content of _x_ determines whether the question belongs on SO or CV. Packages may be necessary for _x_, and answers will use them in passing." CreationDate="2017-02-08T14:56:32.487" UserId="67615" />
  <row Id="12214" PostId="4588" Score="4" Text="Actually I did experience a strong effect but only in one specific case: with my PCA-for-grandmother answer. When I wrote it, there were around 15 answers above and the top one had 200+ upvotes. My answer was all the way down and was barely getting any upvotes. However, as it started rising, the upvote rate kept increasing. The higher it rose, the faster it was being upvoted. At certain moment it got accepted by the OP which made it appear on top, and boy did the upvote rate increase. But the answer stayed (almost) the same! So for answers in that thread -- yes, definitely, rich do get richer." CreationDate="2017-02-03T21:57:03.950" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12217" PostId="4588" Score="3" Text="@amoeba that kind of sounds like things working more or less as they should. Rich-get-richer would be an issue where your initially low-ranked post stayed low forever (in spite of being really good) because the top posts always got all the attention; that story sounds like the moral is &quot;the-low-ranked-but-worthy-can-get-richer-too, even if it may take a bit longer than we'd like&quot;. Nowadays its getting plenty of attention, which might seem less ideal, but your own experience would suggest that a sufficiently better answer, were one to arise, might eventually scale the heights as well. .. ctd" CreationDate="2017-02-04T00:37:30.783" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12218" PostId="4588" Score="2" Text="ctd... however on the level of individual posts I accept that it's sometimes an issue. On the level of people, *on average*, it's less clear that there's as much of an issue - while some of my posts get more attention relative to their intrinsic value and some better posts languish, across many posts it's probably more or less even. I'll modify my answer to be clear that my discussion is averaging over many answers so there may still be an issue to worry about on the level of individual posts." CreationDate="2017-02-04T00:40:43.823" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12272" PostId="4590" Score="7" Text="+1, this does a very good job of capturing the various nuances involved in what questions are on- / off-topic &amp; why. (IMHO, your `caret` vs. `mlr` example question would be *too broad* to be on topic here although it does have real statistical content.)" CreationDate="2017-02-05T17:29:48.800" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12295" PostId="4592" Score="4" Text="To compliment this *between* person analysis I previously had conducted analysis of *within* person analysis for [SO users](http://stats.blogoverflow.com/2011/08/does-jon-skeet-have-mental-powers-that-make-us-upvote-his-answers-the-effect-of-reputation-on-upvotes/). There I showed that people with high reputation tended to have higher scores for their earlier answers. You could actual do the analysis trimming off older votes by using the data dump, https://archive.org/details/stackexchange. Takes alittle more work than the query, but is not as annoying as SO due to the size @DJohnson." CreationDate="2017-02-06T17:58:23.450" UserId="1036" />
  <row Id="12296" PostId="4593" Score="3" Text="The problem w/ that suggestion is that it is very old. It was relevant at the time, but the way the duplication was marked in the SE system was changed sometime between Feb 2, 2013 ([eg](http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/49026/7290)) &amp; Feb 6, 2013 ([eg](http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/49421/7290)). That suggestion would work under the old system, but not now." CreationDate="2017-02-06T21:58:51.300" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12297" PostId="4593" Score="0" Text="@gung thanks I wasn't aware of these changes." CreationDate="2017-02-06T22:01:47.130" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="12300" PostId="4593" Score="0" Text="-1 in light of what @gung wrote above." CreationDate="2017-02-07T13:29:57.423" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12306" PostId="4593" Score="1" Text="@amoeba That's fair. I am leaving the answer so that someone else doesn't make the same suggestion." CreationDate="2017-02-07T16:41:48.033" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="12307" PostId="4594" Score="1" Text="Was the second word of your title intended to be something else? Perhaps *forum*?" CreationDate="2017-02-07T23:00:21.667" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12309" PostId="4594" Score="0" Text="There's a [Sports Stack Exchange](http://sports.stackexchange.com/) in beta, but that seems a rather obvious suggestion: are you in fact wondering if it might be on topic here?" CreationDate="2017-02-08T09:36:42.230" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="12311" PostId="4594" Score="4" Text="Questions about whether a potential Q would be on topic on the main site are very much on topic on meta.CV. I'm voting to leave open." CreationDate="2017-02-08T13:31:56.273" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12312" PostId="4594" Score="2" Text="I would have thought there are possible statistical questions but your proposed example seems to only be peripherally statistical in the form you pose it here." CreationDate="2017-02-08T14:25:34.863" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="12314" PostId="4594" Score="4" Text="Somebody has to read this question as statistical for it to be on-topic. I hardly understand a word, but that's in no sense decisive...." CreationDate="2017-02-08T15:27:04.060" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12315" PostId="4594" Score="0" Text="@mdewey - I know.  Also, the sports guys can say &quot;its stats or management&quot; and the managerial folks can say &quot;its not management, its stats or sports&quot;.  Sometimes stratification into topics gives a &quot;false either-or&quot; logical fallacy in the topic of questions.  Things can sometimes be both sports and stats.  If we spread topics well then this shouldn't happen often, but I think Godel would say that sufficient complexity is also a guarantee that it won't never happen - it has to occur sometimes." CreationDate="2017-02-08T15:27:49.060" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="12316" PostId="4594" Score="2" Text="@NickCox, for clarity, I'm not saying the focal questions would be on topic on the main site, I'm saying the question of whether they would be is on topic for meta.CV." CreationDate="2017-02-08T17:08:23.877" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12317" PostId="4594" Score="0" Text="@gung This Meta question became on-topic only after your edit, so no wonder there was a vote to close it as off-topic before you edit. To be honest, it was my vote (which I can now retract)." CreationDate="2017-02-08T17:45:43.527" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12319" PostId="4594" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, IMHO the question of whether those questions could go on the main site was implied already--I just made it explicit. But I recognize there was some ambiguity." CreationDate="2017-02-08T17:49:54.520" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12330" PostId="4594" Score="0" Text="@gung I agree. Sorry for ambiguity; I did mean the question discussed and whether it is on-topic for CV." CreationDate="2017-02-08T19:39:42.050" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12333" PostId="4594" Score="0" Text="@amoeba - the editing gung did, afaict, is put the questions into a numbered list and capitalize the title.  I cannot see how that change makes the question &quot;off/on&quot; topic.  Can you clarify?" CreationDate="2017-02-08T20:51:09.787" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="12334" PostId="4594" Score="1" Text="That was the editing *I* did :-) What gung did, was to add &quot;Would it be on topic on CV?&quot; sentence. Apologies for being pedantic." CreationDate="2017-02-08T21:03:58.783" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12337" PostId="4595" Score="4" Text="Wow, a downvote? Care to explain?" CreationDate="2017-02-09T18:46:03.830" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12331" PostId="4596" Score="4" Text="+1 for relatively little interest in sports and for judicious summary." CreationDate="2017-02-08T19:40:36.737" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12332" PostId="4596" Score="0" Text="&quot;Utility player&quot; is a class of player allegedly derived by humans using pre-moneyball analysis methods.  It is a statistical idea, but has meaning primarily in the intersection of statistics with baseball.  fwiw." CreationDate="2017-02-08T20:47:30.257" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="12510" PostId="4596" Score="0" Text="+1. Judging from others' (and my) reaction here, the question would be closed very quickly as &quot;unclear what you are asking&quot;." CreationDate="2017-02-18T20:16:54.967" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="12336" PostId="4597" Score="4" Text="I do nothing since New Year (no questions, no answers), and I earned around 1.5k rep since then (some of that already spent on awarding bounties)." CreationDate="2017-02-09T15:58:01.670" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12338" PostId="4597" Score="1" Text="This is an interesting perspective. I can't tell if it's quite the same phenomenon as what the OP wants to understand or not, but it is thought-provoking." CreationDate="2017-02-09T19:43:16.717" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12347" PostId="4599" Score="0" Text="That's confusing. Joel's answer has no downvotes." CreationDate="2017-02-11T15:43:58.413" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12348" PostId="4599" Score="0" Text="Indeed, now it shows that I have *up voted* his answer. Must have been a fluke ... I'll reduce this question to merely asking how to undo a vote. I cannot find that question in the db." CreationDate="2017-02-11T15:59:05.247" UserId="109818" />
  <row Id="12349" PostId="4600" Score="5" Text="This is why we ask people to limit posts to one question!" CreationDate="2017-02-11T16:11:57.710" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="12350" PostId="4600" Score="0" Text="It's not possible to accept both." CreationDate="2017-02-11T16:50:42.473" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12352" PostId="4600" Score="2" Text="At this stage you should probably choose one to accept and then try to post one question per post in future." CreationDate="2017-02-12T00:56:28.840" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12354" PostId="4600" Score="2" Text="And leave a comment for the other post to let the answerer know what happened." CreationDate="2017-02-12T10:12:37.243" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="12355" PostId="4600" Score="2" Text="You can't accept A and B; so a little arbitrarily you accept A; what some people then do is look for another answer by B that they like and can upvote. I too commend commenting with the flavour &quot;I like your answer too&quot;." CreationDate="2017-02-12T12:37:09.720" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12353" PostId="4601" Score="4" Text="I think the last point deserves some additional stressing: after a post is edited (even if the edit is trivially small), everybody can re-vote, i.e. cancel or reverse their previous vote." CreationDate="2017-02-12T09:25:03.350" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12358" PostId="4601" Score="2" Text="I'm upvoting this answer because the crowds for this answer were bigger than any crowds have ever been for any other answer." CreationDate="2017-02-12T14:35:59.850" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12444" PostId="4601" Score="0" Text="It is worth adding that vote can be changed if the answer was edited." CreationDate="2017-02-15T08:59:26.293" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="12446" PostId="4601" Score="0" Text="@Tim it already says &quot;your vote will not be changeable until the post is edited&quot; ... right there at the end. To say it again would seem to be redundant" CreationDate="2017-02-15T09:02:56.780" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12447" PostId="4601" Score="0" Text="Theoretically yes but people often do not read those notices..." CreationDate="2017-02-15T09:06:18.750" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="16959" PostId="4601" Score="0" Text="Since i have just accidentally down-voted a posting and didn't notice within 5 min, i would find it a good thing to drop the 5-min limit for taking back the voting." CreationDate="2018-11-26T15:50:26.557" UserId="128710" />
  <row Id="12360" PostId="4603" Score="7" Text="Please visit http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-answer and read it carefully, because it fully addresses the reasons for those messages." CreationDate="2017-02-12T18:22:34.480" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="12363" PostId="4603" Score="4" Text="That was not my point. I have enough experience on this site to know how to write a good answer.  Please don't insult my intelligence." CreationDate="2017-02-12T19:22:13.910" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="12364" PostId="4603" Score="11" Text="I don't know which answers you mean, but just for the sake of example here is your currently second one: http://stats.stackexchange.com/a/261378. All it says is: &quot;The result always holds when X and Y form a bivariate normal distribution. You will find this in most multivariate analysis texts as well as on some threads on this site.&quot; I find it exemplary unhelpful. You are stating that something always holds without explaining why and you claim that it's a duplicate without providing a link. You might have &quot;enough experience&quot; as you told @whuber but this is *not* a good answer. Just an example." CreationDate="2017-02-12T20:11:42.277" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12365" PostId="4603" Score="8" Text="Michael, I apologize, because I did not intend any insult.  You underestimate me: I can do a much better job of insulting people than that!   I was only assuming that somehow you have overlooked this information and that you would receive a suggestion about where to find it as being a helpful and friendly contribution. Since you do know how to write a good answer--to date, you have posted 35 of them with 10+ net upvotes, out of 1246 answers--the real question on the table is: **why don't you??**" CreationDate="2017-02-12T20:33:26.200" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="12366" PostId="4603" Score="1" Text="I think I have and some were from long ago. I do not appreciate the sarcasm." CreationDate="2017-02-12T20:50:17.110" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="12367" PostId="4603" Score="10" Text="There's no sarcasm there, Michael.  My question &quot;why don't you&quot; is an honest one.  It has been puzzling users of this site--many of whom have not defended you as strongly as I have.  Why do you persist in flaunting site norms by posting so many comments as answers?  How do we avoid the perception that the primary purpose of your activities here is only to draw attention to your previous publications? What can we say that will change your behavior so that your contributions take a form that is consistently seen as valuable and constructive??" CreationDate="2017-02-12T21:04:24.160" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="12368" PostId="4603" Score="1" Text="Did you mean an honest one?" CreationDate="2017-02-12T21:07:02.483" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="12369" PostId="4603" Score="8" Text="I should explain that if I seem to exhibit some frustration, it is not personal: it is because as a moderator, I have had to field complaints from long-time users. They note your credentials, they see the value and insight in some of the answers you post, but universally they bemoan the missed opportunities and they ask why you post so many poor, abbreviated, incomplete, and unexplained answers.  It puzzles them and now it puzzles me, because my stock response--he doesn't yet know the site--just won't fly anymore." CreationDate="2017-02-12T21:13:29.807" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="12373" PostId="4603" Score="7" Text="Short answers are *often* considered poor quality, because they tend to lack sufficient attention to detail, i.e. leaving assumptions unstated / overstated, not calling attention to edge cases, not fully answering the question.  It's sometimes possible to give a terse, correct, and complete answer, but the opportunities to do so are rare." CreationDate="2017-02-13T02:03:45.050" UserId="74500" />
  <row Id="12374" PostId="4603" Score="2" Text="@whuber, with all due respect, I find this censure of Michael Chernick to be inappropriately harsh. I often read Michael's answers and I don't disagree that the many are incomplete, relegate key material to references, or have errors. But, I also think Michael is held to a different standard than others, perhaps due to his sometimes brash tone in comments. At least one very high rep user (who happens to be a moderator) routinely gives vague, incomplete, or duplicate/repetitive answers. He also has a similar rate of 10+ vote answers (~3%). I never see this kind of contempt directed at him." CreationDate="2017-02-13T04:12:59.053" UserId="109178" />
  <row Id="12377" PostId="4603" Score="2" Text="I understand that your motivation is to encourage compliance with the site norms, but using them in this way to excoriate a respected scholar seems harsh at best (and disingenuous at worst), given that the site is far from perfect. Duplicate questions/answers abound. **Many** comments are, in reality, answers (and vica versa). I understand that your statements represent ideals that should be strived for, but acting like routine violation of them justifies (apparently widespread) disgust is too far. One of your moderators, as a matter of course, ignores them. They are clearly not sacrosanct." CreationDate="2017-02-13T04:24:10.883" UserId="109178" />
  <row Id="12379" PostId="4603" Score="12" Text="This mixes two quite different questions. The general question is easy to answer as the grounds are already documented. The specific question on why Michael gets this feedback sometimes is trickier and immensely more difficult to discuss without people getting upset or angry. I don't think it helps at all to infer or impute personal animus or drop dark hints about third parties. If anyone writes poor answers,   downvoting, flagging, comments encouraging developing an answer and just posting a better answer are ways to respond in specific threads." CreationDate="2017-02-13T09:13:11.687" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12385" PostId="4603" Score="9" Text="@gammer: No-one's expressed &quot;disgust&quot; or &quot;contempt&quot; for anyone, or their behaviour - I don't know where you're getting that from. Michael Chernick isn't being &quot;held to a different standard&quot;: he's answered 11 questions over the last two days (including several now deleted or converted to comments), writing an average of about 31 words for each (initially - one he later edited to a fuller answer); no other users approach this combination of rate &amp; brevity - &amp; *he's* the one asking this question." CreationDate="2017-02-13T12:11:26.650" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="12386" PostId="4603" Score="1" Text="I am a little surprised at the animosity being expressed in response to this question. Helping out on this site is one of the pleasures I have had in a difficult year where the U.S. is stuck with a President that I voted against as well as the majority of those who voted in November 2016. The only other goal I would have now would be to become a moderator.  Could anyone tell me if I can accomplish this?" CreationDate="2017-02-13T12:35:50.747" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="12388" PostId="4603" Score="1" Text="To become a moderator anyone needs to stand at the next election and get sufficient votes." CreationDate="2017-02-13T12:48:58.013" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12392" PostId="4603" Score="1" Text="@Scortchi, the fact that Michel did solicit this feedback by asking the question is fair. I may have been overreacting based on a perception that, IMO, MC is often cast as the villain here." CreationDate="2017-02-13T13:02:51.280" UserId="109178" />
  <row Id="12395" PostId="4603" Score="3" Text="Regarding &quot;I don't know where you're getting that&quot;. Yes, whuber was professional, but the underlying message -- &quot;Look, your answers are terrible. I know you're smart so why are your answers so terrible? Is it just because you're a jerk (&quot;flout site norms..&quot;), or is your main purpose here just to brag about your prior academic successes? Everyone else here agrees with me. Trust me, I know. They complain to me all the time and ask why I, as a moderator, put up with it&quot; -- could certainly be described in the terms I gave. Of course, it's subjective, but I don't think my reading was ridiculous." CreationDate="2017-02-13T13:07:41.350" UserId="109178" />
  <row Id="12396" PostId="4603" Score="0" Text="It appears that several of the users on this site are misinterpreting what I have been saying." CreationDate="2017-02-13T13:11:01.013" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="12397" PostId="4603" Score="8" Text="Michael: The reply to that is exactly the same here on Meta as on the main site. If your question is being misunderstood, do edit it to make it clear. It's three sentences long as it stands." CreationDate="2017-02-13T13:16:47.507" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12408" PostId="4603" Score="9" Text="I hate to lengthen a long comment thread, but I simply cannot go without responding to the scurrilous comments posted by @gammer.  What is most offensive about them is the mis-characterization beginning with &quot;Look, your answers are terrible... &quot; Not only does that stretch what has been written far beyond anything real or intended, it appears designed to hurt Michael.  From his first appearance almost five years ago I have been grateful for Michael's participation and have worked hard to make the most of what he so graciously offers us." CreationDate="2017-02-13T14:19:13.433" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="12410" PostId="4603" Score="7" Text="@gammer: It's clearly ridiculous: you've had to resort to re-wording &amp; distorting what whuber wrote in order for it to evince characteristics you claim were originally present. If I were to allow myself the same latitude in interpreting your comments as you allow yourself in interpreting those of others, I'd conclude you were positively trying to sow discord. For my part I'm glad to see Michael back on CV, appreciate his contributions, &amp; am sure he understands that differences of opinion on the best way to contribute are only that." CreationDate="2017-02-13T17:30:06.440" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="12412" PostId="4603" Score="4" Text="Thank you Scortchi.  I very much appreciate you comments." CreationDate="2017-02-13T17:51:53.117" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="12419" PostId="4603" Score="2" Text="Some answers must be short." CreationDate="2017-02-13T20:15:41.347" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="12706" PostId="4603" Score="2" Text="@Scortchi, My paraphrase was basically a sentence-by-sentence (sarcastic) translation of what whuber said. Your first sentence is so vague because there's no part of that paraphrase that is &quot;ridiculous&quot;. The source for every sentence is obvious to anyone who has read these comments. So, no, I took nowhere near the latitude you took when you condemned my motives. My only motive was to express the opinion that MC receives more criticism than other users exhibiting the same behavior, and I've remained consistent with that. We're allowed to disagree, but let's lay off the scurrilous accusations." CreationDate="2017-03-05T05:21:17.683" UserId="109178" />
  <row Id="12707" PostId="4603" Score="1" Text="Thank you once again gammer!" CreationDate="2017-03-05T05:33:50.333" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="12371" PostId="4604" Score="4" Text="Hi @blipblop and welcome to CrossValidated! I can see why whuber closed your question as a duplicate, but I also agree with you that it's not really a duplicate. I guess we tend to take a bit of a liberal view on duplicates here and sometimes questions get closed even though the OPs would prefer to keep them open. This can happen &amp; is fine. You can edit your question to clarify why it is not a duplicate. In particular, you can specify that you went through the linked thread already. Any edit will put your question into a reopen review queue and if 5 people vote to reopen it will get reopened." CreationDate="2017-02-12T22:27:26.443" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12372" PostId="4604" Score="3" Text="Re (2): please do not re-ask! Instead, you can edit your question to show what you got. This might be a good idea. Re (1): the general form is probably not answerable at all." CreationDate="2017-02-12T22:29:46.257" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12380" PostId="4604" Score="3" Text="I agree with @whuber that a line has to be drawn somewhere; &amp; that the result you're asking for is neither use nor ornament - if it's for learning purposes you'd be better off working it out yourself (though with two &amp; three predictors ought to be enough to understand what's going on). By the way, see [Overzealous marking as duplicate](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/q/2977/17230): the question which yours was closed as a duplicate of was itself once closed as a duplicate. whuber's concern that we might &quot;accumulate a growing list of versions of this question&quot; seems to be well founded :)" CreationDate="2017-02-13T10:51:44.373" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="12416" PostId="4604" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi &quot;though with two &amp; three predictors ought to be enough to understand what's going on&quot;. Precisely. Having an answer about two predictors does not exhausts what is needed to help people struggling with this. The three-cases would precisely show how to extend it properly to the generic case - e.g. not accounting for the relationship between $X_2$ and $X_3$. But, as I suspected, there is no point in discussing all this - the fact that a moderator finds a question to be &quot;neither use nor ornament&quot; will always be enough to close down a question. No matter whether it fits the **rules**." CreationDate="2017-02-13T19:59:58.547" UserDisplayName="user148934" />
  <row Id="12421" PostId="4604" Score="1" Text="Oops! Sorry - I was including the intercept / thinking of the no.  simultaneous equations to be solved. Regarding what constitutes a duplicate in general, we're not obliged to spell it out with legalistic precision, &amp; have never tried to do so; @whuber's explained his reasoning in this case. And note that other users can &amp; do reverse moderators' decisions to close:  so far one's voted to re-open your question, &amp; three to leave it closed." CreationDate="2017-02-13T21:28:57.737" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="12425" PostId="4604" Score="1" Text="@Scortchi I voted to reopen because I find OP's case quite convincing. I can see why the Q could have been initially closed as a duplicate, but *after  OP's repeated &amp; well-explained protests*, I, frankly, find it puzzling that people do not vote to reopen. Closing duplicates should, among other things, help OPs quickly find good answers. If OP read the duplicate link, gave it some thought, and still does not consider their question answered (and can explain why), then I feel we basically *have to* reopen it. Otherwise we fail to help and, worse, make a pose out of it." CreationDate="2017-02-13T23:02:32.907" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12432" PostId="4604" Score="1" Text="@amoeba: I don't agree that we *have* to - the CV community surely have a right to decide for ourselves what kind of questions we want here - , but given that the question's not wildly off-topic, the OP's not convinced by the arguments that answering it would be rather pointless, &amp; I can't see any positive harm in it; I'd be inclined to re-open it just to show goodwill. If there are a few more votes to re-open, I'll add mine. But I still say the OP would be helped a great deal more by careful study of the comments &amp; the *three* linked posts - they're certainly not getting short shrift here." CreationDate="2017-02-14T16:58:42.447" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="12383" PostId="4606" Score="1" Text="You can put `deleted:yes` into the search box  - but I couldn't find this one." CreationDate="2017-02-13T11:03:34.833" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="12398" PostId="4606" Score="0" Text="hmmm, then I guess the question was closed, not deleted. No way to find out if that's the case, right? I would like to know who was the OP - maybe she/he will post a similar question later, which I could (try to) answer." CreationDate="2017-02-13T13:19:37.637" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="12399" PostId="4606" Score="2" Text="Closed questions appear in search results by default. I tried searching for questions with the `mcmc` tag &amp; found [Why Hamitonial dynamics is better than random walk proposal in MCMC?](http://stats.stackexchange.com/q/261571/17230)." CreationDate="2017-02-13T13:23:47.200" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="12400" PostId="4606" Score="3" Text="Thanks! So, it hasn't been either closed or deleted. It's just that the title has a typo, thus I couldn't find it by searching for `Hamiltonian`. Looks like the first thing I have to do is to edit that title :)" CreationDate="2017-02-13T13:30:07.407" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="12424" PostId="4606" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi When I try searching with `deleted:yes` in the search box, I get `Note: only content you own is returned when searching for deleted content` message. And I have all possible non-mod privileges unlocked. Can it be that it works differently for the mods?" CreationDate="2017-02-13T22:24:55.200" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12426" PostId="4606" Score="0" Text="Please note that this is a perfect occasion to post and answer the question yourself (if it's not a dupe). I'd certainly be interested in reading your answer!" CreationDate="2017-02-14T06:23:16.353" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="12427" PostId="4606" Score="0" Text="@Sycorax thanks, I really appreciate that a user with your experience is interested in an answer of mine :) the answer to the original question (or, better, to my interpretation of the question,  which corresponds to that of other users) is [here](http://stats.stackexchange.com/a/261677/58675). It's mostly based on a nice paper by Michael Betancourt. I added an explicit computation of the typical set in a classic case, and a few words about my experience with HMC. I'm thinking to add something on the computational overload of the method." CreationDate="2017-02-14T07:16:11.737" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="12466" PostId="4606" Score="0" Text="@amoeba: Must be different - I don't get that message" CreationDate="2017-02-15T17:11:36.797" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="12381" PostId="4607" Score="1" Text="This is likely to get downvoted as a rant. However - you seem to have high rep on Workplace. Can you compare your experience there with your experience here? This would be interesting." CreationDate="2017-02-13T10:58:00.727" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12384" PostId="4607" Score="2" Text="The first paragraph is personal. I doubt that you want, or that anyone wants to give, a discussion of how far your reputation is what you deserve. The second paragraph is puzzling. We have had some excellent answers and I don't see how this one pushes the discussion forward, unless you flesh out the comments." CreationDate="2017-02-13T11:06:02.597" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12387" PostId="4608" Score="1" Text="Thank you very much Andre. I always appreciate your help.  You must have been an English major." CreationDate="2017-02-13T12:46:24.003" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="12402" PostId="4608" Score="1" Text="+1 but I am pretty sure that the message `We're looking for long answers that provide some explanation and context. Don't just give a one-line answer; explain why your answer is right, ideally with citations. Answers that don't include explanations may be removed.` that is currently displayed on a yellowish plaque below the answer is automatic, i.e. is triggered by some background checks, and is not due to flagging." CreationDate="2017-02-13T13:52:41.753" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12404" PostId="4608" Score="5" Text="@amoeba: No, the post notice is placed there by moderators, who decide if the flag is justified." CreationDate="2017-02-13T13:58:15.333" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="12405" PostId="4608" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi Oh! Thanks. I did not realize that." CreationDate="2017-02-13T14:00:22.933" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12409" PostId="4608" Score="2" Text="For my part, I have long recognized your efforts here on meta.CV, &amp; I appreciate them." CreationDate="2017-02-13T17:02:17.250" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12413" PostId="4608" Score="2" Text="(+1) Looking at the linked answer, as an experiment I tried to quickly just add links to the implied citations (@MichaelChernick I believe these are the correct ones?). I am curious: Do people feel that this relatively simple and objective change is a significant improvement?" CreationDate="2017-02-13T18:04:03.317" UserId="127790" />
  <row Id="12414" PostId="4608" Score="3" Text="@GeoMatt22, thanks for the update. My opinion is that such edit improves the answer, but not to the point to make it [self-contained](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/18669/should-posts-be-self-contained)." CreationDate="2017-02-13T18:21:15.790" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="12415" PostId="4608" Score="4" Text="@GeoMatt22, &quot;significant improvement&quot; is ambiguous to me. I certainly think it is an improvement. However, I would still say the post is a comment, not an answer. To paraphrase, the post says,  'you can find the answer to your question here &amp;/or here'. The post doesn't quite contain the answer to the OP's question. It should still be a comment." CreationDate="2017-02-13T19:37:10.797" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12463" PostId="4608" Score="4" Text="+1.  &quot;I did not learn much from it&quot; is an excellent test to apply to any putative answer.  &quot;Learn&quot; should encompass more than &quot;knowing where to go to learn&quot;: that is, a mere reference teaches us little.  In addition, I would like to point out that &quot;short, concise, and accurate&quot; (SCA) do not suffice: one must add *relevant* to that list.  I have downvoted SCA answers because they were not relevant and, when I pointed that out to their poster, those answers were never modified to make them relevant. Correct and *irrelevant* risks misinterpretation and so is little better than *wrong.*" CreationDate="2017-02-15T14:21:15.267" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="12411" PostId="4612" Score="2" Text="(+1) NB Stack Exchange uses Markdown which [&quot;only supports a very strict subset of HTML&quot;](http://stats.stackexchange.com/editing-help)." CreationDate="2017-02-13T17:34:07.123" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="12417" PostId="4614" Score="1" Text="Re #5: I was not going to look at the [randomization] tag. Questions about permutation aka randomiztion test should be retagged with [permutation-test]. We can create the [randomization-test] tag and make it a synonym of [permutation-test] for convenience of future visitors, but if you are going through these questions please retag to [permutation-test]." CreationDate="2017-02-13T20:07:08.037" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12418" PostId="4614" Score="0" Text="Re #1: I am not sure &quot;random-allocation&quot; is the optimal tag name for that. I would guess that some questions can be about randomized experiments that have nothing to do with clinical trials. That's why I thought of &quot;randomized-experiment&quot; as a more general name..." CreationDate="2017-02-13T20:11:17.240" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12420" PostId="4614" Score="0" Text="@amoeba if they are about experiments I will leave them for now but most are about clinical trials.  About permutation I meant the ones so tagged will be cleared without further action from me. If they are not so tagged I will report back." CreationDate="2017-02-13T21:13:16.410" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="12422" PostId="4614" Score="1" Text="Clinical trials *are* experiments. We could tag [randomized-experiment] + [clinical-trial], and we could additionally make [random-allocation] a synonym of [randomized-experiment]. I am not insisting on this tag name, just discussing." CreationDate="2017-02-13T21:35:09.720" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12423" PostId="4614" Score="1" Text="Update: I see that both terms are widely used, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_assignment (also &quot;random allocation&quot;) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomized_experiment. I guess it does not matter what name we pick for the main tag, but it would be handy to have other two as synonyms." CreationDate="2017-02-13T21:39:50.707" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12428" PostId="4614" Score="0" Text="@amoeba my feeling is that since most of the usage is people with clinical trials I would avoid experimentation. Although logically trials are experiments they never use that word. I think perhaps Josef Mengele https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Mengele is to responsible.The only other use which seems to occur although I have not added them up is randomized-blocks." CreationDate="2017-02-14T09:43:13.823" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="12429" PostId="4614" Score="0" Text="OK, random-allocation as the master tag is fine with me (I still think it's a good idea to make synonyms as mentioned above)." CreationDate="2017-02-14T09:46:18.833" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12556" PostId="4614" Score="1" Text="When you are done, could you please also take a look at [tag:randomized] tag with 10 Qs and no excerpt." CreationDate="2017-02-22T09:39:55.700" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13672" PostId="4614" Score="1" Text="I know @amoeba tagged me at some point to look at this, and it looks like I am very late to the party." CreationDate="2017-05-28T20:26:54.387" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="12431" PostId="4615" Score="6" Text="I agree. The very fact that the SE system is programmed to automatically flag very short answers as likely to be low quality speaks volumes in itself." CreationDate="2017-02-14T16:25:16.817" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12708" PostId="4615" Score="1" Text="@gung I disagree." CreationDate="2017-03-05T05:34:38.853" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="12709" PostId="4615" Score="2" Text="@Michael Which part of what gung said do you disagree with, and on what basis? Simply stating you disagree isn't of use (it won't serve to convince anyone if you can offer no basis for disagreement)." CreationDate="2017-03-05T06:21:10.953" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12433" PostId="4616" Score="2" Text="Your link does not go to any contribution of yours that affects reputation.  If you're referring to an upvote on a *comment,* that's worthless.  Consult the help at http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/whats-reputation." CreationDate="2017-02-14T18:42:21.257" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="12434" PostId="4616" Score="0" Text="Ok, I said, that reputation it is not crucial (I don't know when it increase in details), but it was not in inbox or in other place. In this case it is not important, but I am afraid to loose some interesting events. The question is should I be somehow informed about up-voting and new comment on not my Answer or question, or not." CreationDate="2017-02-14T18:46:22.147" UserId="145491" />
  <row Id="12437" PostId="4618" Score="1" Text="@Andre Thank you for the clarification.  I'll remove that last sentence since it's outdated." CreationDate="2017-02-14T22:55:39.330" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="12448" PostId="4618" Score="0" Text="Thanks everybody for explanations. Upvotes of this question should not be in my reputation because it is meta?" CreationDate="2017-02-15T09:17:33.307" UserId="145491" />
  <row Id="12461" PostId="4618" Score="0" Text="That is correct: because voting here on Meta tends to reflect approval or disagreement rather than quality of posts, it is not tracked for reputation.  You still earn badges (FWIW).  Your constructive participation on Meta really matters only if you wish to be elected as a moderator." CreationDate="2017-02-15T13:48:59.567" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="12442" PostId="4619" Score="1" Text="`The suggestion is to condition on the denominator, which would mean making the total numbers of questions an additional predictor, right?` - no, that's wrong (but not a discussion for Meta). I think this Q is a duplicate but of another thread. Maybe this? http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/26762 There are actually lots of threads about this topic." CreationDate="2017-02-15T08:55:23.063" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12443" PostId="4619" Score="0" Text="Or this http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/29038" CreationDate="2017-02-15T08:59:23.963" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12445" PostId="4619" Score="0" Text="I agree with amoeba, I am sure this has been answered before" CreationDate="2017-02-15T09:00:49.813" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12451" PostId="4619" Score="1" Text="I voted to close as a duplicate, and also tidied up and cross-linked some of the mentioned questions." CreationDate="2017-02-15T09:31:25.767" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12458" PostId="4619" Score="0" Text="@amoeba ok, ok, I wasn't planning on discussion on Meta, I just wanted to give you guys an idea of the question I was considering to ask, so that you could tell me if it was a duplicate or not. Duplicate, got it. And thanks for the other threads." CreationDate="2017-02-15T12:36:43.710" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="12459" PostId="4619" Score="1" Text="Well this led to an interesting discussion with NickCox in the comments over there, so thanks for drawing attention to these questions anyway :-)" CreationDate="2017-02-15T12:38:38.833" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12460" PostId="4619" Score="0" Text="@amoeba you're welcome. It looks like while you were writing this comment I wrote a very similar one below the original question :)" CreationDate="2017-02-15T12:50:24.717" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="12479" PostId="4619" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, are you voting to close this meta Q? I think this is on topic for meta.CV." CreationDate="2017-02-17T13:14:37.047" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12480" PostId="4619" Score="0" Text="@gung No, of course I don't! This Meta Q is on-topic on Meta. I meant that I voted to close http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/261790 as a duplicate (and it is closed by now)." CreationDate="2017-02-17T13:15:41.663" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12481" PostId="4619" Score="1" Text="By the way, @gung, you might have seen my long conversation with Nick Cox in the comments under http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/261790. In particular, Nick seems to prefer one approach to dealing with 0-to-1 response variables that is not mentioned in your accepted answer to http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/29038 (and by now the 261790 is closed as a duplicate of 29038). I urged Nick to post a new answer to 29038 so that we have a more comprehensive thread there, but he did not reply and did not do it yet. I don't know if you want to extend *your* answer..." CreationDate="2017-02-17T13:18:07.843" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12482" PostId="4619" Score="1" Text="@amoeba, it was in the close vote review queue. I voted to leave open." CreationDate="2017-02-17T13:25:46.867" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12483" PostId="4619" Score="0" Text="@gung Why? $\:$" CreationDate="2017-02-17T13:31:04.307" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12484" PostId="4619" Score="1" Text="@amoeba, why was it in the review queue? I don't know. Why leave open? B/c I think it's on topic for meta.CV." CreationDate="2017-02-17T13:38:02.677" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12485" PostId="4619" Score="1" Text="@gung Ah! Sorry! I thought &quot;it&quot; in your comment above referred to the thread on the main site, not to this meta thread. Confusion :-)" CreationDate="2017-02-17T13:40:23.443" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12495" PostId="4619" Score="1" Text="I flagged to close as off-topic as this question is too localized (perhaps more a chat subject); and OP already got an answer for the specific situation he/she was asking about. Very likely this post will remain unanswered (@amoeba; @gung)." CreationDate="2017-02-17T21:56:38.060" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="12496" PostId="4619" Score="3" Text="@AndreSilva I would suggest DeltaIV to self-answer this question and to accept this answer; it's enough to briefly state that this was based on a misunderstanding and the issue is resolved." CreationDate="2017-02-17T21:58:50.443" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12452" PostId="4622" Score="3" Text="Congratulations on 1k rep!" CreationDate="2017-02-15T09:33:24.027" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12453" PostId="4622" Score="3" Text="Thank you. Congratulations for 33.3k rep." CreationDate="2017-02-15T09:36:13.697" UserId="128677" />
  <row Id="12457" PostId="4622" Score="3" Text="I don't disagree, but why single out new answers to old questions? New answers get their moment in the sun for anyone watching what is active. There are at least two quite different kinds of users here: those who follow the site almost daily and (I guess wildly) contribute very many of the votes and those who visit the site when they have a specific problem (which may be just once!), so how people use the site is germane.  If we agree (easily in my case) that many answers deserve many  more votes, the role in this of old or new question and old or new answer is harder to analyse." CreationDate="2017-02-15T12:29:55.670" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12462" PostId="4622" Score="10" Text="@Nick Nevertheless, there is a pattern.  I have been systematically digging up old questions and posting answers.  I notice that they get exceptionally little attention.  It might be worthwhile pointing out that such activities do have their objective rewards besides the personal ones that come with crafting good answers: two upvotes will bring you a bronze &quot;Revival&quot; badge (this happens most of the time) and five will add a silver &quot;Necromancer&quot; badge (this occurs only sometimes). Once in a while the OP actually notices and accepts the answer, which is somewhat gratifying." CreationDate="2017-02-15T13:56:36.830" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="12465" PostId="4622" Score="3" Text="@whuber It seems that I have 9 Necromancer badges. I should have been in LOTR. And 3 Revival." CreationDate="2017-02-15T16:08:32.457" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12467" PostId="4622" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Necromancer is easily my proudest achievement -- the name alone is worthwhile." CreationDate="2017-02-15T18:27:51.577" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="12468" PostId="4622" Score="0" Text="*Necromancer* is one of my favourite badges too! It seems I have 40. @whuber has 58! I wonder if anybody has more. (Is there any way to see badge statistics: who has how many of them?)" CreationDate="2017-02-15T19:50:09.290" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12469" PostId="4622" Score="3" Text="@Michael I don't get your title edit: &quot;How do people encourage others...&quot; sounds like a question about what people do in practice to encourage others, whereas OP is clearly asking about what we *should* do. I think the title was better before. But I am not a native speaker." CreationDate="2017-02-15T19:52:52.463" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12475" PostId="4622" Score="1" Text="@amoeba You can query badges with SEDE e.g. [How to distinguish between gold, silver, and bronze tag badges on SEDE?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/114480/178179)" CreationDate="2017-02-16T17:53:01.940" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="12486" PostId="4625" Score="1" Text="These questions seem in some ways like those asking for book recommendations. So far, so good. But I would rather people ask about algorithms than about code in some specific language, just as asking for code in some specific language is generally off-topic here. A difficulty with these questions is that often expectations are unclear or impossible to satisfy, just as &quot;explain it to a seven year old&quot; questions can't be usually answered without assuming high school mathematics. The answer is often likely to be, trivially, just look at the implementations in software X." CreationDate="2017-02-17T19:04:09.280" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12487" PostId="4625" Score="1" Text="What is scratch any way? What are the black boxes taken as standard?  Someone might well regard FFT or SVD as basic while someone else might want to avoid matrix algebra." CreationDate="2017-02-17T19:05:21.570" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12488" PostId="4625" Score="1" Text="@NickCox Looking at the implementation in software X can be much more challenging than looking at a &quot;educational&quot; implementation. E.g., to understand a recurrent neural network,  looking at https://gist.github.com/karpathy/d4dee566867f8291f086 is much easier than looking at TensorFlow. I agree that scratch is subjective but that can be made more explicit, e.g. implementation of RNN without any neural network libraries or autodifff." CreationDate="2017-02-17T19:07:18.400" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="12489" PostId="4625" Score="0" Text="I don't understand the distinction you're making. Software implementations clearly differ in lots of ways, but I don't follow what is &quot;educational&quot; and what is not. I don't know TensorFlow and I can't judge the code example you cite, so unfortunately the examples don't help. What I had in mind was not just that all R code (e.g.) is public but also that large chunks of (e.g.) MATLAB or Stata are visible even though there is a proprietary core to each." CreationDate="2017-02-17T19:32:54.303" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12491" PostId="4625" Score="2" Text="@NickCox For example, in some cases, implementations of algorithms in a large library may be difficult to read as they might incorporate many optimizations, and is spread over many different classes. By educational I meant some implementations that we think match of the level and time of the readers. Pointing to R/Matlab code can definitely be good in many cases." CreationDate="2017-02-17T20:26:30.270" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="12601" PostId="4625" Score="0" Text="@NickCox, Matlab's built-in t-test (ttest.m) is 165 lines. This is a lot, particularly since the t-test algorithm is very simple. Find the critical t-value from alpha and DF, then compare it with the mean/se(mean). The &quot;production&quot; version has to handle a lot of edge cases (all nan inputs, multiple alpha values, old argument format, etc) that obscure the simplicity of this algorithm.&#xA;&#xA;A &quot;teaching&quot; version wouldn't do any of that and might focus more on the mechanics of the test while avoiding some vectorized bsxfun() monstrosity that runs a bit faster." CreationDate="2017-02-25T01:26:55.653" UserId="7250" />
  <row Id="12609" PostId="4625" Score="0" Text="@Matt Krause Fair enough. I write programs too that are public, so am familiar with a spectrum of code styles. But all this exposes, I think, an ambiguity in the original (kind of) question. I am reading the question as Where do I see an implementation exposing the basic principles? whereas you and Franck seem to be thinking more about Where do I see an implementation that focuses on simple, well behaved inputs without extra bells and whistles? There need not be a contradiction there, but original posters need to be clear what they want precisely (what else is new?)." CreationDate="2017-02-26T10:49:41.253" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12614" PostId="4625" Score="0" Text="@NickCox, Coincidentally, someone sent me this github repo, which is almost exactly what I had in mind https://github.com/eriklindernoren/ML-From-Scratch/ It's clearly not something you would use in production, but it's meant to show how the algorithms work while letting you run them." CreationDate="2017-02-27T17:24:01.310" UserId="7250" />
  <row Id="12615" PostId="4625" Score="0" Text="Does seems bang on. Once more I note that reading &quot;ML&quot; as maximum likelihood, as I do, shows that you are on the statistical side of a (virtual) wall. (Here ML means machine learning.)" CreationDate="2017-02-27T18:04:45.487" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12490" PostId="4626" Score="4" Text="The distinction seems along the right lines in principle (+1). Where to draw the line in practice is much trickier. I wonder how many people want to try to write really general pseudocode for more than about 10 lines. But that could be enough. I've seen lots of posts with the flavour &quot;I use here language X but other people should be able to translate&quot; and I've used that line myself (but I think only when giving code chunks as incidental to more general answers; not as an attempt at a full answer)." CreationDate="2017-02-17T19:37:51.470" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12497" PostId="4626" Score="4" Text="I agree with Nick's assessment of the difficulty of drawing the line in practice. I'm not sure of what alternative answer to even suggest." CreationDate="2017-02-18T00:01:20.700" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12492" PostId="4627" Score="2" Text="+1 You make a good point.  The R libraries thread is popular, too." CreationDate="2017-02-17T21:11:22.053" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="12493" PostId="4627" Score="1" Text="The R libraries thread should be closed as off topic. It is not a question about neural networks or machine learning. We have had a (largely) consistent policy of closing pure software questions for some years now, but in the site's initial years, the policy was unclear &amp; inconsistently applied." CreationDate="2017-02-17T21:20:04.753" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12494" PostId="4627" Score="0" Text="Question &quot;what library does X&quot; is not a &quot;pure software question&quot;.  It would be off-topic at stackoverflow.com, for example." CreationDate="2017-02-17T21:38:01.563" UserId="31264" />
  <row Id="12498" PostId="4627" Score="10" Text="Just because something's off topic at SO doesn't necessarily make it not pure software, but in any case gung's assessment of it's off-topicness here would seem to be the broadly accepted position, whether one categorizes it as a software question or not. The on-topic help attempts to describe the practice of what is on topic, but not being explicitly listed as off topic there doesn't itself make something on-topic." CreationDate="2017-02-18T00:06:48.730" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12499" PostId="4627" Score="0" Text="I don't know how much is visible to whom, but let's underline that being put on hold was the result here of 5 votes to close from users with high enough reputation. (I didn't see this post at all, but I would have supported that vote on the grounds summarised by others.)" CreationDate="2017-02-18T08:48:37.447" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12500" PostId="4627" Score="0" Text="@NickCox - &#xA;&#xA;&quot;I didn't see the post at all&quot; -&#xA;&#xA;The question was &quot;Which libraries/implementations for Siamese networks do exist? I am most interested about R, C, and C++ implementations.&quot;&#xA;&#xA;&quot;let's underline that being put on hold was the result here of 5 votes to close from users with high enough reputation.&quot; -&#xA;&#xA;The problem is, there is no vote *against* putting on hold.  If 5 want to put it on hold, and 4 others are against it, it will be put on hold." CreationDate="2017-02-18T11:14:09.690" UserId="31264" />
  <row Id="12501" PostId="4627" Score="1" Text="The key point now is that a vote to put on hold in no way rules out people editing their question to try to make it (more clearly) on-topic. Your specific complaint here is that you think the decision was wrong, but if so you need people to agree with you and sufficient votes to reopen. A general complaint about the voting system belongs on Meta SE." CreationDate="2017-02-18T11:26:46.380" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12502" PostId="4627" Score="0" Text="(I meant that I did not participate in the original decision on this thread, not that the question is or was elusive.)" CreationDate="2017-02-18T11:29:27.187" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12503" PostId="4627" Score="2" Text="I think I am correct in saying that if five people with sufficient rep now vote for it to be re-opened it will be." CreationDate="2017-02-18T12:14:25.013" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="12504" PostId="4627" Score="1" Text="In the close vote review queue, people have the option to vote to *leave open*. If four people had voted to leave open (or if even only two had), the question would not have been closed &amp; would have exited the close vote review queue. In this case the vote was 5 to 0." CreationDate="2017-02-18T13:21:50.480" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12505" PostId="4627" Score="2" Text="Closing a popular thread that has stood for a long time (over a year in this case) is not the best action.  We have a mechanism specifically to handle such a case: &quot;locking&quot; a thread for &quot;historical significance.&quot;  The effect is practically the same but the explanation is more informative.  I have therefore reopened and locked the `R` libraries thread." CreationDate="2017-02-18T14:33:21.053" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="12511" PostId="4627" Score="0" Text="@whuber, FTR, I flagged that thread to be &quot;locked&quot; (although I didn't know that was the term, so my flag was descriptive). The flag was marked *helpful*, but nothing was done to the thread. That was when I voted to close (as subsequently did others)." CreationDate="2017-02-18T20:29:56.440" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12512" PostId="4627" Score="0" Text="@gung I am the culprit: I cleared your flag but took no action at the time pending further discussion here." CreationDate="2017-02-18T20:39:38.480" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="12513" PostId="4627" Score="3" Text="@w.huber, not only that, but you've changed your name. I can't even pronounce it the same way now." CreationDate="2017-02-18T20:50:10.100" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12514" PostId="4627" Score="0" Text="@gung Which is precisely why I did it :-)." CreationDate="2017-02-18T20:55:32.973" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="12542" PostId="4627" Score="0" Text="@gung This is still useful information to exchange somewhere.  Knowing which packages have what strengths/weaknesses...  Where does it belong if not here or on SO?" CreationDate="2017-02-21T02:28:05.083" UserId="78846" />
  <row Id="12543" PostId="4627" Score="2" Text="Most likely nowhere on the SE system, @Maddenker. There have been a couple of attempted proposals to make an R SE site, but they went nowhere. This sort of question can always be asked on the r-help listserv, of course." CreationDate="2017-02-21T02:54:38.483" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12547" PostId="4627" Score="2" Text="Personally I have a softer spot for &quot;what libraries are available that deal with problems of type X&quot; than for &quot;how do I code/debug this particular thing&quot;. But currently consensus is against library questions being on-topic (and I would vote to close, in line with this). I do think this consensus might be revisited at some point. I think there's an argument that library-request questions are very similar to reference-request questions: &quot;what resources are available that deal with problems of type X&quot; is on-topic for written resources, online lectures etc but not for software libraries!" CreationDate="2017-02-21T12:13:35.983" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="12548" PostId="4627" Score="3" Text="To be really cheeky, someone could try asking &quot;What written resources are available to help me understand how to implement X in practice? I speak R.&quot; And the answers could be links to the docs and vignettes of the relevant R packages (and sometimes their accompanying book or journal article). Not quite sure if you'd get away with that, but this analogy is precisely why I'm more sympathetic to library-request questions than other software-specific ones." CreationDate="2017-02-21T12:20:53.910" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="12568" PostId="4627" Score="2" Text="@Silverfish: I tend to agree with you. The similarity to reference requests is greatest for someone who wants to study a new area of Statistics: the choice of software isn't trivial, &amp; a recommendation would often be in tandem with that of a book - &#xA;[Diggle &amp; Ribeiro, *Model-based Geostatistics*](http://www.springer.com/gb/book/9780387329079) &amp; [`geoR`](https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/geoR/index.html); &#xA;[Harrell, *Regression Modelling Strategies*](http://www.springer.com/gb/book/9781441929181) &amp; [`rms`](https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/rms/index.html); &amp;c." CreationDate="2017-02-22T15:51:00.427" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="12569" PostId="4627" Score="0" Text="But welcoming software recommendations would likely share the drawbacks of welcoming reference requests; viz the proliferation of (1) big lists in which people merely state/vote for their favourites, &amp; (2) questions distinguished only by rather fussy criteria (that in any case are usually ignored by answerers)." CreationDate="2017-02-22T16:10:21.630" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="12519" PostId="4630" Score="8" Text="I think the example question is on topic and not opinion-based (in principle). If a term is ill-defined, then one can post an answer explaining that it's ill-defined." CreationDate="2017-02-19T17:01:29.550" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12520" PostId="4630" Score="4" Text="The question sounds fine to me." CreationDate="2017-02-19T17:44:08.707" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="12521" PostId="4630" Score="3" Text="I think the question would be a better fit for another site, the [ai.SE] SE site seems most appropriate, &amp; is borderline on topic here. That said, in answer to your explicit question, if a Q asks for the definition of a term, that turns out to be opinion-based / subjective, it would be best to have an answer that explains that, rather than closing the thread." CreationDate="2017-02-19T17:48:25.620" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12522" PostId="4630" Score="1" Text="In the absence of a language academy which prescribes what is English and what is not surely any question about the meaning of terminology is a matter of opinion?" CreationDate="2017-02-19T18:43:03.787" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="12523" PostId="4630" Score="9" Text="@mdewey Usually not.  The test of whether something is just opinion rests on the evidence that can be brought to bear.  In the present case, one can imagine a study of recent uses of &quot;AI&quot; and &quot;MI&quot; showing exactly how these terms are used and by which communities.  The possibility of such a study--whether it has or even could be done--tells us this is not necessarily a matter of opinion." CreationDate="2017-02-19T19:57:04.350" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="12692" PostId="4630" Score="0" Text="Which of the above statements is factually correct and not an opinion?  Isn't  most of statistics opinion based anyway as proven by the many and recent huge public failures?" CreationDate="2017-03-03T16:53:00.427" UserId="74762" />
  <row Id="12528" PostId="4632" Score="2" Text="More relevant search query: http://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=%22cook%27s+distance%22+is%3Aquestion" CreationDate="2017-02-20T11:31:00.430" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12529" PostId="4632" Score="2" Text="+1. See here: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/a/3101 for some useful advice about creating new tags." CreationDate="2017-02-20T11:33:07.550" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12538" PostId="4632" Score="1" Text="We already seem to have a tag for leverage (but not one for influence). Do we need to have separate ones for all of these concepts? This is a genuine question to which I have no answer." CreationDate="2017-02-20T18:40:12.637" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="12540" PostId="4632" Score="0" Text="@mdewey What is &quot;leverage&quot; (the [leverage] tag has no wiki excerpt), and how is it related to Cook's distance?" CreationDate="2017-02-20T19:18:56.033" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12544" PostId="4632" Score="1" Text="@amoeba as in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leverage_(statistics). I view Cook as a compromise between leverage and residual in my simplistic way. If there is a consensus about these concepts I will write the wiki for leverage unless someone gets there first." CreationDate="2017-02-21T08:49:14.030" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="12545" PostId="4634" Score="3" Text="AFAIK we can't move answers between questions." CreationDate="2017-02-21T08:58:17.473" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="12551" PostId="4634" Score="1" Text="@Scortchi Stack Exchange should add this feature. Please support [Allow high rep users to migrate answers from one question to another](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/40346/178179) and [Can moderators be allowed to move answers to other questions piecemeal?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/147896/178179)" CreationDate="2017-02-21T16:59:58.697" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="12590" PostId="4634" Score="0" Text="I don't like to change the nature of the question after people have already formulated answers to the original formulation. That will certainly lead to inconsistent threads and *a lot* of maintenaince hours for moderators." CreationDate="2017-02-24T10:07:17.960" UserId="109818" />
  <row Id="12591" PostId="4634" Score="0" Text="@YtsendeBoer your title says &quot;I asked 2 questions in 1 post, now I have 2 answers, each one answers another question&quot; so it sounded to me like it was easily separable." CreationDate="2017-02-24T15:59:33.980" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="12713" PostId="4635" Score="0" Text="And here is my tag synonym proposal for residual-analysis -&gt; residuals: http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/a/4652/28666." CreationDate="2017-03-06T11:20:22.370" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12603" PostId="4636" Score="1" Text="You have a valid point it; I agree with the suggestion to delete it. ([Mandatory disclaimer link](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/4641) )" CreationDate="2017-02-25T12:29:56.000" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="12617" PostId="4636" Score="0" Text="@usεr11852 Thanks for the feedback :) I will get rid of the tag." CreationDate="2017-02-28T11:59:19.357" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12581" PostId="4639" Score="3" Text="I think you are right, this tag is not needed and many questions seem to be off-topic. It would be good if you could vote to close the ones that you think are off-topic. And start retagging all of them, unless somebody protests here soon." CreationDate="2017-02-22T23:05:58.090" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12582" PostId="4639" Score="1" Text="I already did. The one problem I just noticed is that there are about four or five questions with many upvotes and answers that actually ask about using latex..." CreationDate="2017-02-22T23:11:26.747" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="12583" PostId="4639" Score="0" Text="Regarding deletion, I am not sure how it works. Take e.g. this Q: http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/48311. It's closed as off-topic 4 years ago but has 2 upvotes and 2 answers with 2 and 3 upvotes. It won't get automatically deleted until all posts there have 0 votes or less. However, I see that you (?) voted to delete it and I have now voted too just to see what will happen, so there is currently 2 votes for deleting it. I am not sure what our policy is in situations like that. Should we vote to delete such threads? I never thought about this before." CreationDate="2017-02-22T23:12:23.360" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12584" PostId="4639" Score="1" Text="There are *lots* of older threads here with a lot of upvotes, answers, and views, that by now are closed as off-topic. The on-topic policy used to be less strict some years ago." CreationDate="2017-02-22T23:14:30.187" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12586" PostId="4639" Score="3" Text="Threads that seem to be acceptable at the time can be grandfathered in (so left open if deemed of historical value, such as the &quot;jokes&quot; thread which is absolutely off topic now). If the vote to close was around the time of the post (and not a year later, say), and the historical/interest value of the thread is not obvious (nb lots of upvotes would suggest some value in that sense), while closing would allow us to clean up or streamline something else, we should probably lean toward closing. However, closing many now-off-topic threads might be quite disruptive in several ways." CreationDate="2017-02-22T23:56:09.647" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12587" PostId="4639" Score="1" Text="@amoeba, I just voted to delete that one, &amp; it seems to be gone now." CreationDate="2017-02-23T02:31:09.690" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12612" PostId="4639" Score="1" Text="Do these predate the [TeX.SE site](http://tex.stackexchange.com/)?" CreationDate="2017-02-27T02:02:34.583" UserId="127790" />
  <row Id="12616" PostId="4639" Score="0" Text="Hey Tim, are you planning to remove [latex] from the remaining questions?" CreationDate="2017-02-28T11:54:37.907" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12619" PostId="4639" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Glen_b has made a good point about deleting threads and it is still not clear for me what should we do with the non-obvious cases." CreationDate="2017-02-28T12:49:37.417" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="12640" PostId="4639" Score="0" Text="I feel that the tag should be removed even if some questions are on-topic or grandfathered or whatever. The same goes for the [sweave] tag, by the way." CreationDate="2017-03-01T12:37:45.687" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12641" PostId="4639" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b do you have any additional comments?" CreationDate="2017-03-01T12:45:41.530" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="12661" PostId="4639" Score="0" Text="@Tim If you're not sure whether to close or not and it's fairly old, I'd just leave it. If you're pretty sure that none of the reasons to keep it have much force in a particular case, then vote to delete. If you make a mistake either way it's probably not a big deal in this case (old threads now clearly off topic)" CreationDate="2017-03-01T22:56:33.810" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13586" PostId="4639" Score="0" Text="Looking at the voting in the comments under my answer, I think we can go ahead and remove latex+sweave tags." CreationDate="2017-05-18T15:37:06.223" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13593" PostId="4639" Score="0" Text="So I went ahead and removed both tags. Case closed?" CreationDate="2017-05-18T21:17:30.493" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12592" PostId="4641" Score="3" Text="Perhaps the underlying difficulty is that this site is not geared towards addressing yes/no questions." CreationDate="2017-02-24T17:50:47.577" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="12593" PostId="4641" Score="2" Text="But we still get them, how should we proceeded?  I don't see much harm in answering." CreationDate="2017-02-24T19:51:16.807" UserId="74500" />
  <row Id="12594" PostId="4641" Score="8" Text="If it answers the question, it should be an answer. Why should it be anything else? (I am not posting this as an answer as I believe a more elaborate explanation is desirable. But if not, this would be in conflict with my own argument.)" CreationDate="2017-02-24T20:18:43.593" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="12595" PostId="4641" Score="10" Text="Such a short answer is only possible because the Q is off-topic and will likely be closed as such. I don't see much sense in answering off-topic questions; off-topic questions *ideally should not even be here,* so why answering them? If the question is closed and not upvoted it will be automatically deleted after some time, *which is a good thing.* Having an answer with positive score will prevent it from being deleted forever. To me it looks like garbage collecting. At the same time, answering in comments is honourable and helpful because it will help OP without messing with the site's logic." CreationDate="2017-02-24T21:26:17.417" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12602" PostId="4641" Score="5" Text="I fully agree with @amoeba on this. Low-quality questions should be not be encouraged with answers. Matthew's comment was adequate. On occasion I &quot;start answering&quot; the question in the comments (eg. [1](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/258711), [2](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/260081) so the OP can formulate/substantiate the real question they have properly and then provide an answer that is constructive for the OP as well as future readers (and on occasion we see there was little to answer anyway (eg. [1](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/263870))." CreationDate="2017-02-25T12:19:58.483" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="12604" PostId="4641" Score="3" Text="As @whuber said, the site is not geared towards yes/no questions but we ask users to research the question and work on it before asking and show us his work. When the question is well researched (as we ask), often the OP has found a possible answer and, if they is right, we only can confirm it. The only way to avoid the issue would be asking users not to research too much their questions, but that wouldn't benefit the site nor the askers." CreationDate="2017-02-25T17:16:55.760" UserId="123561" />
  <row Id="12596" PostId="4642" Score="0" Text="I don't quite get it. What exactly is misleading about your example? The fact that in your experiment (unlike your example), the 1000 events inside one experiment are not independent?" CreationDate="2017-02-24T22:10:32.357" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12597" PostId="4642" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Exactly! This is at least how I understand the comments by soakley and Zahava Kor. And additionally that I have a large sample size what Rose Hartman interferes from the figure." CreationDate="2017-02-24T22:14:01.457" UserId="150029" />
  <row Id="12598" PostId="4642" Score="3" Text="I think you are over-thinking this. Edit your question to clarify these issue ASAP. Some of the answers (e.g. soakley's) seem to be applicable to your actual situation - even if you are not satisfied with these approaches, they do attempt to address your real issue. I would go with your bullet point #1 and edit the question to clarify it as much as possible which IMHO requires shortening it a lot: remove the code, remove the figure, state very briefly what's going on. You can have a little note in the end mentioning why some of the comments talk about n=1000." CreationDate="2017-02-24T22:19:08.130" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12599" PostId="4642" Score="1" Text="@amoeba You are absolutely right, I am completely over-thinking this. I will remove all the confusing additions and provide a link to the history for reference. Should I keep the part about why I am not satisfied with the existing answers?" CreationDate="2017-02-24T22:43:19.717" UserId="150029" />
  <row Id="12600" PostId="4642" Score="1" Text="Yes, this is an important part." CreationDate="2017-02-24T22:46:19.933" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12606" PostId="4644" Score="0" Text="I agree that the question is marginally topical, but the important part of the answer is *who* is saying it: a key contributor to the xgboost respo. It's not *just* another question and answer -- it's more or less *definitive* to the *exact* question OP asked." CreationDate="2017-02-25T23:37:03.160" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="12607" PostId="4644" Score="4" Text="See, I totally missed that it was Tianqi Chen answering the question! &#xA;&#xA;I think a &quot;perfect&quot; answer might have said that &quot;Yes. predict_proba gives you the estimated probability that an example is in class 1. Here's a conversation with Tianqi Chen (tqchen), one of the authors' of xgboost [link] and here's the documentation he refers to [link]." CreationDate="2017-02-25T23:51:49.737" UserId="7250" />
  <row Id="12608" PostId="4644" Score="2" Text="Sometimes I answer in comments because the answer to the question is not what the OP thinks he is asking, and because I have a low tolerance for downvoting, especially when I do not feel the need to explain what I am saying, how I am saying it, why I am saying it and all that in vanilla flavor to all comers. RE answers, frequently less is more, and terminology being ambiguous between disciplines, more is more to misunderstand." CreationDate="2017-02-26T02:49:47.603" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12610" PostId="4645" Score="0" Text="It looks like [randomization] tag can be simply removed from all the remaining 6 questions. Some are about exp design (but have this tag already), others are about various stuff but we don't have a special tag for it (which is okay). The 1 remaining question in [randomized] I would re-tag to exp-design." CreationDate="2017-02-26T20:44:15.540" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12611" PostId="4645" Score="0" Text="Great job, by the way!" CreationDate="2017-02-26T20:46:05.387" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12618" PostId="4645" Score="0" Text="Regarding synonyms, after some reflection I don't think that we need to make [random-assignment] one: it would also start with &quot;random-a&quot;, so I can't imagine people failing to find the right tag. However, [randomized-experiment]-&gt;[random-allocation] can potentially be helpful, what do you think?" CreationDate="2017-02-28T12:08:21.020" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12620" PostId="4645" Score="0" Text="@amoeba yes, that seems a good idea but I am not sure how to do it or whether I can. If you can set it up I think we have to vote for it?" CreationDate="2017-02-28T17:11:58.380" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="12621" PostId="4645" Score="0" Text="You can't. But you can post it as a suggestion in http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1200 and if it gets several upvotes we can try to implement it or perhaps one of the mods will do it." CreationDate="2017-02-28T20:22:44.147" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12638" PostId="4645" Score="0" Text="Other than that, I think you can accept your answer :-)" CreationDate="2017-03-01T12:21:56.030" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12669" PostId="4645" Score="0" Text="By the way, there is a couple of pending big retagging projects in http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/tag-reorganization, would you be interested in any of them? E.g. I've just edited http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2979 to update and to bump." CreationDate="2017-03-02T10:13:16.703" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12693" PostId="4645" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I am currently doing cooks-distance but will have a look at rank-correlation unless you finish them first." CreationDate="2017-03-03T17:21:18.713" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="12624" PostId="4646" Score="3" Text="We need better tools to rename tags on Stack Exchange." CreationDate="2017-02-28T21:15:10.990" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="12627" PostId="4646" Score="4" Text="While not directly about tags, [Is it reasonable to put “try to avoid acronyms” in the help on asking questions?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1707/is-it-reasonable-to-put-try-to-avoid-acronyms-in-the-help-on-asking-questions) (posted in 2013) *specifically* mentions the problem with calling Latent Dirichlet Analysis &quot;LDA&quot; when Linear Discriminant Analysis (which is much older) has the same initials.  Three Letter Acronyms are seen as a particular bugbear in the thread there (with particular mention in the answer)." CreationDate="2017-02-28T22:44:16.567" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12628" PostId="4646" Score="3" Text="whuber's (lone) answer there (16 votes, 0 down) has the conclusion &quot;We should insist that all acronyms be written out (the first time) in all cases.&quot; (I try but don't always succeed).... I think the principle would extend to new tags (as a general principle, to avoid acronyms in their names where feasible, with a few exceptions, like `anova`). This advice was subsequently placed in the **Style** section of our site's [How to ask a good question](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1479/how-to-ask-a-good-question-on-crossvalidated/1483#1483) meta post" CreationDate="2017-02-28T22:54:24.107" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12622" PostId="4647" Score="0" Text="Amoeba, thank you for informing and the discussion with @FranckDernocourt. Will Frank transfer the tag description from `lda` to `latent-dirichlet-alloc` and warn in `lda` not to use it? And submit it to become a junior synonym?" CreationDate="2017-02-28T20:33:56.657" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="12623" PostId="4647" Score="0" Text="The tag description is already transferred. Regarding `lda` tag, it currently has 0 threads and so will disappear within 24 hours... Hopefully forever :)" CreationDate="2017-02-28T20:39:09.550" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12625" PostId="4647" Score="0" Text="Is there a way to prevent someone in the future from using `lda` tag?" CreationDate="2017-02-28T21:16:05.300" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="12626" PostId="4647" Score="0" Text="@FranckDernoncourt In principle, StackExchange allows to &quot;blacklist&quot; a tag. In practice, this is complicated and is never done on CrossValidated (I think to blacklist a tag, one of the mods has to contact SE admins and they will do it)." CreationDate="2017-02-28T21:18:32.853" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12629" PostId="4647" Score="2" Text="I'd prefer *not* to delete it - it will be re-created - nor even to try blacklist it. Better to simply put one of the standard &quot;don't use this tag&quot; notes, directing people to use relevant tags for the alternatives." CreationDate="2017-02-28T23:01:49.330" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12630" PostId="4647" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b AFAIK it's not possible to keep a tag with 0 threads so I am not sure what exactly you are proposing." CreationDate="2017-02-28T23:05:16.983" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12631" PostId="4647" Score="0" Text="Oh, ... damn. Maybe you're right there. So all our &quot;don't use this tag&quot; messages just die? One possibility (as much as I hate the notion) is to lock one post *with* the tag." CreationDate="2017-02-28T23:07:06.357" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12632" PostId="4647" Score="5" Text="@Glen_b Yeah, I strongly dislike this option too. Another possible approach would be to have [lda-linear-discriminant] and [lda-latent-dirichlet] tags, with the former one mapped to [discriminant-analysis] and the latter one to [latent-dirichlet-alloc]. This way anybody starting to type &quot;lda&quot; in a tag field will get both options suggested." CreationDate="2017-02-28T23:09:23.683" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12633" PostId="4647" Score="1" Text="That's a much more enticing possibility; certainly worth some discussion." CreationDate="2017-02-28T23:10:38.147" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12634" PostId="4647" Score="2" Text="@amoeba Great idea. I wish on Stack Exchange one could mark a tag as &quot;abbreviable&quot;, i.e. if [latent-dirichlet-alloc] is marked as abbreviable, the typing lda would bring it up in the suggestions." CreationDate="2017-03-01T02:23:17.767" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="12635" PostId="4647" Score="1" Text="@amoeba, do by &quot;mapped to&quot; you mean automatic substitute? If yes - then it its is acceptable. For we don't need any [lda-linear-discriminant] to be _usable_, I think." CreationDate="2017-03-01T06:57:01.997" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="12636" PostId="4647" Score="1" Text="I would perhaps support those who think we ought to keep &quot;bad&quot; tags, but with description &quot;Not recommended, use... instead&quot;. The colour of such tags or of their description &quot;cards&quot; or of their font should be special, say, magenta." CreationDate="2017-03-01T07:04:32.757" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="12637" PostId="4647" Score="0" Text="@ttnphns Yes, I meant an automatic substitute, as a tag synonym. Regarding &quot;bad deprecated tags&quot;: it could work well, but StackExchange does not support this functionality so it's not something we can use at the moment." CreationDate="2017-03-01T08:39:28.817" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12658" PostId="4648" Score="0" Text="@Have a look at [this](http://meta.gis.stackexchange.com/a/4027/19874), [this](http://meta.gis.stackexchange.com/a/4023/19874) and [this](http://meta.gis.stackexchange.com/q/4018/19874). Yes, it was your suggestion on August 2015 to widen the scope but also you or other elite members of GIS.SE didn't reject the creation of [this proposal](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/90327/remote-sensing-and-photogrammetry) and [2016 ad](http://meta.gis.stackexchange.com/a/4147/19874) gained 16 upvotes and [2017 ad](http://meta.gis.stackexchange.com/a/4466/19874) has gained 7 upvotes so far" CreationDate="2017-03-01T22:48:17.433" UserId="79636" />
  <row Id="12660" PostId="4648" Score="0" Text="When I tried to close the proposal ones, there were [some disapprovals](http://discuss.area51.stackexchange.com/a/22491/142064). So I don't know you can decide about the proposal yourself. I don't think it will get enough 100 committers to reach the beta anyway. I have decided o contribute more and answer unanswered RS questions in GIS.SE if the proposal fails at last. But I can't help about photogrammetry. Any way although it's a niche but seems that there are some people in this community interested in having such site. Because we had some experienced followers that are already members of" CreationDate="2017-03-01T22:56:27.720" UserId="79636" />
  <row Id="12662" PostId="4648" Score="0" Text="GIS.SE members, 36 committers with at least 200+ reputation in one of the other sites and 16, 7 votes during years 2016 and 2017" CreationDate="2017-03-01T22:58:08.187" UserId="79636" />
  <row Id="12655" PostId="4653" Score="2" Text="`I know it isn't stats, but it is academia` - why do you ask a question if you know the answer? (I'd say this answer is correct.)" CreationDate="2017-03-01T21:40:49.593" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12656" PostId="4653" Score="1" Text="its stats-ish.  The difference between the practice and the field.&#xA;&#xA;A bale of hay is hay.  A field of hay is hay.  One of them is found in a store and a storekeeper may be asked about it, and for another you need to ask a farmer.  Even when they are both hay." CreationDate="2017-03-01T21:43:00.067" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="12657" PostId="4653" Score="4" Text="I am positive about this being on-topic: where else would statistically-minded people be lurking to advise? I'd expect a letter of recommendation to touch as far as possible on strengths in mathematics, statistics, data analysis and computing, including formal qualifications and practical experience. But quite what is expected could be very specific to country and institution. On an international forum, you might need to identify your country or perhaps the kind of institution you are applying for. I'd not want to see specific institutions being named or discussed." CreationDate="2017-03-01T22:08:55.937" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12659" PostId="4653" Score="8" Text="I think this type of question is a mixture of &quot;too broad&quot; with &quot;opinion-based&quot;; therefore not on-topic. You may take a look in Academia SE (look at their help center, and search for duplicates)." CreationDate="2017-03-01T22:48:18.013" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="12665" PostId="4653" Score="0" Text="@NickCox: Well, on Academia SE if they're also interested in answering questions about letters of recommendation &amp; such. Just as if they're also interested in answering questions about R programming they'll be lurking on Stack Overflow. A desire to reach the statistically minded doesn't suffice to make a q. on-topic here." CreationDate="2017-03-02T09:24:19.747" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="12667" PostId="4653" Score="1" Text="@Scortchi I can see both sides here. I am reminded of questions on statistical terminology, which some want to see banned as linguistic or semantic. To me the generic advice about recommendation letters is very basic; quite what statistical people prize is germane on CV in my view." CreationDate="2017-03-02T09:32:32.143" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12668" PostId="4653" Score="1" Text="@NIckCox: Perhaps the two aspects could be separated: asking here about the statistical knowledge &amp; skills relevant to post-graduate study, &amp; on Academia about how to get colleagues to write a recommendation. (I think that, though that'd make the q. germane, it'd still be of the broad, opinion-soliciting type that we don't generally welcome - CW at best.)" CreationDate="2017-03-02T10:08:37.320" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="12670" PostId="4653" Score="2" Text="@Scortchi - I think that you are asking &quot;what is the soul of statistics&quot;.  To &quot;beg a metaphor&quot;, the question asking &quot;which defines the person: dna (nature), upbringing (nurture) or the exercise of free will (choice)&quot; implies more than one element can comprise an essence of a person, and thereby can comprise the essence of human fields like stats.  The DNA of every degreed statistician is in part academia.  The parsing into &quot;pure rooms&quot; as you are trying to do is one of the prototypical western philosophical falsehoods.  &quot;False either-or&quot; is a logical fallacy.  Don't engineer SE around it." CreationDate="2017-03-02T12:15:51.623" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="12673" PostId="4653" Score="1" Text="A question can be either on-topic or off-topic on CrossValidated. This is *not* a logical fallacy. Any asked question will either stay open or get closed as off-topic. This is just how it is." CreationDate="2017-03-02T13:40:42.870" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12675" PostId="4653" Score="1" Text="@EngrStudent: I don't think I am. Deciding which SE site a question's most appropriate for is more akin to librarianship than philosophy. I don't dispute that some questions suit more than one site; but suggest this one might be more usefully split into its generically academical &amp; specifically statistical aspects, &amp; furthermore that not all good statistical questions are good CV questions." CreationDate="2017-03-02T14:06:17.827" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="12680" PostId="4653" Score="1" Text="@amoeba - my point is that &quot;false either or&quot; exists [link](https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/black-or-white).  There are some things that are not &quot;either-or&quot;.  Boolean algebra is the simplest case: both and neither are also valid comparisons of two binary variables.  Human beings are what Godel would call &quot;sufficiently complex&quot;.  This means that, however infrequent, there are fundamentally meaningful or critical human-things that don't fit cleanly into any bin or set of bins we make. You can argue this topic shouldn't be one if you like." CreationDate="2017-03-02T16:18:50.677" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="12681" PostId="4653" Score="1" Text="@Scortchi - I strongly agree with and will conform to your comment with the following exception: librarianship is the child of philosophy, and wouldn't exist without it.  There is no &quot;clustering&quot; without a distance metric and cluster definitions.  Librarianship is deciding which point goes into which bin.  Which bins to have, and how to apply a [separation principle](http://www.innovation-triz.com/papers/separation.html) to a point intermediate to two bins is the subject of the philosopher." CreationDate="2017-03-02T16:25:14.013" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="12672" PostId="4654" Score="0" Text="I didn't vote on that, but I can see some ambiguity. I certainly think it should be on topic on [math.SE]. It could also be on topic here, IMO, but math might be a better fit. As @Cardinal mentioned in your other meta.CV Q, there are going to be &quot;many questions that fall in grey areas ... Ultimately we want to find the best possible site for each question so that it gets a great answer&quot;." CreationDate="2017-03-02T13:31:41.200" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12676" PostId="4654" Score="5" Text="*As asked* the q. was just about solving an equation. Your answer brought in more statistical context, though; I wouldn't have voted to migrate the q. after reading it." CreationDate="2017-03-02T14:11:38.933" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="12677" PostId="4654" Score="1" Text="@Scortchi the post's title is &quot;Deriving a (1−α)100% confidence interval for θ pivotal quantity&quot;, for me that's where the statistical context arises. While it's good to also put that information in the body of the post I don't see it as required to establish statistical context." CreationDate="2017-03-02T14:39:26.030" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12678" PostId="4654" Score="1" Text="It was only when I read your answer that I fully appreciated the statistical context so i can see where opinions could differ here." CreationDate="2017-03-02T14:57:44.690" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="12679" PostId="4654" Score="6" Text="@Glen_b: Well, yes; the context is there, but rather scanty - the distribution $\theta$ parametrizes isn't even mentioned - &amp; the question focuses on how to solve $u = \frac{\sqrt{n}(\bar{y}-\theta)}{\sqrt{\theta}}$ for $\theta$. I can see why someone might well have thought &quot;Well if you just need help with the algebra, Maths SE is the best site&quot;." CreationDate="2017-03-02T15:03:44.000" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="12744" PostId="4654" Score="2" Text="I would add http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/266151/in-r-how-to-add-the-95-interval-for-quantiles as another example for consideration.  Although phrased as a request for a &quot;calculation in `R`,&quot; to me it appears to ask a useful statistical question.  I can't imagine an answer on SO (whither it was migrated) that didn't also have to work through some statistical and mathematical issues first." CreationDate="2017-03-08T17:00:04.927" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="12750" PostId="4654" Score="3" Text="@whuber I see that as a rather more astonishing example, to say the least. Indeed, I had begun a new post about that one (pointing out our on-topic help says &quot; ***if it needs statistical expertise to understand or answer, ask it here***&quot;) before I saw your comment. How does that *not* need considerable statistical expertise to even begin to answer?" CreationDate="2017-03-09T01:02:38.883" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12767" PostId="4654" Score="0" Text="I remember discussing this in meta a long time ago.  At that point, I was in favor of leaving a lot of questions here that others wanted to migrate, esp. to the programming site but sometimes to math.  So, do we _have_ a clear policy? It would also be good to distinguish between migrating questions and closing them for being about using a language.  &#xA;&#xA;I'll follow whatever policy there is, but what is it?" CreationDate="2017-03-10T12:15:37.080" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="12774" PostId="4654" Score="1" Text="@Peter Asking about the policy is a fair question, and deserves discussion, but at the same time you are dodging the question Glen_b has posed here: &quot;I'd like a clear explanation (preferably from each of the people who voted to migrate) of how we can determine that this question is off topic on our site.&quot;  What criteria did *you* apply when deciding to migrate this question?  If you would like to discuss this privately, then please join the moderators' chat room." CreationDate="2017-03-12T15:52:20.907" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="12779" PostId="4654" Score="0" Text="@whuber  Fair enough.  I don't think I can exactly articulate what I do, because I am not sure of what the guidelines are supposed to be.  What I try to do is to close questions that are about things that look like pure programming questions and that ought to be answerable from package documentation and to migrate questions that are more about programming - usually, these are more complex questions or ones that could apply in several packages or languages." CreationDate="2017-03-12T21:26:11.967" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="12780" PostId="4654" Score="0" Text="@whuber  Of course, sometimes, I'm wrong.  Who isn't?  Maybe the standard for migrating a question has to be changed?" CreationDate="2017-03-12T21:27:45.903" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="12781" PostId="4654" Score="2" Text="Thanks for responding. The problem is I can't see how to relate a substantial number of migration decisions (I've only posted about a few) to what I see as the current standard. Specifically, I can't see how they can be migrated on the basis of two things - 1. [don't migrate it if it's on topic](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10249/what-is-migration-and-how-does-it-work) here, and - 2. the fairly plain wording of [help/on-topic] which says what's on topic. I don't think those standards changing would solve issue that the decisions frequently don't seem to match the criteria. ...ctd" CreationDate="2017-03-12T21:45:21.670" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12782" PostId="4654" Score="1" Text="ctd ... if we could see how some of those decisions relate to the criteria, we could then have some way to converge on being consistent with each other. At the very least, when we can communicate about the ones we can't figure out it helps to see where we might need to be clearer about what we're doing and so work at converging on those aspects." CreationDate="2017-03-12T21:46:19.173" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12784" PostId="4654" Score="0" Text="Maybe the standards are a good place to start. With regard to the standards you're thinking about (I'm guessing you may be referring to something other than the two links just gave), what things do you think we could talk about changing?" CreationDate="2017-03-12T22:30:48.760" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12800" PostId="4654" Score="1" Text="I'd like to take this opportunity to state that I appreciate the ongoing work @PeterFlom does to keep the review queues clear. Being rather disagreeable, I have disagreed w/ some of Peter's decisions from time to time, but I agree w/ the bulk of them &amp; I would rather he continue (&amp; I occasionally disagree) than that he stop. The fact is, there are a lot of reviews that need to be done &amp; there really aren't enough experienced, dedicated reviewers. If it weren't for Peter, our review queues would be steadily growing. I hope he continues." CreationDate="2017-03-13T22:49:54.710" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12801" PostId="4654" Score="1" Text="Indeed, I think we all appreciate Peter's efforts; no doubt there." CreationDate="2017-03-13T23:01:14.233" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12804" PostId="4654" Score="0" Text="Thanks.  I am reasonably sure that the main disputes are about the bullet point &quot;programming&quot; in the help center (what should be here and what on StackOverflow and what deleted). I remember this being discussed here 2 or 3 years ago.  At the time, I thought that a lot more questions should be kept here.  But others disagreed.  Also, I am rarely the first person to move to migrate a question." CreationDate="2017-03-14T12:18:47.297" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="12805" PostId="4654" Score="0" Text="(cont)  I also note that migration seems to occur immediately.  However, many questions could easily be altered to fit more precisely here or there. And some moderators explicitly post that in a comment.  But .. then what? If the person does not modify the question, then we moderators never see it again.  If we migrate it and then the person changes it, it becomes off-topic at StackOverflow. Maybe we need an option to ask the site to remind moderators about the question in a week to see if it has been changed?" CreationDate="2017-03-14T12:21:57.120" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="12683" PostId="4656" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, thank you for that link.  I believe it changes the nature of the question to ask for a new feature rather than assuming it is something I have overlooked." CreationDate="2017-03-02T22:00:10.280" UserId="137032" />
  <row Id="12685" PostId="4656" Score="0" Text="I think your edit greatly improves the request." CreationDate="2017-03-02T22:17:15.377" UserId="137032" />
  <row Id="12691" PostId="4656" Score="1" Text="This has to be implemented by the developers system-wide. I requested that 2 years ago here: [Is there a comment magic link for tag wikis?](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/247705/187282) Thus far, there hasn't been any action on that request." CreationDate="2017-03-03T14:54:34.933" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12687" PostId="4658" Score="3" Text="Link-only (or almost only) answers are frowned upon and are often forcefully converted into comments." CreationDate="2017-03-03T10:07:20.610" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12688" PostId="4658" Score="2" Text="@amoeba A comment seems all right to me." CreationDate="2017-03-03T10:09:35.763" UserId="9534" />
  <row Id="12689" PostId="4659" Score="9" Text="I'd regard it as off-topic; it's not a question on statistics / machine learning but on access to papers. If you were to ask on chat that might be okay (e.g. if you wanted to know if someone could check some detail in a paper for you; asking to be supplied with a paper you didn't have legitimate access to would not be okay there either)." CreationDate="2017-03-03T12:41:18.480" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12690" PostId="4659" Score="5" Text="Also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub." CreationDate="2017-03-03T14:47:23.807" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12694" PostId="4659" Score="0" Text="@amoeba many thanks." CreationDate="2017-03-03T22:06:36.827" UserId="40252" />
  <row Id="12695" PostId="4659" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b I got it. Thanks" CreationDate="2017-03-03T22:07:25.663" UserId="40252" />
  <row Id="12696" PostId="4659" Score="4" Text="To clarify in relation to the &quot;asking to be supplied&quot; part, I'm not discussing there my feelings about the merits of many publishing houses (I see serious problems there and at times harbour a degree of moral outrage at some of what happens but this isn't the forum for that) nor even directly about copyright (we - especially the mods - can't be in the position of being gatekeepers for that), but more about the impact on the nature of the chat. Asking would place people in the position of feeling they have to respond in some way, and that could badly impact the social nature of the chat." CreationDate="2017-03-03T23:46:27.613" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12698" PostId="4666" Score="2" Text="I've edited the title to flag the generic issue. Please comment if that seems inconsistent with your purpose." CreationDate="2017-03-04T11:24:17.057" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12699" PostId="4666" Score="0" Text="Related question [Answering off-topic questions. Appropriate?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/4528/answering-off-topic-questions-appropriate)" CreationDate="2017-03-04T11:43:46.400" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12700" PostId="4666" Score="5" Text="Possible duplicate of [Answering off-topic questions. Appropriate?](http://meta.stats.stackexchange.com/questions/4528/answering-off-topic-questions-appropriate)" CreationDate="2017-03-04T12:28:02.553" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="12701" PostId="4666" Score="0" Text="@NickCox your edit is not inconsistent, but I was hoping for an answer targeted specifically to the question I was thinking about answering :)" CreationDate="2017-03-04T13:40:02.617" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="12702" PostId="4668" Score="0" Text="We seem to have a tag for dummy-variables already which maps onto categorical-data. As far as your three meanings go on a statistics site I go for 2, in mathematics more generally for 1 and 3 seems a non-starter." CreationDate="2017-03-04T14:40:55.210" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="12703" PostId="4668" Score="2" Text="@mdewey Given that &quot;indicator variable&quot; is more or less the same as &quot;dummy variable&quot; (Scortchi in the linked thread argues that the latter is more general, but still, these are very related terms), it is weird that dummy-variables is a synonym of categorical-data, whereas indicator-variable is left alone. I'd say it's inconsistent. I am not sure that dummy-variables -&gt; categorical-data is a good synonym. It seems it was made by whuber back in 2011 but by now there are almost 2k questions in categorical-data so it might makes sense not to lump too much there." CreationDate="2017-03-04T22:53:01.943" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12710" PostId="4668" Score="0" Text="I would recommend to equate indicator = dummy, as in many ANOVA/general linear model sources. (E.g. &quot;Indicator variable approach&quot; is a overparamerized style to solve general linear model equation)." CreationDate="2017-03-05T07:54:16.630" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="12712" PostId="4669" Score="5" Text="I agree that [dummy-variables] should not be a synonym of [categorical-data]. I agree that [indicator-variables] should be a synonym of [dummy-variables]. But I don't think that having [contrast-variables] and [tag:contrasts] as two separate tags is a good idea. It's not clear to me how these two tags should be separated in usage." CreationDate="2017-03-06T11:16:42.203" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12714" PostId="4669" Score="3" Text="Also, I agree with Scortchi here (http://stats.stackexchange.com/a/125612/28666) that &quot;dummy variable&quot; can have values other than 0 and 1, and so Helmert contrast coding variables can be described as &quot;dummy variables&quot; too." CreationDate="2017-03-06T11:22:22.937" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12715" PostId="4669" Score="1" Text="@amoeba, I think they are didactically distinct, theoretically tied. Contrast is a set of _coefficients_ creating/defining the now being compared groups out of categorical factor(s). Contrast variables are _data_ values, codes. Since we have tag `dummy-variables` for data but define it narrowly (as indicator type contrast variables), we _have_ to compensate and create the wider tag `contrast-variables`. Term &quot;contrast variables&quot; is not my invention, it encounters in literature." CreationDate="2017-03-06T11:23:28.830" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="12716" PostId="4669" Score="1" Text="`I agree with Scortchi here` This is exactly where @Scortchi and I don't agree. I see &quot;dummy variables&quot; as only the binary (1 0), specific type. This is principal issue of terminology. Either the audience decide to follow &quot;Scortchi's&quot; or &quot;my&quot; proposal of definition of &quot;dummy&quot;. If Scortchi's - then we don't need `[contrast-variables]`, but then must play back and recover `[indicator-variables]` (=one-hot) to be a separate tag. You see, this type is so widely used that it deserves a tag." CreationDate="2017-03-06T11:29:24.083" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="12717" PostId="4669" Score="1" Text="P.S. My own background is possibly different somewhat to Scortchi's. I did encounter &quot;dummy variables&quot; in his wide sense (= &quot;my&quot; contrast variables), but much more seldom than &quot;dummy variables&quot; as =indicator (binary) type." CreationDate="2017-03-06T11:35:03.837" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="12718" PostId="4669" Score="4" Text="The distinction between contrasts and contrast variables seems a very subtle one which may only interest a small number of users so I would not want to support that part of the proposal. +1 for the rest" CreationDate="2017-03-06T12:28:08.720" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="12719" PostId="4669" Score="2" Text="One should note that dummy-variables -&gt; categorical-data synonym exists since 2011 and has led to 350+ tag renames (one can see it here http://stats.stackexchange.com/tags/synonyms). Also, there are 500+ questions with &quot;dummy variable&quot; in their body. This makes me wonder whether removing this synonym mapping is the best course of action (even though I said so above)... We are not going to re-tag 300-500 old questions." CreationDate="2017-03-06T14:43:24.957" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12727" PostId="4669" Score="2" Text="amoeba, It was very imprudent decision of @whuber to absorb [dummy-variables] by [categorical-data]. (Even analytically, it was wrong: dummy predictors enter the fitting algorithm as numeric values, they aren't &quot;categorical&quot; anymore.) I would say this should be undone at any &quot;price&quot; - if there price at all." CreationDate="2017-03-06T18:34:18.393" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="12736" PostId="4669" Score="1" Text="@whuber, will you, can you undo the past synonymization of `[dummy-variables]` to `[categorical-data]`?" CreationDate="2017-03-07T11:07:03.147" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="12740" PostId="4669" Score="1" Text="@ttnphns As far as I know, this is impossible in principle. One can delete the synonym mapping, but one can't undo the tag changes that have previously happened via this synonym mapping..." CreationDate="2017-03-08T14:25:32.770" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12747" PostId="4669" Score="2" Text="@amoeba, Anyways, I've seen somewhere in meta here on on SO that _a moderator can abolish_ the tie (mapping). At least this is ought to be done, for the future, for me. (If after it we need to do some &quot;back&quot; retagging manually - we could do it. In particualrly, I could find time(s) re-tag those ~ 500 questions, perhaps)." CreationDate="2017-03-08T17:52:25.500" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="12721" PostId="4671" Score="3" Text="Would the same argument apply to [tag:scikit-learn] tag? That one has over 500 questions by now and is very active." CreationDate="2017-03-06T16:02:16.173" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12722" PostId="4671" Score="3" Text="Meanwhile, I wrote a wiki excerpt for [tag:pandas]." CreationDate="2017-03-06T16:02:32.293" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12723" PostId="4671" Score="3" Text="Speaking about Python tags, there is also [tag:matplotlib]. But if we start deprecating tags like that, a lot of R tags will also need to be deprecated (e.g. [tag:ggplot2])." CreationDate="2017-03-06T16:04:13.770" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12724" PostId="4671" Score="3" Text="Given there is [R] tag (which is the top tag on the site), I don't see why [pandas] is fundamentally different. The same caveats expressed in [R] tag excerpt should apply to other tools." CreationDate="2017-03-06T16:05:21.613" UserDisplayName="user56674" />
  <row Id="12725" PostId="4671" Score="0" Text="@NormalHuman [r] corresponds to [python], not to [pandas]." CreationDate="2017-03-06T16:06:13.407" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12726" PostId="4671" Score="5" Text="I agree w/ @amoeba. Despite our general software policy, I do see a place for tags like `r`, `python`, etc. OTOH, sub-software tags are ambiguous. It seems clear to me that `lme4-lme` has sufficient statistical content, but I'm not sure if, say, `ggplot2` does, &amp; I'm not python savvy enough to know if `pandas` is more like `ggplot2` or `lme4-lme`. I suspect `scikit-learn` is like `lme4-lme`. (On the 3rd hand, if we do start depreciating these, it's going to be a lot of work, &amp; we don't seem to make a lot of progress on tag management tasks.)" CreationDate="2017-03-06T17:34:21.647" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12729" PostId="4671" Score="1" Text="@gung I think [lme4-nlme] is an important tag because these packages do not just implement well-defined algorithms, they almost *define* algorithms, at least to a certain extent; Pinheiro &amp; Bates have a whole book essentially on lme4, AFAIK. In contrast, I don't see much statistical content in [scikit-learn], because it is a collection of well-established statistical algorithms; the developers of the package are not the authors of these algorithms. And I fully agree that there is no statistical content in [ggplot2] or [matplotlib]. As well as in [pandas]." CreationDate="2017-03-06T23:00:32.167" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12730" PostId="4671" Score="0" Text="@gung [continued] In fact, deprecating these tags can be really easy if we simply declare them synonyms of the master language tags. I.e. pandas, scikit-learn, and matplotlib can become synonyms of [python]. And ggplot2 can become a synonym of [r]. This might be a reasonable approach, perhaps worthy of a separate Meta discussion. I don't have a strong opinion either way." CreationDate="2017-03-06T23:02:07.050" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12737" PostId="4671" Score="3" Text="In reply to your Edit: this makes sense. Would you then suggest to eliminate the [sql] tag? What about [latex] tag that was discussed another day on Meta?" CreationDate="2017-03-07T11:58:47.617" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12738" PostId="4671" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, you could post an answer proposing to make `[pandas]` a synonym of `[python]` so that it could be discussed &amp; voted on explicitly." CreationDate="2017-03-07T12:21:28.373" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12739" PostId="4671" Score="0" Text="@gung I am not sure where I stand on this issue. If scikit-learn can be left alone, then I am not sure that pandas can't." CreationDate="2017-03-07T14:05:54.290" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12745" PostId="4671" Score="2" Text="The edits seem to suggest that data management and manipulation have nothing to do with statistics and machine learning.  In my experience, 80% to 90% of the effort on many statistical projects consists of data processing and the details of data management can have important statistical ramifications.  Consequently I have little difficulty imagining how even certain SQL-related questions (obviously not all of them!) could be considered relevant and on topic." CreationDate="2017-03-08T17:04:18.957" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="12749" PostId="4671" Score="1" Text="@whuber: I agree that data manipulation and some aspects of data management are very appropriate questions for CV. But if we allow questions about software for data management, I think that's an extremely slippery slope. To illustrate my view, I think the question &quot;what is a subset of my complete data that I can use to answer my question of interest?&quot; is about data manipulation/management that's definitely on topic, but &quot;how do I use filters in sql?&quot; is also about data manipulation but not on topic. I see the first question as a question about sampling, the second a question about SQL." CreationDate="2017-03-08T21:56:39.297" UserId="76981" />
  <row Id="12765" PostId="4671" Score="1" Text="I agree w/ @CliffAB here. I am hard pressed to imagine any question that is actually *about* SQL that would be sufficiently about statistics / machine learning, etc., to be on topic here IMO. I do recognize that 80-90% of my effort on statistical projects consists of things other than pure stats. Eg, I spend a certain amount of time fussing w/ Outlook (which I am required to use) to manage email threads among multiple collaborators. This is a continuing source of frustration for me &amp; accounts for a real (non-0) amount of my time, but I don't think such questions should be on topic here." CreationDate="2017-03-09T20:30:11.170" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12766" PostId="4671" Score="1" Text="@amoeba:  ggplot2 is about statistical visualization, which is certainly on-topic, when not only about coding.  The exactly same seems to apply to tags like lme4-lme" CreationDate="2017-03-10T10:08:45.107" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="12839" PostId="4671" Score="0" Text="@CliffAB Slippery slopes are slippery because there's no clear cliff where everyone agrees that you've gone off the edge, and no clear fence where there's consensus that this side is in-bounds and that side is out-of-bounds. -- From your comment and post, I don't see where you're wanting to install the handrail. What's *your* bright-line dividing point which separates on-topic software questions from off-topic software questions?" CreationDate="2017-03-19T22:01:06.463" UserId="69382" />
  <row Id="12840" PostId="4671" Score="0" Text="@R.M.: I'm not saying I've come up with a clear, concise line. I'm saying if *any* line exists, it seems that the `[pandas]` tag must be on the other side of it. If no line exists, then how do we say &quot;this question is strictly about software and thus off topic&quot; when we have a `[pandas]` tag?" CreationDate="2017-03-19T22:16:16.837" UserId="76981" />
  <row Id="12728" PostId="4672" Score="0" Text="This all sounds very reasonable, but I am not sure if you argue for or against [pandas] tag. Or e.g. [matplotlib] or [ggplot2] (to name some examples from the comments above)." CreationDate="2017-03-06T22:55:45.207" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12731" PostId="4672" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I had assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that the conclusion to be drawn from a list of positive attributes, accompanied by no negative attributes, would be clear." CreationDate="2017-03-06T23:04:00.403" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="12732" PostId="4672" Score="3" Text="Hmmm, I actually inferred the opposite then. I was thinking that these are potential positives of software tags such as `[r]`, `[python]`, etc, that do not seem to apply well to `[pandas]` &amp; thus `[pandas]` should not be afforded the same protection." CreationDate="2017-03-06T23:07:56.473" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12733" PostId="4672" Score="1" Text="@gung This was my interpretation too." CreationDate="2017-03-06T23:13:08.180" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12734" PostId="4672" Score="0" Text="@Amoeba Could you explain what it is about Pandas that would distinguish it from, say, `R` as a tag?" CreationDate="2017-03-06T23:30:35.633" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="12735" PostId="4672" Score="3" Text="See my two last comments (addressed to @gung) under Cliff's question. I'd say that [pandas] (i) does not have any statistical meaning, (ii) might falsely suggest to somebody that questions about coding something using pandas are on-topic, (iii) does not help syntax highlighting because one can simply use [python] instead (and pandas tag is probably not associated with python syntax anyway, even though this can be fixed). Therefore one could suggest to synonymize pandas with python, and similarly for most other package tags with rare exceptions for particularly prominent/important packages." CreationDate="2017-03-06T23:36:51.653" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12741" PostId="4673" Score="3" Text="Upvote this comment if you think these two tags should be deleted." CreationDate="2017-03-08T16:32:25.740" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12742" PostId="4673" Score="1" Text="Upvote this comment if you think these two tags should stay." CreationDate="2017-03-08T16:32:36.090" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12743" PostId="4673" Score="2" Text="Upvote this comment if you don't really care either way." CreationDate="2017-03-08T16:32:57.073" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13594" PostId="4673" Score="0" Text="**UPDATE:** Based on the voting results (currently 3 votes for deleting, 1 for keeping, and 2 don't care votes), I have just now deleted both tags." CreationDate="2017-05-18T21:18:44.463" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12751" PostId="4674" Score="4" Text="You have an impressively wide-ranging research program." CreationDate="2017-03-09T01:15:33.730" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12752" PostId="4674" Score="1" Text="@gung they are just make-up examples to illustrate the kinds of questions I am talking about." CreationDate="2017-03-09T01:42:54.813" UserId="136742" />
  <row Id="12753" PostId="4678" Score="1" Text="I (not surprisingly) vote for (3)." CreationDate="2017-03-09T13:21:45.543" UserId="76981" />
  <row Id="12754" PostId="4678" Score="0" Text="I would be inclined to prefer option #3. Certainly data storage and manipulation can be very pertinent to statistical analysis, but a whole lot of other things are pertinent that are off topic. As our help states, &quot;if ... [your question is] about ... routine data processing [it is off topic]&quot;." CreationDate="2017-03-09T13:24:12.583" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12755" PostId="4678" Score="0" Text="If there is a close mapping between the library and a particular area of statistics would it not be better to make it a synonym of the statistical concept? So for example ggplot2 would map to data-visualisation. Sorry I cannot give examples for the python ones as I do not use python" CreationDate="2017-03-09T13:34:55.603" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="12756" PostId="4678" Score="0" Text="@CliffAB Can you name all tags from my list that you would get rid of? Or is it only [pandas]? Let's try to see if we can work our some boundary that is self-consistent." CreationDate="2017-03-09T13:52:09.920" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12757" PostId="4678" Score="0" Text="@gung Can you name all tags from my list that you would get rid of? Or is it only [pandas]? Let's try to see if we can work our some boundary that is self-consistent. (Also, maybe we could make/discuss a similar list of R package tags to put this into a broader context.)" CreationDate="2017-03-09T13:52:19.333" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12758" PostId="4678" Score="0" Text="@mdewey This did cross my mind too. Using this logic, e.g. [theano] and [tensorflow] should be mapped to [neural-networks]. However, it's not clear to me where to stop. Would you map [lme4-nlme] with its 1.5k threads to [mixed-models] (2.2k)? I would say such a mapping would be enormously detrimental for the site." CreationDate="2017-03-09T13:56:28.383" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12760" PostId="4678" Score="0" Text="@amoeba: having never used python, I feel like my vote about which tags should go and which should state should have exactly 0 weight." CreationDate="2017-03-09T14:03:02.660" UserId="76981" />
  <row Id="12761" PostId="4678" Score="0" Text="@CliffAB That's fair enough. You are using R, aren't you. How about you name some existing R package tags that you consider non-statistical enough to get rid of? ggplot2? dplyr? sweave? caret?" CreationDate="2017-03-09T14:12:27.647" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12762" PostId="4678" Score="1" Text="As far as [lme4-nlme] is concerned I agree that you cannot now put the toothpaste back in the tube." CreationDate="2017-03-09T14:25:04.787" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="12763" PostId="4678" Score="0" Text="I prefer #1, and suggest the 'off-topic' to be uppercase: 'OFF-TOPIC'. Sometimes, screaming helps :)." CreationDate="2017-03-09T14:35:21.673" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="12764" PostId="4678" Score="0" Text="For the case of R, `[ggplot2]` questions could be on topic as data visualization, `[lme4-lme]` &amp; `[caret]` can certainly have sufficient statistical / machine learning content; OTOH, I am hard pressed to imagine a question that is actually *about* `[dplyr]`, `[sweave]` (or `[latex]`, `[sql]`, etc) that has sufficient stats / ML content to be on topic. I'm not sure I know Python well enough, but I suspect `[scikit-learn]` should stay &amp; `[pandas]` should go." CreationDate="2017-03-09T20:19:25.080" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12768" PostId="4678" Score="0" Text="@gung I can see your reasoning. I would encourage you to post an answer here elaborating on this position, so that we could discuss it &amp; vote on it." CreationDate="2017-03-10T14:56:43.247" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13999" PostId="4678" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I agree with #3 but I'd keep [tensorflow]. It becomes pretty popular and it is something more then &quot;just&quot; a library (something like lme4)." CreationDate="2017-08-09T14:02:21.093" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="12770" PostId="4679" Score="1" Text="Spam we need not discuss. If I understand your second paragraph, you mainly refer to comments, and not questions. So it seems off-topic here in a thread about answering off-topic questions. Comments can be appropriate as remarks on secondary details: whether they are worth preserving is a different question. Good comments often lead to clarification or correction, and can then be excised. I suggest you edit your second paragraph to make it more obviously relevant, or cut it altogether, as it doesn't strengthen the case in your first paragraph." CreationDate="2017-03-11T12:07:50.883" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12771" PostId="4679" Score="1" Text="@NickCox Representation and misrepresentation—including specifically by researchers, but also by health professionals, the police, judges, etc.—are never value-free. When I teach my intro epidemiology grad students, we get to different population measures of mortality. One such is Years of Potential Life Lost, which explicitly values dying young as worse—more mortal—than dying old. Some students are startled by an expression of value in a measure, until I point out that the crude mortality rate values dying young as just as lethal as dying old. All measures are value-laden." CreationDate="2017-03-11T23:22:20.127" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="12772" PostId="4679" Score="2" Text="Carl, I hazard a guess that your outrage at &quot;political correctness&quot; may reference my contention in a different post that sex is not static… questions of statistical representation are challenging, and the ontological question &quot;where did you get the definition of your variables from?&quot; is a critical one, that always has an answer, even an answerer tries to hand-wave over the values creating it. If one does not grapple with questions like &quot;what aspect of sex are we concerned about,&quot; the laws, health providers, border-crossings, and other policies that interpret representation will still ramify." CreationDate="2017-03-11T23:26:35.840" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="12775" PostId="4679" Score="0" Text="@Alexis Not. Haven't seen your post. Nothing to do with you. The discursive problem is felt by the protagonists of personal gender self-identity and not those whose concept of ontogeny is phylogenetically generic enough to be applied to genotyping not-especially-sentient, lower life-forms." CreationDate="2017-03-12T16:04:39.550" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12776" PostId="4679" Score="0" Text="@NickCox OK, examples deleted, frankly not only comments but it is pointless to elaborate, and less is more here." CreationDate="2017-03-12T16:39:48.713" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12778" PostId="4679" Score="2" Text="Obfuscating post-modernist psychobabble is neither a critical assessment of the ontology of the answer to the question ***where did you get your variable definitions from***, nor a critique of the statistical consequences of different forms of measurement. What are you trying to hide?" CreationDate="2017-03-12T20:51:08.460" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="12783" PostId="4679" Score="1" Text="@alexis You appear to be talking at me concerning a topic I did not broach, concerning something you misunderstood from what I said concerning a posted question that I am sure you would have voted to remove as quickly as I did. Moreover, my echo of the 19th century phrase [ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny](http://2000clicks.com/graeme/langwisdomsayingontogenyrecapitulatesphylogeny.htm) is etymologically proper and semantically exact. Please stop with the shadow boxing." CreationDate="2017-03-12T21:51:34.243" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12795" PostId="4682" Score="2" Text="As I said elsewhere, the direction of a tag synonym (once the tags are merged, as these two are) makes almost zero practical difference. It's mostly a question of what tag name we like more. I don't have any strong opinion here, and I am certainly fine with doing the reversal that you suggest. Perhaps you are right and it will make more sense like that. The synonym was originally created this way simply because signed-rank-test was already an existing tag, there was no other reason." CreationDate="2017-03-13T13:36:27.533" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12797" PostId="4682" Score="2" Text="@amoeba, thank you for reply and clarification, and for potential agreement. I hope that my arguments in the answer could weigh sufficiently to do the re-tagging. Both tags ought to start with `wilcoxon...`, for me. (Thank you for creating the very topical thread on ranks.)" CreationDate="2017-03-13T13:42:06.950" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="12814" PostId="4682" Score="2" Text="I've swapped the tag names so that `wilcoxon-signed-rank` is now the synonym." CreationDate="2017-03-15T11:01:14.340" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="12811" PostId="4683" Score="9" Text="As I commented there, I strongly object to describing the situation as &quot;the answer is wrong&quot;. The answer is fine, pedagogical, and helpful. It's not &quot;wrong&quot;. It contains some mistakes/inconsistencies in the code/text, that can be relatively easily fixed without affecting the logic of the answer. If the author does not fix these mistakes following your comment there, then maybe you could do it in a couple of days." CreationDate="2017-03-15T08:27:34.803" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12810" PostId="4685" Score="5" Text="I would add that fixing someone else's &quot;popular but [potentially] misleading answer&quot; is sometimes warranted when its author is not active on CV anymore." CreationDate="2017-03-15T08:20:43.090" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12813" PostId="4685" Score="4" Text="I agree with @amoeba there - when, as in this case, we're not talking about changing the gist of the answer, but rectifying small but nevertheless substantive mistakes. Probably best to get some consensus among other users that the mistakes are indeed mistakes first." CreationDate="2017-03-15T09:32:40.063" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="12832" PostId="4689" Score="4" Text="There is a procedure but you need 3000 rep to participate" CreationDate="2017-03-19T16:17:11.280" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="12834" PostId="4689" Score="4" Text="Even when you're *sure* you know what's being asked, it's usually not a good idea to attempt to answer an ambiguous, nonsensical, or self-contradictory question.  That can be worse than no answer at all, because other readers (including the original proposer) might interpret it in a different sense than you and completely misunderstand your answer.  The comment thread to that question continues to suggest additional clarification is needed.  When (if) the OP elects to edit the post, it will become available for consideration in the reopen queue." CreationDate="2017-03-19T18:12:38.327" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="12835" PostId="4689" Score="0" Text="@whuber, I can't say I like the idea of disagreeing with an user of your experience and skill, but this time I feel I have to. I mean, surely I agree that  questions on hold as unclear shouldn't (and actually can't) be answered. But I don't think the question in object is that unclear. Universal approximation property is a term quite often used with Gaussian Processes, and in general for RKHS methods, both in a frequentist or in a Bayesian framework, although with admittedly quite different meanings." CreationDate="2017-03-19T19:47:04.510" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="12836" PostId="4689" Score="0" Text="maybe I should delete the preceding comment - I don't want to open a technical discussion on Meta, which is not the right place for it." CreationDate="2017-03-19T19:49:37.757" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="12837" PostId="4689" Score="0" Text="I'm not an expert in this, and would gladly defer to you about the subject, but I think I can recognize when a question is inconsistent or self-contradictory.  In this case the referenced Wikipedia article is about neural nets and not about Gaussian processes or RKHS methods.  Moreover, I am familiar with the standard definitions of &quot;function&quot; and &quot;process&quot;: because the question appears to use these in an almost nonsensical way, I am comfortable with waiting until the OP can explain what he means." CreationDate="2017-03-19T20:06:07.863" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="12838" PostId="4689" Score="0" Text="I didn't want to offend anyone. I thought that my comment to the original question, containing a couple links to universal approximation theorems for some particular GP models, would help clarify the situation, but of course that's a personal opinion and I can be wrong. Apologies if I came out as offensive or exerting pressure - it was not intended." CreationDate="2017-03-19T20:20:46.770" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="12845" PostId="4689" Score="8" Text="@DeltaIV I don't think there's a problem. You weren't rude or aggressive. It's fine to ask for clarification or explanation, and it's okay to politely disagree and explain why you think as you do." CreationDate="2017-03-20T05:14:10.577" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12852" PostId="4689" Score="2" Text="DeltaIV, I agree with @Glen_b and apologize if (in the process of conforming to the severe word count limits of a comment) I left the impression of being offended or annoyed: that was not my intent.  The question remains ambiguous and self-contradictory, and the OP has made no efforts so far to clarify it, so I will suggest caution: if you (or anyone else) might elect to answer it, please take care to state what you think the question actually asks before you offer an answer." CreationDate="2017-03-20T17:37:27.013" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="12853" PostId="4689" Score="0" Text="@whuber and Glen_b, thanks for the clarification. If I decide to answer the question, I will take care to clarify my interpretation of the question." CreationDate="2017-03-20T17:50:36.680" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="12843" PostId="4690" Score="1" Text="Please edit the body of your question to be less ambiguous. I never suggested that the merge should be done. I said that I cannot do the merge and that if you wanted a merge you need to go through meta. Particular to your post as I mentioned in the comments of it I think it should be better of as a comment." CreationDate="2017-03-19T23:41:49.730" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="12844" PostId="4690" Score="0" Text="@usεr11852 Why did you bother telling to do something &quot;if you want to&quot; if you did not think it was a good idea. BTW, I do not agree with the comment comment. The rules stipulate to [Provide context for links](http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-answer): &#xA;&#xA;Links to external resources are encouraged, but please add context around the link so your fellow users will have some idea what it is and why it’s there. Always quote the most relevant part of an important link, in case the target site is unreachable or goes permanently offline." CreationDate="2017-03-20T00:54:03.607" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12846" PostId="4690" Score="3" Text="I &quot;bothered&quot; telling you to do something even I disagree with it because you have the same rights as any other CV user and it would be wrong to hide (procedural) information from you just because I disagree with what you may do with it." CreationDate="2017-03-20T07:18:56.180" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="12847" PostId="4690" Score="0" Text="I'm not sure I follow this. A thread isn't a duplicate or not based on whether you like the answers on the master thread. If the question is closed as a duplicate, merging seems fine, but you can also delete your answer &amp; repost it there." CreationDate="2017-03-20T12:41:44.867" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12849" PostId="4690" Score="0" Text="I have now edited the &quot;main&quot; question to have &quot;Cohen's&quot; in the title (and you could have done the same thing), so this part of your argument is not really relevant. I agree with @gung: why don't you re-post your answer in the main thread, if that's where you want it to be?" CreationDate="2017-03-20T15:04:06.617" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12854" PostId="4690" Score="0" Text="@amoeba The last time I did that I ran into a conflict with the moderator who was doing the same thing at the same time. That is, I ported my answer, and he did the same thing simultaneously, which although not a catastrophic outcome, was confusing, and left me wonder how I can port an answer without stepping on someone's toes." CreationDate="2017-03-20T18:22:11.613" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12855" PostId="4690" Score="0" Text="@usεr11852 Thanks for the information, but (see comment above) this is as clear as frozen mud." CreationDate="2017-03-20T18:23:44.280" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12856" PostId="4690" Score="0" Text="Regarding your update. I think when it's about your own answer with 0 upvotes (so far), this is a non-issue: simply move the answer yourself and the case is closed. &quot;Merge&quot; is needed when you want to move other people's answers and/or they are upvoted already (so that deleting+reposting would lose upvotes). Note that I am not sure one can move single answers; when a thread is &quot;merged&quot;, *everything* gets moved." CreationDate="2017-03-20T19:07:25.653" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12857" PostId="4690" Score="0" Text="Carl, I edited your question to remove the obsolete parts - please check if you are fine with it (and roll back if you are not)." CreationDate="2017-03-20T19:13:42.327" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12858" PostId="4690" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Yes, I would have liked a total merge to have occurred. Instead, I got mixed signals. Finally, this is beginning to make sense. I moved my answer and in so doing it has gained votes rapidly. My regret is that the OP of http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/267341/explain-cohens-kappa-in-a-simplest-way  has gained nothing from his contribution." CreationDate="2017-03-20T19:13:59.870" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12860" PostId="4690" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Yes, I am fine with your edit. However, I do wish there was a less clumsy way of getting a merge done. Our current policy seems a bit open ended, that is, it does not necessarily end in a merge, and, it takes too much effort that I would have been better off using on my answer. Any ideas on this would be welcome." CreationDate="2017-03-20T21:04:04.720" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="12851" PostId="4691" Score="0" Text="The thread is now closed as a duplicate. I see no reason why they couldn't be merged." CreationDate="2017-03-20T15:13:57.217" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12863" PostId="4694" Score="20" Text="I applaud your honesty in saying that's what happened, but do please try to avoid this behavior - downvote because you've been able to conclude that the answer has a problem (i.e. you should be able to explain why *you* think the answer is wrong or otherwise problematic - and ideally, actually do so when you downvote)" CreationDate="2017-03-21T08:28:51.687" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12864" PostId="4694" Score="1" Text="I think telling other people how to vote on questions is a total waste of energy. That applies to the entire premise of this question, and to the comment from @Glen_b. You can't control how people vote (both in a general sense, and in a practical sense). Let's just accept the vote counts on this site for what they are - a difficult-to-interpret point system based on a mixture between rating the actual quality of the content and more base motives - and move on." CreationDate="2017-03-21T15:42:39.363" UserId="150516" />
  <row Id="12865" PostId="4694" Score="13" Text="@GoF_Logistic My comment relates to the top answer to the [FAQ question](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7931/faq-for-stack-exchange-sites) &quot;When should I vote?&quot;. It says &quot;*Try not to let other factors like the vote score and other answers influence your vote*&quot; and &quot;*...try to ignore the existing vote score when voting.*&quot; and goes on to list reasons to upvote and downvote. Explaining what the policies are is part of the moderator's tasks, whether you regard it as futile or not." CreationDate="2017-03-21T15:58:35.820" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12867" PostId="4694" Score="2" Text="Sounds like more of a suggestion than a policy. I'm sure everyone will _try_ to keep it in mind." CreationDate="2017-03-21T16:20:44.063" UserId="150516" />
  <row Id="12877" PostId="4694" Score="1" Text="What this site could be is a place to develop new ideas, and it is missing that opportunity by supporting conformity over disturbing novelty. In my case, this site tries my patience at times because when I identify certain points of dogma as flaky, and they often are, I wind up dealing with  irrelevant asides. e.g., outrage, and other ill-considered rants. Missing in that is positing dogma hypothetically, i.e., the scientific method." CreationDate="2017-03-24T20:19:57.493" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="15034" PostId="4694" Score="5" Text="(-1). I am surprised this answer got four upvotes, probably because the OP was sincere and the answer is indeed relevant to what was asked here. I downvoted it based on the assessment that its content shouldn't be followed/rewarded. This is because it reflects an automatic voting pattern, like the one of a robot. Obviously, voting like this can lead to good content being downvoted and also the opposite (as suggested in this question). I agree (from other meta posts) that how people vote is personal, but I support at least reading a post before voting for it." CreationDate="2017-12-28T14:46:20.630" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="15035" PostId="4694" Score="3" Text="@AndreSilva Don't be that serious with voting. They're fake points..." CreationDate="2017-12-28T14:47:41.523" UserId="34623" />
  <row Id="15651" PostId="4694" Score="5" Text="@AndreSilva: I up-voted this answer based on the fact that it shows candour in admitting having engaged in that action, and thereby provides evidence that people sometimes do this.  It is useful information in relation to the topic." CreationDate="2018-04-27T00:30:01.983" UserId="173082" />
  <row Id="12868" PostId="4695" Score="3" Text="I'm willing to place a bounty on that Q of any size you like (I have rep to spare) - maximum is 500 points; there can also be a minimum related to previous bounties - and to award or not award it where you see fit, but I can't really avoid the possibility of an auto-award either. [Well, I suppose strictly speaking there is a way - I believe a bounty can be cancelled by the community moderators  and the reputation refunded - but it would be a clear abuse of the system to try to do that for this situation.]" CreationDate="2017-03-21T23:49:48.610" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12869" PostId="4695" Score="3" Text="@Glen_b I just placed another 200 point bounty on that question to reopen it and hope to get a clear answer." CreationDate="2017-03-22T02:09:40.027" UserId="25" />
  <row Id="12872" PostId="4697" Score="1" Text="I am afraid with 1.5k questions in the [sampling] tag, we cannot do anything about it anymore." CreationDate="2017-03-22T14:46:34.673" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12873" PostId="4697" Score="0" Text="By the way, a brief look at the tag suggests that there are many more meanings of [sampling]. E.g. I see it used for Gibbs sampling, for sampling distribution, and simply for anything about a sample." CreationDate="2017-03-24T09:05:58.877" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12874" PostId="4697" Score="1" Text="@amoeba so basically, anything about statistics? ;)" CreationDate="2017-03-24T09:10:48.567" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="12875" PostId="4697" Score="0" Text="If you take a sample of [sampling], how questions are split between [survey-sampling] and [simulation]? Because if it is something like 70-30%, then it is easier to do something with the 30% and synonymize/rename [sampling] to the 70% tag. Also, should [simulation] and [monte-carlo] be distinct tags (because even if there are differences between them, these differences may not being captured in the way users are tagging questions)?. So, perhaps a good approach is to start with minor tags, until the big one." CreationDate="2017-03-24T16:24:21.583" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="12870" PostId="4698" Score="6" Text="People should look at http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/268914/summation-notation (note that not giving a URL obligates anyone interested to search for themselves). In general, editing is necessary but not sufficient. There have to be sufficient votes to re-open. Otherwise put, whether a question seems clear and on-topic to you is not decisive: it has to seem clear and on-topic to others.  Flagging in this way will let other people decide whether to vote to re-open." CreationDate="2017-03-22T12:03:15.480" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12871" PostId="4698" Score="9" Text="There also has to be time for people to read it: your last edit, finally defining the variables $Y$ &amp; $y$, was made only 10 minutes before you posted this question in Meta. Still unclear are the role of $u$, which makes an entrance early on, only to play no further part in the proceedings; &amp; in which book or paper Hansen et al published something that bears on the matter." CreationDate="2017-03-22T12:37:28.213" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="12879" PostId="4699" Score="4" Text="Even where tags are not quite exactly-exact synonyms, the point of tags is to help you find related information. This means tag categories should not be overly &quot;fine&quot;" CreationDate="2017-03-25T03:53:26.387" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12878" PostId="4700" Score="2" Text="And all good/stable synonyms should be eventually merged." CreationDate="2017-03-25T00:53:31.990" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="12889" PostId="4700" Score="0" Text="@AndreSilva Why don't you post a slightly expanded version of the above comment as an answer to https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2790 ?" CreationDate="2017-03-27T13:44:41.430" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12892" PostId="4700" Score="1" Text="@AndreSilva I was not aware of the badge issue. I think it's better if somebody else answers the question even if the answer is basically &quot;Yes, it's a good idea&quot;, because this allows other people to vote for it more explicitly (upvoting the question can sometimes mean that the topic is worth discussing, not necessarily an agreement with the specific proposal)." CreationDate="2017-03-27T14:06:41.253" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13905" PostId="4700" Score="0" Text="whuber, can you kindly visit the dilemma [if we ought to create tag &quot;dummy-variables&quot;](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/4881/3277) and leave there a comment either con or pro?" CreationDate="2017-07-28T09:35:28.937" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="13909" PostId="4700" Score="0" Text="@ttnphns There's too much for me to follow there, but even in the subset of comments I have read I see much agreement and sensible proposals.  It's simple to create synonyms for tags, so why not first agree on the categories the tags are intended to delimit (which seems close to being accomplished), then choose a set of names for each category and create sets of synonyms corresponding to them?" CreationDate="2017-07-28T13:29:34.847" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="13910" PostId="4700" Score="0" Text="whuber, maybe you did not understand me. I'm inviting top people there to that question to say, in a comment there whether they (1) stand for me &quot;we do need a _separate_ tag `dummy-variables` (I've put some reasons for), or (2) stand for amoeba &quot;we should make that tag a _synonym_ to `categorical-encoding`&quot;, or (3) no opinion." CreationDate="2017-07-28T13:41:40.507" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="12880" PostId="4701" Score="6" Text="Please see https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=election." CreationDate="2017-03-25T21:47:07.093" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="12881" PostId="4701" Score="0" Text="Thank you. It seems that there are a lot of elections that began on February 14.  But I still do not understand how one gets nominated." CreationDate="2017-03-25T22:35:22.600" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="12882" PostId="4701" Score="2" Text="Meta Stack Exchange FAQ: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/135360/theres-an-election-going-on-whats-happening-and-how-does-it-work" CreationDate="2017-03-25T23:04:38.393" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="12883" PostId="4701" Score="0" Text="It looks to me that I can nominate myself for moderator.  Andre, thank you for the link.  What is my next step?" CreationDate="2017-03-25T23:25:28.453" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="12884" PostId="4701" Score="11" Text="You can nominate yourself only when there is an election. FWIW, I don't think reputation really means all that much relative to whether someone would be a good moderator or not." CreationDate="2017-03-26T02:29:27.930" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12885" PostId="4701" Score="10" Text="I agree with @gung. Above (say) 10000 rep, there are many plausible people.  I would look for a sustained profile of positive contributions, including being firm but fair on difficult issues. We are not looking for saints, but we are looking for good diplomats. gung has the highest reputation of non-moderators but more crucially a record of invariably positive contributions: he would be an excellent moderator. amoeba's work on tags and many other contributions makes him another person I would very much see as a future moderator. Naturally, willingness to stand is essential too." CreationDate="2017-03-26T10:02:25.090" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12886" PostId="4701" Score="0" Text="@NickCox considering badges and doing moderator tasks, do you consider me a good candidate for moderator? I do think there is certainly some experience that is necessary and it is partially measured by reputation.  I only asked whether or not I was eligible to nominate myself. That seems to have been answered in this thread. I have done some work on tags but I cannot say that I have done more than others on any of these things.  This is not a popularity contest but is campaigning necessary?" CreationDate="2017-03-26T13:02:09.037" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="12887" PostId="4701" Score="7" Text="There is a campaign period lasting some days before an election during which people set out a platform and answer questions. Sometimes the questions are sharp. In one recent election as I recall one candidate had as one part of his platform the notion that being elected as a moderator would encourage him to continue as a member!   But the real campaign is on whatever you've done while a member." CreationDate="2017-03-26T14:04:52.990" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12913" PostId="4701" Score="2" Text="Giving my two cents about the question you asked to Nick Cox (sorry to be nosy, but I think I can help); I don't think you are a good candidate for moderator, **yet**. This is because I think you still need to get acquainted with some mechanisms from how the SE system works (I say this based on some recent questions of yours here in CV Meta. Also, despite you are a member for 5 years, if my memory does not fail I remember you saying you were not active all those years, is that correct?). But I do think you have a great potential to get there." CreationDate="2017-03-28T15:36:12.783" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="12915" PostId="4701" Score="2" Text="@Andre Thank you for the encouragement.  I have always respected your opinion.  I don't ask many questions on CV Meta but I do think those I have written are improving.  I said that I have been a member for nearly five years.  I have only been off the stack exchange sites briefly when I was ill.  I also have spent a lot of time on the Mathematics site.  I hope the CV members will pick me now, otherwise maybe next time." CreationDate="2017-03-28T15:47:01.537" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="12918" PostId="4701" Score="1" Text="@MichaelChernick You seem to be confused: there is no &quot;now&quot;. No election is being currently held." CreationDate="2017-03-28T17:36:55.597" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12920" PostId="4701" Score="0" Text="I did not make it up.  I heard it from someone." CreationDate="2017-03-28T19:05:39.660" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="12922" PostId="4701" Score="2" Text="I see. Well, this was a misinformation." CreationDate="2017-03-28T19:25:00.000" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12923" PostId="4701" Score="0" Text="@MichaelChernick, where did you hear that? When will the election be?" CreationDate="2017-03-28T21:33:05.507" UserId="150516" />
  <row Id="12924" PostId="4701" Score="0" Text="I was told that this would happen in April of 2017." CreationDate="2017-03-28T21:37:22.427" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="12888" PostId="4702" Score="4" Text="Have you looked at [the existing Meta threads tagged with tag-proposal](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/tag-proposal)? This would give you some idea about current practice." CreationDate="2017-03-27T13:33:28.327" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13033" PostId="4703" Score="3" Text="You mention merging helping people progressing toward badges ... but one disadvantage of merging is that it can remove badges from people that have already earned both; that's unlikely with gold badges but it definitely happens with lower badges. I have lost badges in merges and I expect other high reputation users have as well. [not that it's so very important in that the people impacted probably don't care so much about losing the odd badge compared to the larger number who will gain badges, but it's worth keeping in mind that there's another side to that equation]." CreationDate="2017-04-05T22:46:01.110" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="15331" PostId="4703" Score="3" Text="I am marking this as accepted now because it seems that nobody disagrees and because today @gung merged a whole bunch of older synonyms. On Meta there are no unmerged ones left. On the main site there are still some old ones to merge; hopefully they will be taken care of soon too." CreationDate="2018-02-20T21:53:33.673" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12894" PostId="4704" Score="2" Text="... and enjoy your moment in the sun for about 10 minutes." CreationDate="2017-03-27T15:10:36.593" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="12895" PostId="4704" Score="11" Text="Some people want the voting badges so much that they vote indiscriminately for the maximum (40 votes) each day until they reach 600 votes, then stop.  I believe we have such a user operating right now.  I haven't tried to track them down--it's not worthwhile.  In the past, complaints to the SE powers have gotten no response, so evidently this behavior is tolerated." CreationDate="2017-03-27T15:20:20.693" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="12896" PostId="4704" Score="3" Text="@whuber It's a pitty that there is no symphatizer badge for users with high number of upvotes for high-entropy answers..." CreationDate="2017-03-27T15:24:14.753" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="12899" PostId="4704" Score="4" Text="To answer the question in the title--no, of course not. I'm sure there's a correlation, e.g. if all I knew about two answers is that one is +20 and the other is -2, my best guess would be that the +20 is a better answer, but I think we've all seen plenty of answers of a low quality answer getting upvotes and high quality answers getting few upvotes...There are many possible reasons... Lack of understanding by the voter(s), voting score &quot;momentum&quot;, and the popularity (or non-popularity) of the poster most likely all play a role. It's possible that trolls play a role too, as whuber indicates." CreationDate="2017-03-27T17:47:30.473" UserId="150516" />
  <row Id="12900" PostId="4704" Score="5" Text="Yeah, this nonsense happens. I've seen a number of cases recently where posts that should in no way have had upvotes got one within minutes - or even seconds - of being posted." CreationDate="2017-03-27T21:19:55.993" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12901" PostId="4704" Score="2" Text="I don't think this is really a duplicate. The linked question is about how answerers should be evaluated (presumably across all their answers), this question is just about the narrower issue of whether votes on a given answer correspond to answer quality. They are clearly related, but I don't think this needs to be closed. I'm voting to leave open." CreationDate="2017-03-28T12:33:31.233" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="12911" PostId="4704" Score="1" Text="Tim, @Andre, I changed the title of this post, trying to match it to how I understood the main issue. Tim, your question body does not contain any answers so feel free to edit the title again if you feel that I did not capture your intention. Note that a question on Meta has to be *a question*." CreationDate="2017-03-28T15:34:54.170" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12916" PostId="4704" Score="3" Text="I can't see the history of this. A benign hypothesis is that it once made sense and was upvoted accordingly but then the OP decided to withdraw it but did not know how to delete it, so scribbled over it. We've heard less benign guesses." CreationDate="2017-03-28T16:57:26.397" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12917" PostId="4704" Score="0" Text="@NickCox There is a way to see the history, so it's easy to reject your benign hypothesis. See http://stats.stackexchange.com/posts/270116/revisions or even http://stats.stackexchange.com/posts/270116/timeline." CreationDate="2017-03-28T17:34:40.650" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12919" PostId="4704" Score="1" Text="@Amoeba I didn't see that (and don't know why, as I've looked at edit histories before). As my suggestion might be an answer to other cases, I would want to give a little push to the principle that we shouldn't assume the worst explanation without explicit evidence." CreationDate="2017-03-28T17:39:17.980" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12921" PostId="4704" Score="1" Text="@NickCox Sure. I wanted to share these links because they are not easy to find: the second one (with `timeline`) is, as far as I know, an undocumented feature in a sense that there is no way to find such timeline pages using the site navigation; one has to know the URL and type it manually. I discovered it only recently. The first link (with `revisions`) is easy to find once a post was edited at least once, but if a post has never been edited then this link is normally not displayed." CreationDate="2017-03-28T19:21:56.460" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12925" PostId="4704" Score="5" Text="There's a possibility that Nick is right - it could happen that someone posts something more typical, it's upvoted but then vandalized by the OP all within the first few minutes (inside the time window when it doesn't count as a new edit). I didn't check the timeline but if the vote came within a few minutes of the post. that might have been the case." CreationDate="2017-03-28T22:11:23.817" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12968" PostId="4704" Score="0" Text="I can see not downvoting because it would be a waste of time.  Giving an upvote doesn't make sense to me.  What would the OP be thinking even to post such a question?" CreationDate="2017-04-03T20:03:32.967" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="13904" PostId="4705" Score="0" Text="Glen_b, can you kindly visit the dilemma [if we ought to create tag &quot;dummy-variables&quot;](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/4881/3277) and leave there a comment either con or pro?" CreationDate="2017-07-28T09:33:44.817" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="13906" PostId="4705" Score="0" Text="@ttn I believe I went there 8 hours ago, and commented, and voted. (my comment is under amoeba's answer). Amoeba has been discussing it with me in chat as well." CreationDate="2017-07-28T09:40:53.560" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12936" PostId="4706" Score="1" Text="That's a neat idea @AndreSilva." CreationDate="2017-03-30T09:06:36.663" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="12944" PostId="4706" Score="1" Text="We have reached 99,250 questions on CV.  At this pace I think we will reach 100,000 questions sometime on Monday April 3rd." CreationDate="2017-03-30T21:04:20.880" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="12954" PostId="4706" Score="3" Text="As the comments below suggest, even something as simple as defining 100,000 questions is rubbery and inexact:  questions are deleted, removed etc." CreationDate="2017-04-01T15:02:55.210" UserId="24905" />
  <row Id="12983" PostId="4706" Score="5" Text="In stock markets there's a measure called session high, we can use the same concept: the celebration happens on the day during which at any time the questions count hit 100k" CreationDate="2017-04-04T15:37:04.807" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="13120" PostId="4706" Score="1" Text="@MichaelChernick, it is taking longer than you indicated. It is about 9 days since your comment, while your forecast was roughly 4.5 days. Let us see how much longer we need to wait." CreationDate="2017-04-07T10:05:32.617" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="13121" PostId="4706" Score="0" Text="@RichardHardy My first guess was based on naive understanding of how the question number was defined.  After my latest projection the total fell back under 99,800. I still think it will be within the next two or three days." CreationDate="2017-04-07T10:11:20.910" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="13131" PostId="4706" Score="0" Text="@MichaelChernick, wow, it is down to 99,715... We are facing a countdown here." CreationDate="2017-04-08T14:58:35.800" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="13174" PostId="4706" Score="1" Text="@MichaelChernick, up at 99,957 -- looks promising :)" CreationDate="2017-04-11T13:55:02.450" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="13231" PostId="4706" Score="1" Text="I'm going to celebrate myself tonight" CreationDate="2017-04-13T18:27:56.430" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="13233" PostId="4706" Score="0" Text="Sounds good Aksakal." CreationDate="2017-04-13T18:55:15.493" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="12926" PostId="4707" Score="3" Text="I don't know of any way to save a search apart from copying and pasting its text into a file somewhere.  However, perhaps what you're looking for is accomplished by specifying preferred tags in [your user preferences](http://stats.stackexchange.com/users/preferences/58675).  Could that be it?" CreationDate="2017-03-29T16:14:24.043" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="12927" PostId="4707" Score="2" Text="@whuber very interesting! In particular [this link](http://stackexchange.com/filters/280889/my-filter) seems to do what I want (send me questions corresponding to certain tags, with a certain time frequency). I can then sort the question list by `unanswered`. I will try it out!" CreationDate="2017-03-29T16:40:39.767" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="12928" PostId="4708" Score="1" Text="bookmarking the search return page is also a great idea! It could be less &quot;intrusive&quot; than getting the email alert. I can experiment with both and see what I like the most. Thanks!" CreationDate="2017-03-29T16:42:00.807" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="12979" PostId="4711" Score="1" Text="I merged into the new tag name. Thanks very much for this." CreationDate="2017-04-04T11:00:27.730" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="12970" PostId="4715" Score="0" Text="I know some of us are located in the Philadelphia area." CreationDate="2017-04-03T21:31:28.730" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="12971" PostId="4715" Score="1" Text="Yeap. That would be nice!" CreationDate="2017-04-03T21:50:36.793" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="12972" PostId="4715" Score="4" Text="Whiskey and cigars? Not the most diplomatic choice, even suggested flippantly! Different but not negligible fractions of people here are likely to be appalled by one or the other or even both." CreationDate="2017-04-03T21:56:31.937" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12973" PostId="4715" Score="3" Text="@NickCox in no way my suggestion was meant to be inclusive, yet participants aren't required to have unhealthy habits: carrot juice and kale are in ample supply across the country." CreationDate="2017-04-03T22:07:40.297" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="12975" PostId="4715" Score="2" Text="Hah! Now there's a presumption on a strongly international forum that just one country is involved. Don't give up the day job for diplomacy. Insert smileys to some large power." CreationDate="2017-04-03T22:13:23.467" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12977" PostId="4715" Score="0" Text="@NickCox: Or appalled by neither individually, but by the combination." CreationDate="2017-04-04T09:53:10.070" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="12978" PostId="4715" Score="4" Text="@Scortchi At the end of the meeting people could award the R.A. Fisher prize for obstinate use of tobacco in the face of statistical evidence. (Sorry, if it's in Philadelphia, I can't be there.)" CreationDate="2017-04-04T10:06:44.703" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12981" PostId="4715" Score="0" Text="There are less than 500 questions to go to reach the 100,000 number!" CreationDate="2017-04-04T15:25:11.380" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="12982" PostId="4715" Score="0" Text="@MichaelChernick, then we got to hurry up. it's harder to reserve seats in bars in the 2nd half of the week! that's assuming that the celebrations are in non-prohibitive geographies" CreationDate="2017-04-04T15:35:41.023" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="12984" PostId="4715" Score="0" Text="@NickCox, the [latest research](http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/03/23/521219318/cancer-is-partly-caused-by-bad-luck-study-finds) indicates that smoking hazard function is greatly overestimated: most cancer is caused by random mutation which have nothing to do with behavioral or environmental factors! It's just the sample size is so large that eventually everyone gets the bad luck mutation and dies" CreationDate="2017-04-04T15:40:40.600" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="12985" PostId="4715" Score="3" Text="I am old enough to remember when it was greatly underestimated, just after many doctors recommended smoking as good for you. So, I don't change my attitudes to follow the latest twist in the wind." CreationDate="2017-04-04T15:55:32.747" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="12993" PostId="4715" Score="4" Text="@NickCox and Aksakal: **NOPE:** Tomasetti and Vogelstein fell *profoundly* afoul of the atomistic fallacy. See for example, Sornette, D. and Favre, M. (2015). [Debunking mathematically the logical fallacy that cancer risk is just “bad luck”](http://link.springer.com/article/10.1140/epjnbp/s40366-015-0026-0). *EPJ Nonlinear Biomedical Physics*, 3(10):1–6. **Aside:** *Science* is generally not where epidemiologists publish major findings." CreationDate="2017-04-04T22:48:09.937" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="12994" PostId="4715" Score="0" Text="@Alexis that's an old paper. I'm referring to a new one" CreationDate="2017-04-04T22:49:41.177" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="12995" PostId="4715" Score="0" Text="Who is in the Portland, Oregon area? :)" CreationDate="2017-04-04T22:49:51.510" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="12997" PostId="4715" Score="0" Text="@Alexis pretty amazing considering that the paper I refer to was published in 2017 and yours is fon 2015" CreationDate="2017-04-04T23:00:18.530" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="12998" PostId="4715" Score="0" Text="Aw gosh, I see now that is a more recent paper by the same authors. Looks interesting, too. More nuanced." CreationDate="2017-04-05T02:00:12.233" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="12999" PostId="4715" Score="0" Text="@Alexis Also it was observed that [years of Smoking Associated with Lower Parkinson’s Risk](https://www.aan.com/PressRoom/Home/PressRelease/813)" CreationDate="2017-04-05T02:40:57.927" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="13029" PostId="4718" Score="0" Text="Many of us are in the United States and probably would not be able to makes the trip to Australia especially since the day will come within the next few days. There is really no time to book the trip." CreationDate="2017-04-05T21:21:00.843" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="13030" PostId="4718" Score="2" Text="We should start planning 200K in Australia." CreationDate="2017-04-05T21:35:06.750" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="13035" PostId="4718" Score="1" Text="There are a few Sydneysiders about the site, so it might be worth considering doing something small for the 100K; if not on the day then perhaps during the ensuing days" CreationDate="2017-04-06T02:10:18.083" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13036" PostId="4718" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b Good. How should we organise it?" CreationDate="2017-04-06T02:24:48.850" UserId="34623" />
  <row Id="13041" PostId="4718" Score="1" Text="@Small I'd suggest that at this stage (since the site will probably hit it something like Friday night Zulu time, which would be Saturday for you) you should just nominate a convenient time and place for you (or suggest a couple of possibilities if you prefer) and see if anyone says they'd come (or suggests an alternative). You may not get any takers at this stage but it's probably worth trying either for the weekend or during next week. You could always make a chat room if you want to be able to negotiate places/times." CreationDate="2017-04-06T04:42:34.340" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13093" PostId="4718" Score="0" Text="It is 8 PM EDT from 8 PM yesterday to 8 PM today the number of questions increased from 99,700 to 99, 803. At this rate we should hit 100,000 in a little less than two days." CreationDate="2017-04-07T00:03:39.613" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="13130" PostId="4718" Score="3" Text="We lost about 200 questions so far today.  Maybe we will have to wait a little longer." CreationDate="2017-04-08T04:10:24.537" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="13163" PostId="4718" Score="1" Text="An idea: if you run out of time to organize the event, then just go through open questions looking for those to be closed, that would buy you a few more days :)" CreationDate="2017-04-10T19:23:20.093" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="13164" PostId="4718" Score="0" Text="We just passed 99,900 for the first time." CreationDate="2017-04-11T02:17:05.630" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="13165" PostId="4718" Score="0" Text="@MichaelChernick If the US people decide to meet. I will start a new post to check any interest for Sydney, Australia." CreationDate="2017-04-11T02:17:54.463" UserId="34623" />
  <row Id="13166" PostId="4718" Score="0" Text="@Aksaka Why do you want to delay it?  Many of us vote to close open questions that seem to fail the requirements of the site but we don't do it just to keep the number of open questions from increasing." CreationDate="2017-04-11T02:20:30.900" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="13167" PostId="4718" Score="2" Text="@SmallChess, US people cherish their privacy, and don't want to see each other" CreationDate="2017-04-11T02:25:44.547" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="13168" PostId="4718" Score="0" Text="@Aksakal I don't think I can do it in Australia then... I don't care my privacy because I don't have it." CreationDate="2017-04-11T02:35:06.037" UserId="34623" />
  <row Id="13169" PostId="4718" Score="1" Text="@SmallChess, why don't you start an answer with your place of choice? who knows maybe there are folks in the area willing to smoke and drink" CreationDate="2017-04-11T02:51:00.610" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="13184" PostId="4718" Score="0" Text="We are now only 21 questions short of 100,000." CreationDate="2017-04-11T16:20:21.790" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="13185" PostId="4718" Score="0" Text="We just reached 100,000 questions! I am not sure that it will last." CreationDate="2017-04-11T19:53:13.737" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="13189" PostId="4718" Score="0" Text="Take a look at amoeba's link that captures the moment on the question about celebrating 100,000 questions in Australia SmallChess." CreationDate="2017-04-11T21:48:10.673" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="13477" PostId="4719" Score="1" Text="presently merging [nested] into [nested-data]" CreationDate="2017-05-08T10:21:19.607" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13478" PostId="4719" Score="1" Text="I believe it's complete." CreationDate="2017-05-08T10:22:39.837" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13497" PostId="4719" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b Thanks! If possible, could you now remove the synonym mapping nested--&gt;nested-data? There is no sense in automatic mapping of nested into either nested-data or nested-models in the future." CreationDate="2017-05-08T19:13:35.923" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13498" PostId="4719" Score="1" Text="I have some misgivings about that (such as people now using &quot;nested&quot; again), but done as requested." CreationDate="2017-05-08T22:34:17.173" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13499" PostId="4719" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b Thanks. I would not worry about reappearing of &quot;nested&quot;. So far, whenever we replaced tag A by A-foo and A-bar (I think this happened a couple of times), A did not reappear. I think this makes sense because when people start typing A, they get A-foo and A-bar as suggestions and will choose one of them." CreationDate="2017-05-09T06:50:47.467" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13150" PostId="4720" Score="7" Text="My suggestion, especially if writing Python/Julia/Octave/R/Haskell or anything with a Jupyter kernel: write Jupyter Notebooks and publish those. Github will render them for you, as can https://nbviewer.jupyter.org. Supports all the usual formatting features above, with the added advantage that a reader can open the published Notebook and start experimenting with it immediately. Even if the language lacks a Jupyter kernel (say, C), I can script the process of building &amp; running the code in the Notebook." CreationDate="2017-04-10T01:34:20.323" UserId="31187" />
  <row Id="16972" PostId="4720" Score="0" Text="You may view my profile, or see [my answer for this Math.Meta.SE question](https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/a/29462/290189) for a quick start guide to set up a free personal math blog." CreationDate="2018-12-05T05:07:28.867" UserId="194221" />
  <row Id="13014" PostId="4721" Score="1" Text="Are you tracking your days according to GMT?  (Local time is irrelevant for this badge.)" CreationDate="2017-04-05T14:04:29.400" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="13015" PostId="4721" Score="2" Text="Yes, with GMT tracking, still count got reset" CreationDate="2017-04-05T14:05:16.760" UserDisplayName="user12065" />
  <row Id="13016" PostId="4721" Score="6" Text="Your record shows little activity on our site.  Although the details of what kinds of activity qualify for this badge are not publicly known, it is known that merely logging in does not count as being active on the site.  The point of this badge is to encourage people into constructive interaction: editing, voting, commenting, asking, answering.  If you do those, the badges will take care of themselves." CreationDate="2017-04-05T14:09:05.403" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="13017" PostId="4721" Score="1" Text="@whuber I understand what you are saying in the spirit of badge, but in the letter there is a bug which causes the reset, there is some programming bug, some data corruption, that needs to be taken care of..." CreationDate="2017-04-05T14:15:16.943" UserDisplayName="user12065" />
  <row Id="13018" PostId="4721" Score="4" Text="I'm not seeing any evidence of such a bug.  As I wrote above, I find very little evidence of any activity by you on our main site.  I'm surprised you actually got up to 22 days." CreationDate="2017-04-05T14:18:25.507" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="13019" PostId="4721" Score="2" Text="@whuber I am not sure what kind of evidence you are looking for here. Should I have 21 different questions asked on consecutive days to provide evidence ? If you want to ignore the bug its all right." CreationDate="2017-04-05T14:24:49.217" UserDisplayName="user12065" />
  <row Id="13020" PostId="4721" Score="6" Text="I am not advocating ignoring a bug--I'm just saying there's nothing here anyone can take any action about, because there's no evidence of any bug at all: http://stats.stackexchange.com/users/12065/sarvex?tab=activity.  (As a moderator I have access to far more detailed information than that--but it doesn't show anything more.)" CreationDate="2017-04-05T14:26:07.480" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="13021" PostId="4721" Score="0" Text="These are my votes http://stats.stackexchange.com/users/12065/sarvex?tab=votes They show a regular activity apart for April 3 which is counted as missed" CreationDate="2017-04-05T14:28:47.663" UserDisplayName="user12065" />
  <row Id="13022" PostId="4721" Score="3" Text="It looks like this is [status-bydesign], as @whuber said." CreationDate="2017-04-05T15:31:54.710" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13291" PostId="4721" Score="0" Text="Might want to consider posting the votes issue as a separate bug report. It is probably just a caching issue, but still better to report two separate issues in two separate posts nevertheless." CreationDate="2017-04-18T09:59:32.443" UserId="72321" />
  <row Id="13059" PostId="4723" Score="1" Text="I suggest linking to this answer: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/66485 and possibly even quoting from it here, because this seems to be the main point of confusion." CreationDate="2017-04-06T14:55:50.857" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13060" PostId="4724" Score="1" Text="This seems more like a comment than an answer. I have never seen anyone argue that non-participation on SE is equivalent to zero reputation in any worthwhile sense. Sure, Sir David Cox and Brad Efron don't hang around here that we can see, and fine. My own wild guess is that lack of inclination is more crucial than lack of time. Everyone has to have some rules for what they don't do. For one interesting story on why someone dropped out, see https://kbroman.wordpress.com/2013/05/13/stack-exchange-why-i-dropped-out/" CreationDate="2017-04-06T15:16:32.750" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="13062" PostId="4724" Score="0" Text="@NickCox It does take time to formulate a thorough answer to a question, even when the inclination is there. Some of the excellent responses I've read here must have taken several hours at a minimum to write. Thanks for the link. Karl Broman's answer to drop off of SE seems a bit extreme - I think the answer is just don't get hung up on rep pts. It can be addictive, almost like a drug, tracking your rep pts. I'm not sure that's a good thing." CreationDate="2017-04-06T15:40:29.840" UserId="13634" />
  <row Id="13063" PostId="4724" Score="0" Text="Indeed: I would never deny that serious participation here takes a chunk of personal time. But if reputation is really not important, then not even talking or thinking about it is implied, just as I don't know or care about &lt;I won't say what; someone will be irritated&gt;." CreationDate="2017-04-06T15:46:24.003" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="13116" PostId="4725" Score="6" Text="[I've deleted the entire exchange here, even the good comments (and those below one of the answers which thread also went in a singularly unproductive direction). I don't think the kind of behavior seen here has any place on stackexchange; indeed now it's closed as a duplicate I'm inclined to remove this post altogether. If anyone wishes to behave in this sort of fashion I suggest you spend your time in a forum where that's accepted. This isn't it. If you can't be considerably more constructive than was displayed here by several users, be elsewhere.]" CreationDate="2017-04-07T02:37:45.480" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13117" PostId="4725" Score="3" Text="_If anyone wishes to behave in this sort of fashion I suggest you spend your time in a forum where that's accepted. This isn't it. If you can't be considerably more constructive than was displayed here by several users, be elsewhere._ Well said. Lots of unconstructive comments in that thread from several users. It's too bad it escalated as far as it did. Deleting the comments was the right decision, and I doubt much useful content would be lost by deleting the question altogether." CreationDate="2017-04-07T05:20:38.387" UserId="109178" />
  <row Id="13118" PostId="4725" Score="2" Text="@Glen_b Gosh, yesterday was one rare evening when I decided to go to bed early without reading CV - and now it turns out I missed one of the so rare comment fights! Sad." CreationDate="2017-04-07T07:12:48.700" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13126" PostId="4725" Score="3" Text="I also noticed a considerable increase in downvoted  (usually 1 per post) on first time posts. Some downvotes are normal, and you don't have to post a comment to explain why you downvoted. However, I think on average newcomers should be treated more gently. If the community gets a reputation of being harsh to new users, this won't be good for the site growth." CreationDate="2017-04-07T11:54:22.093" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="13072" PostId="4726" Score="6" Text="More than 10% of the questions here have the tumbleweed badge, mainly given for low views (&lt;20 in a week or so). That shows the main problem: Not enough eyes to really follow up on all the questions." CreationDate="2017-04-06T21:44:14.317" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="13075" PostId="4726" Score="7" Text="@kjetilbhalvorsen Good point. I have no idea how to persuade anyone to contribute here if they don't independently think that it will be (in no particular order) fun; educational, as helping you think through a question and learn from other answers; ideally of some help to others. Otherwise put, whatever satisfaction people get by contributing is essentially personal, visible only here, and not of (say) career benefit." CreationDate="2017-04-06T21:51:26.060" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16819" PostId="4726" Score="0" Text="It seems to me that some of the other StackExchange have downvoting problems much worse than ours, [*exemplis gratis*](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/316262/341152), and by comparison most ([but not all](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/4694/99274)) cross-validated participants are gentle by comparison. Nevertheless, downvoting is a negative, and occasionally I review my downvotes and retract some. Interestingly, the higher my reputation has become, the lesser downvoting seems to be problematic. Is there an ugly patch of reputation around 1k-5k where it matters more? Why?" CreationDate="2018-10-21T03:58:50.397" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16820" PostId="4726" Score="0" Text="Could be that with some or even most of us, the longer you stick around, the less surprised you are by lousy questions or answers. I've shifted a little to more emphasis on explaining what's wrong; and to voting to close  as a reaction to the content not the poster. I am occasionally happy to pile on with a &quot;Me too!&quot; downvote if and only if the poster is spamming or being very rude or otherwise obnoxious. Also, asking numerous different versions of the same question is a personal no-no.  That wastes too much time and effort from people who answer." CreationDate="2018-10-21T09:11:12.213" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16821" PostId="4726" Score="0" Text="This thread remains striking. The OP answered and accepted their own answer, which is always allowed, but the voting went the other way." CreationDate="2018-10-21T10:36:55.823" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="13129" PostId="4728" Score="0" Text="A duplicate question detector, placed inline between the submit and the post, might point someone to what they were looking for.  There is also the idea that the user thinks it is not a duplicate when the machine does, so the user might like the option to say &quot;it isn't really a duplicate&quot;.  Tracking of folks who say &quot;yeah, it was a duplicate, might go to be a +0.5 to the answer, for saving the creation of another question from being posted." CreationDate="2017-04-07T19:50:26.237" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="13132" PostId="4731" Score="0" Text="There might be a few left over threads, at least I find several with the following searches: http://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bwilcoxon%5D+%22rank+sum%22+is%3Aquestion (3 Qs), http://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bwilcoxon%5D+%22whitney%22+is%3Aquestion (2 Qs), http://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bwilcoxon%5D+%22mann%22+is%3Aquestion (1 more Q). I did not look into them (yet), but some of them might need retagging too." CreationDate="2017-04-09T13:42:09.050" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13133" PostId="4731" Score="0" Text="Re Wilcoxon-Gehan, I know nothing about it, but this search http://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=Wilcoxon+Gehan+is%3Aquestion (only 5 Qs mentioning Wilcoxon and Gehan) suggests that this tag is not much needed. Perhaps tagging with [survival] is enough?" CreationDate="2017-04-09T13:46:03.400" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13134" PostId="4731" Score="1" Text="As far as your left over ones are concerned I think many of these are in fact signed ranks even if they speak about rank sum. I suppose I could double tag them which is what I did with some of the others." CreationDate="2017-04-09T14:04:29.413" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="13136" PostId="4731" Score="0" Text="I am somewhat reluctant to have `[wilcoxon]` made a synonym of `wmw`, in that `w` could be used for a number of things. In the future, new or careless users will type `w` for what they want (something else) &amp; then it will be mapped to `wmw` &amp; thus mistagged. W/ 129 remaining, it's a heavy lift, but I wonder if manually retagging them &amp; letting `w` die might be preferable." CreationDate="2017-04-09T15:40:05.213" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13137" PostId="4731" Score="0" Text="@gung in fact the remaining ones are supposed to be wilcoxon signed ranks but I take your point. I think the safest thing is to do them manually. It is only 129 whereas there were nearly 300 so will not take many days to achieve." CreationDate="2017-04-09T15:44:34.223" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="13138" PostId="4731" Score="1" Text="I have now re-tagged the Wilcoxon-Gehan one with [survival]." CreationDate="2017-04-09T16:19:54.510" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="13139" PostId="4731" Score="1" Text="@gung The idea is *not* to make [w] the synonym of [wsr]. The idea is to transfer all threads from [w] to [wsr] via tag merge and then to delete [w] tag altogether." CreationDate="2017-04-09T17:55:27.390" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13140" PostId="4731" Score="1" Text="@amoeba, my mistake. That's a fine solution, IMO." CreationDate="2017-04-09T18:00:18.590" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13142" PostId="4731" Score="0" Text="I looked at the threads I linked above and I agree they are all about signed-rank. I'd say we can go ahead with the merge." CreationDate="2017-04-09T19:14:41.520" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13151" PostId="4731" Score="2" Text="I merged as requested. There were a few threads that looked kind of borderline so if you see any that should have the WMW tag please add it." CreationDate="2017-04-10T07:08:15.783" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13152" PostId="4731" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b and mdewey: Thanks. I leave this thread open for the time being, because I am not sure what's the decision should be regarding [ranking]+[ranks]. Should they be synonymized? Should they be split into sub-tags? Should we leave them as is? What are these two tags even about, are they all about rank-based tests &amp; rank-based correlations (what's the common term for that?), or are there other topics in these tags?" CreationDate="2017-04-10T07:48:23.807" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13156" PostId="4731" Score="0" Text="&quot;ranking&quot; could be relevant to more than just rank based tests and correlations but if in practice it isn't used for anything else that's fine. I don't know that the two should necessarily be covered by a single term." CreationDate="2017-04-10T10:36:07.193" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13135" PostId="4732" Score="0" Text="Andy, thanks a lot for the reply. I've already directed the person to your blog, to appreciate its look and facilities, and he liked it. I hope maybe other people answer too, about other platforms." CreationDate="2017-04-09T14:07:51.853" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="13148" PostId="4733" Score="9" Text="Can you provide a link for your quote, so we can get context?" CreationDate="2017-04-09T22:14:13.897" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13149" PostId="4733" Score="15" Text="I'd say in relation to the opening sentence, the statement cannot be factually correct - CV is demonstrably not a blog, it's a question and answer site by design, and blog-like posts are off-topic (such posts are not in general a question followed by some answers that may be posted by anyone). Even more telling, we actually *had* a blog for our site (if our site was a blog already why would it then *have* a blog?), but it only got two or three posts in my entire time that I was actively using the site. All on-site SE blogs were recently shut down (one or two SE sites maintain offsite blogs)" CreationDate="2017-04-09T22:19:50.187" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13162" PostId="4733" Score="1" Text="I think a better title would be: &quot;CV is not a statistical blog&quot; and would make more sense in the context of Q's first paragraph." CreationDate="2017-04-10T18:35:20.997" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="13170" PostId="4733" Score="1" Text="I edited the title, trying to make it more explicit. Feel free to edit it further. (cc to @AndreSilva)" CreationDate="2017-04-11T11:37:28.843" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13242" PostId="4733" Score="4" Text="My gripe with the quoted comment (without knowing any other context) is that stackexchanges are not blogs any more than wiki's are blogs, or search engines are blogs. CV is a question and answer site, and specifically a *stackexchange* which is a very particular kind of internet resource. CV is not a blog, statistical or otherwise. :)" CreationDate="2017-04-14T02:20:43.577" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="13245" PostId="4733" Score="0" Text="@glen_b  The &quot;senior participant&quot; in question has participated on this specific thread but has either forgotten making this statement or prefers not to be identified with it. Either eay, this makes me reluctant to reveal who is responsible. Wrt whether or not CV is a &quot;blog,&quot; clearly the community does not agree with this choice of words. I want to note that the wording is not mine, it's the anonymous senior participant's." CreationDate="2017-04-14T14:32:00.347" UserId="78229" />
  <row Id="13246" PostId="4733" Score="2" Text="Perhaps it was me before I knew what a blog was. Anyway, it was doubtless a slip - what &quot;statistical&quot; encompasses is the interesting bit." CreationDate="2017-04-14T14:45:55.227" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="13247" PostId="4733" Score="3" Text="@DJohnson without context, you may well be doing whoever it is a disservice, by quoting out of context. I suggest that perhaps your question can manage *without* a quote you won't provide context for. Just ask whatever you want to know without it." CreationDate="2017-04-14T14:50:55.090" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13271" PostId="4733" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi  Nope. It wasn't you." CreationDate="2017-04-16T19:50:16.607" UserId="78229" />
  <row Id="13145" PostId="4734" Score="4" Text="+1 I fully agree. I would also note that in last year or two we have done a much better work of moving &quot;*How to do this in R*&quot; questions in SE. Especially some earlier (&lt;2012) questions (eg. [here](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/9512) and [here](http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/9080/)) where almost *R exclusive* while now, if any questions remain usually they have clear statistical context. This is important because it helps shape the profile of the site as &quot;Statistics&quot; rather than a &quot;Coding&quot; help community." CreationDate="2017-04-09T20:30:45.913" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="13153" PostId="4734" Score="2" Text="(+1) Not sure the philosophy *of statistics* is such a grey area: See [Add Philosophy as a possible SE network to migrate off-topic questions](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2005/17230), &amp; @whuber's answer:-&quot;The meaning and interpretation of the terms and concepts we use are of interest to this community and are on topic here&quot;." CreationDate="2017-04-10T08:13:58.287" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="13154" PostId="4734" Score="0" Text="@usεr11852 This is a digression, but I'd say if one comes across an old thread about coding [in R] that would be closed as off-topic (or migrated) according to our today's standards, one should vote to close as off-topic. These old threads, when they are open, convey a wrong message about what questions are appropriate here. And there is little harm in closing them now." CreationDate="2017-04-10T08:47:05.890" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13157" PostId="4734" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi, perhaps that came off too strong. I tweaked the phrasing." CreationDate="2017-04-10T12:15:55.567" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13276" PostId="4734" Score="1" Text="@amoeba Instead of voting to close old off-topic questions, please consider flagging them for moderator intervention: we can &quot;lock&quot; them, which has the desired effect but also includes a prominent explanation why." CreationDate="2017-04-17T16:11:02.570" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="13277" PostId="4734" Score="0" Text="@whuber Are you talking about &quot;historical lock&quot; (https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/126587)? So the message in this case will be `&quot;This question exists because it has historical significance, but it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site, so please do not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here.&quot;` (I copied if from the linked meta.SE thread)? I was sometimes hesitating to go ahead with this option when I thought that a Q does *not* have &quot;historical significance&quot;. This sounds to me as a high bar. Am I misinterpreting it?" CreationDate="2017-04-17T16:37:03.043" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13278" PostId="4734" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Yes, that was what I was referring to.  &quot;Historical significance&quot; may sound glorious, but all it really means is that the question was once considered on-topic (as evidenced by the fact it has stood open for a relatively long time) but we want to make it clear that it no longer is.  This message doesn't carry implications about how we value the thread, except insofar that the fact we are willing not to delete it altogether implies it bears some relevance to the site." CreationDate="2017-04-17T16:43:20.310" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="13280" PostId="4734" Score="0" Text="@whuber All right. To be honest, I don't necessarily see advantages of &quot;historical lock&quot; over good old closing as off-topic, but if you say that it's preferable, then okay." CreationDate="2017-04-17T19:25:55.920" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13158" PostId="4735" Score="5" Text="+1. I'd underscore that part of the rationale for software questions belonging elsewhere is historical, namely that SO existed before CV and was handling software questions already. It's a moot point whether -- were we to start again from fresh -- the same decisions would be made. It's not surprising that many new members expect or would prefer a one-stop shop covering the range from statistics to statistical software. A big negative is that few things are so uninteresting as questions on using software you don't use yourself. Until the whole world uses R, or whatever, that will remain true." CreationDate="2017-04-10T12:52:02.980" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="13159" PostId="4735" Score="2" Text="@NickCox: I think that historical accident is a happy one: it'd be harder to maintain the distinction between statistical &amp; software questions if both could be asked on the same site; &amp; it's worth maintaining." CreationDate="2017-04-10T15:05:18.340" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="13160" PostId="4735" Score="1" Text="I tend to agree personally but every day we close questions based on not understanding this." CreationDate="2017-04-10T15:06:59.620" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="13161" PostId="4735" Score="2" Text="@NickCox: True, but mitigated by the fact that the obvious software ones are a quick decision, &amp; the ambiguous ones would need clarifying anyway." CreationDate="2017-04-10T15:28:08.247" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="13274" PostId="4736" Score="1" Text="you learn a lot by doing 'hard' things :)" CreationDate="2017-04-17T12:33:19.900" UserId="144099" />
  <row Id="13171" PostId="4737" Score="1" Text="22th, eh? When you say &quot;leader in chess engine&quot; you mean you lead in reputation on the tag `engines`?" CreationDate="2017-04-11T12:31:44.307" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13173" PostId="4737" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b Anything wrong with 22th? Yes. I spent most of time on chess." CreationDate="2017-04-11T13:08:06.013" UserId="34623" />
  <row Id="13175" PostId="4737" Score="2" Text="How do you pronounce &quot;22th&quot;? :) Twenty secondth?" CreationDate="2017-04-11T14:03:39.970" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13177" PostId="4737" Score="4" Text="@amoeba: &quot;Twenty tooth&quot;" CreationDate="2017-04-11T14:36:03.603" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="13178" PostId="4737" Score="1" Text="I think I'm out of the loop, but what's the purpose of these threads? Completely lost on this one." CreationDate="2017-04-11T14:45:58.697" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="13179" PostId="4737" Score="0" Text="@Firebug https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4706/how-should-we-celebrate-reaching-100-000-questions" CreationDate="2017-04-11T14:46:25.420" UserId="34623" />
  <row Id="13180" PostId="4737" Score="0" Text="Oh yeah, saw that one earlier too (even commented on one answer), but most answers/comments don't seem serious, I thought I was loosing some inside joke or something like that." CreationDate="2017-04-11T14:55:11.533" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="13181" PostId="4737" Score="0" Text="@Firebug I'm not sure it'll work, but nothing to lose." CreationDate="2017-04-11T14:55:56.717" UserId="34623" />
  <row Id="13182" PostId="4737" Score="0" Text="I wish I could come with the total at 99,965 currently, the first time past 100,000 might be today April 11th." CreationDate="2017-04-11T15:01:22.317" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="13183" PostId="4737" Score="1" Text="@MichaelChernick Yeah. Best time for posting." CreationDate="2017-04-11T15:01:58.730" UserId="34623" />
  <row Id="13186" PostId="4737" Score="2" Text="We just reached 100,000 questions." CreationDate="2017-04-11T19:54:58.293" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="13187" PostId="4737" Score="4" Text="@MichaelChernick I made a screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/95Jy4MR.png" CreationDate="2017-04-11T21:12:26.590" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13188" PostId="4737" Score="1" Text="@amoeba That ia very nice and very clever!" CreationDate="2017-04-11T21:44:49.577" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="13229" PostId="4737" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, there's no timestamp in the screenshot" CreationDate="2017-04-13T18:26:28.377" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="13230" PostId="4737" Score="0" Text="@Aksakal Yeah, too bad. But my comment has a timestamp (mouseover &quot;yesterday&quot;). And Imgur has timestamp too: http://imgur.com/95Jy4MR (mouseover &quot;1d&quot;)." CreationDate="2017-04-13T18:27:53.020" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13302" PostId="4737" Score="0" Text="At over 100,500 questions now (April 19th) maybe we will be close to 101 K by April 22nd." CreationDate="2017-04-19T17:00:21.087" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="13172" PostId="4738" Score="4" Text="If your question is substantively different from the indicated duplicate you'll need to edit to clarify what you're asking that's not covered by that question." CreationDate="2017-04-11T12:39:20.717" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13205" PostId="4740" Score="0" Text="@AndreSilva I prefer #2 but if the consensus is for #1, #3 or do nothing then I will do that." CreationDate="2017-04-12T14:49:44.727" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="13211" PostId="4740" Score="0" Text="If to create any tags at all (I don't currently have an opinion about that), I would opt for a joint tag for all of that. And I would prefer the tag name to have &quot;correlation&quot; in it. So smth like &quot;biserial-polyserial-correlation&quot; but shorter :) Also, one might consider putting tetrachoric/polychoric correlations into the same tag, see http://personality-project.org/r/html/tetrachor.html. I don't know if there is an umbrella term for all that." CreationDate="2017-04-12T16:10:04.567" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13300" PostId="4741" Score="1" Text="Since there have been no net upvotes for either the question or this answer I think the fourth option, do nothing, is the consensus so I am accepting this answer to close the thread." CreationDate="2017-04-19T14:44:42.747" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="13301" PostId="4741" Score="0" Text="We could always revisit the idea in the future, @mdewey. There doesn't seem to have been much action on this at all." CreationDate="2017-04-19T15:24:02.730" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13212" PostId="4742" Score="2" Text="If you are willing to create this tag and to re-tag 25-30 existing questions with it, then I don't see any disadvantage. I think it would be a decent tag to have. +1." CreationDate="2017-04-13T07:42:04.370" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13238" PostId="4742" Score="2" Text="Yeah, why not? I can do it. (I will be careful not to flood the main I will do them in two sittings.)" CreationDate="2017-04-13T22:28:55.397" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="13252" PostId="4742" Score="0" Text="Laplace smoothing is the kernel smoothing. It has some interesting properties such as minimizing the length of the smooth line" CreationDate="2017-04-14T21:49:59.017" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="13254" PostId="4742" Score="2" Text="@Aksakal: I think it *is* only under a very generic and bird's eye view of kernel smoothing. :D I have strong doubts that people interested in Laplace smoothing applications (on this website/ online community) associate the two on first instance. For example in all eight questions linked above the OP (or people answering) make no references to that association so it probably beats the point of basing a tag on that idea. Please feel free to provide counter-examples." CreationDate="2017-04-14T22:47:05.277" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="13257" PostId="4742" Score="1" Text="With 5 upvotes and 0 downvotes, I'd say we have a consensus here." CreationDate="2017-04-15T15:53:32.893" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13512" PostId="4742" Score="0" Text="Any progress on that @usεr11852? :)" CreationDate="2017-05-10T07:16:56.587" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13514" PostId="4742" Score="1" Text="@amoeba Nothing at all. Honestly, I thought someone else would create the tag first. :D (No worries I will start the labelling soon.)" CreationDate="2017-05-10T18:10:09.800" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="13517" PostId="4742" Score="0" Text="(First dozen done.)" CreationDate="2017-05-10T20:51:04.227" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="13213" PostId="4743" Score="2" Text="Don't like #1 either - someone could be asking about, say, an ordinal predictor in an ordinary (dichotomous response) logistic regression when they use [ordered] + [logistic]." CreationDate="2017-04-13T12:56:21.443" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="13214" PostId="4743" Score="1" Text="Good point @Scortchi (this also means that my estimate of the number of [ordinal] threads about [ordered-logit] might be an overestimation). Do you have a preference between #2 and #3?" CreationDate="2017-04-13T12:57:58.343" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13215" PostId="4743" Score="1" Text="I like choice 3.  In books and other places, I have seen ordinal logistic used much more often than ordered logistic." CreationDate="2017-04-13T12:58:54.803" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="13216" PostId="4743" Score="2" Text="@PeterFlom When I search on Google Scholar, I get 21700 hits for &quot;ordinal logistic regression&quot; and 10400 for &quot;ordered logistic regression&quot;, supporting your impression. However, [&quot;ordered logit&quot;](https://scholar.google.de/scholar?q=%22ordered+logit%22) yields 24600." CreationDate="2017-04-13T13:01:30.487" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13218" PostId="4743" Score="1" Text="Hmm.  I just tried and got 135,000 for &quot;ordinal logistic regression&quot;, 56,000 for &quot;ordered logistic regression&quot;, 123,000 for &quot;ordered logit&quot;" CreationDate="2017-04-13T13:30:40.507" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="13220" PostId="4743" Score="2" Text="@PeterFlom Interesting. That's what I get on Google too, the numbers reported in my comment above are in Google Scholar." CreationDate="2017-04-13T13:55:44.650" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13225" PostId="4743" Score="3" Text="Also proportional odds models are a special case of ordinal/ordered logit models (cf. e.g. continuation ratio models)" CreationDate="2017-04-13T14:29:33.993" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="13256" PostId="4743" Score="1" Text="Are ordered probit and logistic really distinct enough to warrant separate tags? I like #3." CreationDate="2017-04-15T11:11:36.420" UserId="9964" />
  <row Id="13259" PostId="4743" Score="0" Text="@Dougal They are clearly conceptually very similar. But e.g. for normal (not ordered) logit/probit models we have [logistic] and [probit] tags, and nobody is suggesting to merge them together..." CreationDate="2017-04-15T19:07:01.443" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13261" PostId="4743" Score="0" Text="I have a prejudice against ordinal beca,use of its role in Steven's typology which I regard as having been a malign influence so I would prefer ordered over ordinal. I think re-tagging 200 is not an insuperable problem." CreationDate="2017-04-16T11:28:37.817" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="13262" PostId="4743" Score="1" Text="@mdewey But do you prefer to have one single master tag [ordered-regression] or two distinct master tags [ordered-logit] and [ordered-probit]?" CreationDate="2017-04-16T11:34:07.677" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13263" PostId="4743" Score="1" Text="I pinged Franck Harrel hoping that he would comment here; he replied but cryptically and I don't quite understand what options he prefers. See here: https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/111010/interpreting-qqplot-is-there-any-rule-of-thumb-to-decide-for-non-normality/273858?noredirect=1#comment525129_273858." CreationDate="2017-04-16T11:35:15.573" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13264" PostId="4743" Score="0" Text="I think your response to Dougal sums it up perfectly. Separate for me." CreationDate="2017-04-16T11:35:51.553" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="13392" PostId="4743" Score="0" Text="This was up-voted (9 times as I type) so I assume there is consensus that something needs to be done but perhaps less of a consensus on what that might be. Do you want to post some alternative answers so people can vote for them separately? Happy to do  some re-tagging if we agree on a programme." CreationDate="2017-05-01T11:17:31.990" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="13393" PostId="4743" Score="0" Text="@mdewey Why don't *you* post an answer with the solution that you find optimal and a brief explanation why? (As far as I understood, you prefer something line option #2 in my question. Me too, so I will readily upvote.) If nobody loudly protests in the next couple of days, we can go ahead." CreationDate="2017-05-01T12:35:15.083" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13430" PostId="4743" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi As mdewey started some retagging, could you help us create the synonyms ([ordinal-logit] and [ordinal-probit] to [ordered-logit] and [ordered-probit], and [proportional-odds] to [ordered-logit])? There are too few people with enough rep in these tags to do this via voting. Also, very few threads are going to be affected." CreationDate="2017-05-03T09:55:07.577" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13434" PostId="4743" Score="1" Text="@amoeba: I've created those synonyms" CreationDate="2017-05-04T07:32:42.033" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="13439" PostId="4743" Score="0" Text="@amoeba: I'll merge as well after a while -you needn't manually change them" CreationDate="2017-05-04T10:45:03.447" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="13442" PostId="4743" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi Too late, it's done already - I thought it's so few that I can just do it." CreationDate="2017-05-04T11:13:52.977" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13556" PostId="4743" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi Mdewey has finished his retagging job (see update to his post), having moved ~150 threads out of [ordinal]. It would make sense to rename [ordinal] to [ordinal-data] now, as was suggested here and in his answer. I have already edited the wiki &amp; excerpt for this tag to reflect new usage and guidelines." CreationDate="2017-05-16T06:21:15.333" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13557" PostId="4743" Score="0" Text="(And if you are doing it, perhaps rename [nominal] into [nominal-data] for consistency? Cf. [categorical-data], [binary-data]. Cheers.)" CreationDate="2017-05-16T06:22:32.977" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13558" PostId="4743" Score="0" Text="@amoeba: Done ordinal -&gt; ordinal-data. But we've already got nominal -&gt; categorical-data pending (2 votes)." CreationDate="2017-05-16T08:25:24.423" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="13559" PostId="4743" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi Thanks. Regarding nominal -- ah, indeed, I forgot. This was discussed here: https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/4717/28666 -- gung suggested the synonym but ttnphns strongly objected saying that &quot;categorical data&quot; encompasses both nominal and ordinal, and can't be synonymized with nominal. I am not sure where I stand on this issue myself, what do you think? (Perhaps comment there if you have an opinion). I guess given ttnphns's position, I'd rather rename nominal into nominal-data and leave it alone." CreationDate="2017-05-16T08:32:01.947" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13243" PostId="4746" Score="2" Text="It might be something related to [the thing discussed here](https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/26166/should-math-se-support-mathjax-on-its-own-server). Is it possible you're blocking cdnjs.cloudflare.com? If you're using NoScript then there's some advice in the comments about how to enable MathJax without whitelisting the whole of cdnjs.cloudflare.com . If you are using noscript you can check if this is the issue by temporarily enabling cloudflare.com and seeing if the mathematics renders (you can then disable again).  I use NoScript so I presume this will be an issue for me soon." CreationDate="2017-04-14T07:11:05.463" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13244" PostId="4746" Score="2" Text="Have you tried restarting your browser? (I guess you have but just to check.) If so, try clearing browser's cache and restarting again." CreationDate="2017-04-14T07:19:23.773" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13248" PostId="4746" Score="2" Text="There are some hints on the MathJax pages http://docs.mathjax.org/en/latest/misc/faq.html which also links to how to clear your cache (which was news to me, perhaps not to you)." CreationDate="2017-04-14T14:52:53.547" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="13249" PostId="4746" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b That was **exactly** it! Please make an answer, so I can accept. :)" CreationDate="2017-04-14T19:36:03.570" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="13250" PostId="4746" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Yes. And my OS." CreationDate="2017-04-14T19:36:14.783" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="13251" PostId="4746" Score="0" Text="@mdewey Not  cache issue for me, but thank you!" CreationDate="2017-04-14T19:36:38.253" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="13266" PostId="4748" Score="4" Text="[References] does have a wiki excerpt, it says &quot;&quot;References&quot; is our generic tag for questions seeking information about books, papers, presentations, videos of lectures, on-line tutorials, etc., regarding any subject matter that is on-topic for Cross Validated.&quot;. Are you saying that we should add 1 sentence saying that this tag should not be used on its own?" CreationDate="2017-04-16T11:39:37.743" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13268" PostId="4748" Score="1" Text="@amoeba I guess, or anything else like that. I'm not quite sure, since I haven't been active on CV very long." CreationDate="2017-04-16T12:17:19.590" UserId="113090" />
  <row Id="13270" PostId="4748" Score="0" Text="@AndreSilva this looks like what I was looking for -- I'll take a look" CreationDate="2017-04-16T18:39:24.320" UserId="113090" />
  <row Id="13273" PostId="4748" Score="3" Text="I changed the wiki excerpt to &quot;Questions seeking external references (books, papers, etc.) about a particular subject. Always use a more specific tag in addition.&quot;" CreationDate="2017-04-16T21:18:30.787" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13267" PostId="4749" Score="3" Text="I don't think that Wikipedia page is very good. OTOH, I'm not sure if we really need a `[dgp]` tag, either. I'll have to look at some &amp; see how the tag helps categorize the information." CreationDate="2017-04-16T12:03:07.877" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13272" PostId="4749" Score="3" Text="Seeing that there are only 20 Qs in this tag, I also doubt we really need it." CreationDate="2017-04-16T20:17:48.390" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13275" PostId="4749" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I agree with that" CreationDate="2017-04-17T15:11:20.767" UserId="113090" />
  <row Id="13366" PostId="4749" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Wait, should both [dgp] and [data-generation-process] be eliminated? Or just the latter? EDIT: never mind, I forgot that dgp is a synonym of data-generation-process" CreationDate="2017-04-25T15:29:34.237" UserId="113090" />
  <row Id="13279" PostId="4752" Score="2" Text="[accuracy] is a fine tag, I assume it stands for classification accuracy. [methodology] sounds weird, I suspect it might be a useless tag, but this needs to be investigated." CreationDate="2017-04-17T18:09:06.120" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14726" PostId="4752" Score="0" Text="Hi Chill2Macht. Is there any reason you didn't accept gung's answer? It looks quite comprehensive to me." CreationDate="2017-11-13T11:03:23.257" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13281" PostId="4753" Score="3" Text="+1. I took a very brief look on [methodology] that OP mentioned, and it looks like an excellent candidate for burnination (with too many threads for manual removal). I should probably add it to the candidates-for-removal thread." CreationDate="2017-04-17T20:38:59.713" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13282" PostId="4754" Score="0" Text="In the context of [log odds](https://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=log+odds) and Bayesian updates it is *possible* that the &quot;logit&quot; tag could be used. Glancing at the linked query doesn't seem to indicate it *currently* is ... though I had reason to refer to it this way in a [comment](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/273851/using-bayes-for-combining-forecasts-with-different-accuracies-interview-questio#comment525277_273851) recently :)" CreationDate="2017-04-17T23:15:23.023" UserId="127790" />
  <row Id="13283" PostId="4754" Score="4" Text="I'm not totally happy with the current setup but the proposal doesn't fix what I see as the problem, it makes it worse - questions about logistic fits (e.g. via nonlinear least squares) are lumped in with questions they're not closely related to; under this proposal they'd be (incorrectly, I think) tagged with `logistic-regression`. I realize their numbers are fewer (I've seen a good number over the years I have been on site, though), but I don't think that's not a good reason to make them impossible to find. If we do anything like this proposal I think we'd need a new tag for them" CreationDate="2017-04-17T23:50:47.993" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13285" PostId="4754" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b I see. That's an argument against making [logistic-regression] the master name. But what about the second part of this proposal, i.e. mapping [logit] and [logistic] together, e.g. under [logistic]?" CreationDate="2017-04-18T06:00:41.970" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13286" PostId="4754" Score="4" Text="I personally don't have an issue with that; I imagine we might need to edit the logistic tag wiki to specifically mention the logit as well. I'm not sure there's a particularly satisfactory way to bring in logistic curve fits that aren't logistic regression together with logistic regression" CreationDate="2017-04-18T08:08:22.367" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13287" PostId="4754" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b One option that comes to mind regarding logistic curve fits is to create logistic-function tag, move a couple of dozens of most prominent threads there (there is no way one go through all 4k [logistic] threads, but finding most prominent ones might be possible), and then rename logistic to logistic-regression. Or do you think it's futile?" CreationDate="2017-04-18T08:17:56.567" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13288" PostId="4754" Score="1" Text="I don't think it's futile. That might work okay. Perhaps that's a suggestion worth debating/voting on." CreationDate="2017-04-18T08:21:25.720" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13289" PostId="4754" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b What I currently have no sense for, is how many questions are there in this topic. I guess under current tag system, they should be tagged with [logistic] and [curve-fitting], but there are [only 6 questions](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/logistic+curve-fitting?sort=votes&amp;pageSize=50) like that. This IMHO would not be worth a separate tag (given that we do have [curve-fitting]); but maybe this search misses a lot of threads." CreationDate="2017-04-18T08:33:03.090" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13290" PostId="4754" Score="1" Text="Yes, if we still had logistic it would be covered by those two tags; it might be worth trying to identify a few more posts that could have those tags but presently don't" CreationDate="2017-04-18T08:43:00.857" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13341" PostId="4754" Score="0" Text="Just a note on the [logistic-function] idea: there is already a (small) [sigmoid](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/sigmoid) tag. Also there may be neural-net applications that use a logistic activation &quot;inside&quot;, i.e. not just in the output layer? (and tough to call that logistic regression)" CreationDate="2017-04-21T21:42:37.603" UserId="127790" />
  <row Id="13348" PostId="4754" Score="1" Text="@GeoMatt22 Thanks for mentioning the sigmoid tag. It does not look very useful to me (and does not even have a wiki excerpt); we don't even have a tag for relu neuron, or for any other activation function. I would be rather inclined to eliminate the [sigmoid], just using our generic [neural-networks]." CreationDate="2017-04-22T21:48:49.487" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13349" PostId="4754" Score="0" Text="I am fine with [sigmoid] being eliminated. Also was noting that the NN usage could fit under [logistic-function]/[logistic] (e.g. a tag wiki) in addition to the logit/log-odds usage. (as I *think* not all NN uses are cleanly [logistic-regression])" CreationDate="2017-04-23T00:02:37.860" UserId="127790" />
  <row Id="13350" PostId="4754" Score="0" Text="@GeoMatt22 &quot;Logistic regression&quot; is GLM with logit link and binomial family, i.e. a linear model. Nonlinear NN can't be called &quot;logistic regression&quot;. Regarding [logistic-function] tag, I am still not fully convinced that it's needed at all (if we rename [logistic] and [logit] to [logistic-regression]). But most threads tagged with [logistic] and [neural-networks] (https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/logistic+neural-networks), that's 35 of them, are not about logistic-regression, you are right. It's a small drop in [logistic] usage though." CreationDate="2017-04-23T06:23:29.730" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13351" PostId="4754" Score="0" Text="@amoeba your ideas are OK by me. (I was only loosely referring to many NN's that seem ~ input --&gt; nonlinear feature mapping --&gt; logistic-regression = output-layer). In your plan, should tags be removed from the small minority of questions that are *not* about logistic regression?" CreationDate="2017-04-23T06:51:58.157" UserId="127790" />
  <row Id="13370" PostId="4754" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Whatever we end up doing we need to end up with a suitable place for questions about the logistic distribution" CreationDate="2017-04-26T00:04:04.897" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13373" PostId="4754" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b I find [around 30 questions](https://stats.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&amp;q=%22logistic%20distribution%22%20-%22logistic%20regression%22%20is%3aquestion) mentioning &quot;logistic distribution&quot;, but looking at them probably around half wouldn't deserve the corresponding tag (and some of them currently don't even have [logistic] tag). So if we were to create [logistic-distribution], which would be one obvious solution, I estimate it would get maybe around 20 questions only. What do you think?" CreationDate="2017-04-26T07:35:52.903" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13374" PostId="4754" Score="0" Text="I'd be inclined to think logistic-distribution would be worth it. If logistic-regression maps to logistic it might be odd to keep them together." CreationDate="2017-04-26T08:49:57.667" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13375" PostId="4754" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b So we are converging towards having [logistic-regression], [logistic-distribution], and possibly [logistic-function]? Do you think this covers it? The latter two tags will have very few questions, but that's okay I guess. I guess I should post this suggestion as an answer to draw some attention." CreationDate="2017-04-26T12:43:15.717" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13378" PostId="4754" Score="0" Text="Well, those three would be my suggestion, yes. Perhaps post that as an answer plus any other suitable choices for answer you'd like; people can always add other answers if they want votes on them." CreationDate="2017-04-26T21:53:19.027" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13505" PostId="4754" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b I started working on this. I made [logistic-curve] and [sigmoid-curve] tags; can you help me make sigmoid-curve a synonym of logistic-curve? I chose &quot;logistic-curve&quot; as a name instead of &quot;logistic-function&quot;, because I did not want people to use this tag in the context of neural networks (where &quot;sigmoid activation function&quot; is a standard term)... Questions about parameters/shape of the logistic curve and about fitting it to the data (with [curve-fitting]) feel quite different from those neural network questions." CreationDate="2017-05-09T14:31:35.793" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13364" PostId="4755" Score="1" Text="I am willing to do this, no problem -- I hadn't checked this thread again recently, I'm sorry for the confusion." CreationDate="2017-04-25T15:28:00.047" UserId="113090" />
  <row Id="13365" PostId="4755" Score="0" Text="@Chill2Macht Cool." CreationDate="2017-04-25T15:28:58.450" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13367" PostId="4755" Score="1" Text="@Chill2Macht But please ping me here once you are done - I will make an update to this answer, so that everybody is informed." CreationDate="2017-04-25T22:09:23.353" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13376" PostId="4755" Score="1" Text="Sorry about the delay, I just finished." CreationDate="2017-04-26T19:01:07.470" UserId="113090" />
  <row Id="13377" PostId="4755" Score="0" Text="Great! I updated the answer." CreationDate="2017-04-26T19:04:28.457" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13379" PostId="4755" Score="1" Text="By the way, @Chill2Macht, if you are interested in doing some tag work, I can point you to some ongoing or queued retagging projects. Just let me know :) There is much more work needed here than there are people willing to help." CreationDate="2017-04-27T13:53:18.597" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13380" PostId="4755" Score="0" Text="That sounds interesting to me -- I don't know in advance if I would have time for all of them, but certainly it would be worth looking into" CreationDate="2017-04-27T16:50:16.957" UserId="113090" />
  <row Id="13384" PostId="4755" Score="1" Text="@Chill2Macht You can basically navigate our Meta and look for topics in [meta-tag:tag-reorganization]. Here is the latest issue that I posted yesterday: https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4774 -- this one is an easy job. There are other pending issues that require substantial work: e.g. https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4306, or https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3065, or https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4248. There are also tags to be removed: https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3031/ where some tags can be done manually." CreationDate="2017-04-28T07:44:10.943" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13293" PostId="4756" Score="0" Text="+1. By the way, I am somewhat confused by the thread https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1593: it has an accepted answer but I am not sure if that answer answers Yes or No to the title question. Is it a Yes, or is it a No?" CreationDate="2017-04-18T19:06:25.333" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13295" PostId="4756" Score="0" Text="What confused me is that I could not find an answer to the title question. Now I see that it's Yes; I must have overlooked it. Thanks!" CreationDate="2017-04-18T19:54:53.093" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13297" PostId="4756" Score="1" Text="I did edit that answer now - see if you think it makes sense." CreationDate="2017-04-18T19:59:18.803" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13303" PostId="4757" Score="1" Text="Something like that? https://stats.stackexchange.com/users/22452/engrstudent?tab=tags" CreationDate="2017-04-19T20:32:43.203" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13304" PostId="4757" Score="3" Text="Each tag gets *all* the points of any of your (non-wiki) answers it's in. The total points that accrue to your tags will exceed your total reputation." CreationDate="2017-04-19T23:11:49.137" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13307" PostId="4757" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b - I was meaning equal fraction.  If the answer is 10 points, and has 5 tags, each tag should get 2 points." CreationDate="2017-04-20T12:56:29.430" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="13309" PostId="4757" Score="0" Text="That's not how it works, though, @EngrStudent. And the query I wrote below doesn't calculate percentages like that either." CreationDate="2017-04-20T12:59:53.177" UserId="72321" />
  <row Id="13310" PostId="4757" Score="0" Text="I think that I can munge the two.  Now if only my &quot;tags&quot; page was downloadable as csv.  I'm going to poke around the data explorer to see what is there." CreationDate="2017-04-20T13:01:10.657" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="13311" PostId="4757" Score="1" Text="@EngrStudent I think I must have misunderstood. You're not actually asking about points that tags accrue as shown on your profile, but about constructing a new calculation that actually works differently to the present calculation ... right?" CreationDate="2017-04-20T13:10:22.293" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13312" PostId="4757" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b - Neither the tags page, nor the query, fully answers my question.  Together, however, they do have the means to get to the answer.  I was looking for a 3-column table with headers: (tag name, tag rank, and sum of partial points).  I get name and rank from the tag page.  I get the way to get an approximation to partial points using the query results." CreationDate="2017-04-20T13:32:29.247" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="13313" PostId="4757" Score="2" Text="But how is the rank to be computed -- if it's based on the partial points it won't necessarily be in the same order as what's on the profile page. (e.g. if one tag nearly always occurs alone, it will have almost the same partial points as it does on the profile page, but if another tag nearly always occurs with 3 other tags it will have about a quarter of the partial points as it does on the profile -- so some tags might shift quite dramatically from the profile page order to an order based on a different calculation." CreationDate="2017-04-20T13:40:49.830" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13315" PostId="4757" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b - this speaks to the follow-on of this question.  I may only be 5% on CV, but perhaps I am in the top 1% of &lt;insert tag here&gt;.  I know that the 5% doesn't mean a whole lot.  The rock-stars here have 144k points to my ~4k and many are PhD's in stats.  I'm pretty good at my strengths, so in while in total point-sum I might not be too great, but in point-sum by tag I might be pretty decent.  My next step is to look at that." CreationDate="2017-04-20T14:05:48.397" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="13316" PostId="4757" Score="2" Text="@EngrStudent Your most active tag seems to be [machine-learning]. You can look at the top users in this tag here: https://stats.stackexchange.com/tags/machine-learning/topusers." CreationDate="2017-04-20T14:10:17.877" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13305" PostId="4759" Score="2" Text="+1. I very much support this attitude, and I have a problem with our liberal CW usage in general (https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2953)." CreationDate="2017-04-20T09:45:36.077" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13306" PostId="4759" Score="0" Text="@amoeba: Well, it'd be more work, more friction. And there's nothing to stop people voting for the book they like the most rather than the most useful answer." CreationDate="2017-04-20T09:51:57.350" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="13314" PostId="4759" Score="0" Text="That would be great, but I see people already can post such types of answer, but it is not common. I also think what you propose partially overlaps to what @steffen says in his first bullet (in proposal). To me, the next step to what we already have would be to make these types of questions (shopping lists, polls, etc) to be off-topic. It would solve the overuse of CW, and would automatically demand from OPs to ask a more elaborated and specific question (eg: https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/116725/example-of-an-inconsistent-maximum-likelihood-estimator)." CreationDate="2017-04-20T14:00:30.913" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="13308" PostId="4760" Score="0" Text="That is a very nice query!  This is quite useful to me.  Stackexchange and cross-validated are part of my &quot;nerd cred&quot; and I like to say I may only be in the top 5% of contributors, but for machine learning I am in the to xyz%.  Thank you." CreationDate="2017-04-20T12:58:18.243" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="13317" PostId="4761" Score="5" Text="If it ends up being created, make sure it will born with a nice tag excerpt. Perhaps propose one in question body, or as an answer." CreationDate="2017-04-20T17:12:02.723" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="13325" PostId="4761" Score="4" Text="[model-misspecification] could be a more explicit &amp; clear name, but then perhaps it's getting too long..." CreationDate="2017-04-20T20:30:50.367" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13340" PostId="4761" Score="1" Text="Definitely should be created!" CreationDate="2017-04-21T09:25:37.510" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="13347" PostId="4761" Score="1" Text="Looking at some of those questions it does seem to cover a wide variety of situations. Having a more explicit tag as @amoeba suggested might be a good idea and then not tag all of the ones which your search found." CreationDate="2017-04-22T16:56:07.253" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="13353" PostId="4761" Score="1" Text="I went ahead and made the tag.  Retagged a few, much more is needed. Have a look at my proposed tag wiki." CreationDate="2017-04-23T18:06:10.277" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="13319" PostId="4762" Score="2" Text="+1, for not duplicating points; but the system could award a point for accepted answers without upvotes from OP. That would address all points made in your answer, wouldn't it?" CreationDate="2017-04-20T18:16:28.203" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="13320" PostId="4762" Score="3" Text="@AndreSilva That change makes it impossible for regular users to audit their tag score, because they can't possibly know if the upvote on the post is from the OP or not, thus they couldn't know if they needed to count 1 or 2. We're not huge fans of just displaying more numbers that the user can't determine on their own." CreationDate="2017-04-20T18:18:39.837" UserId="72322" />
  <row Id="13323" PostId="4763" Score="1" Text="@amoeba yes, I know if the answer is wrong, no matter how much effort in there I should not upvote. But I am asking, if I do not know if the answer is correct, but see a lot of efforts, what should I do." CreationDate="2017-04-20T20:25:40.623" UserId="113777" />
  <row Id="13324" PostId="4763" Score="2" Text="@hxd1011 I sometimes do upvote in such cases. Usually when I know that I can trust the answerer." CreationDate="2017-04-20T20:29:15.037" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13331" PostId="4763" Score="9" Text="Upvoting a high-effort-but-wrong answer would mislead later readers into thinking the answer was correct. I'd say that if you can take some action to confirm that it's actually correct (doing a simulation or checking a reference, for example) then you'd usually be doing the site a service (and at least commenting to that effect would be very useful along with the upvote). I regularly do internet searches and perform simulations both when answering questions and sometimes when trying to evaluate answers I'm not quite sure of (particularly when the answer is surprising)." CreationDate="2017-04-20T23:32:30.400" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13332" PostId="4763" Score="3" Text="As your confidence with material increases (so you can better judge an answer you were previously less sure about), upvote good older answers as you happen across them." CreationDate="2017-04-20T23:40:31.757" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13327" PostId="4764" Score="4" Text="+1 Good advice. Congratulations on reaching 1k rep!" CreationDate="2017-04-20T22:36:34.670" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13328" PostId="4764" Score="5" Text="As much as I hate to discourage people from upvoting (since we already suffer from a lack of upvotes in a number of ways), I have to agree (indeed I'd say it extends beyond actual mathematics, because sometimes it's a failure in the application of insight/more general reasoning) -- there are a few answers on site that are highly upvoted but wrong or partly wrong. In a couple of cases I suspect they hit the *Hot Network Questions&quot; page. There are comments about what the problems are (and in some cases, more correct answers have been posted later  --  ... ctd" CreationDate="2017-04-20T23:22:43.670" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13329" PostId="4764" Score="4" Text="ctd...  -- if there's neither I'll say something myself), but they just get no traction -- there's other answers and a  number of comments (at least some of some value) that make it hard for new, low information readers to be clearly aware there's a real problem (they usually see neither the barely-voted on comments nor the much lower rep answers, and even if they do see them, there's little reason to take them seriously over *all those upvotes*). Over time a few experts come along. Fewer still read the whole thing and realize the high-vote answer is wrong and vote accordingly ... ctd" CreationDate="2017-04-20T23:23:07.070" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13330" PostId="4764" Score="4" Text="ctd... but there are always more less-expert people coming along and many upvote the popular-and-plausible answer, so it stays &quot;at the top&quot; ... apparently forever." CreationDate="2017-04-20T23:23:19.587" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13338" PostId="4764" Score="6" Text="(+1) An up-vote means &quot;This answer is useful&quot; - we're reminded of that in the mouse-over text. Making such a recommendation to a colleague, client, or student, if you didn't understand the answer, would be dishonest, &amp; risky." CreationDate="2017-04-21T08:05:31.820" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="13333" PostId="4765" Score="0" Text="U can join us! Come!" CreationDate="2017-04-21T01:18:47.733" UserId="34623" />
  <row Id="13334" PostId="4765" Score="0" Text="Where will you be, exactly?" CreationDate="2017-04-21T01:20:07.933" UserId="22199" />
  <row Id="13335" PostId="4765" Score="0" Text="Email tedwong@smallchess.com we can talk" CreationDate="2017-04-21T01:20:58.213" UserId="34623" />
  <row Id="13336" PostId="4765" Score="0" Text="We will be in city please join! Town hall" CreationDate="2017-04-21T01:21:14.503" UserId="34623" />
  <row Id="13337" PostId="4765" Score="0" Text="After the event please let us know how it goes. It is April 21st and we are at 100,634 questions." CreationDate="2017-04-21T04:26:17.040" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="13342" PostId="4765" Score="0" Text="@MichaelChernick We met and it was fun." CreationDate="2017-04-22T12:30:34.853" UserId="34623" />
  <row Id="13345" PostId="4765" Score="2" Text="This event is too political for my taste. The last thing we want is to alienate general population. People are already weary of all these folks who claim to be scientists. This will be hijacked by activists inevitably again." CreationDate="2017-04-22T14:22:07.190" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="13346" PostId="4765" Score="1" Text="@Aksakal Agreed. I did wear my [Science. It works, bitches.](https://xkcd.com/54/) xkcd t-shirt today, but I did not join the march." CreationDate="2017-04-22T15:44:31.813" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13352" PostId="4765" Score="1" Text="First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out..." CreationDate="2017-04-23T09:16:30.327" UserId="22199" />
  <row Id="13343" PostId="4766" Score="3" Text="That sounds great! I am very glad that you were able to organize a nice informal meeting over this." CreationDate="2017-04-22T12:54:21.893" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="13344" PostId="4766" Score="1" Text="Americans are worried too much about their privacy to meet in person :)" CreationDate="2017-04-22T14:19:21.467" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="13355" PostId="4767" Score="2" Text="Thanks a lot! I looked at the tag - looks good to me, maybe someone else can edit if they think it's necessary." CreationDate="2017-04-24T14:35:29.713" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="13385" PostId="4770" Score="0" Text="These https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/logistic+neural-networks should be dealt with together with [sigmoid]. Some are about logistic regression but some others are about sigmoid neurons; there we should remove the tag." CreationDate="2017-04-28T08:10:05.593" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13381" PostId="4773" Score="7" Text="See [What is a disputed flag?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/95275/what-is-a-disputed-flag) ... and ...&#xA;[What is the difference between disputed and declined flags?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/141292/what-is-the-difference-between-disputed-and-declined-flags)" CreationDate="2017-04-27T17:50:20.343" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13382" PostId="4774" Score="2" Text="Good stuff. Looking through, I think that's the appropriate action. (Edit: I've done a few at the top of the list; all were pretty obviously either -t2 or not -t2)" CreationDate="2017-04-27T22:48:17.833" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13394" PostId="4778" Score="1" Text="+1. In addition, I would make [ordinal-logit] and [ordinal-probit] synonyms of [ordered-logit] and [ordered-probit]. And [proportional-odds] a synonym of [ordered-logit]." CreationDate="2017-05-01T14:15:07.850" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13395" PostId="4778" Score="1" Text="Also, I don't think that we necessarily need to move all [ordinal] threads about ordered logit into [ordered-logit]. After all, ordered-logit is also about ordinal-data, so if some threads end up in [ordinal-data], it's no big deal. To be honest, I would only move several dozens (?) of most important/upvoted threads and leave the rest as is." CreationDate="2017-05-01T14:16:43.743" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13396" PostId="4778" Score="0" Text="@amoeba for me proportional odds is a proper subset of ordered logit models as there also exist continuation ratio, adjacent category, and probably some others of which I am ignorant so I would not see them as synonyms." CreationDate="2017-05-01T15:40:45.540" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="13397" PostId="4778" Score="0" Text="This might very well be (honestly, I am probably more ignorant than you here), but it's not always useful to have tag B if it's a proper subset of A. Currently, [proportional-odds] has 2 threads and [ordered-logit] has 62 threads, and I guess that most ordered-logit questions are about proportional-odds. This makes the proportional-odds on its own a pretty useless tag. Hence my suggestion to make it a synonym (even though, technically, it's not a &quot;synonym&quot;)." CreationDate="2017-05-01T19:38:03.560" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13398" PostId="4778" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I see your point, and we do not have tags for the other subsets." CreationDate="2017-05-01T20:30:58.093" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="13435" PostId="4778" Score="0" Text="Update: Scortchi has created the synonyms." CreationDate="2017-05-04T09:09:15.003" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13436" PostId="4778" Score="0" Text="Please ping me somehow when you think that [ordinal] is sufficiently cleaned from ordered-logit / ordered-probit, and then we can ask one of the mods to rename it into [ordinal-data]. As I said, I really don't think you need to sift through all 700 Qs for that." CreationDate="2017-05-04T09:11:14.253" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13440" PostId="4778" Score="0" Text="@amoeba will ping you, probably later this month." CreationDate="2017-05-04T10:47:50.727" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="13555" PostId="4778" Score="0" Text="Re your update: I edited the tag wiki and wiki excerpt for [ordinal]." CreationDate="2017-05-16T06:18:55.227" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13561" PostId="4778" Score="0" Text="I pinged Scortchi above and he has renamed the tag. I accept this answer now, case closed. Thanks a lot for your help!" CreationDate="2017-05-16T08:34:02.513" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13406" PostId="4780" Score="3" Text="https://stats.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&amp;q=%5bnonparametric%5d%20answers%3a0%20created%3a2y.. I.e. you type `[nonparametric] answers:0 created:2y..` in search. See https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/searching for details." CreationDate="2017-05-02T18:21:32.380" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13437" PostId="4780" Score="2" Text="Does Glen_b's answer answer your question? It certainly looks like it does. If so, please consider accepting it. I see that you asked 16 Qs (https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22452/engrstudent) on Meta and only accepted 1 answer, even though many (perhaps most?) seem to have completely fine answers. 1/16 is a *very* low acceptance rate. I think it would be great if you could look through your 16 questions and accept satisfactory answers everywhere. Nobody earns reputation points on Meta, but accepting  helps to visually mark threads as &quot;resolved&quot;. Thanks." CreationDate="2017-05-04T09:57:21.240" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13441" PostId="4780" Score="1" Text="@amoeba - You answered the correct way in the comment, so it was yours and not his.  If you had made an answer I would select it.  It feels less meritocratic to give your points to him.  I will select his answer as you request.  Too often I ask because I am trying to do, and so I move quickly to the doing." CreationDate="2017-05-04T11:07:38.533" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="13443" PostId="4780" Score="2" Text="No problem, nobody earns rep point on Meta anyway :-)" CreationDate="2017-05-04T11:14:34.070" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13444" PostId="4780" Score="1" Text="I have looked through a sampling of my questions without answers, and there are some with no answers, and there are some where the answers are relatively unpalatable.  Cardboardy?  I have substantially changed my rate of meta questions without an accepted answer, but I am not sure I can push it much further.  :)" CreationDate="2017-05-04T11:18:35.253" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="13405" PostId="4781" Score="4" Text="You can add `created:2y..` (as per https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/searching) and I think this will cover 100% of what OP wants. Together with ordering by votes, the link is https://stats.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&amp;q=%5bnonparametric%5d%20answers%3a0%20created%3a2y.. (`https://stats.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&amp;q=%5bnonparametric%5d%20answers%3a0%20created%3a2y..`)" CreationDate="2017-05-02T18:20:23.983" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13423" PostId="4781" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, +1, but also depends what you mean with &quot;uanswered&quot;;  because the SE concept of it is a bit different: unanswered = no accepted answer or no positively scored answers." CreationDate="2017-05-02T21:26:40.513" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="13426" PostId="4781" Score="1" Text="@Andre yes, &quot;answers:0&quot; in a search is different from the &quot;unanswered&quot; tab; the first actually gives things with no answers." CreationDate="2017-05-02T22:37:20.737" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13427" PostId="4781" Score="0" Text="@amoeba thanks; I have corrected my answer to incorporate your suggested improvement of my answer ... but actually it doesn't seem to quite do what is sought. I am editing again." CreationDate="2017-05-02T22:38:40.473" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13428" PostId="4781" Score="0" Text="@amoeba ... oh, my fault! I missed the two dots at the end" CreationDate="2017-05-02T22:57:11.970" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13407" PostId="4782" Score="15" Text="No one should downvote just because it is not of interest to them.  You seem to be placing a motive on the individuals who downvote but motivation is never clear unless the individuals provides a reason in a comment.  But that rarely happens." CreationDate="2017-05-02T19:31:43.180" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="13408" PostId="4782" Score="1" Text="I faced this more than one time without leaving even a comment lead me to delete my question many times. I even see other people do so." CreationDate="2017-05-02T19:33:12.717" UserId="159516" />
  <row Id="13409" PostId="4782" Score="1" Text="I see many questions are downvote and the question is really an interesting." CreationDate="2017-05-02T19:34:39.983" UserId="159516" />
  <row Id="13410" PostId="4782" Score="2" Text="The idea of website causes something like that. That is, if we cannot downvote unless we provide a reasonable reason that will be under review until it confirmed or not, then we can see this will reduce this problem." CreationDate="2017-05-02T19:36:27.740" UserId="159516" />
  <row Id="13411" PostId="4782" Score="4" Text="A related question might be how much does upvoting or downvoting of questions even matter? I believe I recognize the existence of noise in the voting process and hence put little weight on small numbers of votes when deciding what questions to examine. Of course, data and experimentation may show otherwise." CreationDate="2017-05-02T19:37:22.550" UserId="97925" />
  <row Id="13412" PostId="4782" Score="0" Text="For example, I can downvote for your question and this will be counted without any problem!! So, I would like the website to look about this issue." CreationDate="2017-05-02T19:39:38.937" UserId="159516" />
  <row Id="13413" PostId="4782" Score="4" Text="On the other hand many people keep their questions for a long time despite a downvote.  and even when closed they might try to get it reopened by editing it.  I can see an OP could be discouraged when receiving a barrage of downvotes (3 to 5 shortly after posting). You may want to look at the many discussions here on Meta that talk about downvotes." CreationDate="2017-05-02T19:40:05.900" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="13414" PostId="4782" Score="1" Text="The idea is to find a solution for this issue." CreationDate="2017-05-02T19:41:41.733" UserId="159516" />
  <row Id="13415" PostId="4782" Score="1" Text="Even if people keep their questions, in the future they maybe unable to post a question if they put under hold!!" CreationDate="2017-05-02T19:42:50.623" UserId="159516" />
  <row Id="13416" PostId="4782" Score="1" Text="That is just happen. Someone down vote, why? This is a discussion question!! Where is the problem? Just because he/she doesn't like the question?!!" CreationDate="2017-05-02T19:48:02.530" UserId="159516" />
  <row Id="13417" PostId="4782" Score="1" Text="There is no rule for voting in the website. In my opinion it is a personal choice!!" CreationDate="2017-05-02T19:49:28.150" UserId="159516" />
  <row Id="13418" PostId="4782" Score="0" Text="@MichaelChernick how do you know it is rarely happened?!" CreationDate="2017-05-02T19:50:13.213" UserId="159516" />
  <row Id="13419" PostId="4782" Score="7" Text="I have 5 years of experience on Stackexchange and have seen many downvotes but only on some occasions have I seen users explain why they do it.  I think users are entitled to express their views anonymously using the downvote.  I don't do it very often myself.  It does cost a reputation point to do it. I sometimes have had my own questions downvoted.  I use to occasionally ask why.  They don't answer but sometimes those wrongfully accused will tell you that they didn't do it.  I feel like this discussion is very similar to many I participated in on Meta and even one that I asked." CreationDate="2017-05-02T20:01:01.627" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="13420" PostId="4782" Score="1" Text="@Alice I seriously think you would benefit from looking at these other discussions." CreationDate="2017-05-02T20:02:04.490" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="13421" PostId="4782" Score="0" Text="Only downvoting answers on the main site costs reputation." CreationDate="2017-05-02T20:02:26.453" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="13422" PostId="4782" Score="0" Text="I will look at them, but if the idea that causes this problem still available then no way to find a solution." CreationDate="2017-05-02T20:04:29.493" UserId="159516" />
  <row Id="13424" PostId="4782" Score="5" Text="Here are some previous CV meta questions to help you out: https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&amp;q=%5bvotes%5d%20downvote%20is%3aquestion%20-%5bcomments%5d%20-%5banswers%5d. cc/ @MichaelChernick." CreationDate="2017-05-02T21:42:03.750" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="13425" PostId="4782" Score="0" Text="@AndreSilva Thank you for the list.  I think there could be several others as well." CreationDate="2017-05-02T22:28:31.390" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="13431" PostId="4782" Score="4" Text="@Alice: I don't see any record of your questions on CV receiving down-votes or being deleted; does your comment perhaps refer to experiences on other Stack Exchange sites?" CreationDate="2017-05-03T13:35:43.490" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="13542" PostId="4782" Score="0" Text="As a corollary, I've long suspected that some users are happy to close questions that probably have answers, but that they can't personally answer." CreationDate="2017-05-12T23:42:44.380" UserId="36229" />
  <row Id="13432" PostId="4783" Score="12" Text="(+1) Another reason to leave a comment when down-voting is to get feedback as to whether other users disagree with you or not." CreationDate="2017-05-03T15:14:28.193" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="13447" PostId="4783" Score="6" Text="(+1) I try to leave a comment with every down vote or close vote if one has not already been made.  I think all the regulars should try to do the same." CreationDate="2017-05-04T22:55:37.190" UserId="74500" />
  <row Id="13515" PostId="4783" Score="1" Text="@MatthewDrury: I think the boilerplate that appears when a question's closed can often be enough; but a bare down-vote is almost always going to be perplexing, &amp; perhaps sometimes discouraging to a new user. [This q.](https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/278583/17230), for example, was down-voted while I was still writing a comment, &amp; I can't imagine how the OP could have been expected to guess what might need improving." CreationDate="2017-05-10T18:27:31.917" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="13516" PostId="4783" Score="2" Text="Agreed. I do think youre right that the boilerplate is often sufficient, i suppose i hope a human touch may encourage askers to actually improve the question." CreationDate="2017-05-10T19:32:02.917" UserId="74500" />
  <row Id="13518" PostId="4783" Score="2" Text="@Matthew I agree -- I *try* to add specific comments to the boilerplate (and usually do unless I think it's patently obvious from just the boilerplate) -- but if there's not already at least *something* to indicate at least the nature of the problem, a downvote is unlikely to be useful. Some judgement is needed as to whether the boilerplate will suffice -- often additional explanation is likely to help." CreationDate="2017-05-10T22:21:09.030" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13521" PostId="4783" Score="2" Text="@MatthewDrury: Well, there are plenty of questions that are unmistakable duplicates or consist solely of a cut-&amp;-paste of someone's homework - I rarely comment when voting to close these kinds. On the other hand it's very unusual that a question is such utter gibberish that the boilerplate &quot;unclear what you're asking&quot; text is in itself adequate guidance." CreationDate="2017-05-11T09:38:11.437" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="13543" PostId="4783" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi You could just up-vote it back to 0. You didn't do it, why should you complain?" CreationDate="2017-05-13T03:22:04.320" UserId="34623" />
  <row Id="13544" PostId="4783" Score="1" Text="@SmallChess Perhaps because he understands the way we're supposed to do things better than most of us do. Strictly speaking we're not actually supposed to vote &quot;to compensate&quot; for the voting behavior of others, but only on the basis that the post itself merits an upvote or downvote. Instead the right thing to do is to highlight the problem behaviour (which he did). [That said, I think there's at least some scope for leeway when there seems to be highly counterproductive voting behavior.] ... if anything Scortchi's actions seem to be unimpeachable." CreationDate="2017-05-13T07:34:30.353" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13547" PostId="4783" Score="1" Text="@SmallChess: It's as Glen_b says: see [When should I vote?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/130046/225179) &amp; [Is it reasonable to upvote in order to counter what I think is an unjustified downvote?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/104829/225179). When someone down-votes a question, I'd rather they tell the OP the reason than just cancel out the down-vote myself (assuming I disagree with it). Perhaps the next user to come along will disagree &amp; down-vote again - but there's no need for us to be so uncommunicative." CreationDate="2017-05-15T11:33:10.347" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="13445" PostId="4784" Score="0" Text="Even aside from the fact that this is a duplicate of another meta.CV question, questions like this need to be asked on [meta.SE] because they are about SE policies that span multiple sites. (Note that @Andre's answer in the duplicate is largely copied from a meta.SE answer.)" CreationDate="2017-05-04T15:30:06.723" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13469" PostId="4784" Score="0" Text="I agree, cross-website duplicates is a pain.  I think the answer is: [Build and strengthen the Stack Exchange community with &quot;crossover questions&quot; between sites](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/199989/178179)" CreationDate="2017-05-06T18:18:29.440" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="13450" PostId="4785" Score="0" Text="What's the problem with having [quantile-function] and [quantiles]?" CreationDate="2017-05-05T12:06:50.927" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13451" PostId="4785" Score="0" Text="@amoeba there is no problem at all, I'm just asking if we can make it less ambiguous and avoid spreading the questions between the tags." CreationDate="2017-05-05T12:07:53.803" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="13452" PostId="4785" Score="0" Text="To me [quantiles] sounds sufficiently different from [quantile-function] that I don't see much ambiguity." CreationDate="2017-05-05T12:09:05.617" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13453" PostId="4785" Score="0" Text="However, there are a couple of dozens of questions that one could move from [quantiles] to [quantile-function] if we create it. See https://stats.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&amp;q=%5bquantiles%5d%20%22quantile%20function%22%20is%3aquestion." CreationDate="2017-05-05T12:12:01.783" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13454" PostId="4785" Score="0" Text="@amoeba most of them mention the &quot;`quantile()` function&quot; from base R so there is probably much less Q's to migrate." CreationDate="2017-05-05T12:52:39.533" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="13455" PostId="4785" Score="0" Text="Even better.$\:$" CreationDate="2017-05-05T13:12:58.177" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13456" PostId="4785" Score="1" Text="@amoeba I created `[quantile-function]` tag and suggested it as a synonym to `[inverse-cdf]`." CreationDate="2017-05-05T13:15:12.880" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="13457" PostId="4785" Score="1" Text="Cool. Unfortunately, there are very few users who would be able to upvote (https://stats.stackexchange.com/tags/inverse-cdf/topusers), so we would need one of the mods to approve this synonym." CreationDate="2017-05-05T13:17:18.880" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13458" PostId="4785" Score="2" Text="I'd say `[quantile-function]` is the same as `[inverse-cdf]` but `[quantiles]` is not a function" CreationDate="2017-05-05T14:44:20.167" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13459" PostId="4785" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b that's the case, but among Q's tagged as `[quantiles]` it becomes blurry... Btw, as far as I can remember you're a mod and you could approve the tag synonym described above?" CreationDate="2017-05-05T14:47:40.893" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="13460" PostId="4785" Score="2" Text="@Tim I'd want to see some consensus or at least allow a chance for people to voice disagreement with it first. Just because I think it doesn't mean it should happen. If some questions tagged as `[quantiles]` should be tagged as something else, that would seem to be an argument for changing the tags on those questions." CreationDate="2017-05-05T14:50:25.037" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13554" PostId="4787" Score="0" Text="I did not bounty this right away as I had just given Tony a bounty. I've only just remembered to come back to it." CreationDate="2017-05-16T06:13:49.363" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13476" PostId="4788" Score="0" Text="+1 for other suggestions, but I definitely don't need another bounty on that PCA answer: it has well enough upvotes &amp; visibility :)" CreationDate="2017-05-08T09:32:31.597" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13675" PostId="4788" Score="2" Text="The Q calls for one nomination per post. I'll take your first. Even if amoeba had not demurred I would not have awarded one there - while it's well deserving of recognition, I think it has that already, the idea is to spread the recognition around to good posts that don't have the recognition they should -- already-bountied posts will usually be out of the running" CreationDate="2017-05-28T23:43:32.180" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13520" PostId="4790" Score="1" Text="I re-tagged one more and the rest of the 22 Q's seem to be fine and not need re-tagging." CreationDate="2017-05-11T07:49:35.130" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="13552" PostId="4790" Score="0" Text="@Tim, I wrote about it in chat and whuber accepted the pending synonym. Case closed." CreationDate="2017-05-15T20:21:15.533" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13462" PostId="4791" Score="4" Text="Just flag them for moderator attention.  They can be &quot;locked&quot; for &quot;historical significance.&quot;" CreationDate="2017-05-05T23:04:57.463" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="13463" PostId="4791" Score="3" Text="We have several related questions on this kind of topic here already (including the 7th under Related in the sidebar), but yes, as whuber suggests, you can flag them. They can then be locked so that they can't be answered any more and a notice appears that explains the situation. It does have one disadvantage in that old questions whose answers change can no longer be updated (such as &quot;hey there's a new GUI just out that does exactly what you want&quot;), but since these questions are explicitly not on topic any more it's perhaps not such a problem." CreationDate="2017-05-06T00:30:21.157" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13464" PostId="4791" Score="3" Text="This issue (having posts that were borderline okay long ago but are no longer seen as on-topic) occurs across the SE network as communities more clearly define their boundaries and adjust them to the existence of other sites (whose boundaries also refine themselves over time). It's a fairly natural progression as sites grow and develop. Many sites - especially ones that have been around a long while - have a number of locked older posts as a result." CreationDate="2017-05-06T00:33:10.483" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13465" PostId="4791" Score="1" Text="This [post](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2898/should-we-consider-grandfathering-old-r-and-other-programming-heavy-posts) (which I mentioned earlier) has some people advocating to keep some particular old threads open rather than locked even though they're no longer on topic." CreationDate="2017-05-06T00:37:05.213" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13466" PostId="4791" Score="2" Text="@Glen_b After the question is &quot;locked&quot; (as I see it is now), it's impossible to edit answers. Isn't it a big disadvantage, compared to closing as off-topic? I don't quite understand why our policy is to prefer to lock in such cases. Also, so far nobody responded to Tim's suggestion of *deleting* such posts (instead of locking -- see OP's last sentence)." CreationDate="2017-05-06T08:05:38.473" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13468" PostId="4791" Score="2" Text="@Amoeba Those are good points.  Locking has helped us respond to users who complain (sometimes very aggressively) that their off-topic questions should be left open because they are just like such-and-such a question from years ago.  This shows that people do do their research when posting.  Having a prominent statement attached to old off-topic posts (which is one thing locking does) will help such people understand what is currently on topic." CreationDate="2017-05-06T14:47:59.603" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="13590" PostId="4791" Score="0" Text="@whuber This came up again elsewhere, so I'd like to get back to this conversation. I don't think I fully understand the reasoning in your last comment: I do understand that we want to clearly mark old off-topic questions as off-topic, but why would locking work better for this purpose than closing as off-topic? Closing as off-topic does attach &quot;a prominent statement&quot;, as you wrote." CreationDate="2017-05-18T17:41:40.827" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13591" PostId="4791" Score="0" Text="@Amoeba That's a good question.  Locking is a little more severe than closing: it prevents editing the question and voting on it, too.  I believe it would take a moderator to unlock a locked question, too, whereas a vote of high-rep community members will reopen a closed question.  None of those necessarily imply that locking is the better solution." CreationDate="2017-05-18T18:03:33.803" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="13595" PostId="4791" Score="0" Text="@whuber Hmm. I posted this a separate Meta question: https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4827." CreationDate="2017-05-18T21:38:44.267" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13472" PostId="4793" Score="1" Text="Clarification: do you mean standard closing as off-topic or do you mean something else? If something else, then what exactly? If such functionality does not exist, then it's not a viable approach." CreationDate="2017-05-07T14:13:40.300" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13474" PostId="4793" Score="1" Text="@amoeba What's the upside of closing the question? (one could add a warning without closing the question)" CreationDate="2017-05-07T16:17:40.737" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="13475" PostId="4793" Score="7" Text="Well, what's the upside of closing *any* off-topic questions? We close off-topic questions, that's how SE works. Why should we make an exception for a question just because it's old?" CreationDate="2017-05-08T07:33:56.820" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13935" PostId="4793" Score="1" Text="Hi Frank, I came across this thread again; would you mind clarifying your position (last sentence in this answer) in light of the comments above?" CreationDate="2017-08-01T12:06:46.397" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13936" PostId="4793" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I don't have a strong opinion. If the question is closed but of interest to me, I'll post it somewhere else and link to it. Closing is much better than locking or deleting." CreationDate="2017-08-01T12:50:39.077" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="13481" PostId="4797" Score="0" Text="I just gave you +5 rep, hopefully you can post something :-)" CreationDate="2017-05-08T14:06:23.990" UserId="34623" />
  <row Id="13482" PostId="4797" Score="1" Text="I cannot verify your claim: your user profile on CV shows you have never voted.  Do you have multiple accounts?" CreationDate="2017-05-08T15:01:45.700" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="13483" PostId="4797" Score="1" Text="I do not have multiple accounts and have voted with this one." CreationDate="2017-05-08T15:05:04.657" UserId="103785" />
  <row Id="13484" PostId="4797" Score="1" Text="@whuber That is the problem I'm bringing up - that I can't track my votes on my profile while I am low rep." CreationDate="2017-05-08T15:07:55.017" UserId="103785" />
  <row Id="13485" PostId="4797" Score="2" Text="If you click to vote before you have the privilege to vote, I don't think it ever shows anywhere on your account as a vote. My understanding it it's recorded as if someone with  no account had voted (which does impact some things though isn't worth reputation) but doesn't count for you. (People without an account who click on the upvote arrow get a little thank you message, but it's not dealt with like an upvote)" CreationDate="2017-05-08T15:09:14.950" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13486" PostId="4797" Score="3" Text="If you have below 15 rep, you cannot vote (see http://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/vote-up). Hence this: `I recently voted on a couple of questions and answers on CrossValidated. As I have 1 rep` -- is impossible." CreationDate="2017-05-08T15:09:37.053" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13487" PostId="4797" Score="1" Text="Are you voting while logged in or not? There are two voting systems: one for guests and another for registered users." CreationDate="2017-05-08T15:09:38.950" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="13490" PostId="4797" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b Hmm, I thought it's not possible to vote without an account. I can't vote on CV if I am not logged in." CreationDate="2017-05-08T15:14:07.130" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13492" PostId="4797" Score="0" Text="The message I receive when &quot;voting&quot; with less than 15 rep is the following: **&quot;Thanks for the feedback! Votes cast by those with less than 15 reputation are recorded, but do not change the publicly displayed post score.&quot;** I'd like to see that record listed in my vote history on my profile. Maybe they can automatically count for scores once my rep is high enough." CreationDate="2017-05-08T15:16:47.503" UserId="103785" />
  <row Id="13493" PostId="4797" Score="1" Text="@amoeba https://i.stack.imgur.com/JU2EQ.png ... it's not an actual vote." CreationDate="2017-05-08T15:20:35.850" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13495" PostId="4797" Score="0" Text="@whuber I am voting while logged in." CreationDate="2017-05-08T15:43:21.723" UserId="103785" />
  <row Id="13501" PostId="4797" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I agree with Alexander Li's request, irregardless of the action being a vote or not. The 'action' could still be logged for exactly the purpose of being able to find those questions or answers you've liked. IMO it's either that or make clear that to acquire 'history-privileges', you first need a little reputation (i.e. the same 15 points needed to vote)." CreationDate="2017-05-09T11:57:14.577" UserId="144089" />
  <row Id="13502" PostId="4797" Score="0" Text="@IWS To me it looks like if you have rep&lt;15, *you cannot vote*. Asking to have a log of actions that are not possible is just weird." CreationDate="2017-05-09T12:15:08.337" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13503" PostId="4797" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b You mentioned that such attempts-to-vote-by-users-below-15rep actually &quot;do impact some things&quot;. Do you know &amp; can you tell which things?" CreationDate="2017-05-09T12:16:06.800" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13504" PostId="4797" Score="1" Text="When browsing some questions just now I noticed the 'favorite option' (the nice yellow star). Is that one available for new (low rep) users (I do not really remember)? If so, then I would gladly concede my previous comment and 'side'/agree with @amoeba. If the only purpose is being able to find these question or answers again, this option seems adequate enough." CreationDate="2017-05-09T12:16:49.193" UserId="144089" />
  <row Id="13507" PostId="4797" Score="0" Text="-1 based on what I wrote above. I consider this suggestion confusing." CreationDate="2017-05-09T19:55:50.157" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13509" PostId="4797" Score="1" Text="@IWS I did not notice the favorite option. I will use that. However, perhaps it would be appropriate to turn a non-vote into a vote after someone reaches 15 rep?" CreationDate="2017-05-09T20:19:17.380" UserId="103785" />
  <row Id="13510" PostId="4797" Score="1" Text="@AlexanderLi that seems reasonable, but you would have to take it up on the main Meta site (and probably not likely to be implemented)" CreationDate="2017-05-09T22:59:39.543" UserId="127790" />
  <row Id="13511" PostId="4797" Score="1" Text="@ameoba Its my recollection that account-less votes are (or perhaps were) used for something but I don't recall what that actually is." CreationDate="2017-05-10T01:50:45.900" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13488" PostId="4798" Score="9" Text="The very fact that you thought to ask this question should tell you unequivocally what the correct answer is." CreationDate="2017-05-08T15:11:27.937" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="13489" PostId="4798" Score="5" Text="@whuber I was trying to ask how other people deal with this issue. I found so many valuable resources (my and other answers), but find it takes time to organize and archive. Want to know how other people rely on the website." CreationDate="2017-05-08T15:13:03.660" UserId="113777" />
  <row Id="13491" PostId="4798" Score="2" Text="That doesn't sound like the question you asked, though." CreationDate="2017-05-08T15:14:17.303" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="13494" PostId="4798" Score="4" Text="There are no guarantees here. If you're worried about this, always keep safe copies somewhere that will be safe. (I don't see this as a CV-specific question. Always keep copies of whatever is valuable to you if access is not guaranteed.)" CreationDate="2017-05-08T15:28:36.880" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="13496" PostId="4798" Score="4" Text="There are publicly available back-ups made every so often: see https://stackoverflow.blog/2009/06/04/stack-overflow-creative-commons-data-dump/" CreationDate="2017-05-08T16:28:33.687" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="19351" PostId="4799" Score="2" Text="You can also request a [GDPR data export](https://stackoverflow.com/legal/gdpr/request), which should give you all of your data, and will be pretty up to date." CreationDate="2019-11-01T09:14:39.143" UserId="264413" />
  <row Id="13500" PostId="4800" Score="1" Text="I think it's been effectively dead for some time." CreationDate="2017-05-09T11:16:10.960" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13506" PostId="4800" Score="0" Text="@gung yes, it vanished around one year ago I believe." CreationDate="2017-05-09T14:37:37.640" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="13508" PostId="4801" Score="2" Text="The wiki was written by @gung (https://stats.stackexchange.com/posts/47985/revisions), he will hopefully comment here." CreationDate="2017-05-09T19:57:10.803" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13522" PostId="4801" Score="0" Text="If you want to rephrase it, that's fine with me. *Reestimating* seems better than *recalculating*. The sense in which it might be considered analogous to forward selection is probably hard to explain in an excerpt; if you can think of a better phrasing, that's fine, or we could delete that comment." CreationDate="2017-05-11T11:36:57.597" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13524" PostId="4801" Score="0" Text="@gung, I assume you know more about LARS than I do; I only have superficial knowledge of it. I think it is better if you edit it. I would just encourage to either include accurate and concrete statements or nothing (delete the lacking ones) rather than keeping the somewhat inaccurate and potentially misleading information (as per my question, i.e. the OP)." CreationDate="2017-05-11T11:52:12.183" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="13525" PostId="4804" Score="1" Text="See [“Questions about Datasets”: Possible Exceptions?](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2097/17230). If it's on-topic to ask for a data-set that can be used to illustrate a particular statistical issue then a fortiori it's on-topic to ask how to construct one." CreationDate="2017-05-11T12:22:45.423" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="13523" PostId="4805" Score="3" Text="We have a lot of questions on [tag:simulation] &amp; [tag:random-generation]. There have been many questions about simulating data that have been considered on topic for a long time." CreationDate="2017-05-11T11:41:02.657" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13526" PostId="4805" Score="0" Text="Well, what if it is about using a specific package to simulate data?  It seems likely to me that anyone who wants to simulate data is going to use some package to do it.  But are those questions then an exception to the rule about software?  Or do we want to accept only questions on a more theoretical level?" CreationDate="2017-05-11T12:50:15.073" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="13528" PostId="4805" Score="5" Text="@PeterFlom, wrt the on- / off-topic status, my take is that questions about simulating data aren't different from questions about regression, &amp; questions about how to use a specific package (to simulate data) aren't different from questions about how to use a specific package (for regression)." CreationDate="2017-05-11T14:35:05.223" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13571" PostId="4805" Score="0" Text="I think our existing criteria in the [on-topic help](http://stats.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) cover doubt on edge cases of this pretty well. &quot;*If it requires statistical expertise ...*&quot;. If it's asking &quot;which button do I press&quot; it's off topic. If it's asking about approaches to the underlying problem - what's a good way to do it - it's probably on topic" CreationDate="2017-05-18T06:46:10.317" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13527" PostId="4807" Score="0" Text="That is a great job!" CreationDate="2017-05-11T13:04:42.703" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="13534" PostId="4808" Score="2" Text="On the second thing, see the advice in the [help/on-topic] on crossposting (3rd last paragraph) and [this meta post](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1194/crossposting-on-the-stackexchange-network) - pick the best place and post it there. You can flag for migration if you need to shift it. There's a bit more flexibility if you seek different kinds of answers (e.g. &quot;should I run this drainage pipe along a fence-line&quot; might get very different kinds of answers if you post to diy.SE than on law.SE --- there's some scope for tolerance of crossposting in that case)" CreationDate="2017-05-12T02:41:38.620" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13529" PostId="4809" Score="1" Text="thanks for the tips. I am actually doing it. But there are hundreds of pages I like, such approach and@Alecos Papadopoulos'  approach may not be salable." CreationDate="2017-05-11T14:49:15.410" UserId="113777" />
  <row Id="13530" PostId="4809" Score="2" Text="Same here, to save my ~5000 questions + answers, assuming 10 seconds per page (which I believe is an underestimate) it would take me 5000* 10/3600~14 hours. I guess we could write a script to take care of that. (crossing fingers Stack Exchange does not ban the IP on the way)." CreationDate="2017-05-11T15:30:33.163" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="13531" PostId="4809" Score="2" Text="+1. One can force archive.org to save any page at any moment: see &quot;Save Page Now&quot; right on the front page https://archive.org/web/" CreationDate="2017-05-11T15:32:12.003" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13532" PostId="4809" Score="2" Text="Right now I have 1,309 As &amp; 12 Qs, plus 416 favorited Qs, w/ maybe 50% of those numbers on SO. I certainly wouldn't want to save all of that. The most I could ever want to save might be ~1k. That is pretty doable as you go along; in the interim WbM is something I'm perfectly comfortable relying on." CreationDate="2017-05-11T16:09:32.727" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13533" PostId="4809" Score="2" Text="@amoeba they also have a Google Chrome extension: [Google Chrome extension to archive a web page](https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/q/40045/903) and even better some API [API or library to obtain a mirror of a link](https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/q/42188/903) so perhaps one day someone motivated may write some script. I guess the API has some limitations though. Stack Exchange also has some limitations." CreationDate="2017-05-12T02:14:30.490" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="13535" PostId="4812" Score="3" Text="Have you seen https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2468? There is a long list of template comments and some advices on how to insert them effectively." CreationDate="2017-05-12T07:12:54.857" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13536" PostId="4812" Score="4" Text="Congratulations on your new job, by the way!" CreationDate="2017-05-12T07:13:16.197" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13537" PostId="4812" Score="0" Text="thank you :D no, I haven't seen that question! I will check it out right now." CreationDate="2017-05-12T07:14:59.100" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="13540" PostId="4812" Score="1" Text="Also see: https://stackapps.com/search?q=%5Bcomments%5D+is%3Aquestion." CreationDate="2017-05-12T18:58:20.520" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="14799" PostId="4812" Score="0" Text="@AndreSilva are you able to use that [QuickComment2](https://stackapps.com/questions/6167/quickcomment2-automatic-keyboard-only-comment-snippets) app? I installed TamperMonkey under Chrome and it says the script is running, but pressing Alt+X while writing this (or other) comment doesn't bring up any snippet. It doesn't work! I will contact the developer, of course, but I'm curious to know if it works for you or anyone else." CreationDate="2017-11-19T16:58:13.727" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="14801" PostId="4812" Score="0" Text="@AndreSilva is there another one that you tried, and which works for you?" CreationDate="2017-11-19T17:08:09.317" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="14803" PostId="4812" Score="1" Text="@AndreSilva my bad, QuickComment2 works, I accidentally installed the older version [QuickComment](https://github.com/KeyboardFire/Inferno/blob/master/nonmod/quickcomment/stackexchange-quickcomment.user.js). Anyway, in case you remember which extension you used, please let me know. Thanks!" CreationDate="2017-11-19T17:18:49.363" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="13538" PostId="4813" Score="1" Text="Don't forget to tag your questions appropriately. In this case, for example, it's quite obvious that one should use [search] tag (I edited to put it on)." CreationDate="2017-05-12T17:52:52.610" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13541" PostId="4813" Score="0" Text="@amoeba whoops, you're right." CreationDate="2017-05-12T19:53:12.947" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="13545" PostId="4818" Score="1" Text="Yeah, I was worried it might have to come down to going through all 142. I did just start retagging some that should obviously be `[hierarchical-clustering]` instead of `[clustering]` `[hierarchical]`." CreationDate="2017-05-14T19:05:25.347" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13546" PostId="4818" Score="0" Text="If I were to retag these ones, I would leave [clustering] tag (and replace [hierarchical] with [hierarchical-clustering]); it's an old discussion about hierarchical tags (pun intended), but I find it useful e.g. to have clustering-related threads under [clustering] even if there is a more narrow tag. This is not very important though." CreationDate="2017-05-14T19:11:19.670" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13548" PostId="4818" Score="0" Text="OK, so what I'm doing now is reading to see if each question is really only about the peculiarities of hierarchical clustering, or if it is about HC as an instance of clustering generally. I then tag w/ HC alone, or w/ both. In general, I'm not a fan of having to use 2 nested tags." CreationDate="2017-05-15T11:43:53.517" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13549" PostId="4818" Score="1" Text="I found 8 that had &quot;Bayesian&quot; in them. Those have now been done." CreationDate="2017-05-15T17:14:24.883" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13550" PostId="4818" Score="1" Text="All the threads from the search on &quot;clustering&quot; have now been edited. There are 99 &lt;strike&gt;[red balloons](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4kEm8XECLQ)&lt;/strike&gt; threads left." CreationDate="2017-05-15T19:58:04.993" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13551" PostId="4818" Score="0" Text="I guess all of them can be moved to multilevel-analysis now? Or do you want to go over them first to double-check? By the way, I edited the wiki excerpt &amp; wiki of multilevel-analysis. I was hesitating about what to do with [nested-data] (that I created out of [nested] just some days ago) vs. [multilevel-analysis], but maybe it makes sense to leave them be as is. These concepts are strongly intersecting though. In fact, multilevel-analysis is somewhat vague." CreationDate="2017-05-15T20:14:54.013" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13553" PostId="4818" Score="0" Text="Multilevel-analysis is somewhat vague. We can deal w/ that later, I suppose. I'm not sure if the rest can be merged now; I'm not sure if they are really all about MLA--I haven't yet gone through them to check. I've only done the ones that can be captured through simple, intuitive searches." CreationDate="2017-05-15T20:32:06.713" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13623" PostId="4818" Score="0" Text="I still haven't gone through the remaining tags, but I'm not sure when I will. Do you think we should just go ahead and move them to multilevel-analysis now? What do you suggest?" CreationDate="2017-05-24T16:44:39.863" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13625" PostId="4818" Score="0" Text="@gung The last time we talked about it I took a brief a look at the remaining questions and had the feeling that there is some non-negligible fraction that are not really about multilevel analysis. So ideally I'd say we should look through them and remove [hierarchical] from everywhere where multivelel-analysis would be a misnomer. This would also make the case for the subsequent move stronger. But I did not come around doing it so far..." CreationDate="2017-05-24T21:11:42.780" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13673" PostId="4818" Score="0" Text="@gung I think this search https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/hierarchical+-regression+-multiple-regression+-multilevel-analysis+-mixed-model shows the threads that we should take a look at (and in many cases it seems remove the [hierarchical] tag), there is currently 40 of them." CreationDate="2017-05-28T20:44:59.583" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14470" PostId="4818" Score="0" Text="FYI: I started going over the search results in my last comment above (42 of them at the moment) and am planning to retag all that are *not* about [multilevel-analysis]. After this is done, I think we can proceed with the merge as planned." CreationDate="2017-10-29T21:54:45.227" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14471" PostId="4818" Score="0" Text="was our plan to make `[hierarchical]` a synonym of `[multilevel-analysis]`? (It would seem so...) I agree w/ your point that `h` is a bad tag to have around. If we make it a synonym, it will still show up when people start typing &quot;hier&quot; (I believe this is true even if merged). I wonder if retagging as `m-a` is better in the long run." CreationDate="2017-10-30T00:22:14.490" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14472" PostId="4818" Score="0" Text="@gung Can't you (i) make the synonym, (ii) merge, (iii) delete the synonym mapping?" CreationDate="2017-10-30T08:19:24.030" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14473" PostId="4818" Score="0" Text="I don't know. I can try to find out." CreationDate="2017-10-30T11:25:16.030" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14480" PostId="4818" Score="0" Text="@gung I did not realize that it's not clear if this is possible. Somehow I thought this should be doable, but I don't really know. I guess we can just try. I will ping you when I go through the remaining threads." CreationDate="2017-10-30T21:26:41.780" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14483" PostId="4818" Score="0" Text="Just b/c I don't know doesn't mean it's not possible ;-). I'll have to try to find out. This should be a surmountable obstacle one way or another." CreationDate="2017-10-30T22:58:15.697" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14486" PostId="4818" Score="0" Text="I think I can do it. Let's just go ahead &amp; we'll make it work. Let me know when you're finished." CreationDate="2017-10-31T13:58:15.627" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14488" PostId="4818" Score="0" Text="I am done. I removed the tag from some threads, and all the remaining ones can be moved to multilevel-analysis. Let me know if it works out." CreationDate="2017-10-31T22:47:15.553" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14489" PostId="4818" Score="1" Text="It seems to have worked. The questions all have `[multilevel-analysis]` now, &amp; `[hierarchical]` is just gone entirely." CreationDate="2017-11-01T00:16:00.493" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13563" PostId="4819" Score="1" Text="Upvote this comment if you are in favor of gung's approach ([nominal]$\to$[categorical-data])." CreationDate="2017-05-16T12:50:19.840" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13564" PostId="4819" Score="5" Text="Upvote this comment if you are in favor of ttnphns's approach (keep three tags separate)." CreationDate="2017-05-16T12:50:44.383" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13565" PostId="4819" Score="1" Text="Upvote this comment if you think both approaches are fine and/or don't care." CreationDate="2017-05-16T12:51:32.193" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13566" PostId="4819" Score="1" Text="I do not see any sin in keeping [nominal], [ordinal], and [categorical-data] three independent tags. As data types, nominal+ordinal &lt;= categorical, where '&lt;=' means that it would be possible perhaps to conceive of other categorical data types, some special/unusial, which do not easily drop into nominal or ordinal. Besides that, I somewhat doubt that we need to add &quot;data&quot; to [ordianal] and [nominal] tags; well, a question might be very abstract one about concepts of ordinal/nominal _scales_ (measurements) rather than about some realization of it in a form of a _data_ (analysis)." CreationDate="2017-05-17T07:22:22.170" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="13567" PostId="4819" Score="2" Text="@ttnphns I don't disagree. Regarding renaming, note that [ordinal] has *already* been renamed into [ordinal-data], after questions about ordinal logistic regression were moved out of it, see here: https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4743. So now we have ordinal-logit ( = ordered-logit) and ordinal-data. I suggested to rename [nominal], because we have categorical-data, binary-data, now also ordinal-data, etc. so I thought it makes sense to have the tag name nominal-data too. IMHO a question about nominal scales can be tagged with [nominal-data] without any big problem." CreationDate="2017-05-17T08:05:48.250" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13568" PostId="4819" Score="1" Text="Amoeba, because you are much more active a meta user/fixer I recognise your priority. Do how you find it worth in the end. My task is to drop here my opinion, among others', for you to collect considerations." CreationDate="2017-05-17T09:16:07.993" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="15645" PostId="4819" Score="0" Text="Are there any guidelines about the tags? How do they actually function in practice? (I know that they are linked to badges and privileges, but beyond that, is there something useful in searching?)" CreationDate="2018-04-23T11:45:47.553" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="15646" PostId="4819" Score="0" Text="@MartijnWeterings Sorry I don't quite understand what you are asking. Maybe it's better if you ask this in more details either as a new Meta post or in chat." CreationDate="2018-04-23T12:20:00.863" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15647" PostId="4819" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I am considering to join voting on one of the three comments. But, somewhere between the moment of starting this consideration and putting the actual vote I realized that, I do not know what the (practical) function is of these tags. (and now I see this is an old question, with just a new answer)" CreationDate="2018-04-23T15:40:33.543" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="15648" PostId="4819" Score="0" Text="@MartijnWeterings Yes, this particular voting is not relevant anymore; the merge has been made." CreationDate="2018-04-23T15:48:57.913" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13624" PostId="4820" Score="1" Text="Jeff Atwood wrote [a thoughtful post](https://stackoverflow.blog/2010/11/16/dr-strangedupe-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-duplication/) on this subject a while ago, where he's in at least partial agreement with whuber. (as per my reading anyways)" CreationDate="2017-05-24T20:00:20.047" UserId="93623" />
  <row Id="13569" PostId="4821" Score="4" Text="This is the answer I would have wanted to write, if I could do so ..." CreationDate="2017-05-17T15:47:43.693" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="13572" PostId="4821" Score="1" Text="I agree that this is vital work.  I'm not completely clear on how it works. Suppose that a new visitor has a question about ANOVA.  He searches but finds nothing.  However, there is another question, about regression, that has the same answer. The visitor, like so many, doesn't know that ANOVA and regression are related. How will the visitor find it, if the questions are merged?  Should there be some pointer added to the merged question?" CreationDate="2017-05-18T11:13:28.407" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="13577" PostId="4821" Score="1" Text="I'm not completely following you, Peter, perhaps because &quot;merging&quot; differs from closing questions as a duplicate.  Merging assembles all answers and comments into one thread, leaving only one of the questions as a stub of the thread it began.  In your example, the visitor might indeed fail to find the answer; she will post her question; *and a member of this community will identify the duplicate.* Her question will be closed but its text will remain so that *all future visitors* who frame their question in a similar manner can find it and be led to the answer directly." CreationDate="2017-05-18T13:04:26.477" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="13676" PostId="4821" Score="1" Text="You have to handle that hypothetical duplication correctly, though. If all you do is close the ANOVA question as a duplicate to the regression one,  you leave very confused (and upset) question askers, who think you're being jerks for closing an ANOVA question with a - to them - completely unrelated regression answer. -- A &quot;true&quot; answer to the ANOVA questions needs to explain that, in this instance, ANOVA and regression are related enough that the regression answer also applies to ANOVA. If the linked answer doesn't address the similarities, it doesn't truly answer the question." CreationDate="2017-05-29T14:50:49.177" UserId="69382" />
  <row Id="13677" PostId="4821" Score="1" Text="@R.M. Thank you for that cautionary advice, which is wise and helpful.  On some occasions I find a duplicate very clearly answers the closed question but that it uses a different language or notation.  In such cases a comment to the closed question can be helpful in pointing out the connection.  If it takes more than a comment to do that, or if the comment requires expertise to understand, then probably the question should not be closed as a duplicate." CreationDate="2017-05-29T15:00:33.063" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="13573" PostId="4824" Score="2" Text="Your 1st wiki quote does discuss prediction as distinct from forecasting &amp; explains that it is a superset of which F is a subset. The quote at the bottom (from the book) is a copy error [this Google books search](https://books.google.com/books?id=-kOC6D0DiNYC&amp;q=Uncertainty+in+data#v=snippet&amp;q=Uncertainty%20in%20data&amp;f=false) shows that it should be &quot;**unknown** parameters&quot;. I'll fix that." CreationDate="2017-05-18T12:32:00.617" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13574" PostId="4824" Score="1" Text="The first quote is way too indirect about prediction vs. forecasting. What you &quot;see&quot; in it is not what I &quot;read&quot; in it. Taken literally, the connection is just not there. For a newbie, the appearance of forecasting as in bold in the second line of that quote should be confusing." CreationDate="2017-05-18T12:45:42.697" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="13661" PostId="4824" Score="0" Text="Hi Richard! Have you seen my answer? What do you think?" CreationDate="2017-05-27T09:23:24.507" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13732" PostId="4824" Score="2" Text="@amoeba, I have made one more small correction, and in general I like the new tag Wikis and excerpts much better. (Hopefully my edit will get accepted; I do not have the necessary reputation yet to do it freely.) Then the problem is solved." CreationDate="2017-06-14T08:04:14.630" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="13733" PostId="4824" Score="0" Text="Cool. I approved your correction but there is one more vote needed." CreationDate="2017-06-14T09:47:12.187" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13585" PostId="4825" Score="2" Text="+1. There are some questions where it's the only tag. You will have to think what to replace it with. You might find [tag:project-management] useful." CreationDate="2017-05-18T15:35:25.077" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13587" PostId="4825" Score="0" Text="@amoeba is right: to get rid of the tag, it needs to be removed from every thread. So we need something else for those threads where it is the only tag. We can close old, off topic threads, but in some cases consider flagging them to be 'locked', if they have any value (even while off topic)." CreationDate="2017-05-18T15:42:59.900" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13588" PostId="4825" Score="0" Text="@amoeba has made a good suggestion as I was unaware of that tag and it does look as though it would be suitable." CreationDate="2017-05-18T16:11:28.580" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="13589" PostId="4825" Score="0" Text="@gung I will do the easy ones first starting tomorrow and then if in doubt come back here." CreationDate="2017-05-18T16:12:20.547" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="13606" PostId="4825" Score="0" Text="It seems the tag is empty." CreationDate="2017-05-22T08:53:23.250" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13607" PostId="4825" Score="1" Text="@amoeba Last time I looked there were still three there so someone must have lent a helping hand. I think the appropriate thing is for me to post an answer and accept it." CreationDate="2017-05-22T09:17:08.657" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="13608" PostId="4825" Score="0" Text="I did the last two yesterday. Don't know about the third." CreationDate="2017-05-22T09:20:35.367" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13575" PostId="4826" Score="4" Text="[Glen_b's answer to a related question yesterday](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/4822/919) provides some reasons." CreationDate="2017-05-18T13:01:11.150" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="13576" PostId="4826" Score="0" Text="Thanks, I wasn't on Meta yesterday, so I didn't see this. As I look at the question I see this more as a question of when to merge near duplicates and not exactly dealing with which is the duplicate when they are exact." CreationDate="2017-05-18T13:02:58.927" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="13578" PostId="4826" Score="1" Text="In the examples I saw it was just stated that A appears to be a duplicate of B.  The issue of which question was a better thread or needed merging did not seem to be at issue.  I think my issue is that attention should be paid to the dates of the questions because if that is ignored the decision to close an old question may not be warranted." CreationDate="2017-05-18T13:11:49.573" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="13579" PostId="4826" Score="1" Text="Have you reviewed the many related meta threads listed to the right of this page under the heading &quot;Related&quot;? I believe they address your concerns." CreationDate="2017-05-18T13:36:15.797" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="13580" PostId="4826" Score="7" Text="Precedence in time is a factor (*ceteris paribus*) but it's not the primary criterion -- the aim is to arrive at a collection of good questions with good answers, and sometimes a newer question (or its answers) may be the better choice as the place to refer people - i.e. the one to treat as a canonical question. We can use closing as duplicate, merging, and even edits where needed to try to produce a good canonical question with good answers." CreationDate="2017-05-18T14:43:11.870" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13581" PostId="4826" Score="0" Text="As I said at the outset that a lot has been written here about concerns about duplicates. Of the 12 related questions listed I even wrote one of my own in 2012.  I understand the many issues involved and I agree with the reasons for eliminating or merging duplicates.  I have only one major issue which regards overlooking which question came first.  I have reviewed several of the 12 related questions but I do not see this issue mentioned in any of the titles.  If someone could point me to one that addresses this issue specifically I would appreciate it." CreationDate="2017-05-18T14:53:35.733" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="13582" PostId="4826" Score="0" Text="I also appreciate hearing any new opinions on the subject. I agree with the comment that Glen_b just gave above.  I am not concerned about situations where the order is recognized.  I am only concerned about closing a question because the order was overlooked.  Perhaps this does happen very often and there are other remedies such as reopening a question or merging questions in an appropriate way." CreationDate="2017-05-18T14:57:52.623" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="13583" PostId="4826" Score="4" Text="I don't think there is a Meta question *specifically* about this issue, but e.g. I wrote in [this answer two years ago](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2575/28666) that &quot;It [the canonical thread that other questions are duplicates of] does not have to be the oldest question&quot;, and that answer got +10 upvotes. Glen_b wrote the same in his yesterday's answer linked above. (I am sure this came up in some other Meta threads too.) So I guess that's the current consensus." CreationDate="2017-05-18T15:16:38.950" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13584" PostId="4826" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I would also agree about the choice of a &quot;canonical question&quot; although that can sometimes be very difficult to judge.  I was just raising the possibility of not recognizing the time order." CreationDate="2017-05-18T15:24:38.397" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="13596" PostId="4826" Score="0" Text="A discussion from GIS Meta SE (might help): https://gis.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3477/when-flagging-a-duplicate-which-question-should-be-flagged-as-the-original." CreationDate="2017-05-19T15:52:42.277" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="13597" PostId="4826" Score="0" Text="That question is useful to the topic and your answer there seems to be the prevailing position here too. Yet all links mentioned thus far on this post do not address the issue of not recognizing the order of the questions when flagging it. I am beginning to realize that no one can really know for sure why the user flagged a particular question as a duplicate.since the newer question might be viewed as a better post." CreationDate="2017-05-19T16:02:16.107" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="13617" PostId="4826" Score="0" Text="Michael, I am confused about what you are asking here. Your post contains one sentence with the question mark, and I quote: &quot;If the two questions, call them A and B, are truly duplicates how can the older question A be called a duplicate of B?&quot; The comments above explain pretty clearly, and you seem to agree, that in some situations older question A can be called a duplicate of a newer question B. So what is here to left to answer?" CreationDate="2017-05-24T14:45:16.293" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13619" PostId="4826" Score="0" Text="The question asks why the first post could be considered a duplicate of the latter rather than the other way around.  I specifically consider when the person posting doesn't recognize the time order.  Many users argue that the weaker thread should be considered the duplicate regardless of the order and if they are nearly equivalent in terms of answers and comments they should be merged." CreationDate="2017-05-24T15:57:58.773" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="13743" PostId="4826" Score="0" Text="Hi Michael! I noticed that Animuson's answer got 9 upvotes already, and seems in line with the discussion in the comments above. Is there any particular reason why you did not mark it as accepted? If it's intentional, perhaps you can edit to explain what exactly you are still waiting to be clarified; otherwise maybe accept to close this thread?" CreationDate="2017-06-21T10:45:01.020" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13746" PostId="4826" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Please see my comment below the answer." CreationDate="2017-06-21T13:59:01.890" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="13666" PostId="4827" Score="3" Text="See https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/126631/225179. It's suggested that locking a post is for rather special cases rather than run-of-the-mill, off-topic now questions." CreationDate="2017-05-27T13:52:51.453" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="13667" PostId="4827" Score="1" Text="Thanks @Scortchi, this is very interesting. That answer lists 4 criteria that should be met to warrant locking a question, but I am not sure I understand how to apply these criteria. E.g. take this thread https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/5292 that was recently locked following the Meta thread that I linked to in my question. It's clearly off-topic (criterion #1) and has a large number of views/votes (#3). But is it &quot;stellar&quot; (#2) and is it &quot;contentious&quot; (#4)? Do you, personally, think it's better to lock it or to close it as off-topic?" CreationDate="2017-05-27T14:03:44.813" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13678" PostId="4827" Score="2" Text="However useful it is, I wouldn't describe it as &quot;stellar&quot; - annotated lists of R GUIS/IDEs are two-a-penny. But when I google &quot;GUIS for R&quot;, it comes up 2nd. It's been somewhat controversial, perhaps, having had a couple of close votes, a leave-open vote &amp; an off-topic flag. I'm also puzzled about the benefits of locking vs closing, after reading this question at any rate." CreationDate="2017-05-30T10:11:39.827" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="14088" PostId="4827" Score="0" Text="Define &quot;old&quot;: 2 weeks, 6 months, 3 years? Does it depend on whether the user is still active and likely to fix the question?" CreationDate="2017-08-21T01:08:00.957" UserId="7291" />
  <row Id="13598" PostId="4829" Score="5" Text="+1 but I think &quot;See the corresponding Wikipedia page&quot; is still too long &amp; unnecessary in the wiki excerpt, this can go into the full wiki. Can you give an example of when something like that would be useful in the excerpt?" CreationDate="2017-05-19T16:26:20.863" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13599" PostId="4829" Score="0" Text="I suppose it isn't clear, @amoeba. My point is only that 'See the corresponding Wikipedia page' is *better* than `https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution`, not that it's a particularly good thing to add." CreationDate="2017-05-19T16:28:14.703" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13602" PostId="4829" Score="0" Text="By the way, thanks for the reminding me about that old thread on the length of wiki excerpts. I have now marked your answer as accepted (it's the most upvoted one). I took the liberty of adding an update with current versions of the excerpts (based on the whuber's comment under your answer), which are all slightly -- but noticeably -- shorter than the versions suggested in your answer. Feel free to edit my Update and/or perhaps incorporate it in your answer in other way as you see fit." CreationDate="2017-05-19T19:12:56.553" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13605" PostId="4829" Score="3" Text="I'd prefer excerpts not contain any links, &amp; not mention wikipedia pages or anything like it. Space is limited. It should be used to briefly describe (i) what the tag means and (ii) (if needed) how to use it or not use it. If those things are covered, I think we should regard the excerpt as complete. Yes, excerpts are much more read than the tag wiki but we should not pre-empt the function of the tag wiki. It would be like arguing that since newspaper headlines are read by more people than the article, we should try to put all the salient points into it." CreationDate="2017-05-19T22:39:55.333" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13609" PostId="4829" Score="0" Text="When I write a wiki excerpt for a new tag (or for a tag without a wiki excerpt) and find myself copying the definition from Wikipedia, I insert &quot;[Wikipedia]&quot; (without any link) right in the excerpt. I try to write excerpts myself but sometimes I do resort to copying a definition from elsewhere. For example, I saw an archaeology question yesterday and decided to create an [tag:archaeology] tag. I wrote &quot;Study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. [Wikipedia]&quot; in the excerpt. I feel it's OK. But let me know if you don't think so @Glen_b and gung." CreationDate="2017-05-22T12:01:37.550" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13610" PostId="4829" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, that seems fine to me." CreationDate="2017-05-22T12:14:49.343" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13611" PostId="4829" Score="0" Text="I think that should be okay since it's just sourcing a quote" CreationDate="2017-05-23T04:02:56.767" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13616" PostId="4829" Score="0" Text="I guess you can accept your answer by now, gung :)" CreationDate="2017-05-24T14:42:20.570" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13621" PostId="4829" Score="0" Text="@kjetilbhalvorsen, there is a call to accept this as the answer. Would you like to develop your ideas into a separate answer, or do you accept this as the consensus?" CreationDate="2017-05-24T16:33:15.137" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13622" PostId="4829" Score="2" Text="Its fine with me that this becomes the accepted answer (I didn't know that links in excerpts didn't work. Si with time I will go through the links I have added and move them to the excerpts." CreationDate="2017-05-24T16:35:44.457" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="13618" PostId="4831" Score="1" Text="UPDATE: Two days after posting this answer, I went ahead and edited wikis+experts as suggested here. Richard, let me know if this resolved the issue." CreationDate="2017-05-24T14:48:20.333" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13620" PostId="4831" Score="1" Text="Hmmm, I guess I should have moved faster. Oh well." CreationDate="2017-05-24T16:31:54.183" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13615" PostId="4833" Score="2" Text="This seems like a reasonable solution to me." CreationDate="2017-05-24T14:40:07.783" UserId="5829" />
  <row Id="17224" PostId="4833" Score="0" Text="I agree that this is an annoying situation. I'm fine with your proposed solution, but here's a couple of additional possibilities: 1) instead of &quot;random-eff-econometrics&quot;, make it &quot;random-eff-fgls&quot; to focus on the method instead of the field, 2) Make &quot;fixed-eff-econometrics&quot; or even the existing &quot;fixed-effects-model&quot; a synonym of &quot;linear-model&quot; (or whatever) since those are essentially the same." CreationDate="2019-02-05T15:24:35.150" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="17225" PostId="4833" Score="1" Text="@mkt, I disagree. The only people who would be asking questions about these are economists or others specifically using an econometric approach. They will have a particular thing in mind &amp; we want to signal that to both askers selecting tags &amp; answerers. I think having `econometrics` is important. I also think these excerpts are very good. I upvoted this long ago. Was there any reason we didn't pull the trigger then, amoeba?" CreationDate="2019-02-05T15:38:40.657" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17226" PostId="4833" Score="0" Text="@gung Not really -- it just looked like a lot of work, so I was reluctant to go ahead; and in addition I have decreased my participation since then... That said, this was my pet project so I guess I can look into it again." CreationDate="2019-02-05T16:19:50.923" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17227" PostId="4833" Score="0" Text="@mkt Would you be interested in joining the retagging efforts if we decide to go ahead?" CreationDate="2019-02-05T16:20:11.097" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17228" PostId="4833" Score="0" Text="BTW, I agree strongly with what gung wrote in the comment." CreationDate="2019-02-05T16:20:24.917" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17229" PostId="4833" Score="0" Text="@gung Fair enough" CreationDate="2019-02-05T17:59:51.137" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="17230" PostId="4833" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I could help out, but can't really commit to a regular 10/day." CreationDate="2019-02-05T18:00:49.710" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="17231" PostId="4833" Score="2" Text="Note: I made the synonyms in #3." CreationDate="2019-02-05T20:11:47.157" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13626" PostId="4834" Score="3" Text="Did you see the comment under your question explaining why it was put on hold? It was posted 8 hours ago." CreationDate="2017-05-25T14:45:40.190" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13627" PostId="4834" Score="0" Text="yes. Here I respond to the comments." CreationDate="2017-05-25T14:55:09.080" UserId="83526" />
  <row Id="13628" PostId="4834" Score="4" Text="IMHO it makes more sense to respond in the comments under your question on the main site. Here you ask why your Q was put on hold, and the answer to that is: see the comment explaining why. If you want to reply to the comment, please do it there and ping whoever posted that comment (in this case, Glen_b) by including `@Glen_b` into your comment." CreationDate="2017-05-25T15:02:57.520" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13629" PostId="4834" Score="2" Text="In addition to @amoeba's advice, you should incorporate the response addressing the close reason into your question via editing so that the current state of the question is clear, on-topic, etc. Then it may be reopenable." CreationDate="2017-05-25T15:25:38.460" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13630" PostId="4834" Score="0" Text="@gung I think my question is clear and on topic. I don't understand why Glen_b didn't. I explain my problem, offer a reproducible example, and show what I tried so far." CreationDate="2017-05-25T15:37:07.090" UserId="83526" />
  <row Id="13631" PostId="4834" Score="2" Text="Your question doesn't really make sense to me, but I'm not too sharp. I agree w/ @Glen_b's comment. Why not just average them?" CreationDate="2017-05-25T16:02:33.047" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13632" PostId="4834" Score="0" Text="@gung If I choose to average them, I have two options. I can divide the $x$ axis into small rectangles and find the average $f$ value for every $\Delta x$, or divide the $f$ axis into small rectangles and find the average $x$ for each $\Delta f$. I want to rigorously approach this problem, and it is not clear to me if one of these methods is better than the other, or if there is a better way." CreationDate="2017-05-25T16:05:39.950" UserId="83526" />
  <row Id="13633" PostId="4834" Score="3" Text="The clarity that counts is in the eyes of potential answerers. Best thing you could do is explain the context and motivation in as simple terms as possible." CreationDate="2017-05-25T16:08:46.457" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="13634" PostId="4834" Score="0" Text="FWIW, the question of how to average 3 densities by dividing &quot;the x axis into small rectangles and find the average f value for every Δx, or divid[ing] the f axis into small rectangles and find the average x for each Δf&quot; seems clear to me." CreationDate="2017-05-25T16:11:54.230" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13635" PostId="4834" Score="0" Text="@gung I added a plot of what the resulting PDF should look like and a paragraph describing my concerns about averaging. Would you please remove the hold?" CreationDate="2017-05-25T16:20:28.973" UserId="83526" />
  <row Id="13636" PostId="4834" Score="1" Text="I voted to reopen. To be honest, I am not sure why it was closed, I think it was reasonably clear from the beginning; I suspect that everybody was confused by you not simply averaging the PDFs (which seems the most natural and the most reasonable thing to do; you just average three functions, there is only one way of doing it, not two)." CreationDate="2017-05-25T18:53:09.373" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13637" PostId="4834" Score="0" Text="I don't get what &quot;observed probability functions&quot; are, what it means to say they're &quot;all equally valid&quot;, or understnad the goal of combining them into  &quot;the likelihood that x is really different numbers given all of these data&quot;" CreationDate="2017-05-25T19:15:30.503" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="13638" PostId="4834" Score="1" Text="@Scortchi You should be able to see that in my example. I observe the same population three times by randomly sampling from it. This gives me three equally valid probability distributions. What about this doesn't make sense?" CreationDate="2017-05-25T19:31:57.490" UserId="83526" />
  <row Id="13639" PostId="4834" Score="1" Text="Another way to think about it is with a somewhat contrived example. Imagine I want to know the distribution of carrot sizes in my carrot farm.  I take carrot samples in Fall, Summer, and Winter, only recording the probability density functions of carrot sizes found during each season. I want to combine these observed carrot size distributions to a distribution describing the probability of carrots I pick being different sizes in all seasons. Each observation of carrot size distributions used the same number of carrots, so they are each equally valid." CreationDate="2017-05-25T19:37:12.403" UserId="83526" />
  <row Id="13641" PostId="4834" Score="1" Text="@kilojoules I should say that I appreciate that you took my initial comments  seriously and made genuine attempts to improve the question (and indeed did improve it quite a bit), and also that you raised the issue here in a constructive manner. [I believe that there's what would ultimately be a very good question in there, and one that deserves good answers]" CreationDate="2017-05-25T21:54:57.850" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13659" PostId="4834" Score="1" Text="@kilojoule: I hadn't read the code - I rarely do read code unless it's already clear from the question text what it's supposed to do. (Trying to working out what code's supposed to do from what it in fact does is rather tiresome, especially if you're not familiar with the language; &amp; assumes it does what it's supposed to do, which is often enough not the case.) I have had a look now you've trimmed it down &amp; it seems you're just asking how to pool mean &amp; standard deviation estimates from different samples for a common normal population/process." CreationDate="2017-05-26T10:34:18.913" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="13660" PostId="4834" Score="1" Text="@Scortchi I don't want to be limited by gaussian distributions. I used gaussians in my example but I am looking for a general method to combine equally valid observed density functions." CreationDate="2017-05-26T15:24:04.057" UserId="83526" />
  <row Id="13640" PostId="4835" Score="0" Text="+1 These are good points." CreationDate="2017-05-25T21:34:49.840" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13642" PostId="4835" Score="1" Text="What is the difference between probability and density? What other information can I provide?" CreationDate="2017-05-25T21:58:29.047" UserId="83526" />
  <row Id="13643" PostId="4835" Score="2" Text="The first question is answered multiple times on the main site. If you can't locate a good answer to it, comment again here and I'll find you one.. ... I'm not sure how much more explicit I can be about what I want but I'll attempt an edit of the answer above." CreationDate="2017-05-25T22:06:21.557" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13644" PostId="4835" Score="0" Text="@kilojoules Actually, in case you don't spot the edits I'll post them here: Is the quantity you're specifying probability for really discrete? If it is, you probably shouldn't be making it into a density. If it's not discrete, what do the probabilities represent (what are they probabilities *of*?)" CreationDate="2017-05-25T22:10:25.363" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13645" PostId="4835" Score="1" Text="What's the ultimate use of what you get out? what's it to be used to do? I have misgivings about the entire process here. I imagine that if you address what you can address, it will be easier to explain more about what still needs to be clearer." CreationDate="2017-05-25T22:12:29.203" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13646" PostId="4835" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b I am quantifying the model-form uncertainty of synthetic parameters in a reduced physics model. But, I think my question is more broad than that specific application." CreationDate="2017-05-25T22:13:08.823" UserId="83526" />
  <row Id="13647" PostId="4835" Score="1" Text="I'm sure it is broader than your specific application; that's one reason why I am keen to make it a good question. However, there are a number of issues about  the process by which the quantities you're asking about come into existence (the probabilities and then in turn the densities) that potentially affects suitable advice. We don't necessarily need the physics jargon but simple issues like understanding what the quantities are we're dealing with matter. For example I still don't understand the *most basic issues* like whether these quantities you're assigning probabilities to are discrete!" CreationDate="2017-05-25T22:21:33.340" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13648" PostId="4835" Score="0" Text="If that's anything but crystal clear (as well as several issues that follow form it), your question isn't close to being answerable." CreationDate="2017-05-25T22:22:30.037" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13649" PostId="4835" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b nothing in my problem is discreet. My carrot lengths are continuously valued and can be any length." CreationDate="2017-05-25T22:42:56.443" UserId="83526" />
  <row Id="13653" PostId="4835" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b I thought of another example that might represent my problem a little better. I notice a plume of smoke pass by my window once in a while. I trace it's path using binoculars and maps, and use available weather information to develop a probability distribution of where I think the smoke is coming from, taking uncertainty in my model inputs into account. Every time I observe the smoke, I develop a new probability distribution. After several observations, I want to know where I think the plume's origin is and where I think it is not, expressed as a probability function." CreationDate="2017-05-25T23:02:58.887" UserId="83526" />
  <row Id="13654" PostId="4835" Score="1" Text="In both the carrot example and this new one, you jump over an essential part when you say &quot;I develop a probability distribution&quot;. You're going from *data* (the object we should be dealing with) to an estimate (your fitted distribution) without any indication of what your data are like or how you got there. It's the *data* you should be working with, if at all possible. But if it's not possible it's best we understand how the distributions arise from the data because the actual best way to combine the information you're presenting as a density may not be via the density." CreationDate="2017-05-25T23:07:20.287" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13655" PostId="4835" Score="1" Text="Even if you are doing the right things in going from data to density, your densities may not be equally precise at every value of $x$ (it would be astonishing to me if the uncertainty in the density estimate is a constant across the x-values), but we can't figure out what the relative uncertainties are if we don't know how they arise (how they relate to the data). Your analogies may be useful but they still need to convey the information we need to properly advise you." CreationDate="2017-05-25T23:17:49.890" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13656" PostId="4835" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b Thanks very much for your patience and help. The probabilities are due to my uncertainty in modeling the turbulence. In this new example, I have a time-averaged differential equation that describes how the plume should behave, given initial conditions from the local weather service and a synthetic parameter, the &quot;eddy viscosity.&quot; I chose a prior distribution of the synthetic parameter in the turbulence model and used bayesian calibration to find a distribution of the &quot;eddy viscosity&quot; for each observation, resulting in a probability distribution of where my model predicts the origin" CreationDate="2017-05-26T05:31:29.593" UserId="83526" />
  <row Id="13658" PostId="4835" Score="0" Text="That sounds fascinating ... is this distribution some function of parameters, or is it just a set of points with density values?" CreationDate="2017-05-26T07:47:00.347" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13651" PostId="4836" Score="1" Text="Any solution would need to address what people are using this tag for IN PRACTICE. There are only 47 questions tagged with [dispersion]. How many are about &quot;spread&quot;? How many are about &quot;dispersion&quot; as the parameter in quasilikelihood? How many are about epidemiology? Without this information it is impossible to say what the optimal solution is." CreationDate="2017-05-25T22:55:59.200" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13662" PostId="4836" Score="0" Text="By the way, there is also [variability] tag with the excerpt &quot;Variability or dispersion describes how a variable's values are spread out&quot;." CreationDate="2017-05-27T11:22:12.920" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13701" PostId="4839" Score="3" Text="Any chance you're using Safari?" CreationDate="2017-05-31T06:14:46.443" UserId="29865" />
  <row Id="13702" PostId="4839" Score="2" Text="Like that? https://physics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9780/mathjax-shifted-frames" CreationDate="2017-05-31T11:27:58.983" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13703" PostId="4839" Score="1" Text="@PeterKrautzberger: yes! And using Firefox fixes it. Why is that?" CreationDate="2017-05-31T13:19:35.017" UserId="76981" />
  <row Id="13704" PostId="4839" Score="2" Text="See https://meta.mathoverflow.net/questions/3207/mathjax-accents-in-safari-10-1#3207 and https://github.com/mathjax/MathJax/issues/1737 as well as https://github.com/mathjax/MathJax/issues/1709. It's a change in recent Safari versions that's causing issues." CreationDate="2017-05-31T13:20:48.957" UserId="29865" />
  <row Id="13706" PostId="4839" Score="1" Text="someone (either peter or cliff, probably) should write an answer, I think" CreationDate="2017-05-31T15:57:13.357" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13705" PostId="4840" Score="2" Text="As pointed out by @PeterKrautzberger, it's an issue with Safari" CreationDate="2017-05-31T13:24:05.367" UserId="76981" />
  <row Id="13987" PostId="4841" Score="0" Text="The issue seems to be resolved (I made an update), you might want to mark this answer as accepted." CreationDate="2017-08-08T15:26:06.890" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13715" PostId="4846" Score="13" Text="(+1) In practice we often close questions just because they're not good enough to migrate to SO. Many such lack a [minimal, complete, verifiable example](https://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve)." CreationDate="2017-06-08T16:23:06.280" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="13716" PostId="4846" Score="10" Text="I see no practical distinction between &quot;focus on&quot; and &quot;about.&quot; @Scortchi has answered the implicit question of how to determine whether to migrate or not: migration occurs when the question is likely to be considered on topic at the destination site. Closure occurs otherwise. A notable exception is that sometimes the system prevents migration because the OP is blocked from asking questions at the destination. This, IMHO, constitutes willful abuse of our site. I generally downvote, close, and delete such questions when that happens. A repeat offender might lose their account with us." CreationDate="2017-06-08T16:51:42.337" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="13717" PostId="4846" Score="9" Text="Not every programming-related question is on topic at StackOverflow. In particular, we should not migrate questions that would close there (aside from possible duplicates). At the least be sure you're familiar with the requirements of their help/on-topic before trying to migrate there, and anything that would close here as unclear or too broad, etc (if it wasn't off topic) should not be migrated but simply closed" CreationDate="2017-06-08T23:34:46.630" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13719" PostId="4846" Score="4" Text="I find it quite hard, as a novice programmer, to distinguish good from bad questions for migration." CreationDate="2017-06-10T10:52:08.117" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="13740" PostId="4846" Score="3" Text="It's better for most everyone involved if the pipeline of questions flowing out of stats.stackexchange.com to other sites isn't a sewer line." CreationDate="2017-06-15T19:45:31.240" UserId="97925" />
  <row Id="13741" PostId="4846" Score="3" Text="@PeterFlom I give you the same advice I'd give someone considering to vote for migration in the other direction: If you don't feel qualified to judge if the question is of sufficient quality for the migration destination don't vote for migration." CreationDate="2017-06-16T06:55:02.130" UserId="11849" />
  <row Id="13744" PostId="4846" Score="3" Text="Broadly speaking, Stack Overflow is pickier than non-programmers often imagine. The kinds of questions that do not go down well include (a) advice on which packages, programs, functions or commands to use (b) requests to write code in some language (the problem being that the OP doesn't have code in the first place) (c) requests to find the bug(s) in long stretches of code." CreationDate="2017-06-21T11:47:35.083" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="13752" PostId="4846" Score="2" Text="@Matthew That's right.  And for the record, during the last 90 days, SO has rejected just 5 of our 55 migration attempts.  (We have rejected 9 of their 52 attempts to migrate *to* us. That's twice the rate, but the difference in rates is not significant, $p=26\%$ *via* simulation.)" CreationDate="2017-06-29T19:47:30.417" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="13720" PostId="4847" Score="4" Text="I'd say go ahead." CreationDate="2017-06-11T20:35:29.697" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13721" PostId="4847" Score="5" Text="With only three questions with the tag, if we don't know what it's for, and it's not much used, there's no reason to keep it. Unless there's some argument otherwise I'm inclined to remove it from those three questions." CreationDate="2017-06-12T00:08:50.217" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13722" PostId="4847" Score="1" Text="Yes. To be honest, when I come across a tag with only few uses that lacks a wiki excerpt and a clear scope, I just silently remove it myself without raising the issue on Meta. It does not happen very often, but I did a couple of times. (@Glen_b)" CreationDate="2017-06-12T08:21:17.300" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13723" PostId="4847" Score="1" Text="OK,  thanks, will remove now. ...  Done." CreationDate="2017-06-12T08:23:05.833" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="13728" PostId="4847" Score="2" Text="FWIW, I don't think it was *bad* to raise the issue on meta.CV." CreationDate="2017-06-12T13:56:57.747" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13726" PostId="4849" Score="0" Text="Thanks, will correct!" CreationDate="2017-06-12T13:53:37.953" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="13727" PostId="4849" Score="2" Text="Thanks for the work you're doing keeping the site organized &amp; tidy, @kjetilbhalvorsen." CreationDate="2017-06-12T13:56:12.160" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13737" PostId="4852" Score="0" Text="How cool! Thanks!" CreationDate="2017-06-14T10:03:43.810" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="13745" PostId="4853" Score="0" Text="I think you make some good points if your premise is that labeling a question a duplicate is intended to redirect the user to other questions that may provide the answer in a better way.  But I know that duplicate is used as a criteria for closing a question.  Aren't closed questions eventually removed unless they are voted to be reopened (which doesn't happen often)?" CreationDate="2017-06-21T13:58:16.387" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="13747" PostId="4853" Score="1" Text="@MichaelChernick Questions closed as duplicates are *never* automatically removed. Non-upvoted questions closed for any other reason are indeed automatically deleted; but duplicates are special. They stay." CreationDate="2017-06-21T14:04:54.557" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13748" PostId="4853" Score="1" Text="@amoeba Thank you for explaining that.  I will accept the answer. I guess I should pay more attention to questions marked as on hold or duplicate." CreationDate="2017-06-21T14:09:17.013" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="13749" PostId="4854" Score="0" Text="Does the final recommendation mean one should not close-vote at all or that one should vote to close as off-topic (&quot;not about statistics&quot;)?" CreationDate="2017-06-22T05:42:43.703" UserId="24669" />
  <row Id="13750" PostId="4854" Score="1" Text="@JuhoKokkala It means vote to close as off-topic." CreationDate="2017-06-22T07:28:49.723" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13754" PostId="4857" Score="1" Text="Thank you a lot for the thorough response. 1) I'd vote then for [categorical-encoding], not [categorical-coding]. &quot;Coding&quot; is ambiguous, could be thought of as coding (labeling) categories by integers 1,2,.. or letters A,B,.., while we are speaking of the recoding a categorical variable into a set of elementary variables encoding the categories. 2) Though I personally think we better mark out [dummy-variables] as a separate tag too, I could change it for your opinion, especially if others support it. 3) Agree with all the rest points." CreationDate="2017-07-01T23:33:04.587" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="13755" PostId="4857" Score="0" Text="Let us wait a little while for somebody to enter the discussion. Then if we state we agree, I'd suggest you to perform the tags creation/(de)synonymizing (if you don't mind) while I then sort out questions to them." CreationDate="2017-07-02T00:12:52.177" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="13756" PostId="4857" Score="0" Text="Happy to look at the indicator variables ones if this goes ahead." CreationDate="2017-07-02T11:10:51.910" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="13757" PostId="4857" Score="1" Text="+1 this seems like a reasonable path forward for this difficult topic. Re the new name, @ttnphns's concern makes sense. I wonder if `[encoding-categories]` would be a viable option." CreationDate="2017-07-02T13:00:45.760" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13758" PostId="4857" Score="0" Text="@gung, yours is fine too. Still, after some hesitation, I'd stand for [categorical-encoding]. Reasons are subtle. 1) We better keep word &quot;categorical&quot; to keep immediate reference to &quot;categorical-data&quot;, while &quot;categories&quot; might sound too general. 2) &quot;Categories&quot; might prompt (a layman) to think we are recoding each category independently, while in fact its not so, we recode a set of categories (a variable) into a set of encoded &quot;contrast&quot; variables where codes (values) are specially interdependent - depending of the type we choose (dummy, deviance, Helmert etc.)" CreationDate="2017-07-02T13:36:09.270" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="13772" PostId="4857" Score="0" Text="@ttnphns I am fine with categorical-encoding instead of categorical-coding, but note that terms like &quot;effects coding&quot;, &quot;dummy coding&quot; etc. use the word &quot;coding&quot;..." CreationDate="2017-07-03T13:31:30.220" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13773" PostId="4857" Score="0" Text="amoeba, they might as well use &quot;encoding&quot;. Saying &quot;encode&quot; we simply _stress_ the directional and completeness (or totality) nature of the action, thansitional process, not simply a symbolic substitution http://www.dictionary.com/browse/encode. &quot;Coding&quot; is all right, but &quot;encoding&quot; might sound better, for me. Maybe @gung shares his opinion?" CreationDate="2017-07-03T14:23:05.597" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="13774" PostId="4857" Score="0" Text="@ttnphns, any of these are about as good from my point of view. The ideal would be `[coding-categorical-data]`, but I think that's too long. If people prefer `[categorical-encoding]`, that's all right with me." CreationDate="2017-07-03T15:10:08.823" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13775" PostId="4857" Score="0" Text="@gung, just to mention it again - I personally don't like very much [coding-categorical-data] because - as I've said - people think coding = labeling by codes and will take the tag for that; while we are speaking of and mean a special...ehh.. &quot;transformation&quot;." CreationDate="2017-07-03T15:22:17.730" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="13782" PostId="4857" Score="0" Text="@ttnphns Nobody objects to `[categorical-encoding]`, so we could use that. If you want to go ahead, I would suggest the following course of action: first of all, you create this tag and put it on 10-20 (or maybe 30-40, as you see fit) old threads that are &quot;most important&quot; in this topic (are well upvoted etc.). Once this is done and the tag is established, we will ask the mods to uncouple [dummy-variables] from categorical-data and to map it to categorical-encoding. In the meantime, mdewey can sort the [indicator-variables] tag. But creating+populating [categorical-encoding] is the first step." CreationDate="2017-07-10T12:14:43.117" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13790" PostId="4857" Score="0" Text="@mdewey I think you can go ahead with [indicator-variables]. I'd say remove/replace this tag from abstract mathematical questions about indicator function, but leave it on questions about categorical-encoding (i.e. encoding categorical variables for statistical analysis). Once finished, we'll aim to make it a synonym." CreationDate="2017-07-12T11:45:54.437" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13791" PostId="4857" Score="0" Text="[indicator-variables[ is now in progress" CreationDate="2017-07-12T12:22:31.567" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="13792" PostId="4857" Score="1" Text="Amoeba, I created tag [categorical-encoding] and did the tagging of questions with it." CreationDate="2017-07-12T12:55:51.387" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="13795" PostId="4857" Score="0" Text="Amoeba there does not seem to be general agreement about this as some of the ones where I deleted [indicator-variable] have had it restored. I think we may need a rethink so I have stopped work." CreationDate="2017-07-13T16:01:33.903" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="13806" PostId="4857" Score="0" Text="@mdewey I see. I will ping whuber (who rolled back a couple of your edits) about it." CreationDate="2017-07-15T19:34:25.663" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13818" PostId="4857" Score="0" Text="@mdewey See last messages in chat. The misunderstanding is cleared, I think we can proceed, but feel free to join the discussion with whuber in chat if you want." CreationDate="2017-07-17T21:06:42.600" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13822" PostId="4857" Score="0" Text="I will restart but if there are any about which I have doubts I shall leave them for discussion (actually I had already done that for some)." CreationDate="2017-07-18T11:56:52.593" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="13844" PostId="4857" Score="0" Text="Amoeba I have decided to retag the ones which i was sure about to categorical-encoding. This leaves six which are about indicator functions. I am not sure whether we need a new tag for them or whether we should just delete the tag from  them. Thoughts?" CreationDate="2017-07-22T12:43:42.177" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="13854" PostId="4857" Score="0" Text="@mdewey I don't have a strong opinion on that. Creating [indicator-function] is fine with me, but then we'd need to put this tag on some other questions that are not presently tagged with indicator-variables, e.g. https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/149698 and https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/145945 (I quickly searched for &quot;indicator function&quot;)." CreationDate="2017-07-23T20:10:21.983" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13862" PostId="4857" Score="0" Text="amoeba I have created it, re-tagged some, created tag excerpt and entry, will re-tag the rest later and then go on a hunt for any which need the tag as you suggest." CreationDate="2017-07-25T11:43:11.193" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="13864" PostId="4857" Score="0" Text="@ttnphns Which of the following synonyms do you think are going to be useful to have: [indicator-variables], [contrast-variables], [one-hot]? Whatever you think is appropriate, could you please create these tags by applying them to 1 old thread, and then suggest them as synonyms here: https://stats.stackexchange.com/tags/categorical-encoding/synonyms? Then we can ask others to upvote." CreationDate="2017-07-25T20:28:27.123" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13865" PostId="4857" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, I was thinking [dummy-variables] is the best because it is the oldest historically and most heard of. [contrast-variables] won't do because it is a wider meaning and the (almost) exact synonym to tag [categorical-encoding] which we already have. [indicator-variables] and [one-hot] are just synonyms to dummy variables. I think we could create those tags but make them to map into [dummy-variables], - here's my way. What do you say?" CreationDate="2017-07-26T11:47:15.663" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="13866" PostId="4857" Score="0" Text="@ttnphns. [dummy-variables] exists and is a synonym of [categorical-data]. We need moderator help to remove this synonym mapping and make dummy-variables a synonym of our new [categorical-encoding] tag (see bullet point #1 in this answer). I am going to ask one of the mods to do this. My question to you is if we want to create any *other* synonyms of categorical-encoding (bullet points #2-4)?" CreationDate="2017-07-26T11:49:11.057" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13867" PostId="4857" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, I see. You are asking about reserving some junior synonyms to tag [categorical-encoding]. Yes, [contrast-variables] is that candidate. I can create it, if you bid me." CreationDate="2017-07-26T11:51:39.007" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="13868" PostId="4857" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, `make dummy-variables a synonym of our new [categorical-encoding] tag`. I would repeat that I was never _fully_ comfortable with that you proposal. My way was - and will be - to release [dummy-variables] and make it a separate, valid tag." CreationDate="2017-07-26T11:56:42.820" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="13869" PostId="4857" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, if you say that we will _have to be reconciled_ with the perspective  of &quot;dummy-variables as synonym of [categorical-encoding] tag&quot; _then_, I say, _all_ these tags: [contrast-variables], and [dummy-variables] = [indicator-variables] = [one-hot] might be made junior synonyms of  [categorical-encoding]." CreationDate="2017-07-26T12:01:48.583" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="13873" PostId="4857" Score="1" Text="@ttnphns We don't &quot;have to be reconciled&quot;, but if you want to make your case for releasing [dummy-variables] as a stand-alone tag then post your own answer in this thread suggesting this course of action so that people could upvote/downvote it. Currently my answer is suggesting otherwise, and it already has 5 upvotes and 0 downvotes, so it looks like it has some support. If you choose NOT to post your own answer, then I would say yes, &quot;we will have to be reconciled&quot; with what I proposed :-)" CreationDate="2017-07-26T14:13:53.727" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13874" PostId="4857" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, answer made" CreationDate="2017-07-26T16:46:32.500" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="13893" PostId="4857" Score="0" Text="@gung, please come to share your opinion for my [proposal](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/4881/3277) to have &quot;dummy-variables&quot; tag." CreationDate="2017-07-27T07:55:50.433" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="13894" PostId="4857" Score="0" Text="@mdewey, please come to share your opinion for my [proposal](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/4881/3277) to have &quot;dummy-variables&quot; tag." CreationDate="2017-07-27T07:56:21.773" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="13902" PostId="4857" Score="0" Text="Since I agree with almost all of what is here I upvoted, but I also upvoted ttnphns' answer since I find myself in agreement with it (mostly out of considerations of how people will actually use the tags -- we have similar situations with a number of tags in the regression-constellation)" CreationDate="2017-07-28T00:55:42.263" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13908" PostId="4857" Score="1" Text="Amoeba I have tagged a few more questions found by searching for &quot;indicator function&quot;. I only looked at ones with $&gt;2$ votes and I only tagged them if they seemed to me to be _about_ indicator functions rather than just _using_ them as a notation. We now have 15 tagged." CreationDate="2017-07-28T13:07:58.760" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="14448" PostId="4857" Score="0" Text="@gung Now that you are a mod, would you help finishing this? In particular, [dummy-variables] should be uncoupled from categorical-data and mapped to categorical-encoding instead (ttnphns explicitly agreed to this in the last comments under his answer). Apart from that, we could create up to three other synonyms listed in my answer, but this is rather optional; would we need to first edit some Qs to create these tags or can mods create synonym tags that do not yet exist?" CreationDate="2017-10-26T12:54:16.290" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14452" PostId="4857" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, I believe I can create a tag &amp; make it a synonym at the same time. I have removed d-v as a synonym from c-d &amp; made it a synonym of c-e. I also made i-v a synonym of c-e (see [here](https://stats.stackexchange.com/tags/categorical-encoding/synonyms)). What are the other 2 synonyms you need?" CreationDate="2017-10-26T14:19:51.510" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14453" PostId="4857" Score="0" Text="@gung Thanks! I would perhaps create [one-hot] too. The second suggestion was [contrast-variables], but given that we have [contrasts] tag I am not sure if it's going to be helpful or rather confusing to have [contrast-variables] as a separate tag (mapped to c-e)." CreationDate="2017-10-26T14:47:14.420" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14454" PostId="4857" Score="0" Text="o-h is now a synonym, @amoeba. I agree about c-v; I didn't do that one. If you think we gotten everything we need to, you could accept this answer &amp; indicate this thread is complete." CreationDate="2017-10-26T15:13:48.667" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14455" PostId="4857" Score="0" Text="@gung I can't because it's started by ttnphns :) But I will ping him. Cheers!" CreationDate="2017-10-26T15:38:39.367" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13759" PostId="4858" Score="0" Text="The answer has evolved.  I linked your question to its duplicates, but please note the dates associated with each.  I don't see any logical conflict between the concepts of &quot;CW&quot; and &quot;not quite on topic here.&quot;  I routinely set any question that potentially would get a list of different answers as CW, regardless of whether it is currently on topic." CreationDate="2017-07-02T15:40:09.910" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="13760" PostId="4858" Score="0" Text="@whuber so a post on MOOCs about Nouvelle Cousine would be CW here, because it potentially has a lot of answers...I don't see the logic of marking a post which you think is off-topic, as CW." CreationDate="2017-07-02T17:38:03.653" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="13761" PostId="4858" Score="2" Text="Sure, a post about MOOCs on cooking would be CW--but nobody would even bother to make it CW, because it would be deleted or migrated first.  The only reason I bothered to make your question CW was anticipating you would modify it and the community would vote to re-open it.  At that point it would *still* require moderator intervention to make it CW, so why wait?" CreationDate="2017-07-02T17:42:25.747" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="13762" PostId="4858" Score="0" Text="@whuber because closing a question can be undone, while marking a question as CW cannot, so maybe you could have waited  a to see the new question. I think marking a question as CW before it even gets an answer makes it much less likely to get any answer at all. Anyway, questions about book/paper references are not routinely marked as CW, even though by their own nature they can admit more than one answer. Your point is that making it about MOOCs makes it CW, because MOOCs are temporary. I'd like to hear also somebody's else opinion on this." CreationDate="2017-07-02T18:03:28.180" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="13763" PostId="4858" Score="4" Text="On the contrary, questions asking for lists of references *are* routinely marked CW.  If you have a different impression, that is only because some of these do not come to moderators' attention--and that's precisely why I always make such a question CW automatically, as soon as I come across it.  Your other objections appear to be rehashing the discussion in the duplicate questions." CreationDate="2017-07-02T18:18:04.750" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="13764" PostId="4858" Score="1" Text="About your last comment, see: https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1593/should-all-book-recommendation-questions-be-classified-as-community-wiki (/cc @whuber)." CreationDate="2017-07-03T04:06:38.783" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="13765" PostId="4858" Score="1" Text="Not sure if it helps, but technically speaking the question was closed as 'opinion-based', not 'off-topic'. These two close reasons have the same hierarchy in the close reason dialog box, which means in this context a question needs to be both 'on-topic' and not 'opinion-based'." CreationDate="2017-07-03T04:14:57.330" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="13766" PostId="4858" Score="0" Text="@whuber ok. None of my older reference requests was marked as CW, and I also recall a few other requests not being tagged as CW. Spince you pointed out the MOOC component of the question, I thought that was the cause of the CW tag. I see now that's not the case. Thanks for explaining." CreationDate="2017-07-03T06:53:43.953" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="13767" PostId="4858" Score="0" Text="@AndreSilva comment #1: ok, I see now all reference requests *should* be tagged as CW. But in practice that happens (or used to happen until recently) so rarely, that I can't be blamed for feeling my question had been singled out because of the MOOC part. I see this is not the case." CreationDate="2017-07-03T06:56:22.347" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="13768" PostId="4858" Score="0" Text="@AndreSilva comment #2: ok, but my point was that either a question is opinion-based (&quot;worse&quot; than CW, but can be undone) or it is CW (can't be undone, question stays open, but usually **if** it's tagged as CW **before** it has received an answer, then it's unlikely to get any answer at all). I don't think you should tag the same question as both, otherwise that means the two definition are unclear and overlapping." CreationDate="2017-07-03T07:01:58.540" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="13770" PostId="4858" Score="0" Text="Ps sorry for the attitude. I'm having a rough time (unrelated to work) and while I try not to have that show up in my Internet persona, sometimes I may not be successful." CreationDate="2017-07-03T11:24:34.463" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="13771" PostId="4858" Score="3" Text="It depends on the nature of the reference request. A request for a *specific* reference shouldn't be CW ('can someone point me to the paper that proved...'), but open-ended reference requests should be CW ('what is a good book to learn...'). If you know of non-CW instances of the latter, we have just missed them. Flag them &amp; the mods will make them CW." CreationDate="2017-07-03T11:49:25.693" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13776" PostId="4859" Score="8" Text="There is and we're handling it.  The standard mechanism is to flag the material.  Escalating your complaint to Meta should be reserved for issues of concern to the entire community.  One risk in going public with a particular complaint of this sort is that it can be a lose-lose situation: all parties can come out looking petty or worse, because most readers will not have full information about the events." CreationDate="2017-07-06T17:45:07.420" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="13777" PostId="4859" Score="0" Text="Thanks, @whuber.  I agree.  I was just curious about the more general situation, and not necessarily this particular post.  I appreciate the response and the handling." CreationDate="2017-07-06T17:51:25.510" UserId="7962" />
  <row Id="13778" PostId="4859" Score="2" Text="OK.  You might want to refer to https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/mod-flags and https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/mod-cm-contact, as well as https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/harassment and https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/flagging.  I think most of the answers you might be looking for are covered in those pages. Some of the lesser-known options are outlined at https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/site-moderators." CreationDate="2017-07-06T17:55:48.327" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="13779" PostId="4859" Score="1" Text="Great.  Thank you so much.  I really appreciate it.  I'm happy to remove this particular post if you think it appropriate." CreationDate="2017-07-06T18:02:01.147" UserId="7962" />
  <row Id="13780" PostId="4859" Score="2" Text="That's your decision to make.  If you would like to focus on the issues you think would be worthwhile for the community to have a conversation about, then consider editing it to tone down the specifics and focus on the issues.  BTW, I appreciate your efforts to be helpful.  Sometimes, to de-escalate a problem, we find it useful to remove comments from multiple parties, so please don't read anything into that." CreationDate="2017-07-06T18:07:10.837" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="13781" PostId="4859" Score="0" Text="Of course, @whuber.  I totally understand and didn't read much into it.  I have some ideas that I think would benefit the community and development efforts.  I'll edit them when I'm back at my desk this evening.  Thanks!" CreationDate="2017-07-06T19:31:53.220" UserId="7962" />
  <row Id="13796" PostId="4860" Score="1" Text="It would be interesting to ask about basic probability, too, because there are lots of basic probability questions in both site (in MathematicsSE 49k questions tagged &quot;probability&quot; and 12k tagged &quot;statistics&quot;, which seem like a duplication of sites). The same answer to this question could be valid for basic and advanced probability." CreationDate="2017-07-13T21:26:52.573" UserId="123561" />
  <row Id="13843" PostId="4860" Score="2" Text="If there's absolutely no relationship of the question to reality, then I'd consider math SE." CreationDate="2017-07-21T15:49:51.713" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="13856" PostId="4860" Score="1" Text="I always think measure theory belongs on mathSE. Stochastic calculus could be either, in my view. The nice thing about statsSE is that all these sorts of questions are much closer to the core than at mathSE where probability etc is a bit of side-show to the main game." CreationDate="2017-07-24T15:39:19.960" UserId="24905" />
  <row Id="13855" PostId="4861" Score="0" Text="`it's a matter of judgement which you choose ... Some questions will get a better answer here, some there `   ////  Interesting choice of words. I would be interested if you could embellish on that... Are you suggesting that there are diifferences of style / norms between the two sites? ;)" CreationDate="2017-07-24T15:35:14.217" UserId="24905" />
  <row Id="13857" PostId="4861" Score="0" Text="No, that wasn't the point at all; it's more about who is answering particular kinds of questions at each site and where their interests and expertise are focused. Of course sites will differ in style and common behavior (it would be bizarre if they did not), but I don't think it'd be appropriate to migrate an issue from another question into the comments of this one (nor do I want to comment on the original)." CreationDate="2017-07-24T18:16:50.770" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13797" PostId="4863" Score="1" Text="(+1) NB moderators don't get an opportunity to explain why they've declined flags on *comments*, only on questions &amp; answers." CreationDate="2017-07-14T09:00:05.413" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="13798" PostId="4864" Score="3" Text="[&quot;If you have told us (or privately thought) Documentation isn't working: You are correct. It isn't. Yet.&quot;](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/349410/tearing-down-the-structure-of-documentation) The title of this post indicates just how far this product is from coming to other sites. To have Documentation on CV, one needs to have working Documentation on SO first." CreationDate="2017-07-14T20:16:57.313" UserDisplayName="user56674" />
  <row Id="13799" PostId="4864" Score="2" Text="(+1) Thanks for alerting us to this! The SO Documentation tour says:-&quot;When we reviewed traditional documentation, two things were clear: (1) It had to be based on assumptions, not need. It was usually written once, often by someone not even using the technology, so it was a guess at what to focus on. (2) It didn't prioritize good examples. People learn best when they can see things demonstrated in actual code.&quot; What would be the raison d'être for ours? Why consult it rather than one of the many textbooks or websites covering linear regression &amp;c.? Why contribute to it rather than to Wikipedia?" CreationDate="2017-07-14T20:18:44.627" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="13800" PostId="4864" Score="0" Text="I would say, as someone in industry, that textbooks are limited in guidance. Often textbooks are overly simplified on examples for the sake on emphasis on theory. But then, what about *applied* textbooks? Well, those examples are usually overly simplified and geared to someone in academia not aware of the complexity of data out in the wild. Also, why not textbooks, well because textbooks are expensive!" CreationDate="2017-07-14T20:44:46.410" UserId="82338" />
  <row Id="13801" PostId="4864" Score="0" Text="&quot;Why contribute to it rather than to Wikipedia?&quot; -- I think this type of work would be out of scope for Wikipedia's purpose." CreationDate="2017-07-14T20:45:51.233" UserId="82338" />
  <row Id="13802" PostId="4864" Score="1" Text="@Jon: You seem to have an idea in mind that you're contrasting with other reference sources but haven't shared with us. Why not detail it in an answer?" CreationDate="2017-07-14T20:55:52.707" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="13803" PostId="4864" Score="5" Text="1. *Documentation* is about how to use a particular aspect of some language (or similar) -- explaining &quot;How do I use A to do B?&quot; is usually specific and clear; indeed in some languages there's arguably only one right way to do most things. Statistics is a bit different from that because much of it's not so clear cut, requiring more teaching *about* something than giving a recipe for it (indeed, I see focus on recipes in place of understanding as a large part of the problem we have).  Given the plain differences from documenting a language, what is it you'd anticipate this producing?  ...ctd" CreationDate="2017-07-15T09:37:12.257" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13804" PostId="4864" Score="3" Text="2. If your concern is about expense, note that there's a plethora of free statistical textbooks. As with the more expensive ones some are good and some are terrible, but there are some good free ones. What will we be doing that wouldn't be covered by writing a textbook with a slightly different emphasis (such as on better examples)? ... 3. A big concern I have is who would do this. We already have a pretty low answer rate here -- we lack sufficient people able to write good answers to nearly half the questions we get. If regulars redirect their efforts elsewhere, what happens to that?" CreationDate="2017-07-15T09:43:11.300" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13805" PostId="4864" Score="3" Text="You should not read this as opposition to the idea; I mostly seek clarification of what is being proposed and some sense of the scale of effort and consequences." CreationDate="2017-07-15T11:38:47.503" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13809" PostId="4864" Score="1" Text="I liked documentation on SO at first, but then came to find it not worthwhile.  I don't think I've ever contributed &amp; I never use it. I just read the real documentation or find an existing question that explains whatever the issue is on r-help or SO. Like others, I don't see the analogy to a 'documentation' on CV." CreationDate="2017-07-16T00:38:22.583" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13813" PostId="4864" Score="4" Text="The practical question is not whether this would be a good idea, like world peace or Western civilisation, but how far it is all likely to get off the ground in any serious way. Evidence for this community is documentation on R https://stackoverflow.com/documentation/r/topics. If there's a large group of well-informed users of any statistical software active on SO, it's surely R users, but after a year or so it seems unlikely that -- whatever the quality of material posted so far -- documentation that matches what is already well documented in many forms can be produced in this way." CreationDate="2017-07-17T14:25:16.083" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="13814" PostId="4864" Score="1" Text="More candidly put, a wild guess is that very many people don't think that trying to write new documentation from scratch is a good practical idea. That's certainly my personal opinion about Stata on SO. I don't want to disparage anyone with different ambitions on SO or on CV, but it's my impression that there aren't enough of them for this to work, there or indeed here." CreationDate="2017-07-17T14:28:02.790" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="13815" PostId="4864" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b, and everyone, thank you for your comments. Glen_b, I don't have a clear proposed idea for what 'documentation' should look like, I am merely asking if there would be room for it on CV. I see many duplicate questions being asked on CV, and one idea to remedy this issue is to include some sort of documentation on this site for common topics. To your comment *&quot;indeed in some languages there's arguably only one right way to do most things&quot;*, I disagree. In 1 programming language there are many ways to accomplish a task; some more &quot;right&quot; than others. Statistics is similar, I feel." CreationDate="2017-07-17T16:14:42.323" UserId="82338" />
  <row Id="13816" PostId="4864" Score="0" Text="I think Python makes such a claim to one right way; that may have been @Glen_b's allusion. Perl historically emphasised exactly the opposite. Personally I agree, in respect of languages I know a little about; and about statistics, often." CreationDate="2017-07-17T16:23:59.623" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="13817" PostId="4864" Score="2" Text="On the UCLA documentation (where I have some extra knowledge as having met former personnel from there and heard how they worked): that site depends rather crucially on a tight and agreed house style and liaison between a fairly small group of people. Those are precisely the details that are more elusive in  a forum like CV." CreationDate="2017-07-17T19:22:52.693" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="13819" PostId="4864" Score="2" Text="@Nick indeed  in relation to Python precisely that claim is made (there's one right way to do it) ... and that makes it a good candidate for documented examples of particular tasks (how do I do X? In Python, you do it this way,..).  Statistics is a different kind of beast I think. Guidance and principles." CreationDate="2017-07-17T21:56:53.113" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13820" PostId="4864" Score="2" Text="@Jon I agree that common duplicates are an issue and we could indeed consider whether the stackexchange approach (choose or make a canonical version of the question and point everything else to that) is sufficient for the most popular ones." CreationDate="2017-07-17T21:59:01.480" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13821" PostId="4864" Score="2" Text="I'm not sure what the best  way to do something else might be. One nice thing about the current SE method is it fits with a piecemeal approach -- one person can work on making one question (and an answer) more canonical without committing to doing anything beyond that, and without having to be organized into it." CreationDate="2017-07-17T22:08:02.950" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14046" PostId="4864" Score="1" Text="The Documention beta's finished on SO: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/354217/sunsetting-documentation" CreationDate="2017-08-15T10:58:04.197" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="14315" PostId="4864" Score="3" Text="I'm marking this as declined because the beta has been canceled. I would like to revisit the idea if the chance arises. But it will be several years at least. Thank you for your interest, however." CreationDate="2017-09-26T23:59:07.903" UserId="27774" />
  <row Id="13807" PostId="4865" Score="4" Text="I personally don't understand why you need to wait a set amount of time. I feel like if you need help urgently, then a bounty is a way of encouraging help. I wonder why this isn't allowed, hopefully someone can answer." CreationDate="2017-07-15T23:53:51.377" UserId="129126" />
  <row Id="13808" PostId="4865" Score="3" Text="@patty https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/245871/why-eligible-for-bounty-after-two-days-i-want-solution-now-for-some-of-my-rep" CreationDate="2017-07-16T00:29:10.270" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13810" PostId="4865" Score="4" Text="Do you have a question you were considering a bounty for? If the question doesn't need work, I'll happily run a one-trial experiment on the value of placing a bounty." CreationDate="2017-07-16T00:39:29.473" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13824" PostId="4865" Score="0" Text="@Patty That was directed at mrb; sorry to be unclear. I wondered if mrb had a question we should try a bounty on." CreationDate="2017-07-18T12:05:03.267" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13825" PostId="4865" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b thanks for answering. I wanted to use a bounty in the recent past but then, while pondering the option, I got the answer so not needed anymore. However, I find the tool very intriguing. It's the first kind of &quot;reputational currency&quot; that I've ever seen online." CreationDate="2017-07-18T12:08:10.207" UserId="46789" />
  <row Id="13826" PostId="4865" Score="0" Text="Once you get over 20K reputation it's about the only thing worth doing with reputation so it becomes much more attractive -- if it doesn't always work that's not such a big deal." CreationDate="2017-07-18T12:26:57.140" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13833" PostId="4866" Score="2" Text="&quot;Overall, the best thing you can do to get attention for a post is make it as clear and engaging as you can. Only after that would I suggest you consider a bounty, but with a really good question you should still be prepared for the substantial possibility of getting no response.&quot; 100% agree from my personal experience as well." CreationDate="2017-07-19T23:02:11.283" UserId="113090" />
  <row Id="13842" PostId="4866" Score="1" Text="+1 I agree wholeheartedly. What I find somewhat disheartening however, is that this strategy of trying to improve the question has not worked for me. I have not uploaded that many questions (2 to be honest), but none of them have been truly answered, so recently I've bountied both of them. No luck though. Moreover, I find it hard to (further) improve the questions based on my own comprehension of the problem. I'd really like a way where a user can specifically ask others help to improve the question. Maybe this comment/'rant' here does the trick, but a 'please improve flag' might be useful." CreationDate="2017-07-21T08:27:00.270" UserId="144089" />
  <row Id="13823" PostId="4867" Score="0" Text="It's quite considerably less than half, I think -- the list has a very long tail (there's a *lot* of people giving only one or two bounties). At my peak it might have been a bit over half of the *promotions*, but lately I would be doing less than 10% I'd guess. On bounties overall it would be much less than half, even at my peak times." CreationDate="2017-07-18T12:03:13.820" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13829" PostId="4867" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b Fair enough!  I just took a quick glance (and I actually don't know the difference between promotions and bounties).  Thanks." CreationDate="2017-07-19T19:45:16.360" UserId="169018" />
  <row Id="13831" PostId="4867" Score="1" Text="A bounty can be placed on your own question or someone else's question. Placing the second kind of bounty is sometimes called &quot;promotion&quot; - presumably because it makes someone else's questions (and the answers they get) more visible, encouraging additional answers, views and votes on it. Most bounties are not promotions (people want to place bounties on their own questions). I was just worried there would be an impression I was doing the bulk of the bountying on site. It may look like a lot sitting at the top of the list of promotions but it's not a big fraction of all bounties offered." CreationDate="2017-07-19T22:43:28.230" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13832" PostId="4869" Score="0" Text="See also this post: [single-character edits in formulas](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1977/single-character-edits-in-formulas), making a essentially the same point to your (2)" CreationDate="2017-07-19T22:52:10.413" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13836" PostId="4869" Score="0" Text="Given that (2) is a duplicate, perhaps remove it from here altogether? In order to focus this on issue #1 which is arguably a bug." CreationDate="2017-07-20T08:27:23.130" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13837" PostId="4869" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Good idea.  I've edited accordingly." CreationDate="2017-07-20T08:53:46.900" UserId="45576" />
  <row Id="15429" PostId="4869" Score="0" Text="This is not a bug. See https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/232123. You can change it to be feature-request though." CreationDate="2018-03-07T08:56:18.983" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15430" PostId="4869" Score="1" Text="@amoeba Ah, that makes sense.  I've tried to re-word this as a feature request, as you suggest." CreationDate="2018-03-08T03:22:38.420" UserId="45576" />
  <row Id="13834" PostId="4870" Score="0" Text="Not as far as I know. Yes, some sites have this facility set up (I believe physics does as well)" CreationDate="2017-07-20T03:24:09.747" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13845" PostId="4872" Score="7" Text="What kind of results would you expect to achieve with this post? I mean, what possible outcomes of it could benefit the CV SE site? I understand your frustation with the other site, but fail to see how this post is relevant here. Could you clarify? Thanks." CreationDate="2017-07-23T14:08:40.277" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="13846" PostId="4872" Score="0" Text="Hi Andre. The 'discussion' tag is `designed to solicit opinions or best-practices on a particular topic`: there are different ways of dealing with new users &amp; moderation both here and on other SE sites ... which have given arise to the differences in 'cultural norms' that I refer to. I am interested to see if others agree that there are differences of experience here compared to mathSE, and if they have encountered other differences. It is not my role to seek change _per se_ - but I am interested in understanding the differences between sites, and what causes them, within the scope of the tag" CreationDate="2017-07-23T14:23:12.070" UserId="24905" />
  <row Id="13847" PostId="4872" Score="11" Text="All the same, it's something of a loaded question, your presentation of the example could be considered rather partial, &amp; it feels like you're inviting us to start chipping in with our two-pennorth regarding an ongoing dispute on another site." CreationDate="2017-07-23T15:07:12.453" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="13848" PostId="4872" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi In what way do you feel the presentation of the given example is 'partial'? Can you think of any reason why such a question would be closed down on statsSE? And if you can't, then that is exactly the type of cultural differences I am referring to. In any event, please do constrain your comments to factors relevant to statsSE." CreationDate="2017-07-23T15:16:00.177" UserId="24905" />
  <row Id="13849" PostId="4872" Score="9" Text="I doubt whoever deleted the question would describe their motivation as &quot;to hide the evidence&quot;, for a start. For the reasons I gave in my comment above, I don't want to answer this question in its current form." CreationDate="2017-07-23T15:42:50.490" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="13850" PostId="4872" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi I must agree that they would not describe their motivation as to &quot;hide the evidence&quot;. As a moderator, could you perhaps comment what the motivation might be then to delete a newly coined question, of words as stated above, where the question has been nominated for re-opening, and is also the subject of a separate meta question bringing to light colleagues who closed it?  What could the motivation be, as a moderator, conceptually, to delete such a question?" CreationDate="2017-07-23T18:11:06.883" UserId="24905" />
  <row Id="13852" PostId="4872" Score="7" Text="The question on cultural differences between stats.SE and maths.SE could be interesting, but I agree with @Scortchi: this Q is phrased like a rant and that's not helpful. I am not surprised to see it downvoted already. (By the way, I got interested by your US/Canada remark on police and did some googling. The number of people shot by police in Canada is estimated to be ~20 per year whereas in US the unofficial estimates go up to ~1000, but the number of police officers killed in US per year is ~150 whereas in Canada last year one officer died on duty, and it was an automobile accident.)" CreationDate="2017-07-23T19:18:12.370" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13853" PostId="4872" Score="4" Text="@wolfies: As a moderator, I assume other users are trying to do the best for the site by their own lights; &amp; if I disagree with their actions try to engage with them constructively, without casting aspersions." CreationDate="2017-07-23T19:41:21.240" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="13858" PostId="4873" Score="1" Text="+1 Notwithstanding all that downvoting (aha!), what an elegant and interesting posting. Your observation that mathSE is more combative is spot on (in my experience), and I thoroughly enjoyed your adventure in philos as explanation." CreationDate="2017-07-24T20:50:17.600" UserId="24905" />
  <row Id="13859" PostId="4873" Score="0" Text="@wolfies Thank you for your kind words... but there is no downvoting for a comment, neither can I doubly downvote you post, in order to tangibly express my appreciation for the opportunity you gave me to wax philosophical here... I apologize :)" CreationDate="2017-07-24T20:57:35.367" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="13860" PostId="4873" Score="3" Text="No need - with the help of others, I am hoping to make it to -10 in the near future." CreationDate="2017-07-24T21:10:08.067" UserId="24905" />
  <row Id="13863" PostId="4873" Score="3" Text="Another possibility is that I think it is far more common for statisticians to be collaborators with other researchers, &amp; need to work constructively w/ others &amp; nudge them gently towards a better way. I think that is more rare for mathematicians." CreationDate="2017-07-25T12:13:44.233" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13861" PostId="4874" Score="1" Text="`I could just create a chat room, then post a new comment with the chat link` - that's what I did once or twice when I needed it." CreationDate="2017-07-25T09:50:33.527" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13870" PostId="4878" Score="5" Text="That seems a good idea as I regularly see things in the reopen queue where the OP has clarified the request for software part but still left it off-topic." CreationDate="2017-07-26T12:18:14.960" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="13871" PostId="4879" Score="2" Text="Because tags are almost always originated by people posting questions, the only reliable way I know of figuring out the meaning of a generic-sounding tag like this is to visit numerous posts with the tag and attempt to identify what they might mean by it." CreationDate="2017-07-26T13:13:33.660" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="13872" PostId="4879" Score="9" Text="(+1) We have plenty of ambiguous, unclear, and generally useless tags. This seems to be one of them. Sorting them out is an annoying, time consuming, and thankless task." CreationDate="2017-07-26T14:05:17.680" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13881" PostId="4879" Score="10" Text="@amoeba Well, it's certainly annoying and time consuming, but I really want to convey my thanks to you for all your efforts on improving tags -- it definitely improves the site. Often the benefits aren't clear to a casual user, but anyone who searches regularly or looks at what shows up in &quot;Related&quot; in the sidebar will appreciate the great importance of clear, consistent tags." CreationDate="2017-07-26T23:00:54.127" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13898" PostId="4879" Score="0" Text="I added an answer with a proposal, please discuss under it and add criticism. Also, if anyone got a better plan altogether please add another answer." CreationDate="2017-07-27T11:48:50.450" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="13882" PostId="4880" Score="2" Text="+1 Yeah, I don't think an edit is necessarily wasted.even if a question doesn't migrate or reopen, since the user sees something that was wrong with their question with a specific example of how to improve it. That may reduce problems down the line, helping people write better questions is part of how the site works." CreationDate="2017-07-26T23:27:36.707" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13875" PostId="4881" Score="3" Text="I am not going to downvote because I think it's others who should choose between our suggestions, but I'd like to re-iterate that I am against this suggestion, and the main reason is that I am (as a general principle) against strongly overlapping or subset tags. Two distinct tags [categorical-encoding] and [dummy-variables], imho, would overlap WAY too strong to warrant their separate existence. For that reason I am happy to consider the meaning of [categorical-encoding] general enough to be able to include all possible uses that you give in your bullet list." CreationDate="2017-07-26T17:09:57.073" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13876" PostId="4881" Score="1" Text="(Practically speaking, I'd say we now have to wait at least 1 week before we can decide on the further course of action. I encourage everybody who reads this to either upvote or downvote this answer and ideally to leave a comment as well.)" CreationDate="2017-07-26T17:12:23.927" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13877" PostId="4881" Score="0" Text="I would encourage readers to comment on, more than up/down vote. It is strange how you can &quot;measure&quot; `overlap WAY too strong`. It was your intuition which is all right. Mine was different. I expressed some _reasons_ to support it. Also, I think that in some special cases we could well keep separate tags which are much overlap. I'd say the current is such a case. Note that _definitionally_ dummies are just the subset of &quot;cat. encoding&quot;, but _psychologically_ they are enough different for many users, think I." CreationDate="2017-07-26T17:30:05.520" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="13878" PostId="4881" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, [anova] completely belongs to [linear model] while the latter completely belongs to [generalized linear]. Still, we have all these popular tags as separate. It is reasonable. Logically, didactically." CreationDate="2017-07-26T17:40:03.550" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="13879" PostId="4881" Score="1" Text="I consider subset tags evil; sometimes it is a necessary evil. In this case it does not look necessary to me. But that's just my opinion. Let's see what others will say." CreationDate="2017-07-26T18:09:38.147" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13880" PostId="4881" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, evil or not evil, things are (can be) classified hierarchically. If always we are to keep only the parent tag we in the end are left with just tag [everything]. :-) Practical reasons to leave exist some &quot;good&quot; junior subsets is what human thinking is about." CreationDate="2017-07-26T18:15:32.193" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="13897" PostId="4881" Score="1" Text="(+1) My feeling, for what it is worth, is that many beginners may understand the term dummy variable but would not immediately think of categorical encoding so I do see a role for it. It does seem to me to form a proper subset of categorical encoding so I would be happy with that. I do not feel super strongly about this so I shall not be crying into my beer if it does not go through." CreationDate="2017-07-27T10:03:15.450" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="13901" PostId="4881" Score="3" Text="I agree w/ @amoeba. For the most part, `[dummy-variables]` would be overlapping w/ `[categorical-encoding]`. To the extent that you might want `[dummy-variables]` on seemingly unrelated threads about algorithms, there is little chance of it ever really being used correctly, IMO. The point that some people will be familiar w/ the term 'dummy coding', or the term 'one hot', that is reasonable, but to me, it argues that we should also make those two tags &amp; *immediately* make them synonyms of `[categorical-encoding]`." CreationDate="2017-07-27T12:28:23.587" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13903" PostId="4881" Score="0" Text="usεr11852 wrote in chat: &quot;I agree with you so I upvoted your answer but I did not downvote ttphns. (I usually refrain from downvoting Meta answers unless outright harmful.) I think that gung's comment about [one-hot] etc. is spot on. There will be some people that do not see the association immediately but generally it is not a big issue in my opinion and will quickly resolve itself.&quot; On the other hand, Glen_b commented under my answer: &quot;I also upvoted ttnphns' answer since I find myself in agreement with it [...]&quot;. So it's 3:3 at the moment... :-/" CreationDate="2017-07-28T08:22:39.087" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13907" PostId="4881" Score="6" Text="I think mapping all the different encodings to [categorical encoding]  makes sense. I think a lot of people will search for dummy coding, but it's good teaching to show them that dummy coding is only one form of encoding (if they don't already know) and it allows for writing a single, informative description, rather than multiple ones.  I upvoted @amoeba 's answer; I did not downvote this one, as it is helpful, I just disagree." CreationDate="2017-07-28T13:03:29.147" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="13911" PostId="4881" Score="0" Text="Stephan Kolassa has just informed me that he read the discussion and he has no own opinion." CreationDate="2017-07-28T13:44:24.957" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="13915" PostId="4881" Score="3" Text="@PeterFlom You hit the nail on the head there. There's also the issue that `[dummy-variables]` is a *not obviously* overloaded term that can misleadingly connote a single topic, whereas `[categorical-encoding]` reads as a broader topical domain (at least to me), and as you point out the issues in that domain are interrelated. I feel we should not create `[dummy-variables]`, unless we perhaps create it as a &quot;synonymn&quot; that points at `[categorical-encoding]`" CreationDate="2017-07-28T21:38:01.047" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="13919" PostId="4881" Score="0" Text="@Alexis, but did you not like my reasons? For example, the last one. Dummy variables can appear in contexts not even bothered with &quot;categorical data&quot;. As I've said already, strictly definitionally dummies are a subset of [categorical-encoding]. But practically and psychologically they _only_ overlap to some extent with it. If we don't create [dummy-variables] we'll bring much confusion and inconvenience to users." CreationDate="2017-07-29T07:13:02.633" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="13920" PostId="4881" Score="0" Text="@Peter please read my last comment." CreationDate="2017-07-29T07:13:33.310" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="13923" PostId="4881" Score="2" Text="@ttnphns  I don't really see how dummy variables can be used in contexts that don't involve categorical data." CreationDate="2017-07-29T11:46:30.253" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="13926" PostId="4881" Score="0" Text="@Peter consider please my last &quot;reason&quot; in the answer. Some data scientists and algorithm developers will be imagining/playing with/doing input/reading about &quot;dummy&quot; or &quot;one-hot&quot; sets of binary vectors even without thinking about such subjects as &quot;categorical data&quot;, &quot;nominal variable&quot;, &quot;coding of categorical data&quot;, even maybe not aware that such data and such coding exist. Yet, they _are_ working right with &quot;dummy variables&quot;." CreationDate="2017-07-29T12:23:29.130" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="13927" PostId="4881" Score="2" Text="@ttnphns  But if dummy variables linked to encoding, then they would find that wouldn't they?  Dummy variables, on a statistics site, seems to me to have to have something to do with encoding. And, if we did include dummy variables, almost all of its use here on CV would be about that." CreationDate="2017-07-29T12:32:46.130" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="13928" PostId="4881" Score="0" Text="@Peter, _some_ people (mostly of data scientists, ML'ers, computer scientists) may visit this site. They may know and correctly understand what &quot;dummy variables&quot; or &quot;one-hot variables&quot; _are_, by structure. However, they might never consider them in the milieu of categorical encoding. I.e. that the variables represent a categorical variable. They might even don't know what is ANOVA. I stand for that we should not make `[dummy-variables]` a junior synonym of anything; this tag has enough rights to exist on its own." CreationDate="2017-07-29T13:25:20.427" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="13931" PostId="4881" Score="2" Text="I don't get the last reason either. How can someone understand what dummy variables are without also understanding that they encode categorical variables?" CreationDate="2017-07-30T14:54:34.433" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="13986" PostId="4881" Score="1" Text="@amoeba, Your position clearly got more supporters. I think you are free now to do what you have proposed: ask to recover [dummy-variables] and tie it with [categorical-encoding]" CreationDate="2017-08-08T06:55:32.973" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="14012" PostId="4881" Score="0" Text="I will wait until the mod election is over: let's see who our new mods will be :)" CreationDate="2017-08-11T06:39:09.160" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14457" PostId="4881" Score="0" Text="Ttnphns, @gung has implemented it (see Update at the top of my answer), so you could mark my answer as accepted to &quot;close&quot; the issue (if you consider it closed)." CreationDate="2017-10-26T16:02:41.923" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13883" PostId="4882" Score="2" Text="&quot;if a question closes as unclear and hits the reopen queue and is now clear but off topic, please reopen, and then vote to close&quot; - this is counter-intuitive, but I can see the logic. Of course, reopen voters do not get notification that the post has actually been reopened, which can be inconvenient! (If I see something that upon editing seems clear, but which strikes me as off-topic yet migratable, I must admit I generally vote &quot;leave closed&quot; but raise a flag for the moderators to deal with the migration issue.)" CreationDate="2017-07-27T00:05:14.227" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="13884" PostId="4882" Score="2" Text="(Flag-raising seems to be the only immediate thing you can do in the reopen queue to prevent the problem of the question being open for a while before it gets re-closed. Am I missing something here?)" CreationDate="2017-07-27T00:05:26.043" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="13885" PostId="4882" Score="0" Text="@silverfish Thanks! yes, your alternative has the advantage that the reclose definitely happens, and that it happens reasonably quickly. I'll try to come back and edit that into my answer." CreationDate="2017-07-27T00:08:08.963" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13900" PostId="4883" Score="6" Text="+1 for both suggestions. I had a quick glance and could not discern any useful meaning of [empirical] apart from empirical Bayes." CreationDate="2017-07-27T11:58:58.560" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13912" PostId="4883" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I'm doing changes 10 at a time, mostly adding the tag [tag:empirical-bayes]. I'm refraining from removing [tag:empirical] from unrelated questions for now, so if someone else brings a good reason to not proceed we can merge [tag:empirical-bayes] back into it without much loss. As you're more experienced with re-tagging, how many edits you feel start to pollute the questions field? Is 10 at a time too much?" CreationDate="2017-07-28T16:10:12.257" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="13913" PostId="4883" Score="0" Text="See https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4285 - the consensus opinion seems to be 5-10." CreationDate="2017-07-28T18:13:04.580" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13914" PostId="4883" Score="0" Text="In principle there is a way to delete a tag (e.g. [empirical] after you are done tagging with empirical-bayes) but it requires mods to contact SE admins who would eradicate the tag. In practice this is never done, see https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3147." CreationDate="2017-07-28T18:15:25.913" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13964" PostId="4883" Score="0" Text="Re edit: There is no [inverse-ecdf] tag. There is [inverse-cdf]. And [cdf]." CreationDate="2017-08-04T11:58:05.957" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13965" PostId="4883" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Oops, I got confused because they appear together when you type `ecdf` (i.e. &quot;invers**e-cdf**&quot;). Thanks for the correction!" CreationDate="2017-08-04T12:01:08.953" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="14368" PostId="4883" Score="0" Text="I noticed that the tag is gone by now. Would you self-accept this answer?" CreationDate="2017-10-12T21:55:06.970" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14371" PostId="4883" Score="0" Text="Oh yeah, sure! Also, thanks for the help @amoeba!" CreationDate="2017-10-12T22:10:58.553" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="13918" PostId="4885" Score="2" Text="I considered it but decided against doing so; the election announcement itself will be featured soon. I mostly wanted to make sure the people that are actively interested in the site (and so check here regularly) were aware it was coming.  However, if there's clear desire that it be featured I can do so." CreationDate="2017-07-29T05:23:25.080" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13924" PostId="4885" Score="1" Text="Is there any particular reason that motivated this all of a sudden?" CreationDate="2017-07-29T12:05:52.307" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13925" PostId="4885" Score="6" Text="I wouldn't say it was sudden." CreationDate="2017-07-29T12:07:25.737" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13929" PostId="4885" Score="8" Text="@gung To at least partly answer the question; it was for several months clear that the moderators were at the point of needing more help -- which is only to be expected as the site has grown - we had elections in 2011, 2013 and 2015 so it's not especially surprising that we would need another sometime soon. That wasn't the only factor in the timing -- for one example, if I want to continue being able to answer questions at all, I will need to reduce my allocation of time to moderation for an extended period, as my total time on site will have to reduce (/already has, but will reduce further)." CreationDate="2017-07-30T04:38:17.927" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13930" PostId="4885" Score="7" Text="Make CrossValidated great again!" CreationDate="2017-07-30T13:42:25.657" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13932" PostId="4885" Score="8" Text="@amoeba: Will that be your campaign slogan?" CreationDate="2017-07-30T14:59:10.400" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="13938" PostId="4885" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi I am not planning to participate to be honest." CreationDate="2017-08-01T20:44:05.817" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13940" PostId="4885" Score="8" Text="@amoeba I'm very sad to hear that; I think you'd be excellent. ... And just think of the times you wouldn't need to wait on a moderator to fix some tag-synonym issue" CreationDate="2017-08-01T22:57:01.533" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13941" PostId="4885" Score="5" Text="@amoeba: That's a shame! I'd go so far as to say that your work on tags alone qualifies you for the position (&amp; it'd become easier if you had mod. privileges)." CreationDate="2017-08-02T08:15:32.727" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="13950" PostId="4885" Score="1" Text="Glen_b and @Scortchi: Thank you. It's true that being a mod would allow me to handle the tag issues more effectively... At the same time, I am not sure I would really be such a good candidate: e.g. my participation in review queues has always been zero (ZERO!), meaning I have no experience in doing it and little interest to start, whereas I believe this is an important part of any mod's job. I even considered running for a mod on a platform of becoming a &quot;tag mod&quot;, but honestly I am not sure if &quot;specialization mods&quot; would be such a good idea." CreationDate="2017-08-03T11:25:28.780" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13958" PostId="4885" Score="11" Text="@amoeba The whole process depends on division of labour. Conversely, I've never got excited about tags, yet done some other things. But your work on tags is spectacular and with your reputation of 39K  and overall good citizenship makes you a very strong candidate should you be persuaded to stand." CreationDate="2017-08-03T22:01:25.317" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="13921" PostId="4886" Score="4" Text="Interesting that downvotes are not migrated, only upvotes. I did not know that." CreationDate="2017-07-29T08:48:15.557" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13922" PostId="4886" Score="2" Text="Whoops! I  wanted to ask about migrating questions, but I erroneously referred to answers in the question title. Thanks for answering about both :)" CreationDate="2017-07-29T11:44:43.277" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="13937" PostId="4887" Score="2" Text="Questions from the current SO election for inspiration :)  https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/352386/2017-moderator-election-qa-questionnaire" CreationDate="2017-08-01T13:37:57.620" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="13948" PostId="4887" Score="0" Text="Thanks for running the question collection before the nomination phase - it's much better this way around!" CreationDate="2017-08-03T08:37:03.667" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="13949" PostId="4887" Score="3" Text="For yet more inspiration: [the 2015 question collection](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2432/1352) and [the 2015 questionnaire](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2460/1352) and [the 2013 question collection](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1769/1352) and [the 2013 questionnaire](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1800/1352)." CreationDate="2017-08-03T08:45:45.910" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="13933" PostId="4889" Score="0" Text="I could post it as several separate questions if this is the preferred format. If so, then I would perhaps only post issues #1 and #2 because #3 is less pressing." CreationDate="2017-07-31T20:23:49.467" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13934" PostId="4889" Score="2" Text="They're pretty closely connected so I think think is probably okay. I think this (tag management) is an important issue." CreationDate="2017-07-31T21:54:12.870" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="13974" PostId="4890" Score="1" Text="(+1) though &quot;Would you be willing to work towards formulation of some consensus policy and enforcing its consistent implementation?&quot; may be a little optimistic... the decision itself is always going to have some subjectivity, and so this area is one where I'd always expect a certain degree of &quot;one mod would have done one thing, another mod another&quot;. But I think the possibility of variation in moderation styles on this issue makes it an extremely relevant one for election questioning." CreationDate="2017-08-06T10:42:20.830" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="13980" PostId="4890" Score="0" Text="(Incidentally the &quot;rep&quot; issue makes Community Wiki decisions far more contentious than they perhaps deserve - for most readers, the difference between reading a Q&amp;A that is CW and one that isn't will be small, and I doubt many notice at all - yet I don't think even the most fair-handed and diplomatic of moderators, or the ability to point to a &quot;conclusive&quot; Meta discussion, will ever fully defuse the feelings of someone who feels unfairly rep-deprived. So I'm not expecting to see candidates put forward magic answers, but would like to know how they'd handle potentially heated situations.)" CreationDate="2017-08-07T02:12:59.203" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="13981" PostId="4890" Score="0" Text="@Silverfish Good points. Feel free to edit my question formulation as you see fit." CreationDate="2017-08-07T06:38:05.823" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13939" PostId="4891" Score="2" Text="A great idea on the face of it, but how would these &quot;topics&quot; differ from questions?" CreationDate="2017-08-01T21:55:25.780" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="13942" PostId="4891" Score="1" Text="Maybe just add a tag for the specific course?" CreationDate="2017-08-02T11:05:30.723" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="13943" PostId="4891" Score="1" Text="The topics are only different from questions in that they may contain multiple questions that are moderately different from each other.  Good idea re having a course-specific tag if the site is OK with that." CreationDate="2017-08-02T11:18:42.750" UserId="4253" />
  <row Id="13944" PostId="4891" Score="5" Text="Multiple questions juggling w/i the same thread sounds like they may be *too broad*. The tag idea may be better." CreationDate="2017-08-02T11:34:47.690" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13945" PostId="4891" Score="1" Text="On the other hand I'd like people not in the course to be able to contribute to discussions about topics, so I'm still leaning towards a topic orientation rather than a course orientation." CreationDate="2017-08-02T12:26:09.307" UserId="4253" />
  <row Id="13946" PostId="4891" Score="7" Text="I am worried that if something is not manifestly a *question*, then it does not belong here. Also, this platform is not for *discussions* -- discussions are explicitly discouraged and sometimes deleted or moved into chat by mods. If you can think of a format in which you and/or your students post specific questions and specific answers, then it's clearly okay and might indeed be an interesting/promising experiment." CreationDate="2017-08-02T14:35:03.317" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13947" PostId="4891" Score="2" Text="Good thoughts.  But I have trouble delineating questions/answers from discussions, and like discussions.  An answer without a discussion of the answer's downsides can be incomplete." CreationDate="2017-08-02T15:39:09.970" UserId="4253" />
  <row Id="13967" PostId="4891" Score="2" Text="Well the Stack Exchange ideal is that pertinent addenda, amplifications, caveats, corrections, criticisms, &amp;c. arising from discussion in comments are eventually digested &amp; assimilated into well-crafted answers - no need to preserve the (often hard-to-follow) discussion itself. Of course we often fall well short of that ideal, but it's worth bearing it in mind. A chat room linked to the post can be created for open-ended discussions or extended dialogues. (An example below for anyone unfamiliar with these chat rooms)" CreationDate="2017-08-04T14:03:10.430" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="13968" PostId="4891" Score="0" Text="Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been [moved to chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/63329/discussion-on-question-by-frank-harrell-creation-of-topics-instead-of-question)." CreationDate="2017-08-04T14:03:38.270" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="13969" PostId="4891" Score="0" Text="The text can be changed too, so it doesn't sound as if people are being told off." CreationDate="2017-08-04T14:08:37.400" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="13972" PostId="4893" Score="0" Text="I agree this is a big issue, though personally I would separate the package requests (which seem broadly similar to reference-requests - indeed I often wonder how many would be on-topic if e.g. R package requests were rewritten explicitly as requests for references that could be answered with the vignette from the appropriate package!) from the code requests (which generally hope that someone will provide original code). I'm not sure it's that a mod election is the best place to discuss it - I'd rather moderation policy was consistent across the issue, as now, than that different mods ...." CreationDate="2017-08-06T10:38:05.893" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="13973" PostId="4893" Score="0" Text="... who ran on different platforms execute different decisions. I think probably this is something that the community as a whole needs to discuss and formulate some kind of consensus on (possibly the status quo, possibly something else) that hopefully the moderation team can follow consistently. I think issues like Community Wiki, which is both more subjective and more at the mods' discretion, are better suited to discussing at election time, since the mods may differ in personal style over it." CreationDate="2017-08-06T10:40:06.610" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="13951" PostId="4895" Score="8" Text="+1 I think this is a very useful question to have. It would be strange to have a mod candidate *without* a history of active and well-received Meta participation." CreationDate="2017-08-03T11:27:23.843" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13952" PostId="4896" Score="4" Text="Specifically, no one intends to be rude here, and if they do that is out of order. Being re-opened is never inevitable: it depends on enough votes to that effect. Also, it's not enough for an OP to think their question is (now) clear. As I write there are 2 votes to re-open 3 hours after editing. That's not in my experience extraordinarily slow at this time of year. I don't understand the question so I can't honestly add a vote that it is clear. It's hard to respond to the general comment that it &quot;takes forever&quot; for questions to be re-opened. Precise data are needed to discuss that claim." CreationDate="2017-08-03T21:16:33.670" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="13953" PostId="4896" Score="0" Text="@nickcox One of those votes it's actually from me, because I thought I can apply for reopening it somehow. I find rude that the people voting to close do not leave comments why nor feel obliged to come back to re-evaluate the amended version." CreationDate="2017-08-03T21:20:35.550" UserId="24515" />
  <row Id="13954" PostId="4896" Score="5" Text="Sorry, but I can't agree with you. You need stronger evidence to declare conduct &quot;rude&quot;. First, it may be that any or all of those people have revisited the thread and haven't changed their minds. That's their right. Second, I don't think that any contribution here (in this case a vote) **obliges** people to return to the thread promptly. Busy people sleep, eat, do their day job, attend to family, hobbies, etc. Third, and positively, it's in order for other people to visit and make that vote but apart from yourself only one person has done that in 3 hours." CreationDate="2017-08-03T21:28:55.823" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="13955" PostId="4896" Score="1" Text="@NickCox I believe people are clicking quickly on the close / on hold button but do not take time to re-open what they have put on hold. That is of course an impression only. However I believe it would be friendly enough to leave a note why a question is on hold and there should be a system for re-evaluating them. Frankly, the fact you shared that nobody looked at the thread other than myself is evidence supporting my point. Also it may show that nobody else checks out my question *because* it is on hold. This is an awkward situation given that the reason why it's on hold has been fixed." CreationDate="2017-08-03T21:35:51.503" UserId="24515" />
  <row Id="13956" PostId="4896" Score="1" Text="Let me also say that the first person @JuhoKokkala who raised the problem already agreed that it is clearer now and voted to re-open (i.e. this is the second vote)." CreationDate="2017-08-03T21:36:54.803" UserId="24515" />
  <row Id="13957" PostId="4896" Score="1" Text="&quot;nobody looked at the thread other than myself [=tomka]&quot; I didn't say that and it's not true, if only because I looked at the thread. It's not in contention that there is another vote to re-open but, quite simply, the system requires more. I'll close my remarks: 1. there is nothing obviously unusual to me about your thread except your explicit  personal opinion that the process is too slow. 2. whether re-opening happens often enough and fast enough would be a fair question on Meta but there isn't any evidence to discuss this here (but review queues are usually very short on CV)." CreationDate="2017-08-03T21:49:06.143" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="13959" PostId="4896" Score="2" Text="@NickCox I have made some revisions following our discussion." CreationDate="2017-08-03T22:14:08.927" UserId="24515" />
  <row Id="13960" PostId="4896" Score="3" Text="Regarding: `Should there be a better system for reopening questions? (once a question is on hold fewer people tend to look at it, so questions might not get enough attention anymore although they have been revised)` - if a closed question is edited, it gets into reopen review queue and stays there until enough people review it and vote either to reopen or to leave close. So such a system is already in place." CreationDate="2017-08-04T08:23:00.610" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13961" PostId="4896" Score="4" Text="See https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/256071/225179 for details about how the re-open queue @amoeba refers to works. Of particular importance is that only your first edit will place the question into the queue, so make it a good one. Spare your re-open vote (you get only one) for if subsequent edits are required. Of course pinging other users, flagging, or posting on Meta or Ten Fold will get a now-clear question re-opened, but I'd suggest giving the system a bit of time to work." CreationDate="2017-08-04T09:19:09.590" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="13962" PostId="4896" Score="7" Text="But it's a good question (+1). Wonder if someone would be interested in collecting some data (https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/275921/review-queue-statistics). Something else I've noticed is that a tally of 're-open' votes is visible to the OP, but 'leave closed' votes are invisible - perhaps creating the impression that the question isn't getting attention when in fact people regard it as still unclear." CreationDate="2017-08-04T10:11:39.830" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="13963" PostId="4896" Score="1" Text="@Scortchi That would be great. The OP needs more feedback on the question after it got closed, in particular if (s)he puts more effort into it!" CreationDate="2017-08-04T10:15:46.037" UserId="24515" />
  <row Id="13966" PostId="4896" Score="5" Text="@Scortchi, I've often thought the number of *leave open* / *leave closed* votes should be visible to people, especially in the queue. Perhaps I'll investigate that later. I could even put in a feature request on meta.SE, if appropriate." CreationDate="2017-08-04T12:31:27.800" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13975" PostId="4897" Score="0" Text="Can you clarify how you see this question as distinct from @mdewey's [above](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/4893/7290)? To me, they seem to be getting at the same issue." CreationDate="2017-08-06T12:41:48.610" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13976" PostId="4897" Score="1" Text="@gung his question is about coding vs stats. I ask about closing in general, we close question for multiple different reasons." CreationDate="2017-08-06T12:47:18.463" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="13977" PostId="4897" Score="0" Text="So do you mean 'off-topic' in the general sense (e.g., duplicate, self-study, unclear, too broad, opinion-based, etc.)?" CreationDate="2017-08-06T17:44:28.733" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13978" PostId="4897" Score="0" Text="@gung yes that is what I mean" CreationDate="2017-08-06T18:02:41.693" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="13979" PostId="4897" Score="1" Text="I tweaked the phrasing to make your intent, &amp; the contrast w/ @mdewey's question, clearer. See what you think. If you don't like it, roll it back w/ my apologies." CreationDate="2017-08-06T18:13:21.247" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="13982" PostId="4899" Score="0" Text="can I see the repo? Also, I suggest to change the last link to &quot;edit it&quot; to avoid redundancy" CreationDate="2017-08-07T10:31:23.143" UserId="59765" />
  <row Id="13983" PostId="4900" Score="4" Text="See https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/4894" CreationDate="2017-08-07T10:54:13.353" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13984" PostId="4900" Score="6" Text="I totally agree with this question getting answered by potential new moderators! That's why I posted it a couple of days ago ;)" CreationDate="2017-08-07T11:08:26.600" UserId="144089" />
  <row Id="14039" PostId="4901" Score="0" Text="I cannot find the following information: we learn that &quot;two moderator positions are available&quot;. Are they two _additional_ positions? If not, who will stand down?" CreationDate="2017-08-14T18:46:23.887" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="14042" PostId="4901" Score="0" Text="@AlecosPapadopoulos These are two additional positions." CreationDate="2017-08-14T19:50:15.920" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14111" PostId="4901" Score="2" Text="There were several comments on the nomination posts at https://stats.stackexchange.com/election/ which now seem to have been edited away. First, discussion of candidates' views and qualifications surely remains pertinent during the election. Second, if those comments were subject to removal, then minimally there should have been a warning about that (apologies if I missed it). Ideally those comments should remain accessible!" CreationDate="2017-08-22T10:04:57.573" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14135" PostId="4901" Score="0" Text="@NickCox are the comments present here: https://stats.stackexchange.com/election/4?tab=nomination ?" CreationDate="2017-08-26T18:54:55.783" UserId="141382" />
  <row Id="14137" PostId="4901" Score="0" Text="Yes indeed; thanks!" CreationDate="2017-08-27T06:51:23.867" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14141" PostId="4901" Score="0" Text="@NickCox You are welcome. Thank you for challenging certain claims being made. The resulting discourse was informative." CreationDate="2017-08-27T15:33:20.340" UserId="141382" />
  <row Id="13988" PostId="4903" Score="4" Text="I would appreciate a fuller response to Q1 (about tags), in particular to the part asking about what (specifically!) you are going to do about it as a mod. You say that the mod intervention if often needed, but could you briefly outline how you imagine doing if you become a mod? E.g. somebody posts a tag burnination request on Meta; what do you do? What about all the unmerged tag synonyms that we have? Etc. What kind of personal mod policy are you envisioning?" CreationDate="2017-08-08T18:44:01.223" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13989" PostId="4903" Score="1" Text="Re Q9, and tangentially some others, would you intend to intervene more in the review queues to correct some of the decisions you feel are being made wrongly? It seems fair to say you aren't especially active in reviews at the moment ([343 reviews at time of writing](https://stats.stackexchange.com/users/35989/tim?tab=activity&amp;sort=reviews)) - though clearly that is because you devote much useful energy to the site in other ways! - and some mods prefer to let the review queue run itself unless it suffers a backlog. On the other hand, a decisive mod vote would allow you to be &quot;effective&quot; there." CreationDate="2017-08-08T23:05:09.860" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="13990" PostId="4903" Score="2" Text="@Silverfish I probably won't be able to find much more time on moderation-like activities, then I have spend until now. So I'd rather &quot;let it run itself&quot;. I also think that going through all the queue and reading multiple questions so to decide on open/close would inevitably lead to routine and making low-quality decisions, so to bad moderation decisions." CreationDate="2017-08-09T08:29:59.727" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="13991" PostId="4903" Score="0" Text="@amoeba there is lots of things going on CV every day, I believe moderators have a lot of work to do. There is a lot of things to be done with different stuff, including tags. I believe that those things were not yet dealt by the mods until now because they didn't have enough time for it. I don't want to promise you that I'll fix something and then not keep my promise. You know from our discussions on Meta that I'm interested in cleaning up the tags, but I can't promises you what exactly I'll be able to do given other duties and limited time." CreationDate="2017-08-09T08:35:58.450" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="13992" PostId="4903" Score="12" Text="@amoeba BTW, maybe you want to nominate yourself? Even if you wanted to focus solely on the tags, it'd make a difference and you'd get my vote." CreationDate="2017-08-09T08:54:37.457" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="13993" PostId="4903" Score="0" Text="Re promises - that's fair enough and I understand; I actually did not mean that you should promise anything, I was asking about your vision of how mod policy should work in this case (something like &quot;After a burnination request is posted, as a general policy I'd suggest we wait X time until Y votes, check if conditions Z apply, and then contact SE admins to burninate&quot; or something like that). But whatever, we can discuss it after you become a mod :-) Regarding nominating myself, see [here](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4885/#comment13930_4885) about my concerns." CreationDate="2017-08-09T09:03:20.687" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13994" PostId="4903" Score="1" Text="Re duties and limited time, it would actually be very interesting to know what average time per day or week our existing mods spend on moderation tasks." CreationDate="2017-08-09T09:04:44.350" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13995" PostId="4903" Score="2" Text="@amoeba but sometimes less then Y people would care about the tag, then what? Yes, those are the kind of things you need to discuss, but sometimes you need a mod so that he can make an arbitrary decision when it is needed. For this kind of stuff you'd rather need to understand the general principles of how this site works, rather then policies in bullets..." CreationDate="2017-08-09T09:12:31.527" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="14035" PostId="4903" Score="2" Text="Just noticed that your comment asking me to nominate myself got 10 upvotes... Currently there are 2 nominees, you and gung, but AFAIK we need at least 3 for the election to take place. I am considering to nominate myself, but if I do this will mean that you and me will essentially be competing with each other, given that gung's chances I would estimate as around 100% (which is absolutely deserved)... This is awkward given that you expressed your interest from the beginning while I have been rather hesitant." CreationDate="2017-08-14T12:08:27.153" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14036" PostId="4903" Score="0" Text="@amoeba at worst, we would have two good mods :) Moreover, you can always withdraw from the competition if some other candidate appears and you would still hesitate. BTW, please notice that you have 7h to do so (unless the nomination phase gets extended)." CreationDate="2017-08-14T12:12:05.200" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="14079" PostId="4903" Score="1" Text="#9. In my opinion, 'unclear' questions and 'low-quality' are almost 'brothers'. We don't need more of those. If OPs can't fit the site by taking advantage of all material available (tour, help center, close reason messages, CV meta posts tagged with faq), then, perhaps it is not their place here; because SE wants mainly to build a high quality repository about statistics, etc (and if possible, to directly help OPs, but directly helping OPs can be mutually exclusive helping the community, if good answers are buried under a pile of unclear, broad, off-topic, duplicate questions)" CreationDate="2017-08-18T17:53:00.807" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="14080" PostId="4903" Score="1" Text="So, I disagree we close too much unclear questions, and that we should try to be (even) more empathetic." CreationDate="2017-08-18T17:53:28.010" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="13996" PostId="4904" Score="2" Text="Related discussion: https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4671/the-pandas-tag#comment12761_4678" CreationDate="2017-08-09T12:38:06.940" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="13997" PostId="4906" Score="1" Text="What do you think of *keeping* such tags and instead setting their wiki excerpts to warn that the question might be off-topic?" CreationDate="2017-08-09T13:44:49.833" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="13998" PostId="4906" Score="3" Text="@whuber How many tag wikis have you read? I'd bet that most of the people didn't ever read *any* tag wiki." CreationDate="2017-08-09T13:58:05.790" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="14000" PostId="4906" Score="2" Text="We needn't close / delete the *questions* necessarily. If we just remove the tag, it will disappear after 24 hours." CreationDate="2017-08-09T14:51:51.707" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14001" PostId="4906" Score="4" Text="@Tim I refer to the *excerpt* that pops up when you hover your mouse over the tag.  I won't suppose that the way in which I interact with the site generalizes to all users, so whether I see or read the excerpts is irrelevant.  But I don't want to abandon a potentially useful mechanism or not employ it just because some people might not notice it." CreationDate="2017-08-09T14:51:59.120" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="14006" PostId="4906" Score="1" Text="@whuber that's a good thought; there's clearly an argument for that." CreationDate="2017-08-09T22:35:26.827" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14030" PostId="4906" Score="0" Text="Re duplicated posts: I copied edits from the later version into the earlier one and voted to close the later one as a duplicate. In fact, as it's 100% identical duplicate and does not contain useful or upvoted answers/comments I think it can be deleted altogether. I downvoted so that if closed, it eventually gets automatically deleted" CreationDate="2017-08-12T21:55:25.103" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14024" PostId="4908" Score="2" Text="I would be interesting in becoming a mod in the long-term. Nonetheless I am not sure if I am already mature enough. I am lacking rep, experience in SE and knowledge about certain statistical fields. Should I nominate myself and let the community decide or should I wait and apply maybe in 3 or 4 years? I sticked to waiting until now. Maybe someone is feeling the same way as I do and therefore we do not have enough candidates. Disclosure: Please do not consider my comment as impolite I know I am just an &quot;intermediate beginner or so&quot; and I appreciate learning from people who know more than me." CreationDate="2017-08-11T10:56:45.340" UserId="128677" />
  <row Id="14026" PostId="4908" Score="2" Text="@Ferdi: What you describe is very reasonable. Nevertheless the issue is not if one is &quot;knowledgable&quot; in terms of Statistics. Given one can appreciate Statistics to a reasonable extent, moderation tasks (tags, review queue, spam/offensive posts, etc.) entail mainly interpersonal and organisational skills. That being said, if I do not know of a candidate and I have not read their responses and interactions with other users I cannot judge their interpersonal and organisational skills either." CreationDate="2017-08-11T19:37:27.860" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="14027" PostId="4908" Score="2" Text="There's lots of areas of statistics that I know little about. Time series, for example. Or neural nets.  Yet I'm a mod.  Experience in SE would be a bigger problem." CreationDate="2017-08-11T20:06:14.807" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="14013" PostId="4909" Score="8" Text="Clarification on the election rules: you mentioned in chat that if there are &lt;=2 nominees then they become mods automatically. Does it mean that if nobody apart from Tim nominates themselves until 1 min before the end of nomination time, then anybody can hijack the election by nominating themselves in the last moment and automatically getting the mod position, however bad this candidate might be?" CreationDate="2017-08-11T08:20:35.603" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14015" PostId="4909" Score="3" Text="DataScience SE's election's nomination phase got extended by a week cause there were only 2 candidates who were up for nomination for 3 slots.  afaik there should be `n+1` nominees for an election to happen" CreationDate="2017-08-11T08:32:13.830" UserId="84191" />
  <row Id="14016" PostId="4909" Score="1" Text="@Dawny33 Interesting." CreationDate="2017-08-11T09:00:14.083" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14017" PostId="4909" Score="1" Text="@amoeba: I didn't know that, but it seems to be a rule -  https://datascience.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2298/3361, https://money.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2108 - at least for sites graduating from beta." CreationDate="2017-08-11T09:48:47.220" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="14018" PostId="4909" Score="2" Text="@Dawny33: By the way - well done! https://datascience.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2277/3361" CreationDate="2017-08-11T09:51:28.007" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="14019" PostId="4909" Score="2" Text="@amoeba: Not just for beta sites - https://networkengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/q/627." CreationDate="2017-08-11T10:09:16.357" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="14020" PostId="4909" Score="1" Text="@Dawny thanks for that information; that's news to me." CreationDate="2017-08-11T10:24:31.977" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14021" PostId="4909" Score="4" Text="@Dawny33 As you probably know, we have had several Meta discussions about datascience.SE (see [meta-tag:datascience-stackexchange]) with I would describe as a very strong consensus that having datascience.SE separate from CV is a bad idea (e.g. 42 upvotes and not a single downvote here https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2281/28666, but see also other Qs and As). Now I can see that datascience.SE is going to graduate from beta, despite the mentioned consensus... Well well. Would you perhaps want to post an announcement on our Meta?" CreationDate="2017-08-11T10:39:37.440" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14022" PostId="4909" Score="1" Text="@Scortchi Interesting about datascience.SE. See my comment above." CreationDate="2017-08-11T10:39:55.747" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14023" PostId="4909" Score="2" Text="@amoeba To be explicit, just in case anyone reading along is unclear -- my understanding was incorrect; apparently what I thought is not how election works (to my surprise)" CreationDate="2017-08-11T10:49:46.590" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14025" PostId="4909" Score="5" Text="@amoeba: I hadn't noticed till now. It might be useful to have a Meta post explaining what's on topic at DS, as it could be a migration path for questions that would currently be closed here." CreationDate="2017-08-11T13:49:25.800" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="14028" PostId="4909" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Sure. Will ask one of the mods to :)" CreationDate="2017-08-12T07:25:27.413" UserId="84191" />
  <row Id="14031" PostId="4910" Score="4" Text="I like your answers. You taught me that questions on coding or errors in coding should only be referred to SO if they contain a reproducible example. Regarding question 10 maybe you can tell us why you value becoming a moderator more than just enhancing your reputation." CreationDate="2017-08-13T20:24:55.083" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="14032" PostId="4910" Score="0" Text="I'm somewhat mixed about becoming a moderator. I have little interest in enhancing my reputation; I have more reputation than I need already." CreationDate="2017-08-14T01:11:15.303" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14038" PostId="4910" Score="5" Text="I hope you will feel better about it after you are elected." CreationDate="2017-08-14T16:32:40.447" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="14082" PostId="4910" Score="1" Text="FWIW, I endorse amoeba &amp; Tim for moderator." CreationDate="2017-08-18T20:11:45.887" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14083" PostId="4910" Score="1" Text="I think all the nominated candidates are worthy.  I would pick you as being the most qualified based on your reputation and the way you participate on the site (questions, answers, editing and reviewing)." CreationDate="2017-08-18T21:41:32.233" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="14041" PostId="4912" Score="7" Text="I was going to nominate myself, and I still have 12 minutes until 20:00 UTC. However, the site now says that the nomination goes for another 7 days. Does it mean that if I nominate myself during the next 12 minutes, it will nevertheless run for another week?" CreationDate="2017-08-14T19:49:05.490" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14043" PostId="4912" Score="1" Text="Nominated. It's three minutes to 20:00." CreationDate="2017-08-14T19:57:33.987" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14044" PostId="4912" Score="11" Text="On the other hand, perhaps it does make sense to let the nomination period run for another week; other candidates might still step forward." CreationDate="2017-08-14T19:59:39.467" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14159" PostId="4912" Score="0" Text="August is not the optimal month for conducting elections, is it?" CreationDate="2017-08-30T20:21:38.487" UserId="7224" />
  <row Id="14040" PostId="4913" Score="0" Text="+1, thanks for doing this." CreationDate="2017-08-14T19:14:22.373" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14049" PostId="4913" Score="0" Text="I agree and upvoted the suggestion. I got somewhat stuck sorting everything into logistic-regression, logistic-curve, and logistic-distribution (as per my answer above) because there is some amount of questions about logistic neurons (that I aimed to tag neural-network, but perhaps we need logistic-neuron tag? as a synonym to neural-network or stand-alone?) and also about logit transformation as such and I did not make up my mind about what to do with it." CreationDate="2017-08-16T12:12:45.523" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14050" PostId="4913" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I'm not the neural-network kind of person, so I cannot comment on that." CreationDate="2017-08-16T12:16:46.597" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="14051" PostId="4914" Score="6" Text="You need at least 75. https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/set-bounties" CreationDate="2017-08-16T17:30:06.770" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14052" PostId="4914" Score="2" Text="Thank you, @NickCox, I see. I may have overlooked it, but if not I believe it would be useful if that information were given on the help page I linked to as well, maybe in the list at the beginning of the page." CreationDate="2017-08-16T19:54:54.990" UserDisplayName="user167929" />
  <row Id="14053" PostId="4914" Score="2" Text="You may already find an answer among these: https://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=chi+squared+post+hoc ... or these https://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=chi+square+post+hoc" CreationDate="2017-08-16T21:30:04.970" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14054" PostId="4915" Score="7" Text="I have a feeling that Q10 is really asking about what difference the mod tools would make, compared to the mod-like tools that you get at 10k -&#xA; and to some extent 20k - rather than about the difference between moderating activity and participating in the Q&amp;A. (The question would in some ways make more sense for a candidate with &lt;20k rep, but I suppose it can still be interpreted as asking what incremental difference the new tools would make for you.)" CreationDate="2017-08-16T21:59:59.843" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="14057" PostId="4915" Score="18" Text="I am sorry but the statement &quot;*Nobody's using tags anymore*&quot; is wrong. We know for a fact they are still used. People edit them, delete and assign them to question, even complain about them at times. Re-tagging of questions regularly comes up in the review queues. Speaking from personal experience: I use them quite a bit to make my favourite topics stand out. (Just to be clear, I am not your downvoter; your answer is clearly relevant for this electoral matter.)" CreationDate="2017-08-17T23:33:22.700" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="14058" PostId="4915" Score="0" Text="@usεr11852, it was more of a position statement than a statement of fact. I don't think tags are useful, and as a moderator the only tag that I'd support is &quot;self-study&quot;, this one's utility" CreationDate="2017-08-18T02:19:04.910" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="14059" PostId="4915" Score="1" Text="@Silverfish, ok, I got it. So far it seems the ability to close the questions is really the one that would make a difference for me in terms of the routine usage" CreationDate="2017-08-18T02:20:33.223" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="14060" PostId="4917" Score="1" Text="To link directly to an answer, one easy way is to click the &quot;share&quot; link and paste that. Note that referring to an answer by the order it appears on your page doesn't help people who aren't using the same sort order. (See the &quot;active / oldest / votes&quot; tabs to the right at the top of the set of answers), and even if they are using your sort order, for tabs other than oldest the order can change over time" CreationDate="2017-08-18T02:44:23.007" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14063" PostId="4917" Score="1" Text="Have a look at what I did here: https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/239360/contradictory-results-of-adf-and-kpss-unit-root-tests/239367#239367. I copied my own answer to a very similar question. Then I explained why I copied it and gave a link and went into more detail.  In my opinion this was a good procedure." CreationDate="2017-08-18T07:54:21.333" UserId="128677" />
  <row Id="14061" PostId="4918" Score="2" Text="The answer is indeed completely copied; identical except for the beginning &quot;As mentioned by Ben Bolker &lt;link to my answer&gt;&quot;. And the question is already marked as a duplicate." CreationDate="2017-08-18T03:17:51.627" UserId="2126" />
  <row Id="14062" PostId="4918" Score="2" Text="WIth regard to that - at this point you could (1) post a link to here in comments under the answer and (2) vote to delete or flag (Thanks for the edit btw.)" CreationDate="2017-08-18T03:34:30.920" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14072" PostId="4918" Score="1" Text="@BenBolker, you marked the thread w/ your answer as the duplicate. At this point, I would delete your answer &amp; repost it on the master thread." CreationDate="2017-08-18T12:20:05.857" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14073" PostId="4918" Score="2" Text="OK ............" CreationDate="2017-08-18T12:20:37.157" UserId="2126" />
  <row Id="14064" PostId="4919" Score="1" Text="Your feeling is correct insofar as cross-posting is explicitly discouraged on Stack Exchange. Concisely from https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic&#xA;&#xA;&quot;Please note ... that cross-posting is not encouraged on SE sites. Choose one best location to post your question. Later, if it proves better suited on another site, it can be migrated.&quot;  &#xA; In your case, there are no answers as I write and you've offered a bounty of 100. If you get no answers there, I would delete and repost here.  (Giving the link as evidence is more than fine.)" CreationDate="2017-08-18T10:17:40.537" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14066" PostId="4919" Score="2" Text="I've edited in the tag `cross-posting` and from looking at posts under that heading I think this can be declared a duplicate." CreationDate="2017-08-18T10:20:31.880" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14067" PostId="4919" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Why does the cross-posting tag exist then?  It seems as everything under the cross-posting tag would then be a duplicate question to the original one you reference.&#xA;&#xA;Thank you for the appropriate advice on what to do if I don't get answers on math.sx though." CreationDate="2017-08-18T10:23:46.080" UserId="28928" />
  <row Id="14068" PostId="4919" Score="2" Text="@Taal *meta* is a place to discuss policy so having a crossposting tag there makes sense -- it's fine to ask questions *about* crossposting on meta. And crossposts are at least *sometimes* okay -- Andy W's answer at the duplicate lists a potential exception and I list another here." CreationDate="2017-08-18T10:27:40.373" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14069" PostId="4919" Score="4" Text="The cross-posting tag exists because people ask about cross-posting, just as you have done. This is the difference between Meta and the main site. People don't read the Help carefully enough or -- more interestingly -- find it unclear or ambiguous. So questions are asked." CreationDate="2017-08-18T10:34:06.607" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14070" PostId="4919" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Makes sense, thanks." CreationDate="2017-08-18T10:36:38.447" UserId="28928" />
  <row Id="14071" PostId="4920" Score="1" Text="(+1) And best to tailor the question so that it makes your expectation clear. Buy goodwill by including a link to the duplicate on the other site - it's discourteous not to." CreationDate="2017-08-18T12:06:38.723" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="14074" PostId="4920" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi This is good advice, thank you." CreationDate="2017-08-18T12:27:27.687" UserId="28928" />
  <row Id="14075" PostId="4920" Score="1" Text="I didn't explicitly state it (thinking it obvious) but it would be rare for a question posted to stats.SE and math.SE to actually be seeking different kinds of answers" CreationDate="2017-08-18T12:30:56.493" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14126" PostId="4920" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi What if I do not want to include a link to the other question so as to potentially bias the answers differently than the way I want them (which is out of context).  IE. on Math I ended up giving away the entire context of the problem towards the end as the one person trying to solve it I was trying to help as much as possible &amp; just went for it" CreationDate="2017-08-25T07:39:50.717" UserId="28928" />
  <row Id="14127" PostId="4920" Score="1" Text="@Taal: Tough! Remember you're asking for people to give up their free time to help you. Suppose you help your next-door neighbour fill in his tax return. Then you find out that he's already had the neighbour on the other side help - he wants to double-check it. Or that he's asked everyone on the street - he's conducting some kind of an experiment on variability. You'd be peeved. Most you could decently do is link to the other question &amp; *ask* if people would mind not looking at it if they want to answer it here." CreationDate="2017-08-25T08:18:06.963" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="14128" PostId="4920" Score="1" Text="Orthogonally to that, I'd have thought if answers to a question on maths/statistics can be &quot;biased&quot; by providing the context, it's an indication that the question's unclear in the first place." CreationDate="2017-08-25T08:22:59.703" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="14129" PostId="4920" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi I know how I can resolve my issue while still providing a link...i'd just provide a link to the question in its original form.  I was never going to not mention it was on math already though.  &#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA; My bounty just expired...&#xA;&#xA;Ah maybe i'll post it maybe not.  We'll see.  The person working on it or thinking about it now is an active member on both sites though (as are most people it seems)." CreationDate="2017-08-25T08:34:54.980" UserId="28928" />
  <row Id="14130" PostId="4920" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi The guy working on the question didn't use the context I gave him at the end by the way, he said he liked it in its mathematical form purely too.  So I although you mention it's an indication....it's just an indication...not a truth." CreationDate="2017-08-25T08:37:54.807" UserId="28928" />
  <row Id="14131" PostId="4920" Score="1" Text="Sorry if my comment above seemed accusatory - I just wanted to make my point firmly for anyone who might read it. Personally I'd give the question a bit more time on Math SE before thinking about deleting it &amp; re-posting here." CreationDate="2017-08-25T09:10:12.220" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="14107" PostId="4921" Score="0" Text="Did you ever approach posters here with consulting opportunities?" CreationDate="2017-08-22T00:13:45.967" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="14112" PostId="4921" Score="0" Text="@Aksakal I am going to attempt to soon.  For example, I need https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/2395394/solving-ptrue-of-finding-counterpart-pairs-in-2-sets-with-constraints-involvin solved.  I also need the statistical validity of a research paper analyzed...although the statistics are written in C++ and also include aspects of biology." CreationDate="2017-08-22T10:58:07.017" UserId="28928" />
  <row Id="20135" PostId="4921" Score="0" Text="Why should a presence on GitHub weigh so heavily?" CreationDate="2020-10-06T04:10:51.637" UserId="123167" />
  <row Id="21368" PostId="4921" Score="0" Text="Because a presence on Github is this perfect representation of what someone has made before, how they code, who they work with, how they work with them...etc.  Whereas if you said &quot;I have a degree in computer science or I have my google certification for data analysis&quot; that just means you went through some classes.&#xA;&#xA;Github is application." CreationDate="2022-06-24T07:56:19.230" UserId="28928" />
  <row Id="21369" PostId="4921" Score="0" Text="Also, @Aksakal, I do...and so do many others.  However, I have found that people generally interested in stuff on stackexchange arn't very interested in money or a job per say - &#xA;&#xA;It's like when I go to deviantart and try to find an artist to make stuff for me.  I mean, it's overwhelming how many people I'd sell a kidney in order to work with there.  However, their motivations usually are not financial but in the art/discipline in and of itself...and this is also true on math SE or stat SE.&#xA;&#xA;But, jeesh if I saw someone answering questions on any SE nowadays that's like a +1000 points..." CreationDate="2022-06-24T08:00:30.573" UserId="28928" />
  <row Id="14089" PostId="4923" Score="6" Text="Good question, but better on Meta?" CreationDate="2017-08-21T16:48:33.200" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14090" PostId="4923" Score="0" Text="But blind people don't go there" CreationDate="2017-08-21T17:03:24.100" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="14091" PostId="4923" Score="9" Text="(1) How do you know that? (2) Regardless, questions about use of the forum belong in Meta, I think." CreationDate="2017-08-21T17:10:11.573" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14092" PostId="4923" Score="1" Text="Pertinent thread: https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1072/could-we-change-the-color-of-the-accepted-answer-check-for-color-blind-people Not the main question, however." CreationDate="2017-08-21T17:47:17.183" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14093" PostId="4923" Score="0" Text="Do blind people in general use the internet? If yes, how can they do it? How can you build a &quot;blind-friendly&quot; homepage?" CreationDate="2017-08-21T18:01:21.150" UserId="128677" />
  <row Id="14094" PostId="4923" Score="1" Text="@Ferdi, they definitely use internet and read math on it, but I don't know what's most convenient way of doing it." CreationDate="2017-08-21T18:05:08.493" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="14100" PostId="4923" Score="5" Text="One simple thing is to always use text not copy in an image and then screen reading software has a chance." CreationDate="2017-08-21T20:25:18.293" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="14101" PostId="4923" Score="1" Text="We have at least one active blind user: https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3175/top-ten-list-of-reasons-to-close-a-question-immediately#comment10087_3176. Hopefully they will comment." CreationDate="2017-08-21T21:19:33.423" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14104" PostId="4923" Score="0" Text="Some relevant issues raised [here](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/204930/can-simple-linear-regression-be-done-without-using-plots-and-linear-algebra)" CreationDate="2017-08-21T22:05:51.030" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14105" PostId="4923" Score="1" Text="The data analysis is so heavily dependent on visuals, simple things like qq plots etc. Maybe we need to develop non visual methods more" CreationDate="2017-08-21T22:09:00.103" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="14143" PostId="4923" Score="1" Text="@Aksakal A qqplot could easily be rendered in sound.  Hmmmm, may be time to build that." CreationDate="2017-08-28T03:15:30.327" UserId="74500" />
  <row Id="14144" PostId="4923" Score="1" Text="@MatthewDrury, i'd like to hear qqplot. no idea how it would sound" CreationDate="2017-08-28T03:47:40.470" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="14163" PostId="4923" Score="0" Text="A couple of links that raise relevant issues [Statistical Software from a Blind Person’s&#xA;Perspective](https://journal.r-project.org/archive/2013-1/godfrey.pdf) (A. Jonathan R. Godfrey, *The R Journal*, 2013) and [Statistical Software (R, SAS, SPSS, and Minitab) for Blind Students and&#xA;Practitioners](https://www.jstatsoft.org/article/view/v058s01/v58s01.pdf) (A. Jonathan R. Godfrey &amp; M. Theodor Loots, *Journal of Statistical Software*, 2014)" CreationDate="2017-09-02T21:16:57.750" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14099" PostId="4924" Score="1" Text="There are several situations where networks appear in statistics: Neural Networks, Bayesian Networks, Markov Networks, Microeconometric regression systems such (SEM) and several others. Nonetheless not every networks can also be viewed through the eyes of a &quot;non-statistician&quot;." CreationDate="2017-08-21T19:20:58.010" UserId="128677" />
  <row Id="14102" PostId="4924" Score="1" Text="@Ferdi I find your last sentence a little confusing; it doesn't seem to fit with the implication of the first sentence (which combined with &quot;Nonetheless&quot; immediately after it suggests you would be trying to emphasize there are non-statistical aspects of networks in the second sentence, while it seems to actually emphasize again that there's statistical aspects -- the &quot;not every&quot; ... &quot;non-statistician&quot;)" CreationDate="2017-08-21T21:19:47.243" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14109" PostId="4924" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b you can have a look at networks from the statistical perspective, but you can also look at it from other disciplines such as biology, ecology, economics or business." CreationDate="2017-08-22T06:43:19.373" UserId="128677" />
  <row Id="14110" PostId="4924" Score="1" Text="Good, that's what I thought you probably intended but it wasn't what your second sentence says. If you replace &quot;not every&quot; with &quot;some&quot; it fits that better." CreationDate="2017-08-22T07:30:46.093" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14106" PostId="4928" Score="2" Text="So are the formulae here in latex accessible?" CreationDate="2017-08-22T00:08:41.843" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="14108" PostId="4928" Score="2" Text="@Aksakal I think so, yes. They can be zoomed, and if you're literally blind or have JavaScript off, you can fall back on the raw LaTeX." CreationDate="2017-08-22T00:14:44.867" UserId="14076" />
  <row Id="14136" PostId="4928" Score="0" Text="@Aksakal, if you're already accustomed to $\LaTeX$ before you went blind, you should be able to parse most expressions unrendered." CreationDate="2017-08-27T05:57:02.067" UserId="830" />
  <row Id="16751" PostId="4928" Score="0" Text="@Kodiologist: Not to impose, of course, but if you had any feedback on the new site theme it could be very useful: https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5441/17230" CreationDate="2018-09-28T14:06:58.407" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="14113" PostId="4929" Score="1" Text="I think that makes sense." CreationDate="2017-08-22T11:53:17.040" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="14114" PostId="4929" Score="4" Text="Isn't it Cross Validated Meta rather than Math Overflow? BTW I think we can have up to five on the list - https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/77264/225179. For rare migration paths you can flag the post for a moderator to migrate." CreationDate="2017-08-22T12:56:02.493" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="14115" PostId="4929" Score="4" Text="It isn't clear to me how often we really need to migrate to DS, even accepting your argument that this particular thread should be." CreationDate="2017-08-22T13:54:41.580" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14116" PostId="4929" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi, it could be CV Meta instead than MO: I haven't tried flagging another post just to verify that :) yes, I know I could suggest the moderator to migrate the question to DS, but I think this migration path may become more common in the future. See my response to gung's comment." CreationDate="2017-08-22T21:03:44.190" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="14117" PostId="4929" Score="2" Text="@gung I think migrating to DS may become more common in the future. Deep Learning is attracting a lot of users, and many DL-related problems are at a cross-road, so to speak. You don't just have to use Keras (for example) to build your DNN: questions of this kind could be safely migrated to SO). But you will also need to bring your data to the cloud, munge the data, use Amazon Web Services to train the DNN because you're not Google and you don't have 450 GPUs in your company, etc. I've already seen a few ML questions on CV which cannot be considered statistical questions..." CreationDate="2017-08-22T21:11:33.360" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="14118" PostId="4929" Score="1" Text="...and I think the trend will become more common. Of course I may be wrong: &quot; making predictions is hard, expecially about the future&quot;." CreationDate="2017-08-22T21:12:07.593" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="14138" PostId="4929" Score="1" Text="These two are the only others I can find migrated to DS from CV this year: [Boolean classification on strings](https://datascience.stackexchange.com/q/16115/3361) &amp; [Why it is taking more training time on one machine comparatively to similar another?](https://datascience.stackexchange.com/q/22175/3361). I did think [How to generate distance variable using street addresses](https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/297819/17230) might be on-topic at DS, but was told not when I asked on their chat." CreationDate="2017-08-27T10:57:57.750" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="14139" PostId="4929" Score="1" Text="In fact I find it difficult to work out just what's supposed to be on-topic at DS - the [help page](https://datascience.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) gives five examples of &quot;questions [scil. question titles] that are likely to be on-topic&quot; (four of which seem entirely appropriate for CV), but no explanation." CreationDate="2017-08-27T13:42:55.067" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="14142" PostId="4929" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi your numbers match those by whuber. Clearly for now the answer to my question is no (&quot;it doesn't make sense to add DS to the list of suggested sites [...]&quot;). Maybe next year it will be different :-) Anyway, it's not like I'm looking forward to migrating questions from CV - I like this site, I owe you guys a lot and I'll likely keep pestering people with my questions. It's just that some questions I'm interested in, are not the right fit for this site, so I'm interested in migrating them the best way." CreationDate="2017-08-27T17:10:41.570" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="14119" PostId="4930" Score="0" Text="Based on anectodal evidence, i.e., a few posts I saw, which I thought could be migrated to DS instead than closed, as well as on a trend I see on other social media (Twitter, Medium, LinkedIn, etc.), I thought that questions related to &quot;Data Science Carpentry&quot;, so to speak, could become more prevalent in the future. But of course I don't have at my disposal the quantitative data you have. If, based on data, you believe other site are more worthy of addition to the list than DS, then by all means please add them instead than DS. Statistical analysis (nearly) always trumps anectodal evidence :)" CreationDate="2017-08-22T21:18:44.903" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="14120" PostId="4930" Score="2" Text="You are making a highly suspect implicit assumption that the growth of interest in data science ought to lead to a growth in questions that would be appropriate for the DataScience SE site but not here on CV! Arguably, it could go either way. For instance, as data science becomes better known, people learning it might have a greater tendency to see it as part of statistics and machine learning, thereby decreasing the number of (already rare) questions that are on-topic only on the DS site." CreationDate="2017-08-22T21:22:42.770" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="14121" PostId="4930" Score="0" Text="Wait, wait! First of all, I said I **agree** with your analysis: you have data (and you are a statistician of proven worth), I don't have data (and I'm not a professional statistician), so how could I disagree? Secondly, I have never said that the growth of interest in Data Science will not lead to an increase to the number of questions here on CV, and I could have never said that, because I **am sure** the number of questions on CV will increase (not sure if the number of answers will also increase, since many questions go unanswered on CV, but I digress).  For example, some data..." CreationDate="2017-08-22T21:43:05.763" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="14122" PostId="4930" Score="2" Text="...scientists who contacted me on a social media were baffled by the Freedman's paradox. These guys could sure use some help here on CV. And hopefully the number of data scientists who understand they need to learn Statistics better, to be successful at their jobs, will grow. At the same time, though, there **are** questions which pertain to Data Science practice and which don't belong here. Since this site has much more traffic than DS, I think that the growing interest in Data Science will lead to an increase of both *in-topic* and *off-topic* questions here. But again, I might be wrong." CreationDate="2017-08-22T21:53:29.817" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="14216" PostId="4930" Score="4" Text="I'm not sure that &quot;put the top five targets into the default list&quot; is a good approach. At least, my experience from Stack Overflow is that the defaults make migration so much easier that you get a type of confirmation bias." CreationDate="2017-09-12T10:18:14.893" UserId="11849" />
  <row Id="14123" PostId="4931" Score="0" Text="Neither Spark or Azure HDInsight are simply databases. They are cloud computing environments with significant support for large data analysis, distributed computing and machine learning. They are much more than an SQL or an Historian database. Even if you remove the reference to R, the question doesn't appear to be about databases, though the OP admits that she/he doesn't have a clear idea of what she/he wants." CreationDate="2017-08-22T22:01:54.863" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="14124" PostId="4931" Score="2" Text="Spark is just the distributed computing framework. Any questions about it are better covered in its own forums. In our firm it's IT who deals with it." CreationDate="2017-08-22T22:03:50.883" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="14125" PostId="4931" Score="0" Text="Also R has &quot;its own forum&quot; (the R-help mailing list), but this definitely doesn't make that forum the best place to ask any questions about R. Anyway, it looks like there are many questions on Spark and R on SO: https://stackoverflow.com/search?q=Spark+rstudio I still suspect that since the OP asks for a comparison with Azure HDinsights, this won't make her/his question well-received on SO, but I'm not sure." CreationDate="2017-08-23T08:58:04.700" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="14132" PostId="4932" Score="1" Text="Do you just mean how to get a search to include previous versions of posts?" CreationDate="2017-08-25T11:53:05.960" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14133" PostId="4932" Score="0" Text="Yes. Somebody edited my post and I want to see what was changed." CreationDate="2017-08-25T12:33:54.950" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="14460" PostId="4933" Score="0" Text="I think it works independent of the edit privileges. Edit history is accessible to everybody." CreationDate="2017-10-27T07:45:29.770" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14145" PostId="4935" Score="4" Text="There is at least one R package dichromat which, from its description, &quot;Collapse red-green or green-blue distinctions to simulate the effects of different types of color-blindness.&quot;" CreationDate="2017-08-28T12:12:04.670" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="14146" PostId="4935" Score="4" Text="Here is the link https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=dichromat forgot last time." CreationDate="2017-08-28T12:33:19.117" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="14147" PostId="4937" Score="22" Text="Congratulations to both the new mods! But I hope unsuccessful candidates are not put off from reapplication in any future election." CreationDate="2017-08-29T20:02:21.547" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="14148" PostId="4937" Score="14" Text="I look forward to gung and Tim joining the moderator team.  (We are indeed a team: one of the first things for you guys to do is join the moderator chat room so we can facilitate discussions.)  But I especially want to thank the candidates who were not elected this time: your qualifications are strong, your abilities well-regarded, and I am grateful to all of you for standing in this election." CreationDate="2017-08-29T20:07:59.223" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="14153" PostId="4937" Score="9" Text="Congratulations and thank you to our new mods and thanks to the strong candidates not elected. I had a very hard time deciding between the four of you as I value all of you and the work you did and do for this site immensely." CreationDate="2017-08-29T20:50:34.510" UserId="8413" />
  <row Id="14154" PostId="4937" Score="6" Text="Congratulations to the new mods. We had some very strong nominations." CreationDate="2017-08-30T03:02:39.857" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14155" PostId="4937" Score="1" Text="Congratulations and also many thanks to the other two guys. We had four very competent candidates." CreationDate="2017-08-30T06:55:18.723" UserId="128677" />
  <row Id="14157" PostId="4937" Score="4" Text="Thank you to all of the candidates who took the time to put forward a vision for the site." CreationDate="2017-08-30T13:20:33.260" UserId="171895" />
  <row Id="14160" PostId="4937" Score="3" Text="Welcome to the team!  Did anyone tell you about the initiation rites?" CreationDate="2017-08-31T11:30:39.823" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="14161" PostId="4937" Score="2" Text="Congrats to `grumpy old man` and `Rodak ze Wschodu`. Strong candidates all, indeed." CreationDate="2017-08-31T20:22:29.760" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="14162" PostId="4937" Score="0" Text="Congratulations to gung. I knew you wold be elected and I expect you will do a good job!" CreationDate="2017-09-01T19:51:50.533" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="14174" PostId="4937" Score="0" Text="Congrats to both of you, and thank you to everyone who ran." CreationDate="2017-09-06T08:57:43.673" UserId="5836" />
  <row Id="14176" PostId="4943" Score="3" Text="Are you asking about rewarding existing answers? Or about offering a bounty for future answers requesting a certain kind of answer?" CreationDate="2017-09-07T20:02:15.313" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14177" PostId="4943" Score="1" Text="I'm thinking about the latter. Just updated Q to clarify; thanks." CreationDate="2017-09-07T20:03:27.673" UserId="41404" />
  <row Id="14179" PostId="4943" Score="2" Text="This sounds a bit like trying to use CV to advance a philosophical agenda for science. The SE sites are supposed to be a resource of simple factual information in the form of Qs &amp; As. I'm skeptical that this is an appropriate activity for the site. Imagine someone trying to encourage the posting of more answers advocating for Bayesian methods over frequentist ones, at best tangentially related to the question at issue, or analogously advocating for `C#` over `java` on [SO]." CreationDate="2017-09-07T20:12:59.327" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14181" PostId="4943" Score="4" Text="That's an interesting perspective @gung. I'm thinking of the relationship between statistics and philosophy of science as something like that connecting programming with various programming paradigms. The spirit in which I'd be thinking of operating (to extend your analogy) would be something like promoting continuation-based or recursive solutions to algorithm design questions. That's not to negate your point, but to indicate the spirit of my intent." CreationDate="2017-09-07T20:25:40.933" UserId="41404" />
  <row Id="14183" PostId="4943" Score="1" Text="@gung Some people are already doing that, rather aggressively, by posting the same answers (in various forms) all the time.  We have tolerated that for years, mainly because despite the repetition they sometimes provide useful insights and perspectives.  (You know who they are.)  Why should using bounties towards the same end be viewed as a less appropriate approach?" CreationDate="2017-09-08T22:44:38.317" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="14184" PostId="4943" Score="0" Text="@whuber, let's stipulate that that has been occurring. It is still better not to take it one step further." CreationDate="2017-09-09T00:19:00.903" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14187" PostId="4943" Score="2" Text="@gung I do not understand how offering a bounty to request answers from a particular perspective represents a step &quot;further&quot;: that seems like a milder thing to do than writing the answer oneself because (a) it's overt and (b) it opens the field up to anyone who would like to provide that kind of answer." CreationDate="2017-09-09T13:27:41.243" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="14178" PostId="4944" Score="1" Text="+1 Thank you @whuber for broadening my perspective. The idea of promoting questions in other communities is completely unexpected, and encourages me to explore the broader ecosystem here." CreationDate="2017-09-07T20:10:22.573" UserId="41404" />
  <row Id="14180" PostId="4944" Score="4" Text="Click on the &quot;Share&quot; link beneath a question or answer to get an URL you can use on Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc." CreationDate="2017-09-07T20:22:06.527" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="14192" PostId="4944" Score="1" Text="(d) encouraging askers to provide the context that allows that kind of answer. Related: https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3134/17230." CreationDate="2017-09-10T18:06:56.290" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="14200" PostId="4945" Score="3" Text="@Tim I guess you're right. I was hoping there was a ready-made solution, but even if there was one, CV wouldn't be the right place where to find it." CreationDate="2017-09-11T13:09:57.190" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="14208" PostId="4948" Score="11" Text="Simple questions are welcome here. But statistics is different from coding. What users expect to be simple often isn't really. We commonly need more information about your situation to properly answer a question. Please be patient with us &amp; provide extra details when requested. We are trying to help you with your question. Another issue is that very simple questions are often homework questions. Many of us teach statistics &amp; bristle at the idea that students simply go somewhere like CV to have their HW done for them. So we can be prickly about that, but even there, we are trying to help." CreationDate="2017-09-12T01:19:23.187" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14209" PostId="4948" Score="1" Text="@gung lol, I get prickly when people are clearly asking homework questions on stackoverflow, too" CreationDate="2017-09-12T01:26:02.523" UserId="155185" />
  <row Id="14218" PostId="4948" Score="1" Text="Answers here can be fast, but getting multiple replies within 1 hour doesn't seem to be standard, unless the question strikes several people as really interesting." CreationDate="2017-09-13T19:32:20.317" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14210" PostId="4949" Score="0" Text="I actually just figured out the answer elsewhere (the answer is standard deviation = square root of 0.53(1-0.53)/100 and standard error is that over 10).  I'm wondering if I shouldn't just delete my initial question." CreationDate="2017-09-12T01:30:51.753" UserId="155185" />
  <row Id="14211" PostId="4949" Score="3" Text="@lebelinoz If you're inclined to edit to improve it then it wouldn't need to be deleted\* -- you could even answer it yourself. If you don't care to edit, you might choose to delete it.  .... \* it's possible an improved question wold be a duplicate however, and so it may close. However even good questions that close as duplicates perform a very useful function on site, so such closure should not be a concern." CreationDate="2017-09-12T01:34:36.957" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14212" PostId="4949" Score="1" Text="@lebelinoz, why not answer your own question? Future information seekers will benefit from what you were able to figure out. You can mark it as accepted." CreationDate="2017-09-12T01:34:58.930" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14213" PostId="4949" Score="1" Text="@gung I hate it when people ask simple questions, and then answer it an hour later.  I'll give it a day or two." CreationDate="2017-09-12T01:35:50.293" UserId="155185" />
  <row Id="14214" PostId="4949" Score="5" Text="@lebelinoz I'd encourage you to answer it sooner rather than later. It's completely fine to do so. It would immediately remove any impression you weren't putting some effort in, for example (which might lead to downvotes)." CreationDate="2017-09-12T01:39:49.320" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14215" PostId="4949" Score="2" Text="That's perfectly reasonable, @lebelinoz. For my part, I don't hate this, so I'm OK if you answer it sooner." CreationDate="2017-09-12T01:40:03.960" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14219" PostId="4950" Score="6" Text="Thanks a bunch Jon! This will help me a bunch, and many others I'm sure." CreationDate="2017-09-13T22:46:52.180" UserId="150025" />
  <row Id="14227" PostId="4952" Score="3" Text="Can you provide a link to your question? I certainly don't think asking 2 questions is too much / spamming in general." CreationDate="2017-09-14T13:52:46.027" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14228" PostId="4952" Score="2" Text="@gung done, thought I had.  I suppose I'm just not sure whether it's better to separate them out as there is some overlap" CreationDate="2017-09-14T14:07:14.613" UserId="135361" />
  <row Id="14231" PostId="4952" Score="1" Text="If the second one is a follow-up I would include in it a link to the first. If people who answer need more context first they will ask for it, or in the worst case vote to close as unclear." CreationDate="2017-09-14T15:25:58.813" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="14238" PostId="4952" Score="1" Text="@mdewey my issue is I don't know if the second part of that question warrants being split off into a separate question or not, or if it should be kept with the original question." CreationDate="2017-09-14T16:17:55.823" UserId="135361" />
  <row Id="14239" PostId="4953" Score="2" Text="Can you say a little more about the distinction that concerns you? As someone who doesn't work in that area, I can say that my intuition is that MAMs would use MAs such that `[MA]` could plausibly be an overarching superset that includes both. Could you, say, list the excerpts that you would want to use for the 2 &amp; that distinguish them sufficiently for askers who aren't all that familiar w/ the topics they are asking about?" CreationDate="2017-09-14T16:43:37.677" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14240" PostId="4953" Score="1" Text="Would/should [moving-average-model] be a synonym of [arma]-&gt;[arima]? That's the `ma` part, right? Do we have a tag for the `ar` part?" CreationDate="2017-09-14T16:43:48.450" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14241" PostId="4953" Score="0" Text="I should note that it seems I edited the excerpt some time ago for simplicity / brevity. So the reason the excerpt &amp; the wiki are inconsistent could be my fault." CreationDate="2017-09-14T16:53:46.370" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14242" PostId="4953" Score="0" Text="I'm afraid that people would still stick to the shorter MA tag and this wouldn't change much..." CreationDate="2017-09-14T18:07:28.890" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="14243" PostId="4953" Score="0" Text="@Tim, you might be right. This is precisely why I suggest to include a warning on the use of tags in their excerpts. In any case, a high-rep user or a moderator can change the tag when used inappropriately. But now there is no choice as there is only one tag that hides two quite different objects under it, which causes confusion." CreationDate="2017-09-14T19:07:51.550" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="14244" PostId="4953" Score="0" Text="RichardHardy you are right, but let's imagine that lots of people just stick to the shorter tag. Then you want to search for a question about MAM by filtering by tag and you wouldn't see many of the questions *incorrectly* labeled as MA. Please notice that moderators and high-rep users won't be able to re-tag all of them. I guess that the ambiguous MA tag is a **safer** option. Moreover I agree with @amoeba that [arima] tag seems to be OK for it, plus less ambiguous." CreationDate="2017-09-14T19:29:15.217" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="14245" PostId="4953" Score="1" Text="@Tim, I see your point. Perhaps then retag the questions related to the *moving average model* with the `arima` tag and change the tag description for `moving-average` to explicitly ban the *moving average model* from it." CreationDate="2017-09-14T19:41:28.140" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="14246" PostId="4953" Score="1" Text="@amoeba, we have a tag [tag:autoregressive] which is used for the AR part." CreationDate="2017-09-15T05:15:08.057" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="14248" PostId="4953" Score="1" Text="I reconsidered my comment, what about having `moving-average-filter` and `moving-average-model`?" CreationDate="2017-09-15T22:23:41.427" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="14250" PostId="4953" Score="1" Text="If we reach consensus about moving on to disambiguate this tag, then, are you willing to step forward and do the job? I suggest you make this clear in the question, because it was common people to suggest tag reorganizations here, but do nothing further when it was time to take actions (that was before @amoeba era; now I believe we should keep the spirit where the asker holds protagonism until the issue is solved)." CreationDate="2017-09-16T12:22:37.553" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="14251" PostId="4953" Score="0" Text="@AndreSilva, yes, we should keep that spirit. I can do the job. (This won't be my first nor my second job like that; I have fixed a few tags over the last year or so.) But what is the consensus?" CreationDate="2017-09-17T18:39:01.267" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="14252" PostId="4953" Score="0" Text="Great! I believe it helps to come to a solution isolating answers/suggestions as answers. Then, votes can help separate which ideas are more accepted. Also, try to take into account what was said in comments." CreationDate="2017-09-17T19:05:59.803" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="14253" PostId="4953" Score="2" Text="I just want to say that I am not a big fan of having tag names [foo] and [foo-bar], i.e. when one tag's name is an extension of another. I think this is potentially confusing. It's much better to have [foo-bar] and [foo-schmar], then these two tags will not get mixed up. In this sense @Firebug's suggestion with [moving-average-model] and [moving-average-filter] makes sense to me." CreationDate="2017-09-18T11:33:36.790" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14254" PostId="4953" Score="1" Text="@amoeba, I agree with the logic of bars and schmars, but I am not sure if *moving average filter* will be understood as *moving average* or *moving average model* or yet another way. When I see *moving average filter*, I do not know what to think of." CreationDate="2017-09-18T12:06:30.470" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="14259" PostId="4953" Score="0" Text="@RichardHardy That's a convolutional filter, no? (edit: [from Wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_average) _&quot;Mathematically, a moving average is a type of convolution and so it can be viewed as an example of a low-pass filter used in signal processing.&quot;_)" CreationDate="2017-09-18T12:49:19.977" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="14260" PostId="4953" Score="0" Text="@Firebug, I don't argue about the appropriateness of the term but rather what a typical user might think when he/she sees the name. (And perhaps MA(q) is a filter, too; isn't it?)" CreationDate="2017-09-18T12:53:00.287" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="14261" PostId="4953" Score="1" Text="@RichardHardy Reading a bit it seems so, but it's much less known as that compared to moving averages. Perhaps I've not been hanging out too much with econometrists haha. I think we can make it work with `[moving-average]` then making ample mention to running/rolling average and the distinctiveness of the MA(q) models." CreationDate="2017-09-18T12:59:26.297" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="14305" PostId="4953" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, it seems we are not getting much traction here over the last few days, so perhaps it is time to choose the highest-upvoted option and proceed with retagging (which would be done by me, since I raised the issue)?" CreationDate="2017-09-26T13:16:52.233" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="14308" PostId="4953" Score="0" Text="@Firebug, it seems we are not getting much traction here over the last few days, so perhaps it is time to choose the highest-upvoted option and proceed with retagging (which would be done by me, since I raised the issue)?" CreationDate="2017-09-26T13:17:46.950" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="14309" PostId="4953" Score="0" Text="@RichardHardy as for me, this is still disputable, there was much discussion, but not many upvotes for any of the options." CreationDate="2017-09-26T13:31:17.417" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="14310" PostId="4953" Score="0" Text="@Tim, true, there are few upvotes (although there were some downvotes, so it is not easy to get the total count). We can wait more, I just don't expect much more activity. Those who are typically active have probably casted their votes already." CreationDate="2017-09-26T13:43:37.807" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="14311" PostId="4953" Score="0" Text="@RichardHardy since it is disputable I personally would not change anything." CreationDate="2017-09-26T13:47:22.457" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="14312" PostId="4953" Score="1" Text="@RichardHardy, there usually aren't a lot of votes on tag-related topics; this might be what you can realistically expect to get. It's fine with me either way." CreationDate="2017-09-26T13:53:15.013" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14313" PostId="4953" Score="1" Text="@Tim, I would second gung here. Also, leaving the mess as is is a worse option than picking a suboptimal remedy, since, say, the currently-most upvoted remedy is not really controversial, IMHO. We can wait for some more time, but ultimately lack of votes on the best solution does not outweigh the severity of the problem (10 upvotes on the question). Therefore, going with the currently best option makes more sense to me than staying idle." CreationDate="2017-09-26T14:13:21.830" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="14314" PostId="4953" Score="0" Text="I agree @Richard." CreationDate="2017-09-26T16:06:35.753" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14255" PostId="4956" Score="0" Text="I would vote for this one, but I cannot vote on my own post..." CreationDate="2017-09-18T12:20:54.483" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="14262" PostId="4956" Score="0" Text="MA(q) is not necessarily part of a ARIMA framework, even though ARIMA is it's generalization. That would be the same as re-tagging everything AR(p) to ARIMA as well." CreationDate="2017-09-18T13:01:36.133" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="14263" PostId="4956" Score="0" Text="@Firebug, regarding AR(p), I agree, and that is what I have listed under Cons. But I wonder how MA(q) is not part of ARIMA framework? AFAIK, it is a proper subclass of ARIMA. Is there something about &quot;MA(q) proper&quot; that can be contrasted to &quot;MA(q) under ARIMA&quot;?" CreationDate="2017-09-18T13:23:56.163" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="14264" PostId="4956" Score="0" Text="Not. Just like AR(p) is ARIMA(p,0,0), MA(q) is ARIMA(0,0,q)." CreationDate="2017-09-18T14:47:14.170" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="14267" PostId="4956" Score="0" Text="Richard, could you estimate how many out of 130 Qs currently tagged with [moving-average] are about moving average as such and how many are about MA model?" CreationDate="2017-09-20T11:53:34.557" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14268" PostId="4956" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, sure, no problem. I will try not to forget this until I come home from work and have time for it." CreationDate="2017-09-20T12:28:12.287" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="14280" PostId="4956" Score="1" Text="What if we also made a `[moving-average-model]` tag (w/ appropriate excerpt) &amp; made it a synoym of `[arima]`?" CreationDate="2017-09-22T12:48:40.473" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14282" PostId="4956" Score="0" Text="@gung, that could be done, I think it is not a bad option." CreationDate="2017-09-22T13:16:59.527" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="14283" PostId="4956" Score="0" Text="Should we edit this answer? That version seems to me to be the best option. I wonder if @Firebug would think that addresses his concerns, eg." CreationDate="2017-09-22T13:53:45.330" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14284" PostId="4956" Score="0" Text="@gung, Would you like to edit it yourself? Then we will not end up lost in translation (of your idea)." CreationDate="2017-09-22T13:57:13.710" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="14285" PostId="4956" Score="1" Text="@gung I'm of the opinion that would only make sense if you also made `[autoregressive]` synonymous with `[arima]` as well." CreationDate="2017-09-22T14:13:37.867" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="14286" PostId="4956" Score="0" Text="@RichardHardy, what do you think of also making `[autoregressive]` a synonym? (Bear in mind that I have only a superficial knowledge of these topics.) Would it be better to write up a 4th, distinct answer w/ all of these pieces, instead of editing an answer that others have already commented &amp; voted on?" CreationDate="2017-09-22T14:22:17.630" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14288" PostId="4956" Score="1" Text="@gung, I think autoregressive models is a large and significant enough subcategory of ARIMA models that it can stay independent. E.g. you cannot use least-squares estimation for MA or ARMA, but you can for AR, which, among other features, makes it a bit special. A fourth answer it could be." CreationDate="2017-09-22T15:23:57.940" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="14289" PostId="4956" Score="0" Text="See if I captured the ideas faithfully, @RichardHardy." CreationDate="2017-09-22T19:56:59.957" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14373" PostId="4957" Score="0" Text="It's been almost a month. I think you can go ahead (if you still want)." CreationDate="2017-10-13T07:29:06.710" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14394" PostId="4957" Score="1" Text="@amoeba, I think I will once I find time. It is a busy period for me right now." CreationDate="2017-10-17T06:24:41.807" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="21748" PostId="4957" Score="0" Text="@RichardHardy Regarding a recent (since-deleted) comment of yours --  If you believe that an answer is AI-generated (using ChatGPT or similar), then the best course of action is to raise a custom flag and explain why. As mods, we take these things very seriously because they harm the integrity of the site." CreationDate="2023-01-05T15:25:30.597" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21749" PostId="4957" Score="0" Text="@Sycorax, sorry, I think I knew I was supposed to flag the answer but forgot and failed to do so. I will do better next time!" CreationDate="2023-01-05T17:38:43.307" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="21750" PostId="4957" Score="1" Text="No worries! Thanks for everything you do to keep the site working &amp; promote quality answers." CreationDate="2023-01-05T17:42:18.507" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="14272" PostId="4958" Score="0" Text="What is happening? I am still seing the old layout, are you seeing the new?" CreationDate="2017-09-20T18:08:48.023" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="14277" PostId="4958" Score="0" Text="@kjetil yes, at the time I posted I didn't realize we mods were actually the only ones seeing it, but apparently that's the situation -- I suppose we're the guinea pigs but I wish that had been made clearer to us. So this will be a much more useful question once it clicks in site-wide. I expect that will happen very soon" CreationDate="2017-09-20T22:05:15.017" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14281" PostId="4958" Score="0" Text="I wonder if we should put the `[status-completed]` tag on this thread now?" CreationDate="2017-09-22T12:51:32.263" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14287" PostId="4958" Score="0" Text="It seems we shouldn't use `status` tags on `support` questions." CreationDate="2017-09-22T15:09:35.180" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14269" PostId="4959" Score="0" Text="I can't see the new top bar here, yet; but on Stack Overflow. Isn't the help link embedded in the upper rightest icon (the one with horizontal parallel bars)?" CreationDate="2017-09-20T16:22:51.640" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="14270" PostId="4959" Score="0" Text="This menu? https://i.stack.imgur.com/GwYWC.png" CreationDate="2017-09-20T16:40:15.367" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14271" PostId="4959" Score="0" Text="[Yeap](https://i.stack.imgur.com/MYBkH.png), :(" CreationDate="2017-09-20T16:57:31.357" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="14266" PostId="4960" Score="1" Text="Honestly, I always looked for the links at the bottom of the screen... But I liked the previous bar better. Icons are pretty cluttered in the new one." CreationDate="2017-09-20T07:22:01.860" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="14275" PostId="4961" Score="2" Text="Unfair to Averys the world over. More seriously, the pattern here is to follow a generic poor question with explanation of why it is poor and if possible what to do better." CreationDate="2017-09-20T21:33:41.330" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14276" PostId="4961" Score="2" Text="@NickCox I confess I was tickled by the prospect of the opportunity to provide an object lesson as an example.  I mean lolwut?!" CreationDate="2017-09-20T22:04:20.510" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="14278" PostId="4961" Score="1" Text="@NickCox And thank you for urging my compliance with the illustrative pattern. Like my edit?" CreationDate="2017-09-20T22:11:09.297" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="14279" PostId="4961" Score="1" Text="I haven't seen questions like this here, but a pre-emptive post does no harm. Know that I had to look up &quot;lolwut&quot;. I have seen questions answered helpfully on Reddit; in my limited sample it's Quora in which the ratio of ill-informed opinion  to logic and evidence can approach singularity.  You missed &quot;Thanks in advance&quot; which drives old fogeys to apoplexy." CreationDate="2017-09-21T09:23:29.443" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14290" PostId="4962" Score="0" Text="_Moreover, mam and arima would not be merged_. Why?" CreationDate="2017-09-22T20:55:13.453" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="14291" PostId="4962" Score="1" Text="If [mam] is merged into [arima], then when somebody types &quot;moving-average-mod...&quot; they will get [arima] suggested with [mam] listed below as a synonym. Also, we could modify/expand [arima]'s excerpt to reflect that it can be used for MA. Thus, I am not sure if there is any benefit in leaving it unmerged." CreationDate="2017-09-22T21:14:08.830" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14292" PostId="4962" Score="0" Text="The benefit is that it is considerably more salient. Moreover, only 1 tag needs to have `mam`, so w/ a savvy choice (say, [this](https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/136604/7290)), it could be maintained while minimizing the [problems](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2790/7290) that typically make merging necessary." CreationDate="2017-09-23T00:16:24.937" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14295" PostId="4962" Score="0" Text="@gung, +1, I like this option." CreationDate="2017-09-23T07:25:10.107" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="14296" PostId="4962" Score="1" Text="I see your point @gung, but purposefully keeping 1 thread with a synonymized tag is, to me, somehow deeply unsatisfying. It's not how the system is supposed to work; it's a hack. Personally, I would be much more willing to tolerate any disadvantages of the full merge (that you pointed out) than to tolerate this hack." CreationDate="2017-09-23T18:35:58.560" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14297" PostId="4962" Score="0" Text="It isn't how the system is supposed to work, @amoeba; it is a hack. That said, I don't see any real problem other than violating some idealization of how the system should function. If you want the threads merged, in essence, you want [this answer](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/4956/7290). I was under the impression you were against that." CreationDate="2017-09-23T22:02:53.407" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14298" PostId="4962" Score="1" Text="These tags are entirely outside of my expertise or interest, so I don't have much of an opinion. It looks like MA threads should be taken out of [moving-average] tag and retagged as [moving-average-model]. Whether this tag should then remain separate or whether it should be synonymized with [arima], I don't know. But *if* it is synonymized, *then* I would prefer a complete merge." CreationDate="2017-09-23T22:11:33.787" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15885" PostId="4962" Score="0" Text="There is still the [bar] / [shmar] issue w/ leaving MA as one of the tags, @RichardHardy. I grasp, I suppose, your concern w/ using MA-*filter*, I wonder if it would be better to create a `[rolling-average]` tag &amp; map MA to that. The only issue here is that when someone searches on &quot;movi&quot;, it wouldn't show up. To deal w/ that, I could also create a simple `[moving]` tag that would be merged w/ RA. As discussed in my answer above, moving wouldn't be very salient, but it would make the new RA tag show up any time someone searches for &quot;movi&quot;." CreationDate="2018-06-08T16:04:37.613" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14302" PostId="4963" Score="15" Text="As a general proposition, the worst possible action is to attempt to answer an unclear question: unless the answer is very well crafted, future readers will have no way to know what interpretation of the question it addresses.  That's not &quot;knowledge sharing&quot;: that's simple confusion.  Closing does not affect anybody's ability to post *comments* to ask for clarification." CreationDate="2017-09-25T13:10:42.550" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="14318" PostId="4963" Score="2" Text="Agreement with many of the excellent points made on this thread. However, the OP raises a point which deserves underscoring and that's the standards to which queries are to be held. Are they high and, therefore, more or less readily intelligible by the many quantitative experts on this blog or can they be permitted to be couched in more vernacular, nonexpert terms? An example is this query where the OP marked it as &quot;answered&quot; only to have the query put on hold 1 day later...https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/305006/how-to-model-positive-s-shaped-function" CreationDate="2017-09-28T16:41:58.727" UserId="78229" />
  <row Id="14322" PostId="4963" Score="0" Text="There appears to be a consensus among the senior participants of this blog that there are two standards to which CV threads are held: 1), creation of a high-quality, online statistical resource and, 2), ensuring intelligibility to future readers. These are laudable objectives. My only observation is that these standards are quite inconsistently enforced for if they were, then the relatively high proportion of posted queries receiving no comments, edits or responses of any kind would be much lower (last I knew that proportion was running about 1/3rd of all posted queries)." CreationDate="2017-09-29T10:58:40.227" UserId="78229" />
  <row Id="14323" PostId="4963" Score="2" Text="@DJohnson Your logic is puzzling.  I see no connection between the rate of unanswered questions and consistency of moderation.  You seem to be suggesting that this community ought to summarily remove any question that has not elicited any response within some short period of time.  Although that would be feasible, I'm sure it would create an uproar amid allegations that we were trying to hide our failures, disguise our inadequacies, favor only those topics we currently understand, etc. If you seriously think we should go in that direction, then please start a Meta thread about it!" CreationDate="2017-09-29T14:46:41.140" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="14324" PostId="4963" Score="1" Text="Untouched questions (ones without answers, comments or votes) are eventually removed automatically in any case. Better for a question to be placed on hold and improved than ignored in any case." CreationDate="2017-09-29T23:46:15.083" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14325" PostId="4963" Score="1" Text="One thing worth keeping in mind is that while five users with sufficient reputation (or one moderator) can put a question on hold, five users with sufficient reputation (or one moderator) can also reverse it. It's a temporary state which ultimately helps the OP get to a question that can attract a suitable answer." CreationDate="2017-09-29T23:50:25.127" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14342" PostId="4963" Score="0" Text="@whuber  Apologies for assuming too much. Let me try explaining it one more time, if that doesn't work, it's not worth further effort. First, you did not object to the two &quot;standards,&quot; objectives or policies (call them what u will) that I proposed: confirmation that they were not in error. A corollary to these unwritten &quot;policies&quot; is the *consistency* with which they are enacted or observed. That fully 1/3rd of CV queries go unedited, uncommented on and/or ignored suggests the haphazard, arbitrary inconsistency wrt observing these unwritten &quot;policies.&quot; This seems key to the OPs main point." CreationDate="2017-10-03T13:00:10.387" UserId="78229" />
  <row Id="14300" PostId="4964" Score="2" Text="+1. Much overlap with mine, which I take as all to the good." CreationDate="2017-09-25T08:31:06.170" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14301" PostId="4964" Score="3" Text="posted first while I was drafting mine.)" CreationDate="2017-09-25T08:54:00.673" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14316" PostId="4964" Score="1" Text="Main problem is that there are a lot of questions which were just out of the knowledge base of moderators and marked as unclear/off-topic, while at the same time a lot of junk gets promoted because mods decided to have some fun. For example I had a question (already deleted) about ethics in statistical science which was immediately closed as off topic, while what is your best statistics cartoon gets hundreds of answers." CreationDate="2017-09-28T10:59:17.893" UserId="20980" />
  <row Id="14317" PostId="4964" Score="5" Text="@CagdasOzgenc please consider the facts that (a) nobody is monitoring the site 24/7 and looking through *all* the questions that are posted, the review is selective (if you see something vote to close or flag it), (b) there is lots of old currently-off-topic threads that were not off-topic in the present standards (from time to time we close, protect, or lock the threads). Moreover, I see no problem with keeping one or two threads with jokes and cartoons, we don't have to be that serious." CreationDate="2017-09-28T11:23:08.910" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="14319" PostId="4964" Score="1" Text="Aside from whether we need to be completely &quot;serious&quot;, I think there is something to be said for [grandfathering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfather_clause) some old threads from when standards were different, rather than pursuing at all costs a [hobgoblin of consistency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Reliance)" CreationDate="2017-09-28T22:23:42.370" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="14320" PostId="4964" Score="1" Text="@CagdasOzgenc Your first claim is  not substantiated and not really testable, which is all the more crucial because it contains an element of criticism of identifiable individuals. I know of no dataset on moderators' expertise that lets anyone judge impartially if and when they are playing away from home. You should flag speculation as what it is." CreationDate="2017-09-28T23:02:44.787" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14329" PostId="4964" Score="1" Text="@ all above: I agree 'we' (i.e. random commenters) cannot judge the extent of the pool of moderator's knowledge. Why would we even speculate when it is obvious the mods do their utmost best to serve the community, but cannot always be right, let alone omniscient (although from my perspective some do seem so...). But all that aside, I do agree with @CagdasOzgenc, based on the (vague) idea of 'not knowing what you do not know'. A question about the ethics behind statistics seriously interests me, and I think a community debate about it being on or off-topic here on CV could send sparks flying!" CreationDate="2017-10-02T11:51:17.753" UserId="144089" />
  <row Id="14330" PostId="4964" Score="1" Text="cont'd So maybe @CagdasOzgenc would want to honor to start a meta thread about it?" CreationDate="2017-10-02T11:52:07.307" UserId="144089" />
  <row Id="14354" PostId="4964" Score="1" Text="@IWS It seems worth mentioning that a great many moderation decisions can be made without any subject matter knowledge whatsoever: badly formulated, vague, ambiguous, or unreadable questions or answers will need improvement, period.  For moderation purposes, the main benefit of knowing anything about the subject lies in being able to find duplicate or closely related threads. Indeed, there is a standard boilerplate reason for moderators to *decline* flags on posts that goes something like &quot;flags shouldn't be used to indicate wrong answers&quot;: it's not the mod's job to assess correctness." CreationDate="2017-10-09T16:15:23.240" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="14355" PostId="4964" Score="1" Text="(Contd) Having said that, I ought to add that a broad knowledge of the subject matter and its terminology can be a bit of a curse, because it means one can readily see multiple interpretations of many questions.  Where most readers might make only one interpretation--whichever one conforms with their experience--a broadly experienced reader may see many possible meanings. I would therefore suggest that anyone who believes a question has been unfairly closed first think very hard about the possibility they might have overlooked plausible alternative interpretations." CreationDate="2017-10-09T16:21:12.290" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="14359" PostId="4964" Score="0" Text="@whuber, I agree. The point I was trying to make was supporting CagdasOzgenc. A few comments above he introduced ethical considerations into the mix of possible interpretations of Q&amp;As. I believe a thread about whether or not the community wanted guides on how to deal with such differences of opinion/world view would be valuable. Lo and behold: https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4970/how-to-handle-questions-that-raise-ethical-concerns. That said, I do not think the moderators put question 'on hold' too often or unjustly, but would support keeping this/a discussion going anytime ;)" CreationDate="2017-10-10T07:24:22.040" UserId="144089" />
  <row Id="14303" PostId="4965" Score="0" Text="Edited to mention an excellent point brought out by @Scortchi's answer." CreationDate="2017-09-25T13:37:32.500" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14304" PostId="4965" Score="0" Text="and @whuber's comment." CreationDate="2017-09-25T13:37:46.653" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14338" PostId="4968" Score="4" Text="Seems reasonable to me; without knowing I would expect that `kpss` already existed. I think it will be helpful." CreationDate="2017-10-02T21:00:07.907" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="14353" PostId="4968" Score="0" Text="Looks like you can go ahead and create this tag, if you want to." CreationDate="2017-10-09T10:48:29.790" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14360" PostId="4968" Score="1" Text="@amoeba Okay I just created it" CreationDate="2017-10-10T10:00:26.050" UserId="128677" />
  <row Id="14361" PostId="4968" Score="1" Text="Please see https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4285." CreationDate="2017-10-10T10:38:53.753" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14369" PostId="4968" Score="0" Text="Don't forget to post and accept an answer in this thread stating that the tag was created!" CreationDate="2017-10-12T21:56:26.013" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14370" PostId="4968" Score="0" Text="@amoeba thank you for teaching me how this all works" CreationDate="2017-10-12T22:09:49.353" UserId="128677" />
  <row Id="14372" PostId="4968" Score="0" Text="Well, thank *you* for doing the job!" CreationDate="2017-10-13T07:26:23.963" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16137" PostId="4969" Score="1" Text="On the TensorFlow discussion group, it is stated that the group is *not* for seeking help and advice. They suggest to go to StackOverflow." CreationDate="2018-07-09T07:36:05.897" UserId="213979" />
  <row Id="14339" PostId="4970" Score="5" Text="I think this is a very interesting question, which has an abundance of examples in the field I work in: biomedical research. Imagine a decision support system for the overall continuation or withdrawal of medical treatment. 'Supporting' one of these decisions may lead to an irreversible state of death, while the other may lead to a severely impaired remainder of one's life. I think the question we (CV community) should ask ourselves, is whether we want these issues to be on-topic and intertwined with the statististics, or whether this is for the philosophy or ethics stackexchange." CreationDate="2017-10-03T07:12:30.437" UserId="144089" />
  <row Id="14340" PostId="4970" Score="12" Text="Perhaps more mundane, but very commonly there is an ethical dimension to many questions here, even if there is no serious practical consequence of jumping one way or the other: 1. How to advise people who are inclined to identify and omit outliers as awkward for a simplistic analysis (and may have been advised that's a good idea). 2. How to report analyses based on cherry-picking from a bundle of significance tests. 3. How to report analyses presented as if first conceived but selected after a multitude of decisions based on looking at the data and trying a range of models." CreationDate="2017-10-03T08:23:57.243" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14341" PostId="4970" Score="3" Text="https://www.law.kuleuven.be/citip/blog/the-ai-judge-could-we-be-sentenced-to-jail-by-a-computer-algorithm/" CreationDate="2017-10-03T10:49:11.377" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="14343" PostId="4970" Score="4" Text="My guess is that this question has no answers (yet) because it already discusses extremely well the main points to be made." CreationDate="2017-10-04T11:06:13.553" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14344" PostId="4970" Score="2" Text="@NickCox I agree, the question is well put and both of us have indeed given some examples of similar experiences (first Q in the last paragraph). But, the other questions have not been answered: do we think moderators should be notified of ethically laden questions (through flags perhaps)? Or should these questions be put on hold? (what are ethical questions?) I assume OP has put these forward as mere suggestions, alluding to a general point of what to do with ethical dilemmas which could influence the answers. I believe an answer to that question could still be valuable here." CreationDate="2017-10-04T11:49:21.017" UserId="144089" />
  <row Id="14345" PostId="4970" Score="4" Text="@IWS I agree, but I don't see that we need more machinery, e.g. a different kind of flag. The issue doesn't appear to arise commonly (as do questions that are too broad, unclear, etc.). The objection to some questions of this kind might be that they just invite answers based on opinion. I would rather each thread is considered on its merits and that we don't try to erect meta-criteria. In other words, how to answer ethical questions as a category depends on a criterion for &quot;ethical&quot;...." CreationDate="2017-10-04T12:03:39.247" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14346" PostId="4970" Score="0" Text="Another example like your second: https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/142954/17230" CreationDate="2017-10-04T13:49:59.053" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="14357" PostId="4971" Score="1" Text="Yes, it's true that research in some fields must be approved by an internal ethics committee. But, I don't think this covers the full gamut of ethically questionable situations we might encounter here on the site. E.g. the examples I mentioned in the question probably wouldn't have involved such a committee. Nor would questions @NickCox mentioned about cherry picking, outliers, etc." CreationDate="2017-10-10T02:23:59.213" UserId="116440" />
  <row Id="14358" PostId="4971" Score="1" Text="You raise a good point about moderator burden. One thing we'd need to know is: how many questions require some kind of ethical assessment? I'd guess that they're not too common, so may not impose a huge burden in terms of numbers. But, another aspect of burden is the time, effort, and weight of responsibility involved in assessing ethical issues. I think these could be much greater for assessing ethical issues than for determining whether a question is off topic, too broad, etc." CreationDate="2017-10-10T02:24:25.783" UserId="116440" />
  <row Id="14347" PostId="4972" Score="0" Text="Do you mean the &quot;Hot Network Questions&quot; along the right side of question pages about midway down?" CreationDate="2017-10-05T16:33:15.837" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14348" PostId="4972" Score="0" Text="@gung no I mean the homepage. The title says &quot;top questions.&quot; What makes them the top?" CreationDate="2017-10-05T16:50:45.330" UserId="8336" />
  <row Id="14349" PostId="4972" Score="0" Text="Huh, I never really noticed that before." CreationDate="2017-10-05T17:17:53.760" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14350" PostId="4972" Score="0" Text="@gung on mobile it says &quot;All questions&quot; instead" CreationDate="2017-10-05T17:28:20.377" UserId="8336" />
  <row Id="14352" PostId="4972" Score="1" Text="See here: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4766/how-are-questions-in-the-hot-tab-selected" CreationDate="2017-10-06T00:50:31.380" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14365" PostId="4975" Score="3" Text="+1 a follow-up question: do you think a single moderator, or a small group of moderators, can and should decide on the ethical issue raised within such a question? I think this could be problematic if the moderator has moral views of his/her own (which of course the mod is allowed to have!) Maybe the flag shouldn't be directed at the moderators, but at the community at large, asking for a thorough evaluation of the ethical issue *in combination with the statistical aspects* (I also agree that for Q's lacking a statistical aspect migration would indeed be more suitable)." CreationDate="2017-10-12T10:02:50.147" UserId="144089" />
  <row Id="14399" PostId="4975" Score="2" Text="I think the biggest point to make is that some, human, must, eventually, decide. Above all, that's really the single point I'd like to emphasize, since the conversation feels like it's going in the direction of, Nobody should ever make an ethical judgment, that would be unethical. Who, among the rest of the community, would then be responsible? I think a Help! flag, in general, would be useful, but the moderators are the ones we rely on now to respond to flags, and especially since the community chooses the moderators, and I think that balance makes a lot of sense." CreationDate="2017-10-20T18:38:47.033" UserId="52211" />
  <row Id="14363" PostId="4976" Score="1" Text="Step #2 as listed here will probably stop working after the new design of the top bar will roll out on http://stackexchange.com." CreationDate="2017-10-11T22:40:46.127" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14364" PostId="4977" Score="0" Text="+1 So why must logging out of CV require two clicks? ;)" CreationDate="2017-10-12T09:19:41.607" UserId="144089" />
  <row Id="14366" PostId="4977" Score="0" Text="@IWS, because the site designers said so." CreationDate="2017-10-12T11:49:23.943" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14367" PostId="4977" Score="0" Text="Fair enough https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_Intervention" CreationDate="2017-10-12T11:50:44.983" UserId="144089" />
  <row Id="14377" PostId="4981" Score="0" Text="Is this question an example of what you are thinking of? https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/308097/1352" CreationDate="2017-10-15T18:44:19.883" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="14381" PostId="4981" Score="0" Text="That's an example though not one of the worst." CreationDate="2017-10-15T23:46:27.277" UserId="4253" />
  <row Id="14393" PostId="4981" Score="6" Text="I don't have data on this, but if it's true it's unfortunately a reflection of our success. Apart from Wikipedia, which other site would seem as likely as CV to be a source of free authoritative advice for naive statistical users? (No interest or intention to start a debate on the merits of Wikipedia, which at a minimum we can agree to have different aims.)  Also, I don't think many students are obliged to study some engineering when their main aims and talents lie elsewhere, but being obliged to study some statistics is common across many fields." CreationDate="2017-10-17T00:40:12.127" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14406" PostId="4981" Score="3" Text="I agree with this assessment and feel a growing irritation at OP not even checking Wikipedia pages that would address their issues, not to mention opening a textbook..." CreationDate="2017-10-23T08:25:14.413" UserId="7224" />
  <row Id="14374" PostId="4982" Score="7" Text="Peter to clarify, I don't want to imply that there is a decline of high-level questions.  But I'm noticing an increase in the statistical naivete on the other end." CreationDate="2017-10-15T12:33:04.220" UserId="4253" />
  <row Id="14376" PostId="4982" Score="7" Text="The site has been continually growing over the years. It seems to me the number of high-level questions has remained fairly constant; the growth has been largely due to increasing numbers of poor-quality questions, which makes the proportion of high-level Qs shrink." CreationDate="2017-10-15T14:09:28.227" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14379" PostId="4982" Score="6" Text="The problem seems to occur often with first time users. They generally don't tour the site before asking questions. Sometime a member will suggest that they take the tour and learn how to ask a question.  I wonder if there can be another way to deal with this." CreationDate="2017-10-15T21:50:53.170" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="14375" PostId="4983" Score="5" Text="Agree, however in many cases giving -1 is a way to show that you consider a question is low quality. In extreme cases I'd be inclined to close them as suggested by Glen_b." CreationDate="2017-10-15T13:04:50.297" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="14378" PostId="4983" Score="0" Text="Thanks Tim; I should have mentioned votes explicitly" CreationDate="2017-10-15T20:11:30.200" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14380" PostId="4984" Score="8" Text="Yes, that's right: a comment ought to do the trick." CreationDate="2017-10-15T22:24:39.893" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="14383" PostId="4984" Score="2" Text="Prior question on a related topic: [What to do if a question is both unclear and about software?](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4878/what-to-do-if-a-question-is-both-unclear-and-about-software)" CreationDate="2017-10-16T04:24:56.853" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14384" PostId="4984" Score="0" Text="Thanks Glen_b that question and answer clearly relate to and add information related to my question." CreationDate="2017-10-16T04:42:20.510" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="14382" PostId="4985" Score="0" Text="I think my idea is agreeable to you and whuber. Thank you for your answer. I was thinking of a situation where I was not involved with the original question but discovered it in the reopen queue.  So I could only comment after the question had already been closed.  I agree that giving the OP as much information about issues with the post is best and will follow that suggestion in the future." CreationDate="2017-10-16T02:40:01.687" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="14385" PostId="4985" Score="1" Text="When I see something in the reopen queue I usually ask myself &quot;Have they made an honest attempt to deal with the problem it was closed for?&quot;. If they have I vote to reopen. It may well be that it still has other issues but (a) I am not infallible and I would prefer to let others more expert re-close it, (b) it is discouraging for them if they have done what they were asked to do but it never even gets re-opened. If I could work out a way to do what Glen_b suggests I might do that instead." CreationDate="2017-10-16T09:12:03.090" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="14386" PostId="4986" Score="1" Text="See https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/57537/how-do-i-contact-other-users" CreationDate="2017-10-16T10:27:14.810" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="14387" PostId="4986" Score="5" Text="I would write a comment under the question. Without any chat room, just comment there directly. It's commendable that you have such a respect for site policies, but sometimes one can allow oneself a little chatty comment, especially if you have a good reason." CreationDate="2017-10-16T10:45:43.130" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14388" PostId="4986" Score="4" Text="I'm not sure I see the problem w/ leaving a comment. I suppose SE has a policy that comments are not for other purposes than transient prods for greater clarity, but it's not like that policy is respected on any SE site I've visited." CreationDate="2017-10-16T13:01:01.093" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14389" PostId="4986" Score="1" Text="I suppose you could always edit your profile to include your web page, your e-mail, your blog, your twitter, ... I have certainly made contact with people via that route and have seen on another site someone specifically saying the OP could contact them that way." CreationDate="2017-10-16T14:23:58.360" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="14390" PostId="4986" Score="0" Text="@gung I personally have no problem with that, but I seem to remember an older discussion on CV Meta where whuber &amp; some other moderator explicitly warned some user **not** to do that, so I thought it was frowned upon. Anyway, following amoeba's and your suggestion, I wrote a comment. If the OP doesn't get in touch with me in a few days, I'll take it as an indication of her/his will not to interact, and delete the comment. Thanks for the suggestions!" CreationDate="2017-10-16T14:55:22.597" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="14391" PostId="4986" Score="1" Text="I would add an impression that we're more indulgent about comments than some other forums. A good reason for that would be that in statistics there's often room for debate about what is a good or bad idea. Another reason, good or bad depending on who you ask, is that if you stick around enough, many identifiers become familiar and so sending a slightly chatty comment doesn't seem alien. For example, I recognise _all_ the identifiers so far in this thread without having knowingly met anybody socially. For completeness' sake I note past negative comments about this from some other members." CreationDate="2017-10-16T16:01:19.173" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14392" PostId="4986" Score="1" Text="If a user has ever used our chat you can @message them from there. But I don't think that applies here." CreationDate="2017-10-16T22:43:00.297" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14395" PostId="4986" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b thanks for the reminder! You're right it doesn't apply in this specific case, but it's still a good trick. I used it once, but I forgot about it." CreationDate="2017-10-17T08:53:27.083" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="14426" PostId="4988" Score="0" Text="Please note that there exists [tag:discontinuity] tag with 40 Qs. If you create [regression-discontinuity], you should probably check whether [discontinuity] is meaningfully different; perhaps most of these 40 threads can be moved to [regression-discontinuity] and the rest does not need to have this tag at all. In any case one needs to figure out what to do with [discontinuity] before creating [regression-discontinuity]." CreationDate="2017-10-24T11:15:27.560" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14459" PostId="4988" Score="1" Text="@gung I added the tag on one of the questions with a description. Once approved, I will start re-tagging the older questions." CreationDate="2017-10-26T17:18:57.773" UserId="7071" />
  <row Id="14492" PostId="4988" Score="0" Text="Did we come to any conclusions about what to do w/ the `[discontinuity]` tag? Should we initiate another thread about that? (cc, @amoeba)" CreationDate="2017-11-01T00:39:29.643" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14493" PostId="4988" Score="0" Text="@gung To be honest I don't think it's worth another Meta thread. The tag currently has only 22 threads left. My feeling is that it's a diverse collection of topics which makes this tag not very useful (if it all), especially given that some of these 22 could/should be retagged as [changepoint] anyway. I'd get rid of it. But it's not an awful tag; no big harm if it stays either." CreationDate="2017-11-01T00:56:45.993" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14494" PostId="4988" Score="0" Text="If we can come up w/ a useful, er, use for the tag, &amp; can edit the excerpt to provide useful guidance, I'm fine w/ keeping it. If not, it would be better to remove it from all remaining threads &amp; let it die, @amoeba." CreationDate="2017-11-01T01:01:31.253" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14495" PostId="4988" Score="1" Text="@gung Well, okay, I went over these threads and removed [discontinuity] from all of them, retagging as appropriate. It really didn't have any coherent meaning and wasn't useful." CreationDate="2017-11-01T11:33:23.343" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14405" PostId="4989" Score="0" Text="Agreed, regression-discontinuity is a relevant methodology in the Econometrics literature." CreationDate="2017-10-22T22:20:50.017" UserId="2902" />
  <row Id="14427" PostId="4989" Score="1" Text="I upvoted several days ago, but now noticed that there exists [tag:discontinuity] tag with 40 Qs. One would need to figure out what to do with it before creating [regression-discontinuity]." CreationDate="2017-10-24T11:16:16.200" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14430" PostId="4989" Score="0" Text="Re Update: I agree but I'd say that in that case it would be better to eliminate [d] altogether. I am not sure there is any useful (useful for a tag) meaning of &quot;discontinuity&quot; once we take [r-d] out of it." CreationDate="2017-10-24T13:27:24.047" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14431" PostId="4989" Score="0" Text="That's a viable option, @amoeba. I'm open to that. This was just my first thought." CreationDate="2017-10-24T13:43:27.620" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14434" PostId="4989" Score="0" Text="Personally, I prefer the [regression discontinuity] rather than [r-d] or [rdd]. I think there is still room for [discontinuity]. There seem to be some questions about detecting structural breaks and their ilk, and that seems qualitatively different that making use of one that is known to exist." CreationDate="2017-10-25T01:02:16.500" UserId="7071" />
  <row Id="14435" PostId="4989" Score="0" Text="@DimitriyV.Masterov, &quot;r-d&quot; &amp; &quot;rdd&quot; is just my shorthand b/c I'm too lazy to type &quot;regression-discontinuity&quot; each time. But I mean that the new tag should be `[regression-discontinuity]`." CreationDate="2017-10-25T01:15:55.857" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14400" PostId="4990" Score="13" Text="Often it is a conceptual error that caused code to fail or be incorrect.  But if the question essentially amounts to &quot;what's wrong with this code?&quot;, then it ought to be closed: we're not a code review site.  We should at least apply the same standards as [SO]: the code needs to be stripped to a simple, reproducible, executable example using the least amount of data needed to exhibit the problem; and we should expect--no, demand--that the question show what steps have been taken to establish the correctness of the code and debug the problem." CreationDate="2017-10-20T21:21:01.497" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="14407" PostId="4990" Score="2" Text="@whuber sounds extremely reasonable. Maybe we should add it in the Help section? I'm not sure the part about MREs (Minimal Reproducible Examples) is there. On the other hand, adding suggestions on how to include code might be seen as a recommendation to include code, which is not what we want really....I don't know what's the best course of action." CreationDate="2017-10-23T12:07:03.967" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="14521" PostId="4990" Score="1" Text="@whuber Perhaps one way to trick users into adhering to these best practices would be to require the users to **show unit tests** as well as their actual code; the lack of a unit test is demonstrable evidence that the poster has made no effort to check correctness, while the presence of the test gives the context of what the poster's assumptions are about how it *should* work (i.e. the user's conceptual understanding of the problem)." CreationDate="2017-11-02T21:11:03.963" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="14401" PostId="4992" Score="3" Text="I get your general point, but in my opinion ML is different: Neural Networks are much less &quot;standard&quot; than other methods, because *&quot;*we actually don't know why they work** (it's like we're in the steam engine era, before the discovery of thermodynamics). Even a &quot;classic&quot; architecture such as a CNN can have many variations, and each one is an opportunity for errors at the coding _and/or_ at the conceptual level. Contrast it with Gaussian Processes, where 1) usually you just call a function and 2) at most you only change the covariance function. There's much less opportunity for..." CreationDate="2017-10-21T07:24:37.533" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="14402" PostId="4992" Score="2" Text="...errors at a coding or a conceptual error. As a matter of fact, on average I see far more lines of code in ML questions than in questions on GLM, or OLS, etc. It may also be just a bad habit: maybe ML (and especially DL) practitioners mostly come from the computer science world, and err on the side of too much coding." CreationDate="2017-10-21T07:31:17.123" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="14403" PostId="4992" Score="5" Text="To some extent you see similar issues (though perhaps at a different scale) with some of the more tricky parts of MCMC implemented on big models, where even if you screw up it might look plausible and even if you implement it correctly it might not work well. I don't think any of that changes a reasonable policy for our site though -- if you can't easily tell whether it's an implementation error or not, it's likely not in a suitable state for a question here." CreationDate="2017-10-21T08:24:34.167" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14404" PostId="4992" Score="2" Text="100% agree - the policy is great, I just wanted some clarifications, because I had the impression that more ML questions with a lot of code have recently been asked and have not been closed." CreationDate="2017-10-21T11:10:30.147" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="14413" PostId="4994" Score="0" Text="I am not sure how this is different from a thread from two days ago: https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4990." CreationDate="2017-10-23T14:05:39.323" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14414" PostId="4994" Score="1" Text="@amoeba this is more meta question if we should *change* our policies, rather then asking what are the policies. I agree with the linked thread, but maybe we should be even more open for the programming-like question." CreationDate="2017-10-23T14:07:49.477" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="14415" PostId="4994" Score="8" Text="I don't see that we should. If various people are teaching machine learning via the pedagogical strategy of 'here's some code, don't worry about how or why it works', that seems like all the more reason we should focus on helping askers learn to distinguish the difference between the idea &amp; how it's implemented, &amp; to understand the ideas more thoroughly." CreationDate="2017-10-23T14:55:43.747" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14418" PostId="4994" Score="5" Text="I am with @gung.  It's a case of please post on Stack Overflow or a software-specific forum according to their criteria. (In fact, please debug my code is often a poor question even in those places.)" CreationDate="2017-10-23T17:05:03.173" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14420" PostId="4994" Score="6" Text="I'm not directly opposed to having a slightly more relaxed view of questions containing code than we presently do (we did in the past and I had no difficulty with that) as long as we don't start trying to compete with other sites that already cover it (so a pure-programming question should probably remain off topic). I am definitely still opposed to unclear questions (especially ones where you can't tell what they're even trying to do unless you can figure out what they wanted to do from the code). If we move this way we need to be able to spell out policy clearly in our help/on-topic." CreationDate="2017-10-23T21:50:57.683" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14421" PostId="4994" Score="4" Text="I agree with what's said above.  Adding a personal note: the respectful scientific discourse of this forum is what attracted me, and has kept me as a contributor.  I come from the more ML school of thought, with no rigorous statistical training, and this community has helped me become more well rounded.  The consequence for this discussion is that, if the subject matter moves towards valuing programming as a core component of the skill-set (which I know, some long time posters would like to point out that it always has), then naturally new users will join that will help bring that..." CreationDate="2017-10-24T00:07:05.843" UserId="74500" />
  <row Id="14422" PostId="4994" Score="2" Text="...perspective to our community.  I would just encourage everyone to be welcoming when such valuable contributors appear.  Possibly we should be discussing ways to offer mentorship to those that come through our doors." CreationDate="2017-10-24T00:08:05.200" UserId="74500" />
  <row Id="14432" PostId="4994" Score="4" Text="Practicalities here as well as principles. 0. Stack Overflow exists! 1. The present boundary on software questions is a permanent problem likely to get worse if we get more indulgent. 2. Getting more indulgent will multiply questions without necessarily recruiting more people to answer. 3. Few things so unappealing as code questions on software you don't use. Nothing against software questions myself; I support SO and Statalist, but the present line on software questions although arbitrary and artificial is still better than that implied." CreationDate="2017-10-24T17:38:21.210" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14433" PostId="4994" Score="4" Text="Least of all do I want on-line courses to outsource their student coding support to here, however unintended that may be! If the questions fit, that's fine." CreationDate="2017-10-24T17:39:47.250" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14408" PostId="4995" Score="14" Text="Upvote if you agree with combining [gradient-boosted-trees], [gbm], and [boosting]." CreationDate="2017-10-23T13:40:05.087" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14409" PostId="4995" Score="3" Text="Upvote if you disagree with combining [gradient-boosted-trees], [gbm], and [boosting]." CreationDate="2017-10-23T13:40:13.050" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14410" PostId="4995" Score="3" Text="Upvote if you agree with merging xgboost/adaboost/etc into boosting as well." CreationDate="2017-10-23T13:40:39.753" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14411" PostId="4995" Score="5" Text="Upvote if you disagree with merging xgboost/adaboost/etc into boosting." CreationDate="2017-10-23T13:41:04.520" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14412" PostId="4995" Score="3" Text="(If you don't have an opinion then do not vote above.)" CreationDate="2017-10-23T13:41:36.077" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14416" PostId="4995" Score="3" Text="Maybe it would be better if those comment options were answers?" CreationDate="2017-10-23T15:04:10.177" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14423" PostId="4995" Score="2" Text="I'm not sure it's right to say that, in practice, most people doing boosting would be using xgboost or adaboost. Certainly many people routinely use xgboost. But many people also use the `GradientBoostingClassifier`/`GradientBoostingRegressor` implementations in `scikit-learn`, which are not xgboost. And my impression is that while adaboost is still learned about a lot because of its historical significance, it may not be used that much in practice anymore." CreationDate="2017-10-24T09:09:23.817" UserId="5829" />
  <row Id="14424" PostId="4995" Score="0" Text="Thanks @Jake, that's important. Looking at how people voted so far, I guess we can leave [xgboost] and [adaboost] alone. It's fine with me." CreationDate="2017-10-24T09:27:41.853" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14425" PostId="4995" Score="0" Text="@gung I am not sure what's the most convenient way but I think I prefer comments for multiple-choice voting: it's much more compact. I would rather somebody more knowledgeable (than me) posted an answer with a specific unified suggestion; alternatively I can post an answer with a (hopefully) consensus suggestion after a couple of days of discussion and voting in the comments." CreationDate="2017-10-24T09:45:46.767" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14428" PostId="4995" Score="1" Text="It's certainly sensible to prefer the most knowledgeable person to provide the answer, but in this case they seem to be just, &quot;I agree&quot; &amp; &quot;I disagree&quot;, which is less of an issue. Votes on answers can be examined &amp; changed better, &amp; it allows for comments / discussion about options more conveniently than this. That's why I suggested answers." CreationDate="2017-10-24T11:35:46.430" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14441" PostId="4995" Score="1" Text="@JakeWestfall I've stopped teaching AdaBoost.  I prefer to just teach gradient boosting, it makes more sense and is still exceedingly useful." CreationDate="2017-10-26T02:42:10.067" UserId="74500" />
  <row Id="14417" PostId="4996" Score="2" Text="IMHO, it is perfectly on topic." CreationDate="2017-10-23T16:12:52.943" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="14419" PostId="4996" Score="0" Text="I agree with @Tim, your Q is perfectly on topic." CreationDate="2017-10-23T20:46:57.897" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14442" PostId="4998" Score="2" Text="The same thing happened with &quot;Big Data&quot;.  My job title is Data Scientist : (" CreationDate="2017-10-26T02:43:20.413" UserId="74500" />
  <row Id="14443" PostId="4998" Score="3" Text="&quot;the same thing&quot; is not a bad thing, because the business problem did not disappear, it just moved under IT organization, where it is being solved. a job title can be changed. talk to your boss and HR can be asked to put a new title if necessary." CreationDate="2017-10-26T03:09:53.453" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="14444" PostId="4998" Score="0" Text="I was just Kidding Akskal, I'm fine with being a Data Scientist." CreationDate="2017-10-26T03:22:57.460" UserId="74500" />
  <row Id="14436" PostId="4999" Score="2" Text="If there is no substantial disagreement w/i the next, say, week, I will make the synonyms." CreationDate="2017-10-25T11:58:55.467" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14445" PostId="4999" Score="2" Text="I'm a pretty big boosting fanboy.  I think this is correct." CreationDate="2017-10-26T04:15:30.677" UserId="74500" />
  <row Id="14475" PostId="4999" Score="0" Text="Strong disagree. Gradient boosted trees and GBM are popular implementations of boosting, but are not synonymous with it. Even within xgboost, perhaps the most popular implementation of tree-based GBM, there are options for boosting with GLMs as the base learner instead of decision trees." CreationDate="2017-10-30T18:32:00.377" UserId="11646" />
  <row Id="14476" PostId="4999" Score="0" Text="@Paul Thanks. Can you clarify: are you saying that all three tags ([g-b-t], [gbm], and [boosting]) should stay distinct, or is there any pair that you think can be combined? Apart from that, let me stress that for two tags to be made synonymous it is **not** necessary that the respective terms are exactly synonymous. We have to consider how strongly the topics overlap, and how useful it is to have tags separate, i.e. how useful it is for the site users to navigate these tags separately. You are saying that g-b-t and gbm are subsets of &quot;boosting&quot;. [cont.]" CreationDate="2017-10-30T20:42:26.513" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14477" PostId="4999" Score="0" Text="[cont.] However, if these subsets are so larger that they cover most of the &quot;boosting&quot; usage, and if the usage on our site *in practice* is such that many questions are tagged with one tag or another without clear system that we can enforce, the it might very well make sense to merge them into the &quot;parent&quot; [boosting] tag. We often decide to make tags synonyms when the relationship between them is rather set/subset, but the distinction is blurry and/or subset covers most of the set." CreationDate="2017-10-30T20:44:13.820" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14478" PostId="4999" Score="0" Text="@MatthewDrury FYI: See Paul's comment above. Would be good if you could explain your reasoning in more detail (I think you are our top user by rep in the boosting topic.)" CreationDate="2017-10-30T20:46:36.587" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14479" PostId="4999" Score="2" Text="Pretty much the same reasoning as yours above.  Keeping them distinct is only meaningful if most of our users tag things correctly under this scheme. I'm not sure I was aware that `gbm` is used to mean a library, I always use it as a synonym for `gradient-boosting`.  I'm a long time user of boosting, so if this is a misuse, it's probably a representative one." CreationDate="2017-10-30T21:14:33.217" UserId="74500" />
  <row Id="14481" PostId="4999" Score="0" Text="Maybe I'm not understanding the user-facing implications. If this just means that users entering gbm for their tag get the tag automatically changed to boosting, then I think this is fine, since boosting is the most general term. On the other hand, equating the two would be a disservice to users IMO. It wouldn't be good to give the impression that boosting is reducible to GBM or gradient boosted trees." CreationDate="2017-10-30T21:47:38.500" UserId="11646" />
  <row Id="14482" PostId="4999" Score="0" Text="@Paul Could you briefly explain to me the relationship between these terms? &quot;Boosting&quot; is a general term. Is all boosting &quot;gradient boosting&quot; or are there some other types of boosting? &quot;Gradient boosted trees&quot; means boosting done with trees (as opposed to other base learners), correct? And what is &quot;gradient boosting machine&quot; (GBM)? What relationship does it have with &quot;gradient boosting&quot;? I am not asking about the tags now, just clarifying the terminology in the field." CreationDate="2017-10-30T22:47:13.470" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14484" PostId="4999" Score="0" Text="Gradient boosting is a particular type of boosting algorithm, probably the most widely used one. Adaboost is another, different one, older but also popular. I think gradient boosting and gradient boosting machine (GBM) are synonymous, but not 100% sure. Gradient boosted trees does indeed mean gradient boosting done with trees; other base learners could be used in gradient boosting." CreationDate="2017-10-30T23:37:33.237" UserId="11646" />
  <row Id="14487" PostId="4999" Score="0" Text="@Paul Thanks. I think your concern could be addressed by supplying a carefully written tag excerpt for the [boosting] tag (assuming that the suggested synonyms are created). This excerpt should clearly say that boosting is a general term, with gradient boosting being the most widely used boosting algorithm and with trees being the most widely used base learners. The [gbm] and [gradient-boosted-trees] tags will be automatically changed to [boosting], but the very visible tag description will clarify the relationship between these terms." CreationDate="2017-10-31T20:53:18.573" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14490" PostId="4999" Score="0" Text="@Paul (cont.) I edited the excerpt as follows: &quot;A family of algorithms combining weakly predictive models into a strongly predictive model. The most common approach is called gradient boosting, and the most commonly used weak models are classification/regression trees.&quot; (https://stats.stackexchange.com/tags/boosting/info) Feel free to improve it." CreationDate="2017-11-01T00:23:27.893" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14496" PostId="4999" Score="3" Text="@Paul I think you are a bit confused with how tag synonyms work. &quot;x is a synonym of y&quot; means that when someone tries to tag a post with x, the system lets them and then silently replaces the tag with y. Additionally, any time someone searches for x, instead they get results for y. We call y the &quot;master tag&quot; and x the &quot;synonym tag.&quot; This differs a little from the way that the word &quot;synonym&quot; is used in English because it's directional. Although it's usually used for actual synonyms, such as &quot;algorithm&quot; and &quot;algorithms,&quot; it is also used for the purpose in this thread." CreationDate="2017-11-01T13:17:48.523" UserId="144993" />
  <row Id="14505" PostId="4999" Score="0" Text="@MatthewDrury Could you check the wiki excerpt that I wrote for [boosting] after some further discussion with Paul (see above)?" CreationDate="2017-11-02T09:45:24.050" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14544" PostId="4999" Score="0" Text="@gung I would say we could go ahead (but review the above comments first)." CreationDate="2017-11-04T21:06:35.293" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14547" PostId="4999" Score="1" Text="I think it's probably OK. I will make the synonyms, @amoeba. [gbm] &amp; [g-b-t] are now synonyms of [boosting]." CreationDate="2017-11-05T00:13:50.727" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14438" PostId="5000" Score="14" Text="(2) is problematic; (3) done politely is fine--the art here is to reframe the question and then answer your version of it--; but please consider (5): find, edit, or create a *canonical* answer that addresses the problematic procedure you are concerned about and propose it as the duplicate." CreationDate="2017-10-25T21:05:17.307" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="14439" PostId="5000" Score="6" Text="I had thought while reading to leave a suggestion -- that the best thing to do is often to find or in some way make a canonical question-and-answer that these can be pointed to. ... but whuber already made it. So ... I agree with him" CreationDate="2017-10-25T21:56:03.277" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14440" PostId="5000" Score="2" Text="I mostly agree, but I'm not as against the idea of closing as an imperfect duplicate. If understanding the information in the other thread would lead the OP to recognize the nature of the problem &amp; take the appropriate action (ie, not binning), I think it may be acceptable." CreationDate="2017-10-26T00:21:02.543" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14446" PostId="5000" Score="1" Text="@gung: I don't know about that: explaining why the OP should take a different tack is one thing, but closing the q is another - as if we had a party line on the matter." CreationDate="2017-10-26T12:32:24.197" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="14447" PostId="5000" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi: what I'm afraid of is that the question will likely remain unanswered. Unless you are arguing for my alternative 3?" CreationDate="2017-10-26T12:39:15.733" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="14449" PostId="5000" Score="1" Text="It's already answered (at least your 1st example), along the lines of your option #3." CreationDate="2017-10-26T13:00:22.907" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14450" PostId="5000" Score="2" Text="The canonical example here of a wrong question -- binning a continuous variable -- is such that (a) I too find myself repeatedly asking &quot;Why do you want to do that? It would just be throwing away information.&quot;  but (b) it's behind histograms (c) it's utterly standard as a device in economics and finance where looking at the top 10% ... bottom 10% of firms on some criterion is a common strategy." CreationDate="2017-10-26T13:42:55.257" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14451" PostId="5000" Score="3" Text="(ctd) I was grumbling about (c) to a senior biostatistician (disclosure: not Frank Harrell). His reaction was &quot;Perhaps that's not as crazy as it sounds. Looking at the 10% most fragile ... 10% most robust patients might be a method we should be thinking about with medical data&quot;. So,  what looks like a very misguided question may arise commonly because it's a frequent practice in some field; from one perspective it really doesn't seem misguided. Other examples could be over predictor selection in regression-like models or correcting P-values for multiple significance tests (or not)." CreationDate="2017-10-26T13:48:06.560" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14456" PostId="5000" Score="3" Text="@StephanKolassa: I'd say answer along the lines of Option #3 either when you've something to say about why binning is a bad idea in the OP's particular situation or when there's not already a post dealing with the pros &amp; cons of binning in general. Else leave a comment &amp; a link, as you have been doing: if no-one cares to answer a (let's suppose) clear, focussed question on methods that are falling into desuetude (let's wish) except in special cases, what's the problem?" CreationDate="2017-10-26T15:45:52.930" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="14458" PostId="5000" Score="2" Text="@Scortchi &quot;desuetude&quot; is a condition resembling that of old, battered, stained suede shoes lying in a cupboard. Not worn for years, but not yet thrown out." CreationDate="2017-10-26T16:49:01.960" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16438" PostId="5000" Score="0" Text="@NickCox: I agree that there is often room for argument, e.g. &quot;stepwise regression has the following problems ...&quot; is better than &quot;stepwise regression **is wrong**.&quot; With multiple answer(er)s, we have room for a bit of nuance/variety of opinion." CreationDate="2018-08-24T21:50:38.007" UserId="2126" />
  <row Id="14461" PostId="5002" Score="3" Text="(1) Simple question gather attention, since many people are able to answer it. (2) I guess, people often open the &quot;possibly off topic&quot; question to cast votes, so low-quality questions get the attention at the beginning. I can't see any problem in here." CreationDate="2017-10-27T12:21:54.650" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="14462" PostId="5002" Score="1" Text="@Tim neither do I. I'm trying to think of a strategy around the HNQs to improve the site exposure." CreationDate="2017-10-27T12:23:11.753" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="14463" PostId="5002" Score="2" Text="You know why CodeGolf lands many HNQs? They have a question playground (the &quot;sandbox&quot;), so users can improve the puzzles (and pre-formulate their answers). When the question is posted, there are several answers ready to be posted. The number of answers improve a question &quot;hotness&quot; (capped at 10)." CreationDate="2017-10-27T12:24:59.500" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="14464" PostId="5002" Score="8" Text="I think our site has already 'caught on'. We have been growing steadily for a while; I don't think we really need any extra help from the HNQs. In general, it wouldn't hurt, but I think getting a lot of exposure for low quality questions (eg, too broad) *might well* hurt. We already get too many poor questions." CreationDate="2017-10-27T12:54:12.333" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14465" PostId="5002" Score="4" Text="Similar issues occur in a number of other stackexchange sites -- it's often poor questions in one sense or another that tend to be popular enough to hit the HNQ list" CreationDate="2017-10-27T12:59:45.283" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14466" PostId="5002" Score="9" Text="IMHO, some of our worst threads were on the hot list.  They drew attention from people who were wholly unqualified to answer--but tried anyway--and resulted in voting that did not reflect the quality, accuracy, or insight of answers.  I therefore would suggest that this sort of &quot;exposure&quot; might not be something to be desired." CreationDate="2017-10-27T14:28:00.190" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="14474" PostId="5002" Score="0" Text="Consider this question: https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/310119/why-does-collecting-data-until-obtaining-a-significant-result-increase-the-type. It has stayed in HNQs for three whole days already and has attracted a good bunch of attention (50 upvotes, 3k views, 4 answers, even what we might describe as a _canonical answer_). This is good propaganda for our site. Other good questions have been asked in the meantime and also before that one, but didn't achieve HNQ status. Can (should?) we act on that? If we could guarantee our best becomes HNQ we'd also mitigate what @whuber described" CreationDate="2017-10-30T12:06:27.857" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="14522" PostId="5002" Score="1" Text="[The one you link to](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/310119/why-does-collecting-data-until-obtaining-a-significant-result-increase-the-type) is one of the better questions to end up HNQ. But to be honest, my personal impression is that for every quality CV question that ends up HNQ, there are five to ten that are low quality. I fully agree with @gung and whuber that the traffic these HNQs drive here is not helpful. (Incidentally, I have seen similar things happen with HNQs at Academia.SE, where I used to be active.)..." CreationDate="2017-11-02T22:02:26.803" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="14524" PostId="5002" Score="4" Text="... Overall, I'd be happier if the HNQ were killed off completely. It's not a *Good* New Questions list, not by any stretch of the imagination. The few gold nuggets in the big steaming pile of cr*p unfortunately are not worth the steaming pile. (And recently, it seems to have been taken over by IPS. Which may say something about the kind of people that frequent SO. And I guess I should be happy that every IPS or PCG HNQ takes up one slot that might otherwise showcase a gleaming piece of you-know-what from one of the serious sites, and I'm not using scare quotes around &quot;serious&quot; advisedly.)" CreationDate="2017-11-02T22:06:38.187" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="14531" PostId="5002" Score="0" Text="Yeah, one can only hope. But in the meantime the HNQ exists, and will keep showcasing bad examples from our community if we do nothing. If we could set up an email feed of CV HNQs maybe we could speed up the trial of these questions, and close the bad ones faster. Unfortunately I have no experience with that. Has anyone tried something similar on other sites?" CreationDate="2017-11-03T12:06:05.937" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="14594" PostId="5002" Score="0" Text="This question was in th HNQ list: https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/312119/classification-probability-threshold. I think it is an interesting question." CreationDate="2017-11-06T18:23:03.333" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="14608" PostId="5002" Score="0" Text="We've been getting a stream of good (and technical) questions into the HNQ lately. Did we become more observant or is this just my personal bias?" CreationDate="2017-11-07T12:33:43.040" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="14526" PostId="5004" Score="3" Text="Thanks - this seems to be what the community likes best. You unerringly picked the alternative that will make the most work for us, of course. (We expect you to pitch in - after all, with 864 rep, you are hardly a &quot;beginning user&quot; any more ;-)" CreationDate="2017-11-02T22:45:29.180" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="14533" PostId="5004" Score="2" Text="I would be happy to contribute and will continue to do so as long as my contributions are appreciated :)" CreationDate="2017-11-03T14:31:39.453" UserId="176202" />
  <row Id="14497" PostId="5005" Score="4" Text="+1 Both meanings are apparent in the 23 threads with this tag.  We might consider disambiguating them, retagging the less popular one (success/failure in experiments), and giving them brief Wiki excerpts." CreationDate="2017-11-01T22:53:10.053" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="14498" PostId="5005" Score="1" Text="This is my first time bringing something like this to the attention of others. I'm not sure what to do or what is involved in disambiguating them." CreationDate="2017-11-01T22:56:01.330" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="14499" PostId="5005" Score="2" Text="The basic steps are to create a second tag; select appropriate names and/or synonyms for the old and new tags; create wiki excerpts for each; and then physically retag threads that need the less popular one, preferably at some little-used time of week (c. Sunday evening - Monday morning GMT perhaps). Sometimes in the initial stages &quot;orphan wikis&quot; can get detached from their tags and lost, so I often begin by copying and saving all potentially affected wikis and their excerpts. The retagging and Wikifying should be done by an expert in both subjects if possible." CreationDate="2017-11-01T23:03:52.190" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="14502" PostId="5005" Score="7" Text="We don't need a tag for success/failure in experiments (as we don't need tags like [success], [nobel-prize], [failed-phd-and-left-academia], etc.). &quot;Failure&quot; is too ambiguous as a tag name, and such a tag will inevitably be misused. I would say we should simply eliminate it altogether. Threads about survival analysis should be retagged as [survival]." CreationDate="2017-11-02T08:34:24.430" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14512" PostId="5005" Score="3" Text="I agree with @amoeba" CreationDate="2017-11-02T12:30:13.740" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="14565" PostId="5005" Score="1" Text="Peter, the tag has been eliminated by @mdewey, feel free to mark my answer as accepted now. Cheers." CreationDate="2017-11-06T09:42:01.130" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14500" PostId="5006" Score="1" Text="Is your question just the question at the end (&quot;Isn't deciding on which method to use a &quot;method&quot;?&quot;) or is the intended question something broader?" CreationDate="2017-11-01T23:53:51.580" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14501" PostId="5006" Score="0" Text="I'm also not sure of &quot;computations&quot;.  I'd use &quot;instructions&quot;." CreationDate="2017-11-02T00:09:22.917" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="14539" PostId="5006" Score="1" Text="More important is that many models or methods can be implemented in different ways, and each implementation would correspond to a different algorithm." CreationDate="2017-11-03T15:56:21.640" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="14504" PostId="5007" Score="2" Text="(We can also replace &quot;specification&quot; by &quot;set of instructions&quot; as suggested by @Peter." CreationDate="2017-11-02T09:33:29.650" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14506" PostId="5007" Score="2" Text="As well as saying what an algorithm is, we should think about what we want people to use the tag for. To me it suggests an emphasis on the computional steps involved in finding a solution rather on specifying a solution." CreationDate="2017-11-02T10:18:52.227" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="14507" PostId="5007" Score="1" Text="Related: https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3146" CreationDate="2017-11-02T10:18:54.600" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14508" PostId="5007" Score="1" Text="@Scortchi I agree but I am not sure this requires any further additions to the excerpt. Or do you mean we should write &quot;An unambiguous set of computational steps involved in finding a solution to a class of problems&quot;? I like this too." CreationDate="2017-11-02T10:22:19.603" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14510" PostId="5007" Score="0" Text="I do like that version more, but I was trying to think what might give clear, pithy usage guidance. The `algorithms` tag seems unnecessary in a fair few of the posts to which it's been attached." CreationDate="2017-11-02T11:27:07.123" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="14511" PostId="5007" Score="0" Text="So, should I make this change?" CreationDate="2017-11-02T12:29:40.173" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="14513" PostId="5007" Score="1" Text="@Peter, yes, I'd say go ahead. My favourite formulation at the moment is &quot;An unambiguous list of computational steps involved in finding a solution to a class of problems&quot; (which is based on Scortchi's wording; compared to the previous comment I replaced &quot;set&quot; with &quot;list&quot; because it's ordered :-)" CreationDate="2017-11-02T12:44:30.500" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14515" PostId="5008" Score="2" Text="The tag is unclear, so I'd be more prone to getting rid of it (burinating, merging or making it a synonym of order-stats)" CreationDate="2017-11-02T13:54:10.380" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="14516" PostId="5008" Score="2" Text="I agree with @Tim that the tag is unclear and should be eliminated. There are only 21 threads, so I would suggest manually going over them and retagging as appropriate. We have several established alternative tags to choose from (ordered-variables -&gt; ordinal-data, ordered-logit, ordered-probit, ordering-&gt;ranking, order-statistics)." CreationDate="2017-11-02T14:07:55.857" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14517" PostId="5008" Score="1" Text="Then I will go through it and retag" CreationDate="2017-11-02T14:23:27.233" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="14518" PostId="5008" Score="1" Text="@amoeba, why not make that an official answer?" CreationDate="2017-11-02T16:08:40.960" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14519" PostId="5008" Score="1" Text="@gung Done.$\;$" CreationDate="2017-11-02T16:11:38.527" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14534" PostId="5009" Score="1" Text="removed/retagged completed" CreationDate="2017-11-03T14:57:48.473" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="14535" PostId="5009" Score="0" Text="Cool! Good job. Maybe mark this answer as accepted to close the issue." CreationDate="2017-11-03T15:04:34.160" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14520" PostId="5010" Score="0" Text="It's fine with me to eliminate it." CreationDate="2017-11-02T21:01:25.457" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="14525" PostId="5010" Score="1" Text="+1. Get rid of it. (Sometimes I'm tempted to tag certain questions as &quot;failure&quot;, but that would be a little meta on the main site, so I'll just VTC.)" CreationDate="2017-11-02T22:16:17.643" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="14538" PostId="5010" Score="1" Text="Am sorting them out now." CreationDate="2017-11-03T15:50:07.427" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="14563" PostId="5010" Score="1" Text="All gone now, some re-tagged as survival and one or two other tags." CreationDate="2017-11-06T09:33:42.033" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="14566" PostId="5010" Score="0" Text="@mdewey Thanks! I pinged Peter (OP) to mark this answer as accepted." CreationDate="2017-11-06T09:42:20.700" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14536" PostId="5012" Score="4" Text="700 seems to be a gross overestimate. This search https://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=%22basis+function%22+is%3Aquestion yields 93. And I am not sure what fraction is covered by [kernel-trick] (probably substantial)... Nevertheless, the new tag is probably fine." CreationDate="2017-11-03T15:07:47.397" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14537" PostId="5012" Score="1" Text="@amoeba My apologies, your search was literal for &quot;basis function&quot;, mine was for basis+function and frequently users do not know that often basis+function=&quot;basis-function&quot; so perhaps $~90&lt;n&lt;~700$. However, that is not as important as the advice I am seeking, please?" CreationDate="2017-11-03T15:13:55.280" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="14541" PostId="5012" Score="2" Text="I'd say wait a couple of days to see if anybody protests against your new tag, and if nobody raises any concerns, then you can go ahead and put this tag on some questions. I don't recommend hunting down *all* questions possibly related to this tag. Rather, I would suggest to find a dozen or two most prominent (most upvoted or otherwise most important) threads and tag those. This will be enough to &quot;establish&quot; the tag." CreationDate="2017-11-03T21:49:18.733" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14543" PostId="5012" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Thank-you, much obliged. What about synonym? My instinct would be to leave it alone rather than force synonym on people who may learn what a basis function is via a radial basis function, even if, or perhaps because, the order in which a statistician learns physics seems outstanding." CreationDate="2017-11-04T00:25:12.143" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="14545" PostId="5012" Score="0" Text="Re synonym, turns out this issue is more complicated than it could seem, because we have [tag:rbf-network] along with [tag:radial-basis], and lots of radial-basis questions are actually about RBF networks. I would suggest to retag these threads to [rbf-network] (these would be [at least 15](https://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bradial-basis%5D+is%3Aquestion+network))." CreationDate="2017-11-04T23:13:56.760" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14546" PostId="5012" Score="0" Text="Further, most of the remaining threads in radial-basis are about RBF kernel in the context of kernel methods in machine learning (kernel trick). I am wondering if we should move all that to [tag:kernel-trick]. Perhaps we could also create [rbf-kernel] as a synonym to [kernel-trick]. This will leave only a handful (if it all!) of questions left in [radial-basis] and I would retag those to [basis-function] and eliminate the [radial-basis] entirely :-)" CreationDate="2017-11-04T23:17:40.320" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14595" PostId="5012" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I'm working on it, it will take a while, and not yet sure that [`rbf-network`](https://stats.stackexchange.com/tags/rbf-network/info) overlaps [`radial-basis`](https://stats.stackexchange.com/tags/radial-basis/info) entirely. Conceptually they do not appear to, and user interest may be dumped if we eliminate radial-basis, but in practice maybe they are equivalent. So, I will go about this gradually." CreationDate="2017-11-06T19:03:01.357" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="14596" PostId="5012" Score="0" Text="Carl, but I did not say that these two tags overlap entirely! Wait, let me post my suggestion as an answer, so that other people could discuss it as well." CreationDate="2017-11-06T19:25:10.853" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14635" PostId="5013" Score="1" Text="I concur with your opinion here Glen, and I've been trying to preemptively spot HNQ-&quot;worthy&quot; questions before they hit the HNQ list. I suppose we all keep an eye on CV questions already on list when they appear on the sidebar, so perhaps these are non-issue. The effort should be on preventing bad questions from reaching HNQ status, or keeping it too long." CreationDate="2017-11-08T15:36:08.560" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="14601" PostId="5014" Score="0" Text="Thank you. (I will not vote up or down for obvious reasons.) To be honest, at the moment that answer has too much code and not enough explanations to be really considered insightful. I was not planning on working on it any further but if somebody decides to put a bounty on that thread, I will try to add some additional comments. (It's a bit annoying though that OP never left any comments let alone marked my answer as accepted.)" CreationDate="2017-11-06T23:03:15.960" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14602" PostId="5014" Score="0" Text="@amoeba: I think it is great for someone who looks for solid examples. As a side-note: I found it also extremely portable; my Python is rusty and I recoded in R within minutes and it works fine. While vastly unappreciated in the expense of &quot;code-fu&quot; and adherence to style, clarity of presentation is important and your post is excellent at that." CreationDate="2017-11-06T23:17:50.237" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="14603" PostId="5014" Score="0" Text="Oh, I did not even realize that Keras/Tensorflow are available in R." CreationDate="2017-11-07T08:10:43.133" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14772" PostId="5014" Score="0" Text="bounty started." CreationDate="2017-11-16T23:43:47.990" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14844" PostId="5014" Score="0" Text="Bounty now awarded" CreationDate="2017-11-23T00:19:56.683" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14849" PostId="5014" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b: Thanks. I added an R version of amoeba's example too. I waited till the bounty got awarded to avoid any confusion." CreationDate="2017-11-23T01:55:43.030" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="14548" PostId="5015" Score="1" Text="@gung I retagged some Qs about [discriminant-analysis] but it might make sense to create a synonym [fisher-linear-discriminant]-&gt;[discriminant-analysis] for the future." CreationDate="2017-11-05T13:50:38.970" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14549" PostId="5015" Score="1" Text="Similarly, I retagged some Qs to [combining-p-values] but it might make sense to create synonyms [fisher-method] and [stouffer-method] (or fishers- and stouffers-?) pointing to [combining-p-values]." CreationDate="2017-11-05T13:54:58.613" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14550" PostId="5015" Score="2" Text="I've done 6 now of the ones since I last did it (July '13). I'm thinking we should remove the tag from everything, though. It's best for the tag to disappear, this isn't something people are going to be able to use correctly." CreationDate="2017-11-05T14:33:58.613" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14551" PostId="5015" Score="0" Text="@gung Yes, I agree; that is what I meant." CreationDate="2017-11-05T16:12:42.990" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14552" PostId="5015" Score="1" Text="@gung What do you think of the synonym suggestions above?" CreationDate="2017-11-05T16:14:57.710" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14558" PostId="5015" Score="0" Text="They're fine w/ me, @amoeba. I don't really know these topics well enough. It seems there were several FLA threads. I don't know FLA vs L / Q DA. Is it worth its own tag? We could also make it a synonym, but maybe there's enough interest on its own." CreationDate="2017-11-05T20:36:00.730" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14559" PostId="5015" Score="2" Text="@gung Nah, it's the same thing. &quot;FLA&quot; is LDA for two classes. We definitely don't need a separate tag for it (but the synonym would be handy). I have some authority as the highest-rep user [in discriminant-analysis tag](https://stats.stackexchange.com/tags/discriminant-analysis/topusers) :-)" CreationDate="2017-11-05T21:01:20.937" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14560" PostId="5015" Score="1" Text="I made a [synonym](https://stats.stackexchange.com/tags/discriminant-analysis/synonyms)." CreationDate="2017-11-06T01:55:07.720" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14562" PostId="5015" Score="0" Text="Great, thanks. I still think that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher%27s_method deserves a tag (mapped to [tag:combining-p-values]) as well (see my 2nd comment above)." CreationDate="2017-11-06T08:34:05.007" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14564" PostId="5015" Score="0" Text="There are of course other methods for combining p values which have eponyms so we may be starting down a slippery path if we create tags for any more of  them although I suppose if they are synonyms that does not matter too much." CreationDate="2017-11-06T09:36:47.690" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="14567" PostId="5015" Score="0" Text="@mdewey I think it's a question of what eponyms are popular enough to warrant a tag synonym. This is an empirical question that should be easy to answer using our website: a search for &quot;Fisher's method&quot; yields 77 results, for &quot;Stoufer's method&quot; - 28 results. Anything else with &gt;10 mentions?" CreationDate="2017-11-06T09:53:14.260" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14569" PostId="5015" Score="1" Text="@amoeba, `[fishers-method]` is a synonym [here](https://stats.stackexchange.com/tags/combining-p-values/synonyms)." CreationDate="2017-11-06T12:43:15.597" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14636" PostId="5015" Score="0" Text="Are we trying to eliminate the tag? There are four left now for none of which I can find a good replacement." CreationDate="2017-11-08T17:05:08.063" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="14637" PostId="5015" Score="0" Text="@mdewey I did these last four. The tag is gone. Thanks a lot for your help, this was a nice team work. Do you want to post an answer?" CreationDate="2017-11-08T19:21:11.383" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14639" PostId="5015" Score="1" Text="I noticed that a lot of the `[fisher]` questions were about [tag:fishers-lsd], which is legitimate, so I created that &amp; retagged them, @amoeba. I'll post an answer. LSD is mentioned in various threads on CV, but I found 9 that were sufficiently *about* LSD that I added the tag." CreationDate="2017-11-08T19:59:28.157" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14640" PostId="5015" Score="0" Text="Hmmm, I hadn't noticed the new `[fisher-scoring]` tag. I probably should have put that on some. [This search](https://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=fisher+score+is%3Aquestion+-%5Bfisher-scoring%5D) suggests there are threads that should probably have it." CreationDate="2017-11-08T20:10:28.717" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14641" PostId="5015" Score="1" Text="@gung It looks like almost all of these threads are not really about Fisher's scoring. I noticed one that clearly *is* and put the tag on it now, but overall I don't think we are missing a lot of questions." CreationDate="2017-11-08T20:17:04.993" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14557" PostId="5016" Score="5" Text="+1. Looks like it should be a synonym." CreationDate="2017-11-05T19:30:34.860" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14561" PostId="5016" Score="2" Text="If there is no dissent w/i a week or so, ping me &amp; I'll create the synonym." CreationDate="2017-11-06T01:55:59.620" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14700" PostId="5016" Score="0" Text="This can probably go ahead now @gung." CreationDate="2017-11-11T23:47:04.683" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14702" PostId="5016" Score="1" Text="I have made p-o a synonym of o, &amp; merged them." CreationDate="2017-11-11T23:51:03.140" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14556" PostId="5017" Score="2" Text="(This could probably have been added to our master [tag synonym thread](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1200/current-tag-synonym-candidates).) Do you have a preference about which is the master tag? `-gral` has 122 threads, whereas `-gration` has 43, of which 6 have both; Both have excerpts, neither really has a full wiki. That suggests to my mind that `-gral` is preferred, but I could see either as just fine." CreationDate="2017-11-05T19:28:57.790" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14610" PostId="5017" Score="1" Text="@gung I don't care much either, so let's go with the shorter &amp; more popular one then?" CreationDate="2017-11-07T12:54:28.750" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14553" PostId="5018" Score="8" Text="Stochastic Gradient Descent?" CreationDate="2017-11-05T18:30:03.423" UserId="74500" />
  <row Id="14554" PostId="5018" Score="1" Text="The tag seems to have been created by @avocado [here](https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/201279/). This is an example of our [perennial problem](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3177/) w/ people using acronyms w/o defining them; &quot;SVD&quot; is never defined in either the question or the answer." CreationDate="2017-11-05T19:14:37.403" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14555" PostId="5018" Score="3" Text="@MatthewDrury, that seems to be the answer, why not make it an 'official' answer here, &amp; create an excerpt for the tag?" CreationDate="2017-11-05T19:17:54.813" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14568" PostId="5019" Score="1" Text="Please create the synonym!" CreationDate="2017-11-06T11:16:18.117" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="14570" PostId="5019" Score="2" Text="@kjetilbhalvorsen, amoeba, I created the synonym [here](https://stats.stackexchange.com/tags/sgd/synonyms)." CreationDate="2017-11-06T12:46:33.813" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14576" PostId="5019" Score="4" Text="@gung maybe we should swap the synonyms so the full form is the basic tag and sgd is a synonym? PS I created meta thread for this: https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5022/should-the-default-tag-synonyms-be-in-the-full-form-or-abbreviated" CreationDate="2017-11-06T15:22:56.147" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="14579" PostId="5019" Score="0" Text="That's potentially fine w/ me, @Tim. My 1st thought is that people who ask / answer about this seem to have preferred the short version, so we might take that into account. It might also be worth discussing. What do amoeba, Kjetil, &amp; Matt think, eg?" CreationDate="2017-11-06T15:28:21.903" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14581" PostId="5019" Score="0" Text="@kjetilbhalvorsen, see comments above. Do you have a preference?" CreationDate="2017-11-06T15:28:51.607" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14584" PostId="5019" Score="0" Text="@gung I have no preference." CreationDate="2017-11-06T15:30:08.147" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="14589" PostId="5019" Score="2" Text="I'd prefer the full version be primary, and I'd prefer that was our general rule!" CreationDate="2017-11-06T15:35:57.870" UserId="74500" />
  <row Id="14574" PostId="5021" Score="2" Text="The question is not off-topic and I don't understand why it was closed as such. It does look rather unclear, at least for people not very familiar with the VGG16 architecture. I think you should edit (no need to remove the reference to the course, but make the Q clearer to everybody) and vote to reopen, sure." CreationDate="2017-11-06T15:08:27.437" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14575" PostId="5021" Score="3" Text="Apart from that, I am pretty sure that it's possible to accept answers on closed questions." CreationDate="2017-11-06T15:08:48.700" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14580" PostId="5021" Score="2" Text="BTW, why didn't you upvote the question? If you chose to answer it, then presumably you found it a &quot;useful and clear&quot; question, which are criteria for upvoting." CreationDate="2017-11-06T15:28:37.093" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14590" PostId="5021" Score="2" Text="uh, sorry, no, I didn't upvote it because I didn't find it very clear (although indeed very useful), but at the same time not so unclear that it should be closed...an &quot;average&quot; question which didn't need either upvoting or downvoting, but which was &quot;good enough&quot; to be worth answering. I think it's quite clear **now** (after my edit), so I'll upvote: I hope that doesn't make me sound presumptuous!" CreationDate="2017-11-06T15:44:08.147" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="14591" PostId="5021" Score="0" Text="pardon, **our** edits: I didn't notice you also made an edit." CreationDate="2017-11-06T15:48:00.150" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="14577" PostId="5022" Score="4" Text="Upvote here if you prefer the full form." CreationDate="2017-11-06T15:26:25.357" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="14578" PostId="5022" Score="0" Text="Upvote here if you prefer the abbreviated form." CreationDate="2017-11-06T15:26:36.830" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="14585" PostId="5022" Score="6" Text="I think the preferred form should depend on how widespread/well-known the acronym is. E.g. [pca] and [svd] are IMHO fine. But obscure abbreviations are not good as tag names. Where to draw the line, I don't know." CreationDate="2017-11-06T15:30:28.340" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14586" PostId="5022" Score="2" Text="@amoeba but what is &quot;widespread&quot; and &quot;obscure&quot; may depend on your background..." CreationDate="2017-11-06T15:31:30.880" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="14587" PostId="5022" Score="8" Text="OK, but de-abbreviating e.g. [anova] or [arima] seems like an overkill. &quot;Autoregressive integrated moving average&quot; won't even fit as a tag name." CreationDate="2017-11-06T15:33:47.463" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14592" PostId="5024" Score="1" Text="+1, this is my default policy as well." CreationDate="2017-11-06T15:55:41.707" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14593" PostId="5024" Score="5" Text="I don't agree personally, I really prefer the full name be used.  Yet, this is a very sensible argument, so I support it." CreationDate="2017-11-06T18:11:11.737" UserId="74500" />
  <row Id="14699" PostId="5024" Score="0" Text="@MatthewDrury Would you prefer the full name to be used for &quot;ANOVA&quot;? &quot;ARIMA&quot;? My personal preference would *in the vast majority of situations* be for full names, but there are a few things which are better-known by their abbreviations. I am upvoting this answer because I suspect, in practice, most of the time that it's sensible, users will prefer fuller names." CreationDate="2017-11-11T23:39:35.613" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="14710" PostId="5024" Score="0" Text="@Silverfish I wrote don't a detailed description of my thoughts on this here: https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3177/74500" CreationDate="2017-11-12T01:12:49.553" UserId="74500" />
  <row Id="14711" PostId="5024" Score="0" Text="@Matthew Ah, great post, I've (+1)ed it in the past but forgot it was you who wrote it or that we had discussed it before! It did get a lot of support in that thread, which suggests that many users see abbreviations as (often) unnecessarily ambiguous." CreationDate="2017-11-12T01:22:39.597" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="14600" PostId="5025" Score="7" Text="It's probably worth me mentioning that this question was in fact reopened by the community (i.e. by votes of ordinary users with enough reputation to vote to reopen). This is exactly how the system should work." CreationDate="2017-11-06T22:24:06.490" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14598" PostId="5026" Score="0" Text="Thanks much. Much obliged." CreationDate="2017-11-06T20:19:40.853" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="14599" PostId="5026" Score="0" Text="If you are going to carry this out, then ping me please once this is done. Cheers. (Of course let's see first if anybody protests.)" CreationDate="2017-11-06T20:23:16.953" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14718" PostId="5026" Score="0" Text="Hi Carl. So what do you think about this? Do you agree with my assessment? If you do, shall we go ahead? Do you want to implement that?" CreationDate="2017-11-12T14:15:14.287" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14719" PostId="5026" Score="1" Text="Yes, I agree with your assessment and have been slowly implementing it. The reason why I did not respond was because you requested a ping upon completion, and I did not finish making changes. For me, this has proved to be a slow process because the material is new to me and I have to work to understand each Q/A. If you wish to pitch in, feel free to do so. It is less important who does what, when, than it is to create a hierarchic dialectic." CreationDate="2017-11-12T14:33:31.923" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="14720" PostId="5026" Score="0" Text="@Carl Ah, OK great. Sure, no pressure. I might retag something at some moment, but I am happy to let you do it too. Some are pretty straightforward (e.g. see this search https://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bradial-basis%5D+network+is%3Aquestion) but of course if you want to carefully review each Q then it takes time." CreationDate="2017-11-12T14:37:58.927" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14741" PostId="5028" Score="1" Text="Just adding a note that poll-like Meta questions are usually not a good idea. It's preferable to leave the question open so that everyone can voice their opinions, and elaborate on and justify them too — see these two posts by Robert on MSE, elaborating on why, [here](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/233943/208518) and [here](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/279267/208518)." CreationDate="2017-11-15T13:48:25.673" UserId="72321" />
  <row Id="14607" PostId="5031" Score="1" Text="Longer code snippets or data dumps can be pasted e.g. on https://gist.github.com (does not require registration; really simple interface) and then it's enough to put a link in the question. In particularly severe cases I guess one can do if for the OP." CreationDate="2017-11-07T12:25:34.887" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14625" PostId="5031" Score="6" Text="I disagree strongly about these examples. I think they're **model questions with a story, data, graphs and code** and I just upvoted them as such. But if anyone is too busy to read them, that's understood as always. I don't think they raise any points of principle at all. On a different note, almost anyone can comment suggesting cuts of unnecessary material. I and others will often edit for style cutting out unnecessary verbiage especially &quot;I need your help&quot; &quot;My question is&quot; &quot;I am from Mars and new here&quot; (not an issue here)." CreationDate="2017-11-08T08:39:51.463" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14626" PostId="5031" Score="3" Text="There sometimes are long rambling questions that go on and on, but asking a poor question is not something to flag to moderators! If it were, their load would go up by a large factor. Comment and vote! For example, &quot;In my view, this question is too long for people to want to read or to understand easily. You might be better off trying to cut this down.&quot;  As in my previous comment, you may be on to something, but your examples don't convince. If someone wrote a long question, they may be  very unfocused or confused, but they tried." CreationDate="2017-11-08T08:48:55.317" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14630" PostId="5031" Score="0" Text="I agree on the &quot;good intention&quot; part however some parts can get repetitive, redundant or unnecessary. For example OP provided both the graph AND the data of it where the graph alone is certainly enough. I think this distractions can decrease the effectiveness of both the question and the answer thus reaching to potentially less people. That is my main concern." CreationDate="2017-11-08T10:56:54.010" UserId="93663" />
  <row Id="14632" PostId="5031" Score="4" Text="One could argue that it is better to provide too much than do what so many of our questioners do and provide far too little." CreationDate="2017-11-08T11:55:05.723" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="14633" PostId="5031" Score="3" Text="What is repetitive, redundant or unnecessary (the last word is sufficient)  can be skimmed or edited. Often I  want the graph to see what is going on **and** the data to explore and evaluate other analyses. Sometimes the graph is enough but &quot;certainly enough&quot; is just not correct. I've seen many threads where people ask for data even though a graph is provided. You can ignore anything whose style irritates you; it is one of the best principles there is." CreationDate="2017-11-08T13:36:49.597" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14605" PostId="5032" Score="1" Text="Following your link I see a feature request, but it does not look like it's implemented. I don't think this feature is available on SO." CreationDate="2017-11-07T12:21:47.940" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14606" PostId="5032" Score="0" Text="@amoeba one of the answers has working example, so it seems it is implemented." CreationDate="2017-11-07T12:24:34.040" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="14609" PostId="5032" Score="0" Text="Hmm. I don't see a working example." CreationDate="2017-11-07T12:47:41.297" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14612" PostId="5032" Score="0" Text="Sorry, I meant also this https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/270973/3986320" CreationDate="2017-11-07T13:11:39.200" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="14613" PostId="5032" Score="0" Text="Nice! But apparently (https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/269753) only supports HTML, CSS, and JS." CreationDate="2017-11-07T13:16:01.893" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14614" PostId="5032" Score="0" Text="@amoeba maybe we could request for it, so it'd be a feature similar to [spoilers](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/72877/whats-the-exact-syntax-for-spoiler-markup) feature?" CreationDate="2017-11-07T13:19:51.230" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="14615" PostId="5032" Score="3" Text="This has been discussed multiple times on Meta.SE and has **status-declined**. https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5199. Too bad." CreationDate="2017-11-07T13:25:52.403" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14629" PostId="5032" Score="3" Text="Not against this, but keeping questions self-contained and complete is a strong positive. Once anyone says their code is to be found elsewhere I usually bail out straight away. On Stack Overflow, there is an ideal of a minimal, complete, verifiable example https://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve, most of which carries over to any kind of technical question. Any question on CV that hinges on very long code segments is likely to be off-topic any way. Large datasets can be highly problematic but more commonly showing a modest amount of example data is usually helpful and often sufficient." CreationDate="2017-11-08T08:59:46.107" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14631" PostId="5032" Score="0" Text="I think the new users tend to provide whatever they have including long codes and complete output of the script etc. Reducing the question to what actually matters requires some effort and possibly a little bit deeper understanding of what they are trying do. Again, if they have no clue, they seem to copy paste everything they have. I don't think one can blame them for it. So I agree that the shrinkable snippets can actually be useful for a clearer look." CreationDate="2017-11-08T11:05:58.547" UserId="93663" />
  <row Id="14634" PostId="5032" Score="3" Text="Anyone capable of grasping the idea of MCVE and providing one is probably close to answering their problem. Most discussions of similar ideas stress that stripping your problem down is a good way to solve it and thus make a post unnecessary." CreationDate="2017-11-08T13:42:08.317" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14619" PostId="5036" Score="1" Text="My first impression is that this isn't a good idea. For one thing, there is a real question about whether the ideal you describe can really be counted on to be implemented over time. It also seems like these questions would end up being the kind of publicity-seeking threads we've been (correctly) mixed on &amp; have largely moved away from." CreationDate="2017-11-08T02:36:07.747" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14620" PostId="5036" Score="3" Text="I find the idea of challenges attractive -- even intriguing (+1 for raising the idea); however I wonder about the extent to which a nontrivial problem could be completely defined and have unambiguous criteria. Would these be theoretical problems or data analysis problems or something else? The thread here that you link I think gives an excellent example of just how muddy such a problem may be (e.g. consider Russ Lenth's well-aimed disagreement with my answer there; while I was able to offer some justification in response, that's a good illustration of the kind of issues that may arise)" CreationDate="2017-11-08T02:47:43.560" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14621" PostId="5036" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b There's really good points... (a) I wonder if excluding specific types of contest *a priori* would be a reasonable way to approach (like we exclude some types of questions), (b) perhaps there could be sub-categories of contest, (c) I think there'd have to be a commitment on the part of the contest poser to judge by the criteria... perhaps contests might even *require* a bonus? Dunno..." CreationDate="2017-11-08T03:08:48.880" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="14622" PostId="5036" Score="0" Text="@gung Thank you for the intuitive response! :) I wonder if &quot;counted on to be implemented&quot; could be encouraged by appropriate standards in contest rules? (I.e. enough time, don't ask for a resolution to P v. NP or similarly tough problems, etc. :). As to publicity-seeking, might we not establish standards for high quality/unacceptable contests, just as we do for other kinds of questions?" CreationDate="2017-11-08T03:11:31.573" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="14624" PostId="5036" Score="3" Text="The Stack Exchange principle remains that the OP gets to decide, or not, on which answer is accepted. Others can express contrary views through voting, comments or answers. So no principle seems to be raised by someone posing a question to which they know the answer. On a different level, it is perfectly acceptable for people to answer their own questions: whether their answer is known at the outset is immaterial. So, I think any disagreement is over whether the wording _contest_ or _competition_ is congenial, or the flavour so implied to everyone's taste. Just do it and avoid those words?" CreationDate="2017-11-08T08:19:52.047" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14627" PostId="5036" Score="3" Text="It sounds like a duplicate of https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4464/are-puzzles-on-topic-on-cv" CreationDate="2017-11-08T08:52:27.570" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="14685" PostId="5036" Score="1" Text="Possible duplicate of [Are puzzles on-topic on CV?](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4464/are-puzzles-on-topic-on-cv)" CreationDate="2017-11-11T00:57:41.680" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="14738" PostId="5036" Score="0" Text="+1 I like contests. Mainly because the questions are fun and educative. They sharpen my knowledge and understanding in a wider area than my own field. For this reason I always try to solve questions of a quarterly mathematical magazine (winner is either the most elegant or if unclear based on a lottery), which are very approachable. And now since a while I answer questions here, for the same reason." CreationDate="2017-11-14T18:08:17.720" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="14739" PostId="5036" Score="0" Text="Currently the bounty system already works a bit like this, creating attention for interesting questions. And I believe it has an effect. Additional tags parallel to the bounties, e.g. pointing at competition/difficult/unsolved problems in statistics/etcetera, might help. However, I wonder if it would not move too far away from the formula of this website. But then again, I do not understand what the stack exchange network wants to do with the growth and development of their websites, and how this idea would fit their policies, desires and perspective of sustainability of the platform." CreationDate="2017-11-14T18:16:39.413" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="14769" PostId="5036" Score="0" Text="@MartijnWeterings I am less interested in &quot;creating attention for interesting questions,&quot; than I am in asking and answering questions in a form that invites creative, rather than canonical approaches to narrowly-posed statistical problems. But maybe that's already within the remit of CV... so your feedback (and others') is good to mull over, because maybe I am just interested in something we already do. :)" CreationDate="2017-11-16T21:33:17.947" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="14771" PostId="5036" Score="1" Text="I had not seen your question like that before. I believe it makes it stronger. Certainly, creative (or elegant) answers are to be appreciated, and promoting them is good. This fits well to what I mentioned in my first comment. In my second comment I worried about the stackexchange format, and I still do. The Q&amp;A format is very powerful, but also very rigid. Possibly a meta website might work well. A website that communicates with the information on stackexchange, but being separate does not interfere with it. Then stackexchange could become more like a backend." CreationDate="2017-11-16T23:09:20.953" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="14820" PostId="5036" Score="1" Text="OK, thanks. This has been lingering in the close vote queue for a while. I'll vote to leave open." CreationDate="2017-11-20T19:12:30.370" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14642" PostId="5038" Score="0" Text="I am not convinced that these are really so different meanings. Benchmarking means comparing performance of several things with each other. One can benchmark statistical models and one can benchmark algorithms. Is &quot;benchmarking in forecasting&quot; really something so distinct? Otherwise the suggested excerpt looks way too specific for me." CreationDate="2017-11-09T18:22:17.420" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14643" PostId="5038" Score="0" Text="If you think the tag should be split in two, then what two names would you suggest?" CreationDate="2017-11-09T18:22:33.350" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14645" PostId="5038" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Thanks for the feedback. I don't know enough to make a sensible suggestion, though it was clear the suggested excerpt is more specific than the current usage. &quot;How to analyse code runtime benchmarks I have run&quot; vs &quot;what benchmark I should compare a set of forecasts to&quot; seem different to me, but whether the difference is so fundamental that it deserves splitting I am not 100% sure. At any rate, it does seem a fairly heterogeneous collection of questions in its current form." CreationDate="2017-11-09T19:01:34.267" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="14646" PostId="5038" Score="0" Text="Well, I certainly do agree that the tag is not very useful (if at all). It it vanished, I would not regret. On the other hand, it does not look meaningless *enough* to actually spend the effort to kill it. On the yet another hand, 23 threads are so few that it's not much of an effort." CreationDate="2017-11-09T21:18:05.350" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14647" PostId="5038" Score="0" Text="Perhaps we could ping one of our active [time-series] and/or [forecasting] contributors (StephanKolassa?) to ask what they think." CreationDate="2017-11-09T21:18:44.793" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14648" PostId="5038" Score="1" Text="Really my first thought here is to kill off this tag." CreationDate="2017-11-09T21:46:09.013" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14673" PostId="5038" Score="0" Text="Wow my edit made it as a meta post on CV. looks like I made it." CreationDate="2017-11-10T18:52:12.157" UserId="155650" />
  <row Id="14674" PostId="5038" Score="0" Text="How about just creating a [tag:benchmark-forecasting] tag?" CreationDate="2017-11-10T18:53:59.860" UserId="155650" />
  <row Id="14704" PostId="5038" Score="1" Text="@EconJohn If we were to go down that line, I think `[forecasting-benchmark]` sounds more natural to me, but it would be good to get some feedback from a forecaster!" CreationDate="2017-11-12T00:17:12.727" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="14705" PostId="5038" Score="0" Text="@Silverfish well I am one, just a relatively new one with little academic qualification." CreationDate="2017-11-12T00:20:28.710" UserId="155650" />
  <row Id="14709" PostId="5038" Score="0" Text="I am with @gung: kill this tag. A special tag for benchmarks in forecasting looks too specialized to me. But I am not interested/knowledgeable in forecasting. Would be good to ping StephanKolassa and/or RobHyndman." CreationDate="2017-11-12T00:48:05.530" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14713" PostId="5038" Score="1" Text="Welcome to this rarefied club, @EconJohn. The air's thin up here, though." CreationDate="2017-11-12T01:38:12.040" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14714" PostId="5038" Score="0" Text="@gung on EconSE I'm a Mod. here im a peasant. *yelp*" CreationDate="2017-11-12T01:45:14.833" UserId="155650" />
  <row Id="14715" PostId="5038" Score="0" Text="My apologies, @EconJohn, I hadn't realized. I spend little time elsewhere in the SE system, but when I do, I'm a peon, so I understand." CreationDate="2017-11-12T02:01:27.393" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14652" PostId="5040" Score="5" Text="I'd be fine with unbrella tag. I'd argue that the main pourpose of the tags is to be *convenient* rather then precise." CreationDate="2017-11-10T11:46:46.977" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="14653" PostId="5040" Score="2" Text="I don't think they are synonyms.  Zero-inflation is a characteristic of a variable.  Hurdle models are one attempt to deal with that. And hurdle models could (at least in theory) be used for other kinds of inflation. And I agree with you about point mass at zero - I think that ought to refer to nearly continuous variables that are never negative and can have a mass at 0." CreationDate="2017-11-10T12:36:34.270" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="14654" PostId="5040" Score="2" Text="@PeterFlom OK, but we use [zero-inflation] tag e.g. for zero-inflated Poisson regression, don't we? Even though it's also one model that attempts to deal with &quot;zero inflation&quot;?" CreationDate="2017-11-10T12:38:51.063" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14655" PostId="5040" Score="0" Text="I guess it gets into a question of how many tags we want to have.  ZIP is not a synonym of &quot;zero-inflated&quot; in the way synonym is usually used in English.  But synonym seems to be used a little differently here. What are the arguments for &quot;lots of tags&quot; vs &quot;only a few&quot;?   (Also, are there guidelines to this sort of stuff somewhere?)." CreationDate="2017-11-10T12:43:55.860" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="14656" PostId="5040" Score="4" Text="The generic term seems to be clumping but I suspect many questioners will not recognise it. I think it is fine to keep zero-inflated to refer to any sort of clumping at zero and not try to have too many more precise tags." CreationDate="2017-11-10T13:08:48.050" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="14657" PostId="5040" Score="2" Text="@PeterFlom Yes, &quot;tag synonym&quot; is not necessarily a real *synonym*. Sometimes we decide to combine several related tags into one &quot;umbrella tag&quot;. For example we have [combining-p-values] tag, and [fishers-method] is a tag synonym; even though it's only one of the methods to combine p-values. There are other examples as well. I don't think we really have guidelines for that written anywhere; but I feel that there is some vague consensus, at least among the people who are usually discussing tag-related issues on Meta. If you want, you could start a Meta thread to discuss this point." CreationDate="2017-11-10T14:05:15.387" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14666" PostId="5041" Score="5" Text="This seems like a no-brainer. If there's no dissent after a period of time, ping me &amp; I'll do it." CreationDate="2017-11-10T15:45:25.780" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14752" PostId="5041" Score="0" Text="I'd say this can go forward @gung." CreationDate="2017-11-16T08:23:24.833" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14757" PostId="5041" Score="1" Text="It's done now, @amoeba." CreationDate="2017-11-16T12:37:01.940" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14758" PostId="5041" Score="0" Text="Thanks @gung. I am a bit concerned that [poisson] is now a synonym of [poisson-distribution]. Wouldn't it make more sense to delete this synonym?" CreationDate="2017-11-16T12:49:35.910" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14759" PostId="5041" Score="0" Text="Do you want `[poisson]` to simply not exist? It's been merged w/ p-d." CreationDate="2017-11-16T13:24:37.457" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14760" PostId="5041" Score="0" Text="Yes, that's what I was thinking. I am not sure it makes sense to map any tag [a] to [a-b] when we also have [a-c], [a-d], etc. It's like with [fisher] when we got rid of this tag entirely. AFAIK there is no mod tool to just *rename* a tag, so the only way to rename is to create a synonym, merge, and then delete the synonym mapping. That said, if you have an argument for why [poisson] should stay as a synonym, then I am fine with it." CreationDate="2017-11-16T13:42:08.847" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14762" PostId="5041" Score="1" Text="Yeah, that makes sense. I deleted the synonym mapping." CreationDate="2017-11-16T14:04:11.307" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14658" PostId="5044" Score="2" Text="I have no idea what &quot;cycle&quot; is supposed to mean in this context. Can you give a link to a Wikipedia article or something similar that defines this term, and ideally suggest a tag wiki excerpt that you have in mind?" CreationDate="2017-11-10T14:10:32.653" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14659" PostId="5044" Score="2" Text="Could you explain what &quot;cycle&quot; would refer to?  We already have a &quot;seasonality&quot; tag." CreationDate="2017-11-10T14:10:34.370" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="14660" PostId="5044" Score="0" Text="I'd say that it is a similar case as in here: https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4440/what-do-you-think-of-the-new-tag-identity/4463#4463 Moreover, if there is 339 threads and until now they didn't need this tag, then why would we create it now (notice that the threads won't be re-tagged)? you can always search for `cycle [time-series]`." CreationDate="2017-11-10T14:12:24.863" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="14661" PostId="5044" Score="1" Text="Well, 339 is a somewhat misleading number; [a more appropriate query](https://stats.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&amp;q=cycle%20%5btime-series%5d%20is%3aquestion) finds only 100 Qs. However, looking at them I must agree with @whuber that it seems to be all about [tag:seasonality]." CreationDate="2017-11-10T14:17:37.977" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14662" PostId="5044" Score="0" Text="I googled &quot;cyclic pattern&quot; and found https://robjhyndman.com/hyndsight/cyclicts/. Can you ping @RobHyndman to join this discussion and share his opinion?" CreationDate="2017-11-10T14:23:42.110" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14663" PostId="5044" Score="0" Text="The quoted definition of &quot;cyclic&quot; is unusually narrow.  In mathematics, &quot;cyclic&quot; is often taken as a synonym of *periodic,* which in time series analysis means--seasonal." CreationDate="2017-11-10T15:31:57.603" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="14664" PostId="5044" Score="1" Text="@whuber I'd say it's unusually broad :-) &quot;A cyclic pattern exists when data exhibit rises and falls that are not of fixed period&quot; -- isn't it basically *always* true?.." CreationDate="2017-11-10T15:35:16.120" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14665" PostId="5044" Score="1" Text="@Amoeba Somehow I overlooked the &quot;not&quot;!  You're absolutely right--this &quot;definition&quot; is so broad as to be almost worthless.  It merely distinguishes data that can be fit with curves having three or more local extrema from all other data." CreationDate="2017-11-10T15:44:18.763" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="14667" PostId="5044" Score="0" Text="I have little expertise in time series. But this definition of cyclic (periods that are higher &amp; periods that are lower, of irregular duration) sounds like a *moving average* process to me. Is it different?" CreationDate="2017-11-10T15:58:32.867" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14668" PostId="5044" Score="0" Text="@gung The *moving average* process is a process comparable to an *autoregressive* process, the *cycle&quot; is a pattern comparable to *seasonality* or a *trend*" CreationDate="2017-11-10T16:00:45.117" UserId="128677" />
  <row Id="14721" PostId="5044" Score="2" Text="As Ferdi writes, there is indeed a distinction between seasonality (which has a fixed length which is typically known *a priori*) and cycles, which have varying lengths. As Ferdi writes, the most important examples are business cycles, so I'd expect this distinction to be important in Econ.SE. I'm just unsure how often this situation comes up at CV. Ferdi, can you give a few example questions that would get this tag?" CreationDate="2017-11-12T20:18:54.290" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="14669" PostId="5045" Score="2" Text="Hmm. Having [zero-inflation] *and* [zero-inflated-poisson]/[zero-inflated-neg-bin]/etc appears to me to be definitely a bad solution. To be fully consistent we would either need to get rid of [zero-inflation] altogether and sort it into more specific tags (you don't suggest that and I agree that it's a too fine splitting) or clump everything together into one umbrella tag (my suggestion)... Of course we don't *need* to be fully consistent." CreationDate="2017-11-10T17:03:47.723" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14670" PostId="5045" Score="0" Text="Another thing is that one can have zero-inflated positive-continuous data (e.g. zero-inflated gamma or something), in which case as far as I understand there is no difference anymore between hurdle+gamma or zero-inflated-gamma... No idea if this is used in practice or not." CreationDate="2017-11-10T17:04:57.410" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14671" PostId="5045" Score="0" Text="[cont.] and gamma+point-mass-on-zero would also be the same..." CreationDate="2017-11-10T17:14:07.867" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14672" PostId="5045" Score="1" Text="@amoeba, another possibility is to change the existing tag to [z-i-data] &amp; then have a generic [z-i-model]. That would be less open to error. My basic suggestion here is to add / clarify the excerpts &amp; otherwise leave it alone." CreationDate="2017-11-10T17:49:22.403" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14675" PostId="5045" Score="0" Text="I am not sure I understand what we would gain by separating z-i-data and z-i-model. Whoever has to deal with z-i-data will necessarily be looking for z-i-model. I think they go hand in hand. Could you explain a bit more what exactly you don't like about merging this all together into one umbrella tag? Do you think it would be too unspecific? I mean, we did not even have the hurdle-model tag until today, so it's not like it's a flourishing tag that should be left alone..." CreationDate="2017-11-10T20:32:16.047" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14676" PostId="5045" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, if you want to ditch the [hurdle-model] tag, that's fine. I think a tag for the phenomenon of having too many 0's in your (count) data, &amp; a tag for the phenomenon w/ continuous data, both w/ clear excerpts, is what's needed. If you want tags to address things like Qs about zi-models vs hurdle models, we would need additional &amp; more fine-grained tags. But I could live w/o them just as easily." CreationDate="2017-11-10T20:45:01.810" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14677" PostId="5045" Score="0" Text="(cont.) I don't think it's helpful to have the phenomenon of z-i conflated w/ the potential remedy of zi-*models*. When someone &quot;has to deal with z-i-data&quot; they aren't necessarily &quot;looking for z-i-model&quot;. They might be looking for a hurdle model, or an ordinal regression, or something else." CreationDate="2017-11-10T20:46:09.203" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14678" PostId="5045" Score="0" Text="`When someone &quot;has to deal with z-i-data&quot; they aren't necessarily &quot;looking for z-i-model&quot;. They might be looking for a hurdle model` - that's why I wanted to make it a synonym :-) But of course if there are even more possible remedies (you mentioned ordinal regression) then it stops making sense to merge everything... One reason to create hurdle-model tag was that I found it strange that we don't have it, so I thought I would create it and we'd make it a synonym of something. More as a quick fix to the current situation." CreationDate="2017-11-10T20:54:42.357" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14679" PostId="5045" Score="0" Text="Regarding continuous data: I searched for &quot;zero inflated gamma&quot; (https://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=zero+inflated+gamma) and I find quite some questions (some talk about &quot;gamma hurdle&quot;). Most of them have [zero-inflation] tag. But that's about continuous data. What would you do about that?" CreationDate="2017-11-10T20:58:40.407" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14680" PostId="5045" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, it's potentially OK w/ me to have h-m as a synonym for z-i, &amp; then to also create z-i-m &amp; make it a synonym as well. But I'm a little leery of conflating a phenomenon w/ a potential method to address it. I think that's conceptually confused. Alternatively, just have z-i &amp; p-m-a-z (delete h-m). Re gamma, I think Q's about continuous variables would be better retagged as p-m-a-z." CreationDate="2017-11-10T21:03:39.700" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14681" PostId="5045" Score="0" Text="I am just worried that people thinking about &quot;hurdle gamma&quot; or &quot;zero-inflated gamma&quot; will not think about using p-m-a-z tag. Let's see: `zero inflated gamma is:question` yields 19 results, `hurdle gamma is:question` yields 9 results, `[point-mass-at-zero] gamma` only 4. Actually, now that I look at it, [point-mass-at-zero] is a diverse tag, people use it e.g. for continuous priors with point mass at zero, which is a different context I would say..." CreationDate="2017-11-10T21:08:20.317" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14684" PostId="5045" Score="1" Text="I tried to summarize my current point of view in an answer that I just posted. Thanks a lot for this discussion." CreationDate="2017-11-10T23:41:47.293" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14686" PostId="5046" Score="2" Text="I mostly agree w/ this. I'm fine w/ `[zero-inflated-and-hurdle-models]`, eg, although it seems wordy to me. We could eliminate p-m-a-z &amp; fold that into z-i. We can also stay w/ z-i if you like. The suggestion of z-i-d was just about making it clearer / more distinct that the tag refers to the phenomenon of zero-inflation, &amp; not one particular (albeit popular) strategy to address that phenomenon. Eg, I don't think we should make [tag:weighted-regression] a synonym of [tag:heteroscedasticity], likewise I don't think we should make [tag:instrumental-variables] a synonym of [tag:endogeneity], etc." CreationDate="2017-11-11T03:15:02.997" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14687" PostId="5046" Score="0" Text="`[zero-inflation]` is fine but `[zero-inflated-and-hurdle-models]` seems way too cumbersome..." CreationDate="2017-11-11T13:26:30.930" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="14706" PostId="5046" Score="0" Text="@gung I see your point. How about we rename a tag into something that makes it clear that it's about ZI/hurdle *models* and not about the phenomenon (and get rid of the phenomenon tag at all)? `[zero-inflated-and-hurdle-models]` is clearly an awful name. Maybe just `[zero-inflated-model]`? And we write in the excerpt that this tag should be used for hurdle models too (and make the corresponding synonym). I've been looking at [zero-inflated] Qs to get some empirical evidence about how this tag is currently used and most of the threads are about ZI/hurdle models (both count and continuous). ctd" CreationDate="2017-11-12T00:21:05.673" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14707" PostId="5046" Score="0" Text="[cont.] There is indeed a small but non-trivial fraction of threads that arguably have nothing to do with any ZI-models (e.g. &quot;What is effect on PCA of having too many zeros in the data?&quot; or &quot;Explanatory variables with many zeros&quot;). Then we could remove this tag from such Qs." CreationDate="2017-11-12T00:21:50.547" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14712" PostId="5046" Score="0" Text="Could we do `[models-for-0-inflation]` (or something like that), &amp; then have `[zero-inflated-data]`? We could eliminate the current tag, &amp; create additional tags, `[zero-inflated-model]` &amp; `[hurdle-model]`, that become synonyms of m-f-0-i." CreationDate="2017-11-12T01:35:14.390" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14716" PostId="5046" Score="0" Text="@gung Well, I am concerned about the tag overlap. I understand the difference between models and data that you want to preserve, but if the tags (one for models and one for data) overlap more than X% then it doesn't make sense to have both of them. I don't know what is the threshold value of X, but in this case I estimate overlap of at least 90% and that should IMHO be above any threshold. (I could post some statistics based on searches that I did if you want.) That's why I am now thinking that maybe we don't need any tag for the zi-data." CreationDate="2017-11-12T10:03:57.430" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14717" PostId="5046" Score="0" Text="@gung An alternative that is perhaps also fine is not to do anything really. Then I would remove [hurdle-model] tag that I created and would manually get rid of [point-mass-at-zero]. [Zero-inflation] stays the tag about the phenomenon and we use it for all the zi/hurdle models which is the status quo. It's just weird that under this scheme we don't have any tag or tag synonym about hurdle-models. So if somebody types &quot;hurdle&quot;, nothing will pop up." CreationDate="2017-11-12T10:06:52.050" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14724" PostId="5046" Score="0" Text="I need to think about the overlap issue. We could change the excerpt to mention hurdle models." CreationDate="2017-11-13T01:57:58.953" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14750" PostId="5046" Score="0" Text="What if we made the excerpt read: `Count variables often have excess zeroes compared to a specified count distribution. Less commonly, continuous data can have this occur. Use this tag for this issue &amp; for approaches to deal w/ it (eg, ZIP &amp; hurdle models).`?" CreationDate="2017-11-16T02:33:55.260" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14778" PostId="5046" Score="1" Text="@gung See Achim's answer here, he makes some good points (I pinged him to share his opinion because he has by far the most answers in the [zero-inflation] tag). Taking some of his points into account, I modified your suggested excerpt as follows: `Excess of zeroes in the data compared to a specified distribution. Regression approaches include zero-inflated &amp; hurdle aka two-part models. For count data, zero-inflated Poisson (ZIP) and negative binomial (ZINB) are common.` What do you think?" CreationDate="2017-11-17T09:02:23.753" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14784" PostId="5046" Score="0" Text="@gung See also Achim's edit in the comments under his answer." CreationDate="2017-11-17T11:16:37.617" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14788" PostId="5046" Score="0" Text="I'm happy w/ his proposed excerpt as the solution, if that's fine w/ everyone else." CreationDate="2017-11-17T14:15:09.730" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14792" PostId="5046" Score="0" Text="Sounds good to me @gung. Should we (you) make the hurdle-models the synonym of zero-inflation then? I could manually take care of the several point-mass-at-zero threads later." CreationDate="2017-11-17T16:55:24.267" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14793" PostId="5046" Score="1" Text="I changed the excerpt to @Achim's version (I shortened it slightly). h-m &amp; p-m-a-z have both been made into synonyms of z-i &amp; merged. I deleted p-m-a-z. So it's all done now. There is no full wiki for z-i, however. We could work up something comprehensive to put there. We could also work on adding the tag to the appropriate threads where it's missing." CreationDate="2017-11-17T17:21:37.700" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14795" PostId="5046" Score="1" Text="I think you had asked me to weigh in on this, but you said everything I'd have wanted to say, but better. I'm generally in favor of having fewer tags, so what you settled on with Achim's answer works great for me." CreationDate="2017-11-18T17:13:36.423" UserId="36229" />
  <row Id="14722" PostId="5049" Score="2" Text="Thanks for the feedback. I think the difference between an &quot;important&quot; topic and a &quot;big&quot; one is worthwhile for tags." CreationDate="2017-11-12T21:04:15.890" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="14751" PostId="5049" Score="0" Text="+1 Kill the tag!" CreationDate="2017-11-16T08:22:57.693" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14809" PostId="5049" Score="1" Text="I have started removing the tags a few questions at a time. Will take a few days." CreationDate="2017-11-20T13:38:08.567" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="14993" PostId="5049" Score="0" Text="Just checked: three more to go :-)" CreationDate="2017-12-14T08:50:22.740" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14994" PostId="5049" Score="0" Text="@amoeba: gah, completely forgot about that! Thanks for pinging me! I'll finish this off now." CreationDate="2017-12-14T08:53:27.310" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="14995" PostId="5049" Score="0" Text="Done. Flagged the question to be tagged [tag:resolved]." CreationDate="2017-12-14T08:57:16.260" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="14996" PostId="5049" Score="0" Text="Hmm, we don't usually do it (marking with resolved) with tag related Meta posts but actually it might be not a bad idea. What we usually do, is to edit the answer with &quot;Update: done&quot; and ping the OP to accept it :-)" CreationDate="2017-12-14T08:58:58.850" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14997" PostId="5049" Score="0" Text="@Silverfish See above." CreationDate="2017-12-14T08:59:35.393" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15004" PostId="5049" Score="0" Text="Thank you Stephan!" CreationDate="2017-12-14T18:50:07.187" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="14729" PostId="5052" Score="6" Text="can start a second bounty (e.g. &quot;reward an existing answer&quot;) but it will have to be double the first one (however, you don't currently have the reputation to start any bounties at all)" CreationDate="2017-11-14T12:02:52.097" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14730" PostId="5052" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b Thanks for the info - yeah, I tried to find it again and came across the doubling :/ It's just unfortunate, as the answer was good and I wanted to respect that." CreationDate="2017-11-14T12:04:54.923" UserId="148135" />
  <row Id="14731" PostId="5052" Score="0" Text="It's not an insurmountable problem." CreationDate="2017-11-14T12:05:27.007" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14732" PostId="5052" Score="0" Text="True. A useful perspective that is." CreationDate="2017-11-14T12:06:11.260" UserId="148135" />
  <row Id="14735" PostId="5052" Score="3" Text="Thanks @Glen_b for funding a new bounty out of your own pocket - whether it ends up going to me or to someone else, it definitely benefits the community by encouraging people to answer questions." CreationDate="2017-11-14T14:52:41.487" UserId="182174" />
  <row Id="14736" PostId="5052" Score="3" Text="@Glen_b I echo the sentiments of Candamir. Thank you for adding it on." CreationDate="2017-11-14T17:30:59.007" UserId="148135" />
  <row Id="14742" PostId="5054" Score="2" Text="A convenient way to make such requests is to [suggest a tag synonym.](https://stats.stackexchange.com/tags/smallareaestimation/synonyms)  Because this is so rarely done, it wouldn't be a bad idea to alert a moderator in addition (or instead) of doing this." CreationDate="2017-11-15T15:22:19.587" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="14743" PostId="5054" Score="3" Text="@whuber, sufficiently high reputation in the particular tag is needed for suggesting a synonym, and this gets really hard for rarely-used tags such as the current one..." CreationDate="2017-11-15T15:32:17.723" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="14744" PostId="5054" Score="0" Text="Thank you for pointing that out.  That leaves only my second suggestion: flagging a tag for moderator attention." CreationDate="2017-11-15T15:38:19.990" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="14748" PostId="5054" Score="0" Text="&quot;the system did not allow me to create the new tag&quot; - interesting. I did not know that it works like that." CreationDate="2017-11-15T18:43:36.723" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14749" PostId="5054" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, apparently, it does. It also suggested me to post on Meta!" CreationDate="2017-11-15T19:36:45.853" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="14745" PostId="5055" Score="0" Text="I would suggest not merging the tags, at least not at first, because it's difficult to reverse in case any problem is later noted." CreationDate="2017-11-15T15:39:01.123" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="14746" PostId="5055" Score="2" Text="@whuber agree, but in this case it is just transforming to &quot;nicer looking&quot; name, links between the tags work, so nothing seems to be lost." CreationDate="2017-11-15T15:40:38.357" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="14747" PostId="5055" Score="0" Text="@Tim, thanks for such fast reaction! In the answer, could you also discuss the case where a user cannot propose synonyms as described in the comments to the OP? Thanks." CreationDate="2017-11-15T15:44:36.880" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="14753" PostId="5055" Score="0" Text="&quot;If you are not a moderator, then you should suggest a tag synonym and wait for approval from the community, or moderator.&quot; -- this cannot really work for tag renaming because even if such a synonym goes through, the *old tag* will stay the master tag (and a synonym will be added)." CreationDate="2017-11-16T10:07:32.320" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14754" PostId="5055" Score="1" Text="Also, one cannot suggest a synonym before a synonym tag is created, and @RichardHardy said that he was not able to create a hyphenated version of the tag at all, presumably because the system does not allow very similar tag names. The bottomline is that if one wants to add hyphens to an existing tag, one should either post on Meta or reach out to the mods directly." CreationDate="2017-11-16T10:09:24.310" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14755" PostId="5055" Score="0" Text="@amoeba yes, but this is actually a *good* thing since it doesn't crash anything associated to the old tag." CreationDate="2017-11-16T10:09:35.203" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="14756" PostId="5055" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Maybe you could provide your own answer since with mod tools few things work slightly different so I may be wrong." CreationDate="2017-11-16T10:12:13.447" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="14761" PostId="5055" Score="1" Text="Perhaps with so few tags the OP could create a new dummy tag (perhaps richard-hardy) re-tag everything, let the old one disappear, re-tag all of richard=hardy manually to small-area-estimation?" CreationDate="2017-11-16T13:48:33.807" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="14768" PostId="5059" Score="7" Text="Agreed. 1. Whatever has been made been public can be quoted and developed with acknowledgments. 2. If in small doubt, be generous. &quot;This answer draws upon the characteristically elegant, perceptive and witty comment of @Scortchi, which goes to the heart of the matter.&quot;  3. Anyone feeling possessive about their ideas should not make them public." CreationDate="2017-11-16T19:43:37.717" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14770" PostId="5059" Score="8" Text="I agree completely; aside from acknowledging other people's effort that you draw on (which you're supposed to do anyway) -- or even appear to draw on -- I see no problem whatever in using information in other comments in an answer; I wish people would do it more often. Indeed, I think it's often acceptable to use information in other answers in the same thread, within reason (I feel it's incumbent to add some value in that case, though; for example, I think it's to be encouraged when trying to make a canonical answer to a common question). I don't see that the bounty changes things much" CreationDate="2017-11-16T22:23:00.360" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14773" PostId="5060" Score="2" Text="Yes. that's a good one. Bounty started." CreationDate="2017-11-16T23:46:19.253" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14843" PostId="5060" Score="1" Text="Bounty now awarded." CreationDate="2017-11-23T00:19:48.180" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14774" PostId="5061" Score="2" Text="I'm not sure I quite follow your point about the referenced thread. The answer to your question *here* is that regular users can't convert Qs to CW. You have to flag the Q &amp; the moderators do it." CreationDate="2017-11-17T01:10:11.937" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14775" PostId="5061" Score="0" Text="@gung my point is that the gist of the question is &quot;what named tests are just formulations of linear regression models?&quot; and he names the t test and anova as two examples. There are many possible answers." CreationDate="2017-11-17T02:27:08.750" UserId="8013" />
  <row Id="14779" PostId="5062" Score="0" Text="Thanks for answering! Very good points in the beginning. Re your suggestions: (1) Based on gung's draft and some of your points, I would suggest the following excerpt for the [zero-inflation] tag: `Excess of zeroes in the data compared to a specified distribution. Regression approaches include zero-inflated &amp; hurdle aka two-part models. For count data, zero-inflated Poisson (ZIP) or negative binomial (ZINB) are common.` Improvements welcome. We could then put links to related tags in the full tag wiki." CreationDate="2017-11-17T09:05:07.297" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14780" PostId="5062" Score="1" Text="(2) I am against [count-regression]. We already have [poisson-regression] and people have been using [negative-binomial] for NB regression, so creating [count-regression] now will leave a huge number of existing threads without this tag. I don't see a point. But we could extend the excerpt of [count-data], yes." CreationDate="2017-11-17T09:07:03.283" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14781" PostId="5062" Score="0" Text="(3) If we settle on the &quot;broad&quot; scope of [zero-inflation] tag as per your answer, then I think [hurdle-model] should be made a tag synonym." CreationDate="2017-11-17T09:07:28.290" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14782" PostId="5062" Score="0" Text="Good point re `[poisson-regression]` and `[negative-binomial]`. Personally, I'm not fond of distinguishing the two because they are so very closely related. But I think it would help to point out that `[count-data]` can be coupled with either `[poisson-regression]` or `[negative-binomial]`. This wouldn't involve major changes but help to create spillover effects between the tags." CreationDate="2017-11-17T10:59:47.117" UserId="60261" />
  <row Id="14783" PostId="5062" Score="3" Text="Proposed adaptation of tag description for `[zero-inflation]`: _Excess of zeros in a variable compared to a specified reference distribution. Regression approaches include zero-inflated models and hurdle aka two-part models. For count data, zero-inflated and hurdle models based on Poisson or negative binomial distributions are common (ZIP/ZINB and HP/HNB)._ The HP/HNB labels are far less common than ZIP/ZINB but for symmetry reasons I would still include them." CreationDate="2017-11-17T11:06:07.907" UserId="60261" />
  <row Id="14794" PostId="5062" Score="0" Text="Gung updated the tag description using your wording (slightly shortened), and made the hurdle-models the synonym of zero-inflation. I mark your answer as accepted! Thanks." CreationDate="2017-11-18T12:32:00.600" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14796" PostId="5062" Score="0" Text="Thanks for this - and for going through my contributions on CV - very much appreciated. I'm glad I could contribute a little bit back..." CreationDate="2017-11-19T00:07:38.253" UserId="60261" />
  <row Id="14785" PostId="5063" Score="1" Text="I have also found a bunch of questions about quasi-Poisson that did not have any quasi- tag. I tagged  a few with [quasi-likelihood]. This supports the idea of creating synonyms." CreationDate="2017-11-17T11:33:45.273" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14787" PostId="5063" Score="1" Text="Maybe we should change the quoted excerpt by saying &quot;It's often used for *binary or* count data&quot; and removing &quot;count&quot; in the end." CreationDate="2017-11-17T13:26:56.340" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14789" PostId="5063" Score="1" Text="I have shortened that wiki excerpt to conform with our [length policy](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2848).  BTW, manual retagging is not needed (and should be strongly discouraged because it alters the site systematically in a way that is difficult to reverse): once a synonym has been established, the system will apply it automatically.  That's one of the main points of using synonyms!" CreationDate="2017-11-17T14:21:18.850" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="14790" PostId="5063" Score="0" Text="I think the link should have been to here: https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2848 @whuber. I thought in this case it's important to mention quasi-binomial and quasi-poisson. But actually if we have synonyms that they will appear nearby anyway, when one is selecting a tag for a new question. Re manual retagging: I know! I thought with 15 Qs it does not really matter. But yes." CreationDate="2017-11-17T14:38:22.260" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14791" PostId="5063" Score="0" Text="Sorry--I cut off the last digit of the question number when pasting the link.  It's fixed now." CreationDate="2017-11-17T14:46:33.597" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="14804" PostId="5064" Score="4" Text="Long discussions in comments are not pretty solution, but sometimes they are necessity." CreationDate="2017-11-19T20:44:40.000" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="14805" PostId="5064" Score="4" Text="I usually at least try to do the former (discussion in comments &amp; then convert to an answer). [Here](https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/190535/) is an example when I did so. Alternatively, [here](https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/58718/) is a case where I posted an initial hint as an answer &amp; then had a discussion w/ the OP in comments underneath my answer." CreationDate="2017-11-19T21:05:15.683" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14806" PostId="5064" Score="4" Text="Stern strategy is to comment if and only if the OP indicates some thinking towards a solution. Sweet strategy is to give a broad push regardless. (&quot;Consider calculating the probability that the condition is not satisfied.&quot; &quot;Did you consider using Cauchy-Schwarz?&quot;  &quot;Are you getting confused between addition and multiplication?&quot;)" CreationDate="2017-11-20T09:27:36.803" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14808" PostId="5064" Score="3" Text="I think that, in general, the strategy of giving hints in comments and then perhaps making then into an answer is good.  But if the solution is something very straightforward (such as missing a - sign somewhere or using addition instead of multiplication) that might go to an answer right away." CreationDate="2017-11-20T12:04:11.897" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="14812" PostId="5064" Score="1" Text="NB There's a format for spoilers that can come in handy - see https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1815/17230." CreationDate="2017-11-20T15:06:18.133" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="14818" PostId="5064" Score="3" Text="I'd rather we did not have this tag, and treat self-study questions just with our custom close reason for it, and corresponding guidance through our meta faq. Also, we would relax answering in a full way or not, leaving the decision to post writers. Have expressed my opinion [here](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4393/should-i-add-the-self-study-tag-to-a-question-that-is-copy-pasted-from-a-book/4409#4409)." CreationDate="2017-11-20T16:23:03.847" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="14821" PostId="5064" Score="9" Text="Every technical forum I know is in tension on homework and assignments (I don't like the term `self-study` either but I doubt the term is the main issue). The tension is between a general goal of wanting to help those able and willing to help themselves and specific goals of (a) not wanting to support the idle and clueless (arguably in their own best interests too) (b) not wanting a forum to be swamped by elementary or trivial questions (c) not wanting to collude in or condone, however unwittingly, plagiarism or collusion, which are offences (NB) in any respectable university or equivalent." CreationDate="2017-11-21T02:44:32.943" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14822" PostId="5064" Score="6" Text="(a) (b) (c) are all in practice serious matters and, although they can also arise in some questions from researchers, they seem to imply the necessity for an explicit policy. In short, I can't agree that the tag should be abolished." CreationDate="2017-11-21T02:46:53.897" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14823" PostId="5067" Score="5" Text="We usually do not create new tags to anticipate questions: tags emerge from the keywords applied to existing questions.  Are you suggesting there are questions that need such a tag?" CreationDate="2017-11-21T20:01:08.937" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="14824" PostId="5067" Score="2" Text="This search https://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=%22number+needed+to+treat%22+is%3Aquestion only yields 5 Qs so I am not sure such a tag is really needed. But I don't know much about epidemiology." CreationDate="2017-11-21T20:06:46.850" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14825" PostId="5067" Score="0" Text="Well, I just asked such a question.  It's not my area of expertise, but I suspect that there are other such questions." CreationDate="2017-11-21T20:51:40.923" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="14826" PostId="5067" Score="3" Text="If you asked a question about this subject and feel that a particular string would be a useful tag, then by all means apply the tag.  That's how tagging is supposed to work and that's all it takes to create a new tag." CreationDate="2017-11-21T20:57:21.743" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="14827" PostId="5067" Score="5" Text="There is an existing tag, it is named &quot;[tag:nnt]&quot;. It appears I created in in December '12. It currently has 2 threads. We could add @amoeba's 3 others, make it a synonym of your new tag, or just get rid of it." CreationDate="2017-11-21T21:14:16.647" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14828" PostId="5067" Score="0" Text="I don't know how I missed that.  I think making it a synonym is best." CreationDate="2017-11-21T21:30:28.937" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="14829" PostId="5067" Score="0" Text="@PeterFlom, do you have a preference re which is the master tag?" CreationDate="2017-11-21T21:47:01.737" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14830" PostId="5067" Score="7" Text="@gung I would suggest the long one. I think the fact that Peter overlooked the short one speaks for itself." CreationDate="2017-11-21T22:08:29.840" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14831" PostId="5067" Score="0" Text="@gung  I agree with Amoeba." CreationDate="2017-11-21T22:35:14.283" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="14833" PostId="5069" Score="5" Text="I think the new question is poor (so it's not surprising that it was downvoted; my first impulse would also be to downvote), but arguably on topic. However, it's unclear (what on Earth is &quot;something concrete&quot;?), so I voted to close as such. If it gets clarified &amp; if edited for readability and clarity and a more focused title, then perhaps it could be an okay on topic question. Yes, I would put [references] tag. No, I would certainly not put [self-study] (which IMHO should be renamed into [exercises] or something). Also, tt might make sense to flag it for the mods to convert to Community Wiki." CreationDate="2017-11-22T12:05:47.810" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14838" PostId="5069" Score="3" Text="@amoeba Agreed, except I feel conflicted about applying CW when the problem really is that the question is completely off topic and badly formulated.  It seems like that wouldn't do any harm, but it could have the unintended consequence of confusing people about what CW really is for." CreationDate="2017-11-22T14:55:01.167" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="14839" PostId="5069" Score="6" Text="I closed this thread as *too broad* instead of making it CW. I'm very sympathetic to questions near the borderline that may have real value despite being outside our scope. I think that's a good description of the *Mathematician wants...* thread, but not of this one. If it were edited to be such, I would be OK with reopening it &amp; making it CW." CreationDate="2017-11-22T16:03:29.243" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14842" PostId="5069" Score="1" Text="side comment: the first Q could also be tagged [tag:careers]. Maybe it is a dupe to some of [these](https://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bcareers%5D+math)." CreationDate="2017-11-22T21:23:40.277" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="14845" PostId="5071" Score="2" Text="+1.  I hadn't noticed this use of one tag for two such distinct concepts--even though I was the last to edit it!  I guess I just accepted the *status quo*.  It could be a lot of work for someone to go through all the [tag:pdf] questions (almost 900 of them) to identify which ones really need to be retagged, though!" CreationDate="2017-11-23T01:05:03.470" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="14846" PostId="5071" Score="1" Text="@whuber Yup, agreed they are different and I do not like getting clobbered. Moreover, my post defining `pmf` was deleted, and I cannot tell how this occurred." CreationDate="2017-11-23T01:09:31.857" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="14847" PostId="5071" Score="0" Text="@amoeba What gives with this? Weigh in please." CreationDate="2017-11-23T01:10:28.380" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="14848" PostId="5071" Score="1" Text="Concerning your pmf post, could you provide some details of what you mean by that?  Often when stuff disappears it can be recovered, but we need some hints about where to look for it.  A few minutes ago I fielded your flag requesting a deletion of one of your answers on the main site, so I did so, but I hope that's not what you're referring to." CreationDate="2017-11-23T01:15:50.263" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="14850" PostId="5071" Score="0" Text="@whuber No, my friend, you did no wrong deletion. I did a `pmf` tag proposal, but cannot make a wiki tag that is not reviewed as my rep is &lt;5000, was notified that the tag is under review, and it does now not exist. It turns out that gung made the synonym just after I proposed the tag: https://stats.stackexchange.com/tags/synonyms I would like this discussed, please." CreationDate="2017-11-23T03:03:07.787" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="14851" PostId="5071" Score="2" Text="I've been clobbered here for insisting on *not* calling a pmf a pdf..." CreationDate="2017-11-23T03:21:40.110" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14852" PostId="5071" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b I would defend your position. A density function is the mass per unit x-axis variable, a mass function has a localized masses at evaluated points on an x-axis like at x=2,3, and are not per unit range." CreationDate="2017-11-23T03:30:17.880" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="14853" PostId="5071" Score="6" Text="I can't see any problem with making `[pdf]` and `[pmf]` synonyms. The idea of synonyms is not only about exact synonyms, but about groupping related concepts for easier searching." CreationDate="2017-11-23T08:13:45.967" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="14878" PostId="5071" Score="3" Text="Fashions change, so it's not just one kind of rigour versus its lack. Many modern authors regard density functions as defined widely, it being just a question of what kind of density in what kind of outcome space. So such authors are happy to  include functions defined w.r.t. counting measure, that some want to insist are mass functions. See for example Peter Whittle's probability text, various editions and titles from 1970 on." CreationDate="2017-11-24T16:19:01.053" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14916" PostId="5072" Score="0" Text="Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been [moved to chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/69409/discussion-on-answer-by-amoeba-lets-create-pmf-tag-and-keep-it-distinct-from)." CreationDate="2017-11-28T23:07:26.837" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="14854" PostId="5073" Score="6" Text="I don't know, but I often start my comments with *&quot;please edit your question to give us more details on...&quot;*, in many cases it seems to work better then simply asking for clarification." CreationDate="2017-11-23T09:08:55.897" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="14855" PostId="5073" Score="2" Text="@Tim good, but it doesn't seem to be enough for some OPs. I could add a little note in the help center, stressing the importance of updating the main question, if someone shows me/points me to a link on how to do it." CreationDate="2017-11-23T09:14:48.197" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="14856" PostId="5073" Score="6" Text="Well, someone could provide such explanation in this thread and you can always send link to it, however I'm afraid that the people who do not read/understand your comments, would be exactly the same group that would not visit the link." CreationDate="2017-11-23T09:18:33.347" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="14857" PostId="5073" Score="2" Text="@DeltaIV: True, but the way it usually seems to work out is that when someone overlooks the request to provide more information *by editing the question* their response is thin and incomplete in any case (at which point I usually give up rather than repeat myself in writing). Note that closing unclear questions in addition to commenting helps you to make the point." CreationDate="2017-11-23T10:31:18.550" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="14858" PostId="5073" Score="1" Text="@Scortchi how long should we give an OP before suggesting a close? I have seldom voted to close as I hold the good hope that someone does eventually edit the question or responds to the comments otherwise. Of course, any single arbitrary time cut-off will be flawed, but what kind of timeframe is considered reasonable? A couple of days, a week or a month even?" CreationDate="2017-11-23T10:47:00.147" UserId="144089" />
  <row Id="14859" PostId="5073" Score="1" Text="IWS: For 'close' read 'place on hold pending improvement'. The sooner the better [in my opinion](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3121/17230)." CreationDate="2017-11-23T11:05:17.557" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="14860" PostId="5073" Score="1" Text="@Tim if someone provides the explanation in this thread, I will for sure include the link - at least it shows that it's not just a pet peeve of  mine, but it's something backed up by people with considerably more reputation and/or status (e.g., moderators) than me. You think it won't work? Maybe, but at least I'll know I tried my best to convince them." CreationDate="2017-11-23T13:04:02.467" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="14861" PostId="5073" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi  please see my edited question :-) you  mean I should flag the question as &quot;unclear what you're asking&quot;, right? I do that often, but there are cases [where I think the question is not bad](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/301696/combining-multiple-series-of-experimental-data-to-calculate-confidence-intervals) (so I would feel a bit awkward flagging it), but the problem (prediction intervals for mixed models) is one of those where the answer depends even on &quot;tiny&quot; details . Anyway, if that helps the site quality, I can start flagging more questions." CreationDate="2017-11-23T13:22:45.393" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="14862" PostId="5073" Score="3" Text="@DeltaIV: I think you're misunderstanding something: to place a question on hold is to close it. The latter wording - users see '[on hold]' appended to the title of a closed question - was adopted to make it clearer that improvement followed by re-opening is the expected path. With over 3k rep., you can cast close votes yourself, with no need to raise flags." CreationDate="2017-11-23T13:33:38.450" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="14863" PostId="5073" Score="1" Text="@Scortchi yes, I was definitely misunderstanding that. I know I can cast `close` votes, but since I also see the `flag` option I thought there was some difference...I now think the only difference is that in the first case I don't need to get the moderators involved. Thanks for clarifying" CreationDate="2017-11-23T13:38:41.290" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="14874" PostId="5076" Score="6" Text="What do you mean..? In my case it is just that if I come along some question that needs moderation, then I do whatever is needed, I never explicitly look through the history since it would be hopeless given the number of Q&amp;A's." CreationDate="2017-11-24T13:05:28.477" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="14875" PostId="5076" Score="2" Text="Well, today I got a question from 2014 in my feed because someone (I think it was Kjetil) had edited it." CreationDate="2017-11-24T13:26:19.613" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="14884" PostId="5078" Score="4" Text="Personally I agree, but this has been discussed on Meta many times and the strong consensus among the most active and respected members of our forum is that our current policy regarding [self-study] tag works reasonably well and should be maintained." CreationDate="2017-11-24T22:43:19.887" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14882" PostId="5079" Score="4" Text="Point 4 happens to me. I sometimes clean up a tag (right now, the &quot;benchmark&quot; tag), so all questions get retagged, and some I VTC, some I answer." CreationDate="2017-11-24T22:00:58.033" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="14885" PostId="5079" Score="4" Text="I sometimes search for some tag or keyword adding the key answers:0 to explicitely find unanswered posts ... and yes, today that led to closing four dups. Sometimes maybe even an answer ..." CreationDate="2017-11-24T23:08:01.687" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="14886" PostId="5080" Score="4" Text="+1, I like the mention grandfathering which is often relevant to old threads (I would likely edit to remove obvious typos or fix math typesetting regardless, but it might affect whether I choose to vote-to-close for instance)" CreationDate="2017-11-25T03:04:36.773" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="14887" PostId="5081" Score="3" Text="This is an interesting perspective. However, (1) we have so many complete answers (instead of &quot;hints&quot;) in the [self-study] tag, including from our most respected users, that I am not sure it can serve this purpose in reality. (2) I strongly doubt that people use our site like you suggest: restricting the search to [self-study] in order *not* to see full solutions. Somehow I cannot imagine anybody doing that. I might be wrong, but I think that here you are trying to provide a service that [almost] nobody needs." CreationDate="2017-11-25T11:38:58.653" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14888" PostId="5081" Score="1" Text="I share amoeba’s opinion. Besides, following this approach we give priority to help an individual user rather than attempting to build the best repository of questions/answers that we can." CreationDate="2017-11-25T12:37:25.407" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="14889" PostId="5081" Score="1" Text="@AndreSilva My answer is arguing for the opposite -- making `self-study` questions useful beyond a single user. The fact that some questions have already been answered fully (i.e. the policy has not been sufficiently adhered in every case) doesn't imply that it's best to continue that way. Amoeba seems here to be arguing that we simply abandon existing policy, while I am trying to make the existing policy work better with the SE framework. While we *could* alter the policy (to one where `self-study` is essentially superfluous since every question would in effect be a free-for all), ... ctd" CreationDate="2017-11-25T17:15:55.253" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14890" PostId="5081" Score="1" Text="ctd...  that would be something to address in a new question. We would need to revisit the arguments for *why* we don't want complete answers on self study questions (*and* we'd need to revisit the question of what the purpose of the tag is, independent of the policy -- what are tags actually *for*?)" CreationDate="2017-11-26T00:20:52.943" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14891" PostId="5081" Score="2" Text="I agree with this perspective, even though I doubt later readers approach such questions in the same spirit as the OP. You can usually feel some degree of desperation in the OP's tone. But keeping from entirely solving the problem should be the rule, including spoilers." CreationDate="2017-11-26T16:14:02.193" UserId="7224" />
  <row Id="14892" PostId="5081" Score="1" Text="@XI'an I agree -- there should still be work left for the reader; that's the point of assigning such material; a spoiler is simply one way of helping people that choose to avoid bigger hints to do so - even though indeed most readers would not care to avoid any hints that are going." CreationDate="2017-11-26T21:22:21.913" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14893" PostId="5081" Score="2" Text="Glen, I think there are some false premises here: (i) self-study questions are already being answered fully, not being properly tagged, and what you fear is far away from happening; (ii) if what you feared actually happened (almost all reasonable statistics questions with complete answers here) this would be probably the best thing that could ever happen to this site, being great not only for students but for society in general --- there would be nothing like it anywhere else. Students who really want to learn must have self control to attempt first, it's not this site's job to enforce that." CreationDate="2017-11-27T04:02:32.393" UserId="39630" />
  <row Id="14894" PostId="5081" Score="0" Text="By the way I'm a self taught guitar player, and watching fully explanatory instructional videos was one of the most effective ways to speed up learning." CreationDate="2017-11-27T04:02:38.803" UserId="39630" />
  <row Id="14895" PostId="5081" Score="1" Text="PS:  I don't mean to favor answering poorly written questions demanding answers such as &quot;hw, ans pls!!!&quot; --- these questions should be simply downvoted and closed --- my point is just that I don't see any special reason to give a question special treatment, other than the question's content itself." CreationDate="2017-11-27T04:12:11.333" UserId="39630" />
  <row Id="16325" PostId="5081" Score="0" Text="&quot;Imagine the state of music performance of students who -- instead of actually practicing playing -- could send in videos of someone else performing the pieces they were supposed to learn!&quot; $\leftarrow$ I think you just described the *musical* practice of &quot;sampling&quot;." CreationDate="2018-07-26T04:45:03.060" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="14897" PostId="5082" Score="3" Text="Clarification on terminology: does HDE refer to what happens in logistic regression, or does it describe the property of the data?" CreationDate="2017-11-27T08:33:40.330" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14898" PostId="5082" Score="3" Text="@amoeba If we argue from historical principles then H&amp;D's paper is entitled &quot;Wald's Test as Applied to Hypotheses in Logit Analysis&quot; so I think they saw it as a property of the analysis method. It seems to me that separability may be slightly more general and so it would be better if it were the only term but I would not want to man the barricades over the choice." CreationDate="2017-11-27T13:54:43.940" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="14899" PostId="5082" Score="2" Text="We seem to have quite a few tagged [logistic] mentioning &quot;separation&quot; but tagged with neither [hauck-donner-effect] nor [separability] so if we do re-tag one of these existing threads then we might re-tag some which lack either." CreationDate="2017-11-27T14:10:42.517" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="14900" PostId="5082" Score="3" Text="That's a perceptive comment, @amoeba. I suppose this situation is analogous to the one w/ zero-inflation. Prima facie, it seems more appropriate to me to have a single tag here than there; but I'm not sure I can fully articulate why." CreationDate="2017-11-27T14:37:18.673" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14901" PostId="5082" Score="0" Text="Some evidence: recently this question https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/314842/error-gee-function-in-r-logistic-model-for-probability-has-fitted-value-very-c  about what look like hauck-donner effect, but in a logistic model estimated by gee, was closed as an exact duplicate of a question about hacck-donner in usual maximum likelihood logistic regression. I'm not totally sure that was absolutely correct ... what do you think? My guess is that the Hauck-donner effect will manifest itself even if estimation is not by maximum likelihood, but I know of no references ..." CreationDate="2017-11-27T17:30:14.113" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="14904" PostId="5083" Score="1" Text="Is this similar to the [XY problem](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/66377/what-is-the-xy-problem)?" CreationDate="2017-11-27T18:38:04.897" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="14905" PostId="5083" Score="4" Text="Although it's usually undesirable as a direct putdown -- as  being neither courteous nor constructive -- the reaction &quot;That's not a question; that's a statement&quot; does often summarize posts of this kind (and some others)." CreationDate="2017-11-27T19:07:33.143" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14903" PostId="5084" Score="3" Text="I can always make a synonym &amp; merge them, so I don't see the need for you to do all that work. The question is more just, should they stay separate or come together (somehow)? If they should stay apart, how should we define their scope more clearly such that they will be used correctly?" CreationDate="2017-11-27T18:33:26.720" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14911" PostId="5084" Score="1" Text="All in all,there are so few questions in total so it makes meaning to make hauck-donner-effect a synonym of separability even it they are not synonyms in strict sense, but clearly [separability] is the more general term." CreationDate="2017-11-28T11:45:11.423" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="14912" PostId="5084" Score="0" Text="To me [separability] sounds not very clear as a tag name. Maybe [complete-separation] could be clearer? Or is it just because I am not very familiar with this terminology? @gung" CreationDate="2017-11-28T22:25:27.833" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14914" PostId="5084" Score="0" Text="I agree that separability is not very clear, complete-separation might be better." CreationDate="2017-11-28T22:28:04.147" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="14917" PostId="5084" Score="1" Text="@amoeba, technically, there is also &quot;quasi-separation&quot; at the boundary between complete separation &amp; overlapping categories. We could try `[category-separation]`, which isn't an official term, but is very descriptive &amp; intuitive. H-D is rather esoteric, IMHO." CreationDate="2017-11-29T01:08:43.010" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14919" PostId="5084" Score="0" Text="I read up on what &quot;quasi-separation&quot; is and I see it called &quot;quasi-complete separation&quot; too. I think I would be fine mapping it under &quot;complete-separation&quot; which does have a clearer name for a tag than &quot;category-separation&quot; IMHO. @gung" CreationDate="2017-11-29T08:08:51.077" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14920" PostId="5084" Score="1" Text="My feeling is that most of the people who post questions about separation have no idea what is happening to them and so many of the tags are done later by us or people like us. Ditto HDE. I would prefer to leave it as [separability] even if usually the problem is indeed complete-separation but I am happy to go with the majority." CreationDate="2017-11-29T12:05:12.383" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="14921" PostId="5084" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, would just plain, old `[separation]` be OK?" CreationDate="2017-11-29T12:56:34.383" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14923" PostId="5084" Score="0" Text="@gung I don't know, to me personally [complete-separation] is rather clear while [separation] (or [separability]) sounds mysterious. But then there is this Wiki page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_(statistics) so maybe &quot;separation&quot; is a clear enough term. It's not my area, so I don't know the terminology. Feel free to ignore my opinions here." CreationDate="2017-11-29T15:01:18.040" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14924" PostId="5084" Score="0" Text="cc above to @mdewey" CreationDate="2017-11-29T15:01:31.667" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14927" PostId="5084" Score="1" Text="@amoeba there is a highly voted question with an extremely good answer by scortchi https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/11109/how-to-deal-with-perfect-separation-in-logistic-regression (which has both tags incidentally) if you want to extend your horizons. Its accepted answer is not so good in my view." CreationDate="2017-11-29T15:09:23.927" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="14928" PostId="5084" Score="3" Text="Regarding separation, when I talk to people about this, I never say 'complete separation' (or 'partial separation', or 'quasi separation', etc, or for that matter 'separability' or 'h-d-e'). I always just say 'separation'. I may follow up w/ a brief explanatory description. To me, plain, old 'separation' would be the clearest, phrase." CreationDate="2017-11-29T15:09:37.720" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14930" PostId="5084" Score="0" Text="OK then [separation] seems fine as the master tag. @gung" CreationDate="2017-11-29T15:17:38.233" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14931" PostId="5084" Score="0" Text="@gung I'd say let's wait with merging, not because I am not sure but in accordance with the policy suggested in the (only) answer to https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2790. By the way, what happened with the project to have all old (older than several months) synonyms merged? :-)" CreationDate="2017-11-29T15:19:46.403" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14932" PostId="5084" Score="1" Text="@mdewey, if you like the idea of using just `[separation]`, why not add it to your answer? If everyone is in agreement, I can accept it &amp; implement this after a few days w/o objection. Also, you could suggest your preferred excerpt text, if you'd like (or I could do it from the existing 2 excerpts)." CreationDate="2017-11-29T17:15:02.500" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14933" PostId="5084" Score="0" Text="I am not convinced that Hauck Donner effect is any synonym to  (quasi or complete) separability, see my separate answer. but it might be that many posts thought this was the case, and hence some cleaning is needed?" CreationDate="2017-11-30T05:07:06.343" UserId="35398" />
  <row Id="14966" PostId="5084" Score="0" Text="I have made the new tag &amp; the 1st synonym (for separability). I added the excerpt from your post, but I think we should work on refining it. Taken literally, there are plenty of cases that meet that definition but aren't separation: consider my answer here: [Is it possible to get fitted values 0 or 1 in logistic regression when the fitting algorithm converges?](https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/277237/7290), there are plenty of values of `x` where there is only 1 category, but there is no separation. I created a full wiki from h-d-e w/ some editing." CreationDate="2017-12-04T15:02:17.297" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14969" PostId="5084" Score="0" Text="I did struggle to find something which I hoped was understandable to beginners but still correct. I think it might be better if someone else in this thread had a go at it @kjetilbhalvorsen might have a contribution." CreationDate="2017-12-04T16:54:34.193" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="14972" PostId="5084" Score="1" Text="Maybe something along the lines &quot;Separation occurs when the values of the categorical outcome (classes) can be completely separated by a linear combination of predictors. Can cause problems in logistic regression.&quot; ? CC @gung" CreationDate="2017-12-06T10:21:43.727" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14973" PostId="5084" Score="2" Text="I adapted @amoeba's text. Both synonyms are made &amp; merged." CreationDate="2017-12-06T14:17:07.297" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14907" PostId="5085" Score="0" Text="whuber has asked me not to give him bounties, sorry (and hasn't yet indicated a change of heart). I agree that this answer (like many of his answers) deserves one. I will have to try to content myself with a mere upvote there. I have placed a bounty for amoeba's answer" CreationDate="2017-11-27T21:59:05.313" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14909" PostId="5085" Score="1" Text="Stephan and @Glen_b thanks. I am planning to share one half of Glen's  bounty with whuber :-)" CreationDate="2017-11-28T08:12:12.353" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14918" PostId="5085" Score="1" Text="I wonder if whuber's answer is the highest upvoted deleted answer on our site (Cc to @Glen_b)." CreationDate="2017-11-29T07:56:29.673" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14936" PostId="5085" Score="1" Text="I've been working on an answer that addresses &quot;physicality&quot; fallacies which have been appearing throughout the question's answers. No bounty-begging here, but I am hoping some people see it and enjoy. It has been fun to write! https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/316129/11646" CreationDate="2017-12-01T16:15:37.417" UserId="11646" />
  <row Id="14942" PostId="5085" Score="0" Text="I'd like to share part of @Glen_b's generous bounty with some other answer(s), so Stephan and Glen_b if you have some suggestions, let me know." CreationDate="2017-12-02T09:19:44.267" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14943" PostId="5085" Score="0" Text="Also, ekvall's answer IMHO definitely needs to have more net votes than Neil's one so check your votes :)" CreationDate="2017-12-02T09:20:43.823" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14934" PostId="5086" Score="1" Text="This is interesting, but I have never seen this generalized use in practice." CreationDate="2017-12-01T13:46:58.293" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="14935" PostId="5086" Score="2" Text="Looking again at the questions tagged HDE even the titles usually contain &quot;separation&quot; so would you like to spell out the implications of your answer for what we should do next?" CreationDate="2017-12-01T15:53:01.650" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="14937" PostId="5086" Score="1" Text="But are there any references for the common use of Hauck Donner as separability @kjetilbhalvorsen ? A google search links to... cross-validated itself, blogs or stata lists. Any papers or books in the next 30-50 google links refer to the Wald test issue it seems?" CreationDate="2017-12-01T17:18:52.290" UserId="35398" />
  <row Id="14938" PostId="5086" Score="0" Text="@mdewey fair point, as I am not sure about where the &quot;common use&quot; of HDE as separation issue comes from, I am not sure at this point what the implications should be." CreationDate="2017-12-01T17:20:24.980" UserId="35398" />
  <row Id="14939" PostId="5086" Score="1" Text="MASS 4th edition, page 198 says: &quot;There is one fairly common circumstance in which both convergence problems and the Hauck-Donner phenomenon occur.  This is when the fitted probabilities are exytremely close to zero or one&quot;.  So, it does not equate, just says that it very commonly occurs together. That may explain the &quot;common use&quot; issue." CreationDate="2017-12-01T18:18:58.630" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="14940" PostId="5086" Score="0" Text="Indeed @kjetilbhalvorsen, I had just added that quote into the list! I am also wondering whether this quote led to confusion among practitioners. But is this &quot;common use&quot; broader than cross-validated itself?" CreationDate="2017-12-01T18:48:32.787" UserId="35398" />
  <row Id="14941" PostId="5086" Score="2" Text="I'm not sure about this. These quotes suggest H-D is about problems with the Wald test, but the examples mostly refer to logistic regression, it seems. When there is separation, the Wald test has problems. That is clear. If there are similar problems with the Wald test outside of separation in logistic models, I'm not familiar w/ it. Moreover, all the threads grouped by the tag seem to be about separation. If we just edited them, we would eliminate the tag. Is that what you're suggesting? I doubt there is sufficient demand to support a tag for the Wald test blowing up outside of separation." CreationDate="2017-12-02T01:12:32.680" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14944" PostId="5086" Score="0" Text="It seems h-d-e tag was created by Sycorax as mentioned here https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3112/28666 so maybe you guys should ping him to join this conversation? CC @gung" CreationDate="2017-12-03T09:40:56.270" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14946" PostId="5086" Score="2" Text="I was under the impression that HDE exclusively referred to the &quot;perfect separation&quot; issue, but it appears that was a misuse or conflation of terminology. But from a tagging perspective, I think the problem largely disappears if we're agreed to retag all posts referring to separation as &quot;HDE&quot; to &quot;separation.&quot; I'm not aware of any posts asking about the HDE and referring to Wald tests." CreationDate="2017-12-03T17:49:21.793" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="14947" PostId="5086" Score="0" Text="@gung I forgot to tag you in my comment which you solicited." CreationDate="2017-12-03T22:54:42.433" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="14948" PostId="5086" Score="1" Text="@Matifou, I appreciate your contribution. Would you mind going through the h-d-e threads &amp; seeing if you find any that are about problems w/ the Wald test unrelated to separation &amp; letting me know which you find? If you don't find any, would you be willing to go along w/ us making the synonyms as suggested above for the purposes of keeping the site's content organized? (Nb, the way tags are used is that they don't really have to be perfect synonyms in the everyday language sense.)" CreationDate="2017-12-04T01:06:29.897" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14949" PostId="5086" Score="0" Text="@gung. Sure. I did go through and indeed, it looks like all of them relate to the (quasi-)separation issue. That's impressive indeed :-) So I think indeed going ahead by making sure they have a separation tag, and removing the HDE tag. The only one I found discussing HDE didn't have the tag! https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/5304/why-is-there-a-difference-between-manually-calculating-a-logistic-regression-95/5412#5412" CreationDate="2017-12-04T05:18:22.427" UserId="35398" />
  <row Id="14950" PostId="5086" Score="0" Text="This is not necessarily very surprising because it seems that in the vast majority of cases [h-d-e] tag was not added by the OPs but by one of the few people who are participating in this Meta discussion. So I wouldn't take the evidence about how [h-d-e] tag is being used on CV as an evidence of how this term is used in a broader community. That said, I agree with the current proposal as stated above by @gung." CreationDate="2017-12-04T08:38:38.867" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14962" PostId="5086" Score="1" Text="OK, I'm going to go ahead &amp; make the synonyms at this point." CreationDate="2017-12-04T14:21:16.673" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14977" PostId="5087" Score="0" Text="For an alternative, you could always just host and link to a graphic off-site, and maybe provide a still frame so readers in the future will know what they're linking to." CreationDate="2017-12-10T18:22:26.277" UserId="36229" />
  <row Id="14952" PostId="5088" Score="0" Text="-1 because I think this suggestion is off-topic here as Glen_b explicitly asked about answers." CreationDate="2017-12-04T11:11:05.233" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14954" PostId="5088" Score="0" Text="@amoeba no; in fact the post explicitly allows both questions and answers, and one question has already been bountied -- see [this one](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2940/805). Of course, the bounty can only be awarded to an answer to the bountied question -- if none get posted, the bounty is gone." CreationDate="2017-12-04T11:14:14.080" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14955" PostId="5088" Score="0" Text="@amoeba hey, that's unfair! Glen_b specifically wrote &quot;I'd like to see suggestions of good posts that deserve a bounty (one per answer*) -- answers that more people should see, or even **questions** that it would be good for the site to get a good answer to. &quot;" CreationDate="2017-12-04T11:17:26.397" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="14956" PostId="5088" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b ah, ok, like I said! I didn't see the Anscombe question. So it looks like the ice had already been broken :-)" CreationDate="2017-12-04T11:19:18.783" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="14957" PostId="5088" Score="0" Text="I don't think amoeba was unfair; it's easy to miss. (*I* did the first read-through and I wrote the thing.)" CreationDate="2017-12-04T11:22:54.243" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="14958" PostId="5088" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b Thanks for the clarification. DeltaIV, could you please make any edit to this post so that I could remove the downvote? In my defense, bountying unanswered questions is not really &quot;spreading the wealth&quot; as the title of this thread says; it's a different bounty reason (from the official list of bounty reasons) altogether. That's why I assumed that this thread refers to only one of those reasons, namely rewarding existing answers." CreationDate="2017-12-04T11:40:06.097" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14959" PostId="5088" Score="0" Text="@amoeba done. No problem, and I know downvotes here don't affect reputation, I just didn't want to appear as someone who hadn't read the question :-)" CreationDate="2017-12-04T13:06:02.323" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="14960" PostId="5088" Score="0" Text="Downvote removed. However, this question is less than 48 hours old which means it's not possible to put a bounty on it. This is for the good reason - many questions on CV get answered after a day or two. Usually it makes sense to curate the question, edit it a couple of times, and try to improve, *before* putting a bounty. IMHO it does not make sense to post an answer here suggesting for Glen to put a bounty there before all these normal routes of attracting attention to the question are exhausted." CreationDate="2017-12-04T13:08:21.020" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14961" PostId="5088" Score="0" Text="@amoeba yes, yes, I know...I do admit that &quot;the post is not great&quot;, and I did ask the OP to improve it. In case s/he improves it, then it might become worthy of a bounty, but I wasn't suggesting to put a bounty **right now**. Also, I respect the fact that it's an &quot;absolute first&quot; post - to me it seems a very interesting question, for someone who has never used Stack Exchange before. Anyway, I didn't wan't to create an argument - I can delete this answer of mine, ok? I don't think it's that bad, but if you feel strongly against it, I will." CreationDate="2017-12-04T13:22:19.270" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="14968" PostId="5089" Score="8" Text="The spirit of this is right, but I wouldn't want to warn off anyone with &quot;pretty complicated data structures&quot; which, depending on personal definitions, make up a high fraction of questions here." CreationDate="2017-12-04T15:38:37.780" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14976" PostId="5089" Score="0" Text="_Notice that most of the answers on CV do not use graphics, or use very limited and simple graphics._ This is only because it's relatively difficult to produce high-quality graphics, interactive graphics moreso. Do you really mean to assert that &quot;CV is not the place to discuss&quot; [histograms](https://tinlizzie.org/histograms/?imm_mid=0f57e6&amp;cmp=em-data-na-na-newsltr_20170816)?" CreationDate="2017-12-10T18:20:28.807" UserId="36229" />
  <row Id="14978" PostId="5089" Score="0" Text="@ssdecontrol I *never* said it is not a place to &quot;discuss&quot; graphics. I said that most questions and answers do not *use* graphics. Moreover, this is not a journal, so there is no need for high-quality graphics, it is enough if they are readable and show your point (so base R graphics or Excel plots are just enough in the vast majority of cases)." CreationDate="2017-12-10T19:46:54.963" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="14979" PostId="5089" Score="1" Text="*Moreover, this is not a journal, so there is no need for high-quality graphics, it is enough if they are readable and show your point* -- This doesn't make sense to me: sometimes (indeed, often) the best way to show your point, once you've explained it in words, is with an interactive graphic. High-quality, rich graphical displays are highly effective teaching tools. If we followed your line of reasoning in the classroom, we'd still be using overhead projectors." CreationDate="2017-12-10T19:52:46.353" UserId="36229" />
  <row Id="14980" PostId="5089" Score="0" Text="Sorry to belabor the point, but look at [Martijn Weterings' answer](https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/311010). Now imagine if he had been able to post an interactive graphic that readers could drag, rotate, and pan. It's a small improvement, but the pedagogical benefits of interactivity are tremendous. The &quot;a-ha&quot; moment is that much more delicious, and therefore that much more memorable. Discounting the importance of interactive data viz is a big mistake IMO." CreationDate="2017-12-10T19:57:31.450" UserId="36229" />
  <row Id="14981" PostId="5089" Score="0" Text="@ssdecontrol but isn't the 3D rotating plot in his answer enough? Also, imagine that we had plotly and similar engines as a backend for graphics on CV, I'd bet that the answers would soon look like Christmas trees but this wouldn't immediately lead to improvement of the quality of the answers. Sorry but my opinion on interactive plots is that in vast majority of the cases they lead users to mindlessly rotate, zoom, shift things until they notice how much time did they wasted..." CreationDate="2017-12-10T20:39:13.217" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="14990" PostId="5089" Score="0" Text="@ssdeccontrol Overhead projectors! What's wrong with chalk? Sketching a diagram with chalk (1960s-1980s in my case) ensured that you showed information at about the speed an audience could absorb and many colleagues still prefer a whiteboard for talks for more or less the same reason. Just joking; I am very positive about graphics and don't see any case for disparaging or downplaying their role on CV. I tend to agree with Tim on interactive graphics, however: how much time is anyone expected to spend writing/reading an answer? (As much as they like, clearly, but apart from that?)" CreationDate="2017-12-11T18:35:42.873" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14963" PostId="5090" Score="3" Text="I agree that gif images can be a solution in some cases and I have used them before: https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/310517/interpreting-pca-figures-in-layman-terms/311010#311010  However, such type of images can sometimes go too fast and for that reason I have also used arrays of images https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/306743/164061 in order to show the different ways two surfaces can touch each other (which may work in 3D)." CreationDate="2017-12-04T14:36:25.523" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="14964" PostId="5090" Score="2" Text="In was also thinking of other applications in which a slider allows the change of some parameter and gives the reader of an answer some ability to 'explore' the data and the problem." CreationDate="2017-12-04T14:38:10.513" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="14965" PostId="5090" Score="1" Text="I believe it's possible to slow them down somehow, although I'm not very savvy w/ it, @MartijnWeterings. Using multiple types of plots is sometimes the best way to go (cf, [Why is polynomial regression considered a special case of multiple linear regression?](https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/92087/7290)). The only thing I think you can do here is create an animation with you moving the slider." CreationDate="2017-12-04T14:47:13.403" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14967" PostId="5090" Score="5" Text="Animations are not interactive!  There is nothing that irritates me more on any site than an endlessly repeating animation, period.  If the viewer had more control over them, such as being able to slow them down, speed them up, *and easily halt them,* then they would be less obnoxious.  Consequently I make every effort not to use animated images here if there is any possible alternative way to explain a concept--and almost always there is." CreationDate="2017-12-04T15:35:30.607" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="14970" PostId="5090" Score="3" Text="@whuber, and if there is no other option, then make it worth it: https://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/1900/how-can-this-confetti-code-be-improved-to-include-shadows-and-gravity/2296#2296." CreationDate="2017-12-04T20:47:18.813" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="14982" PostId="5090" Score="0" Text="@MartijnWeterings that's the use case I have in mind as well -- letting the user control the parameters of a demo." CreationDate="2017-12-10T23:52:52.883" UserId="36229" />
  <row Id="14974" PostId="5092" Score="4" Text="FTR, I rejected the edit.   I sympathize with your situation, but you should not edit to change / correct someone else's answer. I think your comment is appropriate &amp; will be clear enough for future readers. You can always hope someone else posts an answer. You can even post your own answer; however, I don't think you can reward your own answer w/ the bounty &amp; half the bounty will be automatically awarded to the highest voted answer, if you don't award it to another answer yourself." CreationDate="2017-12-10T14:18:38.887" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14975" PostId="5092" Score="10" Text="@gung Whence the dictum not to edit to correct an answer?  Although it's rare for somebody to venture a correction, this seems like the kind of situation where the ability of the community to correct a post would be of most value." CreationDate="2017-12-10T16:59:49.927" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="14983" PostId="5092" Score="2" Text="I think you should award the bounty to the existing answer and edit to correct/update it. I did not see your edit but I think if done well it can go through (cc @gung). Maybe use `&lt;strike&gt;&lt;/strike&gt;` or write something like `Correction by @Clarinetist:` etc." CreationDate="2017-12-11T08:56:59.470" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14984" PostId="5092" Score="1" Text="If the answer moved things further for you, even though it may have been incomplete or even wrong then it could be up-voted (=This answer is useful) and so I do not think, by the same sort of reasoning you can withhold the county. Equally leaving it unedited seems wrong to me so I support @amoeba suggestion." CreationDate="2017-12-11T11:39:10.177" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="14986" PostId="5092" Score="1" Text="I have to say that I find it remarkable that anyone thinks it should be OK for people to edit existing answers &amp; change the contents just because the potential editor thinks the answer is incorrect (irrespective of whether the editor is right). When I have sufficient time, I'll post an answer addressing this." CreationDate="2017-12-11T17:10:03.910" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15067" PostId="5092" Score="2" Text="@gung Correctness of answers is marginally more important than purity of content ownership.  If the original author *disagrees*, or the community is divided on the correctness of the correction, then the balance shifts.  But abset controversy or disagreement, correctness should win.  SE primary goal is to present awesome questions and awesome answers to those questions; treating answerers *well* is part of this, but isn't paramount." CreationDate="2018-01-04T17:03:24.103" UserId="103498" />
  <row Id="15068" PostId="5092" Score="0" Text="@Yakk, how does that work? As long as a potential editor believes an answer is wrong, they should edit to change what it says? What is the purpose of downvotes, then? What signal is sent by a set of upvotes for an answer, when they were given when the answer stated something else? Changing the content of answers is not a solution to anything." CreationDate="2018-01-04T17:20:42.503" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15069" PostId="5092" Score="0" Text="@gung In this case, the answer was substantially right, there was one error, and the original writer was both anonymous and missing.  And you should be certain, not just belief.  The *problem* is &quot;how do we generate awesome and useful questions and answers&quot;, and changing the content of answers *can help solve that*.  When the primary author is present, I'll edit *and let them know* (if I assume the edit isn't enough) to correct small errors." CreationDate="2018-01-04T17:51:18.037" UserId="103498" />
  <row Id="15070" PostId="5092" Score="0" Text="@Yakk, so in the future, shall we ping you to provide the requisite certainty that that the answer as written is wrong-but-almost-correct, and the various other conditions are met, so that we can change the content of existing answers by other users?" CreationDate="2018-01-04T18:06:12.100" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15071" PostId="5092" Score="0" Text="@gung I am sorry if I am unable to provide you with what you seem to require, which is hard and fast bright line rules.  Every edit you make to another poster's answer is changing the content of an existing answer.  We disagree about where the line should be, and what factors weigh in; unless you truly believe that no edit of anyone else's answer is acceptable?" CreationDate="2018-01-04T18:24:11.503" UserId="103498" />
  <row Id="15072" PostId="5092" Score="0" Text="@Yakk, [here](https://stats.stackexchange.com/users?tab=editors) is the list of editors on CV. Somehow, it must be possible to edit a post without changing it's content to say something different from what had been there previously." CreationDate="2018-01-04T18:32:19.733" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="14989" PostId="5093" Score="2" Text="Agreed that many threads are spoiled by lack of focus; and very strongly that the aim here is building resources for many, not providing a help line for individuals.  But it is also true that many people have great difficulty formulating a precise question; that is why they're posting at all. Also, many threads here are valuable because they expose a variety of view points. The Stack Exchange model is dominated by an ideal (sometimes well approximated in programming) of a sharp question with a precise answer. The tacit question here for many threads is fuzzy, how should I analyse my data?" CreationDate="2017-12-11T17:18:50.367" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14985" PostId="5094" Score="5" Text="The key is that OPs decide whether an answer deserves formal acceptance. That's crucial only for who does/doesn't get +15 on an answer. Whether OPs understand the answer is a different dimension. Many may recall what they thought were perverse acceptances, when weaker or even very bad answers were accepted (on Meta too).  I'd respect both (a) OPs being reluctant to accept any answer and (b) discreet suggestions that an answer deserves acceptance (preferably from third parties if there are several answers) ." CreationDate="2017-12-11T16:46:04.050" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="14998" PostId="5096" Score="5" Text="I think wrong answers *increase* the chances to get a good answer (because they increase the visibility of the post) instead of decreasing them. If you think an answer is wrong, or critically incomplete, comment to say so and downvote. That's all you need to do really." CreationDate="2017-12-14T09:29:54.480" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="14999" PostId="5096" Score="9" Text="@amoeba: Moreover, wrong answers can provoke the [&quot;something is wrong on the internet&quot;](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/duty_calls.png) reflex." CreationDate="2017-12-14T11:19:18.927" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="15000" PostId="5096" Score="1" Text="@Scortchi =D First time hearing about that! =D" CreationDate="2017-12-14T11:22:15.470" UserId="40252" />
  <row Id="15001" PostId="5096" Score="2" Text="You should leave comment &amp;/or downvote answers that are incomplete &amp; incorrect." CreationDate="2017-12-14T13:13:37.233" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15002" PostId="5096" Score="2" Text="In essence, awarding a bounty gives you a decision on which post gets it, but it doesn't confer any scope or obligation to do anything you could not or would not do in any other thread. You're not expected to manage the thread." CreationDate="2017-12-14T14:42:16.397" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15057" PostId="5096" Score="0" Text="You could offer a new bounty." CreationDate="2018-01-03T03:04:50.917" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="15005" PostId="5097" Score="2" Text="A quick glance at the most upvoted [control] Qs shows that most of them are about &quot;controlling for variables&quot; in regression. I find the term &quot;control&quot; very unclear (I initially thought this tag is about control theory); in fact &quot;statistical control&quot; is IMHO not much better. Wikipedia calls it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlling_for_a_variable - arguably too cumbersome for a tag name. I'd say we need to come up with a reasonable tag name, rename this tag accordingly, and then go through all 141 threads and remove the tag from the ones that are not about &quot;controlling for a variable&quot;." CreationDate="2017-12-14T20:14:04.893" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15006" PostId="5097" Score="4" Text="I don't see a particular problem with the length of `controlling-for-a-variable`; typing `control` would bring it up (so you don't usually have to type all of it) and it's then clear which thing it is about." CreationDate="2017-12-14T23:52:43.857" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="15007" PostId="5097" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b There used to be 25 chars limit but I think it's lately been removed. If there are no better suggestions then we can go with that." CreationDate="2017-12-15T13:47:14.020" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15008" PostId="5097" Score="0" Text="@amoeba there are only 141 of them so it might almost be as easy to re-tag them each manually which would also give an opportunity to flag any for closure. I assume renaming the tag requires special powers?" CreationDate="2017-12-15T16:23:41.163" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="15009" PostId="5097" Score="0" Text="Yes only mods can rename, but I would still suggest to do it this way. One can then *look* through all 141, but we won't need to retag the ones that are fine." CreationDate="2017-12-15T16:33:59.853" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15011" PostId="5097" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I believe it's 32 now but I am not sure" CreationDate="2017-12-17T07:39:53.493" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="15013" PostId="5097" Score="0" Text="(I am going to post another answer, but did not have time for it yet.)" CreationDate="2017-12-20T09:20:30.963" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15085" PostId="5097" Score="0" Text="@amoeba have you had any more thoughts or shall I try to push this one forward with a suggestion as answer?" CreationDate="2018-01-07T14:58:37.773" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="15191" PostId="5097" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b I have now completed re-tagging and there are about 65 left which are about controlling for a variable. Can you do the re-naming as discussed above please?" CreationDate="2018-01-26T15:21:33.880" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="15193" PostId="5097" Score="0" Text="@mdewey Sorry can you be explicit about the renaming you're asking for? These are hard to untangle if I screw up." CreationDate="2018-01-27T04:12:11.323" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="15194" PostId="5097" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b the last suggestion was [controlling -for-a-variable] which got three upvotes. I will ping amoeba too." CreationDate="2018-01-27T14:25:43.027" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="15195" PostId="5097" Score="0" Text="@amoeba do you agree with [controlling-for-a-variable]?" CreationDate="2018-01-27T14:26:05.787" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="15198" PostId="5097" Score="0" Text="Don't have any better suggestions, so yes. Also, if we come up with a better name later, we can always [ask a mod to] rename it again." CreationDate="2018-01-27T16:31:37.923" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15230" PostId="5097" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b since nobody else has chipped in I think we can go for [controlling-for-a-variable]" CreationDate="2018-02-05T16:24:02.397" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="15231" PostId="5097" Score="0" Text="HI @mdewey - I will try to remember to do this but I am pressed for time at the moment." CreationDate="2018-02-05T21:48:31.420" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="15233" PostId="5097" Score="1" Text="@mdewey By my understanding the proposal was to make anything that's currently got the `control` tag become `controlling-for-a-variable`. That's done now; I didn't synonymize them (forcing every future use of `control` to be `controlling-for-a-variable`), but that should be doable if you need it." CreationDate="2018-02-06T00:51:59.277" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="15234" PostId="5097" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b Thanks! I think it's better to let [control] die, so I agree it's better if we don't have it as a synonym. I think this thread can be marked as resolved now by mdewey accepting his answer." CreationDate="2018-02-06T08:41:21.397" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15235" PostId="5097" Score="0" Text="Somebody should still write a wiki excerpt for [controlling-...]." CreationDate="2018-02-06T08:43:23.610" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15236" PostId="5097" Score="1" Text="@amoeba I have written a brief excerpt." CreationDate="2018-02-06T15:39:31.803" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="15010" PostId="5099" Score="2" Text="I think there are some which your definition would not cover like the ones falling under the tag [quality-control] but they could be dealt with separately I suppose." CreationDate="2017-12-16T14:37:05.843" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="15192" PostId="5099" Score="2" Text="I created the tag [control-theory] and re-tagged the ones which amoeba agreed were pertinent. If you know of any others the tag is there now. You might also want to edit my naive attempt at a wiki excerpt." CreationDate="2018-01-26T15:23:33.523" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="15014" PostId="5100" Score="1" Text="Not sure - checking they're right takes longer so you might just not vote." CreationDate="2017-12-21T14:53:30.433" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="15015" PostId="5100" Score="3" Text="In my opinion, $\Pr(\text{you are right}) &gt; 0.5$, but I may be wrong. Please upvote if you agree ;) Seriously: you probably can query https://data.stackexchange.com in a smart way that recognizes $\TeX$ (e.g. looks for `$...$`) and verify such hypothesis using the data." CreationDate="2017-12-21T15:06:03.810" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="15016" PostId="5100" Score="1" Text="@Tim, I was hoping some did it already :) The trick is to find the correct answers to the same question but with and without formula. That is difficult because how do we know the answers are equivalent in other regards?" CreationDate="2017-12-21T15:07:53.850" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="15017" PostId="5100" Score="8" Text="Well, that is actually *the* problem, since many answers that use formatting (a) may simply be higher quality (e.g. you know $\TeX$ since you use it in academia), (b) may show greater effort in answering, so the effort was +1'd no matter that the answer was not that &quot;outstanding&quot;." CreationDate="2017-12-21T15:17:22.677" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="15018" PostId="5100" Score="8" Text="It looks to me like you want to answer a causal question (about the effect of adding a formula on the resulting number of votes) based on observational data (what seems to have happened organically on the site to date). There are a lot of issues here, which are discussed heavily in various threads on the main site. You could do a small experiment for yourself by composing answers, then flipping a coin and adding a formula or not." CreationDate="2017-12-21T16:39:32.423" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15019" PostId="5100" Score="0" Text="@gung, I thought about an experiment. It's not that easy to conduct either, because we'd need to separate the identity of answer's impact, so an accomplice is necessary." CreationDate="2017-12-21T16:42:24.910" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="15020" PostId="5100" Score="4" Text="The identity of the answerer would be controlled by virtue of the fact that you are the only answerer in the study. One might wonder how well it would generalize, though." CreationDate="2017-12-21T17:27:00.837" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15021" PostId="5100" Score="2" Text="An additional idea, aside your proposed &quot;self administered A/B test&quot;, is to look for duplicate questions that have *not* been closed. That should allow for some pseudo-replication in the one thread contains formulas and the other does not.  (Afterwards though you would have to flag the threads for merging as a good CV citizen). (I think Tim's hits the nail in the head; the presence of $\LaTeX$ is strongly associated with other features that also affect a post's overall votes.)" CreationDate="2017-12-21T23:51:34.473" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="15038" PostId="5100" Score="3" Text="The idea put forward by @gung is the only practicable one. There are too many confounding factors otherwise.  They include the topic of the question, how well the question was formulated, the mathematical level at which it was formulated, how often the thread has been viewed, the number of locations of links to it, how much attention it received initially and over time, the reputation of the person who answers, how effectively they use mathematical language, when the answer was posted, who else was posting answers around the same time, and whether there are also illustrations in the answer." CreationDate="2017-12-28T20:01:44.837" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="15048" PostId="5100" Score="0" Text="Related: https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1611/are-there-guidelines-patterns-to-follow-when-choosing-between-posting-a-picture. (/cc @MartijnWeterings)." CreationDate="2017-12-29T15:19:10.037" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="15041" PostId="5101" Score="1" Text="I think the difference between with/without after a score of 20 for Amoeba is interesting." CreationDate="2017-12-29T00:10:05.107" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="15047" PostId="5101" Score="1" Text="@EngrStudent i have added a new plot which allows to observe this difference a bit better.  I think it is a though problem since the distributions seem to be a mixture of multiple exponential distributions. Maybe some other type of, flexible, distribution could be fitted to it and aggregates the sum of multiple effects... But I believe that, given the nature of many different types of posts and topics, a model mixing multiple curves would be the more accurate underlying model." CreationDate="2017-12-29T11:13:43.800" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="15022" PostId="5102" Score="2" Text="A variety of time series, presented in graphical form, are available to moderators--but we are explicitly not allowed to share them.  There is a strong seasonal decline in questions and answers at the end of each December and beginning of each May, clearly associated with academic calendars.  You can obtain comparable statistics through the SE API." CreationDate="2017-12-23T17:43:36.230" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="15024" PostId="5102" Score="1" Text="Found it: http://sese.evbpc.com/Sites/Detail?SiteId=5c9d37da-6dff-e511-80c0-00155d918203." CreationDate="2017-12-23T19:00:59.103" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="15027" PostId="5102" Score="0" Text="https://stats.stackexchange.com/users/8373" CreationDate="2017-12-23T20:37:54.753" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="15028" PostId="5102" Score="0" Text="@AndreSilva your first link is great! I would accept it as an answer" CreationDate="2017-12-23T21:22:51.957" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="15029" PostId="5102" Score="0" Text="@whuber thanks for the tip. Looking at the time series I would have actually hypothesized that the summer dip was in July, but I can be wrong." CreationDate="2017-12-23T21:23:46.520" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="15030" PostId="5102" Score="0" Text="@usεr11852 David Robinson is a nice guy but I'm not sure how his profile could help me. As far as I know, he only blogs about Stack Overflow statistics, not Cross Validated ones, and I can't contact him on CV...maybe you were suggesting to get in touch by mail/Twitter?" CreationDate="2017-12-23T21:26:46.583" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="15031" PostId="5102" Score="0" Text="I believe the best action would be to make this Q a dupe, and add that link to Glen_b’ s answer or post it as a new one there (I prefer the former). But feel free to use it in a self-answer as well. Tks." CreationDate="2017-12-23T21:38:47.913" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="15032" PostId="5102" Score="1" Text="@DeltaIV: It was just for a jokey direct answer to your question &quot;*Does anyone compute statistics about Cross Validated?*&quot; (In retrospect I should have put a smiley alongside it :) )" CreationDate="2017-12-23T21:52:53.797" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="15033" PostId="5102" Score="0" Text="@AndreSilva I don't think it's exactly a duplicate, though I did explain myself really badly, because I was more interested in 1) existing analyses of Cross Validated data (for example, a blog post/web app/whatever from one of you guys), which discussed the data and drew conclusions, or  2) in collaborators to perform such an analysis. I knew about SEDE, but that doesn't even make plots, it allows me to extract data which I then need to analyze. I'm not sure if I should edit my question, because it seems clear now that no one has written such a blog post." CreationDate="2017-12-23T22:02:51.137" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="15053" PostId="5108" Score="5" Text="Hint: try clicking the “ask question” button; write something in the body, then click the title box and search there. It has been reported (I’d need to search where it was reported) it searches better than the search box (this was some years ago; perhaps they already improved the search box too). Give it a try." CreationDate="2017-12-31T14:31:00.550" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="15054" PostId="5108" Score="1" Text="Was it any of [these](https://stats.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=sensors%20average%20is%3aquestion%20created%3a2017)?" CreationDate="2017-12-31T14:38:39.743" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15055" PostId="5108" Score="0" Text="@gung it was none of those, and even substituting *average* with *two* didn't help. I'm starting to think it was deleted." CreationDate="2017-12-31T17:44:14.133" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="15056" PostId="5108" Score="0" Text="@AndreSilva good tip! I'm not at at a pc anymore, and the smartphone interface is severely limited, but next year :-) I'll try your suggestion too. Happy New Year to everyone!" CreationDate="2017-12-31T17:49:34.043" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="15060" PostId="5108" Score="1" Text="@AndreSilva I tried, and while it did give me better suggestions than the search box, I still couldn't find what I was looking for. Maybe it had been deleted." CreationDate="2018-01-03T17:25:10.470" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="15061" PostId="5111" Score="8" Text="It seems you have a fan :). It is indeed a little bit odd, because within a day all votes happened at the same minute (check the reputation tab). If it is a fan, it is someone who knows the system, because apparently the upvoting was limited to a maximum of 4 per day, which did not trigger the routine which roll 'row votes' back. It is very positive of you to report this odd pattern (now wait if something can be done), but I'd say if you are confident your posts are good, don't worry." CreationDate="2018-01-03T18:12:44.563" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="15062" PostId="5111" Score="7" Text="Nothing really jumps out at me. If as far as you know there is no fraud, you should have nothing to worry about. This sort of thing does happen on occasion.  Presumably, someone noticed &amp; liked a post of yours, &amp; so went looking through your profile for other posts they might like &amp; upvoted a bunch. As @AndreSilva points out, the individual is presumably SE-savvy." CreationDate="2018-01-03T18:38:43.990" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15063" PostId="5111" Score="3" Text="Peculiar indeed. I clicked through all 20 of your answers serially upvoted in the last days (https://stats.stackexchange.com/users/196/russellpierce?tab=reputation) and almost all of them (17 or 18) currently have exactly 1 upvote. This cannot be a coincidence. Moreover, the 2 or 3 answers that do not have 1 upvote, have exactly 10 upvotes. (CC @AndreSilva)" CreationDate="2018-01-03T20:42:33.990" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15064" PostId="5111" Score="0" Text="@amoeba That matches my less rigorous spot check... thats part of why I reached out - I didn't think that these were unrealized instances of me being insightful.  I thought some of them might be attempts to give an answer a score &gt; 0 in the face of no answers or other 'meh' answers... but now that I look back maybe that wasn't happening as much as I thought (or someone looking through this decided to upvote other answers)." CreationDate="2018-01-03T22:16:52.483" UserId="196" />
  <row Id="15065" PostId="5111" Score="3" Text="@amoeba, perhaps someone motivated to what gung said, also decided to improve our unanswered question ratio stat." CreationDate="2018-01-03T22:17:44.893" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="15066" PostId="5111" Score="5" Text="Just for the record happened to me a while back too. Same pattern. I assumed Father Christmas was getting in some early practice." CreationDate="2018-01-04T13:38:59.963" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="15073" PostId="5112" Score="10" Text="The tag or term `data-preprocessing` isn't universal across statistical science (minimally, it's not a term I meet around the place or in literature), but whether and how to deal with outliers, work on transformed scales, etc. seem utterly and completely on-topic. Let the tag be used by anyone to whom it's standard jargon." CreationDate="2018-01-04T19:35:10.490" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15074" PostId="5112" Score="13" Text="It seems to me that &quot;data-preprocessing&quot; sounds a lot like *data-cleaning* (which we have a [tag](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/data-cleaning) for). I have [argued](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/104335/what-is-the-best-way-to-reshape-restructure-data/104338#comment201818_104335) that this is &quot;within the scope of statistics writ large, &amp; although I recognize good people can disagree, I think such questions can be on-topic&quot;. I would say the same here. It may be that the tags should be made synonyms, but I'd have to investigate their usages first to be sure." CreationDate="2018-01-04T20:17:21.397" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15075" PostId="5112" Score="20" Text="Only textbooks, and maybe the rare academician, can rely on data already being cleaned and perfectly processed. Many people report that that most of their time working as statisticians consists of processing and cleaning data. I wouldn't like to exclude as off-topic the activities that most occupy people who practice statistics. Having said that, I admit to closing many posts that ask *only* about the details of executing a particular data processing step with specific software, such as how to combine columns in an `R` dataframe, etc. I have felt uncomfortable even about closing those." CreationDate="2018-01-04T20:33:13.130" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="15076" PostId="5112" Score="16" Text="Since data collection is on-topic it would seem odd for the step in between collection and analysis to be off topic." CreationDate="2018-01-05T02:15:04.940" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="15077" PostId="5112" Score="7" Text="You wrote &quot;Statistics relies on data being already &quot;cleaned&quot;: free of typos, formatted correctly, etc&quot;. In my experience, this is incorrect. Indeed, cleaning data is a huge part of my job and is often highly statistical. I remember reading some famous statistician (it might have been Box) saying he had never had a data set entered correctly." CreationDate="2018-01-05T11:53:41.633" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="15078" PostId="5112" Score="7" Text="`data-preprocessing` is just computer science/machine learning vernacular for cleaning and transforming data. If one is doing knn, they should standardize their data before analysis. This is preprocessing, and it is wholly relevant to statistical issues. Just as taking the log of a variable before entering it into a regression equation is preprocessing for traditional statistical techniques. SO is for, &quot;What is wrong with my preprocessing code?&quot; while CV is for, &quot;How should I preprocess my data for valid inferences and predictions?&quot;" CreationDate="2018-01-05T15:45:56.777" UserId="130869" />
  <row Id="15079" PostId="5112" Score="2" Text="@PeterFlom I partly agree. I'll cite one anecdote I use when people suggest that an abnormal range test alone justifies deleting (an) observation(s): &quot;If I randomly sample 100 people and one happens to be Bill Gates, then as far as the data tell me, Bill Gates is representative of 1/100th of the population.&quot; Statistically, the Bill Gates case is indistinguishable from data entry errors. My concern is that &quot;data cleaning&quot; and its analogues seem to support such a practice (&quot;make the data normal&quot;, &quot;delete the outliers&quot;, etc.)." CreationDate="2018-01-05T15:51:51.357" UserId="8013" />
  <row Id="15080" PostId="5112" Score="4" Text="I agree, without having looked closely at how they're actually used, that [tag:data-preprocessing] and [tag:data-cleaning] should probably be made synonyms. &quot;Preprocessing&quot; more implies to me rescaling / changing featurizations / etc and &quot;cleaning&quot; more about dropping outliers / etc, but the line is very blurry." CreationDate="2018-01-05T20:04:08.683" UserId="9964" />
  <row Id="15081" PostId="5112" Score="1" Text="@AdamO that is a primary reason why the topic should be on this site: To answer questions getting at what are appropriate methods for cleaning and processing." CreationDate="2018-01-05T20:04:15.407" UserId="130869" />
  <row Id="15087" PostId="5112" Score="5" Text="I definitely think questions that relate to practices like removing outliers, transforming data and so forth are on topic. I've answered hundreds and I only answer a tiny fraction of the ones that have been posted." CreationDate="2018-01-08T02:43:32.343" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="15088" PostId="5112" Score="2" Text="Is the box-cox transform a pre-processing?  If so then this process, named for two top-tier statisticians, Geoge Box and David Cox, should be considered part of what Box and Cox consider to be statistics.  Missing data imputation is pre-processing before the model fit process, so again, pre-processing is part of stats." CreationDate="2018-01-08T02:54:03.020" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="15092" PostId="5112" Score="0" Text="Statistical theory and concepts are useful not just in the analysis stage but earlier stages as well. What happens at the data collection, cleaning, and processing stages have implications for subsequent statistical analysis, hence a statistician has something to say about them. Perhaps similarly, a cook cares about what happens to ingredients before they enter the pot. On topic at cooking.stackexchange.com isn't just cooking narrowly defined but also &quot;food handling and storage&quot; and &quot;ingredient selection and use.&quot;" CreationDate="2018-01-10T15:21:10.857" UserId="97925" />
  <row Id="15089" PostId="5113" Score="0" Text="I like the idea of collecting questions and classifying them as on-topic/off-topic. However (and partly my rationale for even asking the question here), I notice a large proportion of questions have the deadly mixture of extremely high-level jargon and lack of a clear problem statement/question. I also find a great deal of terminology largely conflated with programming, so that if it is even a pure programming question, one cannot tell. Here, a user grasps LOCF but is basically asking for software to do this (I think): https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/262324/data-synchronisation" CreationDate="2018-01-08T14:53:41.863" UserId="8013" />
  <row Id="15090" PostId="5113" Score="0" Text="Agree it is not easy to make this menu of on-topic and off-topic questions. I'd start excluding questions which should be closed for another reason than ontopicness. For example: _&quot;However (...), I notice a large proportion of questions have the deadly mixture of extremely high-level jargon and lack of a clear problem statement/question.&quot;_ --&gt; those would be unclear questions. And the question you linked last is also unclear; note the OP did not answer last whuber's comment. But, if edited could be an on-topic question related to interpolation, time-series, data-cleaning, etc. (@AdamO)." CreationDate="2018-01-08T15:37:47.723" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="15091" PostId="5114" Score="0" Text="This seems to be a new development. A good one." CreationDate="2018-01-09T11:17:36.947" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="15094" PostId="5115" Score="4" Text="There isn't an explicit cross posting close reason, but there is a free text reason under the off topic option. You could do that; if you didn't want to vote to close, you could just leave a comment, &amp; possibly flag to alert the moderators." CreationDate="2018-01-10T19:41:19.293" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15097" PostId="5115" Score="4" Text="While we're asked not to cross post, if it's not off topic I don't think we'd have a basis to close it. When people flag these I generally just leave a comment for the explaining the policy (&quot;Please don't cross post, choose one best site...&quot; etc, pretty much what it says in the [help/on-topic]). If it's a stats question I often vote to close on SO." CreationDate="2018-01-11T00:53:23.050" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="15100" PostId="5115" Score="0" Text="@gung I see that in the end it was *my* answer (or better, the question I answered) that got closed as off-topic, even though it was (IMO) more on-topic here than on CV :-) but I understand - after all, I myself said that I wouldn't flag the other one, and my answer would have never been accepted, thus closing the question on CV was  the right choice." CreationDate="2018-01-12T07:39:02.743" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="15102" PostId="5115" Score="0" Text="@DeltaIV, if the version on [SO] gets closed / deleted, &amp; the OP says they want the version on [stats.SE] to be the primary Q, I will reopen it. Just let me know." CreationDate="2018-01-12T18:42:26.557" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15103" PostId="5115" Score="0" Text="@gung I don't think it will, but it's ok, don't worry. Ben Bolker's answer deserves to stay open." CreationDate="2018-01-12T19:50:35.080" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="15098" PostId="5117" Score="10" Text="In this situation, you should flag your question, &amp; ask the moderators to migrate it to the site where you think it will be more appropriate.  For example, once there is an upvoted answer, you won't be able to delete your Q." CreationDate="2018-01-11T13:33:04.460" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15099" PostId="5117" Score="3" Text="Extending on gung's comment, if you are not familiar with migration yet, refer to https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10249/what-is-migration-and-how-does-it-work. Tks." CreationDate="2018-01-11T18:41:30.970" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="15104" PostId="5118" Score="2" Text="I tried [detexify](http://detexify.kirelabs.org/classify.html), but didn't find anything. There is information about $\LaTeX$ here: [Reviewing questions and applying LaTeX format](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1605/7290)." CreationDate="2018-01-13T22:11:08.227" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15105" PostId="5118" Score="4" Text="On the attempted migration: 1. We have quite a few MathJax questions here on meta. Did our policy on them change? 2. We shouldn't migrate stuff that isn't on topic at the destination. MathJax questions are often seen as off-topic on tex.SE (e.g. see [this answer](https://tex.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3483/84564)), which says in part &quot;*While [tag:MathJax] uses LaTeX syntax, it uses Javascript and HTML's DOM model rather than TeX technology, making it mostly off topic for this site.*&quot;. How they're drawing the border in practice is unclear, suggesting we usually shouldn't migrate these." CreationDate="2018-01-14T21:29:52.810" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="15106" PostId="5118" Score="1" Text="For the sake of consistency, I have reopened. If the question re-closes, I will leave it alone." CreationDate="2018-01-14T22:05:47.030" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="15107" PostId="5118" Score="5" Text="I'm not sure why this is off topic here, since MathJax is very much part of &quot;*the software that powers the Stack Exchange network*&quot; (from the bullet point above).  As noted by @Glen_b, it is off-topic for the TeX SE site, and it seems to me to be natural to ask about how to use MathJax here in meta.  Where else would one suggest it be asked?  Stack Overflow itself does get MathJax questions, so that is a possibility, and the MathJax forums is another, but if the issue is a symbol like this, wouldn't the community that uses the symbol be more likely to know than a more general forum?" CreationDate="2018-01-14T22:09:50.967" UserId="9462" />
  <row Id="15108" PostId="5118" Score="3" Text="I agree with @Glen_b that this is on-topic here." CreationDate="2018-01-15T08:12:37.927" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15109" PostId="5121" Score="0" Text="The builtin screenreader of macOS 10.13 reads &quot;to obtain A double up tack B A x2AEB; B by calling&quot;. So it correctly read the symbol but then it said &quot;A x2AEB; B&quot;, which is also what you get when copying the statement. This might be some MathJax related shortcoming?" CreationDate="2018-01-15T14:14:16.733" UserId="190938" />
  <row Id="15111" PostId="5121" Score="1" Text="@Lejafar, there are several issues involved, here.  First, I incorrectly used `0x2AEB` when I should have used just `x2AEB` in the `\unicode{}` macro.  That caused the &quot;x2AEB&quot; instead of the &quot;double up tack&quot;.  I have fixed it in my answer above, so now you should get &quot;A double up tack B&quot; twice.  The reason for this is that MathJax inserts a MathML version of the mathematics (hidden from view) that is read by the screen reader, while marking the visual math as **not** to be read by the reader.  Unfortunately, VoiceOver seems to be ignoring the `area-hidden=&quot;true&quot;` attribute that should ..." CreationDate="2018-01-15T21:07:39.030" UserId="9462" />
  <row Id="15112" PostId="5121" Score="0" Text="prevent it from being read by VoiceOver.  So VoiceOver reads both the layer out math and the MathML, and you get the double voicing of the expression.  Note that in this case, both are the same, but for more complicated math (like roots or fractions), reading the visual math would produce incorrect results (which is why it is supposed to be hidden from the screen reader)." CreationDate="2018-01-15T21:09:51.640" UserId="9462" />
  <row Id="15113" PostId="5121" Score="0" Text="One work around for that would be to use the MathJax contextual menu to select the MathML output renderer (which will insert only one version of the math) and that will be read properly by VoiceOver." CreationDate="2018-01-15T21:10:46.003" UserId="9462" />
  <row Id="15114" PostId="5122" Score="3" Text="Apologies for not following up on that. I still think that [control] is a bad tag name, and Adam's proposed wiki excerpt sounds way too broad for me. I think we could create [control-theory] if needed and rename [control] into [controlling-for-a-variable] or something like that. To begin, you could retag all Qs that are NOT about controlling for a variable. Is that what you were having in mind?" CreationDate="2018-01-16T15:40:35.380" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15115" PostId="5122" Score="4" Text="@amoeba yes, that is my idea. It will then be easier to see the wood for the trees. I hope." CreationDate="2018-01-16T16:00:05.130" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="15158" PostId="5122" Score="1" Text="1,2,7 are not about control theory as far as I can see (I'd remove control tag from them). The rest are." CreationDate="2018-01-24T12:52:49.013" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15159" PostId="5122" Score="0" Text="Also, I agree that [contol-group] and [controlling-for-a-variable] should be two different tags (or possibly not exist), and should NOT be lumped together in one tag." CreationDate="2018-01-24T12:54:32.903" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15122" PostId="5123" Score="1" Text="While I agree that using a macro to make things easier to author is a good idea (I almost suggested it myself), it does not help the screen reader situation in the way you suggest (at least not on SE sites).  When MathJax runs, the original TeX is removed from the page and replaced by the typeset version (marked as not to be read by screen readers) and the hidden MathML version (hidden from visual users).  So the screen reason does *not* read the TeX version as you suggest, but will read the converted MathML version.  Generally, the TeX source is not an appropriate form for screen readers..." CreationDate="2018-01-17T14:44:57.647" UserId="9462" />
  <row Id="15123" PostId="5123" Score="2" Text="@Davide That is disappointing but useful information.  Thank you for sharing it." CreationDate="2018-01-17T14:45:54.977" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="15124" PostId="5123" Score="1" Text="... and will be more difficult for the listener to interpret.  There are some sites, however, that convert TeX to images and include the TeX source as the alt text for the image.  In those situations, screen readers will read that alt text (so the TeX source) in place of the image.  Perhaps that is the usage you have in mind." CreationDate="2018-01-17T14:47:18.397" UserId="9462" />
  <row Id="15125" PostId="5123" Score="3" Text="A user can, however, select the &quot;Plain Source&quot; renderer, in which case the TeX code is shown rather than typeset math (with no MathML version inserted), and then a screen reader will read the TeX source instead.  So you can get the result you are suggesting, but the reader will have to select a different renderer using the MathJax contextual menu, and *all* the math will be read as TeX source." CreationDate="2018-01-17T14:49:54.990" UserId="9462" />
  <row Id="15129" PostId="5124" Score="1" Text="It seems the tag was created in July 2014 for [this](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/105873) question about mixed ANOVA." CreationDate="2018-01-18T12:22:05.213" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15145" PostId="5124" Score="4" Text="It's a tricky situation, but your proposal seems at least as reasonable as anything else I could think of. The biggest catch I can think of is that, while in practice [tag:mixed-design] seems to mostly be used to talk about mixed ANOVA, in theory I think the tag might more appropriately be a synonym for [tag:split-plot]. But I guess there's no sense in creating a synonym that would be contrary to how most users actually end up applying [tag:mixed-design] to their questions." CreationDate="2018-01-20T16:05:11.827" UserId="5829" />
  <row Id="15146" PostId="5124" Score="0" Text="@Jake that's right, that's partly why I suggest to eliminate [mixed-design] as a tag name; if we rename it into [mixed-anova] and make it a synonym of [anova], anybody wanting to ask about mixed anova will correctly get redirected to [anova]. I doubt that with this arrangement, [mixed-design] will ever reappear." CreationDate="2018-01-21T22:13:57.113" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15190" PostId="5127" Score="1" Text="Funny, I answered that question and I was wandering how bounty disappeared." CreationDate="2018-01-26T13:47:16.170" UserId="185148" />
  <row Id="15133" PostId="5128" Score="2" Text="+1 An alternative if space is short is to give a one-sentence summary of the gist of the original, but as you note, it's not strictly necessary since the edit history can be inspected." CreationDate="2018-01-19T00:57:18.147" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="15139" PostId="5128" Score="2" Text="Thank you for the answer. I think keeping the original answer will make the post very long and cumbersome, so I would prefer to cut it out and let people look in the search history. Actually, I like Glen_b's suggestion of keeping just a short summary of the original, as well as an accompanying explanation of *why* it's wrong. (I feel like I owe that explanation, because people actually upvoted and accepted it.)" CreationDate="2018-01-19T13:53:58.347" UserId="73531" />
  <row Id="15152" PostId="5128" Score="2" Text="@Glen_b Further, if you're feeling especially generous/transparent, it is possible to give a link to the appropriate part of the history. Not everybody realises the edit history is there, and even those who do may not end up looking at the version of the answer you intend if there have been several edits made to it." CreationDate="2018-01-23T16:33:49.380" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="15147" PostId="5130" Score="0" Text="I wasn't one of the rejecters but if I was to review it, I might well have  been tempted to reject (and would then have chosen the same reason). I don't think the change to the code indenting helps in any  substantive way, it looks more like a stylistic preference. Setting that aside, what's left seems to be too small for an edit, and perhaps could even be seen as more of the same stylistic preference." CreationDate="2018-01-23T06:03:30.253" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="15148" PostId="5130" Score="16" Text="@Glen_b, But it is not stylistic.  Python cares about indenting.  So the lack of indent means that the code is wrong.  Anyways thanks for the response, I will assume you a statistically representative sample of those hang out here. I assumed it was likely due to the lack of Python Knowledge, and since we are all doing the best we can, and none of us knows everything, it is what it is. If no else responds and says I was egregiously wrong, I will keep editing things I look at that need it, when I wander by...  Cheers." CreationDate="2018-01-23T06:19:02.823" UserId="154402" />
  <row Id="15149" PostId="5130" Score="2" Text="Yes, this is a great point; I didn't even notice that it was Python code to be honest; while I'm aware that Python cares about indenting I didn't pick up that this is what it was from a quick look." CreationDate="2018-01-23T07:16:00.273" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="15150" PostId="5130" Score="9" Text="IMHO this was a good edit and it was rejected wrongly. Mistakes happen I guess. Thanks for your efforts!" CreationDate="2018-01-23T07:58:50.763" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15154" PostId="5130" Score="6" Text="I quite often fix code indenting even in curly bracket languages to improve readability.  I don't think it's a valid stylistic choice to not indent code correctly.  I'm a bit surprised this puts me in the minority, but so it goes." CreationDate="2018-01-23T21:17:06.197" UserId="74500" />
  <row Id="15181" PostId="5130" Score="1" Text="The particular question is still unchanged and with the erroneous Python code. I would be happy to redo the suggested edit but maybe (I don't know) a person with more rights, or an administrator, can approve the previously rejected suggested edit (that would be more clean I guess)." CreationDate="2018-01-25T12:51:24.823" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="15151" PostId="5131" Score="17" Text="+1 These are the right recommendations.  We ought to emphasize that reviewers are under no obligation to make decisions: the &quot;Skip&quot; button is always available.  *Leave the decisions to people who understand what's going on.*" CreationDate="2018-01-23T16:32:26.583" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="15153" PostId="5131" Score="3" Text="Great Advice, and a Great Answer. THanks for taking the time to write this up. I will endeavor to add better explanations when doing *suggested* edits....." CreationDate="2018-01-23T16:37:25.013" UserId="154402" />
  <row Id="15161" PostId="5132" Score="1" Text="Since meta-regression is a proper subset of meta-analysis making it a synonym is fine. By the same logic f-e, r-e and m-e meta-analysis might as well be synonyms of meta-analysis too. Or we could just delete f-e, r-e when we see them used with meta-analysis.." CreationDate="2018-01-24T13:35:36.520" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="15162" PostId="5132" Score="0" Text="@mdewey I'd rather have meta-analysis synonyms for f-e, r-e, and m-e, because otherwise people will keep using other tags for this purpose." CreationDate="2018-01-24T13:55:16.600" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15163" PostId="5132" Score="0" Text="@mdewey There is also a small [network-meta-analysis] tag with ~10 Qs but here I have no opinion at all and am fine with keeping it as is." CreationDate="2018-01-24T14:05:32.590" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15164" PostId="5132" Score="1" Text="Although n-m-a is a subset of m-a it is sufficiently a niche area that a separate tag does seem helpful." CreationDate="2018-01-24T14:25:39.867" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="15165" PostId="5132" Score="0" Text="I would be inclined to leave [m-r] as is; someone could well want to search on that &amp; read those specific threads as distinct from regular, old m-a. Ideally, we would get people to not feel they need to use both tags (let me know if you have a solution for that ;-). The fixed &amp; random effects versions of m-a are more of an issue; people should not be using our standard mixed tags for those. Creating the new tags to be synonyms is a good solution here. This is a case where I'd prefer to have the tags on 1 thread &amp; don't merge, though, so they would be more salient in the future." CreationDate="2018-01-24T14:59:53.557" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15173" PostId="5132" Score="0" Text="@gung I have no problem with subset tags, as long as the smaller tag has a clear scope and the bigger tag has enough Qs to warrant the subsetting. So even if 100% of [m-r] Qs were tagged with [m-a], it would be fine with me. The question is rather, is &quot;meta-regression&quot; a clearly defined *and* useful subset? I have no experience in meta analysis, so I have no opinion. We have two users who are very active in these tags and I pinged both of them to share their opinions." CreationDate="2018-01-24T20:45:16.097" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15174" PostId="5132" Score="0" Text="@gung Regarding synonyms, I strongly dislike keeping a synonym on 1 thread. It's cumbersome, it's against the SE guidelines, it's gaming the system, and it's not a stable solution (one edit to this thread and the full merge will happen). Also, I don't see a benefit. Ideally, this will be a part of my old plan on reorganizing fixed-effect and random-effect tags. My current thinking is to have meta-analysis-random-effect -&gt; meta-analysis, mixed-model-random-effect -&gt; mixed-model, econometrics-random-effect (on its own), and anova-random-effect -&gt; anova. But let's deal with meta-analysis first..." CreationDate="2018-01-24T20:50:56.313" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15176" PostId="5132" Score="1" Text="Chiming in here based on the request by @amoeba I think the meta-regression tag is useful. I skimmed through the questions that are tagged with m-r and see some cases where it is used when it doesn't seem relevant/applicable. As for the FE/RE/ME stuff - this one is tricky. In principle, the terms *could* have the same meaning in the context of meta-analysis (and imho they should) but they have taken on bizarre interpretations/definitions in the meta-analytic context that are really confusing. So not really sure what to do about these tags when they are used for meta-analysis questions." CreationDate="2018-01-24T23:35:23.347" UserId="1934" />
  <row Id="15179" PostId="5132" Score="0" Text="@Wolfgang Thanks for joining the discussion. Okay, we can keep [meta-regression]. Regarding FE/RE/ME, could you clarify what bizarre interpretations you mean? My understanding (based on your paper linked in my question here) was that all these models in meta-analytic context assume known (and heteroscedastic) error variances, unlike what happens in basically any other regression context. I guess this is not what you mean by &quot;bizarre&quot;?" CreationDate="2018-01-25T08:36:17.800" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15180" PostId="5132" Score="0" Text="Wolfgand and @mdewey, I tried to edit the [meta-regression] wiki excerpt, can you please make sure that it makes sense and is useful? https://stats.stackexchange.com/posts/87546/revisions We could potentially cut out the 2nd sentence if you think it will be only confusing for the readers." CreationDate="2018-01-25T09:24:00.320" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15182" PostId="5132" Score="0" Text="When I looked we have 39 with m-a + r-e-m of which 10 also have f-e-m, there are 19 with m-m of which 4 have r-e-m and 1 f-e-m. f-e on its own is rare. Interestingly m-m occurs quite often with meta-reg which is adding nothing. @Wolfgang may have more to say here but none of this surprised me." CreationDate="2018-01-25T13:38:37.827" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="15183" PostId="5132" Score="0" Text="The meta-reg excerpt looks fine but the wiki itself does not ring true to me. I will have a think unless someone gets there first." CreationDate="2018-01-25T13:40:33.797" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="15187" PostId="5132" Score="1" Text="@mdewey My current inclination based on the discussion above is to remove all f-e-m, r-e-m, and m-m from Qs with m-a (around 50 threads involved probably?) and then create three synonyms of m-a: meta-analysis-fixed-effects, meta-analysis-random-effects, meta-analysis-mixed-effects. Meta-regression can be left alone based on Wolfgang's and gung's comments (btw, by now 100% of Qs with m-r are also tagged m-a)." CreationDate="2018-01-26T08:32:47.177" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15208" PostId="5132" Score="0" Text="@mdewey (Of course not all instances of m-m need to be removed. If a question asks about &quot;standard&quot; mixed model vs meta-analytic mixed model then it's obviously fine to keep m-m. I would remove all f-e-m and r-e-m though because these two tags are ambiguous). It seems that there is no opposition here. Would you be willing to go through these threads?" CreationDate="2018-01-30T16:20:30.417" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15209" PostId="5132" Score="1" Text="I will have a look at them and delete all the obvious ones with f|r-effect or m-m and come back with any puzzles." CreationDate="2018-01-30T17:04:54.430" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="15223" PostId="5132" Score="0" Text="I have now deleted f-e, r-e and m-m as appropriate. I have left a couple with m-m where there did seem to be a comparison between meta-analysis and mixed-model." CreationDate="2018-02-05T09:44:48.273" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="15225" PostId="5132" Score="0" Text="@mdewey Great thanks. I've just noticed and rolled back the removal of m-m from here http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/116659 - isn't it explicitly using `nlme`?" CreationDate="2018-02-05T10:09:22.567" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15226" PostId="5132" Score="0" Text="Yes indeed but since it already had nlme-lme I thought mixed-model was redundant (almost). But fine with me." CreationDate="2018-02-05T10:14:00.177" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="15227" PostId="5132" Score="0" Text="@mdewey Yeah, that's this old issue of software tags... I usually prefer to have [mixed-model] tag on *every* question with [lme4-nlme], it does not make at lot of sense to me otherwise." CreationDate="2018-02-05T10:42:43.640" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15166" PostId="5133" Score="6" Text="I don't follow that tag, so I can't really speak to that, but in general it's a question of how many / which users have expertise on a topic &amp; how much of their own time they can dedicate to helping others on the internet for free." CreationDate="2018-01-24T19:49:06.147" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15167" PostId="5133" Score="16" Text="This is a statistical site, so do you have any data for that? Assuming it's true, and I don't disbelieve it, I have one guess only. Forecasting is difficult at best and many posts here that I see are frankly rather naive. They have the flavour &quot;I have data and wish to forecast future values&quot;. So far, so good, but it is frustrating, I imagine, even for experts (I'm not one)  to spell out what just about every forecasting text not based on snake-oil spells out: many methods, no panaceas, know your system, explore your data, etc., etc." CreationDate="2018-01-24T19:49:49.683" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15170" PostId="5133" Score="1" Text="The pattern I identify is common across many topics. Again, to forestall a fair comment, I have no data. I am just trading in impressions." CreationDate="2018-01-24T19:55:31.673" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15171" PostId="5133" Score="3" Text="Related: [Why is our answer rate so low?](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1538/)" CreationDate="2018-01-24T20:19:56.213" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15172" PostId="5133" Score="7" Text="For some data pertaining to response rates, I searched on the top 8 tags &amp; divided the total # of answers listed by the total # of questions. The resulting rates were: (**1**) `[r]` $.964$; (**2**) `[regression]` $0.973$; (**3**) `[machine-learning]` $0.997$; (**4**) `[time-series]` $0.899$; (**5**) `[probability]` $1.103$; (**6**) `[hypothesis-testing]` $1.048$; (**7**) `[self-study]` $0.967$; (**8**) `[distributions]` $1.029$. (cc @NickCox)" CreationDate="2018-01-24T20:33:29.277" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15175" PostId="5133" Score="1" Text="@gung so my intuition that time series has a response rate lower than the rest was correct. As to your initial comment about users dedicating time - given how involved and detailed many of the answers on this site are, why would time series be the one topic were experts can't be bothered to put too much time into answers?" CreationDate="2018-01-24T21:46:46.237" UserId="89649" />
  <row Id="15177" PostId="5133" Score="8" Text="@Alex, I also had the impression that the answer rate for `[t-s]` questions was lower. I was surprised at how trivial the difference is. I don't have the impression there is a problem w/ `[regression]` questions, &amp; I've never heard anyone complain about it, but the difference is less than one tenth of an answer per question. As for why it differs *at all* (even if only trivially), it again has to do w/ who &amp; how many people there are answering those Qs. Eg, there may be fewer active users answering t-s Qs." CreationDate="2018-01-25T00:50:02.843" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15178" PostId="5133" Score="5" Text="Another statistic to look at would be a proportion of unanswered questions from all questions. It's 5724/15172 = 0.37 for [regression] and 3431/7792 = 0.44 for [time-series]. @gung" CreationDate="2018-01-25T08:19:58.117" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15184" PostId="5134" Score="1" Text="Good points, but last sentence needs elaborating. Everything until the last sentence could be a better fit for https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1538/why-is-our-answer-rate-so-low." CreationDate="2018-01-25T15:19:26.817" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15185" PostId="5134" Score="3" Text="I will see how to improve it. I have already edited a lot and am working on this answer. My basic idea is that I find time series often cumbersome, vague, and also very specific. Solving a problem you can pick out one of many solutions and variations theroef and it seems more like an art than science." CreationDate="2018-01-25T15:20:57.100" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="15186" PostId="5134" Score="2" Text="The focus of the question is why are time series different (and confirming that they are different is crucial; @gung's evidence suggests that the differences are not enormous and thus should not be over-interpreted). Thus it's a question of how many act in the presence of time series questions rather than how you feel personally. At the same time, I too make guesses as a projection of my impressions!" CreationDate="2018-01-25T20:04:27.673" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15188" PostId="5134" Score="0" Text="@NickCox this seems more like a problem that originates in the question being very open. Therefore, subjective input is necessary before some objective answer can be formulated, if such answer is possible at all. If these speculations on effects are over-interpreting the tiny differences then maybe the question should not be asked?  (although I believe the effects may even still be present without the differences, since there are many multiple positive and negative effects and verifying/quantifying the OPs propositions by looking at simple differences does not seem so crucial to me)" CreationDate="2018-01-26T12:14:55.383" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="15189" PostId="5134" Score="0" Text="We agree on essentials." CreationDate="2018-01-26T12:17:51.920" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15196" PostId="5135" Score="4" Text="When I have re-tagged all the posts in the past then eventually the tag disappears by itself. I cannot find a definitive link for this behaviour but I suspect if you come back tomorrow all will be well." CreationDate="2018-01-27T15:27:07.977" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="15197" PostId="5135" Score="5" Text="@mdewey is correct: unused tags naturally disappear after a short time.  I prefer leaving such tags as aliases so that in the future they won't be recreated *ab initio*, repeating the whole cycle.  BTW, Peter, because we're discussing things that only diamond mods have access to, this isn't the right place to raise this question: please use the [moderators' chat room.](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/20/infinite-variance)  By not participating you have been missing a lot." CreationDate="2018-01-27T16:20:54.553" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="15199" PostId="5137" Score="9" Text="Each stack exchange site should be clearly defining its scope. I think ours is pretty clearly defined in our [help/on-topic]. I also think it's incumbent on later sites to clarify where they draw the line vs pre-existing sites with which they overlap, but that delineation doesn't make them off topic at the earlier site." CreationDate="2018-01-29T00:07:47.503" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="15200" PostId="5137" Score="0" Text="As a mod, I hear complaints about posts that are incorrectly migrated, so we tend to be wary of the process where there is any uncertainty. There's no unilateral solution on AI's side so far as I can see.  AI, Data Science and Cross Validated are distinct but inextricably related, so I think there needs to be communication between the communities.  A Cross Validated tag is probably inappropriate, since we already have  &quot;machine learning&quot;, &quot;statistical-ai&quot; and &quot;probabilistic&quot; tags. But it would be good to have some guidance from the CV community on what post should be migrated, if any." CreationDate="2018-01-29T04:49:08.750" UserId="156885" />
  <row Id="15202" PostId="5137" Score="15" Text="Frankly, there has been a lot of discussions about DataScience.SE on our Meta (see [meta-tag:datascience-stackexchange] tag) and there seems to be a strong consensus that the whole DataScience.SE site should not have been created in the first place; that it is overlapping with our site too strongly, and that this is only creating confusion: https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&amp;q=%5bdatascience-stackexchange%5d%20is%3aanswer. Many people hoped it would not graduate from beta, and when it eventually did, were baffled. So I'm not sure you will get useful advice." CreationDate="2018-01-29T08:03:33.917" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15204" PostId="5137" Score="9" Text="I only partially agree with @amoeba.  My current go to delineation is that DataScience stack exchange is a good place to ask about ML and statistical tools.  So things like hadoop, spark, various implementations of neural networks (tensorflow, keras, torch, etc), are more on topic at DS stack exchange than here.  While more conceptual, theory driven, or mathematical questions are more on topic here.  I would suspect that opinion is not uniformly held though." CreationDate="2018-01-29T21:47:20.620" UserId="74500" />
  <row Id="15210" PostId="5137" Score="0" Text="@amoeba that helps clarify the issue for sure!" CreationDate="2018-01-30T23:39:58.323" UserId="156885" />
  <row Id="15211" PostId="5137" Score="9" Text="I suppose we should not be surprised that the AI people want a decision rule on this issue." CreationDate="2018-01-31T21:10:06.203" UserId="14188" />
  <row Id="15212" PostId="5137" Score="1" Text="@Placidia :)  It's probably mainly just me, but we do have several users who are fond of commenting &quot;This is a DS question&quot; or &quot;This is a CV question&quot;.  At this point, I'm mainly trying to tag them so folks with the relevant knowledge who may want to answer can find them easily.  Although we're taking basic implementation questions, because the tech has become so accessible, we'd certainly prefer the more advanced question to be re-routed to the more optimal stack for the subject." CreationDate="2018-01-31T21:20:18.690" UserId="156885" />
  <row Id="15254" PostId="5137" Score="2" Text="@MatthewDrury: &quot;more conceptual, theory driven, or mathematical questions are more on topic here&quot;: yes, but I shouldn't like 'more' to be read as 'only'. A practical, applied, or non-mathematical question isn't necessarily about computing tools (as I've [commented](https://datascience.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2316/hands-on-moderation-is-essential-for-this-community-to-continue/2318#comment1326_2318) before on the DS Meta)." CreationDate="2018-02-09T11:41:47.680" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="15228" PostId="5138" Score="1" Text="Taking note of [mathSE](https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/25812/community-promotion-ads-2017) last year proposals, perhaps we could try ads for open-source statistical programming tools such as R, JuliaStats, pandas?" CreationDate="2018-02-05T14:06:33.950" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="15435" PostId="5138" Score="1" Text="I have never seen these community promoted adds. What is the main site url where these adds show up? How often do they show up?" CreationDate="2018-03-12T15:43:38.547" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="15436" PostId="5138" Score="2" Text="If I vote for a certain add, does this decrease the rate at which other adds are showing up?" CreationDate="2018-03-12T15:44:25.767" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="15201" PostId="5139" Score="3" Text="This is a demonstration post to indicate how this should look when an ad is posted. It also doubles as your twitter ad, but it's up to you if you wish to promote it by voting" CreationDate="2018-01-29T05:10:18.530" UserId="5645" />
  <row Id="15206" PostId="5141" Score="1" Text="I think this is a nice solution. Removing `mixed-design`, which can mean a lot of things not necessarily related to anova, makes a lot of sense. And I also agree that `mixed-anova` can just link to anova. Thanks." CreationDate="2018-01-30T15:38:49.203" UserId="442" />
  <row Id="15339" PostId="5141" Score="1" Text="I [believe I] approved the synonym for this &amp; merged them. [Something is strange, though, &amp; I can't tell if it worked properly. Hopefully, it's done &amp; the issue is permanently resolved.]" CreationDate="2018-02-22T01:30:02.203" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15340" PostId="5141" Score="0" Text="@gung Looks merged to me. Thanks! Answer marked as accepted." CreationDate="2018-02-22T07:08:32.253" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15431" PostId="5141" Score="0" Text="@gung Hmm, I wonder if whatever &quot;was strange&quot; could have caused this: https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5186." CreationDate="2018-03-09T16:08:14.763" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15432" PostId="5141" Score="0" Text="Yeah, could be. At this point, I don't quite remember what the issue was, though. Maybe the m-a 'ghost' is a one-off, &amp; not something that will typically occur. If so, just fixing the m-a ghost via a hack should be doable." CreationDate="2018-03-09T16:11:38.213" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15462" PostId="5141" Score="0" Text="@gung Hmm, I tried to delete or edit https://stats.stackexchange.com/posts/324506/edit, but I am getting &quot;An error occured submitting the edit&quot; error message no matter what edit I am trying to do (either deleting the whole excerpt or replacing it with something). Could you try to delete it as a mod?" CreationDate="2018-03-13T13:38:12.630" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15463" PostId="5141" Score="0" Text="I can't tell that it worked for me, either. I can just delete [m-a] altogether. Do you want me to do that? (I could also try to recreate it later as a synonym.)" CreationDate="2018-03-13T13:43:25.277" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15512" PostId="5141" Score="0" Text="@gung I just noticed that I don't see the ghost excerpt on the Tags page anymore (even though if I open https://stats.stackexchange.com/posts/324506/edit, then I still see it, but now it does not seem to be displayed anywhere). I am wondering if you did anything else since then or if the problem just dissolved somehow." CreationDate="2018-03-26T08:08:40.957" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15513" PostId="5141" Score="0" Text="I don't quite remember, @amoeba. I thought I deleted the tag altogether. I'm pretty sure I remember doing that. But it's clearly still there. I think the link to the edit page is just flotsam in the servers for the site that no one has ever thought to clean up (&amp; may not be worth the devs' time). My guess is that at this point the situation has resolved itself satisfactorily one way or another." CreationDate="2018-03-26T13:40:36.433" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15205" PostId="5143" Score="10" Text="Yup.  Your three questions also fit my mental model for what is on topic at DS but not here." CreationDate="2018-01-29T21:48:47.587" UserId="74500" />
  <row Id="15213" PostId="5146" Score="18" Text="No, it's definitely not a violation of site etiquette.  See our help: https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/self-answer.  (If you look closely when asking a question you can see the site explicitly encourages self-answers.)&#xA; Related meta threads include https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1844 and https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2142." CreationDate="2018-02-01T21:48:45.893" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="15214" PostId="5146" Score="6" Text="Reputation is only a game! Content is surely subject to peer pressure, as always." CreationDate="2018-02-01T21:56:22.063" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15215" PostId="5146" Score="12" Text="It wasn't just &quot;within a minute&quot;. Both Q and A were posted exactly at the same time (timestamps are identical up to the seconds), which is possible by design of Stack Exchange: one can write both on the same page and submit with one click. Just look closer at the &quot;Ask Question&quot; form." CreationDate="2018-02-01T21:56:47.403" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15217" PostId="5146" Score="7" Text="Thanks for the feedback. I see now how this can be a useful approach. Readers can offer different perspectives to your problem as well as critiquing your approach. This method may in fact be better than posting both in the same &quot;question&quot; and dually asking for alternate approaches and critiques... I have seen those kinds of questions go unnoticed." CreationDate="2018-02-01T22:31:46.023" UserId="8013" />
  <row Id="15218" PostId="5146" Score="5" Text="Self-answered questions have been engineered to be hard to game for reputation (if you have an interesting new question you can answer, try it some time and see). You can get reputation for a good question or answer (or both) by attracting votes or bounties from others, as with other questions and answers. That form of reputation gain is not a problem." CreationDate="2018-02-02T00:08:38.997" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="15220" PostId="5146" Score="2" Text="I hope, now this has been brought to light, more people add interesting questions &amp; self-answers to help share their knowledge :)" CreationDate="2018-02-02T15:17:27.357" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="15221" PostId="5146" Score="7" Text="As the author and answerer of the question at hand: yes, I derived the answer / wrote the code before considering asking a question here (though of course I searched if the result was already on the site first!). I figured others in the future might want the answer to the question, since it's annoying to compute. I also got a suggestion from whuber that made me realize I could have done it less annoyingly, which will be nice to know in the future if a similar thing comes up. :) The 0.5% of my total reputation that it's gained me thus far was definitely not a factor." CreationDate="2018-02-02T15:58:58.760" UserId="9964" />
  <row Id="15237" PostId="5146" Score="0" Text="@Dougal Then your example almost perfectly illustrates why a poster would take such an approach. Thanks for showing me how to better use the site!" CreationDate="2018-02-06T21:44:25.100" UserId="8013" />
  <row Id="15238" PostId="5146" Score="0" Text="@AdamO Well, in retrospect perhaps I should have asked before deriving the answer. Then whuber's suggestion could have saved me some time. On the other hand, someone else might have started working on it in parallel, which was what I was trying to avoid." CreationDate="2018-02-06T21:45:44.173" UserId="9964" />
  <row Id="15219" PostId="5147" Score="2" Text="Also, (albeit not the case here) it's a good tool to provide content for beta sites." CreationDate="2018-02-02T15:16:12.260" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="15222" PostId="5148" Score="5" Text="Having been the second or third most active guy in the [forecasting] tag in 2016 and 2017, I largely agree. The issue with full or near duplicates has become quite tiresome for me; I do not want to write yet another nearly identical answer to a nearly identical question but I do not have the time and energy to find the duplicate either. It would be nice if we had some more canonical threads to refer to (5 or 10 could summarize a lot), but creating these threads again requires energy. I agree about the &quot;no research effort&quot; questions, too. As a consequence, I have reduced my activity in the tag." CreationDate="2018-02-03T10:03:13.380" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="15239" PostId="5151" Score="6" Text="Deep reinforcement learning, I assume? The approach that beats people in Go, etc." CreationDate="2018-02-07T07:53:29.733" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15240" PostId="5151" Score="0" Text="The tag was created here: [Why does Q-Learning use epsilon-greedy during testing?](https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/270618/) That supports @amoeba's guess. Another issue is what to do about the tag." CreationDate="2018-02-07T12:17:25.523" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15241" PostId="5151" Score="5" Text="&quot;Deep RL&quot; is a standard term in the deep RL community, so I'm pretty sure that's what it is. I can write an excerpt, but we can also replace all 9 instances with [deep-learning] + [reinforcement-learning]. @gung" CreationDate="2018-02-07T12:28:29.743" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15242" PostId="5151" Score="6" Text="@amoeba Thanks for doing the legwork! But there is a touch of tautology to the statement &quot;'Deep RL' is a standard term in the deep RL community.&quot; ;-)" CreationDate="2018-02-07T16:08:05.587" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="15244" PostId="5151" Score="0" Text="Tautology of touch!" CreationDate="2018-02-08T13:41:41.910" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15245" PostId="5151" Score="1" Text="(Zero hits on google? Seriously? It should be a book title or something.)" CreationDate="2018-02-08T13:42:21.473" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15253" PostId="5151" Score="0" Text="This includes stuff like deep Q networks, actor critic models, hybrid CNN-RL methods, but maybe not  things like multi-armed bandits or monte carlo methods." CreationDate="2018-02-09T03:29:12.017" UserId="17760" />
  <row Id="15243" PostId="5152" Score="0" Text="Do you want it made a synonym of `[deep-learning]` as well?" CreationDate="2018-02-08T11:59:57.073" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15246" PostId="5152" Score="2" Text="@gung If it all, I'd say it should rather be a synonym of [reinforcement-learning]..." CreationDate="2018-02-08T14:33:48.167" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15247" PostId="5152" Score="1" Text="@amoeba, in 9/11, the Q already has r-l, but only 4/11 have d-l. My impression is that people start w/ the general category (ie, r-l) &amp; then want to augment that by noting that this is the 'deep' version. That's the reasoning behind my suggestion. That said, I'm fine w/ it if people prefer the other mapping." CreationDate="2018-02-08T14:50:10.567" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15248" PostId="5152" Score="2" Text="I'm not convinced that we need [tag:deep-learning] at all since it amounts to branding, but I'm apparently in the minority. I agree with amoeba: my view is that [tag:reinforcement-learning] is the more specific designation. Additionally, OP can specify that the post is about [tag:deep-learning]." CreationDate="2018-02-08T14:57:51.660" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="15255" PostId="5152" Score="1" Text="OK, I made it a synonym of r-l.  If there are no objections after a period of time, I'll merge them." CreationDate="2018-02-09T14:31:35.177" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15258" PostId="5152" Score="2" Text="@Sycorax we don't need `[deep-learning]`; it's a shame that even researchers use marketing terms (and, to make it worse, often introduce them)." CreationDate="2018-02-11T19:45:47.883" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="15342" PostId="5152" Score="1" Text="@Sycorax do you consider this issue closed by now? (If so, pls mark this as accepted. And maybe edit to reflect what was actually done? We did not replace [deep-rl] as per my comment, we made a synonym.)" CreationDate="2018-02-22T08:48:40.727" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15249" PostId="5153" Score="3" Text="See https://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Breferences%5D+wiki%3Ayes+-quotations+-Jokes+is%3Aanswer+score%3A5 for exemplary answers in threads of this type.  I expect most of them to support your contention that they are not necessarily matters of opinion: they provide objective reasons to justify their recommendations." CreationDate="2018-02-08T23:06:24.870" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="15250" PostId="5154" Score="4" Text="Sorry; but on your last proposal: artificial answers are not good answers. More crucially, they won't be accepted if the OP doesn't notice them (very likely in the circumstances you describe) and they won't be upvoted if they aren't genuine." CreationDate="2018-02-08T23:30:51.400" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15251" PostId="5154" Score="4" Text="You can post answers based on comments; just give credit. You can flag (or with a bit more reputation, vote-to-close) questions that have problems which would lead to not getting answers (like being vague or broad or off topic). Outside answering questions or removing ones that we have some grounds to, you may be able refine your search criteria a little using the search facility, or by querying the database." CreationDate="2018-02-08T23:49:44.453" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="15252" PostId="5154" Score="1" Text="I agree w/ @NickCox that the strategies you suggest can't really work &amp; shouldn't be tried. That said, I do agree w/ the thought that lies behind them. Here are a couple places I have brushed up against these issues: [Should the standards for closing questions be relaxed somewhat for old questions?](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1409/7290), &amp; [Are we seeing a dramatic drop in answers per question?](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2245/7290)" CreationDate="2018-02-09T02:41:43.460" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15263" PostId="5154" Score="2" Text="Also, upvote the *good* unanswered questions to make them stand out." CreationDate="2018-02-12T08:48:49.623" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="15281" PostId="5155" Score="0" Text="Sometimes it isn't that I didn't grasp it in a class, it is that I have never seen the idea and I'm looking for written basics by a decent and credible author." CreationDate="2018-02-15T00:59:04.483" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="15256" PostId="5156" Score="1" Text="Thanks @kjetil - that is very helpful." CreationDate="2018-02-09T21:28:18.717" UserId="173082" />
  <row Id="15266" PostId="5159" Score="1" Text="You're right in abstraction and I've often said or thought similarly. But in turn (a) many people still want to know which books are worthwhile for particular purposes (b) a good recommendation  will say why a book is good and who or what it's best for (and also who or what it's not good for) (c) any specific recommendation can be challenged, as for example you might challenge any mention of a textbook that was unreliable. (Note that some might want to point out that assumptions are about errors, not residuals. There's always a criticism on some different level.)" CreationDate="2018-02-13T19:07:42.280" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15268" PostId="5159" Score="0" Text="@NickCox I think you're helping to underscore the point of my post: *be specific* with requests. Asking for &quot;A good book about the linear regression&quot; should not be closed as off-topic, but could be closed for being too broad. Also thanks for NB about errors/residuals :)" CreationDate="2018-02-13T19:16:26.190" UserId="8013" />
  <row Id="15269" PostId="5159" Score="0" Text="Now I am puzzled, as your first sentence seems in direct contradiction to that of @gung. His very short answer to the question is evidently Yes, and I thought your very short answer to be thus No, although the interest is in precisely why and what you are recommending. But I am pleased if you think we agree." CreationDate="2018-02-13T19:30:39.687" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15270" PostId="5159" Score="0" Text="@NickCox OP's question lands in me a few different ways, to which I have different responses [1] It's okay to ask for references (but name your purpose) [2] It's silly to ask for **good** references [3] There is no such thing as canonical/authoritative references." CreationDate="2018-02-13T19:35:09.630" UserId="8013" />
  <row Id="15271" PostId="5159" Score="2" Text="We agree on (1). Counter-examples to (3) seem easy e.g. McCullagh and Nelder is canonical and authoritative on GLMs; Efron and Tibshirani on the bootstrap; etc. (2) is like (1): it can be discussed with details on purpose and background. I wouldn't say that requests for linear regression references are necessarily off-topic, although there could be dozens of different answers." CreationDate="2018-02-13T20:18:43.013" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15264" PostId="5160" Score="6" Text="This seems mostly like a question for meta.SE, rather than here. Basically, the SE system has a mechanism for proposing new sites (area 51) such that the sites will automatically launch if there is sufficient interest. People make different suggestions &amp; some catch on. For related discussions of CV vs DS, see the threads categorized under the [datascience-stackexchange](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/datascience-stackexchange) tag." CreationDate="2018-02-13T16:42:15.423" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15265" PostId="5160" Score="6" Text="The answers can be found by visiting the sites and reading their help pages.  There is essentially *zero* overlap between CV and MO.  Although there is some with mathematics, it's far less than you would think: if you have an abstract theoretical question or a textbook exercise, Math is probably the place for it, but if you are concerned about applications or intuition, CV is the place to go.  (There's probably more overlap between Math and Physics etc. than there is with us.)  The DS site substantially overlaps CV--which perhaps is one reason it has had such little success." CreationDate="2018-02-13T17:21:29.893" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="15267" PostId="5160" Score="6" Text="Some reasons why sites overlap (not likely to include them all): (a) many questions may seem to touch on the scope of two or more sites (b) many won't study, or prefer to ignore, detailed advice about what's on-topic at any site and no mechanisms are perfect in flushing off-topic material (c) such advice may seem in turn unclear or ambiguous; even experienced people can disagree in good faith on where to draw lines." CreationDate="2018-02-13T19:15:07.417" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15329" PostId="5160" Score="0" Text="also: [After Data Science SE: Artificial Intelligence SE](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/4243/12359)" CreationDate="2018-02-20T21:50:06.257" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="15273" PostId="5162" Score="2" Text="I often wish for the superpower to be able to freeze certain keyboards remotely. Seriously, what would that be? There is no provision in our guidance to discriminate according to where questions originate." CreationDate="2018-02-14T18:37:15.610" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15274" PostId="5162" Score="1" Text="Agree with @NickCox. If we &quot;did something&quot; with MOOCs, then what about academic year, maybe we should also &quot;do something&quot; with students? What about conferences? Or publishing cycles for journals?" CreationDate="2018-02-14T18:39:07.290" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="15275" PostId="5162" Score="4" Text="@NickCox, actually, I was thinking about accommodating, not discriuminating. Maybe something can be done to help these people navigate. Maybe a welcome page or something along those lines. My sense is that most MOOC students here are programmers, they're smart but don't know anything. So, there could be a way to adjust to their needs" CreationDate="2018-02-14T18:39:50.323" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="15276" PostId="5162" Score="5" Text="@Tim, I think MOOCs are different, because they can have thousands people studying exact same thing in exactly the same schedule. That's why they're noticeable unlike ordinary students who are less correlated." CreationDate="2018-02-14T18:41:18.407" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="15277" PostId="5162" Score="1" Text="I'd argue that at the beginning of the academic year there is even more &quot;Statistics 101&quot; students..." CreationDate="2018-02-14T18:42:34.483" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="15278" PostId="5162" Score="6" Text="Here's an easy way to try what you want. Ask a Meta question which is &quot;I am doing a MOOC. I am smart but I don't know anything. So, can you give me specific hints about asking questions here?&quot; -- and then answer it. The wording should not be exactly that, naturally. In general, it would be subject in the usual way to the whole range of reactions possible on Meta. My own wild guess is that it's hard to find much to say that differs from anything we say already, but I would be very happy to be shown up as wrong (well, here at least)." CreationDate="2018-02-14T19:02:52.140" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15279" PostId="5162" Score="0" Text="how about a &quot;MOOC&quot; tag? we'll ask them to self-identify the questions with it. it'll make them easier find similar questions. there are common themes coming from MOOC students in my opinion." CreationDate="2018-02-14T21:27:44.087" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="15280" PostId="5162" Score="3" Text="@Nick Actually, I think that may serve well, even though we have similar questions and answers already. We could make such a post &quot;featured&quot; for a few weeks each time it was thought to be necessary, so it would appear near the top of the right hand sidebar -- with a catchy title it could attract the attention of at least a fraction of those visitors. The answer(s) could provide some general orientation and some specific links to other sources of information (like how to write a good question, how to write a self-study question and so on)." CreationDate="2018-02-15T00:34:41.367" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="15282" PostId="5162" Score="6" Text="I am not in favour of using tags for this purpose. Tag identify content, not something about how threads arise." CreationDate="2018-02-15T06:46:12.860" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15482" PostId="5162" Score="0" Text="If they are &quot;*asking similar questions as the previous wave of students*&quot; should these question naturally be treated as duplicates?" CreationDate="2018-03-19T01:32:02.483" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="15302" PostId="5165" Score="4" Text="Asking for the ability to sort by date should probably be done on [meta.SE]; that would need to be done by the developers &amp; would be SE-wide. There is a [data query](https://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/431621/most-used-tags-without-excerpts) for tags w/o excerpts." CreationDate="2018-02-19T21:22:58.020" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15314" PostId="5165" Score="1" Text="Thanks!  I did not know about data queries at all.  However, the query didn't work quite right - for instance, I ran it and found &quot;inferential-statistics&quot; on the list. But it has both an excerpt and a full wiki." CreationDate="2018-02-20T11:43:22.450" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="15315" PostId="5165" Score="2" Text="I'm not sure what the problem w/ the query is. The SQL code is quite simple." CreationDate="2018-02-20T11:54:12.717" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15316" PostId="5165" Score="1" Text="I don't know either (I don't know SQL at all, but this does look straightforward).  But, you can see that inferential-statistics (not surprisingly) does have a full wiki." CreationDate="2018-02-20T11:57:03.020" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="15318" PostId="5165" Score="1" Text="[inferential-statistics] is an unmerged synonym. Itself, it does not have a wiki excerpt. As I must have said 100 times before, [WE SHOULD BE MERGING ALL OUR UNMERGED SYNONYMS](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2790) [that are older than say 3 months] because it only creates confusion. Cc @gung. Peter, you are a mod; can you help doing that?" CreationDate="2018-02-20T13:03:43.247" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15320" PostId="5165" Score="0" Text="I don't know how to merge synonyms.  I didn't see an option to do that on the page for inferential-statistics." CreationDate="2018-02-20T13:09:39.907" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="15321" PostId="5165" Score="1" Text="If you want to try it out and see how it works, you could start with the two existing unmerged synonyms on Meta: https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/tags/synonyms?filter=merge&amp;tab=newest. I am obviously not familiar with the moderation interface but I imagine it should be straightforward... @gung should know how it works." CreationDate="2018-02-20T13:10:30.147" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15322" PostId="5165" Score="3" Text="I just merged them (&amp; a whole bunch of others)." CreationDate="2018-02-20T13:30:52.250" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15323" PostId="5165" Score="2" Text="@gung Great! I don't see them merged but perhaps some time is needed until it gets updated." CreationDate="2018-02-20T13:58:25.827" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15327" PostId="5165" Score="1" Text="@gung Ah, I realized that by &quot;them&quot; you must have meant inferential-statistics &amp; inference (I do see them merged). I thought you meant the two unmerged ones on Meta, but I guess you did not touch those yet (at least they still look unmerged as of now). Anyway, thanks for bringing this forward." CreationDate="2018-02-20T21:40:09.007" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15328" PostId="5165" Score="1" Text="@amoeba, TBH, meta.CV didn't even occur to me. I see there were 2 synonyms that were unmerged here. I have merged them now." CreationDate="2018-02-20T21:48:26.933" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15330" PostId="5165" Score="0" Text="@gung Cool. It's just that I mentioned them to Peter in a comment right above your comment saying &quot;I just merged them&quot;, hence my confusion." CreationDate="2018-02-20T21:51:40.180" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15332" PostId="5165" Score="1" Text="@amoeba, lol. Evidently, I didn't read that closely." CreationDate="2018-02-20T21:53:59.217" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15333" PostId="5165" Score="0" Text="But I just (7:15 PM Eastern, Feb 20) ran the query again and inferential-statistics is still there.  I guess the database is still updating?" CreationDate="2018-02-21T00:17:25.993" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="15334" PostId="5165" Score="1" Text="It's updated once per week." CreationDate="2018-02-21T09:15:08.310" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15401" PostId="5165" Score="3" Text="You can find all tags without excerpts or wikis by using [this query](http://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/810957/tags-without-a-wiki-or-excerpt)." CreationDate="2018-02-26T15:25:45.310" UserId="72321" />
  <row Id="15300" PostId="5167" Score="3" Text="+1. A simpler (?) method is to mouse-over &quot;11 hours&quot; in &quot;This question has an open bounty worth +100 reputation from Alex R. ending in 11 hours&quot;." CreationDate="2018-02-19T20:41:30.807" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15301" PostId="5167" Score="0" Text="Good point, @amoeba, I didn't know that was there. Why not add that as a new answer?" CreationDate="2018-02-19T21:15:19.140" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15305" PostId="5168" Score="0" Text="Note that this is useful in many other circumstances too. E.g. this question is currently displayed as &quot;asked 3 hours ago&quot;, but one can find out the exact timestamp by mouseover." CreationDate="2018-02-19T22:06:12.740" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15335" PostId="5170" Score="3" Text="I think if questions like this https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2806 are on topic then this one can also be considered on topic. It would benefit from some editing though which I tried to do now." CreationDate="2018-02-21T12:13:31.033" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15336" PostId="5170" Score="8" Text="To me questions on general statistical computing  are usually fine; questions on specific code usually not. A rule of thumb is to imagine the question without specific code references. If little or nothing is left, it is often off-topic. If something of wide interest is left, it is on-topic. A related test is whether a question focusing on software X should be almost equally interesting to people who use Y or Z instead. Why do different programs give different results is a kind of question to which the answer is often statistical." CreationDate="2018-02-21T14:12:31.770" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15337" PostId="5170" Score="2" Text="I imagine that this question has different angles and is in the gray area (so I'd say it is on topic). Somebody is looking for a hack to allocate some vector. This might be done in two different ways, considering mathematical/computational tricks, or considering software engineering tricks. In the discussion we see both (discussion about memory allocation and about changing the strategy to get to the solution)." CreationDate="2018-02-21T14:50:21.657" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="15338" PostId="5170" Score="4" Text="That question is very clearly off topic--but for a completely different reason: it doesn't supply enough information to permit a diagnosis.  We couldn't send it to any other SE site because of that.  For example, if this is a Gaussian response with linear link, there are potential ways to reduce RAM requirements by working only with the sums-of-squares matrix, but if it is for a GLM (say, a logistic regression) then such an option is off the table." CreationDate="2018-02-21T15:54:36.873" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="15341" PostId="5170" Score="1" Text="@whuber This information has been provided by the OP in an edit." CreationDate="2018-02-22T08:40:02.840" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15403" PostId="5170" Score="0" Text="If you think the problem can be resolved in software agnostic manner, then you can help OP to reformulate the question in such a way that makes it software agnostic instead of outright closing or porting the question to SE" CreationDate="2018-02-28T18:55:42.970" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="15343" PostId="5171" Score="0" Text="+1. Do you think the current version of this question (after several edits) can be considered on-topic?" CreationDate="2018-02-22T09:08:29.307" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15344" PostId="5171" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, IMO no. It is still asking about R code, how it works, how to use it to get around the error. It does not seem to be asking about the related statistical issues, nor does it seem to be asking about a computational algorithm (to be implemented later in some barely mentioned language) as w/ the PCA thread you linked to above." CreationDate="2018-02-22T12:26:00.723" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15345" PostId="5171" Score="0" Text="Hmm. OK. I edited it again (only slightly) - can you check if it's okay now?" CreationDate="2018-02-22T12:44:58.563" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15346" PostId="5171" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, from the body of the Q, the main question seems to be, &quot;Is there some package that I can use...&quot;. Ie, no, this is still off-topic from my point of view. As I discuss above, my definition is based on what the OP needs explained, &amp; they seem to be after R code / packages, or more generally an R based solution. Another way to test whether a Q is on topic (which is imperfect, but often clarifying) is to imagine someone answers w/ an example coded in software to which the OP does not have access, would that be a sufficient answer for the OP? If not, the Q is off topic." CreationDate="2018-02-22T13:09:13.010" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15347" PostId="5171" Score="0" Text="In this case, 'try package y in software z' is the kind of answer the OP seems to want, but will only be of value if the OP has access to software z. That's b/c the OP is asking about code, not statistics." CreationDate="2018-02-22T13:10:37.703" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15348" PostId="5171" Score="0" Text="I can see your logic but I'd say it's too restrictive. Somebody wants to run logistic regression with elastic net penalty -- a very clear &amp; meaningful statistical problem. The dataset is too large and the standard tool (glmnet) fails to work -- a very clear obstacle that other people can later have too. This person comes to our forum and asks &quot;What do do?!&quot; -- and we are telling them: Sorry, off-topic. This just looks strange to me." CreationDate="2018-02-22T13:17:04.467" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15349" PostId="5171" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, I think these kinds of clear boundaries are the only thing that's workable in the long run. People who need tech support for their software need to use the software's native facilities." CreationDate="2018-02-22T13:20:47.030" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15350" PostId="5171" Score="0" Text="I agree with the second sentence, but in this case the Q is explicitly not about the tech support with glmnet. As I wrote above, the Q is basically &quot;What can I do?&quot;. You can say that it's about package recommendation, and you will have a point. But it's definitely not tech support." CreationDate="2018-02-22T13:22:11.900" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15351" PostId="5171" Score="1" Text="They can ask, 'what can I do?', but 'what code / package do I use?' is off topic. There is a difference between those. It may be subtle, but it's clear to me." CreationDate="2018-02-22T13:24:59.313" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15352" PostId="5171" Score="0" Text="Wait - so &quot;what can I do?&quot; is on-topic then? Because the title, the 1st paragraph and the last sentence amount to that I think. Or if you think not, then a tiniest of edits could make it amount to that." CreationDate="2018-02-22T13:30:24.070" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15353" PostId="5171" Score="1" Text="I could edit the question to make it about 'what can I do?', but it would be a *large* edit. It isn't my place to change the nature of the OP's question. Moreover, I think the answer to that question would not be an answer the OP would find helpful, b/c the OP is *clearly* after, '`library(z); mod &lt;- y(data); summary(y)`'." CreationDate="2018-02-22T13:33:09.753" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15354" PostId="5171" Score="0" Text="If *the OP* changes their Q to be clearly about something else. That would indicate that another type of answer would suffice. In that case, I'd be happy to reopen." CreationDate="2018-02-22T13:34:25.350" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15355" PostId="5171" Score="0" Text="OK I will stop editing that Q now, but if *I* were the OP, I would still not know what exactly kind of edit you would want from me." CreationDate="2018-02-22T13:35:11.700" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15356" PostId="5171" Score="1" Text="Perhaps the clearest strategy would be to remove all reference to software, packages, error messages, etc. Then state that you want to know what strategies or algorithms are available for penalized LR when the matrix is too large to fit in a reasonable computer's memory. That is more drastic than necessary, but it does lay out a clear path forward. If the OP would not be interested in the answer to that kind of Q, the Q they are asking is off topic here." CreationDate="2018-02-22T13:40:20.247" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15357" PostId="5171" Score="1" Text="OK but if this Q had not even mentioned glmnet, then my first comment would be along the lines of &quot;Have you already tried glmnet? Did it not work?&quot; It seems strange to *require* to edit this useful information out." CreationDate="2018-02-22T13:50:47.183" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15358" PostId="5171" Score="3" Text="I'm with @amoeba on this one. It's an interesting Statistics problem, which just can't be solved without a computer, and which would be very hard to solve without using a dedicated software tool. The OP is not asking us to debug her code (as a matter of fact, she provides very little code at all), and there are at least two answers which work in R. The simplest answer is to broadly describe the implementation of the methodology which solves her problem, and then point her at the right package. The hardest, less useful answer is to describe the implementation in minute detail, don't mention 1/" CreationDate="2018-02-23T08:42:27.893" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="15359" PostId="5171" Score="1" Text="2/ the existing package and expecting her to reinvent the wheel. Then there are other approaches based on free cloud computing resources. I think it's an interesting, answerable question of general interest, and closing it is a pity. But of course that's just my opinion." CreationDate="2018-02-23T08:44:03.220" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="15360" PostId="5171" Score="1" Text="Thanks @DeltaIV. I suggest you vote to reopen. I cannot because I already did and the Q did get reopened but then was closed by gung again; the system does not allow me to vote again. One of us should probably also post an answer here explaining our disagreement with gung." CreationDate="2018-02-23T08:58:57.953" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15361" PostId="5171" Score="1" Text="@DeltaIV Well I could not resist a procrastination opportunity and did post an answer here." CreationDate="2018-02-23T09:12:28.410" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15371" PostId="5171" Score="0" Text="@DeltaIV, see my comments under amoeba's answer. I certainly don't think that the algorithm needs to be described in &quot;minute detail&quot; &amp; the fact that it is already implemented be intentionally left unsaid, in order for this to be on-topic. I think the answer you suggest would be fine. I just don't think the OP is after that. If I thought they were, I would reopen." CreationDate="2018-02-23T15:13:37.467" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15373" PostId="5171" Score="0" Text="Here are two recent threads ([1](https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/329243/), [2](https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/329527/)) that are asked in terms of software (&amp; people had voted to close), that I thought were ultimately statistical &amp; voted to leave open. My point is that it isn't about whether code is included in the Q, but the nature of the appropriate answer. Those 2 were judgment calls, &amp; I may have been wrong. Likewise, the thread under discussion here is also a judgment call, &amp; I may be wrong again. What I am trying to do in this meta thread is clarify how I think about these issues." CreationDate="2018-02-23T15:28:49.683" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15363" PostId="5172" Score="0" Text="It's still off-topic to me, `&quot;I have tried to use sparse matrix and it reduces the size from 2.2 to 1.1 GB, but I am still not able to run the function. Is there some package that I can use - I saw bigmemory but am not really sure how to apply it? Or if you can recommend another way to proceed with the variable selection that would also work for me?&quot;`. But I think software/package recommendations have their place here on CV, so I also do not fully agree with gung." CreationDate="2018-02-23T14:00:07.633" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="15364" PostId="5172" Score="0" Text="@Firebug Can you clarify what aspect makes it off-topic and what kind of edit could make it on-topic? If OP cuts out the first two sentences of the part you quoted, will it become any better?" CreationDate="2018-02-23T14:02:10.743" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15365" PostId="5172" Score="0" Text="I think a discussion that illuminates the statistical &amp; computational issues that led to the OPs result, &amp; a &quot;description of the methodology&quot; that addresses the above, would be a great answer. Of course, there is no problem w/ pairing such an answer with an illustration (that would obviously entail code). If you read through some of my answers, you will note that that pattern is one I use often. I have no problem with any of that." CreationDate="2018-02-23T14:46:31.037" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15366" PostId="5172" Score="0" Text="Instead, the issue WRT this specific Q is that I don't think the OP is after that. One thing to note is that all the clarifying edits that serve to move the Q *somewhat* away from 'what library &amp; code do I use?' were made by you, not the OP. Even the edited Q still implies that the answer they are after is  '`library(z); mod &lt;- y(data); summary(mod)`'. If you had both, my guess is that the OP would skip the &quot;[technical and wordy](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/92141/pp-plots-vs-qq-plots/100383#comment621298_100383)&quot; stuff &amp; just look at the code." CreationDate="2018-02-23T14:51:47.973" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15367" PostId="5172" Score="0" Text="As I said above, another conceptual test that I use to think through whether a Q is on topic, is what if the issue were illustrated, but with software the OP doesn't have? In this case, I think the answer we are describing would be an absolute $0$: The part about statistics is of no interest to the OP, &amp; they would not be able to run the code. So the whole thing would be viewed as a waste." CreationDate="2018-02-23T14:54:05.807" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15368" PostId="5172" Score="0" Text="By way of contrast, [here](https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/89968/) is an answer that follows the general pattern, describing a plot, &amp; illustrating it, but w/ software to which I don't have access (&amp; can't even read). Nonetheless, I thought it was quite helpful to me." CreationDate="2018-02-23T14:57:25.287" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15369" PostId="5172" Score="0" Text="@gung This OP never posted on CV before and is obviously unfamiliar with our rules. When I see a suboptimal Q that I consider potentially interesting (also for others and for future readers), I'd rather edit it to make it comply with our guidelines, than close as not complying. This was my intention here. Just trying to &quot;save&quot; a potentially interesting thread." CreationDate="2018-02-23T15:00:09.123" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15370" PostId="5172" Score="0" Text="I'm not blaming you for trying, @amoeba. I hope I didn't give you that impression." CreationDate="2018-02-23T15:01:05.430" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15372" PostId="5172" Score="0" Text="@gung whoa, it must have taken some ...guts to define your nice answer about the difference btw pp-plots and qq-plots &quot;technical &amp; wordy&quot;. There's literally not a single equation in it." CreationDate="2018-02-23T15:27:27.777" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="15374" PostId="5172" Score="3" Text="@gung one last comment and then I'll refrain from intervening on this topic anymore: you and amoeba have already discussed it at length, and you're users with way more experience than me. I tend to agree with gung that the OP seems to be interested in code only, but a &quot;method + a little code&quot; answer would be useful to other users. Does this make a difference in deciding if the Q is on-topic or off-topic? Not a rhetorical question." CreationDate="2018-02-23T15:29:31.260" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="15375" PostId="5172" Score="0" Text="Exactly my point @DeltaIV: I often tend to think about other users more than about OP." CreationDate="2018-02-23T15:30:59.933" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15376" PostId="5172" Score="1" Text="That's an excellent question, @DeltaIV. It has kept coming up in my thinking as amoeba &amp; I have been discussing this. I'm not sure what the answer is (although implicitly I've been saying 'no' by not reopening). It may be worth a separate meta thread to hash out. The underlying issue goes farther than this thread. What is 1 answer will be better for the asker, but a different answer will be better for posterity, eg?" CreationDate="2018-02-23T15:32:06.590" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15377" PostId="5172" Score="0" Text="Ok, I'll ask it. I don't have time now to write a nice question (and I actually need to write two of them), so it will be short, but hopefully good." CreationDate="2018-02-23T15:38:09.197" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="15390" PostId="5173" Score="5" Text="I wouldn't worry much about &quot;too broad&quot; being too broad. It can mean &quot;too big&quot; or &quot;too vague&quot;, which perhaps are your meanings. The question makes sense, but it's too big to expect anyone to answer. Or, it's not clear what you mean within a larger territory; that grades into &quot;unclear what you're asking&quot;. Both sub-reasons to close, in any case. (I think we've (almost) seen questions where everyone voting to close chose a different reason. Sometimes you know it's a poor question, but it's a struggle to explain the top reason why. Compare lousy movies, politicians you despise, etc.)" CreationDate="2018-02-24T07:30:06.083" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15392" PostId="5174" Score="4" Text="W/i the SE system, there is some leeway for interpretation of the rules. I'm sympathetic to Peter's position. Consider that, under our current standards, a question like, '[What skills are required to perform large scale statistical analyses?](https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/7815/)' would be closed as too broad to be answerable. But I suspect a good (maybe even great) answer could be given to that question, &amp; would create a lot of value. Most questions closed as too broad undoubtedly should be closed, but I do wonder if sometimes we are too strict &amp; preempt helpful possibilities." CreationDate="2018-02-25T12:49:22.463" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15378" PostId="5175" Score="4" Text="Have you contemplated writing comments to ask the OP to clarify their intention?  That's the main purpose of the commenting mechanism, by the way.  Note, too, that closing a question does not delete it or in any way limit the process of improving it: it's a way to suspend posting answers until the OP has had an opportunity to formulate the question appropriately." CreationDate="2018-02-23T15:53:46.270" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="15380" PostId="5175" Score="1" Text="@whuber you're right, that's the first thing to do and I should have said that in my Q. Suppose the OP doesn't reply, or replies in an ambiguous way (not the other thread's case, but it happened to me sometimes). Suppose also most of the edits to make the question more on-topic are done by someone else, not the OP (this is the other thread's case). We cannot be 100% sure that the OP won't like the on-topic answer, but we have a strong suspicion. Your suggestion is then &quot;close and reopen only if  the OP modifies the question so that it's clearly on-topic&quot;. Right?" CreationDate="2018-02-23T16:09:50.543" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="15383" PostId="5175" Score="5" Text="Yes, that's right.  My perception of closing has evolved.  Initially closing seemed pejorative: &quot;this is a closed question, meaning we think it's bad or you're stupid.&quot;  Now I see closing as a service and as a kindness: it staves off downvotes; it prevents answers from appearing that may be irrelevant, confusing, or even wrong (not because they are inherently incorrect but because they address some issue that wasn't asked); and it provides the OP some time in which to reflect on, discuss, and refine their question before it's subjected to any more criticism or voting." CreationDate="2018-02-23T16:15:42.220" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="15385" PostId="5175" Score="0" Text="@whuber it's an interesting perspective, which I never thought of. I'm not sure I can see it as a kindness, but I do see your point in it being a service, and giving the OP time to think. After all, if s/he doesn't want to invest some time to reflect on, and refine her/his question, it's probably best left closed." CreationDate="2018-02-23T16:21:33.333" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="15386" PostId="5175" Score="5" Text="It's a kindness in that sometimes downvotes accumulate quickly on unclear or ill-posed questions. Those can only be perceived by the OP as negative. Moreover, many downvotes are never reversed even after a post is edited. I would like to prevent such downvotes, if I can, in circumstances where there is a prospect for the question to be turned into a good one. The message I intend is &quot;Welcome to our site; we see you have taken the effort to formulate a question for us, but it currently doesn't fit our format; let us work with you to get it to the point where we can offer useful answers.&quot;" CreationDate="2018-02-23T16:26:09.093" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="15387" PostId="5175" Score="0" Text="@whuber got it, it makes sense. Thanks!" CreationDate="2018-02-23T16:39:00.403" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="15382" PostId="5176" Score="1" Text="How much nicer was it than what you wrote here?  :) Are you just looking for a reference answer for this quoted notation, or are you looking for a better notation?" CreationDate="2018-02-23T16:14:35.313" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15384" PostId="5176" Score="1" Text="@amoeba hey, thanks for the compliments :-) I'm (have been, actually) more of a user of LMMs than a learner, so I wasn't sure my notation was correct and thus yes, I was looking for a reference answer which would confirm this quoted notation. But I also seem to remember it was a nice answer overall, so I would have probably enjoyed reading it again during the weekend." CreationDate="2018-02-23T16:18:05.443" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="15388" PostId="5176" Score="1" Text="https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/304374 ?" CreationDate="2018-02-23T21:52:15.197" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15389" PostId="5176" Score="1" Text="If not, it might help to review https://stats.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&amp;q=is%3aanswer%20%5bmixed-model%5d%20mathcal (26 hits)." CreationDate="2018-02-23T21:53:42.423" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15391" PostId="5176" Score="2" Text="@amoeba adding `mathcal` to the search query was clever...I was halfway through your list but I got bored (weekend laziness :) and I decided to use the notation of Doug Bates from `lme4` vignette https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/lme4/vignettes/lmer.pdf which is very similar to mine, but it allows for correlations among random effects." CreationDate="2018-02-24T10:49:29.550" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="15433" PostId="5176" Score="1" Text="@DeltaIV: I almost always use the notation $...+Z\gamma+...$ when it comes to LME, I based this on the notation used in Faraway's in [Extending the Linear Model with R](http://www.maths.bath.ac.uk/~jjf23/ELM/index.html). While I view Bates` opinions on LMEMs almost as laws, I dislike the idea of using $b$ instead of $\gamma$. The reason is that in multivariate settings where we just want to change our vectors $\alpha$, $\beta$ to matrices $A$, $B$, using both $b$ and $\beta$ becomes cumbersome, $\gamma$ generalised to $\Gamma$ without any issues. (But Bates' notation can't ever be wrong so +1)" CreationDate="2018-03-10T20:34:03.953" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="15434" PostId="5176" Score="0" Text="@usεr11852 ah, I just used $\gamma$ &quot;unconsciously&quot;: I felt that using $b$ and $\beta$ in the same equation &quot;didn't feel right&quot;, but I didn't realize about the implications for multivariate linear mixed models (probably because I never use them)." CreationDate="2018-03-12T11:17:48.903" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="15394" PostId="5178" Score="0" Text="This (meta.CV) is now the right place to ask this question. But your question isn't very clear. Can you say more about what you have in mind?" CreationDate="2018-02-25T14:41:26.427" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15395" PostId="5178" Score="0" Text="I just updated the main message." CreationDate="2018-02-25T15:09:45.530" UserId="196648" />
  <row Id="15397" PostId="5178" Score="1" Text="See https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/41959/is-so-an-inappropriate-venue-for-assembling-a-development-team-for-a-new-project for some possibilities." CreationDate="2018-02-25T16:36:08.067" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15398" PostId="5178" Score="2" Text="Guru.com is a site for all types of developers with expertise in many software languages and platforms willing to work on a consulting basis." CreationDate="2018-02-25T16:56:37.000" UserId="78229" />
  <row Id="15400" PostId="5178" Score="1" Text="Thanks for you suggestions. I will check out that thread and Guru" CreationDate="2018-02-26T04:26:37.277" UserId="196648" />
  <row Id="15402" PostId="5178" Score="0" Text="-1 because the edit seems to have nothing to do with the title or original question. My assessment of the problem is that you need to hire a consultant. There are many contract research groups out there who do this kind of work, and googling yields a lot of results all over the globe." CreationDate="2018-02-27T19:54:19.850" UserId="8013" />
  <row Id="15405" PostId="5178" Score="0" Text="@AdamO That's a little harsh, because we have to know what kind of question is in mind before we can advise on where to ask it. I'd just comment further that there are many kinds of collaboration that don't involve a consultant, but many of us would be wary of working with a stranger for free and not trivially when there are so many people we already know or know about who identifiably have complementary skills or expertise and are known to be congenial personally." CreationDate="2018-02-28T20:51:35.730" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15412" PostId="5182" Score="2" Text="As I understand it, &quot;evaluation&quot; for many people is about evaluating the success or failure of a programme/program [non-computing sense], policy, law, or intervention in society, medicine, the environment, etc. That often has a statistical flavour. (Indeed, it is hard to think of good evaluations that don't.)" CreationDate="2018-03-01T18:59:39.383" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15413" PostId="5183" Score="4" Text="We do have a [tag:metric] tag. It isn't clear to me that your question needs any of that. Ultimately, you have a [good] question about aggregating over means in a particular circumstance. My 1st thought would be that the tags `[mean]`, `[aggregation]`, &amp; perhaps `[geometric-mean]` would be appropriate &amp; sufficient." CreationDate="2018-03-01T19:17:10.577" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15414" PostId="5183" Score="2" Text="To me &quot;evaluation&quot; implies a question about calculation of some kind of expression on a computer. I believe that &quot;evaluation&quot; without some adjective is too broad/general and would be misused." CreationDate="2018-03-02T00:26:15.900" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="15415" PostId="5183" Score="4" Text="@gung that's a good point, I've changed the tags." CreationDate="2018-03-02T13:01:20.523" UserId="16052" />
  <row Id="15416" PostId="5184" Score="1" Text="Why not let proposers decide?  That's how tags are generated on SE in the first place.  When somebody has a question that they feel truly needs a &quot;mixed-data&quot; tag then they can create it for that question." CreationDate="2018-03-02T17:01:23.593" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="15417" PostId="5184" Score="1" Text="@whuber, in this case ttnphns is the proposer, but he is opening his proposal for wider discussion fist (which is admirable IMO)." CreationDate="2018-03-02T17:21:12.790" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15418" PostId="5184" Score="1" Text="@gung By &quot;proposer&quot; I mean proposer of a *question.*  If ttnphns is asking a question that he believes requires a &quot;mixed-data&quot; tag, then by all means he should apply it. That will create the tag.  There's no need to ask the community to do that!" CreationDate="2018-03-02T17:38:39.363" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="15419" PostId="5184" Score="2" Text="@whuber, I don't have a problem w/ someone proposing a useful tag &amp; putting it on existing questions to group them. I've done that twice ([tag:glmm], &amp; [tag:var]), &amp; both became productive tags. People asking questions might search for a tag, not find one, &amp; not know--or have the required rep--to create their own. Someone more familiar w/ the site, like ttnphns, may be better able to see where a new tag is needed." CreationDate="2018-03-02T17:48:30.193" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15421" PostId="5184" Score="7" Text="Regarding `We also have tag [nominal] and I wonder shouldn't it be kept, dismissed or merged to [categorical-data]`: Yes, I think [nominal] should be made a synonym of [categorical-data]! That was @gung's suggestion some time ago and we discussed it [in a separate Meta post](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4819) but you were strongly against this mapping so it was never implemented. Did you have second thoughts since then? I don't know about gung but I still think it would be a sensible tag synonym mapping." CreationDate="2018-03-02T22:44:55.377" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15465" PostId="5184" Score="1" Text="@amoeba I would be for merging those tags. We would be doing site-users a favor by stressing these are identical terms." CreationDate="2018-03-14T13:50:29.820" UserId="8013" />
  <row Id="15466" PostId="5184" Score="2" Text="I sense the risk of vagueness is very high. At first blush, when *I* read &quot;mixed-data&quot; I think 1) data for mixed models (which can be of any sort), then 2) mixture data. Neither of these fit with what you're suggesting here." CreationDate="2018-03-14T13:53:41.587" UserId="8013" />
  <row Id="15467" PostId="5184" Score="1" Text="@AdamO, I probably will change the tag `mixed-data` to `mixed-type-data` (as I mentioned it) soon. Then I'll select and tag questions. I'll do it, please wait a bit." CreationDate="2018-03-14T17:08:51.350" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="15615" PostId="5184" Score="1" Text="Would `[mixed-data]` refer to variables with different measures, or to mixed continuous-discrete distributions, or to?" CreationDate="2018-04-13T17:57:30.503" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="15616" PostId="5184" Score="0" Text="@Alexis, no. `mixed-type-data` (that will be the tag) will refer only to mixture of variates (data columns) of different measures." CreationDate="2018-04-13T18:01:41.013" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="15624" PostId="5184" Score="0" Text="The [mixed-data] tag is already being used incorrectly (for mixed models). We really should rename the tag and provide a wiki excerpt to prevent proliferating the confusion. Otherwise I would simply delete the [mixed-data] tag for the time being." CreationDate="2018-04-19T09:57:55.233" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15625" PostId="5184" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, we may delete [mixed-data]. The tag I'll organize will be [mixed-type-data]" CreationDate="2018-04-19T12:02:44.163" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="15626" PostId="5184" Score="0" Text="OK, I've just deleted [mixed-data] then. By the way, what do you think about nominal/categorical-data -- see my comment above ([this one](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5184/a-new-tag-for-mixture-of-data-types?noredirect=1#comment15421_5184))." CreationDate="2018-04-19T12:17:12.930" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15631" PostId="5184" Score="2" Text="@amoeba, thinking back, I perceive we shouldn't be excessively scholastic. Yes, I think you may merge nominal to [categorical-data]." CreationDate="2018-04-19T14:49:51.377" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="15420" PostId="5185" Score="1" Text="I am also worried about your point #2. By the way, I noticed that we have [mixed] as a synonym of [mixed-model]. I think it would make sense to delete this synonym mapping (i.e. delete [mixed] altogether), given that we have several [mixed-something] tags, and might get even more." CreationDate="2018-03-02T22:30:10.187" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15422" PostId="5185" Score="2" Text="@amoeba, I deleted `[mixed]`. It should disappear in a day or so." CreationDate="2018-03-03T01:05:22.840" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15627" PostId="5185" Score="1" Text="FYI [mixed-data] started to be misused and I deleted the tag. Ttnphns says he is going to create [mixed-type-data] some time soon. If you don't like this name then perhaps comment under the Q." CreationDate="2018-04-19T12:25:23.993" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15637" PostId="5185" Score="0" Text="@gung, shouldn't we rename tag [mixed-model] into [mixed-effect-model]? We have have tags [fixed-effect-model], [random-effect-model]. [mixed-model] sounds really ambiguous." CreationDate="2018-04-20T15:27:53.427" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="15638" PostId="5185" Score="0" Text="Maybe, @ttnphns, but that should be discussed somewhere on meta.CV other than here in these comments. My impression is that just saying 'mixed-model' is very common." CreationDate="2018-04-20T15:38:15.350" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15639" PostId="5185" Score="0" Text="@gung, it is common. But people not inqrequently confuse it with 1) [mixed-type-data], 2) &quot;gaussian/finite/etc mixture&quot; or 3) distrubutions like Tweedie. See also AdamO's comments above." CreationDate="2018-04-20T15:44:43.193" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="15640" PostId="5185" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, will you have an opinion, too? (I mean last 3 comments on {mixed-model] here" CreationDate="2018-04-20T15:45:16.703" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="15641" PostId="5185" Score="0" Text="@ttnphns I prefer the tag to be called [mixed-model]. This is IMHO by far the most common term. Actually, my long-standing plan is to eliminate [fixed-effect-model] and [random-effect-model] entirely because I think *those* are ambiguous, but this is such a big undertaking that I never started implementing it (see https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4391)." CreationDate="2018-04-20T15:48:35.327" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15642" PostId="5185" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, it's a problem intrinsic to the inconsistent terminology that exists. ttnphns has a point about the potential for confusion w/ FMMs." CreationDate="2018-04-20T16:49:18.887" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15423" PostId="5186" Score="0" Text="I wanted to find the tag id by executing `select * from Tags where TagName = 'mixed-anova'` at https://data.stackexchange.com but this query returns zero results (as is the case for other merged tags too). The synonym mapping can be found like this: `select * from TagSynonyms where SourceTagName = 'mixed-anova'` but this table does not contain tag ids." CreationDate="2018-03-06T11:36:41.533" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15424" PostId="5186" Score="2" Text="This sounds like a question for sitewide-meta (meta.stackexchange), though it may already have been asked there in some form." CreationDate="2018-03-06T12:32:13.433" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="15425" PostId="5186" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b I searched there and did not find an answer (what I did find seemed to confirm that the wiki of a merged tag should be gone). I reckoned that if it's a bug then it makes sense to raise it on the site where it occurred." CreationDate="2018-03-06T12:33:08.967" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15426" PostId="5186" Score="1" Text="OK, using `select * from Posts where PostTypeId=4 order by LastEditDate desc` query I was able to find post id of this tag wiki excerpt. It is 324506. So now I *could* go to https://stats.stackexchange.com/posts/XX/edit replacing XX with 324506 and delete the wiki excerpt. However, I am not going to do it (and please nobody do it!!) in order not to disturb the bug. This query `select * from Tags where ExcerptPostId=324506` returns empty result so I don't understand how [mixed-anova] could possibly show this excerpt on the Tags page. Looks more and more like a bug." CreationDate="2018-03-06T13:02:29.873" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15427" PostId="5186" Score="0" Text="My guess is that it's cached in HTML form somewhere and the cache was not rebuilt during merge for some reason." CreationDate="2018-03-06T16:31:31.837" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15428" PostId="5186" Score="1" Text="since the sites should all be using the same code for this, it will almost surely be a site-wide bug rather than a site-specific one, which is why I suggested the broader meta. (Yes, the PtB will see it here, but I'd expect they'd see it quicker there)" CreationDate="2018-03-07T01:10:55.797" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="15443" PostId="5187" Score="2" Text="I thought this was very gentle (no objections to gentleness rather than its opposite)  until I read #4 which advises us, IIRC, to ignore such questions for a week or so. If that advice was followed, I doubt that any of these questions would get answers. Just guessing, but who sets a personal reminder &quot;Look at this question in a week's time to see if it's still there&quot;." CreationDate="2018-03-12T19:14:55.527" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15456" PostId="5187" Score="1" Text="An advantage of our current policy is that to apply it we need only decide whether a question's an exercise or not - much easier than speculating or quizzing people about whether or not it was set as homework. What would we gain from changing it? What (good) reason would anyone doing an exercise have to object to explaining where they were stuck &amp; getting hints for the next step instead of a fully worked-out solution?" CreationDate="2018-03-12T20:37:06.427" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="15440" PostId="5189" Score="1" Text="&quot;it isn't about the practice or principles of participating in Cross Validated&quot;... The number one rule on the help page for *every* stackexchange site is &quot;no open-ended questions.&quot;  So the ability to clearly discern &quot;open-endedness&quot; seems key to any sort of participation in Cross-Validated, or any other StackExchange site." CreationDate="2018-03-12T19:03:36.240" UserId="143446" />
  <row Id="15444" PostId="5189" Score="4" Text="We cannot state how &quot;research-oriented&quot; other SE sites may or may not be. With that in mind, can you adapt this Q to be specifically about CV, &amp; what's appropriate here?" CreationDate="2018-03-12T19:15:06.597" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15445" PostId="5189" Score="0" Text="@NickCox &quot;I am statistical enough to say what are the data behind that?&quot;.  It was not an assertion, it was an opinion... note the &quot;imho&quot;.  In any case, surely you will agree that *some* stackexchange sites are more amenable to research-level questions than others.  For more examples, there is a site for &quot;code review&quot;... there is also a site &quot;mathematics&quot; that specifically says to ask &quot;research-level&quot; questions on mathoverflow instead.  It has been my experience that &quot;research-level&quot; questions are generally welcome on Cross Validated, but that this is not the sole purpose of the site." CreationDate="2018-03-12T19:21:16.837" UserId="143446" />
  <row Id="15446" PostId="5189" Score="0" Text="@gung, My question is, specifically, how the concept of &quot;open-endedness&quot; differs here on Cross-Validated vs other stackexchange sites.  The ban on &quot;open-ended&quot; questions seems to have been cookie-cutter applied to many sites on the network, which have different purposes, and that what constitutes an &quot;open-ended&quot; question in one community may not in another.  I will slightly reword the question to focus on CV, as requested." CreationDate="2018-03-12T19:25:26.093" UserId="143446" />
  <row Id="15448" PostId="5189" Score="7" Text="@Nick It seems to me that if this question were changed only a little to ask &quot;how do and should we interpret 'open-ended' for the purposes of deciding which questions are appropriate&quot; then it would on-topic here in Meta.CV." CreationDate="2018-03-12T19:29:54.850" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="15450" PostId="5189" Score="2" Text="What &quot;open-ended&quot; means on other sites is not something we can comment on. Nor can we really say how we compare, for the same reason. We can talk about *our* policies, but that's really it." CreationDate="2018-03-12T19:35:45.903" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15451" PostId="5189" Score="0" Text="@gung &quot;for the same reason&quot;.  No reason was given..." CreationDate="2018-03-12T19:41:51.787" UserId="143446" />
  <row Id="15453" PostId="5189" Score="3" Text="CV is a **Q&amp;A site**, while open-ended questions are rather topics for discussion, so are better suited for discussion forums. I won't common on other SE sites, but I imagine that different disciplines also differ in the open- vs closed-endness (e.g. engineering vs philosophy), but this site has clear scope and discussing research topics is beyond it." CreationDate="2018-03-12T20:18:22.947" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="15454" PostId="5189" Score="3" Text="I'm inclined to keep Meta posts open, even when there is controversy, because the very purpose of Meta is to have discussions--even somewhat open-ended ones--about our site's policies and practices.  The comments so far display differences of opinion that IMHO could be useful and interesting to discuss here." CreationDate="2018-03-12T20:23:52.610" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="15459" PostId="5189" Score="0" Text="Thanks for focusing the q. on CV - I've re-opened it." CreationDate="2018-03-12T22:00:03.220" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="15460" PostId="5189" Score="1" Text="@Scott, thank you for refocusing the Q. If it helps, I can rephrase my comment above: &quot;What &quot;open-ended&quot; means on other sites is not something we can comment on. Nor can we really say how we compare, *also because *what &quot;open-ended&quot; means on other sites is not something we can comment on*. We can talk about our policies, but that's really it.&quot; I hope that clarifies it for you." CreationDate="2018-03-13T00:25:20.133" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15461" PostId="5189" Score="0" Text="Following helpful revision, I will venture a comment, but not an answer. I don't think I consult any personal or public definition of open-ended. Is there scope for definitive answer(s) of usual length (between a paragraph and an order of magnitude more) is  a workable criterion. _What will statistical science look like in 2100?_ or _What would be suitable Master's or PhD topics in statistics?_ would fail that criterion for me in different ways. Being unclear what is asked and/or being too broad are common concomitants of being too open-ended." CreationDate="2018-03-13T07:03:10.037" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15455" PostId="5190" Score="1" Text="@Tim I reopened this thread in the belief that you might have misinterpreted it.  To me it's clear that it is asking a legitimate question about how to use our site, even though the initial paragraph might suggest otherwise." CreationDate="2018-03-12T20:27:01.550" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="15457" PostId="5190" Score="1" Text="See https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3239/17230" CreationDate="2018-03-12T21:35:47.923" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="15468" PostId="5194" Score="1" Text="Yes, I did search for the two terms before posting the question, and I was a bit surprised at finding nothing. Thank you for not finding your own post on this, either - I find few things as embarrassing as posting a question and having it flagged as a duplicate of some easily found question within 30 seconds." CreationDate="2018-03-15T12:36:28.293" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="15469" PostId="5194" Score="1" Text="I am usually a big supporter of synonymizing tags quite liberally, but in this case I have to say that I do see a meaningful difference. CC @StephanKolassa. [Normality] is supposed to be about normality testing and normality assumption of different procedures. Looking at the most upvoted Qs in [normality] tag, they are all about these topics. Are we sure there actually is much confusion between these two tags?" CreationDate="2018-03-15T13:33:57.010" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15470" PostId="5194" Score="0" Text="That said, I can see that the wiki excerpt for [normality] is unhelpful and even misleading." CreationDate="2018-03-15T13:35:13.630" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15471" PostId="5194" Score="2" Text="@amoeba, we could change the name to `[normality-assumption]` &amp; rewrite the excerpt. I'd have to go through the threads, but my impression is that when you get down into the mass of Q's w/ few votes &amp; few views, it's a hash. I agree that the top ones are more coherent." CreationDate="2018-03-15T13:45:39.820" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15472" PostId="5194" Score="1" Text="@amoeba: thanks for your perspective. Could you please post it as an answer so we can vote on it? I personally do see a difference along the lines you suggest, but as I wrote, I don't know whether we would be able to keep the tags distinct. Perhaps you would like to change the excerpts along the lines I suggested, including indications about when to use the &quot;other&quot; tag?" CreationDate="2018-03-15T15:15:31.360" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="15473" PostId="5194" Score="0" Text="@StephanKolassa I basically agree with gung's answer (+1) and in particular like his suggestion in the last paragraph (after the update). So I don't think I should post another answer." CreationDate="2018-03-15T20:52:59.060" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15474" PostId="5194" Score="1" Text="@StephanKolassa I edited the excerpts (but I am sure one can come up with better formulations). I think renaming [normality] into [normality-assumption] makes total sense and should be done. After that we can still discuss whether to make it a synonym, but at the moment I am rather inclined to be against." CreationDate="2018-03-15T21:02:28.200" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15475" PostId="5194" Score="0" Text="We definitely had some kind of a discussion on this along the lines you mention." CreationDate="2018-03-15T21:13:16.213" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="15490" PostId="5194" Score="1" Text="I see that this answer has been marked as accepted. Should we rename [normality] to [normality-assumption] now? The excerpts have already been edited." CreationDate="2018-03-20T09:22:08.997" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15491" PostId="5194" Score="2" Text="`[normality]` should disappear in 24 hours, @amoeba." CreationDate="2018-03-20T13:26:31.233" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15476" PostId="5195" Score="4" Text="Frankly, I cannot understand your question.  &quot;Do some prediction&quot; is uselessly vague.  You refer to &quot;events&quot; but illustrate them using only *times*.  Your uses of the words &quot;extract,&quot; &quot;sort of prediction,&quot; and &quot;false positives and negatives&quot; are obscure.  The example is so small that we are unlikely to be able to guess what you want just from examining it.  I can tell that you might be concerned with aggregating times, but that's it." CreationDate="2018-03-18T19:26:26.003" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="15477" PostId="5195" Score="0" Text="@whuber &quot;uselessly vague&quot; - I'll tell my boss about your opinion. :D +++ The events have no attributes, it's just that something happens. +++ Obscure use of words... &quot;extract&quot; = &quot;produce output&quot;, &quot;sort of prediction&quot; = &quot;prediction which is expected to be wrong sometimes&quot;, &quot;false positives and negatives&quot; - what's wrong here? +++ I've added three real data sets with expected outputs." CreationDate="2018-03-18T20:35:49.023" UserId="190765" />
  <row Id="15478" PostId="5195" Score="8" Text="I'm just trying to indicate where you might focus to make your question understandable.  Complaining won't get you anywhere, but an honest effort to communicate is always received warmly.  Although of course your question *can* be answered, because it is vague it admits distinct interpretations.  In such cases answers can be worse than useless because they might mislead readers who don't adopt the same interpretation.  That's why we have a mechanism to close questions.  The method for *reopening* is to edit the original question and keep doing so until people vote to reopen it." CreationDate="2018-03-18T21:00:23.400" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="15479" PostId="5195" Score="2" Text="@whuber I'm really grateful for your comments. While I'm new here, I'm pretty seasoned on SO. What I really hate is closing a question without any feedback, unless the question is a hopeless mess. You're the only one having given me any feedback and it's really appreciated." CreationDate="2018-03-18T21:48:43.400" UserId="190765" />
  <row Id="15480" PostId="5195" Score="0" Text="@whuber But concerning &quot;edit the original question and keep doing so until people vote to reopen it&quot;, I must disagree. This is a small site, the question has got 16 views in 47 hours and I may keep editing it for months until someone notices. **This sounds like a bad joke.** Especially given your &quot;Complaining won't get you anywhere&quot; as without having complained I'd get no feedback at all. Adding unsolicited information makes only limited sense as soon the question gets too long for anyone to read. You guys should really try to be a bit user-friendly." CreationDate="2018-03-18T21:59:07.847" UserId="190765" />
  <row Id="15481" PostId="5195" Score="5" Text="I don't think whuber was objecting to the question as complaining, but to your response to his first comment, which does seem to be argumentative. I think your question still seems pretty vague about what precisely is required (besides some of the things whuber mentioned still being at issue, it talks about how something &quot;seems&quot; and we have no good basis to guess how that might generalize for your feelings about how things seem) - I'd have voted to close as unclear as well, and might well have done so even as it stands now - an answer would rely too heavily on opinion about how to interpret it" CreationDate="2018-03-18T22:53:44.290" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="15483" PostId="5195" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b I've answered in my question. I don't mind closing my question, I mind doing so it without dropping a note. Anyway, isn't my question crystal clear compared to e.g., [this one](https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/186378/190765)?" CreationDate="2018-03-19T02:39:29.310" UserId="190765" />
  <row Id="15484" PostId="5195" Score="6" Text="I certainly agree that putting a question on hold should normally be accompanied by a clear explanation of the problem (whenever the pink-boxed on-hold text doesn't already make it explicit). On the other hand, the fact that you might find a question that you regard as less clear than yours doesn't make yours any easier to answer; it simply indicates that there may be another question that should have been put on hold. (It's possible the lack of answer there may be as a result of our failure to require additional clarification)" CreationDate="2018-03-19T02:48:08.203" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="15485" PostId="5195" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b Before I even think about closing a question, I'm asking myself, if that does any good. Duplicate or pure non-sense -&gt; yes, unclear question -&gt; probably not. Building Q-A archives is one goal, helping directly is another. Commenting is cheap and there's no deadline for closing. I don't think the question I linked should be closed. IMHO it should be commented and clarified and answered (or maybe closed). The comments alone may be sometimes good enough for the OP." CreationDate="2018-03-19T04:54:36.477" UserId="190765" />
  <row Id="15486" PostId="5195" Score="8" Text="Placing on hold is a temporary thing to prevent premature answers; frequently unclear questions get answers that the OP (and certainly many other people seeing the front page) is not aware is not necessarily a suitable answer to what they actually need to know, and before anyone comments that there's a problem, the OP has posted &quot;thanks!&quot; and left again (perhaps never to be seen again). Placing a question on hold while it is clarified rather than leaving it open is sometimes important; it can be a matter of judgement, but I don't think poor judgement was applied in this case." CreationDate="2018-03-19T07:35:28.763" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="15487" PostId="5195" Score="4" Text="At first blush, it doesn't look like it could be answerable. Certainly not by us, &amp; probably not by you. My recommendation would be to go back to your client &amp;/or boss &amp; ask for greater clarity about what should be done. I often tell clients that there is nothing I can do until they have a clearer sense of what they have &amp; what they want to do with it." CreationDate="2018-03-19T13:39:59.193" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15489" PostId="5195" Score="3" Text="It's unfortunate that this first encounter with CV gave you a bad impression -- especially because your experience and reputation elsewhere on SE shows that you understand the overall system well. But equally neither moderators nor experienced users can usually discern what really lies behind a question that looks unclear or too broad. In reverse, I often see questions on Stack Overflow that boil down to please write the code  I don't have or read the documentation for me. So, sad but essential fact: _whatever looks unclear has to be bounced back to the OP_." CreationDate="2018-03-19T17:59:11.640" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15501" PostId="5195" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b In theory, I agree with the prevent-premature-answers theory, but IMHO it practically means that everything just gets delayed. Anyway, closing a question without any comment means zero progress - unless the OP gets miraculously enlightened. A comment or a misplaced answer would lead somewhere, nothing leads nowhere. Anyway, now I've got quite some feedback and will improve my question soon." CreationDate="2018-03-23T03:10:26.057" UserId="190765" />
  <row Id="15502" PostId="5195" Score="0" Text="@gung I'm claiming, it is answerable as the task is &quot;to generate predictions as good as you can (within reasonable effort)&quot;. I know the context and I'll add it (while I strongly believe, it's not helpful) and improve the question otherwise, too." CreationDate="2018-03-23T03:20:10.720" UserId="190765" />
  <row Id="15511" PostId="5195" Score="0" Text="I am seeing the question shifting from (very) unclear to broad (thank you Maaartinus that is a very big change, even when you might not consider this as such by yourself). This poses a much bigger problem. While unclear question can be (often) &quot;blamed&quot; on the person that poses the question, a question that is too broad, is often too difficult to be fixed by the (novice) person that created the question. ------- I believe that we should fix this as a community either by creating good answers or by turning the question into a community wiki and edit it to make it suitable." CreationDate="2018-03-25T20:51:24.523" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16005" PostId="5195" Score="0" Text="@maaartinus  &quot;I'll tell my boss about your opinion.&quot;  From my perspective you've assumed that *your boss* is fully informed and knowledgeable about the technical issues he's asked you to handle. This is the kind of mistake a *newbie* data scientist will make. There is another way to think about this and that is that *your boss* tossed a half-baked idea or project into your lap and is asking YOU to take care of it, to deal with the vicissitudes and come up with a reasonable approach and solution and *not* to badger him with trivial questions. That is your job." CreationDate="2018-06-23T15:48:44.353" UserId="78229" />
  <row Id="16014" PostId="5195" Score="0" Text="@DJohnson Indeed, it's my job to get *some* prediction, but I'm *not* assuming my boss knows is more knowledgeable. Neither he nor I are experts, we just need some results and we're not going to become experts - it's just one of many tasks to do - the planned time is not sufficient for reading a single textbook. Note: The task was postponed due to more urgent ones." CreationDate="2018-06-25T00:41:24.910" UserId="190765" />
  <row Id="15494" PostId="5196" Score="6" Text="I think it should be edited out. I also think Springer and Wiley and publishers are basically criminal but two wrongs don't make a right. If there's ever a comparable open source alternative, it's major brownie points to drop a comment and point the interested readers to a better resource. Here's a nice Wiki on open source texts: https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/614/open-source-statistical-textbooks" CreationDate="2018-03-20T18:03:02.543" UserId="8013" />
  <row Id="15519" PostId="5196" Score="2" Text="@AdamO Editing out helps publishers. Why would you help them? They cost billions of dollars to taxpayers each year, slow down research, increase student debts, etc" CreationDate="2018-03-26T19:08:49.263" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="15520" PostId="5196" Score="3" Text="@FranckDernoncourt Increasing the visibility of open-access materials is, in my opinion, the best way to counter that." CreationDate="2018-03-26T19:30:41.277" UserId="8013" />
  <row Id="15521" PostId="5196" Score="2" Text="@AdamO I agree it's a good approach. But I wouldn't edit out for the above-mentioned reasons." CreationDate="2018-03-26T19:33:24.207" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="15515" PostId="5197" Score="5" Text="-1 How do we know that content is pirated or not?" CreationDate="2018-03-26T18:50:56.950" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="15516" PostId="5197" Score="0" Text="@Sycorax, a link to a scanned copy of a published book (w/ copyright page) is clearly pirated. Links to papers is another issue; I've linked to papers myself." CreationDate="2018-03-26T18:55:36.960" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15517" PostId="5197" Score="4" Text="It depends on the book. Some books can legitimately be reproduced by electronic media, either because the copyright page states that (or more likely, omits a claim to protect electronic copies) or other arrangements which are not obvious or present in the document have arisen which permit the book to be distributed electronically without limit. I have no issue taking down content at the request of the owner, but we have no obligation nor qualification to do so *proactively.* And, indeed, that's the whole point of DMCA safe harbor." CreationDate="2018-03-26T18:59:39.753" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="15518" PostId="5197" Score="5" Text="For example *Elements of Statistical Learning* is available on this webpage https://web.stanford.edu/~hastie/ElemStatLearn/ hosted by Stanford, presumably with the consent of its authors (who work at Stanford). But the copyright notice in the PDF (and print edition) also expressly prohibits the books dissemination by electronic media. Which one wins? In this case, we infer that Stanford is not violating copyright  because it says so here https://web.stanford.edu/~hastie/ElemStatLearn/ but outside of this exact scenario, we will not have the resources (or really any reason) to do this work" CreationDate="2018-03-26T19:02:51.157" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="15524" PostId="5197" Score="2" Text="Very good points raised by @Sycorax made me -1 as well." CreationDate="2018-03-27T06:35:43.530" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15488" PostId="5198" Score="4" Text="This is a good point. We won't usually be able to know, &amp; in that case we should defer. We should edit out the materials, such as in this case, where any reasonable person would recognize that the material has to be pirated." CreationDate="2018-03-19T16:20:12.657" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15527" PostId="5198" Score="0" Text="@gung It actually isn't clear *to me* that in this case the textbook is there illegally. In most cases if you google a title and authors of a textbook you will *not* get a PDF link (yes, one might find most books at gen.lib.rus.ec or some other specialized resource, but if one simply googles, nothing usually pops up). However, googling `Casella Berger textbook` gives me a direct PDF link as the 2nd result (!). Which makes me wonder if perhaps publishers have allowed to post it there. As Scortchi argues, we have no obligation to check that. So I'd argue the link is fine." CreationDate="2018-03-27T06:51:19.150" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15528" PostId="5198" Score="1" Text="@amoeba: A scanned copy with visible library stamps?" CreationDate="2018-03-27T08:53:20.763" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="15529" PostId="5198" Score="0" Text="Well, it's clearly not the publishers who used that Wordpress link to release the textbook. But they might have *allowed* to put a scan online, yes. E.g. they could have granted Casella or Berger the permission to post it online, and the only copy C &amp; B had at hand was a library scan. I am not saying it is likely. But I am saying it is possible. And in any case, the publishers obviously are not trying to prevent that PDF from being distributed, otherwise they could have make Wordpress delete it with one email." CreationDate="2018-03-27T09:26:56.357" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15530" PostId="5198" Score="0" Text="@amoeba: They still might, then we'll have a broken link. In any case, the best thing to link to from a book reference is a web page *about the book*: users are thereby helped to decide for themselves if they want to read it &amp; how they want to procure it. Many people won't want to download large PDFs by following a link from the site, especially on to their 'phones, &amp; many won't want to download PDFs that look like they infringe copyright, especially on to work computers." CreationDate="2018-03-27T15:28:24.273" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="15500" PostId="5200" Score="0" Text="Thank you for your answer. I replied in my question here. TL;DR I'll edit my question soon and we'll see." CreationDate="2018-03-23T03:03:46.490" UserId="190765" />
  <row Id="15568" PostId="5200" Score="0" Text="Concerning holidays and phases of the moon: That's surely a valid point. However, there *must* be some general procedure allowing some (possibly low quality) predictions even in case you know no context at all. When I see a series of events occurring every Monday, I'd predict the next occurrence on Monday. Sure, holidays may prove me wrong, but they're not that common so most my predictions stay valid. I guess, I can safely ignore holidays in my data: ..." CreationDate="2018-04-02T00:26:01.407" UserId="190765" />
  <row Id="15569" PostId="5200" Score="0" Text="There's definitely no direct rule like &quot;holidays shift the event to the next day&quot;, there isn't even something like &quot;holidays prevent about 30% of events&quot; there. Such a rule may possibly be derived from a much bigger data collection, collected over longer periods when multiple holidays happend. It'd probably require analysis of *local* holidays, which is possible, but in the moment surely not worth the effort. My questions has been reopened one week ago, but there's still no answer. **Is there anything else I can do?** I'd really prefer *anything* more scientific to just coding *some* algorithm" CreationDate="2018-04-02T00:35:51.940" UserId="190765" />
  <row Id="15503" PostId="5201" Score="2" Text="I can't see any point for that. I guess that the questions would either use the data as an example and the data itself would be irrelevant, or if asking about the data itself, the questions would be rather duplicates... (I may be wrong.)" CreationDate="2018-03-23T10:45:58.380" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="15504" PostId="5201" Score="0" Text="Questions duplicates of themselves?" CreationDate="2018-03-23T10:47:57.420" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="15505" PostId="5201" Score="1" Text="Just to pick one of the first Iris questions, here is an answer that specifically addresses this dataset and its idiosyncrasies: https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/299646/1352 I'd say this argues for commonalities within the dataset that set questions about it apart." CreationDate="2018-03-23T10:50:12.427" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="15506" PostId="5201" Score="1" Text="We have tags for software packages which I know is not to everyone's taste so I would have thought dataset tags would be even more appropriate since datasets are the bread and butter of applied statisticians." CreationDate="2018-03-23T13:20:35.460" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="15507" PostId="5201" Score="3" Text="I agree w/ @Tim. It's hard for me to see a question that is only about 1 of these datasets that would be on-topic. Typically, these are simply used to illustrate something else, where the something else is the point of the question. More generally, I think of tags as 1 of the primary ways we organize the information on the site (in keeping w/ our primary mission to create a repository of high-quality information about statistics via Qs &amp; As). I can see someone wanting to learn about `lme4`, or using the tag to find a specific piece of information, but I don't see needing to learn about `iris`." CreationDate="2018-03-23T13:44:16.343" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15508" PostId="5201" Score="2" Text="It is rather telling that after almost eight years nobody who has asked a question has thought to tag it with the name of a dataset. (Although there is a [tag:kaggle] tag now, it was created less than a day ago and only added retroactively to a few questions!)" CreationDate="2018-03-23T13:46:21.453" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="15509" PostId="5201" Score="1" Text="@whuber I can see reason for `[kaggle]` tag, since it hosts very specific kind of competitions, that need very specific kind of skills etc." CreationDate="2018-03-23T14:03:03.973" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="15510" PostId="5201" Score="2" Text="@Tim My point is that nobody has thought it worthwhile to tag their own questions with dataset names.  Moreover, there's hardly any need in the case of Kaggle: &quot;Kaggle&quot; will work fine as a search term; it doesn't need any semantic disambiguation.  As such, one gets the impression that this thread concerns a non-issue." CreationDate="2018-03-23T14:06:12.757" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="15514" PostId="5203" Score="7" Text="+1 **I think we should do nothing and let the publishers directly contact Stack Exchange if they wish.** This is also exactly how DMCA safe harbor works in the US. If SE has a legal concern, as an institution, about how piracy interacts with the service, that's a job for SE's attorneys to sort out (section 15 of TOS as of this writing). We are not competent to assess the copyright of *any link, anywhere*." CreationDate="2018-03-26T18:49:23.027" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="15525" PostId="5203" Score="2" Text="+1 Good points." CreationDate="2018-03-27T06:36:17.557" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15522" PostId="5204" Score="3" Text="libgen for textbooks." CreationDate="2018-03-26T23:37:59.137" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="15526" PostId="5204" Score="2" Text="+1. Despite working in a big university with good access to most journals, I find myself using sci-hub quite often. Previously I was working in a smaller private institute with bad access to journals and back then I was using sci-hub *daily*. Regarding textbooks, gen.lib.rus.ec is great (much more convenient than actually going to the university library by foot; and indispensable when there is no university library around)." CreationDate="2018-03-27T06:42:24.913" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15531" PostId="5204" Score="3" Text="I have edited out the expletive. &quot;Rent-seeking parasites&quot;, OTOH, I find perfectly kosher." CreationDate="2018-03-27T18:52:13.093" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15532" PostId="5204" Score="0" Text="@gung Fair enough, although if I am bidden not use that most expressive panlogism, I wonder if &quot;Fie upon,&quot; or &quot;The Devil take&quot; might give it a tad more flare? :)" CreationDate="2018-03-27T18:55:03.123" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="15533" PostId="5204" Score="1" Text="We wouldn't want to lack flair here at CV, now would we, @Alexis?" CreationDate="2018-03-27T18:58:57.180" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15534" PostId="5204" Score="1" Text="@gung Howzzzat?" CreationDate="2018-03-27T19:02:57.443" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="15537" PostId="5204" Score="0" Text="@gung Dang it! I thought I was cleverly making a new word to describe the four-letter expletive's ability to more or less occupy any part of speech, but it turns out &quot;panlogism&quot; is some term from Hegelian philosophy. Draft and confound!" CreationDate="2018-03-27T21:32:33.060" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="15536" PostId="5207" Score="1" Text="Thanks :). Done as best I could" CreationDate="2018-03-27T19:36:24.490" UserId="201735" />
  <row Id="15551" PostId="5208" Score="2" Text="I voted for that linked question to &quot;stay open&quot;. The criterium is simple: it needs statistical expertise to answer." CreationDate="2018-03-29T20:31:34.983" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="15542" PostId="5209" Score="0" Text="I definitely agree with your two bullets." CreationDate="2018-03-28T19:28:41.460" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="15538" PostId="5210" Score="2" Text="(+1) &quot;Egregious&quot;? I suppose we should expect some archaism from ancient Chinese philosophers, but it may confuse some readers more used to the modern sense." CreationDate="2018-03-28T15:35:40.720" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="15539" PostId="5210" Score="2" Text="That's a typo, @Scortchi, it was supposed to have been &quot;are*n't* egregious&quot;." CreationDate="2018-03-28T16:03:14.047" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15540" PostId="5210" Score="3" Text="Oh! Never crossed my mind that you'd make a typo, so I googled the word: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/egregious" CreationDate="2018-03-28T16:06:44.023" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="15541" PostId="5210" Score="9" Text="I recall a question on why two different programs gave kurtosis values that differed by something like 2.999988. The answer was &quot;Look at the documentation: one uses a formula with 3 subtracted and the other doesn't.&quot; The question, however, was on-topic because the issue at root was statistical, how quantities are defined." CreationDate="2018-03-28T18:38:52.470" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15543" PostId="5210" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi &quot;Egregious&quot; is really [not that uncommon](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=egregious%2C+cross-validated&amp;year_start=1800&amp;year_end=2000&amp;corpus=15&amp;smoothing=3&amp;share=&amp;direct_url=t1%3B%2Cegregious%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Ccross%20-%20validated%3B%2Cc0), and it's a great word! :)" CreationDate="2018-03-28T19:31:15.397" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="15544" PostId="5210" Score="0" Text="I think there are substantial gray areas in &quot;how the software works&quot;.  If it's about how the software works for programming (e.g. about macro variables in SAS; about the [] subset thing in R) then it's surely off topic.&#xA;&#xA;But what if it's about how a particular program does something statistical?" CreationDate="2018-03-28T19:31:29.137" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="15545" PostId="5210" Score="1" Text="It's hard to say, @PeterFlom, it depends on exactly what &quot;how a particular program does something statistical&quot; means in each context. I've seen several questions that amount to 'why did the developers pick this default vs that one?', but that isn't really a question we can answer. The proper response is, 'go ask them why they made that choice'. The idea to consider the proper answer to a Q (ie, if it's a statistical explanation, on topic here, if not, not) works really well 99% of the time." CreationDate="2018-03-28T19:57:46.343" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15547" PostId="5210" Score="5" Text="@Alexis: Indeed; but it was its apparent use to mean &quot;outstandingly *good*&quot; that seemed to me to confirm gung's antiquity. Exactly the sort of slip you'd expect from St Germain, Orlando, Ayesha, &amp; the like. Still not sure I really believe that was just a typo ..." CreationDate="2018-03-29T08:18:47.627" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="15546" PostId="5211" Score="0" Text="That's a good answer; I upvoted that long ago. Note however, that the 1st sentence is: &quot;Understanding how these tests differ requires understanding the actual test statistics themselves.&quot; Ie, the explanation is statistical in nature." CreationDate="2018-03-28T20:01:32.900" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15565" PostId="5213" Score="0" Text="I really like this answer because it emphasises that the &quot;stats/computing&quot; dichotomy that we often use as a rule-of-thumb for what's on-topic can sometimes be misleading. Sometimes understanding the computing side is actually important in its own right, even from the statistician's point of view." CreationDate="2018-03-31T16:57:14.857" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="15550" PostId="5214" Score="6" Text="The [tag:sem] tag has over 500 questions; this isn't &quot;few&quot;. That said, I would love to know what structural equation modeling actually *is*..." CreationDate="2018-03-29T19:34:44.253" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15553" PostId="5214" Score="5" Text="I used to be on SEMNET but left a couple years ago (I no longer use SEM very often and so don't get much out of the discussions). While the scope of SEMNET is technically within our purview, having them move entirely to our site would be a really big change (for them, not us) because SEMNET tends to host a lot of long, rambling, back-and-forth discussions (not to mention arguments). It's not clear to me how smoothly the adjustment to a purely question-and-answer based format would go down for a lot of the SEMNET regulars." CreationDate="2018-03-30T02:29:49.293" UserId="5829" />
  <row Id="15558" PostId="5214" Score="0" Text="@amoeba that looks like roughly a question per day on CV. SEMNET sees maybe 50 emails per day, with ten or so active threads on a given day. Intensity just isn't comparable. For your reference, a good chunk of SEM has been picked up by the Annals-publishing authors and rebranded as &quot;directed acyclic graphs&quot; which were applied to 0/1 variables, as far as I understand DAGs. Beyond that, there's very interesting nonlinear statistics buried deeper, but most of the applied work is drowning in cookbook recipes based on a simulation or two." CreationDate="2018-03-30T14:35:42.327" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="15574" PostId="5214" Score="2" Text="Individuals active on SEMNET are more than welcome to post here anything that fits CV guidelines.  That includes guidelines on behaviour: CV is quite strict on not allowing anything that seems rude or offensive. (I haven't ever looked at SEMNET to know quite how heated it ever becomes.)" CreationDate="2018-04-03T14:36:52.217" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15575" PostId="5214" Score="4" Text="A thread in 2010 https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/72352/migration-of-old-information-to-stack-overflow focused on a hypothetical transfer of Statalist to SO. In 2014 Statalist abandoned its listserver format and became a web forum. I can say as one of the people involved that my experiences on SE helped encourage my advocacy of the move to a web forum (traffic exploded, proper posting of code and graphs was an immediate gain, and access to entire threads was improved) and also my advocacy that moving a list wholesale (with its existing mores) to an SE site was not a good option." CreationDate="2018-04-03T14:42:47.127" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15579" PostId="5214" Score="1" Text="@NickCox, getting way overheated has become one of the bigger reason SEMNET as a community is looking at other options. They had to block somebody, a pretty senior figure, because their responses to the list have become prohibitively toxic. SEMNETters are now in the process of figuring out whether StackExchange or reddit voting models would become popularity contests (vs. allowing the most scientific answers to raise to the top). You know my opinion of statalist.org." CreationDate="2018-04-04T16:49:02.093" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="15580" PostId="5214" Score="1" Text="@StasK I don't really know your opinion of Statalist -- the default explanation for a lack of contribution by experienced people is surely that such people are just too busy to solve other people's problems -- but you're welcome to join and post constructive criticism there. To the point, I know even less about SEMNET but I am a little nervous about any idea that this community should provide the discipline SEMNET has not been able to exercise itself! We do have painful experience on CV of people who don't seem to realise -- over extended periods -- that a abrasive style is just not welcome." CreationDate="2018-04-04T17:08:24.833" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15552" PostId="5215" Score="7" Text="Unless there's something particular about their questions (I don't follow that listserv), such as they are all Mplus code questions, SEM is surely within our mandate. I see no reason they shouldn't come here." CreationDate="2018-03-30T01:09:47.213" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15557" PostId="5215" Score="1" Text="@gung I think the ratio of code to substance is a bit higher on SEMNET than on CV, but not radically higher." CreationDate="2018-03-30T14:26:23.303" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="15549" PostId="5217" Score="1" Text="While not 1:1 related, &quot;not being here&quot; is what Stata community have chosen... not very wisely, in my highly opinionated opinion. @nickcox would probably disagree though." CreationDate="2018-03-29T19:21:26.043" UserId="5739" />
  <row Id="15555" PostId="5217" Score="1" Text="I've reomved the commentary on SEM as a field since it doesn't really seem to bear on where SEM fits in SE." CreationDate="2018-03-30T13:01:36.170" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="15567" PostId="5217" Score="1" Text="Most questions on Statalist would be (very) off-topic here. Regardless of that. people can choose where they post." CreationDate="2018-04-01T08:34:38.020" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15583" PostId="5221" Score="3" Text="I see that I was the last person of 5 to vote against that question. I would have (could have) downvoted it on several grounds, not just that reported as the expressed community view. It's not that it doesn't touch on interesting and important issues: rather, its wording and its links more or less doomed it to be seem too broad as well as too contentious." CreationDate="2018-04-04T17:27:28.593" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15585" PostId="5221" Score="0" Text="I should add that I liked your answer and upvoted it. Contradictory? I guess so." CreationDate="2018-04-04T18:19:58.293" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15586" PostId="5221" Score="0" Text="@NickCox: good answer, wrong forum is a completely defendable position" CreationDate="2018-04-04T19:05:01.743" UserId="76981" />
  <row Id="15590" PostId="5221" Score="0" Text="At this time, it's a tie between closing for reason A or closing for reason B. Seems like the correct course of action is pretty clear." CreationDate="2018-04-05T15:35:23.933" UserId="76981" />
  <row Id="15576" PostId="5222" Score="4" Text="I'm mixed on this. It is (another) opportunity for petty B vs A pontificating, &amp; we have several of those already, so it could be a duplicate. OTOH, your answer is balanced (&amp; good, +1). However, it was voted to close by 5 CV users, including both Bayesians and frequentists, with high reputations &amp; who contribute frequently. That's the standard the SE system uses. As a result, I'm inclined to let the closure stand." CreationDate="2018-04-04T13:05:23.953" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15589" PostId="5222" Score="0" Text="I agree that it is opinion based because what could possibly be a &quot;right&quot; answer here? The blogs that were linked speak for themselves. Would a &quot;right&quot; answer merely parrot the views expressed on the blogs? If the OP has trouble understanding the points in the blogs he/she linked, they should post asking for clarification, but that is not the question that was asked." CreationDate="2018-04-05T15:06:01.627" UserId="8013" />
  <row Id="15578" PostId="5223" Score="3" Text="Note: it would be better for people to only upvote their choice, &amp; not also downvote the option they disagree with. That policy will yield the clearest picture of the community's preferences." CreationDate="2018-04-04T15:17:56.290" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15582" PostId="5223" Score="1" Text="@gung As we won't know who voted once, twice or three times interpretation is fraught any way...." CreationDate="2018-04-04T17:23:58.807" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15584" PostId="5223" Score="3" Text="@NickCox, it's a bit late now, but if no one had downvoted, the picture would be clearer. That's my point." CreationDate="2018-04-04T17:41:44.973" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15613" PostId="5230" Score="3" Text="It isn't clear to me if it's a duplicate at this point, but it isn't really clear to me at all. Furthermore, I'm unsure what your question actually is. The only question marks I see are at the end of the 2nd to last paragraph, but I can't tell if that's supposed to be the real question, or if those are just speculative asides. AFAICT, you seem to have some theory of something to do with income &amp; probability, &amp; want someone to confirm whether it's right. But that isn't a real question, from the point of view of the SE system." CreationDate="2018-04-12T00:58:25.337" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15614" PostId="5230" Score="1" Text="It's very hard to parse your question: it's too long and meandering. It seems to be about how to interpret pmfs/pdfs. In that case, the duplicate is non-trivially the same question and Mark's answer is non-trivially the right answer. Perhaps you should be asking (here is a good place) why the questions are in fact duplicates before posting another. Posting a cleaner, neater version of the question is not bad *per se*, but I'm sure you'll be disappointed if it's closed again." CreationDate="2018-04-12T22:11:19.123" UserId="8013" />
  <row Id="15617" PostId="5230" Score="0" Text="I think my question is different because 1) it concerns the interpretation of the integral from 0 to y* of y * qdf(y), not of a pdf.  2) My question is not, as whuber suggests, about what the qdf units corresponding to the pdf units are; I know those units, as I am pains to point out; hence &quot;meandering.&quot; My question is about what they mean, specifically in the income context. I offer a suggested interpretation, and want to know if it is consistent with the units  required for mathematical consistency, and if not, for a better one." CreationDate="2018-04-14T03:59:25.553" UserId="12923" />
  <row Id="15618" PostId="5230" Score="0" Text="Also because the prior question was about a unitless quantity, whereas my question concerns a quantity for which, like a mean, the units must be specified (and therefor interpreted)." CreationDate="2018-04-14T04:40:55.573" UserId="12923" />
  <row Id="15619" PostId="5232" Score="4" Text="I appreciate your posting this answer." CreationDate="2018-04-15T16:00:49.963" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15644" PostId="5232" Score="2" Text="Thank you so much; you made me learn something ;)" CreationDate="2018-04-22T21:17:28.793" UserId="201735" />
  <row Id="15620" PostId="5233" Score="0" Text="I have found what I believe to be the answer to my original question which I think you will agree  establishes that my original question was not a duplicate. I have reposted my original question, together with that answer, here: https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/340961/dimensional-analysis-for-a-qdf-quantile-function-corresponing-to-the-pdf-cdf-in/340962#340962" CreationDate="2018-04-17T03:38:58.870" UserId="12923" />
  <row Id="15835" PostId="5234" Score="0" Text="This ad gets distorted when shown because `The image that you create must be 300 x 250 pixels, or double that if high DPI.`" CreationDate="2018-06-01T18:31:05.343" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="15630" PostId="5235" Score="1" Text="I wrote about this topic once in Main Meta Stack Exchange with some suggestions: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/88709/the-lost-worlds-of-the-reversal-badge/197616#197616. The “update” part in the question body it was also me; in that time I came to the conclusion that most (or at least many) of “reversal” posts get deleted with time." CreationDate="2018-04-19T13:45:03.043" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="15632" PostId="5235" Score="0" Text="The question was a rant (likely to be deleted), but for the purpose of keeping as much content as possible alive ( in order to keep the back-end of the website, which new visitors can't see, as open as possible), it would be nice if the *links* to deleted content would still be available and the censorship only removes the content of the posts or whatever else is considered to be deleted." CreationDate="2018-04-19T15:50:06.713" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="15633" PostId="5235" Score="0" Text="@AndreSilva thanks for that read, and I like your suggestions." CreationDate="2018-04-19T20:26:24.953" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="15634" PostId="5235" Score="1" Text="mkt -- keep in mind the possibility that my comment that you quote may not be quite correct either. I do make mistakes." CreationDate="2018-04-20T00:32:05.470" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="15622" PostId="5236" Score="1" Text="Thanks - I appreciate the explanation and the clarification." CreationDate="2018-04-19T07:59:24.850" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="15629" PostId="5236" Score="8" Text="To satisfy the morbid curiosity of any who don't have the rep required to view deleted questions, [an archive is available](https://web.archive.org/web/20150912142518/https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/55822/how-to-deal-with-a-fake-scientist/55824). It's only missing a few un-expanded comments and some votes versus the version at deletion (when the question was at -30 and the answer at +36)." CreationDate="2018-04-19T12:41:36.827" UserId="9964" />
  <row Id="15623" PostId="5237" Score="0" Text="Thanks! Nice to have that cleared up. And I appreciate the citation." CreationDate="2018-04-19T08:00:29.737" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="15628" PostId="5237" Score="6" Text="I upvoted the answer, and elected not to delete that thread, because it was a remarkably gentle and effective response to a question that (probably unintentionally) was little more than a trolling expedition." CreationDate="2018-04-19T12:34:38.587" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="15643" PostId="5238" Score="2" Text="I think this would be a better answer if your &quot;meanwhile&quot; was [meanwhile, back at the ranch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKSNiK9uwmg), instead." CreationDate="2018-04-21T12:28:53.743" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15658" PostId="5242" Score="2" Text="I think this Q belongs on meta.CV, where you asked it." CreationDate="2018-04-30T19:18:55.677" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15659" PostId="5242" Score="0" Text="The very fact that you don't know what it's called suggests that the concept is so uncommon that we should not have a tag for it. I would suggest to remove the [partial-moments] tag." CreationDate="2018-04-30T19:51:28.573" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15660" PostId="5242" Score="0" Text="google have multiple pages of hits, so maybe not that uncommon, but could still be known under other names ..." CreationDate="2018-04-30T20:00:18.777" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="15662" PostId="5243" Score="4" Text="Not my field, but that question looks doomed to me. Why does my code which I am not showing produce results that puzzle me? is a question most of us face from time to time but it can't usually be answered remotely. But on your Meta point you can certainly make suggestions about changing the question but most of the kinds of suggestions that can be made would make this a difficult question for SO, not here." CreationDate="2018-05-03T08:00:35.120" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15663" PostId="5243" Score="0" Text="@NickCox sorry I don't understand. If I suggest the OP to include code, do you agree this would make the question less suitable for CV?" CreationDate="2018-05-03T08:10:12.497" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="15664" PostId="5243" Score="3" Text="Absolutely. An answerable question would need to show more details about what was done. It's possible that would reveal statistical  or machine learning issues but more likely that it would morph into a question about the OP's code. I am active on SO and positive about it but even SO doesn't work well with fuzzy questions about complicated code." CreationDate="2018-05-03T08:14:44.320" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15665" PostId="5243" Score="1" Text="Since it's meta -- I agree to the observation of splitting the question and posting it to the correct sites. But how to hint gently at this approach? Looking at the topic of the question, my guess is that it's somebody learning to use NN. But a well-reviewed and completely available example will be better suited; the so called &quot;detailed description&quot; is not nearly detailed enough." CreationDate="2018-05-04T13:50:32.390" UserId="113959" />
  <row Id="15666" PostId="5243" Score="0" Text="@cherub I agree with you. I'm starting to think that the question is doomed, as Nick Cox predicted." CreationDate="2018-05-04T17:27:32.487" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="15673" PostId="5243" Score="3" Text="+1 for trying to help and improve" CreationDate="2018-05-07T08:27:16.993" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="15674" PostId="5243" Score="0" Text="thanks @MartijnWeterings" CreationDate="2018-05-07T09:25:50.107" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="15667" PostId="5244" Score="3" Text="It seems to pertain to ANNs, which are on topic. I would say it's OK. We can see how it fares. In the interim, you added the `[attention]` tag, but it has no excerpt. Can you provide one?" CreationDate="2018-05-04T19:03:58.843" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15668" PostId="5244" Score="3" Text="Hi @gung, I didn't create the `[attention]` label, I just used it because the site auto-completion suggested it (I did notice that it didn't have an excerpt, which I found odd). Given that I've never really understood what attention mechanism are (that's why I'm asking), I don't feel qualified to write an excerpt. If no one else volunteers to write a proper excerpt, I can surely parrot back the sentences commonly used to describe attention, but I'm not sure I'll make the community a great service." CreationDate="2018-05-05T10:42:30.470" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="15669" PostId="5244" Score="0" Text="FWIW the tag was created by @FranckDernoncourt." CreationDate="2018-05-05T12:17:45.920" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15756" PostId="5244" Score="0" Text="Sorry for not having written an excerpt when creating the tag :-)" CreationDate="2018-05-17T04:42:51.450" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="15675" PostId="5245" Score="0" Text="I think the WP definition is wrong, in the context of statistics." CreationDate="2018-05-07T11:25:15.310" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15676" PostId="5245" Score="0" Text="@gung: Can you cite a better definition?" CreationDate="2018-05-07T11:27:03.793" UserId="7291" />
  <row Id="15677" PostId="5245" Score="1" Text="I don't know of a specific place where there's an official definition, but it is very common in statistics to use the term 'sensitivity analysis' loosely to refer to things like the top statement. (Nb, &quot;assumptions&quot; doesn't strictly mean, eg, homoscedasticity.) The discussion on WP sounds like error propagation (mostly in reverse). Indeed, the page repeatedly references the Wikipedia page for [Uncertainty analysis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_analysis). It reads like it is written by / for engineers trying to simulate complex systems (or has that in mind)." CreationDate="2018-05-07T13:06:18.350" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15678" PostId="5245" Score="1" Text="@gung I find the term used quite frequntly in papers I review for the situation where authors check what would happen if they deleted certain cases. For instance in meta-analysis what would happen if I deleted the low-quality studies? The Wikipedia definition seems to cover that in a rather abstract and indirect way." CreationDate="2018-05-07T13:17:12.107" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="15679" PostId="5245" Score="1" Text="@mdewey, my interpretation of the top definition covers that. IMHO, the WP definition, read in the context of the whole page, seems to largely have something else in mind." CreationDate="2018-05-07T13:42:38.930" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15683" PostId="5245" Score="0" Text="Then what do you call &quot;measuring how much varying an individual variable affects the model output&quot;? (and mainly measuring the influence, not the uncertainty or error). This is the meaning I've heard other data scientists use. Seems there are multiple meanings out there? Do we need a numbered list on the tag info?" CreationDate="2018-05-07T22:41:09.630" UserId="7291" />
  <row Id="15684" PostId="5245" Score="0" Text="It's certainly possible that there are people who use the term that way, @smci. My point is that in applications of statistics to scientific research, it isn't what I'm familiar with. What you are referring to sounds like [tag:importance]." CreationDate="2018-05-08T01:07:10.080" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15686" PostId="5245" Score="0" Text="@gung: No, [(variable or feature) importance is only a *ranking*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_forest#Variable_importance) of how much influence (+ve or -ve) a variable has on the idv (and then I've only ever seen it with tree-based models, not LR or NN). Importance is not the variable's actual numerical influence, e.g. *&quot;when Age changes from 18 to 25, (average) income changes from 22K to 40K&quot;*. Compare to *&quot;variable importances: Age 1, Zipcode 2, Gender 3&quot;*." CreationDate="2018-05-08T01:12:26.800" UserId="7291" />
  <row Id="15688" PostId="5245" Score="0" Text="@smci, variable importance is a topic in statistics beyond just random forests. I don't know of a measure for ANN's per se, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are some. For an overview of some suggested measures for linear regression, see [here](https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3034496). I don't know this material well, but it seems to me that the idea of seeing how much the predicted value changes as a function of changing an input variable could fit within this topic, broadly construed." CreationDate="2018-05-08T20:50:23.463" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15689" PostId="5245" Score="0" Text="I think we could modify the top definition to explicitly mention that it could include assumptions that are not specifically about the assumptions of the method used - e.g normality of residuals or whatnot - but also about the various inputs to the model." CreationDate="2018-05-09T11:00:26.523" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="15701" PostId="5245" Score="0" Text="What do we call *&quot;measuring how much varying an individual variable affects the model output&quot;?&quot;* As in quantifying the ratio of change in input[i] to change in output (not just ranking whether input[i] has more influence than input[j]. It *isn't* importance. I believe &quot;sensitivity analysis&quot; is used in that sense (among the others you also mention). If you say it isn't, then what's the right term?" CreationDate="2018-05-11T08:34:51.610" UserId="7291" />
  <row Id="15712" PostId="5245" Score="0" Text="@smci, that would be a decent question for the main site. 'What should the SA tag excerpt say?', is the question on this thread (&amp; is appropriate for meta.CV)." CreationDate="2018-05-11T12:57:24.573" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15746" PostId="5245" Score="1" Text="@smci FYI, I have updated the wiki excerpt based on the suggestion in my answer. I realize that we did not reach consensus and you will probably be unhappy about this new excerpt, but if better (more consensus) suggestions appear in this thread, we can easily update the excerpt again." CreationDate="2018-05-15T09:02:56.903" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15670" PostId="5246" Score="1" Text="How is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitivity_index a synonym of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitivity_and_specificity#Sensitivity ? It's two unrelated things." CreationDate="2018-05-07T07:21:01.707" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15671" PostId="5246" Score="1" Text="But to prevent confusion, it might make sense to merge [sensitivity] and [specificity] into [sensitivity-specificity], like Wikipedia does." CreationDate="2018-05-07T07:23:20.953" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15672" PostId="5246" Score="0" Text="@amoeba: Yes I'm stupid, I rewrote the question to just say how do we prevent them getting confused. Should you separately post your merge  suggestion on [sensitivity-specificity]?" CreationDate="2018-05-07T08:15:26.443" UserId="7291" />
  <row Id="15734" PostId="5246" Score="0" Text="I haven't seen any objections to my suggestions below, @smci. Let me know if you have any, or any further comments. Otherwise, I'll go ahead w/ those proposals." CreationDate="2018-05-14T15:29:11.193" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15739" PostId="5246" Score="0" Text="@gung, sure, except we haven't reached final consensus on [tag:sensitivity-analysis] tag excerpt and definition" CreationDate="2018-05-14T21:33:31.063" UserId="7291" />
  <row Id="15744" PostId="5246" Score="0" Text="That's fair, @smci. I'll do the rest." CreationDate="2018-05-15T00:34:52.337" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15699" PostId="5247" Score="0" Text="Some folks have said &quot;it is too software-side of machine learning&quot; so it goes on stack-overflow.  Some folks have said &quot;its too pure-mathy&quot; so it goes on mathematics or data science.  Some have said &quot;its too academia&quot; or &quot;its too work-professionalism&quot; so I had to move to those forums.  There is no perfect Venn diagram as to which parts of stack-exchange it goes on, but it can go on one of them." CreationDate="2018-05-10T18:28:41.813" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="15747" PostId="5247" Score="4" Text="@EngrStudent those folks are wrong. StackExchange does **not** have the philosophy &quot;It's not offtopic *here* only because it's *better* suited elsewhere&quot;. If something is on-topic on both A and B, OP can decide where to post, but only pick one." CreationDate="2018-05-15T12:14:29.623" UserId="32176" />
  <row Id="15758" PostId="5247" Score="0" Text="Try this: https://stats.stackexchange.com/review/close/186430  Since when isn't using a neural network to forecast time-series data on-topic?" CreationDate="2018-05-17T14:19:35.190" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="15759" PostId="5247" Score="1" Text="@EngrStudent I'm not sure what you're asking. In this thread, DeltaIV asks about a specific question, and I say that DeltaIV's question is on-topic because it's about ML. You're asking about a different question, and saying that this second question is on-topic because it's about ANN time-series forecasting. This seems to be an entirely new question. Perhaps you would find more helpful answers if you opened your own meta thread." CreationDate="2018-05-17T14:32:43.840" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="15761" PostId="5247" Score="0" Text="I was just supplying one of several examples where just because something is &quot;machine learning&quot; or otherwise &quot;core&quot; to stats, it gets voted as &quot;off-topic&quot; for the stats forum.  Goes along with the first topic.  fwiw, I love your answer, and I want these sorts of things to be on-topic.  I've just been axed and seen things axed that depart from the ideal." CreationDate="2018-05-17T14:55:20.273" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="15762" PostId="5247" Score="2" Text="@EngrStudent Just speculating, but when the title includes &quot;how to do ... in R,&quot; people tend to regard that as off-topic because the question asks for explanation of how to use software -- that is, the answer is code and/or software documentation. On the other hand, if the question asked for the predictive equations for a specific model, it would probably be on-topic -- the answer is about machine learning as a mathematical discipline, not software engineering." CreationDate="2018-05-17T14:58:15.707" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="15680" PostId="5248" Score="0" Text="+1, this seems right to me. However, it is rather general; I wonder if someone who isn't very familiar w/ statistics &amp; modeling would recognize what this really means in practice." CreationDate="2018-05-07T17:55:19.700" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15682" PostId="5248" Score="1" Text="@gung Agreed. Excerpts are general summaries. This is what the user sees while hovering their cursor over the tag. If the user in't familiar with stats/modeling, my hope would be they'd click through to the Wiki and read on." CreationDate="2018-05-07T21:44:27.077" UserId="8013" />
  <row Id="15685" PostId="5248" Score="1" Text="True, @AdamO. It was more a caveat than a criticism. There is a legitimate issue here, though. If people wouldn't be able to recognize what is meant, it wouldn't be as effective as an excerpt. That's my concern. Note that my answer (ie, the set of examples) is consistent w/ your excerpt. So again, I don't disagree." CreationDate="2018-05-08T01:10:09.167" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15691" PostId="5248" Score="1" Text="How about starting &quot;An analysis conducted after the primary analysis ...&quot;. The word non-primary looks ugly to me but that may just be a matter of taste." CreationDate="2018-05-09T14:13:38.813" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="15692" PostId="5248" Score="1" Text="@mdewey fine by me, all I want to underscore is that the findings of sensitivity analyses are always considered incidental and never interesting in their own right. Otherwise they are secondary hypotheses. It all boils down to what you report in a summary statement. Sensitivity analyses are behind the scenes and not all that relevant to the science." CreationDate="2018-05-09T15:21:41.170" UserId="8013" />
  <row Id="15702" PostId="5248" Score="1" Text="To be honest, I don't like this particular wording too much. It sounds too convoluted for an excerpt. I'd rather go with the one we have currently, modifying it in the general direction suggested by AdamO: &quot;Auxiliary methods intended to check if the outcome of some statistical analysis strongly depends on the model assumptions, preprocessing steps, presence of outliers, etc.&quot; (CC @gung)" CreationDate="2018-05-11T08:50:42.827" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15703" PostId="5248" Score="0" Text="Also cc @mdewey." CreationDate="2018-05-11T08:50:47.147" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15705" PostId="5248" Score="0" Text="@amoeba: that's nice and concise, but as I mention doesn't resolve the conflict in usage(s) I've heard." CreationDate="2018-05-11T09:15:17.653" UserId="7291" />
  <row Id="15708" PostId="5248" Score="1" Text="@smci Yes, it seems there might be different meanings of &quot;sensitivity analysis&quot;. Gung and AdamO are talking about the sensitivity of analysis results on non-normality/outiers/etc. You seem to be talking about the sensitivity of prediction on a particular independent variable. Can you give an example of some source where &quot;sensitivity analysis&quot; is used in this latter meaning? But not Wikipedia; a paper or book that uses &quot;sensitivity analysis&quot; in this sense." CreationDate="2018-05-11T09:34:29.503" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15714" PostId="5248" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, why not make your excerpt suggestion into an official answer?" CreationDate="2018-05-11T13:04:24.060" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15715" PostId="5248" Score="2" Text="BTW, I think 'sensitivity analysis' *is* used in the latter way, it's just common in other fields &amp; not so much in statistics. W/ a regression model, it's really obvious what will happen to y-hat if you vary Xj, but in simulation models of complex phenomena, there might be no way to just look at the model &amp; tell what is going to happen. So people do 'experiments' on the model by plugging in different values &amp; running it to get the output. This elucidates the model's sensitivity to Xj in a manner analogous to how d-prime is a measure of a detection system's sensitivity to a signal." CreationDate="2018-05-11T13:05:10.817" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15716" PostId="5248" Score="3" Text="@amoeba On thinking about this further, I am inclined to agree with you here. There are two other kinds of &quot;non-primary&quot; analyses that are worth mentioning: secondary analyses and post-hoc analyses: these often augment the primary findings but aren't meant to validate them. For instance, I might be interested in a causal effect of smoking on lung cancer. I might also want to know if sex is an effect modifier. In that case, testing for interaction is a secondary analysis. It is meant to augment rather than advise the primary analysis." CreationDate="2018-05-11T13:20:07.873" UserId="8013" />
  <row Id="15720" PostId="5248" Score="0" Text="@gung OK, I posted my suggestion as an answer." CreationDate="2018-05-11T13:31:05.020" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15723" PostId="5248" Score="0" Text="@AdamO, you could upvote amoeba's answer below if you like his phrasing." CreationDate="2018-05-12T00:37:48.827" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15681" PostId="5249" Score="2" Text="+1. This could (should?) be an answer on the main site to a question &quot;What is sensitivity analysis?&quot;" CreationDate="2018-05-07T21:18:27.950" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15700" PostId="5249" Score="0" Text="But what's your suggested tag excerpt? I was only asking about the tag excerpt (a paragraph), not the full definition." CreationDate="2018-05-11T08:31:17.420" UserId="7291" />
  <row Id="15704" PostId="5249" Score="0" Text="@smci An excerpt suggestion based on gung's answer: https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5245/wiki-excerpt-for-sensitivity-analysis-tag#comment15702_5248." CreationDate="2018-05-11T08:52:12.690" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15713" PostId="5249" Score="0" Text="@smci, I think amoeba's suggested excerpt might be the best." CreationDate="2018-05-11T12:59:32.947" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15687" PostId="5250" Score="1" Text="+1. I edited d-prime excerpt and wiki to say &quot;also called sensitivity index&quot; instead of &quot;also called sensitivity&quot;." CreationDate="2018-05-08T13:04:17.790" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15750" PostId="5250" Score="1" Text="#1 &amp; #2 have now been done." CreationDate="2018-05-15T18:50:24.467" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15690" PostId="5251" Score="5" Text="I think this tag is so broad that it is useless. As far as I am concerned, it could (and even should) be eliminated altogether. However, it has almost 4k threads so the only way to get rid of it would be through SE admin action (&quot;tag burnination&quot;) which has never ever happened on CV so far, despite multiple requests on Meta. Therefore I suspect the tag is here to stay. Given that, I personally don't care too much about what is written in its excerpt :) It's useless anyway." CreationDate="2018-05-09T13:11:50.117" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15693" PostId="5251" Score="1" Text="We could perhaps make it a synonym of &quot;theoretical statistics&quot;" CreationDate="2018-05-09T16:17:18.490" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="15694" PostId="5251" Score="5" Text="I'm not sure &quot;theoretical statistics&quot; would end up working, either. I don't remember the character limit, but `[mathematical-theory-of-statistics]` (33 characters) seems less likely to be misused. &amp; then to the excerpt we could add, &quot;Don't use this tag just because you think statistics has a lot of weird math in it.&quot;" CreationDate="2018-05-09T17:01:55.347" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15695" PostId="5251" Score="3" Text="I honestly don't see a problem with people &quot;misusing&quot; this tag, because it's so vague in the first place. What's it scope *supposed* to be anyway? FWIW, I'd be against renaming [mathematical-statistics] into [mathemetical-theory-of-statistics] (@gung). If people get annoyed with this tag being misused then let's get rid of it." CreationDate="2018-05-09T20:04:23.233" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15696" PostId="5251" Score="4" Text="Well, like it says in the usage guidelines &quot;theorems and proofs&quot;. The sort of thing you'd study in a statistics course in a math department. As opposed to data analysis and such." CreationDate="2018-05-09T22:14:52.870" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="15697" PostId="5251" Score="3" Text="I use it for proofs, because the [tag:proof] tag was made a synonym of it. Other than that I do not see much use of having the tag. I would rather have some tag for algebraic proofs (usually applied on properties of estimators)." CreationDate="2018-05-10T09:36:00.643" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="15698" PostId="5251" Score="2" Text="Somewhat related: https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/32001" CreationDate="2018-05-10T11:23:21.523" UserId="24669" />
  <row Id="15706" PostId="5251" Score="3" Text="I have 'mathematical-statistics' among my favorite tags and use it to track those questions which entail problems with a mathematical orientation. Personally I have mostly been doing &quot;statistics&quot; much on an ad-hoc basis without much regards to the classics and just applying probability-theory to the problem at hand (I feel that this custom-made approach to statistics is typical for the field of astronomy where I first encountered &quot;statistics&quot;, in comparison to the more out of the box paved roads statistics that are made for the scientist in fields such as social and agricultural sciences)." CreationDate="2018-05-11T09:29:52.580" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="15707" PostId="5251" Score="4" Text="So while I &quot;feel&quot; that the tag 'mathematical-statistics' can be useful, I wonder how much is actually misclassified? This surprises me (but maybe I have not been paying attention to this and skipped reading the misclassified questions). I would say that we should focus on the misclassification (if this is a problem to anyone) rather than eliminating the tag altogether." CreationDate="2018-05-11T09:32:20.607" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="15709" PostId="5251" Score="4" Text="@MartijnWeterings  I think the tag has a bimodal distribution :-).  That is, it is used by some people who are clearly very new to the field (and probably don't even know that mathematical statistics is separable from statistics, or what theorem-proof math classes are like) and those who really do want theorems and proofs.  I'm not proposing eliminating it. I think it's useful." CreationDate="2018-05-11T11:32:58.880" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="15710" PostId="5251" Score="3" Text="Mathematical-statistics might be ambiguous to novice statisticians. It might be regarded as 'any' mathematics involved in statistics (doing statistics in a mathematical way), and in the end this relates to a lot of statistics (which is about numbers after all). To the more experienced statistician 'mathematical-statistics' might be more regarded as something like mathematical *foundations* of statistics. So, I guess this *split* of interpretation might be a lead to find some good differentiation of two tags for this single tag," CreationDate="2018-05-11T11:43:42.643" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="15711" PostId="5251" Score="0" Text="Personally I am a big fan of 'Edward Tufte' who is much more into visualization of statistics, and I believe that this 'visualization-topic' (or related topics) is much less covered here (which surprises me). As a result, since much on stats.stackexchange is covered by mathematics, the 'tag' might seem relatively useless (broad). So maybe (?) we could classify statistics, broadly into 'visualization', 'mathematics', 'logic/philosophy', 'experimental/practical application', 'other'?" CreationDate="2018-05-11T11:52:11.837" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="15717" PostId="5251" Score="2" Text="@MartijnWeterings, *foundations* could work, too. Nb, `[mathematical-foundations-of-statistics]` is 38 characters; `[math-foundations-of-stats]` is 25; `[math-theory-of-stats]` is 20." CreationDate="2018-05-11T13:21:45.570" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15718" PostId="5251" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, I don't quite see why you'd be opposed to changing the name &amp; excerpt. It seems to me that from your perspective, you'd be indifferent. None of the proposed changes should make your concerns worse (whether they would make an improvement is certainly up for debate)." CreationDate="2018-05-11T13:23:43.323" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15719" PostId="5251" Score="0" Text="@gung Fair enough. I *am* rather indifferent. What I meant is that [mathematical-theory-of-statistics] is quite long and I don't see how it's better (less ambiguous) than [mathematical-statistics]. By the way, &quot;mathematical foundations&quot; has an entirely different ring to me. It's more specific but I think that 95%+ threads in [mathematical-statistics] are not about &quot;foundations&quot; by any means." CreationDate="2018-05-11T13:30:17.317" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15722" PostId="5251" Score="1" Text="Hmmm, I suppose you're right about &quot;foundations&quot;, @amoeba." CreationDate="2018-05-11T13:41:35.967" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15724" PostId="5251" Score="2" Text="I agree that *foundations* indeed doesn't sound right, but what about *theoretical*? `[mathematical-and-theoretical-statistics]` at least, I think, the tag `mathematical` should not be about &quot;simple&quot;/straight-forward applied mathematics but more about the (theoretical) background of certain mathematical constructions that are used in statistics or about the discussions of the mathematics itself in certain use of applied mathematics." CreationDate="2018-05-12T11:15:53.427" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="15721" PostId="5252" Score="0" Text="+1, I might make this slightly shorter by substituting &quot;an&quot; for &quot;some statistical&quot;." CreationDate="2018-05-11T13:40:37.593" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15735" PostId="5252" Score="1" Text="@gung I have updated the wiki excerpt (with your edit). If better suggestions appear here, we can update it again." CreationDate="2018-05-14T19:50:58.517" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15755" PostId="5252" Score="0" Text="This is great, except I'd change *&quot;the outcome of some statistical analysis&quot;* to *&quot;... of some statistical model&quot;*" CreationDate="2018-05-17T02:41:51.103" UserId="7291" />
  <row Id="15757" PostId="5252" Score="0" Text="@smci It currently says &quot;outcome of an analysis&quot;, as gung suggested. &quot;Outcome of a model&quot; sounds slightly weird to me, and there is the world &quot;model&quot; in this sentence already." CreationDate="2018-05-17T13:30:50.293" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15725" PostId="5253" Score="2" Text="If you do not think there is enough information for even an expert to answer then I would be tempted to say it is Unclear what you are asking." CreationDate="2018-05-12T12:31:08.440" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="15726" PostId="5253" Score="2" Text="You might also find this Q&amp;A interesting https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4436/does-unanimity-of-reasons-to-close-matter as it raises a related question about whether the reason matters." CreationDate="2018-05-12T13:17:52.870" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="15727" PostId="5253" Score="1" Text="@mdewey, why not make that an official answer?" CreationDate="2018-05-12T15:50:55.127" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15728" PostId="5253" Score="4" Text="In reference to a premise in the question - a post containing code is not neccessarly off-topic. This is a common error made by a subset of close-voters. I feel our [help/on-topic] is pretty clear on the matter (&quot;*if it needs statistical expertise to understand or answer, ask it here; if it's about the implementation of an algorithm, routine data processing, or details of the language, then please refer to the collection of links to resources we maintain*&quot;). There's certainly room for disagreement about what counts as what for some of the conditions, but no doubt that posts may contain code." CreationDate="2018-05-13T05:21:31.990" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="15730" PostId="5253" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b I think you misunderstood me. I never said that **every** post with code is off-topic. I believe that **this specific question** will become off-topic, once code is added, because the problem (handwritten digit classification on the MNIST dataset) is extremely well-studied, and we know that neural networks implemented in Tensorflow (the plots are clearly from TensorBoard) do well, the split in train/test set is predetermined, thus it's unlikely that the error is statistical. IMO the problem will be of implementation, thus off-topic here. Of course,I can't be sure. But I'm sure the 1/" CreationDate="2018-05-13T16:21:14.397" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="15731" PostId="5253" Score="0" Text="2/ question is impossible to answer in its current form, and all existing answers concentrate on points that are totally irrelevant such as the train/test split, which for this dataset is given." CreationDate="2018-05-13T16:23:17.573" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="15732" PostId="5254" Score="0" Text="I believe it's off-topic for the reasons in my comments above, anyway let's see what's happens when/if the OP adds code." CreationDate="2018-05-13T16:24:37.380" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="15733" PostId="5254" Score="0" Text="The idea that the reason given for closing doesn't matter *at all* seems too strong to me, &amp; isn't my reading of the linked thread. I would say that some inconsistency is inevitable &amp; it's OK if people get it wrong sometimes or give what they think is the best reason from several possibilities, even if that differs from others' votes." CreationDate="2018-05-14T12:58:00.947" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15748" PostId="5255" Score="2" Text="I don't see a deleted question like that from that user. A deleted question similar to that may exist from a different user, but I haven't found one." CreationDate="2018-05-15T16:38:18.257" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15749" PostId="5255" Score="0" Text="@gung ok thanks, I must have remembered the user name incorrectly." CreationDate="2018-05-15T17:33:50.570" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="15764" PostId="5258" Score="9" Text="I would say `code mode` is best. Links to other sites may rot away, eg. Our mandate is to develop a permanent repository of high-quality statistical (ML, etc) information in the form of Qs &amp; As. Only having the dataset in the body of the Q really guarantees that." CreationDate="2018-05-18T19:06:19.973" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15765" PostId="5258" Score="4" Text="The possibility of sharing data through SE was discussed--and answered in the negative by an SE representative--at https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1035/uploading-data-to-site." CreationDate="2018-05-18T20:58:09.433" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="15766" PostId="5258" Score="4" Text="@whuber Although answered in the negative in the link your provided, I wonder how difficult it would be to create a plug-in that encodes/decodes something .csv files in jpg, gif, or png format? Given the volatile half life of &quot;in the cloud&quot; services, I can see the value in (reasonably sized) data hosting (although... I guess imgur is currently hosting, aren't they?). The issue is having the longevity of Qs &amp; As not depend on the longevity of others' services." CreationDate="2018-05-18T22:24:44.050" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="15767" PostId="5258" Score="8" Text="I don't think that well-established services like https://gist.github.com are in danger of rotting away before CrossValidated does." CreationDate="2018-05-19T07:58:29.163" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15768" PostId="5258" Score="4" Text="Alright, thank you for the feedback. Then should this not be written down somewhere... like in the help center: &#xA;&#xA;&quot;If you want to share your data, CV prefers you post it in the body of your question (in `code mode`). If you feel you must use an alternative, we recommend https://gist.github.com/. We do not endorse sharing data through email.&quot; &#xA;&#xA;Or something along those lines." CreationDate="2018-05-19T16:00:12.150" UserId="67042" />
  <row Id="15769" PostId="5258" Score="2" Text="Surely the point of repositories such as [figshare](https://figshare.com) or [dryad](https://www.datadryad.org) is that they won't rot away. Would these be a suitable? I'd argue that this is site is an academic repository of knowledge and as these are academic data sharing sites then they would be a good match." CreationDate="2018-05-20T12:06:38.713" UserId="7746" />
  <row Id="15782" PostId="5258" Score="4" Text="One thing I would recommend, particularly if you are using `R`, is using `dput()`." CreationDate="2018-05-22T13:10:25.787" UserId="46427" />
  <row Id="15887" PostId="5258" Score="0" Text="@Clarinetist may I ask you to you expand your comment as an answer. In the same way @AdamO has done. Could you go into *the pros* of using `dput()`." CreationDate="2018-06-08T16:14:18.680" UserId="67042" />
  <row Id="15891" PostId="5258" Score="0" Text="@Jim IMO at least, it's honestly simple enough that I don't think an answer would provide any further substantial information. For example, if you have a table in `R`, doing `dput()` on the table provides you the raw code used for generating the table, which you can share with anyone else." CreationDate="2018-06-08T18:49:35.340" UserId="46427" />
  <row Id="15770" PostId="5259" Score="6" Text="This is very meta meta: You are asking a long, complicated multiple-part question on Meta about a long, complicated multiple-part question on the main site, and no one has yet answered either, possibly for loosely similar reasons. There are some simple answers, notably that it is fine for someone to peel off one question  or one facet and answer it. I think there is some danger of as much effort being given to asking the OP to rewrite the question as might be given just to answer at least some of it. (It's not my kind of question.)" CreationDate="2018-05-21T18:50:45.863" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15771" PostId="5259" Score="1" Text="@NickCox Does that make your comment meta very meta meta? ;)" CreationDate="2018-05-21T22:59:21.067" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="15772" PostId="5259" Score="3" Text="I never meta regress I didn't want to go on forever." CreationDate="2018-05-21T23:20:26.073" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15774" PostId="5259" Score="0" Text="@NickCox  I've made my question a bit more brief (not sure whether this makes it less complex but I think at least the key-point of the issue/question is more clear)." CreationDate="2018-05-22T07:30:18.170" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="15775" PostId="5259" Score="5" Text="I don't see that the original question on CV raises new issues for Meta. Consensus: it's on-topic. You can't push or pull or even easily persuade people into providing answers they don't want to give. The community has done a good job in commenting. If you (@MartijnWeterings) want to provide an answer, that's good, and it doesn't have to be a complete answer. Like scientific or scholarly papers, all threads here are candidates for greatness, but most don't achieve it, and sometimes a thread doesn't deserve closure but it won't go far. The moral is to ask focused, specific questions." CreationDate="2018-05-22T08:31:23.257" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15776" PostId="5259" Score="0" Text="I intended this meta question to be more like about 'how to provide better answers' or 'how to answer, or what to do, when the question is not focused'. I do not want to discuss whether the question is on-topic or not (I believe it is on-topic), but more like whether and how we can improve quality of question+answer." CreationDate="2018-05-22T09:41:57.003" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="15777" PostId="5259" Score="0" Text="If the answer is that it is best to just ignore this issue (or that it is not necessary to spend much time on improving such questions) and that it is best to just simply provide the solution to the question without trying to improve it on a meta-level (splitting up the questions, make new questions that handle certain topics separately, make the question optimized for search engines, etc.) then this is a fine enough answer to this meta-question (at least for me) when this is the consensus here." CreationDate="2018-05-22T09:49:57.313" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="15778" PostId="5259" Score="3" Text="I think most of the issues have been covered on Meta. Nothing stops anyone asking a new question inspired by an existing one and even answering it too. What does seem out of bounds is drastically rewriting somebody's question. Edits should be conservative (in terms of not changing the statistical question) and cosmetic (tweaks and fixes to presentation)." CreationDate="2018-05-22T11:20:58.603" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15779" PostId="5259" Score="1" Text="There is always some caprice over what is answered. I will answer a question specific to someone's data that has little general interest if I can think of something to say. But long term, the value of CV hinges on our high-quality threads with definitive answers, not on it being a helpline in public." CreationDate="2018-05-22T11:22:08.060" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15780" PostId="5259" Score="2" Text="*&quot;the value of CV hinges on our high-quality threads with definitive answers, not on it being a helpline in public&quot;* that is exactly why I posed this question. I had one occasion where I tried to (zealously) change a question (by a too large extend, I can't find the question anymore but the critics were correct) which was frowned upon (which might be a reason that I started to become more careful in these issues). Now (after this post) I believe that (at least for me personally) one way to resolve this issue is to simply post ones own questions that are &quot;better&quot; versions (let the votes decide)" CreationDate="2018-05-22T11:31:17.637" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="15781" PostId="5259" Score="0" Text="To me the point is to get these 'high-quality threads with definitive answers' and sometimes I find the question less suitable to start these threads because the question is very convoluted. So, I guesss, it is best practice to start new threads that deal with the questions/issues individually." CreationDate="2018-05-22T11:37:44.197" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="15789" PostId="5259" Score="0" Text="I don't take @NickCox's comments here as criticizing your asking of this meta Q, Martijn. This is a perfectly reasonable question to ask on meta.CV (+1 from days ago)." CreationDate="2018-05-23T14:26:06.877" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15783" PostId="5260" Score="1" Text="That seems reasonable on its face. I don't know much about it, how distinctive is it? Can questions about boruta be grouped under an existing tag?" CreationDate="2018-05-22T16:39:12.343" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15784" PostId="5260" Score="0" Text="Well they could be grouped under the randomForest tag or under some kind of feature selection, but in my opinion it is a very specific type of feature selection just like PCA is a specific type of dimensionality reducation." CreationDate="2018-05-22T16:46:08.250" UserId="128677" />
  <row Id="15785" PostId="5260" Score="2" Text="It seems reasonable for me. The tags are for making navigating on the site easier, it may serve the purpose." CreationDate="2018-05-22T16:48:50.310" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="15786" PostId="5260" Score="0" Text="Yeah, RF isn't specific enough. Would having `[random-forest]` &amp; `[feature-selection]` be OK? If not, we should have the tag. There seems to be adequate demand for it. If you do create the tag, be sure to create an excerpt to guide its usage." CreationDate="2018-05-22T16:49:00.470" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15787" PostId="5260" Score="0" Text="Okay I decided to create a tag" CreationDate="2018-05-23T07:01:33.203" UserId="128677" />
  <row Id="15788" PostId="5261" Score="1" Text="That looks fine to me." CreationDate="2018-05-23T14:19:53.127" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15790" PostId="5261" Score="0" Text="Thank you for having a look at it." CreationDate="2018-05-23T14:41:27.147" UserId="128677" />
  <row Id="15791" PostId="5262" Score="5" Text="I understood the title (and the first sentence) such that you want to encourage problem users to participate more. Maybe replace &quot;better participation&quot; with &quot;better behaviour&quot; to remove ambiguity?" CreationDate="2018-05-24T06:37:41.307" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15793" PostId="5262" Score="4" Text="With problematic users it is best to back off quickly if initial counter-comments don't work and the same behaviour is just repeated.  Often there are not just over-sharp comments, but any of  appeals to freedom of speech; complaints of over-bearing  moderation or ganging up; claims that CV is hypocritical or inconsistent in handling criticism; relishing the attention and ding-dong. It's hard for many of us to keep quiet when we think someone is wrong --- that is part of why we contribute -- but, long run, leaving major problems to moderators is the better idea." CreationDate="2018-05-24T08:20:22.883" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15794" PostId="5262" Score="3" Text="I don't want this person to be identified or identifiable and I agree that  that the question should be posed and answered generically. I am less happy with the element of judgement and excoriation without much specific evidence in this question (&quot;pretty appalling&quot;, &quot;weak&quot;, &quot;stupid opinions&quot;). That is, if anyone thinks they are being complained about here, what chance does even a general question have of changing their habits?" CreationDate="2018-05-24T08:23:13.927" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15812" PostId="5262" Score="2" Text="Is ignoring unhelpful comments a viable strategy? In environments where quality is scarce, does identifying, elevating the good provide more information than flagging the bad? [Is the answer to be like Bill?](http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/be-like-bill)" CreationDate="2018-05-28T21:00:31.783" UserId="97925" />
  <row Id="15863" PostId="5262" Score="2" Text="@MatthewGunn Ironically, or otherwise, your comment about comments being ignored was ignored, which is unfair. Sometimes with &quot;repeat offenders&quot; it is apparent that indifference, as expressed by ignoring comments, rather than arguing back **is** a good strategy. Some people thrive on arguing back as confirming their impression that they have interesting and different ideas and that they or their ideas are receiving unfair/hostile/ignorant treatment. In short, don't feed the trolls." CreationDate="2018-06-06T11:41:13.480" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15796" PostId="5263" Score="5" Text="&quot;&quot;In general, however, this is a high-risk, low-reward strategy.&quot;&quot; that is SO much what a statistician would say." CreationDate="2018-05-25T12:04:57.190" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="15797" PostId="5263" Score="6" Text="@MartijnWeterings, to me it seems like a perfectly normal thing to say." CreationDate="2018-05-25T12:43:05.023" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15798" PostId="5263" Score="7" Text="'a perfectly normal thing' , that is what the statistician would say." CreationDate="2018-05-25T13:28:30.667" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="15804" PostId="5266" Score="0" Text="Have a look at: [https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/71004/82135](https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/71004/82135)." CreationDate="2018-05-26T11:33:51.073" UserDisplayName="user82135" />
  <row Id="15836" PostId="5266" Score="0" Text="`If the background of the image is white or partially white, there must be a 1px border (2px if high DPI) surrounding it.`" CreationDate="2018-06-01T18:32:00.990" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="15799" PostId="5268" Score="1" Text="That tag has been approved as synonym &amp; they have been merged. I think it might just be a ghost in the machine. It doesn't show up as a suggestion when you are entering tags on a question, eg." CreationDate="2018-05-25T18:09:05.200" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15800" PostId="5268" Score="0" Text="@gung Hmm, I don't think this is a duplicate. I think it's expected behaviour that merged synonyms such as e.g. [randomized-experiment] show up on https://stats.stackexchange.com/tags if one searches for them. Which *I think* is what AdamO is asking about. They should appear without any wiki excerpt and with no question count displayed." CreationDate="2018-05-25T19:42:45.673" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15801" PostId="5268" Score="0" Text="@gung By the way, can we create [randomization-test] as synonym to [permutation-test]? I just eliminated [randomization] that was recently created and had 3 threads." CreationDate="2018-05-25T19:48:10.410" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15803" PostId="5268" Score="0" Text="I don't know that we should make them synonyms." CreationDate="2018-05-26T00:09:51.770" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="15805" PostId="5268" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b Do you mean that &quot;randomization test&quot; and &quot;permutation test&quot; are two sufficiently different things? I thought it's the same thing; what is the difference?" CreationDate="2018-05-26T21:00:25.793" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15806" PostId="5268" Score="2" Text="The definition of randomization test varies across authors. Under some definitions they're identical. But see, for example, [this question](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/55742/difference-between-randomization-test-and-permutation-test), which explains distinctions drawn by authors like Good and Edgington. In my own student days the term &quot;randomization test&quot; was used differently again, to refer to the case where you sampled the permutation distribution with replacement (vs the exact distribution in a permutation test); this difference is briefly hinted at in Greg Snow's answer." CreationDate="2018-05-27T01:01:29.233" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="15807" PostId="5268" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b Well, yes: that's exactly why I think that we should NOT have two different tags [permutation-test] and [randomization-test]. Do you agree? Currently we only have [permutation-test], meaning that if somebody tries to search for &quot;randomization test&quot; among tags, they won't find anything. There is a danger that they would create this tag (as already happened: [randomization] was created). Hence my suggestion to create this tag as a synonym for [permutation-test]. I don't understand why you disagree. What's your preferred arrangement?" CreationDate="2018-05-27T14:28:19.193" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15808" PostId="5268" Score="0" Text="That one term has more than one meaning doesn't clearly indicate to me that it should be treated as a synonym of another. *If* we were to  explain the various meanings of randomization-test in the extended tag wiki, perhaps it might make some sense to combine them." CreationDate="2018-05-28T02:18:06.373" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="15809" PostId="5268" Score="0" Text="@gung See the small discussion above; what do you think?" CreationDate="2018-05-28T06:05:03.873" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15810" PostId="5268" Score="2" Text="The distinction seem *awfully* subtle to me (&amp; I think I understand what it is). I'm not confident it will be understood &amp; used correctly by the typical person asking a question on PT/RT here. I see the point of tags as primarily to help organize the material on the site. Tags for a distinction so subtle most people will miss it strike me as likely to be misused &amp; lead to less well organized content. I think we'd be best off making them synonyms &amp; having the excerpt &amp; wiki include the distinction, @Glen_b." CreationDate="2018-05-28T15:25:24.970" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15811" PostId="5268" Score="0" Text="We can also ask a new meta Q to discuss it, @amoeba." CreationDate="2018-05-28T15:25:34.010" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16031" PostId="5268" Score="1" Text="AdamO, did my answer clarify the issue for you? If yes, then consider marking it as accepted. If not, feel free to ask for clarifications." CreationDate="2018-06-27T19:37:34.627" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16032" PostId="5268" Score="0" Text="@amoeba yes, SE could stand to use some intuitive formatting about tag ghosts, like shading the text box differently, or something along those lines... that's just my griping. Browsing tags is a useful way to better participate in the site: I'm no jack-of-all-trades, but have some familiar topics that I like to see." CreationDate="2018-06-27T19:55:43.537" UserId="8013" />
  <row Id="15815" PostId="5271" Score="9" Text="I don't feel strongly about it but if you want to create this tag (and put it on the most prominent threads) then I'd ceratinly have nothing against. I would only suggest to call it more explicitly, e.g. [bias-variance-tradeoff]." CreationDate="2018-05-29T18:42:13.203" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15814" PostId="5272" Score="3" Text="In the same spirit I note that Stata has `dataex` (bundled with the company's software in Stata 14.2 or 15.1 up, and otherwise downloadable with `ssc install dataex`). More generally, data examples as text with one header line are highly readable across different software." CreationDate="2018-05-29T17:40:44.587" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15817" PostId="5273" Score="6" Text="My feeling is that -- without very careful focus - most such questions are too broad (and often unclear), but I've been hoping the many machine learning experts on site would curate these posts - initially, placing most of them on hold. While I know some topics that would now be considered machine learning well enough, I'm not in a position to curate other topics - e.g. many of the technical NN posts. The standards applied by the high rep users in these topics seem considerably more lenient than the rest of the site; we'd expect to see some difference, but it seems like a lot. .... ctd" CreationDate="2018-05-30T02:00:20.597" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="15818" PostId="5273" Score="14" Text="ctd...  I appreciate the motivation to help &amp; the increasing importance of the topic but we cannot solve every kind of problem. In particular, we're not a clinic. Vague questions in the &quot;it doesn't work, please fix it&quot; style *aren't even questions*. They should be on hold until they're a clear question answerable in a few paragraphs, or they belong on some kind of site nearer to a forum. StackExchange sites are supposed to be a repository for questions whose answers *will help more than one user*. There's some greyness in the placement of the line, but I think almost all of these go beyond it." CreationDate="2018-05-30T02:02:58.023" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="15824" PostId="5273" Score="3" Text="I couldn't answer even the simplest questions on neural networks, but these seem on all fours with any question of the form Why doesn't my method work well (OR at all) with my data? The latter can often be answered with a small or moderate dataset and a simple procedure, but once the dataset is too large to post, the model or method or estimation is complicated, and there may even be doubt about whether in principle the procedure is a good choice for the data, or vice versa, all bets are usually off." CreationDate="2018-05-30T08:59:58.403" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15825" PostId="5273" Score="1" Text="Thanks for the input, @Glen_b and Nick Cox. I think that at least some of these problems could be resolved with a more vigorous close-as-unclear or close-as-dupe, but since expertise is required to make those determinations, and that expertise is uncommon among our regular reviewers, the review queue is not working quite how we want it to. So right now I'm undertaking to get a gold badge in  [tag:neural-network], so that I have &quot;dupe-hammer&quot; power. But this will take some time to accumulate that much rep in [tag:neural-network]." CreationDate="2018-05-30T15:34:46.183" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="15826" PostId="5273" Score="0" Text="That's a noble aim. One or two users with gold badges would be a big help." CreationDate="2018-05-30T16:34:09.687" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="15827" PostId="5273" Score="0" Text="Can't such questions be marked as duplicate of some other question (in a general way, 'how do I make a NN of type ... more effective?' 'which knows can I turn with this type ... of NN?')? Otherwise (if no duplicate) then I guess they may be considered usefull, although they might be worded in a very specific way such that general application and searchability for future users might be difficult." CreationDate="2018-05-30T17:30:48.310" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="15828" PostId="5273" Score="2" Text="@MartijnWeterings In general, this is how the queue works. Over the past few months, I've noticed that a number of my attempts to close-as-dupe fail. My speculation is that other reviewers are, in instances where they do not feel competent to judge, are voting to leave open/skipping voting entirely. This is all well and good (people shouldn't close-as-dupe unless they understand what's going on in the questions), but it has the side-effect that some dupes remain open because the 5-vote threshold is not reached." CreationDate="2018-05-30T17:32:54.617" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="15829" PostId="5273" Score="1" Text="You could create a sort of support question like is done  with general question about software. Then all (or many) of those questions can be closed as being duplicates (or at least receive little upvotes) if they do not provide sufficient novelty." CreationDate="2018-05-30T17:33:48.787" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="15830" PostId="5273" Score="1" Text="@MartijnWeterings We could. And I think that I will, over the next few weeks, try to write &amp; answer such a question. The challenging point is that askers might feel shortchanged by that result: &quot;But I tried all the suggestions in that thread and it didn't work!&quot; And maybe they have! Usually the problem is getting all of the different dials configured &quot;just right&quot; in combination." CreationDate="2018-05-30T17:35:06.667" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="15832" PostId="5273" Score="0" Text="@Sycorax *&quot;Usually the problem is getting all of the different dials configured &quot;just right&quot; in combination.&quot;*... this can be part of the general solution/answer. If people want some ready made solution like an answer to homework or get somebody else to finish their project, then I guess it is off-topic. It is just debugging or doing regular work which makes the question useless for the general public unless there is some (new) 'principle' explained by the answer." CreationDate="2018-05-30T18:31:30.583" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="15834" PostId="5273" Score="0" Text="I am among those who wouldn't read questions on NNs or presume to judge what is and what is not a good question on NNs and so am part of the problem." CreationDate="2018-05-31T23:37:44.870" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15840" PostId="5273" Score="0" Text="If the code is &quot;syntactically correct&quot; shouldn't OPs be directed to: codereview.stackexchange.com?  (I've been gently asked to go there myself when posting a question when asking for help improving &quot;working&quot; code)." CreationDate="2018-06-03T19:32:24.520" UserId="21004" />
  <row Id="15850" PostId="5273" Score="1" Text="hey, I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who has issues with this kind of DNN questions! I've been [asking similar questions before](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5253/which-close-option-to-choose-for-this-question) [here on Meta](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5243/how-to-improve-the-following-question) [several times](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4990/are-machine-learning-questions-about-an-incorrectly-working-piece-of-code-consid). Last year, I even predicted that these kind of questions would become more and more common 1/" CreationDate="2018-06-04T09:09:40.057" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="15851" PostId="5273" Score="0" Text="2/ (see my comments to [this question](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4929/would-it-make-sense-to-add-data-science-se-to-the-list-of-suggested-sites-for-mi)). Turns out my prediction was correct, even though others didn't agree! More to the point, your example (exploring a DOE of 150 configurations including hyperparameter interactions) makes a convincing case for AutoML, Hyperopt (it doesn't support GPUs, though, so that sucks) or similar. Maybe we're too much hung up on the idea that we must be &quot;so smart&quot; that we can tell the OP exactly which hyperparameter(s) s/he has to 3/" CreationDate="2018-06-04T09:10:43.477" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="15852" PostId="5273" Score="0" Text="3/ tune, by just looking at the plots. Deep Learning doesn't work like that: you don't find the &quot;magic config&quot; just by staring at some plots and then saying &quot;eureka!&quot;. It's an iterative process: you try some things, you see what happens, and you decide what to do next. You often backtrack. It doesn't really fit a Q&amp;A site. I say either we bring down the close hammer _much more often_, or we start referring to AutoML algorithms. Otherwise, I'm sure the trend will only increase: I know the hiring market for DL relatively well, and people have a strong incentive to ask _more_ of these questions." CreationDate="2018-06-04T09:11:06.037" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="15855" PostId="5273" Score="2" Text="Recently I considered posting the same meta question. These answers are generally impossible to answer other than using some generic recipes from Deep learning 101, and have very low value for future users (whose network also doesn't work but they need to tune other hyperparameters to make it work). In this sense I think they are off-topic." CreationDate="2018-06-04T14:04:12.343" UserId="163572" />
  <row Id="15856" PostId="5273" Score="2" Text="@JanKukacka But I think that repeating the generic advice could be a valid answer. The trick is to correctly scope the question so that we write that answer exactly once." CreationDate="2018-06-04T14:48:14.543" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="15950" PostId="5273" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b I wrote this answer so be a target for close-as-dupe questions about how to train a neural network." CreationDate="2018-06-19T00:39:04.570" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="15952" PostId="5273" Score="0" Text="The one linked from your answer below? Cool, I'll take a look." CreationDate="2018-06-19T02:00:13.087" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="15831" PostId="5274" Score="0" Text="This answer gives a nice perspective. Continouing on this line allows to give a less definitive answer about a seperate NN site; maybe we might better say that it is currently not yet the 'time' for such a sub-site (and leave open the possibilty that a separate site is possible in the future when there is a big enough independent community that can 'maintain' and 'fill' it)." CreationDate="2018-05-30T18:14:45.280" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="15833" PostId="5274" Score="0" Text="Robert addresses restarts in [&quot;Can this closed proposal be reopened or do I have to make a new proposal?&quot;](https://area51.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/28032/can-this-closed-proposal-be-reopened-or-do-i-have-to-make-a-new-proposal): &quot;... when you submit a proposal for a site, it is generally assumed you have access to a large enough audience ...  [if] you now have a community to see this proposal through ... you will need to resubmit the proposal. But without a subtantial increase in actvity with a larger community organizing their efforts, the proposal will likely be closed again.&quot;." CreationDate="2018-05-30T21:47:38.683" UserId="197829" />
  <row Id="15853" PostId="5276" Score="4" Text="I'd like to strengthen your position by adding that one of the issues with Deep Learning is that deep neural networks [have a nasty habit of converging to a suboptimal solution even when the code has bugs](https://medium.com/@keeper6928/how-to-unit-test-machine-learning-code-57cf6fd81765), so very often you get DNN code which runs, even though it would fail basic unit tests!" CreationDate="2018-06-04T09:16:54.840" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="15949" PostId="5276" Score="1" Text="I have posted a thread about how to tune a neural network here. https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/352036/my-neural-network-doesnt-learn/352037#352037" CreationDate="2018-06-19T00:38:00.597" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="15951" PostId="5276" Score="0" Text="@Sycorax Thanks. I'm taking a look." CreationDate="2018-06-19T00:40:10.417" UserId="34623" />
  <row Id="15843" PostId="5277" Score="0" Text="Also, why did you award the bounty to the accepted answer if you think it's so misleading?" CreationDate="2018-06-04T07:06:08.457" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15844" PostId="5277" Score="0" Text="@amoeba bounty time has passed, there was no new answers, the highest upvoted answer would give it anyway if I did not award it." CreationDate="2018-06-04T07:35:33.697" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="15845" PostId="5277" Score="5" Text="I am pretty sure that if there were no new answers during the bounty time, then the bounty would not be awarded to any answer automatically. The highest upvoted answer _from the ones posted after the bounty was started_ automatically gets half of the bounty. The answers posted before the bounty was started play no role." CreationDate="2018-06-04T07:41:24.487" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15846" PostId="5277" Score="2" Text="I think @amoeba is correct, at least on my reading of https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/bounty" CreationDate="2018-06-04T08:47:55.713" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="15854" PostId="5277" Score="1" Text="...I don't think it changes anything in here, it is just about wasting the bounty, or giving it to outdated answer." CreationDate="2018-06-04T09:22:27.867" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="15857" PostId="5277" Score="2" Text="@Tim Kind of off-topic, don't know where else to post this -- often, having a question on the Bounty board for 7 days can stand as its own source of rep, aside from the rep awarded as part of the bounty itself, because being on the board raises the question's visibility. Ending a bounty at the earliest possible moment deprives the post of rep which it might have accrued as part of that process." CreationDate="2018-06-04T15:33:44.730" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="15841" PostId="5278" Score="7" Text="+1 Good advice. However, this should only be done when one is absolutely sure that the existing answers are all hopelessly unhelpful/outdated *and* when the chances that a new good answer would rise to the top are low. In this specific case I am not (yet?) convinced of the either. (1) There is a number of answers from 2015; a state-of-the-art answer from back then would certainly still be a good answer now in 2018. But I haven't read through all of them. (2) The OP is Rob Hyndman who is still active and could perhaps be convinced to change the accepted answer if one appears." CreationDate="2018-06-04T06:54:19.683" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15911" PostId="5278" Score="0" Text="I think this is not going to (ironically) generalize to a lot of SE sites, so that's something that should be communicated to people if this becomes widespread practice here. I'm worried people will start marking-as-outdated questions or answers that become &quot;incorrect&quot; because the underlying technology has changed, rather than because our understanding of the facts has changed. (e.g. I wouldn't want a question about &quot;how to print to stderr in Python&quot; being marked as &quot;outdated&quot; because `print &gt;&gt; sys.stderr, x` should now be `print(x, file=sys.stderr)` in Python 3...)" CreationDate="2018-06-14T01:11:56.817" UserId="10636" />
  <row Id="15862" PostId="5281" Score="0" Text="Update: I have pinged three people I mentioned here." CreationDate="2018-06-06T10:33:00.750" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15864" PostId="5281" Score="1" Text="I’ll take a look at the thread! This seems like a good idea." CreationDate="2018-06-06T13:04:24.457" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="15865" PostId="5281" Score="1" Text="I'll have a look at the thread too." CreationDate="2018-06-06T17:07:40.027" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="15867" PostId="5281" Score="1" Text="I have had a look at the thread, I was genuinely surprised that a question with highly upvoted answer got a bounty, but I did not realize the hidden message behind :)" CreationDate="2018-06-06T19:24:53.487" UserId="163572" />
  <row Id="15868" PostId="5281" Score="0" Text="The accepted answer is definitely outdated: I will go through the other answers in the next days. Ps I note that @RobHyndman's question specifically concerns feedforward networks, thus RNNs are excluded." CreationDate="2018-06-06T19:44:19.577" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="15927" PostId="5281" Score="0" Text="At what point will it be a good idea to simply post a new question, as per @Glen_b  's answer ? I am very interested in the current state of play regarding choosing hidden layers and nodes. I will rewrite the question if needs be...." CreationDate="2018-06-15T11:24:43.590" UserId="7486" />
  <row Id="15866" PostId="5282" Score="1" Text="Lightly edited for style, etc. Please check that I have been faithful to your intent." CreationDate="2018-06-06T19:22:29.410" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15869" PostId="5282" Score="0" Text="This could be a canonical thread on the main site, &amp; the new questions could be closed as duplicates." CreationDate="2018-06-07T15:38:28.013" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15948" PostId="5282" Score="1" Text="I have posted what I hope will become the canonical answer for &quot;how to train a neural network&quot; questions here: https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/352036/my-neural-network-doesnt-learn/352037#352037" CreationDate="2018-06-19T00:37:43.780" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="15892" PostId="5285" Score="6" Text="I opened a &quot;private&quot; browser window (where I am logged out from CV) and checked that I could still see users' reputation history. So it's not a privilege." CreationDate="2018-06-09T13:50:52.203" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15893" PostId="5285" Score="2" Text="You see downvotes that they may have received but not details on downvotes that they may have given." CreationDate="2018-06-09T15:15:52.643" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="15894" PostId="5285" Score="0" Text="@NickCox so, I shouldn't see the -1 people get when downvoting others. I should only be able to see the -2 they received, because someone else downvoted their questions/answers, or -5 because their answers were unupvoted, but not the -1 because they gave downvotes. Is this correct?" CreationDate="2018-06-09T15:56:10.887" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="15895" PostId="5285" Score="2" Text="This is system-wide behavior, &amp; it is part of the design intended by the developers." CreationDate="2018-06-09T15:56:43.303" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15896" PostId="5285" Score="2" Text="On a browser where I am logged out, I cannot see reputation changes from downvotes that I've given." CreationDate="2018-06-09T15:59:03.623" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15897" PostId="5285" Score="1" Text="@gung that makes sense: otherwise, it would be relatively easy to de-anonymize downvotes." CreationDate="2018-06-09T16:01:19.877" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="15898" PostId="5286" Score="4" Text="A brief discussion among several of the mods indicated that we were all inclined to reopen the question; a sufficient consensus." CreationDate="2018-06-11T15:35:55.940" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="15899" PostId="5286" Score="0" Text="It's not a statistics question, it's strictly related to Tensorflow (and to an old version too, though it works perfectly in Tensorflow 1.9, because now we have 1000 different ways to do the same thing in Tensorflow: a brilliant software design choice, really). As a matter of fact, you couldn't have asked the same question in Keras or in PyTorch" CreationDate="2018-06-12T19:41:04.920" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="15900" PostId="5286" Score="3" Text="This frustrates me (too?): Separating statistics from software is about as useful as separating medicine from the medical instruments. You'll find SO has an equally frustrating door-in-the-face policy on questions. [Here is a question](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4846/when-should-programming-questions-be-closed-as-off-topic-and-when-migrated-to-s) about closing vs. migrating programming Qs. On CV, I close many such questions b/c they don't meet SO's reqs for a MRW example. But even SO preferentially passes Qs that are &quot;interesting&quot; to them." CreationDate="2018-06-12T20:40:57.823" UserId="8013" />
  <row Id="15910" PostId="5286" Score="3" Text="@AdamO I appreciate your frustration and understand where you are coming from. But is *this particular question* a good test case for litigating the case that we should accept more questions which are software-heavy?" CreationDate="2018-06-13T14:35:26.007" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="15922" PostId="5286" Score="2" Text="Totally! I had similar tags on my questions. Discussing coding details should be valid at CV. Coding is the practical part of machine learning, besides the shiny theory. I can perfectly understand the theory and still make stupid (or less elegant) decisions in my implementation. This kind of best practices-recipes would increase the value of CV, IMHO. Maybe with a special tag?" CreationDate="2018-06-14T15:52:18.273" UserDisplayName="user209249" />
  <row Id="15974" PostId="5286" Score="0" Text="+1. The fact that there are coding tags and mandating that questions be agonistic creates conflicting messages." CreationDate="2018-06-19T19:08:05.113" UserId="83526" />
  <row Id="15905" PostId="5290" Score="11" Text="It's not a bug, it's &quot;community wiki&quot;. See [meta-tag:community-wiki]. The reason you got 10 rep at all, is that the thread was converted to CW status after you already got 10 rep, and the rep points are not retroactively removed in this situation." CreationDate="2018-06-13T10:30:18.850" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15906" PostId="5290" Score="0" Text="Ok, it's good to know, there is no bug but a special situation called &quot;community wiki&quot; od &quot;CW&quot;. I read the link and do not quite get to the point of it, but that is fine. Thank you." CreationDate="2018-06-13T12:02:15.513" UserId="117812" />
  <row Id="15907" PostId="5290" Score="1" Text="Here is official SE information: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11740/what-are-community-wiki-posts. Here on CV, we use CW status in a particular way and looking at the most upvoted Meta threads with this tag should give you some idea about how it's used: https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/community-wiki?sort=votes. Specifically about reference requests, see https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1593." CreationDate="2018-06-13T12:10:51.170" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15908" PostId="5290" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Thank you for the great links. I take away, that I did not overlook something obvious, but that it is a complicated matter. Reference requests bare special risks and as a general rule &quot;All this type of questions need to be community wiki to prevent the reputation-only-motivation to answer this type of questions&quot; (from one of the links). That is a great answer." CreationDate="2018-06-13T12:25:12.803" UserId="117812" />
  <row Id="15912" PostId="5291" Score="10" Text="I've just read the post on homework questions and feel a related approach is relevant. In most cases the reason people ask these professional questions is they have a main job and are being asked to do something out of their comfort zone. We should encourage guidance type answers rather than solutions, similar to self study, in fact I would advise using the self study tag. That way it helps the newbie learn better. It would also stop people doing the OP's work for them." CreationDate="2018-06-14T04:28:00.453" UserId="195935" />
  <row Id="15913" PostId="5291" Score="0" Text="Thanks for the comment (+1) - maybe convert to an answer?" CreationDate="2018-06-14T04:33:15.873" UserId="173082" />
  <row Id="15914" PostId="5291" Score="0" Text="Now added as an answer" CreationDate="2018-06-14T05:41:23.430" UserId="195935" />
  <row Id="15921" PostId="5291" Score="2" Text="Seems like a great opportunity to provide OP with a cost estimate and proposed statement of work and drum up some business..." CreationDate="2018-06-14T14:57:27.237" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="15923" PostId="5291" Score="3" Text="Many of the first group of questions will be off topic (if it's primarily related to coding issues rather than requiring expertise) or unclear (if you can't even tell whether it's merely a coding issue or not). The second kind should often close as too broad (indeed I just now closed one exactly with this issue) or unclear (often they don't even state what it is they want to find out!). You can [vote to close](https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/close-questions) - you should have all the required [privileges](https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/privileges) to cast such votes...ctd" CreationDate="2018-06-14T23:30:42.377" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="15924" PostId="5291" Score="5" Text="ctd... Of those that could be turned into a specific question with a clear answer of only a few paragraphs with an edit, encourage such an edit. If it's essentially a homework-style question, treat it as one. We cannot, however, effectively police whether or not a question relates to someones job (most of them will); the main criterion should be &quot;is this a question whose answer will help the *next* person with a similar issue?&quot;. If it's not likely to help anyone but the asker, it's probably not a good question for our site. ." CreationDate="2018-06-14T23:36:12.817" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="15926" PostId="5291" Score="4" Text="@Glen_b &quot;is this a question whose answer will help the next person with a similar issue?&quot; this criterion makes sense for a Q&amp;A site and I've used a few times myself, but I just noticed it doesn't seem to be explicitly stated anywhere. Neither [the tour](https://stats.stackexchange.com/tour), [the list of topics](https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) or [the list of inappropriate questions](https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask) seem to mention it. Should we add it? I may have also missed something obvious - I'm in a hurry today." CreationDate="2018-06-15T08:51:43.117" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="15915" PostId="5292" Score="8" Text="(-1) I agree with the sentiments here but not with the proposed approach. The self-study tag is for exercises/bookwork - artificial problems for training. Other types of questions should be judged according simply to whether they're good or not. We already close questions that ask for code debugging, or are too broad. (I should add my own answer when I have time.)" CreationDate="2018-06-14T08:27:19.747" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="15916" PostId="5292" Score="7" Text="(-1) I agree with @Scortchi that the `self-study` tag must not be abused for questions which are not exercise or bookwork." CreationDate="2018-06-14T12:14:52.160" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="15917" PostId="5292" Score="7" Text="Indeed, if the self-study tag is required for any question where someone is &quot;seeking to learn new skills and gain new understanding&quot;, then we may as well add it by default to any question, as it will then be hard to imagine a question where it is not required." CreationDate="2018-06-14T12:22:59.943" UserId="67799" />
  <row Id="15942" PostId="5292" Score="0" Text="+1. The meta tag [tag:self-study] only makes things more confused in this site. We should [eliminate](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4393/should-i-add-the-self-study-tag-to-a-question-that-is-copy-pasted-from-a-book/4409#4409) it." CreationDate="2018-06-16T19:05:54.597" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="15962" PostId="5292" Score="0" Text="@AndreSilva We generally dislike meta-tags and I do think the self-study tag is extremely poorly worded and poorly named, but then again, I do think it is sensible to deal differently with questions of the ilk Scortchi described. I might suggest renaming &quot;self-study&quot; as &quot;bookwork&quot;, for a start..." CreationDate="2018-06-19T16:15:50.183" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="15925" PostId="5295" Score="2" Text="Thanks for explaining your down-vote (+1)" CreationDate="2018-06-14T23:40:01.350" UserId="173082" />
  <row Id="15930" PostId="5295" Score="1" Text="I believe that Ben was (much) more nuanced then just being against job-related questions." CreationDate="2018-06-15T21:07:53.890" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="15931" PostId="5295" Score="0" Text="@MartijnWeterings I believe you didn't understand my answer." CreationDate="2018-06-16T07:05:35.250" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="15933" PostId="5295" Score="2" Text="The point made by Ben is that we have a special off-topic closing option for 'self-study' when these questions go out of boundaries. We do not have this for professional work questions (except the general tag). The analogy, allowing nuanced differences, is certainly valid." CreationDate="2018-06-16T11:13:53.947" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="15934" PostId="5295" Score="1" Text="@DeltaIV I guess I do not understand your first sentence. But I agree with all of the rest (which maybe I did not understand either). It is just that (simplified) first premise that you extract from Ben's question which is entirely different in comparison to what I got from the question. ----- Certainly we should not need to judge questions on whether the OP gets paid for getting an answer. But the same is true for self-study questions where we should not judge the statistics and validity of the question (being on-topic) based on whether the OP is getting a mark for work copied from an answer." CreationDate="2018-06-16T11:16:07.267" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="15936" PostId="5295" Score="1" Text="The point made by Ben is that we have a special off-topic closing option for 'self-study' when these questions go out of boundaries (off-topic). We do not have this for professional work questions (except the general tag). The analogy is certainly valid." CreationDate="2018-06-16T11:21:52.510" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="15938" PostId="5295" Score="3" Text="@MartijnWeterings it is not valid _at all_. There are obvious reasons why universities have policies against copying one another's work (or [from the Internet](https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/04/how-to-stop-cheating-in-college/479037/)), while hospitals have no policies against doctors (professionals) asking for suggestions from other doctors (professionals). This is so self-evident that I won't spend my time arguing the point here in comments. If you're convinced the analogy is valid, you're free to propose a new tag - naturally I'll oppose it." CreationDate="2018-06-16T13:03:18.720" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="15939" PostId="5295" Score="0" Text="@DeltaIV I am not so much convinced about a different tag. I was just pointing out that the case is much more nuanced. The same is true for the single argument about university policies. There are many more reasons why we have a self-study tag. The least reason would be that students can copy homework, work which btw is not so much university level but more for school (in that case we should delete the self-study questions after the OPs have discovered the solution, to prevent abuse from other students with the same question)" CreationDate="2018-06-16T13:57:44.753" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="15961" PostId="5295" Score="4" Text="I downvoted the question for similar reasons, but I do want to make it clear to the OP that downvoting on Meta has very different implications and interpretations to downvoting questions on the main site, and should not at all be perceived as a slight!" CreationDate="2018-06-19T16:13:26.930" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="15918" PostId="5296" Score="2" Text="+1.  FWIW, [&quot;machine language&quot;](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_code) usually refers to the bytecode language used to control processing units, as opposed to &quot;machine learning,&quot; which is what the referenced question asks about." CreationDate="2018-06-14T13:20:15.083" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="15919" PostId="5296" Score="0" Text="Thanks. I copied the word down wrong and have fixed it. But it's just an example." CreationDate="2018-06-14T13:27:02.580" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="15920" PostId="5296" Score="6" Text="That one seem OK but I have marked as too broad ones which give no idea of (a) what the OP already knows, (b) what background they have in statistics, mathematics, the underlying science, (c) what searches they have already undertaken and why what they found was unsatisfactory." CreationDate="2018-06-14T14:29:10.397" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="15928" PostId="5296" Score="2" Text="I voted to close the example question since it is imo unclear whether the reference  should be about ML for trading strategies, about supervised learning for continuous targets, about online learning of the strategy while trading, etc. (so &quot;too many possible answers&quot; from Glen_b's answer). And I don't think reference requests should ask for &quot;pieces of code&quot;.  However, should this perhaps be &quot;unclear what you're asking&quot; rather than &quot;too broad&quot;?" CreationDate="2018-06-15T13:21:30.373" UserId="24669" />
  <row Id="21857" PostId="5298" Score="1" Text="Multiple possible answers is no longer a valid reason to close a question, yet this problem seems to persist. See here: https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/604996/literature-about-robust-standard-errors-in-astrophysics?noredirect=1#comment1122866_604996 is this a case of &quot;Needs more details or clarity&quot;?" CreationDate="2023-02-10T18:22:13.543" UserId="8013" />
  <row Id="15941" PostId="5299" Score="3" Text="FWIW, I think the recommendation that the asker make &quot;their question as general as possible&quot;. This belief often leads to questions that have no relevant context, are difficult to interpret &amp; to answer usefully &amp; correctly. Cf, [How can we encourage askers to provide context?](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3134/)" CreationDate="2018-06-16T18:38:33.607" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15944" PostId="5300" Score="3" Text="Welcome to the site, Xavier, I've appreciated your answers. In fact, we did used to have a tag, `[basic-concepts]`, that was similar to what you suggest. We eventually deleted it, however. Such tags are considered [meta tags](https://stackoverflow.blog/2010/08/07/the-death-of-meta-tags/) &amp; are verboten in the SE system. 1 piece of advice I can give you: the unanswered tab lists Qs by votes; thew ones you see first are often old &amp; hard. Instead, seatch on your favorite tag using the keyword, `answers:0`, &amp; use the newest tab." CreationDate="2018-06-17T12:24:00.807" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15945" PostId="5300" Score="0" Text="Great i ll have a look!" CreationDate="2018-06-17T12:38:05.383" UserId="192854" />
  <row Id="15953" PostId="5302" Score="3" Text="I've favourited it so I can hopefully find it again" CreationDate="2018-06-19T02:12:32.110" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="15954" PostId="5303" Score="1" Text="I don't have an opinion here, but FWIW when gung created this tag, he seems to have put it on two threads: https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/106038 and https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/108983. The other 8 threads with this tag appeared later. Most of them do not have [autocorrelation] tag. Would  your suggestion then be to make [acf-pcaf] a synonym of [autocorrelation]?" CreationDate="2018-06-19T12:49:05.317" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15955" PostId="5303" Score="1" Text="@amoeba, this could be logical. Either we keep it (then I would urge to change the name to `acf-pacf`) or make it a synonym, and then the intuitive synonym for me is  indeed [tag:autocorrelation]." CreationDate="2018-06-19T13:04:55.697" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="15959" PostId="5303" Score="1" Text="Seeing that many people started using this tag after it was created, I think having it around is a good idea. The question remains whether to make it a synonym or not (on which I have no opinion)." CreationDate="2018-06-19T13:57:00.370" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15960" PostId="5303" Score="0" Text="7 questions over 2 months (besides the two old threads @gung tagged himself when creating the tag) – not too intense, but not dead either." CreationDate="2018-06-19T14:02:31.377" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="15969" PostId="5303" Score="1" Text="OK, the tag's name has been changed to [tag:acf-pacf]." CreationDate="2018-06-19T17:33:33.327" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15972" PostId="5303" Score="1" Text="I seem to have a vague memory that part of the point was to make it a synonym, but I'm not really sure. Couldn't someone have a question about the plots w/o it being a question about *autocorrelation*? What if someone wanted to ask, 'how to identify the MA parameter from this ACF plot?', should the system retag that (silently) to `[autocorrelation]`?" CreationDate="2018-06-19T17:43:48.123" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15973" PostId="5303" Score="0" Text="@gung, good example. Perhaps it shouldn't." CreationDate="2018-06-19T17:53:11.427" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="15978" PostId="5303" Score="2" Text="ACF and PACF are typically used in identifying ARIMA orders in a Box-Jenkins type approach. Looking (only) at the titles of the [tag:acf-pacf] questions, it seems like most of these could be retagged [tag:box-jenkins]. To be honest, I have little preference either way, since Box-Jenkins is really not the modern way to go about ARIMA model selection - nowadays, one uses information criteria." CreationDate="2018-06-21T00:43:17.077" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="15976" PostId="5306" Score="0" Text="+1 from the OP." CreationDate="2018-06-20T14:16:08.120" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="16021" PostId="5306" Score="0" Text="@RichardHardy Is the issue settled then? If so, perhaps accept gung's answer?" CreationDate="2018-06-27T14:22:01.960" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16022" PostId="5306" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, good idea." CreationDate="2018-06-27T14:23:46.857" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="15979" PostId="5308" Score="0" Text="+1 from the OP. I think `[type-i-errors] ` can be understood to stand for $i=1,2$, so you would not need to create the `[type-1-&amp;-2-errors]` tag, but perhaps this is not obvious to everyone." CreationDate="2018-06-21T11:17:56.127" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="15980" PostId="5308" Score="9" Text="@Richard I would find &quot;type-i-errors&quot; to be obscure and confusing.  Gung's idea of having two tags (as synonyms of each other and perhaps of yet more) is good, because it exploits the tags *already applied by users of the site.*  Those are the ones most likely to be used by future users in their searching." CreationDate="2018-06-21T12:02:36.820" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="15981" PostId="5308" Score="0" Text="@whuber, for clarity, you are arguing for making the new tag `i-&amp;-ii`, right?" CreationDate="2018-06-21T12:42:37.573" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15982" PostId="5308" Score="0" Text="To be precise, originally you proposed `1-&amp;-2`, not `i-&amp;-ii`." CreationDate="2018-06-21T12:45:16.920" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="15983" PostId="5308" Score="1" Text="Gung: I advocate letting tags be determined organically by the proposers of questions, insofar as that is possible.  If a tag needs clarification, a good approach is to *leave it alone* but make it a synonym of another--preferably an existing one.  That suggests not creating any new tag in this case." CreationDate="2018-06-21T12:56:13.330" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="15984" PostId="5308" Score="0" Text="@whuber I don't understand what suggestion you are endorsing; you wrote that you &quot;would find &quot;type-i-errors&quot; to be obscure and confusing&quot; but that is exactly how the tag is currently called and you said you are against creating new tags in this case." CreationDate="2018-06-21T20:56:33.077" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15985" PostId="5308" Score="2" Text="@amoeba Thank you for pointing that out.  I had misread some tags (the tag font shows up very small on this monitor for some reason).  Without context, &quot;type-i-errors&quot; strikes me as strange because it is reminiscent of a mathematical shorthand for &quot;type 1, 2, 3, ..., whatever errors.&quot;   But that's me and I have to let the general principle override that: we ought to respect, and try to retain, whatever tags users originally pick.  However, there's nothing to prevent us from creating some (or even many) synonymous tags, such as &quot;type-1-errors&quot; or even &quot;type-1-&amp;-2-errors.&quot;" CreationDate="2018-06-21T22:26:45.333" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="15986" PostId="5308" Score="5" Text="@whuber I see. I must say I do not agree with the general principle you are referring to. The tags are often suboptimal; once a suboptimal tag is created it will get used (remember that it requires some minimal reputation to be able to create a new tag) and there is no mechanism to ensure some sort of competition or survival of the fittest tags. I would agree that we should not delete existing tags (as a &quot;weak form&quot; of your principle). However, in my mind, nothing prevents us to create a new tag X and make an existing tag Y a synonym of X." CreationDate="2018-06-22T05:04:35.410" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15987" PostId="5308" Score="1" Text="@amoeba Your thoughts have merit; I find them persuasive.  I still would like to hold out for the &quot;weak principle,&quot; though, because that's part of what I promised when elected as moderator: to moderate lightly wherever possible.  Part of that means accepting the decisions of users whenever they do not clearly violate site policies or norms, even if I might disagree." CreationDate="2018-06-22T13:14:19.240" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="16017" PostId="5308" Score="0" Text="Is symbol &quot;&amp;&quot; allowed in a tag name, @gung? I've never seen a tag with this symbol so I suspect that it isn't; if so, my preferred tag name would be `[type-i-and-ii-errors]`." CreationDate="2018-06-26T20:47:22.430" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16019" PostId="5308" Score="0" Text="I tried: &quot;&amp;&quot; does not work." CreationDate="2018-06-27T11:15:24.887" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16025" PostId="5308" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, do you prefer the `i`'s or the Arabic numerals?" CreationDate="2018-06-27T14:32:57.657" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16026" PostId="5308" Score="0" Text="I prefer `i`'s as in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_I_and_type_II_errors but this is not something that is very important to me." CreationDate="2018-06-27T14:38:41.490" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16027" PostId="5308" Score="1" Text="@RichardHardy, are you OK w/ `[type-i-and-ii-errors]`, &amp; making both existing tags synonyms of that? At this point, I think I might just go ahead if you're OK w/ it." CreationDate="2018-06-27T14:47:19.483" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16029" PostId="5308" Score="0" Text="@gung, Besides `&amp;` vs. `and` in the answer, all is well now (if amoeba is right that &amp; cannot be used). Thank you." CreationDate="2018-06-27T15:06:37.523" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="16030" PostId="5308" Score="0" Text="It's done, @RichardHardy." CreationDate="2018-06-27T15:15:17.257" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16000" PostId="5310" Score="0" Text="I think I wrote that wiki excerpt. The tag should be eliminated by retagging some Qs to [categorical-encoding] and by removing it from some Qs altogether. It still exists because nobody so far did the work of actually going through the Qs and retagging them." CreationDate="2018-06-23T05:30:17.497" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16006" PostId="5310" Score="3" Text="@amoeba I've completed re-tagging all of these questions." CreationDate="2018-06-23T16:04:19.683" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16012" PostId="5310" Score="0" Text="Related discussion: https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5020/28666." CreationDate="2018-06-23T21:21:18.110" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="15988" PostId="5311" Score="0" Text="(+1) This sounds like a good idea to me. But just to give potential dissenters the chance to make their case, I'll hold off on marking this as &quot;answered&quot; for a few days." CreationDate="2018-06-22T15:12:36.800" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16001" PostId="5311" Score="2" Text="@Sycorax Please don't mark this as answered as long as the tag still exists." CreationDate="2018-06-23T05:31:14.683" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16007" PostId="5311" Score="0" Text="@gung I've completed re-tagging all of the [tag:coding] questions. The tag can be burninated." CreationDate="2018-06-23T16:04:42.370" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16008" PostId="5311" Score="0" Text="@Sycorax, it will disappear naturally after 24 hours if it isn't on any threads." CreationDate="2018-06-23T17:09:28.140" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16009" PostId="5311" Score="1" Text="I don’t think that will burn the tag though. We don’t want people to re-make the coding tag in the future, do we?" CreationDate="2018-06-23T20:04:59.807" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16010" PostId="5311" Score="0" Text="@Sycorax, I can contact the community team &amp; ask them to blacklist the tag, but I can't do it myself. Whether they'll do it depends on how they feel about it. '[Burninating](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/120640/187282)' mostly just means deleting, which we (you) have done." CreationDate="2018-06-23T20:30:19.243" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16011" PostId="5311" Score="2" Text="I don't think that blacklisting is necessary." CreationDate="2018-06-23T21:19:28.530" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16013" PostId="5311" Score="1" Text="@amoeba, blacklisting is the only way to ensure people can't remake the tag. FWIW, I've already contacted the community team; I suppose I could contact them again to cancel, but I'm disinclined to do so." CreationDate="2018-06-23T21:27:14.933" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16018" PostId="5311" Score="1" Text="I see! There is certainly no problem with blacklisting. It's just that I was under impression that our community has not blacklisted any tag in the last 5+ years (I think some tags might have been blacklisted in the early days of CV), so I assumed this is perceived (by mods) as a major hassle. If you are willing to initiate the blacklisting process whenever it seems appropriate, I am only happy." CreationDate="2018-06-26T20:50:59.633" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16024" PostId="5311" Score="1" Text="@amoeba, well, Sycorax asked me to. The SE community mods might get sick of me if I start emailing them blacklist requests every week, but this one seemed reasonable." CreationDate="2018-06-27T14:32:18.430" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16033" PostId="5311" Score="1" Text="Now that we are discussing contacting SE mods, @gung, what do you think about contacting SE mods to burninate some tags? As in remove them from all threads by admin super-powers? I think we had some worthy candidates, we could try to make a list if that is something you would want to do in principle." CreationDate="2018-06-28T19:52:24.577" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16037" PostId="5311" Score="2" Text="I'd have to go back &amp; look into it. I thought the answer was that *we* need to remove them from all threads." CreationDate="2018-06-28T20:24:57.873" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15989" PostId="5313" Score="0" Text="The problem in my case is actually quite specific to the package though (i.e. doesn't really fit the criteria in your first paragraph), in that I'm asking for the meaning of blank lines. (Also it's not really the results of a statistical analysis; the function prints out the priors used by a model, not stuff like parameter estimates.) Do you still think it's appropriate to ask it here? Thanks!" CreationDate="2018-06-22T19:04:04.927" UserId="129075" />
  <row Id="15990" PostId="5313" Score="4" Text="I think it's appropriate. Please do take the trouble to explain what `brms` &amp; `prior_summary` are &amp; to quote any relevant passages from the manual - by doing so you're helping to make it a question of statistical interest." CreationDate="2018-06-22T19:23:17.583" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="15991" PostId="5313" Score="0" Text="(+1) But https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/4554/17230. You've provided *good* examples of how to ask about digital computer outputs." CreationDate="2018-06-22T19:29:26.703" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="15992" PostId="5313" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi, I upvoted many of the answers on that thread, but not that one. While I usually agree w/ Nick, I don't there. I think that, in general, interpretation-of-output questions are absolutely on topic (as I argue here); that said, any otherwise on topic question could be closable by virtue of being unclear or too broad. I don't see anything specific to output interpretation questions as necessarily making them any more or less likely to be unclear or too broad than questions on any other subject." CreationDate="2018-06-22T20:26:25.230" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15993" PostId="5313" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi Thanks! I will." CreationDate="2018-06-22T20:29:11.067" UserId="129075" />
  <row Id="15994" PostId="5313" Score="0" Text="@WavesWashSands, that sounds ambiguous. If this is just a read-the-documentation question, it might be off topic both here &amp; on SO. OTOH, the boundaries for what is on topic listed in our [help/on-topic] includes a vague line about &quot;needing statistical expertise&quot;. Your question could be about reading the docs, but where they aren't understandable w/o stats expertise, &amp; so on topic in that way. I firmly believe that questions about interpreting statistical output are on topic, in general, but that doesn't guarantee that all questions about interpreting statistical output must be on topic." CreationDate="2018-06-22T20:34:45.743" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15996" PostId="5313" Score="0" Text="@gung: I have asked the question [here](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/352772/what-do-blank-cells-mean-in-the-output-of-prior-summary-in-the-brms-package) - please take a look if it's okay. I do think that reading the docs requires some stats expertise. Thanks!" CreationDate="2018-06-22T21:26:07.320" UserId="129075" />
  <row Id="15997" PostId="5313" Score="0" Text="@gung: I took the moral of Nick's answer to be:-Don't just dump output into a question &amp; ask how it should be interpreted. I think it's worth drawing attention to for the benefit of future readers of this post - all the same I entirely agree with what you've written." CreationDate="2018-06-23T00:11:08.000" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="15998" PostId="5313" Score="0" Text="@WavesWashSands, that seems like a statistical question to me." CreationDate="2018-06-23T00:59:06.663" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="15999" PostId="5313" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi, I think your raising the issue of the potential inconsistency between these two answers is entirely appropriate." CreationDate="2018-06-23T01:00:30.260" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16004" PostId="5313" Score="1" Text="I've edited my answer in that thread in an attempt to address what appears to be inconsistent advice. Unclear, ambiguous questions are poor, while well  focused specific questions are good: that's the nub." CreationDate="2018-06-23T07:40:00.087" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16038" PostId="5314" Score="3" Text="The picture suggested is (1) explain why you're voting to close as unclear (2) unless it's obvious why it is unclear. This raises the question of obvious to who[m]? If I don't explain why, the reasons can range from (a) someone else has already done it (best, as in @Glen_b's answer) through  (b) I am hoping that someone else will do it  to (c) question is doomed or shows so little effort that I won't give my time to the OP or (d) question is so unclear that I can't begin to explain what is wrong. (&quot;Not even wrong&quot;: Wolfgang Pauli's put-down on very confused physics)." CreationDate="2018-06-29T08:21:33.750" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16039" PostId="5314" Score="1" Text="@Stephan Kolassa's answer written at the same time makes broadly similar points." CreationDate="2018-06-29T08:23:16.867" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16040" PostId="5314" Score="0" Text="Those are good points, but i think that sometimes, the lack of clarity is due to something that most moderators may not know." CreationDate="2018-06-29T11:25:10.747" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="16041" PostId="5314" Score="2" Text="So, given that their vote is decisive, moderators shouldn't cast a vote on these grounds if they don't have a clear view on where the lack of clarity lies?" CreationDate="2018-06-29T11:31:54.590" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16043" PostId="5314" Score="0" Text="I don't know. I just think it make it easier to vote to close or not if we had a better idea what was unclear. I would skip fewer review tasks." CreationDate="2018-06-30T13:44:56.057" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="16047" PostId="5314" Score="0" Text="@Nick Agreed.  Whenever I don't have the time to really understand the question--which is often these days--then I just skip making a decision.  This feels like an abdication of responsibility, so I have to remind myself that none of us claimed to be omniscient when we ran for election (or even to know much about statistics at all), that we are a community, and that I am constantly grateful for the ongoing help of the myriad people who make this site work." CreationDate="2018-07-02T13:58:14.590" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="16048" PostId="5314" Score="0" Text="@whuber Indeed. If I see 3 or 4 people have voted to close I am more likely to vote to close if (and only if) the question looks unclear to me AND I think I know something about the territory. In principle that is wrong as each vote to close should be entirely on the merits of the case. In practice one learns from looking at closed cases that the vast majority of votes to close are from very experienced people known to contribute positively to the site over a long period. So, there is a Bayesian flavour in combining a prior from trusted others with one's own assessment." CreationDate="2018-07-02T14:08:14.587" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16049" PostId="5314" Score="0" Text="@Nick A key part of my job is to understand and act on behalf of the community, so I frequently compare my votes against any existing votes and think hard about the situations where I am in the minority.  Take some care with that Bayesian approach: some of the most active reviewers here are consistently in the minority with their voting.  One might call them &quot;idiosyncratic.&quot;" CreationDate="2018-07-02T14:22:12.353" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="16050" PostId="5314" Score="0" Text="@whuber Fair comment. My point is that the forum depends on trusting others as well as logic and evidence. I couldn't, and wouldn't want to, quantify any trade-off. In principle logic and evidence should be enough." CreationDate="2018-07-02T16:40:42.660" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16051" PostId="5314" Score="0" Text="How often do you all skip on voting to close?" CreationDate="2018-07-02T17:59:06.013" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="16052" PostId="5314" Score="1" Text="I think that comment is a good new question, but I am not sure how far you will get good data. There are at least two modes here (1) just looking at questions and voting to close, or not (2) looking at the review queue, and voting to close or not. (2) is conditional on someone else having voted to close!" CreationDate="2018-07-02T18:45:24.707" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16015" PostId="5315" Score="4" Text="+1.  [We get those questions, too.](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/352765)" CreationDate="2018-06-25T12:27:36.770" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="16016" PostId="5315" Score="3" Text="@whuber that specific one is a stronger case, 'I want to do some statistical thingies with my data, what do I do?'" CreationDate="2018-06-25T15:16:32.600" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16020" PostId="5316" Score="9" Text="(+1) Re last sentence: I would suggest to upvote that comment then." CreationDate="2018-06-27T14:18:23.137" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16046" PostId="5318" Score="4" Text="(+1) I also get the feeling that once I've started helping to clarify a question I'm then responsible for seeing it through to the bitter end. All the same, I try to shake it off: some guidance is better than none, &amp; if the OP only makes a start on improving their question, someone else may pick up where I've left off. (There are some questions, of course, though not all that many, where there's nothing useful to be said beyond the &quot;unclear what you're asking&quot; boiler-plate.)" CreationDate="2018-07-02T09:15:09.863" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16303" PostId="5318" Score="0" Text="Sadly enough, [the thread I used as an example](https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/353599/1352) - where the OP obviously went to quite some effort to craft a good question, and where Scortchi and I left comments asking for clarification - has been deleted in the meantime. The OP never answered our comments, and so Community did a RemoveAbandonedClosed on it. Another nail in my motivation to leave a comment next time, to mix metaphors." CreationDate="2018-07-19T19:20:33.160" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16053" PostId="5319" Score="21" Text="I skip questions on topics I don't feel expert about, that are not clearly off-topic or against the rules. I skip if I have mixed feelings and no clear opinion. We have many users capable of voting, so this should not be a problem if some of us abstain from voting in some cases." CreationDate="2018-07-02T19:09:01.320" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="16057" PostId="5319" Score="4" Text="@Tim That seems like a fine answer -- and is basically identical to my own feelings on skipping." CreationDate="2018-07-02T21:00:01.167" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16058" PostId="5319" Score="3" Text="Peter, as a moderator you have access to a complete list of reviews, including skipped ones if you request them.  Meta isn't the place to discuss such moderation tools, though: inquire in chat if you're not sure where to find this information." CreationDate="2018-07-02T21:01:28.217" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="16080" PostId="5319" Score="9" Text="What @Tim said.  About 1/3 of the time for me, the question seems OK on the surface, but I don't know enough about the subject to say whether it's definitely reasonable or definitely screwy, so I leave it to someone more knowledgeable to decide." CreationDate="2018-07-03T21:23:29.120" UserId="136746" />
  <row Id="16061" PostId="5320" Score="1" Text="There's a distinct levelling off in the answers there; perhaps even a slight drop off." CreationDate="2018-07-03T00:51:06.567" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="16062" PostId="5320" Score="0" Text="Are the questions in these statistics also including the closed/deleted questions?" CreationDate="2018-07-03T07:22:02.593" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16063" PostId="5320" Score="1" Text="@MartijnWeterings I haven't conducted a thorough analysis. I conjecture that each graph presented in this thread uses a slightly different query. I haven't studied the problem enough to say either way which query is measuring the most relevant statistics. Your hypothesis is reasonable -- we have more questions, but also a larger portion of **closed** questions." CreationDate="2018-07-03T14:16:05.987" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16065" PostId="5320" Score="0" Text="@Sycorax I find this topic intriguing. But it is difficult. This is related to an earlier topic on which I gave an answer (https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5101/164061). That answer was very incomplete. Later on, I found out that time was an extremely import parameter in determining the responses (explaining the mixture of time-dependent distributions resulting into the time-independent Whuber-Amoeba-Polarization-Effect, I did not add this insight to that answer). The orientation of Q&amp;A has changed (differnet orientation rarding the use of formulae)." CreationDate="2018-07-03T14:50:53.760" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16066" PostId="5320" Score="0" Text="You recent change to the post, with the update including 'non-closed' post shows more strongly (basically the image is the same but now we now it is independent from bad/closed questions) that the answerrate has decreased (bit absolute and relative). To be honest, hoping that all is untrue, I am still looking into models that might apply to the controverse (e.g. when questions get answered with a delay than naturally the number of answers is less than the number of questions, when the number of questions is increasing. I would wish to state this some day using the database, but I have no time)" CreationDate="2018-07-03T14:56:40.783" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16067" PostId="5320" Score="0" Text="@MartijnWeterings I'll have to review that post -- I recall that I skimmed it, but that was some time ago. In the meantime, I've updated my answer to add what I think is a more helpful view into the question: how many total questions are there, and how many *answered* questions are there?" CreationDate="2018-07-03T14:59:19.843" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16068" PostId="5320" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b Upon reflection, I do not believe that the first plot reflected the actual phenomenon of interest. The third plot seems to more sharply emphasize the gap between questions and answers." CreationDate="2018-07-03T17:10:39.250" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16081" PostId="5320" Score="1" Text="Yep. So linear growth in questions, flat, possibly even decreasing answers. We would seem to need either need a lot more closures or a lot more answers. I wonder if we have any particular tags that are especially short of answers or if it's a progression across the board (I'd anticipate that machine learning questions could be an issue, because of the rapidly growing interest but without a nearly so rapidly growing pool of answerers)." CreationDate="2018-07-03T23:25:03.807" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="16082" PostId="5320" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b +1 I've been on a bit of a tear in recent days to (1) close unanswerable/poorly framed/exact duplicates and (2) answer unanswered questions. Often, these closure votes become stymied at 4 votes. But if we look at root causes, I think that you're right: we need more people with machine learning competence to dive in and start answering questions, and more people with VTC privileges to more aggressively moderate these questions. I've noticed that there is a tendency to allow marginal, unanswerable questions or questions for which the answer is unknown or unknowable to remain open..." CreationDate="2018-07-03T23:30:54.430" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16083" PostId="5320" Score="0" Text="... @Glen_b But I think we should move just a little bit towards closing questions for which the answer is unknowable (&quot;I've tried estimating many models and none of them are good. Why?&quot;) or ridiculous (&quot;I fit a logistic regression and random forest. The results are different. Why?&quot;). I think that we have a decided need for a moderator with deeper machine learning knowledge would help to tame our unanswered question problem by VTCing poor questions." CreationDate="2018-07-03T23:44:20.610" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16084" PostId="5320" Score="0" Text="It doesn't help when I exhaust my VTC allotment with more than 12 hours left in the day." CreationDate="2018-07-03T23:49:27.477" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16085" PostId="5320" Score="1" Text="I agree completely on the value of having a moderator with a focus in that area. I've been thinking the same thing for some time." CreationDate="2018-07-03T23:54:20.793" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="16088" PostId="5320" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b Do you know when the next moderator election will be held?" CreationDate="2018-07-04T16:50:21.747" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16089" PostId="5320" Score="2" Text="There's no set time. Various things might lead us to ask for one (such as the mods feel like the work has grown a lot, or some mods become inactive or less active for whatever reason, or community consensus as expressed here indicates a desire for one, among other possibilities). If there's been a substantial time gap sometimes the community moderators (&quot;the Stackexchange team&quot;) will ask us if we want one. Typically they've been held roughly every two years here but there's no particular requirement that it be two years. (This question predates my time as a moderator.)" CreationDate="2018-07-05T02:59:25.750" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="16069" PostId="5321" Score="0" Text="It is correct that most users cannot nominate a closed thread as a duplicate--but diamond moderators can.  Therefore, if you're sure this would be a good action, please just raise a flag." CreationDate="2018-07-03T18:01:38.013" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="16071" PostId="5321" Score="0" Text="@whuber I think I may have poorly expressed what is at issue. What I mean is that a reviewer in the VTC queue is commenting that it is not possible to close a question as dupe because the target thread has not accepted answer. To protect that user, I will flag an example." CreationDate="2018-07-03T18:44:07.707" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16072" PostId="5321" Score="2" Text="I think that it might be impossible to vote to close as a duplicate of a thread that has no answer (or perhaps no *upvoted* answer? not sure about that). It *is* definitely possible to vote to close as a duplicate of a thread with an upvoted but not accepted answer." CreationDate="2018-07-03T18:44:57.660" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16073" PostId="5321" Score="3" Text="@amoeba Yes, that's sort of my point -- I know that it is *possible*. The curiosity is that a specific user is insisting otherwise, and in several threads." CreationDate="2018-07-03T18:45:48.457" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16074" PostId="5321" Score="3" Text="The user must have been confused. My point was that there does exist a similar policy; that's probably why there were confused." CreationDate="2018-07-03T18:47:23.350" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16087" PostId="5321" Score="1" Text="@amoeba The user was confused." CreationDate="2018-07-04T14:35:38.390" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="16076" PostId="5322" Score="3" Text="Suppose I am looking at question A. I have found a duplicate question B with no answers. However, B is *a better question* than A (as in, it's asked in a better way). In such a case, I won't hesitate to VTC A as a duplicate of B. Look at things the other way around: why should we have unmarked duplicate questions simply because none of them have ever received an answer? We have [plenty of good questions with no answers](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=unanswered)." CreationDate="2018-07-03T20:18:46.933" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16077" PostId="5322" Score="4" Text="@StephanKolassa, that might be reasonable. I believe that the SE system won't let regular users VTC a thread as a duplicate of a target w/o any answers. That said, if you're confident enough, flag it &amp; we might go ahead if the case seems strong." CreationDate="2018-07-03T20:33:50.273" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16078" PostId="5322" Score="3" Text="@StephanKolassa An extreme example of this phenomenon is that some users persist in asking identical questions when that question has been closed previously, or simply received no attention. Moderator flags are the best way to deal with that." CreationDate="2018-07-03T20:51:13.090" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16079" PostId="5322" Score="3" Text="Ah, indeed, I see that VTC is not possible in this scenario. &quot;This question does not have an upvoted or accepted answer.&quot; I seem to be engaging in wishful thinking... again." CreationDate="2018-07-03T20:53:48.610" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16090" PostId="5323" Score="0" Text="Thanks for digging this up." CreationDate="2018-07-05T07:09:00.393" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16095" PostId="5325" Score="10" Text="I sometimes see mods comment on questions to the effect that they are unclear, but no close votes. Probably because [mod votes are binding](https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/site-moderators), and the mod didn't want to single-handedly close the question. [It might make sense to ask SE that mods could also VTC in a non-binding way.](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/41062/256777)" CreationDate="2018-07-06T08:31:21.620" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16111" PostId="5325" Score="7" Text="Is this metric (fraction of answered questions) still as relevant as it used to be? Of all the value that's ultimately derived from our site, what fraction of that value is due to users actually posting a question and receiving an answer vs. just perusing existing, high-quality answers to common questions? If the latter is a strong and still growing majority, as I suspect it is, then how important is it really if a decreasing fraction of askers are receiving answers?" CreationDate="2018-07-06T14:54:25.440" UserId="5829" />
  <row Id="16112" PostId="5325" Score="0" Text="@JakeWestfall If we take your reasoning to its logical conclusion, you seem to suggest that we could *stop accepting new questions*." CreationDate="2018-07-06T14:59:18.327" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16115" PostId="5325" Score="6" Text="Well, I think it's arguable whether that's the logical conclusion ;) In a world of unlimited volunteer time and expert knowledge, it would be good if we could answer all reasonable questions. In the real world, I think we should at least ask the question of how big a problem this really is, and not automatically take the issue as granted. What are the actual bad consequences of letting the fraction of unanswered questions continue to grow?" CreationDate="2018-07-06T15:12:55.423" UserId="5829" />
  <row Id="16116" PostId="5325" Score="6" Text="I'm concerned about stats.SE remaining relevant as a place to have statistics and machine learning questions answered. If we gain a reputation as a self-serving backwater, where (new) users have no hope of having their questions answered, we'll  lose visitors and users and become irrelevant. I don't want that to happen. I think that the Answer Gap provides some evidence that we are losing ground -- I think there are a number of good, solid unanswered questions which are relevant to modern statistics, especially in machine learning. We need people to answer them!" CreationDate="2018-07-06T15:19:43.537" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16118" PostId="5325" Score="7" Text="I don't disagree. I just want us to think clearly and critically about what's realistically at stake so that we can set priorities accordingly." CreationDate="2018-07-06T15:22:59.627" UserId="5829" />
  <row Id="16146" PostId="5325" Score="2" Text="It is interesting to note that several other highly visited stackexchange sites, like 'super user', 'ask ubuntu', 'server fault', have the same issues with a growing gap between total questions and questions with answers. I myself believe that this is, in part, due to maturity of these topics/sites. The site stackexchange is largely based on activity around 'filling' the websites (scoring for good questions and answers). But what when originality runs out? We get stuck with a lot of visitors posting esoteric questions but not so much answers. Possibly we need a drastic shift to 'fight' this." CreationDate="2018-07-09T16:47:42.793" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16148" PostId="5325" Score="4" Text="One way or another the related problems in this thread are frequent topics on Meta. So, there is a lot of garbage here on CV. There is a lot of garbage on the internet and there's only so much one can do. It's more interesting and probably more useful for people who like CV a lot just to visit, answer what new questions you can, comment and vote a little, and then get back to the day job. Working on many poor old threads (downvoting, cleaning up, etc.)  is as exciting as tidying up an untidy cupboard/closet when the alternative is watching one of your favourite movies or TV shows." CreationDate="2018-07-09T18:40:09.393" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16152" PostId="5325" Score="0" Text="It seems like if we could keep the number of monthly questions down to &lt;1500 per month, then we would have a much higher quality website. The same with other stack-exchange sites until roughly 2014 the question and answers were equal (it may have been easier to keep up with questions). Now there are so many questions that remain unanswered for so many reasons. A good strategy would be to recognize all those reasons and eliminate the unanswered questions one by one (remove bad questions more easily, stop answering questions in comments, etc.)." CreationDate="2018-07-09T19:57:47.413" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16153" PostId="5325" Score="3" Text="@MartijnWeterings only if we can also know which questions are worthwhile to answer in the absence of an answer being provided." CreationDate="2018-07-09T19:58:56.777" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16155" PostId="5325" Score="1" Text="@Sycorax, how many questions still get answered after a year? I guess we can easily remove them out of sight (sometimes the OP's never returned themselves) especially when we are dealing more often according Stephen Kolassa's suggestion of downvoting. Personally I am not a good downvoter but if there would be a clear 'old rubish' list I would be less reluctant. I actually tried to go trough the list of changes made by the 'community bot' which often bumps old posts, but the actions list by the user 'community' are full with minor edits like changes due to migrated questions and other issues." CreationDate="2018-07-09T20:11:50.300" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16156" PostId="5325" Score="0" Text="@MartijnWeterings That question should be answerable using the SE data explorer; it's just SQL. You'd have to make your question a little more precise, though, since maybe a question doesn't get a good answer until some time after it gets a bad answer, etc." CreationDate="2018-07-09T20:13:25.843" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16159" PostId="5325" Score="6" Text="On stats.SE we have questions: 49,981, unanswered: 41,456 -- on physics.SE we have questions: 122,216, unanswered: 25,588 -- on math.SE we have questions: 968,501, unanswered: 218,115 --- If you want to find ***us*** on the [All Sites - Unanswered Percentage (Sort)](https://stackexchange.com/sites#percentanswered) we rank **#3** from last place.  --- I make a point at looking at unanswered questions on sites where I frequent and trying to find something to answer from the list." CreationDate="2018-07-09T22:19:54.790" UserId="197829" />
  <row Id="16164" PostId="5325" Score="2" Text="@Rob Where did you take the first two numbers from? They are completely wrong. There are 127k Qs on CV and 50k unanswered." CreationDate="2018-07-10T08:33:12.230" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16166" PostId="5325" Score="0" Text="@amoeba - Not &quot;completely wrong&quot;, they change slightly since 12 hours ago. The numbers are supplied by the website in the upper right portion of the screen. Now the first number is: [50,007](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=unanswered), and the second number is: [41,478](https://stats.stackexchange.com/unanswered). The physics.SE should have been: [25,590](https://physics.stackexchange.com/unanswered) and [17,719](https://physics.stackexchange.com/unanswered/tagged/?tab=noanswers), etc." CreationDate="2018-07-10T10:50:07.613" UserId="197829" />
  <row Id="16167" PostId="5325" Score="0" Text="@amoeba - continued: However you wish to obtain the numbers, whichever links you wish to use, my point is that this site would be better if we could improve our numbers. Solutions for this have been proposed previously, such as 'get the Mods to place better old questions in the featured question box' but it was believed unfair as it would favor some questions over others. An answer to the question from someone whom has been her longer would be more helpful than my comment agreeing with the question." CreationDate="2018-07-10T10:55:33.723" UserId="197829" />
  <row Id="16168" PostId="5325" Score="1" Text="@Rob There is ~50k unanswered questions and 120+k overall questions. Are you debating the 120k+ number?" CreationDate="2018-07-10T11:02:44.550" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16172" PostId="5325" Score="0" Text="@Rob you have been using the statistics for 'questions without any answers' versus 'questions without upvoted or accepted answers'." CreationDate="2018-07-10T15:08:18.980" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16173" PostId="5325" Score="0" Text="@amoeba - No, see prior comment." CreationDate="2018-07-10T15:08:48.730" UserId="197829" />
  <row Id="16174" PostId="5325" Score="1" Text="@MartijnWeterings - Thanks. Regardless of those links, how about the last one mentioning 3rd place - room for improvement, that was the point to dwell on." CreationDate="2018-07-10T15:11:11.963" UserId="197829" />
  <row Id="16175" PostId="5325" Score="0" Text="I don't see the 3rd place as disturbing. Such a ranking may sound bad but if you compare with other main site then I see the same patterns (and I would expect statistics to do worse, it is not like the questions are always so straightforward and many are very specific like *&quot;If I am facing North while my pencil uses red ink, should I use the B test or the C test from &lt;plugin obscure article&gt;?&quot;* but that is a different albeit associated topic)." CreationDate="2018-07-10T15:19:34.550" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16176" PostId="5325" Score="0" Text="Among many of the highly visited websites we see a decline in the fraction of answered questions. This is a much broader development which we just happen to notice more severely at stats.stackexchange. While the development of this statistic is worrisome, I believe that we should not make it a leading goal to answer a lot of questions. The goal of this website is to be a website where you can find answers to questions (that is the main statistic and if you look at the number of daily visits then the website seems to do *very* well). It is not a goal to become some sort of help- or service-desk" CreationDate="2018-07-10T15:26:29.770" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16181" PostId="5325" Score="0" Text="Can you improve your query by finding out which tags contribute the most to the widening gap? I have an idea." CreationDate="2018-07-11T08:34:37.760" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="16193" PostId="5325" Score="0" Text="@DeltaIV I provided a link  to the query so that you are empowered to do so yourself." CreationDate="2018-07-11T12:56:36.927" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16201" PostId="5325" Score="0" Text="I have no idea what's the language you used, so I'll pass." CreationDate="2018-07-11T15:05:07.600" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="16202" PostId="5325" Score="0" Text="@DeltaIV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL" CreationDate="2018-07-11T15:06:44.603" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16205" PostId="5325" Score="0" Text="Considering only `neural-networks` is not good enough. Wait for my updated answer." CreationDate="2018-07-12T06:10:22.333" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="16217" PostId="5325" Score="0" Text="done, have a look. Granted, my analysis is quite elementary, but it looks like questions with tags `r`, `regression`, `machine-learning` and `time-series` are the main contributors." CreationDate="2018-07-12T13:49:25.880" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="16234" PostId="5325" Score="0" Text="Are closed questions (e.g., R programming questions, duplicate questions) counted in these totals?  One would expect the fraction of duplicate - and therefore not answered - questions to go up over time." CreationDate="2018-07-13T18:01:27.517" UserId="7555" />
  <row Id="16235" PostId="5325" Score="0" Text="@jbowman Closed questions are excluded from both. This is written in the text of the post, and also in the code of the linked queries." CreationDate="2018-07-13T18:04:45.473" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16328" PostId="5325" Score="2" Text="I wonder, in the light of [this thread](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5343/1352)... does `AnswerCount` also count answers with zero upvotes? Community already bumps questions with zero-vote answers now and then. I kind of wonder whether there should be more of this. (The problem being, of course, that it pushed new questions off the first page.)" CreationDate="2018-07-26T08:24:42.047" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16329" PostId="5325" Score="0" Text="@StephanKolassa I don't think so. You can test this hypothesis by querying for posts with `AnswerCount = 0` in the Data Explorer, and the query returns only 0-answer queries, as far as I can tell. http://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/edit/879492" CreationDate="2018-07-26T13:32:12.400" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="17280" PostId="5325" Score="0" Text="Just noticed this question. I can't see if this has been asked or answered, but: to what extent are new users of the site asking a question, then failing to mark it as answered? Is this something that can be addressed?" CreationDate="2019-02-27T16:23:39.323" UserId="148503" />
  <row Id="17281" PostId="5325" Score="0" Text="@WeiwenNg It would be hard to why a user chose not to mark a question as answered. Some questions have answers which OP feels are not adequate, perhaps because the answer is wrong or incomplete or not relevant to the question, or simply does not satisfy their query. By not marking a question as answered, this implies that OP would be willing to consider awarding the check mark to a more complete or better answer." CreationDate="2019-02-27T16:25:38.963" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="17299" PostId="5325" Score="1" Text="@Sycorax subjectively, I think that a number of newer posters don't know that they 'should' come back and mark a question as answered, or they simply don't come back to the site to see the answer, or they come back but don't find the answer useful (note, this can be because the question wasn't well-posed). I wonder how much this phenonemon contributes to the apparent gap. Sorry for not being more clear." CreationDate="2019-02-28T18:24:36.670" UserId="148503" />
  <row Id="21236" PostId="5325" Score="2" Text="@WeiwenNg The first plot shows questions with 1 or more answers, not whether or not the answer is marked as *accepted.*" CreationDate="2022-02-16T18:26:02.443" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21246" PostId="5325" Score="1" Text="@Sycorax I have updated my answer with new graphs like you updated your question. The number of questions with answers is indeed declining. But when we look for the specific category of questions with two or more upvotes, then the ratio of questions with answers is slightly increasing. This means that the widening gap is related specifically to questions with few votes." CreationDate="2022-02-24T11:26:17.760" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21247" PostId="5325" Score="0" Text="@SextusEmpiricus this is an interesting finding!" CreationDate="2022-02-24T13:02:39.163" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21324" PostId="5325" Score="0" Text="I have just returned to StackExchange after a long period and also have noticed many many more unanswered questions, and an increase in comments.  I think this has to do with the fear of being downvoted.  I am also reluctant to answer questions because of this, and that is why I often answer in comments." CreationDate="2022-04-29T20:37:23.857" UserId="3489" />
  <row Id="21326" PostId="5325" Score="0" Text="@RalphWinters It's true that downvotes are an imperfect system for determining quality. Some number of downvotes will simply be incorrect. This is why upvotes give +10 points but downvotes give -2. Comments give +0. And, inevitably, there will also be some upvotes that are incorrect, but I've never heard of an answer author complain about it." CreationDate="2022-05-02T12:52:09.117" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16091" PostId="5326" Score="3" Text="+1. Regarding the &quot;more sophisticated marginal question which is completely answered with two or three trite sentences&quot;: I'd say one should *write* those two or three trite questions. It will probably help the OP, and it might even help someone coming along later. Better than answering in the comments (as you point out at the bottom), or voting to close (with what reason? As you point out, such questions are on topic), or leaving unanswered. ..." CreationDate="2018-07-06T08:02:02.327" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16092" PostId="5326" Score="3" Text="... Yes, this may result in an increase of short answers. We would all prefer to write detailed, thoughtful answers crafted with love, but [time doesn't grow on trees](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5318/1352), and if we want to stem the tide, we will need to accept and embrace the Twitter-style answer." CreationDate="2018-07-06T08:03:36.703" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16097" PostId="5326" Score="6" Text="(+1) As a journeyman statistician myself, I'd say there's an annoying structural barrier to getting in new ones: as non-experts, we can mainly hope to answer recent questions (older ones that are simple enough for us to answer have already been addressed). But one can write an answer and then discover a few hours later that the question is flagged as a duplicate with a better answer elsewhere. Better search functionality or stronger filtering of 'first posts' might help." CreationDate="2018-07-06T08:51:44.353" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="16098" PostId="5326" Score="2" Text="Secondly, these answers to simple questions frequently get no upvotes because the questions don't attract attention - which is not very motivating. Possible solutions: 1) 'reviewing' and upvoting more answers, especially from new users (not just first posts). This need not be a formal review process, but something is informally encouraged. 2) more handholding of first-time posters encouraging them to upvote/accept helpful answers. And to follow the community rules. We should not have to spend so much time *after* they have posted to get them to do it well - the guidance should come before." CreationDate="2018-07-06T09:04:14.913" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="16099" PostId="5326" Score="2" Text="@mkt: for your point 1, note that [&quot;The Community user will bump non-negatively scored, open questions every hour that have at least one answer scoring 0 and none scoring more than that.&quot;](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/48579/256777), for your point 2, to be honest, I am skeptical that this would work. From what I see, new users won't even look through the help center or click on the many helpful links they see when composing a question. The focus on making SE easy to use also works against hand-holding." CreationDate="2018-07-06T09:19:21.440" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16100" PostId="5326" Score="0" Text="@StephanKolassa You could be right - but I've rarely found the help center particularly useful. The information I've sought has been far too fragmented, and a few things we practice seem to be common knowledge among experienced users without there being clear direction in the help for beginners. I do think a better tutorial at the beginning could help, but it's hard to know. And thanks for the link, I'm aware of Community's bumping and I expect it helps; more of that sort of thing could be useful." CreationDate="2018-07-06T09:26:27.767" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="16101" PostId="5326" Score="0" Text="As comments from downvoter have been requested: I downvoted the answer. Although the answer is well worked and it contains some useful thoughts, it's title idea reduces is to solve the problem of unanswered questions by aggressively closing them. Of course, that would improve our statistics, but it wouldn't benefit the site, the OP of questions or the future readers. I admit that some questions need to be closed, but in my opinion, we usually close a lot of questions that could get a useful answer, and in fact I'm often prevented from answering questions because somebody closed them. (...)" CreationDate="2018-07-06T09:44:19.910" UserId="123561" />
  <row Id="16102" PostId="5326" Score="0" Text="(continuation) The first step in any consulting work in any field is to find out what is the customer's problem, even if the customer is unable to clearly state their problem in the field language. Some OP are this king of customer: they don't know enough statistics to clearly make the question, or sometimes they are just lazy. However, we can deduce which is the OP's problem and give a useful question - useful for the OP and, more importantly, for future readers of the site. (...)" CreationDate="2018-07-06T09:48:08.793" UserId="123561" />
  <row Id="16103" PostId="5326" Score="0" Text="(continuation) I've seen often questions voted for closing until an answer pops up and makes clear what is the question about. Closing more aggressively would just have prevented a nice and upvoted answer to be in the site." CreationDate="2018-07-06T09:51:23.183" UserId="123561" />
  <row Id="16104" PostId="5326" Score="3" Text="@Pere: There's certainly no requirement that the OP clearly state their problem in statistical language - indeed, when they don't know much Statistics, trying to do so often obfuscates rather than clarifies it - but they do need to state it clearly in some language. I've sometimes seen answers that retroactively clarify an unclear question to everyone's satisfaction; more often I've seen confusion, &amp; some frustration, caused by answers that jump the gun. As you say, &quot;the first step in any consulting work in any field is to find out what is the customer's problem&quot;, &amp; ..." CreationDate="2018-07-06T10:40:12.310" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16105" PostId="5326" Score="2" Text="... our mechanism for doing that is to place the question on hold &amp; ask for clarification in comments." CreationDate="2018-07-06T10:40:38.060" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16107" PostId="5326" Score="5" Text="(+1) I'd suggest appending the explanation - &quot;I've copied this comment [...]&quot; - as a comment to your answers, rather than as part of the answers themselves. Not that it makes much difference." CreationDate="2018-07-06T11:47:02.837" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16108" PostId="5326" Score="0" Text="@Pere Thank you for your feedback. You make a good point, that the centerpiece of closing the Answer Gap cannot solely or even primarily be to close questions. I've made some edits to emphasize that we need to take steps to get more answers to on-topic, non-duplicate questions." CreationDate="2018-07-06T12:24:09.190" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16110" PostId="5326" Score="0" Text="@StephanKolassa You make a good point that short answers are still answers. I've edited my post." CreationDate="2018-07-06T12:41:59.860" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16113" PostId="5326" Score="1" Text="My two cents: 1) More and more questions coming to our site are in a sense obviously a good sign, as people still seem to feel it's worth their time to type a question. If we &quot;succeed&quot; to acquire a reputation that one is unlikely to get an answer from CV people may stop posting and the gap may close again. Would that be good? 2) There will always be a shortage of people willing to provide free labor (yes, my primary training was in economics :-) ). Short of talking universities and employers into offering tenure, promotion or bonusses for CV rep, only so much will ever change." CreationDate="2018-07-06T15:01:27.983" UserId="67799" />
  <row Id="16117" PostId="5326" Score="1" Text="@ChristophHanck (1) I think you've missed the boat. The increasing volume of questions is not, itself, a problem -- the problem is the Answer Gap. (2) The fundamental blindspot of that variety of economic analysis is that it assumes that monetary reward is the only incentive that elicits participation. If this line of reasoning were correct, there would be exactly zero answers on CV. (Yes, my economic philosophy is heterodox.) We can reframe the question as &quot;Since we can't bribe people, how do we encourage more volunteers?&quot;" CreationDate="2018-07-06T15:22:19.103" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16121" PostId="5326" Score="0" Text="(1) All else equal, I would of course love the gap to be smaller, but to me, the more interesting measure of the usefulness of CV is the number of questions *answered*, as it tells us something by how much we have helped people better understand statistics. That there is still a whole lot confusion about statistics, whether measured by questions not answered on CV or not asked in the first place or asked but not answered elsewhere, is a fact, but need not (and IMO, should not really) be the main concern of those who contribute on CV." CreationDate="2018-07-06T15:48:53.440" UserId="67799" />
  <row Id="16122" PostId="5326" Score="1" Text="(2) I definitely do not deny that there are such motives (else, I would much probably not write here). All I am saying is that we have probably already fished quite well in the pool of those who can be reached by such non-monetary incentives." CreationDate="2018-07-06T15:48:57.633" UserId="67799" />
  <row Id="16132" PostId="5326" Score="13" Text="Following up on the discussion above: It is true that upvotes motivate authors - especially those whose rep is between, say, 500-5000, I'd guess wildly - and it is true that it is unrealistic to expect that we can educate newbies to upvote a lot. That leaves experienced users - i.e., us - to upvote more. I try to do that, even when I feel that an answer may not be as good as it can be. As long as it is not false - roughly, as long as it is better than no answer - consider upvoting! That does not attract new authors to CV, but helps keep the ones we have motivated to continue answering." CreationDate="2018-07-07T13:14:50.217" UserId="67799" />
  <row Id="16147" PostId="5326" Score="4" Text="@ChristophHanck Can you add that as an answer, I want to upvote it : )" CreationDate="2018-07-09T16:49:33.013" UserId="74500" />
  <row Id="16182" PostId="5326" Score="3" Text="Re: &quot;VTC efforts often get stuck at 4 votes&quot; (for machine learning questions). I rarely go through the VTC queue because 1) I have little time to answer questions now, and even less to go through the queue; 2) there isn't a way to filter the queue by tag. If I could choose to see only the machine learning questions (I mean, only the question voted to close belonging to a certain set of tags), I could probably help in closing more questions. I'll ask a related question here." CreationDate="2018-07-11T08:39:19.910" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="16185" PostId="5326" Score="5" Text="@DeltaIV: you can filter the VTC queue by tag. Open the queue, then click on &quot;filter&quot;." CreationDate="2018-07-11T09:08:45.320" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16186" PostId="5326" Score="2" Text="One thing that keeps popping up is to attract more answerers. I'd love to wear a CV T-shirt to draw people's attention to CV; unfortunately, [the shop probably won't be coming back](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/216357/256777)." CreationDate="2018-07-11T09:10:48.623" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16187" PostId="5326" Score="0" Text="@StephanKolassa thanks, I completed missed the `filter` link next to the `Close Votes` one (greyed out)." CreationDate="2018-07-11T09:33:23.937" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="16190" PostId="5326" Score="3" Text="Woah, even just filtering by the `neural-networks` gave me so many questions to check that I finished my close votes for the day. There are _a lot_ of these questions which are of low quality and/or very old." CreationDate="2018-07-11T09:59:24.397" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="16195" PostId="5326" Score="0" Text="@DeltaIV I've been doing a spree of tidying up on [tag:neural-networks] for the past few weeks, so I imagine there are a number of questions awaiting review." CreationDate="2018-07-11T13:04:59.990" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21230" PostId="5326" Score="0" Text="Wonderfully thoughtful, but I want you to know I am awarding the +1 **specifically** for the fake O'Rly In A Nutshell book. :D" CreationDate="2022-02-15T22:50:13.140" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="16094" PostId="5327" Score="9" Text="(+1) I think the admonition to offer helpful feedback to posters in the hope that they edit their question into something useful has become a bit of a millstone around the community's neck. It's a wonderful goal and kudos to those who do it. But it sucks up time that could be devoted to better questions, which get lost among the dreck. And the feedback is ignored too frequently for it to feel like a productive activity." CreationDate="2018-07-06T08:31:00.577" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="16096" PostId="5327" Score="11" Text="NB: There's no rep. cost for down-voting *questions*." CreationDate="2018-07-06T08:47:45.677" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16106" PostId="5327" Score="3" Text="@mkt: You may have already read Stephan Kolassa's interesting post [here](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5318/17230). I think there's often a middle way between leaving no feedback beyond the boiler-plate &amp; giving an exhaustive list of things to clarify that, as you say, may be completely or mostly ignored. An initial comment can be thought of as putting out feelers - if the OP's interested you can go into more detail. It can be fun, after all; but if it starts to feel like drawing teeth, just give up." CreationDate="2018-07-06T11:00:25.433" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16109" PostId="5327" Score="3" Text="I've been active here for some time and didn't know that negative-score questions were pruned! Good point!" CreationDate="2018-07-06T12:41:10.500" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16119" PostId="5327" Score="0" Text="This is an interesting suggestion, and probably worthwhile. But it does strike me as, to some extent, gaming the metric. Yes, if the metric is the fraction of answered questions, then we can increase that fraction by removing questions. But it's not clear at all that this will increase the satisfaction of casual users of the site on average, which is closer to the spirit of the question as I understood it." CreationDate="2018-07-06T15:32:07.293" UserId="5829" />
  <row Id="16120" PostId="5327" Score="2" Text="I think one could clarify that the downvote can be used judiciously, more like a scalpel than a chainsaw." CreationDate="2018-07-06T15:34:05.900" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16123" PostId="5327" Score="4" Text="@JakeWestfall: I'm not sure if it's more satisfying to see your question linger on receiving no attention whatsoever, or to get a clear signal that it's not up to scratch. But it'd encourage answerers if the pool of unanswered questions were more a treasure trove &amp; less a rubbish heap. Almost half of unanswered questions have neither up-votes nor down-votes - coming to a decision as to whether each should stay or not would seem sensible, to spare others the bother of having to paw through many poor ones before finding a good one." CreationDate="2018-07-06T18:04:44.337" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16124" PostId="5327" Score="1" Text="Note also that serial down-voting (and up-voting!) is reversed by the SE robots when it is discovered, so we can't just go on a down-voting rampage to purge poor questions." CreationDate="2018-07-06T18:10:17.907" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16125" PostId="5327" Score="3" Text="@Sycorax: note that *serial* voting is only voting that happens to a *single* user. I don't think there are many users that post *multiple* questions that my proposed &quot;treatment&quot; would apply to." CreationDate="2018-07-06T18:25:54.210" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16126" PostId="5327" Score="1" Text="Oh, so you're saying if I downvote a large number of questions by *different* users, that won't  be reversed?" CreationDate="2018-07-06T18:27:23.077" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16127" PostId="5327" Score="2" Text="@Sycorax: AFAIK &quot;serial downvoting&quot; means giving several down-votes in succession to the same user's posts, &amp; that's what the robots hunt." CreationDate="2018-07-06T18:27:38.183" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16128" PostId="5327" Score="6" Text="@JakeWestfall: I don't think it's gaming the metric. SE does have reasons to remove downvoted and unanswered questions - namely, that they are noise, not signal. They run counter to SE's mission of providing a searchable repository of knowledge. Thus, they should be removed. And consequently not counted among unanswered questions." CreationDate="2018-07-06T18:27:59.923" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16129" PostId="5327" Score="1" Text="[Serial voting explained at Meta.SE.](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/126829/256777)" CreationDate="2018-07-06T18:29:02.873" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16130" PostId="5327" Score="0" Text="(-1) I don't think this will have a significant impact and I feel this will push people to downvote legitimate questions which simply don't have answers. it would be useful to have a query to see how many questions are negative or have been closed per month but I argue it is minimal. Most unanswered questions are legitimate, but either boring, too difficult or too specific, or already answered in a slightly different way." CreationDate="2018-07-07T08:50:53.017" UserId="192854" />
  <row Id="16136" PostId="5327" Score="9" Text="@XavierBourretSicotte: sounds just like &quot;not useful&quot; to me." CreationDate="2018-07-07T18:07:43.283" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16178" PostId="5327" Score="0" Text="What about &quot;on hold&quot; questions? What happens if they are downvoted and they have no answers? Will they be deleted too? You mention unlocked questions." CreationDate="2018-07-10T19:18:46.127" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="16179" PostId="5327" Score="1" Text="@DeltaIV: closed questions with zero or negative votes and without upvoted answers will also be auto-deleted. See point 7 in [the list](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/5222/256777)." CreationDate="2018-07-10T20:32:34.637" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16312" PostId="5327" Score="0" Text="Maybe it's just my impression, but it seems that recently there are more downvotes being cast on low-quality or unclear questions. Maybe we'll soon be able to see whether this makes an impact or not." CreationDate="2018-07-24T13:39:27.497" UserId="20221" />
  <row Id="16317" PostId="5327" Score="3" Text="@Rickyfox: I know that I for one have started writing more short answers [per my comment](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5325/we-have-a-very-large-widening-gap-between-questions-and-answers-how-do-we-fix/5327#comment16092_5326). I'd rather write a short answer and have the OP come back with requests for clarification in a comment (which I will usually happily address), rather than write a long answer that gets little to no love." CreationDate="2018-07-25T12:21:28.720" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16343" PostId="5327" Score="0" Text="@XavierBourretSicotte I don't think that down-voting broad, off-topic or unclear **new** questions is a good practice (the exceptions are obvious spam or other inappropriate content). But if a question is, say, a year old and not suitable, I think that down-voting is acceptable; it takes 5 votes or 1 moderator vote to close a question, and questions which are closed a while after being asked are unlikely to be edited or refined so that they might be opened. A down-vote that moves a question to have negative score will result in its deletion during the weekly cleanup." CreationDate="2018-07-30T15:47:40.377" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16344" PostId="5327" Score="2" Text="2/ The &quot;game&quot; quality of SE is what keeps people engaged; if we want to attract new users and keep old users, up-voting is a key part of the process. I think that down-votes are mostly useful as moderation tools, and should be used carefully." CreationDate="2018-07-30T15:50:44.360" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21231" PostId="5327" Score="1" Text="&quot;If you are concerned about the reputation loss from downvoting, remember that you get your rep back when the question is deleted.&quot; I am intrigued by your perspective, and should like to subscribe to your newsletter. +1" CreationDate="2022-02-15T22:51:45.300" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="21232" PostId="5327" Score="0" Text="@Sycorax &quot;I don't think that down-voting broad, off-topic or unclear new questions is a good practice&quot; what if such practice is coupled to constructive feedback for improvement, along with willingness to un-downvote, or even upvote such questions when well-edited?" CreationDate="2022-02-15T22:53:24.810" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="21233" PostId="5327" Score="1" Text="@Alexis Opinions on how and when to use downvoting differ and are at their core personal choices; there's probably already a thread where people share their views on it. What I meant in that comment is that a downvote is a strong, negative signal to the author, and I think it can be received as unwelcoming, especially to new users, which is why I'm *reluctant* to downvote **new** questions. (Abandoned questions are a different story.)" CreationDate="2022-02-15T22:59:51.840" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16133" PostId="5329" Score="3" Text="_.... as **they are not addressing the fundamental structural problem the site is facing**_. I have to politely disagree. To me, the fundamental structural problem the site is facing is users with close vote privilege deferring to immediately close questions (specially from new users) and let the close reason messages and feedback provided from comments to do their job. We have thousands of low-quality/unclear questions which remains open for eternity (also, lots of duplicates not closed). We need more people moderating and acting quickly on poor questions." CreationDate="2018-07-07T16:03:32.453" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="16134" PostId="5329" Score="1" Text="The second problem to me is also about voting, but voting for answers. Currently, there are [23k answers](https://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=+is%3Aanswer+score%3A0) with zero score (assume most of them are zero because of no votes). Are all these answers that bad?" CreationDate="2018-07-07T16:06:59.613" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="16158" PostId="5329" Score="3" Text="From experience, the more academic a SE site gets or the higher its level, the harder is to get an answer upvoted. Cross Validated is in the same path as Physics SE or Law SE, where it's actually hard to get a handful of votes. In Wordbuilding, Skeptics or Academia SE you can get a lot more votes for the same effort. Probably, that has an impact on motivation." CreationDate="2018-07-09T22:09:44.557" UserId="123561" />
  <row Id="16256" PostId="5329" Score="4" Text="Asking professors to discuss SE and its usefulness to *students* will add more *questions*, not answers.  If you want more good answers, we need to communicate the value of SE and its usefulness to other statisticians/academics." CreationDate="2018-07-17T09:11:58.380" UserId="173082" />
  <row Id="16177" PostId="5330" Score="2" Text="the cumulative answer rate is 60% but the instantaneous answer rate is declining more rapidly and currently is below 40% (http://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/872406/questions-and-answers-per-month#graph). (a part of the recently unanswered questions might become answered in the future)" CreationDate="2018-07-10T15:34:40.490" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16194" PostId="5330" Score="1" Text="None of the arguments in the &quot;CW is not a quick fix&quot; thread pertain to using community wiki as a way to collect some other person's answer-as-comment into an answer." CreationDate="2018-07-11T13:01:56.853" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16197" PostId="5330" Score="0" Text="I linked to a stats.cv meta thread where the topic is discussed." CreationDate="2018-07-11T13:29:06.930" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16199" PostId="5330" Score="0" Text="I don't want to be seen as &quot;stealing&quot; someone's credit for rep. I have enough rep. All I want is to do is have answers in the right place. If people don't want to make it CW, that's their business. I'm not a cop (or even a mod!)." CreationDate="2018-07-11T14:08:10.940" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16140" PostId="5331" Score="0" Text="Could you make it more specific?" CreationDate="2018-07-09T10:54:38.073" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="16149" PostId="5331" Score="0" Text="Both examples you link seem to have been closed by mods. Was something changed about them after you asked?" CreationDate="2018-07-09T19:13:31.123" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16151" PostId="5331" Score="0" Text="To be honest, I don't understand why these have not long been deleted, as they should have been by point 7 of [this list](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/5222/256777). Does anyone have an explanation?" CreationDate="2018-07-09T19:15:43.727" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16154" PostId="5331" Score="2" Text="@StephanKolassa Because they were locked until Scortchi unlocked them in response to this Q. Now they will be automatically deleted after some time (I think the script runs daily)." CreationDate="2018-07-09T20:02:57.450" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16141" PostId="5332" Score="1" Text="Well, but is there a point in keeping the lock? I read a bit on https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/22228/what-is-a-locked-post  and it seems locking can also be used for &quot;heating down&quot; flame wars, close/unclose cycling and other unwanted activity. Years later unlocking seems natural!" CreationDate="2018-07-09T11:46:26.550" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="16142" PostId="5332" Score="1" Text="@kjetilhalvorsen: If there are any you think should be merely unlocked then flag for unlocking. The examples you've given are clearly off-topic, without answers, &amp; already closed; it seems they were locked when migration didn't work for some reason: I'm suggesting you flag them &amp; others like them for immediate deletion, sparing yourself &amp; others a little work, &amp; reducing clutter more quickly." CreationDate="2018-07-09T11:56:55.070" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16143" PostId="5332" Score="1" Text="(I've not deleted them yet, just so that other readers of this Meta post can see what we're talking about.)" CreationDate="2018-07-09T12:06:20.293" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16144" PostId="5332" Score="2" Text="I was not aware that this can happen. Here are some candidates for @kjetilbhalvorsen: https://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=locked%3Ayes+duplicate%3Ano+score%3A0 (search for `locked:yes duplicate:no score:0`). Note that merged questions end up locked, that's why I put `duplicate:no`. Also some threads are locked &quot;for historical significance&quot; (which I find a questionable practice most of the time, see https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/482), that's why I put `score:0`. One can replace it with `answers:0`." CreationDate="2018-07-09T13:17:29.697" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16145" PostId="5332" Score="3" Text="(BTW, I noticed that some Qs are merged but *not* marked as a duplicate, e.g. https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/13159/how-to-choose-a-span-parameter-with-loess. That's a bit confusing.)" CreationDate="2018-07-09T13:17:34.923" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16157" PostId="5332" Score="1" Text="NB I've already deleted several posts from @amoeba's query that kjetil flagged, &amp; a couple more - there may not be much left to do." CreationDate="2018-07-09T20:20:40.430" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16161" PostId="5332" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi Re merged Qs that are not marked as duplicates: do you know if it's always like that? Or does one need to tick an extra tick when merging so that the Q gets marked as a duplicate? Or did it maybe change at some moment?" CreationDate="2018-07-10T07:05:59.523" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16165" PostId="5332" Score="0" Text="@amoeba: I *think* it's always like that - the question stub is locked by merging &amp; linked to the target, but not otherwise marked as a duplicate." CreationDate="2018-07-10T08:33:22.707" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16162" PostId="5333" Score="3" Text="Here's the funniest programmer cartoon thread: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/84556. It's currently locked (for &quot;historical significance&quot;)." CreationDate="2018-07-10T07:11:39.947" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16163" PostId="5333" Score="15" Text="It's an anomaly. I don't worry one bit about the negative signal: good news that we have a sense of humour even if it's localised. It's needed to cope with the poor questions posted here in an endless stream." CreationDate="2018-07-10T08:05:49.650" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16169" PostId="5333" Score="11" Text="It's so *clearly* anomalous I don't think it sends much of a signal at all about what kind of questions are considered all right here. On the other hand, locking it now wouldn't do any positive harm." CreationDate="2018-07-10T13:05:58.497" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16170" PostId="5333" Score="3" Text="Note that we also have somewhat similar in spirit https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/726 and https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1337, both open. See also whuber's comment here https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1337/statistics-jokes#comment39045_1337." CreationDate="2018-07-10T13:38:09.547" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16184" PostId="5333" Score="1" Text="@Scortchi this twitter user pointed to it as an example of being treated unfairly here. https://twitter.com/mohsen____/status/1016431208207699968 so it is doing active harm." CreationDate="2018-07-11T08:59:51.787" UserId="123" />
  <row Id="16188" PostId="5333" Score="3" Text="From the twitter conversation, it isn't clear if they are talking about [SO], [stats.SE], or [math.SE]. What was their actual question that was closed? Was it even on CV? I'm not sure that locking, closing, or deleting this thread will preempt the style of complaint proffered in the tweet.  We regularly get off topic questions that are closed followed by whataboutisms. This is most commonly programming questions &amp; then, 'but you have n-thousand threads tagged [r]'. We would have to close cartoons, the others @amoeba lists, &amp; then *thousands* more just to *hope* to stop whataboutisms." CreationDate="2018-07-11T09:51:22.987" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16189" PostId="5333" Score="1" Text="@gung: It's this (now deleted question): https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/355210/17230. It was closed not because it wasn't a &quot;real, actual problem&quot;, but because it wasn't about statistics/machine learning, not even remotely." CreationDate="2018-07-11T09:58:33.257" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16191" PostId="5333" Score="1" Text="OK, this is the closed thread: [Smallest FIFA World Cup semi-finals yet?](https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/355210/). Note that it is deleted, so users &lt;10k may not be able to see it. At any rate, it isn't funny, so the cartoons thread is not a good analogy. Also, it isn't even remotely on topic. If we closed the cartoons thread, there must be tens of thousands of threads that are at least this close an analogy and still open for a motivated complainer to point to." CreationDate="2018-07-11T10:00:36.943" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16192" PostId="5333" Score="1" Text="@gung To be fair, the FIFA question has clearly been misunderstood in the comments. OP probably has in mind the area of the smallest convex shape covering all four semi-finalists; not the sum of the four countries' own areas. I think it's in principle a good question but it is off-topic here; maybe it could belong on https://gis.stackexchange.com. In any case, I 100% agree that it is not funny and has no relationship **whatsoever** to the cartoon thread." CreationDate="2018-07-11T10:07:45.207" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16203" PostId="5333" Score="0" Text="@amoeba: It's ambiguous: &quot;All those countries combined cover a small area of earth surface&quot; suggests one thing; &quot;draw a polygon that covers all of the semi-finalists&quot; another. There's already [an SO question](https://stackoverflow.com/q/9678624/1864816) on how to find a convex hull on the surface of a sphere - might also be on topic at Maths or CS. It's whimsical, I suppose, rather than funny - which wouldn't in itself be a reason to close a question." CreationDate="2018-07-11T16:50:31.457" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16160" PostId="5334" Score="2" Text="This is related to your previous question (and answer in the same post) https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5325/we-have-a-very-large-widening-gap-between-questions-and-answers-how-do-we-fix. In my opinion, your answer here marginally conflicts with the main idea about that question; 'do something to reduce the widening gap between Q and A', because if we are going to keep accepting off-topic questions more noise (and grey area) there will be for us to reach a consensus about when to close and when not to close marginal/poor posts in CV." CreationDate="2018-07-10T01:13:39.127" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="16171" PostId="5334" Score="0" Text="@AndreSilva The good news is that these questions have answers, at least." CreationDate="2018-07-10T14:58:39.267" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16183" PostId="5334" Score="3" Text="Someone on Twitter pointed out that their &quot;funny&quot; Stats question about the World Cup was closed, but this &quot;funny&quot; question was left open -- even encouraged, per your text. So it is doing active harm. Closing it is the correct course of action." CreationDate="2018-07-11T08:58:23.060" UserId="123" />
  <row Id="16204" PostId="5334" Score="7" Text="@JeffAtwood I'm not interested in catering to the needs of the kind of person who shows up out of the blue, asks an off-topic question, and then complains on Twitter about the injustice of it all. We have [help] to explain the site to new users, and meta for people to ask specific questions about how the site works. We have no obligation to help people acting in bad faith, and I do not think this user is arguing in good faith." CreationDate="2018-07-11T18:05:28.080" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16226" PostId="5334" Score="3" Text="I wouldn't impute &quot;bad faith&quot;. I would just call the Twitter post a tantrum. The OP has a case in so far as they didn't receive a reason for closure that they understood, but nevertheless their reaction is just over the top. A person couldn't have got to 45K reputation without paying some attention to community practices and experiencing some decisions that look quirky or even wrong (who agrees with all the decisions ever made?)." CreationDate="2018-07-13T10:02:40.223" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16227" PostId="5334" Score="4" Text="In that vein there'd probably be a dozen more deserving injustices a day (where a post has a better &quot;what about&quot; to point to). Do we focus on this guy's complaint simply because he found a way to ping a network founder? How would that be equitable to the users who *don't* go on twitter and poke Jeff Atwood? It's not about stats and was rightly closed (by 5 highly experienced users). The guy's comparison is unfounded and if closing posts while leaving the comic one open lose us people who behave that way, we'll be saving a lot of drama. Responding to it would encourage people to hassle Jeff" CreationDate="2018-07-13T11:00:25.140" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="16228" PostId="5334" Score="3" Text="If he had a point, he could post here on meta -- and surely he knew that already; it seems like he already understood he was out of order. There may be some basis on which we should close the comic question, but that world cup isn't remotely comparable to it." CreationDate="2018-07-13T11:12:02.990" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="16229" PostId="5334" Score="1" Text="@JeffAtwood I’d be open to closing the joke thread if it were accompanied by a concerted effort of users with VTC privileges to more aggressively close broad, vague and unanswerable questions. But the joke thread on its own is not the core problem that CV faces w.r.t. moderation — my recent meta posts outline my feelings there. But closing the joke thread solely because it’s garnered high-level attention isn’t how SE moderation is supposed to work either." CreationDate="2018-07-13T12:57:30.277" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16230" PostId="5334" Score="1" Text="Stated another way, if the joke thread a problem, we’d have many more joke-type threads opened. I can only recall seeing one other such thread, and it was immediately closed as a duplicate. But that’s not what our users tend to do. When CV users ask poor questions, they’re usually about debugging or asking us to do their job for them (“how do I analyze these data?”)" CreationDate="2018-07-13T13:01:10.457" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="17490" PostId="5334" Score="0" Text="@Sycorax: In what scentece that I wrote did you read that I was writing in bad faith? This is an insinuation which is as invalid as the argument that the cartoon post helps other posts marking as a duplicate - yes but only the cartoon-like posts. So if you simply like the cartoon post why making up excuses to keep it" CreationDate="2019-04-12T12:50:07.807" UserDisplayName="user213325" />
  <row Id="17492" PostId="5334" Score="0" Text="@igoR87 I wasn’t writing about you. Look at the date of the comment. This is a thread from a year ago; it's impossible for the comment to be about you because at that time you hadn't posted your controversial question." CreationDate="2019-04-12T14:28:11.673" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="17493" PostId="5334" Score="0" Text="Sorry I misunderstood what you referred to" CreationDate="2019-04-12T14:35:58.290" UserDisplayName="user213325" />
  <row Id="17494" PostId="5334" Score="0" Text="@igoR87 If you read the text in large letters in my answer you'll see that I no longer support keeping the cartoon post open. Scroll down on this page and you'll see a new answer where write that the cartoon post should be closed." CreationDate="2019-04-12T14:37:04.610" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="17495" PostId="5334" Score="0" Text="@Sycorax: Ah, now I get it what is meant with &quot;historical artefact&quot;. I thougth the historical artefact is beeing the cartoon which is supposed to have gained a historical value here. Ok sorry i missunderstood" CreationDate="2019-04-12T14:41:01.143" UserDisplayName="user213325" />
  <row Id="17496" PostId="5334" Score="0" Text="@igoR87 Perhaps you could revise your answer in light of my change of opinion." CreationDate="2019-04-12T14:43:48.493" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="17497" PostId="5334" Score="0" Text="I did. Please let me know if this is still not alright like that." CreationDate="2019-04-12T15:00:45.577" UserDisplayName="user213325" />
  <row Id="17498" PostId="5334" Score="1" Text="@igoR87 Thank you! I appreciate it. I'm sorry that your question was a source of so much consternation; that must have been frustrating. Part of what makes SE a good network for Q&amp;A is that it has lots of guardrails around what it wants to do, which can be surprising for new users because those guardrails are what make it unlike the rest of the internet -- so there can be a disconnect between what users expect and what happens." CreationDate="2019-04-12T15:09:13.280" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="17500" PostId="5334" Score="1" Text="Yes this is definitely true to me. And yes, I find it a pity because I've been using SE for long time passively and actually like the idea but the last days were pretty frustrating for me. That is why I wrote that I want to delete me original question &quot;must know about statistics&quot; but this edit I made wasn't approved. Anyway, hopefully there'll be a happy end and I got a big take home message on asking questions.." CreationDate="2019-04-12T15:21:26.383" UserDisplayName="user213325" />
  <row Id="17501" PostId="5334" Score="2" Text="I've been here for a few years and there are still times that it's frustrating -- good answers don't get upvoted, duplicate questions don't get closed. But that's when I remember that this is just a hobby that I do for free, so I can take a break and do something else until I'm not frustrated and want to come back." CreationDate="2019-04-12T16:17:59.763" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16211" PostId="5336" Score="7" Text="Unanswered questions with 0 votes and 0 comments are automatically deleted after 365 days." CreationDate="2018-07-12T08:52:54.660" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="21250" PostId="5336" Score="0" Text="The first paragraph is my take. I’ve tried to look for old questions that never got answers, and most of them went unanswered for a reason. Asking for clarification in the comments could help, but when the OP hasn’t been seen on here since 2011, the chance of getting a reply is low." CreationDate="2022-02-27T15:32:53.657" UserId="247274" />
  <row Id="21277" PostId="5336" Score="0" Text="Maybe unanswered questions with 0 votes and 0 comments by the OP should be deleted.  Potential answerer asking a clarifying question which never gets answered is very common in my experience, and this shouldn't be a reason for a question to remain open in perpetuity IMO." CreationDate="2022-03-22T14:49:45.130" UserId="36381" />
  <row Id="16206" PostId="5338" Score="5" Text="These questions will continue to be asked if you do this (that doesn't make it a bad suggestion). They will continue no matter what." CreationDate="2018-07-12T06:32:15.620" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16207" PostId="5338" Score="1" Text="That's my point. &#xA;There's too many of these sorts of questions to attempt to tease out some form of an answerable question and then provide a detailed answer. Having one good,detailed answer that helps them at least gain a foothold, I think, would be beneficial to the asker." CreationDate="2018-07-12T06:51:33.077" UserId="172392" />
  <row Id="16208" PostId="5338" Score="4" Text="See https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3119/are-we-closing-questions-too-fast and https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3175/top-k-list-of-reasons-to-close-a-question-immediately for similar discussions. Moreover, please notice that putting questions on-hold is not meant to stop them, but rather to encourage OP's to edit &amp; improve. If we wanted to get rid of such questions, we would simply delete them (yes, we can)." CreationDate="2018-07-12T07:01:10.840" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="16209" PostId="5338" Score="6" Text="Upvoted, because this is an important question, even if I disagree with the proposal." CreationDate="2018-07-12T07:30:28.763" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16210" PostId="5338" Score="1" Text="@ Tim &#xA;I suspect that regardless of the actual purpose of putting questions on hold, new users will only ever take the closure as a rebuke. &quot;Go away, you're not smart enough to post questions Here&quot;. They simply move on and ask the question somewhere else.&#xA;&#xA; It would be interesting seeing the proportion of questions that get edited by the OP after being put on hold - I suspect it is quite low." CreationDate="2018-07-12T08:31:15.307" UserId="172392" />
  <row Id="16212" PostId="5338" Score="14" Text="I'll be heartless here. The &quot;on hold as unclear what you're asking&quot; message seems clear enough to me, and it contains links to the help center. If a poster interprets this as &quot;Go away, you're not smart enough to post questions Here&quot;, I am somewhat at a loss what to do. In addition, I doubt that someone prone to this kind of misunderstanding would be, ahem, mentally equipped to profit from a &quot;general&quot; Q&amp;A of the kind you are proposing." CreationDate="2018-07-12T08:57:43.170" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16216" PostId="5338" Score="2" Text="I just pasted by the question that you were referring to, and I commented somewhat myself, but as you noted yourself (*&quot;You'll have to narrow your question down substantially to get it into an answerable state&quot;*). Yes, *general advice* is possible but should this really be part of a q&amp;a that is dedicated to statistics? I think yes-maybe, but it is a gray area. In my comment to Stephan's answer I mentioned a canonical case which I believe is more useful. The question that you mention should I believe be deleted if it does not change. It is only meta-discussion (and broad) about data-science." CreationDate="2018-07-12T10:06:40.587" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16223" PostId="5338" Score="1" Text="We got such questions long before machine learning started gaining popularity (I was regularly answering questions just like it in the mid 80s in person or via email, and by the early 90s was regularly answering them on the internet - before I started using a browser. I recently encountered a lengthy answer I wrote in 1992). It's not a phenomenon specifically related to machine learning though it's certainly helping to generate more of this type of question." CreationDate="2018-07-12T23:19:18.683" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="16254" PostId="5338" Score="1" Text="Following up on [@Glen_b's comment](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5338/help-i-have-some-data-and-need-to-analyse-it-what-do-i-dooo#comment16223_5338): this is indeed not confined to ML and people having to &quot;learn something from your data, just do ML!&quot; The *other* prevalent flavor is people doing a study, collecting lots of data, and *only afterwards* thinking about how to analyze it. (I'm baffled by thinking that collecting data without an idea of how to analyze it is a good idea.) We used to get more of that flavor; they still come, but are crowded out by the &quot;ML flavor&quot;." CreationDate="2018-07-17T08:11:45.560" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16309" PostId="5338" Score="3" Text="@StephanKolassa Here is an example of how I just handled a probably &quot;too broad&quot; question: https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/358441/130869. I think it is helpful enough, given how broad of a topic they are asking about, and it took me about 5 minutes to write." CreationDate="2018-07-22T17:24:29.757" UserId="130869" />
  <row Id="16213" PostId="5339" Score="7" Text="So this excellent answer to a broad question is the sort of thing I had in mind: https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/7815/what-skills-are-required-to-perform-large-scale-statistical-analyses&#xA;&#xA;It's not possible to impart 3+ years of experience into an answer, but it is possible to craft a decent overview with multiple links to more detailed answers/articles, and have that be an acceptable springboard from the 'unknown unknowns' where they are currently, to the 'known unknowns'." CreationDate="2018-07-12T08:57:51.050" UserId="172392" />
  <row Id="16214" PostId="5339" Score="1" Text="Also, to be clear, I'm not advocating for not closing such questions. However, they shouldn't be closed without any other form of feedback or a link to an answer for a similar question. If such answers already exist, I think we should be linking the OP to them." CreationDate="2018-07-12T09:01:19.047" UserId="172392" />
  <row Id="16215" PostId="5339" Score="3" Text="It might be interesting if we could slice of a bit of the broad or basic but big questions by referring them to some canonical Q&amp;A that relates to the topic. I agree that this can not be too broad and it might be difficult to find good topics for which this can be done, but I believe that the one by https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5273/whats-the-best-way-to-answer-my-neural-network-doesnt-work-please-fix-quest Sycorax is a good example." CreationDate="2018-07-12T09:37:15.967" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16218" PostId="5340" Score="5" Text="+1. Can I bounty Meta questions?" CreationDate="2018-07-12T20:57:54.420" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16219" PostId="5340" Score="5" Text="@StephanKolassa Not to my knowledge, but I do accept fine distilled spirits as a gratuity." CreationDate="2018-07-12T20:59:13.420" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16220" PostId="5340" Score="4" Text="I have... *connections*... to some not-too-bad vineyards. We need to set up a secret handshake in case we ever meet." CreationDate="2018-07-12T21:00:30.137" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16224" PostId="5340" Score="8" Text="Ya'll will recognise eachother due to your &quot;what would whuber do?&quot; t-shirts." CreationDate="2018-07-13T04:11:16.833" UserId="74500" />
  <row Id="16225" PostId="5340" Score="1" Text="Judging from the profile picture  @Sycorax would be easy to spot at any statistics or machine learning meeting. Mind you, I've never been to a machine learning meeting so I might not be making enough allowance for robots or cyborgs in fancy dress." CreationDate="2018-07-13T07:44:57.447" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16231" PostId="5340" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Just look for the pine grove imprisoning users asking off-topic questions." CreationDate="2018-07-13T14:51:36.833" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16236" PostId="5341" Score="3" Text="(Not the downvoter, but) there is a legitimate argument for closing the cartoon thread--it's not the kind of question that CV (or any of the SE sites more generally) is supposed to be about.  It may help you to read the blog post ([Good subjective, bad subjective](https://stackoverflow.blog/2010/09/29/good-subjective-bad-subjective/)) Jeff points to for the official SE statement on the matter. Moreover, analogous threads have been deleted from [SO] (the flagship site)." CreationDate="2018-07-13T20:18:42.923" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16237" PostId="5341" Score="3" Text="There is a limit to the amount of populism that is beneficial for CV; other Q&amp;A sites have existed that were more unconditionally populist &amp; they've never coalesced the way the SE sites have. They've never built the high-quality repository of information we have. There's a reason for that. Ultimately, the constraints built into the SE system yield better content over time. That said, there is also some legitimate ambiguity over where exactly to draw the line. I believe the cartoon thread lies within it, or at least, this argument doesn't make a good case that it should fall outside." CreationDate="2018-07-13T20:23:49.050" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16255" PostId="5342" Score="2" Text="Yes, this was the sort of thing I was thinking of. Links to introductory resources and 'So you're a junior data scientist and don't know what data science is' - type blog posts and links to sets of good answers to broad-ish questions on CV. &#xA;I'll admit, my push for this is because I was in this exact position a year ago - transitioning from a chemistry PhD to data science in a tech environment. I had only a vague idea of what a data scientist does, and actually thought one of the main functions of a statistician was fitting distributions to things." CreationDate="2018-07-17T08:54:48.340" UserId="172392" />
  <row Id="16242" PostId="5343" Score="6" Text="For what it's worth, I find it helpful to search for unanswered questions using this query in the site search: `score:0..0 answers:0 [TAG OF INTEREST] closed:no`. Open questions with 0 score and 0 answers are either (1) good but unrecognized &amp; deserving of an answer (2) too vague or too broad to be answerable or (3) duplicates of existing questions." CreationDate="2018-07-14T20:05:55.587" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16243" PostId="5343" Score="2" Text="@Sycorax I often use answers:0 but mostly I don't restrict the score (if it has positive score but 0 answers it probably needs an answer -- while high scores may indicate a question that's difficult to answer for some reason, if you don't sort by score that's usually not a big issue. On the other hand, if it has a negative score it may need some kind of action - a comment or a vote to close for example)" CreationDate="2018-07-14T20:41:54.643" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="16248" PostId="5343" Score="4" Text="FAQ: [Why does the “Unanswered Questions” tab show questions that have answers?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/18870/why-does-the-unanswered-questions-tab-show-questions-that-have-answers): &quot;The Unanswered Questions tab shows questions that have no answers with a positive score **nor** an accepted answer. (That includes questions with no answers at all.)&quot;." CreationDate="2018-07-15T21:20:56.943" UserId="197829" />
  <row Id="16250" PostId="5343" Score="0" Text="@Rob (+1) I edited this link into my answer below." CreationDate="2018-07-16T12:20:36.607" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16240" PostId="5344" Score="3" Text="The site search engine doesn't look at comments, but sometimes Google does.  Try keywords like &quot;shimao relu resnet site:stats.stackexchange.com&quot;." CreationDate="2018-07-14T19:27:53.280" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="16245" PostId="5344" Score="1" Text="@AndreSilva good suggestion, I tried to do that without success." CreationDate="2018-07-15T14:49:52.450" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="16246" PostId="5344" Score="0" Text="@whuber good point, tried to do that , but still couldn't find anything. Such a pity, it was a great video....Actually Google did return a few hits that sounded promising, but they were pointing to deleted questions. That would also explain why it doesn't show up in my favorites list - years of burns with the SE search engine have taught me to immediately add to Favorites any question/answer that I find interesting. Thus, I was expecting it to be there, but if the question has been deleted in meantime, that would explain why it's no more among my favorites." CreationDate="2018-07-15T14:52:53.830" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="16241" PostId="5345" Score="2" Text="Ah ha.  That is, indeed, unintuitive." CreationDate="2018-07-14T20:02:00.823" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="16249" PostId="5345" Score="2" Text="But only slightly so. If no answer is upvoted, then by the logic of the site, not one user has found any of the answers useful, so effectively the question has not been answered at all, and should remain in the Unanswered queue to &quot;invite&quot; more answers." CreationDate="2018-07-16T09:54:18.577" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="16253" PostId="5345" Score="7" Text="Otherwise put, &quot;unanswered&quot; means &quot;not answered in a way that anyone rewarded&quot;." CreationDate="2018-07-16T15:15:09.283" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16247" PostId="5346" Score="1" Text="ah! That explains the mystery. Thanks a lot :-)" CreationDate="2018-07-15T16:49:18.457" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="16257" PostId="5347" Score="6" Text="This seems confused on whether you are referring to questions or answers. A post can't be both. A poster might post a question and an answer. Either way, the reputation needed for voting is a Stack Exchange-wide issue.  Often the number of votes is not what you (I, we) think a post deserves: in abstraction we all agree, I imagine. Otherwise what decides what is &quot;too popular&quot;? The measure of popularity is voting; there is no independent measure of merit, just many personal opinions. In short, I don't think you've identified a problem we can do anything about, let alone a solution." CreationDate="2018-07-17T09:44:02.957" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16258" PostId="5347" Score="0" Text="I am referring to answers in popular questions. Up-voting a question is okay, it can just mean you have the same question or same doubt. Now I'm talking about up-voting an answer. &quot;*what decides what is &quot;too popular&quot;*&quot;  Number of visits. Look, e.g. at this question: https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/89251/deriving-beta-from-expected-loss-function-hastie-tibshirani . It has far less views than the one linked, and they are equally old." CreationDate="2018-07-17T09:47:21.313" UserId="138788" />
  <row Id="16259" PostId="5347" Score="1" Text="No; I don't think that will walk, let alone run. _Too popular_ is a pejorative but  _popular_ means that many people have the same question, which is not a problem. Voting rules in any case are Stack Exchange-wide rules. In principle any proposal from down below can be discussed on its merits; in practice village hall discussions don't lead to changes in national or international policy." CreationDate="2018-07-17T09:56:44.393" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16260" PostId="5347" Score="0" Text="Hmm. Regarding this specific answer, it is mine. Do you think the thread would improve if I delete it? I was hesitant to delete it because I think there is useful discussion in the comments and the updated version of the answer clearly points to the relevant literature and to the other relevant threads on CV. Alternatively, I can delete the disclaimer about the original answer and the original answer itself, leaving only the &quot;new answer&quot;. Would this improve the answer in your opinion?" CreationDate="2018-07-17T10:22:46.157" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16261" PostId="5347" Score="1" Text="By the way, I did see [your new answer](https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/357404) in the linked thread that is now marked as accepted. Unfortunately you don't provide any specific evidence showing that LOO does indeed have high[er] variance, only some heuristic arguments (the same ones that I give in my answer). So I don't really see how your answer resolved the issues that I raised in my answer (&quot;However, note that Hastie et al. do not give any citations here, and while this reasoning sounds plausible, I would like to see some more convincing evidence that this is the case.&quot;)" CreationDate="2018-07-17T10:26:09.673" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16262" PostId="5347" Score="0" Text="@amoeba To the first question, yeah, you are right, there is interesting discussion. While I do not think it should be deleted, as it indeed contains valuable information, I also don't think the answer should have that amount of up-votes. Because pointing to the relevant literature does not answer the question." CreationDate="2018-07-17T10:32:34.517" UserId="138788" />
  <row Id="16264" PostId="5347" Score="0" Text="@amoeba To the second question. I do not provide specific evidence because the user is asking for clarification. Evidence has been provided in other threads. Anyway I have linked a thread where that is explained in my answer." CreationDate="2018-07-17T10:41:19.930" UserId="138788" />
  <row Id="16265" PostId="5347" Score="3" Text="In practice readers will not all read all the links. I think you should declare an interest as an participant in these threads. You're fine asking a question arising partly out of your experience, but declaring an interest in the examples is still advisable." CreationDate="2018-07-17T10:43:49.787" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16266" PostId="5347" Score="0" Text="@NickCox I don't get what you mean. I do not have any interest. I simply linked that question as an example of up-voted answer which I do not think answers the question. Then, in **another** (linked) question, which had a good, yet in my opinion, improvable answer, I added my own. For the record, overall I did think this question hadn't been completely *solved* (for me answer is different than solve) in this site,  but that is a whole different topic." CreationDate="2018-07-17T10:47:29.673" UserId="138788" />
  <row Id="16267" PostId="5347" Score="0" Text="I haven't seen *any* evidence *anywhere* and would be very interested in seeing it. Obviously I understand that, abstractly, the variance of the mean of correlated data will be higher than of iid data. What I want, is a direct empirical demonstration (e.g. via simulation) that LOOCV has higher variance than e.g. 10-fold CV. You've probably seen that in the comments to my answer somebody makes an opposite claim." CreationDate="2018-07-17T10:59:02.720" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16268" PostId="5347" Score="0" Text="@amoeba There is evidence. I link a post where there is both a theoretical proof and an empirical one." CreationDate="2018-07-17T11:02:28.510" UserId="138788" />
  <row Id="16269" PostId="5347" Score="0" Text="This? https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/223446 As I said, that is completely clear to me, but it has nothing to do with CV. I can only repeat that I'd like to see a direct empirical demonstration that LOOCV has higher variance than 10-fold CV." CreationDate="2018-07-17T11:04:26.653" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16270" PostId="5347" Score="0" Text="Regarding my answer, while I agree with you that pointing to the relevant literature does not answer a question, I think the current version of my answer provides an explanation that is **equivalent** to your answer in the 1st paragraph under the disclaimer. So I am slightly puzzled about your downvote." CreationDate="2018-07-17T11:05:06.850" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16271" PostId="5347" Score="1" Text="@amoeba Then, no offense intended, read again. I think I do answer the user's question and clarify his misconception. Please do note that it is the user himself that has decided to accept my answer. **What you want or request might not be what that question is asking, it may be as simple as that**. By the way, I do think this is an interesting discussion." CreationDate="2018-07-17T11:09:01.700" UserId="138788" />
  <row Id="16272" PostId="5347" Score="4" Text="A &quot;declaration of interest&quot; means here merely that you should make explicit that you're a party to the threads you cite. It's one thing to make assertions about the merits of other people's threads and not quite the same thing to make assertions about threads in which you participate." CreationDate="2018-07-17T11:12:16.510" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16273" PostId="5347" Score="1" Text="This is getting too messy. Your general suggestions (which I don't see merit in, but that's just one view) are too tangled up with examples in which you have a personal stake. Your main example is compromised by strong personal opinion such as &quot;definitely not a good answer&quot;. I would rewrite the question and go for neutral examples. It is not out of order to cite threads in which you participate. but this long discussion with @amoeba suggests that in this case the examples raise too many side-issues." CreationDate="2018-07-17T11:18:42.620" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16274" PostId="5347" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Yeah, I see what you mean. The particular topic was one that was difficult for me at the start to understand. And I found the different answers misleading. That's why I choose it as an example. Nevermind, I will delete this question in 10 minutes or so." CreationDate="2018-07-17T11:24:14.447" UserId="138788" />
  <row Id="16276" PostId="5347" Score="1" Text="For the record, I took absolutely no offense and I don't think you need to delete this thread." CreationDate="2018-07-17T11:30:17.507" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16277" PostId="5347" Score="1" Text="I am not suggesting deletion, just rewriting. That should be clear. There are upvoted answers, so I don't think you can delete it any way." CreationDate="2018-07-17T11:31:47.087" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16280" PostId="5347" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Yeah, I do not exactly know how to rewrite this. I have been suggested to post it on http://meta.stackexchange.com/ , so I am thinking that it just might be off-topic. I just wanted to warn about misleading answers, answers that might be up-voted by beginners because they like it or empathize with the answerer saying *&quot;This is a complicated topic, and I must admit that I don't have a full understanding of it&quot;*" CreationDate="2018-07-17T11:51:39.223" UserId="138788" />
  <row Id="16282" PostId="5347" Score="0" Text="You are missing the point! My answer got all these upvotes BEFORE I supplied the disclaimer that I don't have a full understanding of it." CreationDate="2018-07-17T12:06:28.877" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16284" PostId="5347" Score="0" Text="Oh, that is interesting... Anyway, the issue is still there: a bad answer got upvoted, which, as you say in one of the comments, is indeed *funny*... Don't you think your answer being up-voted was due to the fact that it was a too-easy- to-read answer for a complicated topic like this?" CreationDate="2018-07-17T12:10:17.187" UserId="138788" />
  <row Id="16285" PostId="5347" Score="2" Text="You shouldn't just say &quot;a bad answer&quot; as if it were objective fact. Regardless, the reaction to what you think is a bad answer is comments or a better answer explaining your view of the question." CreationDate="2018-07-17T12:35:15.470" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16286" PostId="5347" Score="1" Text="Bad answer, wrong answer, or, as you say &quot;answer that does not make a lot of sense&quot;. It was just me trying to get to the point. Call it as you wish." CreationDate="2018-07-17T12:38:24.177" UserId="138788" />
  <row Id="16288" PostId="5347" Score="3" Text="No; I don't think you can dismiss the point as merely one about wording. It's got to the point where adding another answer is a better reaction." CreationDate="2018-07-17T13:02:59.880" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16275" PostId="5348" Score="0" Text="This answers the question, yet I'm afraid I'm going to delete the question, as suggested by comments." CreationDate="2018-07-17T11:26:49.173" UserId="138788" />
  <row Id="16278" PostId="5349" Score="0" Text="The questions are not the same. The exact question the user makes in what you answered is exactly  *&quot;Is there a mathematical formula, visual, or intuitive way to understand why that average has a higher variance compared with the k-fold cross validation?&quot;* Again, I still think your answer, while instructive, does not answer this. While it might resemble mine, (I don't think so, but let's just assume it) we **are NOT answering the same question**. What the question I answer asks, is, precisely *If the above argument is right, why would models learned with leave-one-out CV have higher variance?*" CreationDate="2018-07-17T11:41:22.777" UserId="138788" />
  <row Id="16279" PostId="5349" Score="0" Text="The point I am trying to make here is that two answers may be equal yet one might be correct and the other one not, depending on the **question**. In one of the questions the user specifically asks something and in the other one the other user asks another thing." CreationDate="2018-07-17T11:45:03.900" UserId="138788" />
  <row Id="16281" PostId="5349" Score="0" Text="You are making a distinction between *&quot;Why X?&quot;* and *&quot;Is there an intuitive way to understand X?&quot;*. I don't quite understand this distinction." CreationDate="2018-07-17T12:02:36.877" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16283" PostId="5349" Score="0" Text="No, that is not true. I myself don't understand why you don't understand what I mean. It is clear that the one who asks your ( let's call it like that for simplification ) question has already understood the meaning of variance in the context of CV. Mine has not. Mine is asking about variance of the model and is confused about which variance we are talking about, which is something I do my best to clarify in the answer." CreationDate="2018-07-17T12:07:39.457" UserId="138788" />
  <row Id="16291" PostId="5349" Score="0" Text="The original askers might indeed have had different level of understanding, but nevertheless they were asking essentially the same question. Anyway, I decided to edit my answer, see updated version at https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/90903. I inserted specific links to simulations and papers to support my claim that this topic is controversial." CreationDate="2018-07-17T21:48:19.977" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16289" PostId="5351" Score="6" Text="Can you suggest an edit to the accepted answer that would sufficiently clarify this point? By &quot;suggest&quot; I mean suggest right here in your Q? If your suggestion gets support, one of the mods could unlock the thread, let you edit the answer, and lock it again." CreationDate="2018-07-17T16:59:39.847" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16290" PostId="5351" Score="1" Text="What is a common usage is often user dependent. I would have said frequency weights were very rare and survey weights quite a specialised subject but your experience is clearly different." CreationDate="2018-07-17T21:08:32.887" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="16292" PostId="5351" Score="1" Text="Weights inversely proportional to variances is not &quot;quite different&quot; from frequency weights. Under iid sampling, frequency weights *are* &quot;inversely proportional to variance&quot;; you might regard frequency weights as a special case of that more general precision weighting." CreationDate="2018-07-18T00:51:25.940" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="16293" PostId="5351" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b Interesting. Do you have a reference where I can read more about it? Under _iid_ sampling, then, pretty much every type of weight is, in practice, the same. Frequency and sampling weights, in practice, [might be so too](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/354689/are-frequency-weights-and-sampling-weights-in-practice-the-same-thing)." CreationDate="2018-07-18T10:24:45.577" UserId="100369" />
  <row Id="16294" PostId="5351" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Done. Glen_b or others would like to see if the comment is accurate enough." CreationDate="2018-07-18T10:36:07.300" UserId="100369" />
  <row Id="16295" PostId="5351" Score="0" Text="The quote from the documentation stops at the semi-colon. The rest of that sentence says &quot;or equivalently, when the elements of weights are positive integers w_i, that each response y_i is the mean of w_i unit-weight observations (including the case that there are w_i observations equal to y_i and the data have been summarized). However, in the latter case, notice that within-group variation is not used. Therefore, the sigma estimate and residual degrees of freedom may be suboptimal; in the case of replication weights, even wrong.&quot;" CreationDate="2018-07-18T10:57:46.377" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="16296" PostId="5351" Score="0" Text="@mdewey I'm not sure I understand the objective of the comment." CreationDate="2018-07-18T12:19:12.097" UserId="100369" />
  <row Id="16301" PostId="5351" Score="0" Text="I was suggesting that the documentation and functionality were not quite so limited as you outline." CreationDate="2018-07-19T09:55:04.690" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="16342" PostId="5351" Score="0" Text="I asked [a very similar question](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/246913/the-theory-behind-the-weights-argument-in-r-when-using-lm) which might be relevant to this thread." CreationDate="2018-07-30T13:32:50.570" UserId="46427" />
  <row Id="16297" PostId="5352" Score="0" Text="Thanks but this does not fully explain to me what happened here. The merged tags are *forever* displayed on the Tags page as tags with 0 questions. They never go away from there. However, they don't have any tag wiki excerpt displayed there. In this particular case, the merged tag had its old wiki excerpt visible on the Tags page for at least a week. Then at certain moment this wiki excerpt disappeared from the Tags page. Are you saying that this specific sequence of events is by design?" CreationDate="2018-07-18T19:47:07.147" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16298" PostId="5352" Score="0" Text="The listing that remains is for the synonym; it just redirects to the main tag." CreationDate="2018-07-18T19:49:12.673" UserId="4454" />
  <row Id="16299" PostId="5352" Score="0" Text="Yes, I know. But as I said, normally there is no wiki excerpt shown but in this case there was and it persisted for days (perhaps even weeks)." CreationDate="2018-07-18T19:50:36.407" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16300" PostId="5352" Score="0" Text="That is a shockingly long time for a tag to hang around; usually it would be minutes, no more than a day." CreationDate="2018-07-18T20:53:38.627" UserId="4454" />
  <row Id="16305" PostId="5353" Score="1" Text="I'd go straight to Stack Overflow (SO) on this. I don't use your software but the question looks in fine shape for anyone who does, as it seems to have a dataset all included. It's a model question for SO, but _ipso facto_ utterly off-topic here. There is no saving that by tweaking the question." CreationDate="2018-07-20T09:53:08.830" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16306" PostId="5353" Score="1" Text="Furthermore the tag &quot;bug&quot; is referred to situations in which the stackexchange homepage is not working properly. I replaced it with the tag &quot;discussion&quot;." CreationDate="2018-07-20T09:58:35.400" UserId="128677" />
  <row Id="16307" PostId="5354" Score="3" Text="+1.  Additionally, the question as stated--&quot;I would appreciate any advice&quot;--is far too unfocused for any SE site.  Great information on asking on-topic questions that will be answered is available at http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#forum." CreationDate="2018-07-20T13:21:00.467" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="16318" PostId="5358" Score="1" Text="You focus quite a bit on whether a question is &quot;routine&quot;,  we needn't take the description quite so literally--it's just our attempt to get the idea across clearly &amp; succinctly. [It is like a finger pointing a way to the moon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4O9o4CKTGzQ). That said, you have good points here." CreationDate="2018-07-25T13:38:22.827" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16323" PostId="5358" Score="2" Text="See https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5066/17230 &amp; https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2844/17230. Though I share your insouciance about the fate of lazy students come exam time, a repository of solutions to statistical exercises would be dull &amp; pointless: like physical exercises, their purpose is in the doing of them (which is no fun) by the person that needs to, not in their having been done by someone else." CreationDate="2018-07-25T17:36:47.537" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16315" PostId="5359" Score="5" Text="BTW, no-one's (yet) proposed *removing* the cartoons post; just closing it - which would prevent new answers' being added." CreationDate="2018-07-25T06:57:21.520" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16316" PostId="5359" Score="2" Text="Oh, okay.  That is a big difference.  I misunderstood." CreationDate="2018-07-25T10:04:32.463" UserId="173082" />
  <row Id="20691" PostId="5359" Score="1" Text="I have updated my answer to reflect closure but non-removal.  I still think it is a shame to close these questions, since that locks new answers." CreationDate="2021-04-19T22:54:31.273" UserId="173082" />
  <row Id="16313" PostId="5360" Score="1" Text="My sense is that this doesn't seem like a good idea. We can see what others say. For one thing, not all such posts are actually funny, so I don't think this quite captures the exception being made. I also don't think popularity is the basis for the exception, when applied." CreationDate="2018-07-25T04:11:18.933" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16314" PostId="5360" Score="0" Text="I'd be happy for alternative descriptions that better capture the intended exception.  My suggestion is just a starting point." CreationDate="2018-07-25T04:13:20.193" UserId="173082" />
  <row Id="16324" PostId="5360" Score="3" Text="If we're going to tag it anything, I think it it should be &quot;`grandfathered-in`&quot;." CreationDate="2018-07-26T02:10:13.080" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="16319" PostId="5361" Score="0" Text="True. But fun is a wider concept than humor. I could see [the &quot;quotations&quot; thread] having a [tag:fun] tag, but not the [tag:humor] tag (which it rightfully doesn't have right now). Then again, I don't think this difference warrants a new tag... After all, CV is neither about fun nor about humor, is it now?" CreationDate="2018-07-25T15:11:52.070" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16320" PostId="5361" Score="0" Text="It's true that I've never had any fun here, and we are always entirely humorless. I don't see any reason to change our (unusual, for SE) indulgence of &quot;funny&quot; questions -- yes, it's atypical for a SE to have an open [tag:humor] thread, but I think this is exactly the correct limit to set." CreationDate="2018-07-25T15:15:52.467" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16321" PostId="5362" Score="3" Text="Prima facie, this seems appropriate, but I'm not a survey expert either." CreationDate="2018-07-25T16:42:21.220" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16326" PostId="5362" Score="0" Text="We already have tags for [sampling] and [stratification] so as long as they do not want to add more than three other tags I would have thought that was adequate." CreationDate="2018-07-26T07:52:33.627" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="16327" PostId="5362" Score="1" Text="@mdewey: I wasn't aware of [tag:stratification]. Thanks! I agree that that is all we need." CreationDate="2018-07-26T08:02:40.690" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16331" PostId="5362" Score="2" Text="@AndreSilva: they weren't, sorry and thanks. Now they are." CreationDate="2018-07-27T06:19:55.957" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16332" PostId="5364" Score="1" Text="Mark as accepted?" CreationDate="2018-07-28T09:20:47.837" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16333" PostId="5364" Score="1" Text="@amoeba: good point. (I honestly thought I couldn't accept my own answer...)" CreationDate="2018-07-28T12:53:29.283" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16339" PostId="5365" Score="8" Text="I believe @Kjetil is doing a useful job in principle (most threads that he retags/bumps are not closed), but I agree that in this particular case he got carried away. This question should be deleted, not retagged. I downvoted it now so that it quickly gets automatically deleted (as negatively scored closed Q with no answers)." CreationDate="2018-07-28T15:38:03.077" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16340" PostId="5365" Score="7" Text="Closed questions may potentially reopen; part of the reason questions are closed in the first place is so they can be improved. If a closed question should have a tag, it should have a tag. If that helps it attract an answer (say because it's now seen by someone searching for questions with that tag), then so much the better. However, we should avoid bumping large numbers of old questions in a row when doing so. (There's a meta question on that issue here somewhere that suggests only doing small numbers at one time)" CreationDate="2018-07-29T00:30:59.647" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="16341" PostId="5365" Score="7" Text="I want to add warm thanks to @kjetil for his hard work on tags. The side-effects are trivial in my view." CreationDate="2018-07-29T08:26:28.703" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16345" PostId="5365" Score="2" Text="It's best to bump-edit when traffic is slow. Related discussion: [When is traffic slow on CrossValidated?](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3106/1352)" CreationDate="2018-07-31T11:20:36.920" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16346" PostId="5365" Score="1" Text="@StephanKolassa But traffic is high on this site. The post was 2016." CreationDate="2018-07-31T11:43:49.443" UserId="34623" />
  <row Id="16363" PostId="5365" Score="0" Text="@CagdasOzgenc Well, -6 wouldn't hurt me. However, I still believe excessively bumping up old questions by editing tags shouldn't be encouraged." CreationDate="2018-08-08T10:54:17.253" UserId="34623" />
  <row Id="16594" PostId="5367" Score="0" Text="Here is one tangentially relevant request. https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/29394/it-should-be-possible-to-retag-a-question-without-bumping-it-to-the-front-page" CreationDate="2018-09-11T04:55:32.433" UserId="23810" />
  <row Id="16347" PostId="5370" Score="11" Text="We tend to be pretty mixed about the [datascience.SE] site (see, eg: [1](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2026/7290), [2](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5137/)). That said, it's beyond our purview to do much of anything about it." CreationDate="2018-08-03T01:47:04.867" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16348" PostId="5370" Score="4" Text="Long term, questions and people migrate to sites where there are better answers. It can take some years but sites with fewer people or fewer answers  or even fewer good questions tend to fade away. And that goes for specific kinds of questions too.  So, opportunity for improvement on both sides, not a threat." CreationDate="2018-08-03T08:26:33.110" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16374" PostId="5370" Score="9" Text="Some people have a misapprehension that &quot;data science&quot; and &quot;statistics&quot; are distinct, instead of the former being a clever marketing gimmick that renamed the latter. Almost all content on datascience.se is on-topic here, with the exception of questions about how to use software (for which there is a dedicate software forum called stackoverflow)." CreationDate="2018-08-09T16:17:23.687" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16466" PostId="5370" Score="0" Text="I'm not sure how answerable this question is without digging into actual answer rates. I don't know how to access that kind of data. But my gut instinct is &quot;yes&quot;. @Sycorax this is just my opinion, but I feel like data science has become an umbrella term for statistics and machine learning; if anything, statistics is being left out to dry a bit. Perhaps it could be renamed &quot;the data sciences&quot;, much like how library science itself isn't really &quot;science&quot; in the sense of the scientific method, but a collection of techniques for &quot;getting stuff done at libraries&quot;." CreationDate="2018-08-27T19:49:19.607" UserId="36229" />
  <row Id="16467" PostId="5370" Score="1" Text="@shadowtalker Could be. Sometimes it's now called &quot;library and information sciences.&quot; To my mind, &quot;data science,&quot; &quot;statistics,' and &quot;machine learning&quot; are three circles of a Venn diagram with 97% of the area falling in the intersection of all 3." CreationDate="2018-08-27T19:51:53.280" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16349" PostId="5373" Score="5" Text="(+1) This is a good way to leverage the mechanisms of CV to start productive discussions." CreationDate="2018-08-03T18:54:35.537" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16351" PostId="5374" Score="7" Text="your best bet may be a data.SE query - https://data.stackexchange.com/stats/queries; there's a tutorial document on writing database queries for it around somewhere, written by Monica Cellio. (Edit: see here-- https://stackoverflow.blog/2016/06/24/learn-more-about-your-site-with-the-se-data-explorer-heres-how/)" CreationDate="2018-08-05T10:34:32.847" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="16355" PostId="5375" Score="2" Text="Taking aside the automatic stuff, this question is very low quality, so even if it appeared in the queue, it might not get re-opened." CreationDate="2018-08-07T06:29:20.570" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="16354" PostId="5376" Score="0" Text="Ah, it’s apparently because I flagged it for closure in the first place. Now, I know where to put my feature request." CreationDate="2018-08-07T05:41:43.750" UserId="36423" />
  <row Id="16356" PostId="5376" Score="0" Text="Even if you hadn't flagged it for closure it still wouldn't have hit the reopen queue." CreationDate="2018-08-07T10:14:41.630" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="16357" PostId="5376" Score="0" Text="Why? The second point would apply to me. Either way, [here](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/313711/255554) is the feature request to fix this." CreationDate="2018-08-07T11:36:12.163" UserId="36423" />
  <row Id="16358" PostId="5376" Score="0" Text="My apologies -- I misread the date it was posted. You're correct." CreationDate="2018-08-07T14:37:33.603" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="16370" PostId="5378" Score="2" Text="SEDE is updated once a week. Within the few days since the last update you can look through your own notifications from your user page" CreationDate="2018-08-09T00:39:59.650" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="16372" PostId="5378" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b sure, and anyway these are more curiosities, I'm rarely in such a hurry that I can't wait a week for SEDE to be updated :-)" CreationDate="2018-08-09T07:14:55.443" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="16365" PostId="5379" Score="2" Text="Thank you for that vote! This is an issue that I have been a bit unhappy about for a while: once a high-rep votes to close (VTC) and the thread ends up in the close-vote queue, I suspect a lot of other users more or less blindly also VTC. Even if the OP adds the requested clarification, and the original close-voter retracts their close vote. It's an unfortunate effect, but I don't know how to combat it. One could, of course, hold off on VTCing, but then I'd quickly have a long backlog of questions where I requested clarifications that I would need to revisit. Suboptimal. (ctd)" CreationDate="2018-08-08T13:44:31.690" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16366" PostId="5379" Score="8" Text="(ctd) Also, my experience is that out of about ten questions where I request clarifications, only about one or two OPs actually do provide them. Which I'll admit pushes me towards requesting clarifications and *simultaneously* VTCing. Leading to the effect above. Then again, if a clarified question *is* closed, one can always nominate it for reopening, or flag it for a moderator's attention." CreationDate="2018-08-08T13:50:21.987" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16369" PostId="5379" Score="5" Text="@StephanKolassa, yeah, I've [long thought](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/148062/187282) that the system incentivizes voting to close. There isn't an ideal solution w/i the current setup. Your approach is the best you can do." CreationDate="2018-08-08T14:31:59.093" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16375" PostId="5379" Score="0" Text="@StephanKolassa , I'm going through the exact situation you described above [here](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/359051/problems-with-model-validation-with-glmmadmb-object?noredirect=1#comment675723_359051). I've already voted to undelete it, but I'm not sure if that's all I can do. Could you please provide some clarification on what you mean by &quot;flag it for moderator's attention&quot;? Also, feedback on the question is welcome." CreationDate="2018-08-10T19:37:52.923" UserId="184596" />
  <row Id="16376" PostId="5379" Score="2" Text="@EricLino: it's almost certainly possible to plot a fit line, by fixing all but one of your predictors to a specific value and then calling some `predict` function with a range of interesting values for the remaining predictor. You might be able to vary more than one predictor and plot an interaction. You might be able to extract standard errors to plot CIs. How exactly to do so is still off-topic here, which is why I assume the question is still closed (and auto-deleted). It is possible that the `coefplot2` functionality was folded into `coefplot`, did you check?" CreationDate="2018-08-10T20:47:54.840" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16383" PostId="5381" Score="2" Text="Related: [What to do about “wrong” questions?](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5000/1352)" CreationDate="2018-08-14T11:54:05.940" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16378" PostId="5382" Score="4" Text="Yes, but also: *downvote!* This particular Q is old and now closed. However it won't be deleted because it's upvoted. If one sees an unhelpful question, downvote! I downvoted this one and if both mkt and Tim downvote further, it will eventually get automatically deleted =&gt; profit." CreationDate="2018-08-13T13:26:39.370" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16380" PostId="5382" Score="1" Text="Thanks for chiming in, Tim (&amp; @amoeba). I wouldn't have interpreted asking how to interpret a specific, simple plot to be too broad (as opposed to poor/misguided). But it's good to know that this is how that flag is used in practice. I sometimes wish the text of the flags was less specific because of these edge cases, but perhaps I'm too focussed on the wording." CreationDate="2018-08-13T15:06:21.260" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="16381" PostId="5382" Score="3" Text="@amoeba I agree with the downvoting suggestion and have now done so; the problem of course is that this question would have lasted much longer if it wasn't raised here (and this is true of others as well)." CreationDate="2018-08-13T15:08:22.130" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="16382" PostId="5383" Score="1" Text="Thank you, this is helpful." CreationDate="2018-08-14T09:19:46.813" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="16384" PostId="5384" Score="6" Text="+1 I believe this ambiguity and lack of good possibilities to classify/order/simplify questions/problems from a rather broad type is part of the difficulty with efficiently finding/answering questions on CV." CreationDate="2018-08-17T10:30:22.750" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16388" PostId="5384" Score="5" Text="Perhaps a tag like [tag:distribution-identification] might be useful?" CreationDate="2018-08-17T16:38:07.900" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16404" PostId="5384" Score="2" Text="@MartijnWeterings, thanks for fixing some already. I have tagged all of these under distribution-identification and will think of a decent description of the tag." CreationDate="2018-08-20T06:55:03.250" UserId="176202" />
  <row Id="16385" PostId="5385" Score="1" Text="(+1) What about if there were a question+answer that described the properties of the most commonly encountered distributions? Wouldn't that allow us to close many of these as duplicates?" CreationDate="2018-08-17T12:13:01.017" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="16386" PostId="5385" Score="1" Text="@mkt I don't know. Perhaps. But it would require a lot of work to do it well." CreationDate="2018-08-17T14:42:47.980" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16387" PostId="5385" Score="5" Text="@mkt: I wonder whether that kind of encompassing answer would be a good fit to CV. Perhaps a list of potential resources might be helpful, like the [NIST/SEMATECH Gallery of Distributions](https://itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/eda/section3/eda366.htm), or [Wikipedia's list of common distributions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability_distribution), or a few standard textbooks." CreationDate="2018-08-17T16:37:22.947" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16389" PostId="5385" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Agreed, it would be." CreationDate="2018-08-17T17:01:15.367" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="16390" PostId="5385" Score="0" Text="@StephanKolassa I'm not sure either. It's a kludgy workaround that lets us close a bunch of unhelpful questions, and is perhaps not worth it. I do like your tag suggestion." CreationDate="2018-08-17T17:02:43.947" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="16402" PostId="5385" Score="0" Text="Thanks @amoeba, I think changing the titles to include the category would already be a big improvement. So is it okay if I edit the example questions' titles, or should I leave that to a moderator so I don't bump all of these questions?" CreationDate="2018-08-20T04:44:56.060" UserId="176202" />
  <row Id="16403" PostId="5385" Score="1" Text="@FransRodenburg Mods cannot edit anything without bumping either. So I'd say you can go ahead. Thanks." CreationDate="2018-08-20T06:28:56.937" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16392" PostId="5386" Score="7" Text="(+1) This is peculiar. I thought that the VTC limit for a user grew in accordance with reputation in a manner consistent across all of SE, but that can't be true if you have more rep on CV.SE than on math.SE, yet a larger VTC limit on mathSE. FWIW, I am the cause of the large number of old questions with [tag:neural-networks],[tag:machine-learning], etc. tags being closed. This is because a large slice of these unanswered questions are duplicates, unclear, or too broad to be answerable." CreationDate="2018-08-18T18:48:54.953" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16393" PostId="5386" Score="7" Text="... I'm not undertaking this closure effort to cause anyone trouble. I am trying to improve the quality of the content with these tags, since they are a bit of a &quot;Wild West&quot; right now. I'm also undertaking to provide answers where I can, and upvotes (or bounties!) where appropriate. In the long-term, I'm attempting to gain the gold badge for [tag:machine-learning] and [tag:neural-networks] which will allow me to close-as-duplicate questions unilaterally, and alleviate the queue backlogs for these tags." CreationDate="2018-08-18T18:52:22.837" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16394" PostId="5386" Score="3" Text="@Sycorax Godspeed!" CreationDate="2018-08-18T22:11:42.020" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16395" PostId="5386" Score="2" Text="@amoeba It's ... slow going. I'm about half-way there for each of [tag:machine-learning] and [tag:neural-networks]." CreationDate="2018-08-18T22:47:41.233" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16396" PostId="5386" Score="2" Text="@Sycorax I know. I still never got one for [tag:pca]." CreationDate="2018-08-19T07:28:12.730" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16397" PostId="5386" Score="1" Text="I'm responsible for a bunch of recent flags (and comment -&gt; CW answers). Apologies for the extra work, I'm trying to clear up the unanswered `regression` questions list a bit." CreationDate="2018-08-19T12:24:27.237" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="16398" PostId="5386" Score="2" Text="I'm also contributing to the long review queue! that is not really the problem, it is good that Qs that should be closed gets closed. But that's not happening effectively now, the question is what to do with that. Either getting more reviewers (how?), or that existing reviewers get more votes. That seems more practical, but how?" CreationDate="2018-08-19T14:06:07.200" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="16424" PostId="5387" Score="0" Text="I think this is a good idea, discussion of which tag(s) should be themes belongs in its own thread. Meanwhile I am still waiting if anyone knows about how/if vote limits can be increased." CreationDate="2018-08-22T16:00:23.977" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="16425" PostId="5387" Score="1" Text="I suspect the VTC limits are governed by some sort of SE-wide policy -- perhaps asking on SE meta would be the best place to find a solution?" CreationDate="2018-08-22T16:02:30.883" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16426" PostId="5387" Score="0" Text="Will do so!  ..." CreationDate="2018-08-22T16:04:18.227" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="16427" PostId="5387" Score="2" Text="@kjetilbhalvorsen See https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/147981. Apparently the limit is 20 but it gets doubled if a queue has a &quot;large backlog&quot;." CreationDate="2018-08-22T19:51:02.277" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16428" PostId="5387" Score="0" Text="This is a great idea!" CreationDate="2018-08-23T06:29:29.427" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="16399" PostId="5389" Score="0" Text="Ah! I didn't know about the `deleted` advanced search option!" CreationDate="2018-08-19T23:15:46.493" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16411" PostId="5389" Score="1" Text="Hmm. I have one &quot;deleted recent answer&quot; (that I see when I click on &quot;deleted recent answers&quot;) but it does not appear in the overall list of my answers (as in your first figure)... The search works great though; I did not know about it either." CreationDate="2018-08-21T20:18:57.893" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16412" PostId="5389" Score="0" Text="@amoeba thanks, I'll mention that in the answer" CreationDate="2018-08-21T23:02:45.650" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="16414" PostId="5389" Score="1" Text="@Sycorax thanks for that improvement" CreationDate="2018-08-22T03:29:45.357" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="16419" PostId="5389" Score="1" Text="Only mods can see all of the deleted posts in the tab of the user page." CreationDate="2018-08-22T13:00:55.500" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16420" PostId="5389" Score="0" Text="@gung Ah, okay. Thanks." CreationDate="2018-08-22T13:06:06.410" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="16405" PostId="5390" Score="3" Text="Have you tried https://data.stackexchange.com/ ?" CreationDate="2018-08-20T09:36:13.577" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="16406" PostId="5390" Score="0" Text="@Tim I am aware of this site but I am not very familiar with its workings. Let's see if someone that knows it better can tell whether the required data are available." CreationDate="2018-08-20T09:46:08.053" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="16407" PostId="5390" Score="3" Text="I think there's several other indicators of 'repository-ness': 1. the number of searches that hit pages here (which I think only people at the highest rep level and moderators can see, but which you might perhaps be able to get by SEDE query, I don't know), and 2. The number of questions closed as duplicates. I know we do close a fair few as duplicates (though perhaps only a small proportion of the total questions)" CreationDate="2018-08-20T09:56:58.920" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="16408" PostId="5390" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b Indeed, these are also indicators that can be used on the matter." CreationDate="2018-08-20T10:22:48.777" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="16409" PostId="5392" Score="2" Text="As you said, thread B is low quality overall. It's also pretty old and the OP is inactive. It does not really matter if the question in B is not fully addressed in A. It still makes sense to make B a duplicate of A. So I suggest you flag B for mod attention and ask to revert the duplication direction." CreationDate="2018-08-21T19:09:16.060" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16410" PostId="5392" Score="3" Text="See also https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/122974. I think it's a better target." CreationDate="2018-08-21T19:50:41.447" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16415" PostId="5392" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Thanks! Good solutions." CreationDate="2018-08-22T05:38:08.060" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="16417" PostId="5392" Score="0" Text="And which Q did you want to close as a duplicate (&quot;I'd like to flag a third question as a duplicate&quot;)?" CreationDate="2018-08-22T09:48:50.897" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16418" PostId="5392" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Whoops, I'll need to find that one again... Will flag when I locate it." CreationDate="2018-08-22T11:21:09.850" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="16421" PostId="5393" Score="0" Text="Re #1, we might as well recruit the tooth fairy. There are only so many users &gt;3k rep &amp; they may not want to spend a lot of time every day reviewing close votes--there's nothing we can do to induce them to do so. Re #2 &amp;3, SE sites will necessarily reflect the idiosyncrasies of their most active users; that's mitigated by a large enough pool of highly active users (ie [SO]), but nowhere else--it's inescapable. Re #3, moderators do do *occasional* purges, they would need to be less 'occasional' until there is sufficient user review activity. The tension in #4 is also intrinsic to SE sites." CreationDate="2018-08-22T13:26:01.437" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16422" PostId="5393" Score="1" Text="*(The Department of the Blindingly Obvious responds to itself.)*" CreationDate="2018-08-22T13:26:26.090" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16413" PostId="5394" Score="6" Text="Another option - particularly if there's at least one good answer among the poor ones, or if the one with poor answers is actually the more canonical question - is to merge. It only requires that the answers for the one being merged will serve as good answers to the target question." CreationDate="2018-08-21T23:07:19.127" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="16416" PostId="5394" Score="1" Text="Thanks, gung &amp; @Glen_b. Useful to know that it's possible to mark a question as a duplicate of multiple threads." CreationDate="2018-08-22T05:39:26.493" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="16443" PostId="5395" Score="2" Text="To find old closed posts which (maybe) needs downvoting, use a search like `* closed:yes duplicate:no score:1 created:..2016` (where * is some search term(s))." CreationDate="2018-08-26T20:40:37.130" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="16435" PostId="5397" Score="0" Text="What do you think, Ben?  Is this a duplicate or is there some distinguishing feature in your concern you would like to emphasize compared to the thread found by @StephanKolassa?" CreationDate="2018-08-24T21:28:06.957" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="16437" PostId="5397" Score="0" Text="yes, it's a duplicate." CreationDate="2018-08-24T21:47:35.430" UserId="2126" />
  <row Id="16439" PostId="5398" Score="2" Text="Could you provide some examples of what you're describing?  For instance, could you link to one or two questions that have &quot;simple fixes&quot; and explain what those fixes would be?" CreationDate="2018-08-26T19:35:26.643" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="16440" PostId="5398" Score="0" Text="@whuber I could, but, I do not want to cast aspersion in anyone's personal direction. I have to great a respect for the participants to do that. Please consider that a call to accentuate the positive experience of participants is vanilla enough that it does not really require a formal proof of concept to be well understood. If you insist, I can rummage around for one, but I also spend some time putting stuff out of the close vote stream, so there are lots of occurrences." CreationDate="2018-08-26T19:44:13.930" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16441" PostId="5398" Score="2" Text="Without such an example, I'm unable to understand what you are describing.  Perhaps you could invent one or paraphrase one anonymously?" CreationDate="2018-08-26T19:49:42.560" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="16442" PostId="5398" Score="0" Text="@whuber OK, next one I come across I will document." CreationDate="2018-08-26T20:06:37.247" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16451" PostId="5398" Score="2" Text="&quot;*There seems to be a pervasive attitude of objecting to &quot;stupid.&quot;*&quot; &lt;&lt; That's a good thing, right?" CreationDate="2018-08-27T00:14:22.103" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="16452" PostId="5398" Score="2" Text="@usεr11852 I once upon a boy who was crying then started laughing. He then bent over and charged head first into a brick wall, knocked himself out, came to, started crying, then laughing again, and headed for the brick wall. I asked, &quot;Why?&quot; &quot;Because it feels so good when the pain stops,&quot; said the boy. Well, knock yourself out, so to speak, objecting to stupid can be a lifetime occupation, just not a very rewarding one, I venture." CreationDate="2018-08-27T01:01:12.667" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16476" PostId="5398" Score="0" Text="Still struggling with &quot;grossly correct because of inaccurate language&quot;. &quot;grossly&quot; is a word I would only use negatively.  Do you mean &quot;grossly incorrect&quot; or &quot;broadly correct despite inaccurate language&quot;." CreationDate="2018-08-28T12:59:32.440" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16481" PostId="5398" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Changed word order to mitigate the ambiguity. It was supposed to be read &quot;grossly correct, (but) because of...&quot; and I agree that was not clear. It is also very funny because the sentence suffered from the same language problem is was describing. BTW, I would like you to get two points for editing something like that." CreationDate="2018-08-28T15:09:06.150" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16514" PostId="5398" Score="0" Text="Carl I appreciate this question and the anecdote about the boy knocking his head into the wall. :) I also agree with @whuber about the need for examples." CreationDate="2018-08-30T19:34:55.697" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="16515" PostId="5398" Score="0" Text="@Alexis Serious suggestion, do some reviews on the close vote queue and pay attention to what is at play. I seriously think that some of the reviewers find the questions &quot;too dumb for words&quot; or &quot;trivial and uninteresting&quot; or &quot;hopelessly mixed up&quot; and yet have no checkbox to say so. I really think we should explore what our motives are for closing things, not so much as to find fault, just to find a better fit for what we actually are doing." CreationDate="2018-08-30T20:36:37.540" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16517" PostId="5398" Score="1" Text="&quot;Serious suggestion, do some reviews on the close vote queue and pay attention to what is at play.&quot; Uh... I *do* precisely that, but I agree with the introspection." CreationDate="2018-08-30T20:58:05.827" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="16447" PostId="5399" Score="0" Text="The question was posed On Dec 13, 2017, when the OP, @HardCore, had a reputation of 15. HardCore's experience since then has been positive enough to become a contributor with a current reputation of 466. Would that have happened if HardCore's early experience had not been overall positive?" CreationDate="2018-08-26T22:45:37.767" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16460" PostId="5399" Score="0" Text="Agreed, but irrelevant. For example, unless I know multiple fold more than what is revealed in a garbled text, in that particular subject area, I tend to skip offering a close/open opinion. The alternative is to close everything I do not understand as &quot;unclear&quot; which is not a fair choice, and it is precisely those that I either spend considerable time trying to understand, if and when I am curious about them, or I skip entirely." CreationDate="2018-08-27T14:50:24.117" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16461" PostId="5399" Score="0" Text="It is currently too easy to just say that something is unclear and too frequently I find myself understanding questions that others dismiss for some minor problems that are unrelated to the meaning of what is being asked. The close vote queue seems to be frequently the longest one needing attention. We users need some positive reinforcement to pay proper attention to it." CreationDate="2018-08-27T14:54:39.223" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16475" PostId="5399" Score="3" Text="Actually, for me, it's just the reverse!  If I look at the close votes for being unclear, it's often the case that the person voting to close understands the problem *better* than I do and that I missed some subtlety that they caught." CreationDate="2018-08-28T09:50:23.077" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="16489" PostId="5399" Score="0" Text="Both occur. That is, sometimes &quot;unclear&quot; is used appropriately, sometimes not. When used appropriately, it is not problematic, when used incorrectly it is confusing and &quot;off topic&quot; so to speak, thus problematic." CreationDate="2018-08-28T18:26:32.177" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16453" PostId="5401" Score="2" Text="It's prone to be abused, just like the badge itself. Self-disclosure: I somewhat abuse this on another site by editing (even only *copyediting*) the question *after* I answer it to get the badge. Of course, I also edited and salvaged some questions that I don't know the answer." CreationDate="2018-08-27T09:52:15.247" UserId="62336" />
  <row Id="16456" PostId="5401" Score="3" Text="That would be an SE-wide change that would require the developers to implement. If that is what you're after, this should be raised on meta.SE, not meta.CV. I doubt that this would be adopted, though." CreationDate="2018-08-27T13:42:36.110" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16457" PostId="5401" Score="0" Text="@Gung Without some request coming from our site, the chances of a system wide change or a local sire change occurring is smaller than it would otherwise be. You have recently witnessed the uber-left cure all non-solution to excess negativity the current site structure is producing, the politically correct new &quot;be nice&quot; policy. Part of this is due to [downvoting](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/4567/99274) problems that show up as negative comments with some individuals calling others &quot;stupid&quot; out of small mindedness born of frustration. Nice language does not address those..." CreationDate="2018-08-27T14:07:02.403" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16458" PostId="5401" Score="0" Text="@gung ...con't problems, it just covers them up. I lived behind the iron curtain for 6 years, I do not recommend turning in your neighbors for perceived political offenses, trust me, it is the road to hell. We need a mechanical solution to excess negativity, and it will be increasingly problematic unless addressed. That is what is in play here. Only positive reinforcement can address the social degeneracy that population pressure creates. If you do not like my suggestion, come up with something else, please." CreationDate="2018-08-27T14:14:18.113" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16459" PostId="5401" Score="0" Text="@AndrewT. Someone getting a badge or a few points that they cheated to get does not really hurt anyone, and there are some safeguards in place already. Problems with positive reinforcement from stealing cookies from an infinitely large and imaginary cookie jar can be addressed, but that &quot;theft&quot; would not hurt others like negative personal attacks do. Here is the cost benefit; the cost is imaginary, the benefit is real." CreationDate="2018-08-27T14:40:48.297" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16474" PostId="5401" Score="1" Text="Presently, there is an automatic award of +2 rep for editing, but only for users whose total rep is &lt;2000. Given that this edit-only award has an even lower bar that you propose  (i.e. edit + answer) and the problem still exists, would your proposed solution change anything? For high rep users, a +2 bonus is unlikely to influence motivation. And for low-rep users who are willing to edit a question, they would probably answer it (and gain more rep by upvotes) if they could." CreationDate="2018-08-28T09:47:06.377" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="16477" PostId="5401" Score="2" Text="(Is this offered as the answer? You are clearly allowed to answer your own question but this proposal seems like a small detail compared with the important and difficult issues you raise.) FWIW, I doubt that anyone with a reputation much over say 1000 is all motivated by getting an extra +2 here or there, but I speak only for myself." CreationDate="2018-08-28T13:02:49.150" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16478" PostId="5401" Score="0" Text="@NickCox On meta there are no points for anything, and yet we participate. A positive reinforcement would have to fit into the site's style fairly seamlessly. Is there a proposal that you would like better?" CreationDate="2018-08-28T14:55:36.550" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16479" PostId="5401" Score="0" Text="@mkt Understood. How about +4 for editing and answering but only for users whose reputation is &gt;2000?" CreationDate="2018-08-28T14:58:07.593" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16480" PostId="5401" Score="2" Text="I have contributed to several threads with this theme but regret to have no new ideas. It's unfortunate that many new or occasional posters here don't realise that CV  (or SE) isn't a help line. It's understandable that many people who use statistics understand it poorly. The net outcome is that many questions here aren't even answerable, let alone contributions to the long-term improvement of the site. I have no objection to anyone who wants to be nice, gentle, kind -- I try it myself much of the time -- but I fear what the site needs most is ruthless weeding out of questions that don't fit." CreationDate="2018-08-28T15:06:25.073" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16482" PostId="5401" Score="0" Text="@Carl I wouldn't object to something of that sort - such incentives can't hurt and I'm not too worried about excessive/trivial editing. I tend to agree with Nick Cox's view in the above comment, though." CreationDate="2018-08-28T15:56:55.610" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="16483" PostId="5401" Score="1" Text="@mkt So why do we not expand the definition of &quot;low quality&quot; enough to cover the low quality posts? Currently &quot;Very low quality (i.e. no amount of editing can salvage the post) (only new posts scoring 0 or less)&quot; Right now, we are throwing out stuff that has value, mislabeling low quality as &quot;too broad&quot; or &quot;unclear.&quot;" CreationDate="2018-08-28T17:08:51.063" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16484" PostId="5401" Score="1" Text="@Carl Fair point. I tend to think that the language around flag/close reasons is too narrow. I've slowly learned that the community doesn't it fact stick to the text strictly in practice. I think this is a good thing, on balance, though fixing the text would be better." CreationDate="2018-08-28T17:12:29.450" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="16485" PostId="5401" Score="0" Text="@mkt Agreed, but the worse effect is upon the OP whose post is inexplicable mischaracterized which misdirects the OP's corrective action. Also, we still need more positive reinforcement." CreationDate="2018-08-28T17:26:47.953" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16523" PostId="5401" Score="0" Text="@NickCox I do not know how to distinguish between reasons for turning to this site with a question that are considered help or not help. Certainly, some questions do treat us like a help line, e.g., [this](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/362752/special-case-probability/362765#362765) or [this](https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/362752/99274), but do we actually have a mandate to draw a line, and if so, how?" CreationDate="2018-08-31T05:18:35.373" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16524" PostId="5401" Score="0" Text="I agree with that. The comment that we are not a help line is at most a comment for Meta discussion. Please see https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3119/are-we-closing-questions-too-fast/3127#3127 for my development of that thought. I don't think that it would be a good motto for guiding votes to close or for fending off poor questions -- not least because we should be explaining what we are, not what we aren't.  Also, the reasons for turning to this site don't determine the questions, except that &quot;I have no idea how to analyse my data&quot;, for example, rarely leads to good questions." CreationDate="2018-08-31T08:13:28.640" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16468" PostId="5402" Score="4" Text="Closely related: [How can we best help to improve the questions asked on our site?](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1282).  It might also behoove us to review https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-answer from time to time, especially the section beginning &quot;Not all questions can or should be answered here.&quot;" CreationDate="2018-08-27T20:16:06.140" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="16469" PostId="5402" Score="2" Text="Could you expand on, or give examples of, the kind of difference you see between &quot;quick-and-dirty&quot;/&quot;sorta-okay&quot; &amp; &quot;great&quot;/&quot;good&quot;? I think it's hard to answer you without a fairly clear notion of that - &quot;Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well&quot; vs &quot;The best is the enemy of the good&quot;." CreationDate="2018-08-27T22:00:00.860" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16470" PostId="5402" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi here's a &quot;sorta okay&quot; answer of mine from today: https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/364232/36229 . Someone with even moderate practical experience in CNNs would be in a position to provide a better answer." CreationDate="2018-08-27T22:06:58.547" UserId="36229" />
  <row Id="16472" PostId="5402" Score="7" Text="In my previous thread about how to improve the answer rate, I advocate writing brief answers to questions which can be completely, and clearly answered briefly. This sounds a little tautological, but it’s motivated as a reaction against writing answers in comments. Personally, I write an answer only when I’m confident that it addresses the post. That threshold will be different for everyone, but I think it’s a reasonable standard." CreationDate="2018-08-27T23:04:53.593" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16473" PostId="5402" Score="2" Text="I tend to comment quite extensively at times and potentially interact with the OP. If that seems to help the OP I might go ahead and take the time to make it into a stand-alone answer. I find it faster and easier." CreationDate="2018-08-27T23:12:51.000" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="16486" PostId="5402" Score="1" Text="Forgot to include the link -- https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5325/we-have-a-very-large-widening-gap-between-questions-and-answers-how-do-we-fix/5326#5326" CreationDate="2018-08-28T17:56:38.547" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16498" PostId="5402" Score="1" Text="@whuber This thread reminds me of your words back from 2012: &quot;So when deciding whether to spend your valuable time rushing to answer a lot of questions or answering a single one really well, I urge you to consider expressing your expertise and insight in a high-quality, well-crafted answer whenever you can.&quot; (https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1248). Personally, I tend to agree with you, but I see that many people (e.g. in this very thread) worry about our low answer rate and seem rather to advocate an opposite approach." CreationDate="2018-08-29T19:57:08.587" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16499" PostId="5402" Score="1" Text="@amoeba You have me pegged correctly." CreationDate="2018-08-29T22:05:30.127" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="16506" PostId="5402" Score="1" Text="@amoeba I don't see this as an either/or situation. I think the optimal community strategy is a mix of experts who write fewer long, well-crafted answers and journeyman statisticians (to use Sycorax's phrase) who write many short answers. The short answers can take some pressure off the experts, and let them focus on writing detailed answers. The only alternative is to recruit a huge number of new experts, which seems unlikely to happen soon." CreationDate="2018-08-30T07:53:24.160" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="16507" PostId="5402" Score="1" Text="(Well, we could also choose to leave a lot of questions open but unanswered, or to close many more by being a lot tougher. These options seem to have less support.)" CreationDate="2018-08-30T08:04:29.727" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="16487" PostId="5403" Score="1" Text="The boundaries here are often (hmm) unclear. Too broad, unclear, low quality aren't mutually exclusive: two or three such labels often make sense. We've had posts where the votes to close were all or almost all for different reasons. I don't get that rejecting for the wrong reason is much of a problem even in abstraction. We are, supposedly, &quot;mislabeling&quot; or &quot;mischaracterizing&quot;. What does this mean except that in some cases other people select different criteria from you? Where's the objective evidence?" CreationDate="2018-08-28T18:06:06.517" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16488" PostId="5403" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Well, you just gave that evidence. One could collect it objectively, I suppose. On some questions, the agreement for closure is uniform, all choosing the same reason for closure, on others, there are three or more reasons, none of them really saying what is going on. Sure, there can be objectively more than one reason for closure, however, it also may be that none of the reasons is a good fit." CreationDate="2018-08-28T18:18:07.703" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16491" PostId="5403" Score="0" Text="There is plenty of evidence that people disagree on reasons for vote to close. Some people might want to interpret that as that some of the reasons are wrongly declared." CreationDate="2018-08-29T07:37:12.737" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16495" PostId="5403" Score="1" Text="@NickCox When a multiple choice has no good answer, the answers chosen tend not to agree. If we improve the choices, the editing and OP response to it would be more directed." CreationDate="2018-08-29T15:27:07.000" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16496" PostId="5403" Score="5" Text="In principle we could discuss different wording, but I think it would be tinkering with small details that don't matter much. In practice if a question appears poor on several different grounds it is almost always doomed any way. I don't have very much time or inclination to try to rescue really bad questions. More positively, there are enough mechanisms for those willing to try: comments as specific and as constructive as possible and directed at the question are immensely more important than precisely which reason is given to the OP for why a question was closed." CreationDate="2018-08-29T16:11:48.863" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16516" PostId="5403" Score="1" Text="I rarely disagree about reasons for VTC.  The problem I run into is that many questions ought to be closed for two, three, or more of the reasons available and I can pick only one of them!  I vote for the one I think might give the most constructive suggestion.  Carl, I haven't figured out what you mean by &quot;throwing out stuff that has value.&quot;  If a question is not in a shape to be answered and the OP doesn't improve it, it's difficult to hold to the position that it's somehow still &quot;valuable&quot; to the site. (cc @Nick)" CreationDate="2018-08-30T20:37:11.850" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="16518" PostId="5403" Score="0" Text="@whuber I am not concerned here about those questions that are &quot;so incoherent that editing would have very real risk of making them something other than what the OP wanted.&quot; That is not the topic that I have been trying to broach. That is the most popular answer, but it is not germane to my intent, and it is not a problem." CreationDate="2018-08-30T20:59:54.080" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16519" PostId="5403" Score="2" Text="It's unclear to me, then, what you are concerned about.  You explicitly posit a situation in which a question is &quot;self-contradictory.&quot;   Although you refer to &quot;simple fixes&quot; you don't appear to explain what you have in mind.  That quotation you draw from Peter Flom's answer tried to point out that the obvious &quot;simple fix&quot;--namely, editing the question--won't usually work in those cases.  The fact that you're getting answers and comments all over the place indicates your question here on meta needs work.  Could you focus and clarify it?" CreationDate="2018-08-30T21:17:25.693" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="16520" PostId="5403" Score="0" Text="@whuber I am trying to solve the following problems. 1) The close queue is too long and reviewing it should be rewarding for those doing the work, or it will stay too long. 2) Some questions are valuable, like the one referenced, and should be saved by editing or just answering them. 3) We need better positive reinforcement and rewards for our work and good deeds. We know this because the new policy for &quot;niceness&quot; is a reaction to surfeit negativity. It is a reactionary policy, not a proactive one. I want proactive activity. Finally, these three things are related." CreationDate="2018-08-30T21:43:50.463" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16521" PostId="5403" Score="0" Text="@whuber I am asking here for ideas people find acceptable to foster positive reinforcement. That some questions should be closed and are unsalvageable is beside the point. That if we want to be negative, we should do so politely is beside the point. The question goes to how can we be more positive, not less negative." CreationDate="2018-08-30T22:12:57.170" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16522" PostId="5403" Score="0" Text="@whuber I am trying to explain. See new text above, another example. Do correct me if I am wrong, but, I think I understand the question better than the responses." CreationDate="2018-08-31T04:50:08.810" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16525" PostId="5403" Score="3" Text="That doesn't surprise me, because in these comments alone you have articulated at least three distinct questions.  That would explain why your edits are getting so long that the post is becoming unreadable.  Please simplify it to focus on one question." CreationDate="2018-08-31T13:32:55.017" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="16535" PostId="5403" Score="0" Text="@whuber Fine, I boiled it down to a single question." CreationDate="2018-09-03T19:49:52.473" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16497" PostId="5404" Score="2" Text="I think @whuber disagrees with this approach (or at least he did 6 years ago): &quot;So when deciding whether to spend your valuable time rushing to answer a lot of questions or answering a single one really well, I urge you to consider expressing your expertise and insight in a high-quality, well-crafted answer whenever you can.&quot; (https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1248)." CreationDate="2018-08-29T19:55:38.863" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16500" PostId="5404" Score="3" Text="(-1) I couldn't disagree more with this answer.  We are not Twitter or Reddit.  We're not here to toss out one-off answers to badly formed, ambiguous questions.  Even *great* answers to ambiguous questions--unless they clearly reformulate the question, which is rare--are a lasting nuisance due to their potential to confuse future readers. The lesser evil is to leave those questions unanswered." CreationDate="2018-08-29T22:06:29.287" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="16501" PostId="5404" Score="0" Text="@whuber: I don't quite see where I advocated answering &quot;badly-formed, ambiguous questions&quot;." CreationDate="2018-08-30T06:55:07.497" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16502" PostId="5404" Score="0" Text="@amoeba: thank you for that link. It looks like whuber and I are on opposite ends of this tradeoff spectrum. (And [I am still not advocating tossing off answers to bad questions.](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5402/is-a-quick-and-dirty-answer-better-than-no-answer/5404?noredirect=1#comment16501_5404))" CreationDate="2018-08-30T06:59:07.020" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16505" PostId="5404" Score="4" Text="I have edited my post. To be honest, I have pontificated often about closing, downvoting and generally manhandling bad questions that I am a bit mystified how at least two people could misunderstand me as advocating answering these. Hope my edit helps." CreationDate="2018-08-30T07:36:22.357" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16509" PostId="5404" Score="3" Text="Your clarification helps greatly, thank you.  Another solution to consider--and in most cases it will lead to superior results--is to perform the research needed to identify existing answers on the site and vote to close the unanswered question." CreationDate="2018-08-30T12:28:42.483" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="16511" PostId="5404" Score="3" Text="@whuber: I agree that we often have close duplicates to &quot;bread and butter&quot; questions. The problem is that while it may be obvious how to adapt a proposed duplicate to a new question for a statistician, this adaptation may be non-obvious to a non-statistician. Plus, it's hard to find a duplicate in over 120,000 questions." CreationDate="2018-08-30T14:46:25.570" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16513" PostId="5404" Score="5" Text="@Stephan I agree: that's why it's so valuable to close a question as a duplicate.  It typically reflects the results of a nontrivial search." CreationDate="2018-08-30T16:59:11.197" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="16490" PostId="5405" Score="7" Text="+1, though I would say a quick answer would be useful even if comments are present, if only to get the question out of the &quot;unanswered&quot; list so people working through that list don't have to spend time on answered-in-comments questions. If the comment is an answer, [turn it into an answer](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5326/1352). If the comment is an answered request for clarification, write an answer. If it is an *unanswered* request for clarification, close as &quot;unclear&quot;." CreationDate="2018-08-29T06:44:01.487" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16493" PostId="5405" Score="1" Text="@StephanKolassa Agreed. What I meant was a bit different, though poorly phrased: unless I'm personally going to comment to ask for clarification (or flag/vote to close), I feel fine with posting a short answer." CreationDate="2018-08-29T10:47:29.330" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="16550" PostId="5405" Score="1" Text="+1, quick and dirty answer is better than no answer. Not everyone has the time to invest in long encyclopedic latex-supported answers and a complex approach is not always the best approach." CreationDate="2018-09-06T11:32:27.590" UserId="83065" />
  <row Id="16560" PostId="5405" Score="1" Text="+1, People are asking for help and providing a quick answer doesn't stop someone else from proving a better answer later.  Well said." CreationDate="2018-09-06T17:16:19.487" UserId="177387" />
  <row Id="16494" PostId="5406" Score="1" Text="Geological allusion tweaked: Gondwanaland, not Godwana. (Perhaps you're averaging with Godzilla. Let's keep them apart.)" CreationDate="2018-08-29T13:22:55.250" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16538" PostId="5406" Score="1" Text="+1.  But may I make a suggestion?  I find it more meaningful to track the sum of answers *and closed questions.*  I hope the reasons for that choice are obvious.  Its importance might not be, so let me just add that approximately a quarter of all questions are now closed (and most of those are unanswered, which is why I don't bother to distinguished answered closed questions from unanswered closed questions).  Also, because very few answers are deleted, it has been unnecessary to track them." CreationDate="2018-09-05T12:25:42.777" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="16540" PostId="5406" Score="0" Text="That is an interesting suggestion. However, I tried a quick adaptation http://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/894703/questions-and-answers-per-month#graph and I do not see that a quarter of the questions have been closed. How should I change the query (or what other source does the quarter come from)? Maybe some information is blocked for me? Anyway, I do not think that it will provide much change to the picture of these crude data. There are, of course, clear changes going on, but that is not strange for an 8 year old forum. Yet, the datascience can only have a small side effect." CreationDate="2018-09-05T14:27:38.300" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16510" PostId="5407" Score="4" Text="I don't agree with this. In practice, 30 days is too long to wait. In practice and in principle, a comment can be anything from a good approximation to an answer to a request for clarification, so automating responses is not the solution here. We have to read the question and whatever comments and answers have appeared so far to judge what might else be said and what voting or voting to close is appropriate." CreationDate="2018-08-30T14:45:16.813" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16512" PostId="5407" Score="7" Text="I think that it's acceptable to ask a clarifying question and VTC at the same time. If OP clarifies before it's closed, you can retract your vote. If OP clarifies after it's closed, the question can be re-opened." CreationDate="2018-08-30T15:54:59.780" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16526" PostId="5409" Score="7" Text="Where to draw the line? Good question. How about questions on say eigenvalues or inequalities? Both arise in many branches of statistical science, but unless there is a statistical core to such questions, it would be the same boundary determination problem." CreationDate="2018-08-31T16:52:12.593" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16529" PostId="5409" Score="6" Text="One factor: as machine learning questions have grown to be a larger part of the site, at least some questions related to optimization have become less borderline than they were -- some questions that might have quickly closed say 6 or 7 years ago might not close at all now." CreationDate="2018-08-31T23:27:13.840" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="16530" PostId="5409" Score="1" Text="FWIW I edited the question and voted to reopen..." CreationDate="2018-09-02T21:58:43.450" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16531" PostId="5409" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I had initially voted to re-open at the time that I posed this question, but I'm no longer convinced that was the correct action. The question is marginally on-topic, and there is a reasonable consensus that this question is on the wrong side of the line. I can accept that!" CreationDate="2018-09-03T00:16:58.457" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16536" PostId="5409" Score="1" Text="Shouldn't we move the thread to another place instead of closing it? The question is not bad. It doesn't need editing but instead it needs a different place." CreationDate="2018-09-03T20:57:37.190" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16537" PostId="5409" Score="0" Text="See also  https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2990/where-can-i-ask-questions-about-operations-research" CreationDate="2018-09-04T08:34:49.497" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="16528" PostId="5410" Score="5" Text="I suppose it is telling that the post *only* has the [tag:optimization] tag applied to it." CreationDate="2018-08-31T19:00:02.980" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16549" PostId="5410" Score="0" Text="Isn't optimization central to both statistics and machine learning? Aren't the concepts of training/learning/estimation basically synonymous to &quot;optimization&quot;? I don't understand why would you discourage people from asking such questions." CreationDate="2018-09-06T11:01:56.593" UserId="83065" />
  <row Id="16553" PostId="5410" Score="3" Text="@Digio Nobody is proposing anything like that.  Optimization comprises far more than the methods used in statistics.  My answer is rooted in the basic fact that we do not field questions unrelated to statistics or machine learning." CreationDate="2018-09-06T12:43:20.427" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="16554" PostId="5410" Score="0" Text="It's hard to draw the line. While it is true that optimization methods go beyond statistics, they could all be applicable to statistics. On the level of basic research there are constant efforts to adapt or invent new optimization methods for the purpose of estimation/training. In my perception, this makes optimization a related topic en par with simulation." CreationDate="2018-09-06T12:51:24.550" UserId="83065" />
  <row Id="16555" PostId="5410" Score="4" Text="@Digio One flaw in that argument is that if it were valid you could draw all of mathematics and much of the sciences as well as a great deal of philosophy into the mix of on-topic questions, too.  I don't find it at all difficult to draw the line: if the application to stats and ML is not apparent, then I ask the OP to explain how the question might be related to stats and ML. If they can tell us, then it's on topic.  This works not only for optimization-related questions but for all questions." CreationDate="2018-09-06T13:10:48.423" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="16563" PostId="5410" Score="4" Text="&quot; this thread is still available, still searchable, and people can still comment and vote on it: its closure just means additional answers will not be forthcoming.&quot; -&gt; closing a question allows users to vote for deletion." CreationDate="2018-09-07T07:56:47.143" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="16569" PostId="5410" Score="1" Text="@Franck Thank you for adding that--it's a good point.  Currently there is little risk of that thread disappearing for such a reason.  On CV, at least up to the present, so few people vote for deletion that I believe few threads have ever been deleted by means of such votes (and those were easy decisions)." CreationDate="2018-09-07T13:47:54.020" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="16585" PostId="5410" Score="1" Text="I did not vote to reopen, in fact in comments to my answer to the question I noted that I thought it was off-topic.  I think that something so specific to a particular optimization technique, and not in such a way that it is related to statistics, is really off topic.  Something like &quot;why don't more maximum likelihood estimation algorithms use Newton's Method?&quot; would relate to a specific optimization technique but be on-topic.  I thought it was a question well worth an answer, OT though it may be, but being well worth an answer isn't the relevant criterion." CreationDate="2018-09-10T02:12:29.420" UserId="7555" />
  <row Id="16689" PostId="5410" Score="1" Text="Gold star to @whuber, if they can articulate how it applies to stats or ML, then it is on topic.  Agreed." CreationDate="2018-09-18T17:10:27.630" UserId="177387" />
  <row Id="16532" PostId="5412" Score="3" Text="Thinking you can give an answer that is more complete or more nearly correct than the comments given so far is indeed a stimulus to answering." CreationDate="2018-09-03T16:07:53.550" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16533" PostId="5413" Score="2" Text="The OP only has say over their acceptance -- and their vote if they have enough reputation -- so satisfying the OP is not to me a primary goal, although appreciation when you get it is welcome too. It would be interesting to know what fraction of accepted answers are also the highest voted answers." CreationDate="2018-09-03T16:10:23.470" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16534" PostId="5413" Score="2" Text="I agree that for the &quot;accepted answer&quot; an early, short answer has an advantage over a thorough late answer. I&quot;d like to see answers with many more votes show up above the accepted one, because of this. Nevertheless, a good second answer may still stand out with enough upvotes." CreationDate="2018-09-03T19:07:51.177" UserId="7828" />
  <row Id="16542" PostId="5414" Score="4" Text="Unfortunately SE does not provide any way of contacting individual users. You can flag a question or answer with a comment for the moderator, you can use chat. So there is no such a functionality. If it is urgent, flag something and ask for a contact, as moderators can send direct e-mails to users &amp; those can be responded, but this can be initiated only by a moderator, not by a user and should be used in special cases." CreationDate="2018-09-06T06:36:53.567" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="16543" PostId="5414" Score="2" Text="I'd also suggest flagging or a chat ping to initiate contact. Flagging will get your message to any/all moderators until it's resolved but if you have a concern about moderation this is usually appropriate (for example, if my moderation decisions are in question, I would generally seek to get other moderators involved anyway; I'm acutely aware that I am as fallible as anyone and I appreciate the advice of fellow moderators, who are a very sensible collection of people). In some cases issues might reasonably be raised on meta, particularly if it's a question of policy or how it's applied." CreationDate="2018-09-06T06:48:09.593" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="16544" PostId="5414" Score="3" Text="Moderators can set up a private chat room to talk to specified users. I think &quot;private&quot; there means only those users, plus site moderators, plus community managers can enter it." CreationDate="2018-09-06T07:41:48.267" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16545" PostId="5414" Score="0" Text="@Tim yes, I know SE doesn't allow to contact individual users, but I thought that was only for &quot;common&quot; users, not for moderators. The issue is definitely not so serious that I would consider it a special case, so if direct email are reserved for special action (I guess because they're sent from the moderator's personal email, so they violate her/his anonimity), then it's not the appropriate tool for my problem." CreationDate="2018-09-06T07:59:09.150" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="16546" PostId="5414" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b ok, I guess I'll either flag the message or ping the involved moderator in chat. The point is, I didn't want to discuss the matter in public (it's nothing serious! Just a little bit private), so I was wondering if there was any other way, but I don't think there is. I'll guess I'll flag. Is there a way to see the list of current moderators on Cross Validated?" CreationDate="2018-09-06T08:01:09.020" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="16547" PostId="5414" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi ah, this is very interesting: a private chat would be the **perfect** tool for my use case. However, since from the current discussion I'm getting the feeling that the preferred way to deal with these things is flagging, I'll just flag the message." CreationDate="2018-09-06T08:03:26.823" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="16548" PostId="5414" Score="0" Text="here goes nothing: I flagged the question. Thanks for all the suggestions." CreationDate="2018-09-06T08:09:22.730" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="16551" PostId="5414" Score="0" Text="I believe others can *see* the content of a private chat room, they just can't say anything. I could be wrong, but I believe that to be the case." CreationDate="2018-09-06T12:29:39.253" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16552" PostId="5414" Score="1" Text="Another way to communicate with anyone in a somewhat clandestine manner is to find an old, little viewed post by them &amp; leave them a comment. Afterwards, the comments can be deleted." CreationDate="2018-09-06T12:31:42.093" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16561" PostId="5414" Score="0" Text="@gung: When you create a room, you're given the options 'Public', 'Gallery', &amp; 'Private': it's the galleries that anyone can enter though only only specified users can speak." CreationDate="2018-09-06T18:50:40.270" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16584" PostId="5414" Score="0" Text="@DeltaIV Do you refer to one of the only two moderators that are unidentifiable via a quick look on their stack-exchange profiles?" CreationDate="2018-09-08T21:23:58.080" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16588" PostId="5414" Score="0" Text="@MartijnWeterings: Don't you mean &quot;five&quot; (two are identifiable)?" CreationDate="2018-09-10T13:29:41.817" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16590" PostId="5414" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi you are right it was less. I was wrong about one.  It is four in total. One has his username similar to his first and last name (and also links to his personal website), one has has his username similar to his first letter and last name (and used to have a link somewhere to his consultancy company), one has a link to his github page, one has a link to his twitter page," CreationDate="2018-09-10T14:17:43.993" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16562" PostId="5415" Score="1" Text="Looking forward to your Q&amp;A." CreationDate="2018-09-07T07:21:58.403" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16564" PostId="5415" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I take it this means there's no such question, currently. Ok! Then I'll ask one later today. Hopefully it doesn't get closed as a dupe after 5 minutes ;-)" CreationDate="2018-09-07T08:13:58.070" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="16565" PostId="5415" Score="0" Text="Having your question closed as a duplicate can be frustrating, but at least you would have found a way to ask your question that presumably nobody thought of before... when you have written your Q&amp;A, can you please link there in an answer here?" CreationDate="2018-09-07T12:52:32.563" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16567" PostId="5415" Score="2" Text="@StephanKolassa I've written the Q. I plan to write the A by the end of the day (and I will share the link here) but if anyone wants to answer it before, be my guest." CreationDate="2018-09-07T13:14:42.180" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="16586" PostId="5415" Score="0" Text="@DeltaIV &quot;by the end of the day&quot; :-/" CreationDate="2018-09-10T08:21:55.223" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16587" PostId="5415" Score="1" Text="@amoeba ah, but then Sycorax wrote the currently accepted answer to this question, where he correctly notes that several hours of careful crafting should go in the answer....also, you know: weekend ;-)" CreationDate="2018-09-10T10:25:49.320" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="16592" PostId="5415" Score="0" Text="Sure I understand. But if possible, don't wait too long: you are rapidly losing chances to get on the Hot Network list which would increase the visibility of the thread (and the number of upvotes) by an order of magnitude. @Sycorax'es thread got there right after posting (I think he posted Q and A together or maybe in quick succession) and that brought 100s of upvotes." CreationDate="2018-09-10T21:43:15.007" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16733" PostId="5415" Score="0" Text=":-($\phantom{}\phantom{}$" CreationDate="2018-09-25T20:23:25.307" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16737" PostId="5415" Score="0" Text="@amoeba sorry, you're right! The answer ended up becoming so huge that I could never find the time complete it...I'll try to do better in the next days. Concerning the Hot Network list, I don't think the question ever made it to that list." CreationDate="2018-09-25T22:25:37.413" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="16753" PostId="5415" Score="1" Text="@amoeba at long last, I posted an answer! Looking forward to constructive criticism." CreationDate="2018-09-30T19:04:25.280" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="16556" PostId="5416" Score="6" Text="Furthermore, I think an such an edit can prematurely place a question into the re-open queue: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/196078/225179 &amp; https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/256572/1864816." CreationDate="2018-09-06T13:38:04.763" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16557" PostId="5416" Score="1" Text="@Scortchi Thanks for pointing that out, I wasn't aware of that and it changes the calculus a bit." CreationDate="2018-09-06T13:43:11.287" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="16558" PostId="5416" Score="3" Text="Yes - if I understand right such edits can deprive the OP of their chance to automatically put their question into the re-open queue by editing it." CreationDate="2018-09-06T13:46:39.873" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16559" PostId="5416" Score="1" Text="@Scortchi Those points would seem to settle things clearly in favour of rejecting such edits." CreationDate="2018-09-06T15:51:27.657" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="16566" PostId="5417" Score="5" Text="I understand your reasoning. However I'd like to draw attention to one potential upside from this kind of edits. Namely, these are often the first steps that low-reputation users take in participating in the site, e.g., users who get the +100 network bonus and can therefore immediately edit. Rejecting their edits risks permanently souring them on CV. [The Music.SE community managed to do exactly that to me, giving pretty much your rationale (though for tag edits).](https://music.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2621/23492) Just something to maybe keep in mind." CreationDate="2018-09-07T12:57:52.130" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16568" PostId="5417" Score="5" Text="@StephanKolassa, that looks like pretty shoddy treatment over there. I don't agree w/ their reasoning. I would have approved those edits. I often approve of small edits by newer users here. My main exceptions are closed threads (as above) &amp; trivial edits to old, inactive threads. Often I will choose the `[improve edit]` option for imperfect suggestions, rather than reject. They could have done that at [music.SE]; I doubt their time was so valuable they needed to flatly reject edits that were improvements just b/c they didn't improve the excerpts enough." CreationDate="2018-09-07T13:32:24.217" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16572" PostId="5418" Score="8" Text="*(Note that downvotes on meta reflect disagreement w/ the suggestion, not a disparagement of the quality of the question.)*" CreationDate="2018-09-07T15:05:22.990" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16574" PostId="5418" Score="0" Text="@gung Thanks for clarification! I was a bit confused about the negative record." CreationDate="2018-09-07T15:07:37.827" UserId="163572" />
  <row Id="16576" PostId="5418" Score="5" Text="No problem, @JanKukacka, I wanted to be sure that was clear. I disagree w/ the suggestion (as explained below), but this is a good question &amp; well put forward." CreationDate="2018-09-07T15:10:09.313" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16578" PostId="5418" Score="3" Text="If it would really end up being only 1 or 2 lines, you could add them as a comment to the answer. If it's more substantive / longer than that, you should post them as a complementary answer, IMO." CreationDate="2018-09-07T15:42:36.233" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16583" PostId="5418" Score="2" Text="I am a bit confused about the community wiki thing. So I am not able to comment about that, but there is a bit of a side track and thus I will allow myself to go slightly off-topic and meta-meta:  I do believe that there is some sort of consensus that we wish to have a 'power-user' or additional moderator in the direction of neural networks and machine learning. Could we not fast track this somehow?" CreationDate="2018-09-08T21:12:11.737" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16626" PostId="5418" Score="0" Text="@MartijnWeterings This seems like a perfectly reasonable question to ask in its own thread." CreationDate="2018-09-12T13:58:31.840" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16570" PostId="5419" Score="6" Text="Something that I want to underscore: The loss of votes on my NN thread has consequences beyond preventing me from accumulating additional reputation points. It would also deprive me of a large chunk of the progress towards towards a gold badge in [tag:neural-networks], which would give me more latitude to close-as-dupe [tag:neural-networks] questions. IMHO, obtaining the badge is a good thing for the site overall, since that is one area in particular need of curation." CreationDate="2018-09-07T14:33:39.853" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16571" PostId="5419" Score="0" Text="@Sycorax score obtained before switching to CW is not removed from the author, as far as I understand" CreationDate="2018-09-07T15:04:20.500" UserId="163572" />
  <row Id="16573" PostId="5419" Score="4" Text="My understanding is that CW answers are excluded from consideration for the purposes of awarding the gold badge. While I won't lose pre-CW *reputation points*, the votes on a CW answer won't be counted *towards the badge.*" CreationDate="2018-09-07T15:06:47.650" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16575" PostId="5419" Score="3" Text="@JanKukacka, the rep / score isn't the point in this case. If it's CW, then it doesn't count towards the 200 answers &amp; the net 1k upvotes needed for the gold tag badge. The gold tag badge is needed to have additional privileges wrt curating the tag (viz, the ability to close as a duplicate unilaterally)." CreationDate="2018-09-07T15:07:49.930" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16577" PostId="5419" Score="2" Text="Sycorax+gung: I see. That is a strong argument against wikization." CreationDate="2018-09-07T15:10:58.153" UserId="163572" />
  <row Id="16581" PostId="5419" Score="4" Text="+1. I agree with most of this answer, but not really with the 2nd paragraph. I am a high-rep user who does not &quot;need&quot; more rep, but I certainly still do enjoy getting reputation points... I doubt I am the only one like that :)" CreationDate="2018-09-07T20:13:05.140" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16582" PostId="5419" Score="1" Text="@amoeba, maybe I'm projecting. At this point, I'm really pretty indifferent. It seems I have 37 CW answers; my highest voted is [here](https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/21669/). It was CW when I answered. I've 'lost' 1010 rep as a result... But I'm barely aware of it &amp; on rediscovering that fact I just don't care." CreationDate="2018-09-07T20:22:22.347" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16589" PostId="5422" Score="7" Text="+1.  I would just like to point out that for a long time we have had a canonical *link* to reply to such questions: see https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/3207/919." CreationDate="2018-09-10T13:31:58.783" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="16595" PostId="5423" Score="7" Text="Perhaps more to the point explain that you posted half a dozen answers in rapid succession, all with a link to your site. Most of these posts have now been cleaned up from the promotional link. See also discussion in comments at https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/366319/23810" CreationDate="2018-09-11T05:39:17.410" UserId="23810" />
  <row Id="16596" PostId="5423" Score="8" Text="@tripleee I don't see it as relevant that many answers were posted in quick succession. The answers are related but not identical, and each can stand or fall on their own merits. And OP has removed the links and brought the matter up for discussion here, so I'm inclined to think this is a simple misunderstanding of community norms." CreationDate="2018-09-11T07:52:26.897" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="16597" PostId="5423" Score="13" Text="Regardless of what's allowed, if you want to avoid a negative reaction to hawking your wares my advice would be, rather than writing many short, high-level answers, to write a few detailed ones - perhaps using your solver to illustrate how an optimization method works, or explaining a unique approach it takes to certain problems." CreationDate="2018-09-11T09:26:43.000" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16606" PostId="5423" Score="12" Text="+1 Kudos for having the sensitivity and awareness to bring up this topic." CreationDate="2018-09-11T13:39:41.903" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="16607" PostId="5423" Score="1" Text="@whuber Fortunately, tripleee corrected me and noted that there is a possibility to bring this question. I didn't know about the meta." CreationDate="2018-09-11T13:44:56.273" UserId="48734" />
  <row Id="16610" PostId="5423" Score="3" Text="Aside from the self promotion... I do not think that it is correct to answer a question with a brief *statement* like 'your problem can be solved with this software/algorithm/tool/method, here is a link'." CreationDate="2018-09-11T14:53:59.753" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16611" PostId="5423" Score="0" Text="@MartijnWeterings None of my answers were a brief statement like  'your problem can be solved with this software/algorithm/tool/method, here is a link'." CreationDate="2018-09-11T14:55:49.197" UserId="48734" />
  <row Id="16612" PostId="5423" Score="0" Text="They may have been a bit longer and stated somewhat different. But, in my opinion (and that is just opinion) they where much like that or at least in a similar spirit. Here is a typical example: https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/366310/164061" CreationDate="2018-09-11T14:56:27.233" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16613" PostId="5423" Score="0" Text="@MartijnWeterings Please see https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5402/is-a-quick-and-dirty-answer-better-than-no-answer for a relevant discussion" CreationDate="2018-09-11T14:59:50.110" UserId="48734" />
  <row Id="16614" PostId="5423" Score="4" Text="*&quot;Links to external resources are encouraged, but please add context around the link so your fellow users will have some idea what it is and why it’s there. Always quote the most relevant part of an important link, in case the target site is unreachable or goes permanently offline&quot;* https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-answer  *&quot;Brevity is acceptable, but fuller explanations are better.&quot;*" CreationDate="2018-09-11T15:02:33.863" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16615" PostId="5423" Score="0" Text="As it was mentioned before, the reason the answers were similar (when they were) is due to the fact the questions were similar - essentially about multifidelity optimization and evaluations on data subsets. Unfortunately, the questions were not merged timely (months and years ago)." CreationDate="2018-09-11T15:08:30.637" UserId="48734" />
  <row Id="16616" PostId="5423" Score="4" Text="I was not arguing about similarity of the answers but about the answers being brief statements without any explanation. This might be good for comments or possibly as an answer when you do not have much time or capacity to write a better answer for the moment. But note that the meta-discussion that you link to is mostly about another type of issue. It is specifically about the additional part *better than no answer*. And even then a shorter or incomplete answer should still not be a simple statement or just a link without providing context." CreationDate="2018-09-11T15:13:16.363" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16617" PostId="5423" Score="0" Text="@MartijnWeterings Your assessment does not seem balanced. It focuses on a few particular answers and refers to them as &quot;just a link without providing context&quot; while avoiding the other answers https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/160479/practical-hyperparameter-optimization-random-vs-grid-search/366318#366318, https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/258094/using-genetic-algorithm-for-hyperparameter-optimization/366313#366313 , https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/339437/finding-the-global-minimum-of-a-nonnegative-black-box-polynomial-spline/366302?noredirect=1#comment688212_366302" CreationDate="2018-09-11T15:26:54.147" UserId="48734" />
  <row Id="16618" PostId="5423" Score="0" Text="I was not intending to give a balanced assessment about all of your answers. I just wanted to point out that for some of the answers there would already be issues independent from the self-promotion." CreationDate="2018-09-11T15:38:36.747" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16619" PostId="5423" Score="3" Text="The following four answers are basically like &quot;you can use the ... optimization method&quot;, &quot;this method is fast/can do this/etc&quot;, &quot;here is a link&quot; https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/366319/164061 https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/366310/164061 https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/366306/164061&#xA;https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/366302/164061 Technically you can consider them as answers, but they are very brief with the link occupying most of the information and the link is not explained (if it is helpful at all, it only links to a commercial website that explains nothing further about the question)." CreationDate="2018-09-11T15:49:52.253" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16621" PostId="5423" Score="5" Text="IndieSolver, I don't doubt that you have a deep knowledge of global optimization strategies &amp; the underlying mathematics. But please take a moment to familiarize yourself with how other users have answered similar questions; you can search the site for keywords &amp; sort the results by score. I think that doing this research will give you some helpful context for what makes a good answer. In particular, *it is not sufficient to make a claim without supporting reasoning.* A template: &quot;X is a good way to solve [your problem] because it has Y and Z properties which are important because...&quot;" CreationDate="2018-09-11T15:59:29.033" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16622" PostId="5423" Score="0" Text="@MartijnWeterings &quot;with the link occupying most of the information&quot; this statement is false - please avoid misleading statements. &quot;it only links to a commercial website&quot; it is freemium and is free for academics." CreationDate="2018-09-11T16:06:48.940" UserId="48734" />
  <row Id="16623" PostId="5423" Score="2" Text="@Sycorax thanks for your suggestion. I think that my answer at https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/205727/hyperparameter-optimization-on-large-dataset/366306#366306 nicely followed &quot;X is a good way to solve [your problem] because it has Y and Z properties which are important because...&quot;" CreationDate="2018-09-11T16:10:07.900" UserId="48734" />
  <row Id="16624" PostId="5423" Score="2" Text="@IndieSolver my comment might have been incorrect. But you seem to be very pedantic and misread my intention. This makes it difficult to discuss this topic. When writing 'commercial' I was just copying from the title in this topic. I am not writing an academic article here and intent to be perfect. I am just making a point. I am just someone that clicks on the link of your website and finds nothing else but a commercial product (which yes my also be freemium, but that is besides the point). I am just someone that you might learn from concerning the way how your answers might be perceived." CreationDate="2018-09-11T16:24:31.163" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16625" PostId="5423" Score="0" Text="Regarding 'most of the information'. There is nothing in your answers that explains the link. Thus, it is most of the information. Without clicking on the link a person would not know what is behind it and why it is in the answer. We can discuss this a lot more further, but this at least a (possibly common) way how it may be perceived." CreationDate="2018-09-11T16:30:25.817" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16598" PostId="5424" Score="0" Text="My decision to add links was inspired by the following reply which had +8 score given at https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/160479/practical-hyperparameter-optimization-random-vs-grid-search/366318#366318: &quot;@Marc When you provide a link to something you're involved with, you should make your association with it clear (one or two words can suffice, even something as brief as referring to it as our Optunity should do); as the help on behavior says, &quot;if some ... happen to be about your product or website, that’s okay. However, you must disclose your affiliation&quot;" CreationDate="2018-09-11T11:59:55.650" UserId="48734" />
  <row Id="16599" PostId="5424" Score="0" Text="I disagree with &quot;removing the link did not detract from the quality or message of the answers&quot; I think that after removing the links, most users are left with what they had before - guessing how to deal with their problems and which approach to use. IMHO, providing the link to the solver was providing the actual useful solution." CreationDate="2018-09-11T12:05:27.797" UserId="48734" />
  <row Id="16600" PostId="5424" Score="1" Text="@IndieSolver To your first point: mentioning one's association with a product one is recommending is good practice and a fairly standard norm for openness. That ought to be uncontroversial." CreationDate="2018-09-11T12:27:04.833" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="16602" PostId="5424" Score="5" Text="@IndieSolver As for your second point, we will have to agree to disagree. I have read all your answers (upvoted a couple of them, FWIW) and personally do not see that adding the link helped in any way. If you feel that the answer is not useful without the link, then I'd invite you to edit the answer to make it useful. Or, if you explained in your answer why the link was helpful by following the great advice of Scortchi (&quot;*using your solver to illustrate how an optimization method works, or explaining a unique approach it takes*&quot;), it might make the link more relevant and helpful" CreationDate="2018-09-11T12:38:37.203" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="16603" PostId="5424" Score="1" Text="Thank you for providing your point and answering my question. I guess I was too fast and could do a better job." CreationDate="2018-09-11T12:46:42.250" UserId="48734" />
  <row Id="16604" PostId="5424" Score="9" Text="@IndieSolver You're welcome, and I would like to reiterate that your participation and expertise is welcomed here." CreationDate="2018-09-11T12:47:18.897" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="16608" PostId="5425" Score="4" Text="Is there a difference here between &quot;product&quot; and &quot;scientific paper&quot;? I.e. are there any reservations for citing one's papers? Is it true that one *must* disclose it?" CreationDate="2018-09-11T13:58:01.567" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16609" PostId="5425" Score="4" Text="@amoeba, I would think that one should disclose that they are the author of the cited paper, but I don't think citing papers has the same feel as saying how good your product is (&amp; implicitly that people should buy it). That seems like a good topic for a separate meta question." CreationDate="2018-09-11T14:23:36.380" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16666" PostId="5425" Score="2" Text="gung and @amoeba: At the risk of getting off-topic: I don't see a fundamental difference. In the first place a paper/product may be relevant to the answer. If it is, fine.  And I'm in any particular relation to it, I disclose that. If it is not relevant, it should not be mentioned. In other words, I'd frown on advertising irrelevant papers just the same as advertising irrelevant products. That being said, I think the nature of CV makes it more likely that a paper is relevant, and authors of scientific papers may be may be less pushy in their marketing - so trouble with that is less frequent." CreationDate="2018-09-14T14:13:51.053" UserId="4598" />
  <row Id="16627" PostId="5426" Score="10" Text="I don't think we'd get SE to change the criteria for awarding gold tag badges (see https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/295707/225179 &amp;&#xA;https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/69689/225179), or to grant the corresponding privileges on any other basis. But if we want a moderator election I'm sure they'd arrange one for us." CreationDate="2018-09-12T16:00:43.597" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16628" PostId="5426" Score="5" Text="It's pretty hard to get a gold badge, unless one answers a lot. I have 3k rep in the [pca] tag but &quot;only&quot; 170 answers..." CreationDate="2018-09-12T17:21:18.430" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16629" PostId="5426" Score="7" Text="The Department of the Obvious wishes to point out that receiving up-votes and writing answers are the sole path to the gold badge privileges. I agree with Martijn and amoeba that it is a long road; I am currently about half-way to gold badges for both the [tag:neural-networks] and [tag:machine-learning] fronts. More active voting can help; so can concerted efforts to write canonical answers and close duplicates with the canonical threads as targets." CreationDate="2018-09-12T17:28:10.163" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16630" PostId="5426" Score="6" Text="Tangentially, the gold badge privileges crucially hinge on threads being appropriately tagged. Hence, editing questions to tag questions appropriately is very valuable in this respect. Some users undertake to edit many such questions, and are doing CV.SE a great service." CreationDate="2018-09-12T17:33:18.877" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16631" PostId="5426" Score="1" Text="I would as well not expect the people that run SE to change the badge system that easily. However, I do think that the question here has a slightly different angle than the two previous questions at the general stack-overflow meta. Or at least there is a new argument which is about the role of tag badges in the management/moderation of the sites. I care much less about the other badges which are just shiny additions for people's trophy cases." CreationDate="2018-09-12T17:33:42.670" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16632" PostId="5426" Score="2" Text="Although I believe we will eventually take the more pragmatic road, I hope to see that we can discuss this topic also more freely (not necessarily only pragmatic with the possible restrictions of the SE owners in mind), or at least bring in new ideas or show the current 'public opinion'. It would stop possible useful discussion before it can start if we always assume beforehand that SE is not gonna change anyway." CreationDate="2018-09-12T17:36:34.063" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16635" PostId="5426" Score="2" Text="I didn't mean to imply it wasn't worth discussing changes to the badge system; just to point out a path of least resistance. Your graph does make a compelling case, in that acknowledged experts in their fields are taking ages &amp; many posts to be awarded gold tag badges." CreationDate="2018-09-12T18:46:34.890" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16636" PostId="5426" Score="3" Text="Note that editing a thread to add the right tag does not confer the ability to use the gold tag badge duplicate hammer. The tag needs to have already been there." CreationDate="2018-09-12T20:35:44.963" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16637" PostId="5426" Score="3" Text="It's also worth considering the history of the SE system. It started w/ SO, which really was the model everything was built around. On SO, it just isn't that hard to write 200 answers about R, Python, C++, Java, etc. It's more of an issue to get to 1k upvotes, since upvoting is much lower there, but in general I think gold tag badges are *much* more doable on SO than on most of the smaller sites." CreationDate="2018-09-12T20:44:02.490" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16643" PostId="5426" Score="5" Text="@gung I fully agree about SO. I find it annoying to have enough rep but not enough answers for the gold badge. It means in principle I could quickly write 30 crappy answers in [pca], and even if they all remain with 0 score or even downvoted, I would get the gold badge. This is a weird incentive." CreationDate="2018-09-12T21:40:40.400" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16645" PostId="5426" Score="4" Text="@amoeba, I'm pretty sure. When I had a gold tag badge, but before I was a mod, there was a situation where someone posted a question &amp; I closed it unilaterally as a duplicate. The OP promptly deleted the thread &amp; reasked the Q, verbatim, but w/o the tag. I edited the thread to add the tag, but couldn't close unilaterally." CreationDate="2018-09-13T00:44:29.840" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16646" PostId="5426" Score="4" Text="Also, I actually think you should just go ahead &amp; post another 30 answers to [pca] Q's somewhere, even if the answers are brief &amp; middling. The site would be better off if you had the tag badge." CreationDate="2018-09-13T00:48:01.930" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16663" PostId="5426" Score="0" Text="@amoeba: note that it's not 1,000 *reputation*, but 1,000 *upvotes* you need. The difference is roughly a factor of 10, last time I looked..." CreationDate="2018-09-14T13:21:00.903" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16664" PostId="5426" Score="0" Text="@StephanKolassa Oh yes, thanks. I do have 3k upvotes in [pca] though :) That's what I meant." CreationDate="2018-09-14T13:33:42.557" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16668" PostId="5426" Score="0" Text="@Martijn Re your plot -- I am pretty sure I don't have a gold tag badge in clustering." CreationDate="2018-09-15T06:39:38.880" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="16669" PostId="5426" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b that is the disadvantage from doing things manually in a spreadsheet program. I made the graph by manually copying from https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/badges?tab=tags&amp;filter=gold" CreationDate="2018-09-15T06:52:19.807" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16670" PostId="5426" Score="2" Text="https://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/60719/gold-tag-badges might be easier for next time" CreationDate="2018-09-15T07:50:45.240" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="16633" PostId="5427" Score="1" Text="I did not really ask those two questions explicitly/directly, or it was not my intention. I do however agree that these questions are *part* or the issue that I raise (the fact that the mechanism of golden tag badges and the privileges associated with them are not doing their job as CV.SE). Machine-learning and neural-networks are one thing. Principal component analysis, which amoeba mentioned, is another thing (although in that place the issue is less problematic due to the topic being more well known among users and moderators)." CreationDate="2018-09-12T17:58:23.137" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16634" PostId="5427" Score="2" Text="Possibly I should have stated those questions more explicitly on machine-learning and neural-networks specifically. However somehow I wanted to frame the question more in this general way about the gold tag badges and the mechanism how SE provides more privileges to other uses. I feel we should at least go past this route before we think about moderators, which I feel is more like a work-around and not really like a solution to the underlying problem." CreationDate="2018-09-12T18:01:06.260" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16647" PostId="5427" Score="0" Text="@MartijnWeterings and of course we could have another election and the community could choose someone with zero knowledge of machine learning and neural networks." CreationDate="2018-09-13T08:09:25.357" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="16648" PostId="5427" Score="1" Text="@mdewey I do not think that the community that asks for an election, because they feel there is a need of moderators with different expertise and specifically machine learning and neural networks, will choose someone with zero knowledge of machine learning and neural networks. another thing is whether the election is gonna have a lot of choice anyway." CreationDate="2018-09-13T08:14:05.707" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16651" PostId="5427" Score="1" Text="@MartijnWeterings well you have more faith in elections than I do although perhaps your country is more sensible than some anglophone countries I could mention." CreationDate="2018-09-13T12:40:07.957" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="16652" PostId="5427" Score="2" Text="@mdewey that is a very cynical approach to elections. I do not think that elections here would go in the same way as elections for politics. I think that it is not possible, or at least not likely, for an insufficiently competent person to become moderator here. (although that doesn't mean I would be in favor of more moderators, I guess that superusers would be enough)" CreationDate="2018-09-13T16:03:46.887" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16653" PostId="5427" Score="5" Text="From my observations of previous moderator elections, my view is that the candidates have ample technical knowledge. The main consideration that I make is that we want moderators who are fair-minded and even-tempered; this is the larger part of how I make my votes. For me, at least, it would be a shift to look towards the moderator's technical knowledge as the *primary* consideration; currently, I look to interpersonal skills first." CreationDate="2018-09-13T16:08:24.810" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16657" PostId="5429" Score="4" Text="Be aware that some vote bulk up/down-vote actions are automatically reversed, and other kinds of misbehavior around voting can result in permanent bans. I don't know much about the policies around this, but I would tread carefully." CreationDate="2018-09-13T23:21:00.680" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16658" PostId="5429" Score="0" Text="@Sycorax Thank you, I agree it's borderline and don't plan to undertake anything unilaterally. I bring it up here for discussion." CreationDate="2018-09-14T05:38:51.597" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="16661" PostId="5429" Score="2" Text="I would feel uncomfortable about voting for posts which lie outside my range of interests even in a good cause. However, if @Sycorax were approaching the reuqired number of posts and short of rep would it work if one of us awarded a bounty on one of the answers (like the one about why my NN does not work)? Does anyone know if bountied reputation counts for the tag?" CreationDate="2018-09-14T11:28:27.577" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="16662" PostId="5429" Score="4" Text="@mdewey, it's not rep, it's the net upvotes on answers for the tag." CreationDate="2018-09-14T12:04:47.953" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16719" PostId="5429" Score="2" Text="+1 As I have argued elsewhere, high-rep users should generally upvote more on CV, even if an answer is not as elegant as it can possibly get, so upvoting more on posts of other high-rep users who tend to give good answers sounds like a good thing." CreationDate="2018-09-25T12:06:58.847" UserId="67799" />
  <row Id="16665" PostId="5430" Score="8" Text="(-1) Other than a reaction of No!!! I'd like to underline that you can think privately of CV as &quot;stats&quot; if you like but its public focus is explicit as &quot;statistics, machine learning, data analysis, data mining, and data visualization&quot;, so statistics in a very broad and generous sense." CreationDate="2018-09-14T14:12:27.347" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16667" PostId="5430" Score="7" Text="While I disagree with this answer, it is helpful because it illustrates that there is a  misunderstanding about what is on-topic here among some people." CreationDate="2018-09-14T14:39:33.773" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="19056" PostId="5430" Score="0" Text="Devil's advocate: if CV was rolled into DS, DS would be a lot like SO itself in that it would be a huge omnibus Q&amp;A site, rather than a topic-specific one. I don't think that's a bad thing." CreationDate="2019-09-15T16:32:48.863" UserId="36229" />
  <row Id="16654" PostId="5431" Score="8" Text="Ooooh boy, the [tag:machine-learning] tag is a bit of a mess... I agree with the sentiment that tags need to be correctly applied, but I think the [tag:machine-learning] tag has its own issues which should be addressed separately; I do not think that it is a good example for tag hygiene because its usage widely deviates from its description in the tag wiki (suggesting that either the wiki or its usage need to be revised)" CreationDate="2018-09-13T16:46:32.907" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16655" PostId="5431" Score="0" Text="@Sycorax Well, I mentioned [tag:machine-learning] because it is mentioned by OP. I see not guidance in the tag wiki though." CreationDate="2018-09-13T17:25:41.873" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="16656" PostId="5432" Score="2" Text="The neural networks questions (number of CNN filters &amp; dropout) seem much like question we have under [tag:conv-neural-network] and [tag:dropout]." CreationDate="2018-09-13T22:21:28.247" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16659" PostId="5432" Score="2" Text="Six of those questions seem perfectly on-topic here, two on-topic at Stack Overflow, &amp; one perhaps better suited for Computational Science; I can't see much difference in the style of asking. Two (on circular predictors &amp; on evaluation of classifiers) I recognize as already having been asked here, with less irrelevant &amp; more comprehensive answers respectively." CreationDate="2018-09-14T07:11:19.427" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16671" PostId="5432" Score="3" Text="Note that &quot;time-stamps in ridge regression&quot; is explicitly asking how to represent time of day as a predictor (so that a minute to midnight is as close to a minute past midnight as a minute to three is to a minute past three). If it had been asked on CV, I don't doubt it would have been quickly identified &amp; closed as a duplicate, whereas it's still awaiting an adequate answer on DS. If there's a subset of questions that are on-topic on both sites, &amp; if, as your sample suggests, they make up over half of the DS questions, then the question has to be asked -  What good's that doing anyone?" CreationDate="2018-09-15T20:51:33.460" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16672" PostId="5432" Score="1" Text="@Scortchi The obvious conclusion is that OP asked their [tag:circular-statistics] question on datascience.SE because OP wanted a *data science* answer, not a *statistics* answer. ;-)" CreationDate="2018-09-15T22:47:13.407" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16687" PostId="5432" Score="1" Text="@Sycorax: Quite. My hope's that with time DS will get more picky about what kind of questions it accepts, rather like CV has got. After all, what Data Science actually is may be obscure, but there seems to be at least general agreement that it can be represented by a Venn diagram, in which its scope is represented by the *intersection* of other fields, not their union." CreationDate="2018-09-18T14:44:41.930" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16704" PostId="5434" Score="2" Text="Admittedly, only 6 of our moderators are regularly active these days. Also, as far as closing questions is concerned, moderators are not the only party involved. SO has 200x more users who may participate in the closing review queue (~52k) than CV (261)." CreationDate="2018-09-20T13:47:15.193" UserId="163572" />
  <row Id="16716" PostId="5435" Score="0" Text="This has already been asked on Meta main: [Is cross-posting a question on multiple Stack Exchange sites permitted if the question is on-topic for each site?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/64068/is-cross-posting-a-question-on-multiple-stack-exchange-sites-permitted-if-the-qu?answertab=votes#tab-top). With (currently) 346 votes for the question and the top answer scoring 172 (with 46 down) it is asked and answered. If it appears that it's a duplicate question, even from a different user, a comment referring to the other post can be helpful. With cross-site issues check main Meta 1st." CreationDate="2018-09-25T04:58:54.657" UserId="197829" />
  <row Id="16718" PostId="5435" Score="1" Text="That is about whether it is permitted. My question is about what to do." CreationDate="2018-09-25T10:41:41.627" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="16720" PostId="5435" Score="0" Text="The second highest voted answer contains a comment that it's a condensed version of the top answer, perhaps it is better: &quot;If you might have slightly better odds of getting an answer by posting it on two sites, well, by gum, why not maximize your odds by posting it on twenty sites!  &#xA;&#xA;There are some questions which fall into grey areas between sites, and I think it's OK to ask and delete, then re-ask if you feel you have asked on the wrong site.  &#xA;&#xA;But as a general rule, do not cross-post questions, please. Pick a site and go with it.&quot; --- So comment and ask, or in your case DIY." CreationDate="2018-09-25T12:32:42.900" UserId="197829" />
  <row Id="16673" PostId="5436" Score="1" Text="To clarify: you are saying that we should *not* close such a Q here? Peter linked to a review queue and it seems there are already 4 votes to close." CreationDate="2018-09-17T12:12:38.953" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16674" PostId="5436" Score="1" Text="@amoeba: The votes to close in this case are as *unclear*; we don't have a *cross-posted* close reason. Deleting would be the appropriate action, if any action's to be taken." CreationDate="2018-09-17T14:02:23.567" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16675" PostId="5437" Score="2" Text="I add the link to the cross-post to avoid peoples' time being wasted. Many incidents of cross-posting are from new users, unfamiliar with SE rules; so if someone posts the same question here &amp; on another site, then comes back later on to find it closed/deleted on both - it does give an impression of heavy-handed officiousness, I feel. (-1)" CreationDate="2018-09-17T14:28:36.650" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16679" PostId="5437" Score="1" Text="@Scortchi In his answer, gung also suggests closing cross-posted questions. Do you feel gung's answer is more reasonable than mdewey's or would you -1 it too?" CreationDate="2018-09-18T07:31:17.577" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16680" PostId="5437" Score="2" Text="I think this is a bit  harsh, especially for new users." CreationDate="2018-09-18T09:59:46.227" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="16686" PostId="5437" Score="1" Text="@amoeba: They're both reasonable, but a little too strict, in my opinion. -1 too. But I think we should be consistent, &amp; of course I'd be willing to change what I currently do if people want that." CreationDate="2018-09-18T12:56:18.763" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16676" PostId="5438" Score="2" Text="You close it with what reason? As Scortchi wrote, &quot;we don't have a cross-posted close reason&quot;." CreationDate="2018-09-17T20:28:17.077" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16677" PostId="5438" Score="1" Text="@amoeba, we have an open ended off topic reason, where you leave a comment explaining what the issue is. I close as off topic because it's cross posted." CreationDate="2018-09-18T00:56:06.390" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16678" PostId="5438" Score="4" Text="This feels wrong to me because an on-topic Q that was cross-posted is (by definition) *not* off-topic." CreationDate="2018-09-18T07:28:56.717" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16681" PostId="5438" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, the phrase &quot;off-topic&quot; is a little bit ambiguous: it can be literally *about a different topic*, or it can generally mean that the question is outside of the defined limits for questions on the site in some way. Note that people commonly say things like, 'this is off topic because it's opinion based [unclear, too broad, etc]'. They aren't saying that it's about a different topic from statistics because it asks for opinions, just that it needs to be closed." CreationDate="2018-09-18T12:11:57.597" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16682" PostId="5438" Score="0" Text="We don't, &amp; can't, have prelisted close options for every possible reason. There needs to be a fill-in-the-blank option. We do have that, it just happens to be nested under *off topic*. We could edit the starter text from, &quot;I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because&quot;, to &quot;I'm voting to close this question as outside the defined limits for questions on this site because&quot;, or something like that, but that seems like a hassle to me, &amp; doesn't really seem necessary in context." CreationDate="2018-09-18T12:14:56.660" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16683" PostId="5438" Score="0" Text="Another possibility is deleting, but these are typically new users, &amp; it's hard for non-mods (&amp; new users especially) to find their deleted Q's &amp; figure out what happened &amp; why. The close mechanism is a lighter touch; it'll be easier for new users to understand, &amp; it's easier to modify &amp; reopen those threads." CreationDate="2018-09-18T12:19:13.063" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16696" PostId="5441" Score="7" Text="We lose our custom up &amp; down facing normal ;distributions for voting." CreationDate="2018-09-19T19:09:31.030" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16697" PostId="5441" Score="5" Text="The new design wastes to much screen real estate! The new column on the left is the culprit. Any good reason for that? Prefers the old design." CreationDate="2018-09-19T19:58:03.243" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="16698" PostId="5441" Score="2" Text="@kjetilbhalvorsen we have a lot of big plans for the left navigation in the future. It will give a home to some features that have been long-requested, such as [saved searches/custom question lists](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/312781/custom-question-lists-finding-questions-you-can-answer). Right now, it is somewhat sparse but we're hoping that everyone will eventually find it a great hub for content they use frequently." CreationDate="2018-09-19T20:38:16.257" UserId="202450" />
  <row Id="16699" PostId="5441" Score="3" Text="Catija: Then why not switch it off by default until those plans are ready to be implemented?" CreationDate="2018-09-19T20:41:27.450" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16700" PostId="5441" Score="2" Text="@Scortchi Because hiding those links by default behind a completely new hamburger menu make things much more confusing for many users, particularly users who are viewing the site anonymously (and don't have site settings at all) or who have just created accounts. Most users who access these sites (particularly SO) never create accounts or aren't constantly logged in. We have to be certain that the navigation is easy to find for everyone and consistent." CreationDate="2018-09-19T20:47:26.167" UserId="202450" />
  <row Id="16701" PostId="5441" Score="3" Text="There is another change, probably unintended: On this machine (and all my other machines), in the old design, posts that I have visited before (on the same machine), and posts not visited before, have a slight title color difference. With the new design that disappeared. Get it back!" CreationDate="2018-09-20T08:24:47.447" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="16702" PostId="5441" Score="4" Text="@kjetilbhalvorsen &amp; everyone else: I was just thinking, it'll be better if we raise issues in answers, one per answer, else this post could become a terrible mess quite quickly." CreationDate="2018-09-20T11:56:17.997" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="17026" PostId="5441" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b It'd be really helpful if you could write this up in an answer and include some screenshots. You have a lot of concerns that are important but I'm not seeing what you are, so I'm not precisely sure what's wrong. :)" CreationDate="2018-12-14T05:08:14.553" UserId="202450" />
  <row Id="17042" PostId="5441" Score="2" Text="Having dug through and found an old page I had saved on my machine I was able to do a comparison. The biggest difference is when I try to make the text larger to make it easier to read (which I used to do often -- the old layout accommodates this readily but the new one is forced to wrap lines much more making it harder to read long questions and answers.) ... I've deleted my previous comments, but I may post a new one later." CreationDate="2018-12-21T07:35:52.873" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="16690" PostId="5442" Score="4" Text="I think the issue is that we need a better *question*.  Something like &quot;How can coincidences be analyzed using statistics and probability?&quot; (although maybe not exactly that)." CreationDate="2018-09-19T13:28:30.367" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="16691" PostId="5442" Score="1" Text="Could you try to write that?" CreationDate="2018-09-19T13:29:10.190" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="16692" PostId="5442" Score="4" Text="I think what I have is a good first draft.  Maybe others will have suggestions for improving it." CreationDate="2018-09-19T13:31:02.030" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="16695" PostId="5442" Score="5" Text="@PeterFlom, you could just post the question, &amp; people could comment &amp;/or edit as needed." CreationDate="2018-09-19T15:13:20.640" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17905" PostId="5442" Score="0" Text="@Peter Flom: Did you have any advance? We need that question so we can close as dups, for instance today this one:  https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/193091/sexuality-of-dog-owner" CreationDate="2019-08-11T09:35:55.023" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="17906" PostId="5442" Score="0" Text="@kjetilbhalvorsen I don't understand what you are asking for." CreationDate="2019-08-11T11:55:34.103" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="17907" PostId="5442" Score="0" Text="@Peter Flom: I just referred to your own old comments in this thread. ??? Or do you know of some other question now that can be used as a canonical dup target?" CreationDate="2019-08-11T20:10:44.497" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="17908" PostId="5442" Score="0" Text="I don't.  But I think we can mark it as a dup of yours and then change the wording or something.  Or maybe one of us can ask a canonical one and mark both as dups." CreationDate="2019-08-11T20:49:23.780" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="17909" PostId="5442" Score="0" Text="For now I vote to close as a dup of my, and we can change if we got something better." CreationDate="2019-08-11T20:51:38.927" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="16703" PostId="5443" Score="9" Text="(+1) Perhaps even a greater difference in contrast than we have now would make things easier for the visually impaired, &amp; colours could be chosen to help most dichromats." CreationDate="2018-09-20T13:22:47.897" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16705" PostId="5443" Score="3" Text="+1 fof the color blinds" CreationDate="2018-09-20T16:42:09.127" UserId="192854" />
  <row Id="16763" PostId="5443" Score="3" Text="This has been fixed! Thanks for pointing it out. :)" CreationDate="2018-10-04T16:31:49.060" UserId="202450" />
  <row Id="16806" PostId="5443" Score="0" Text="I tried it, is perfect now." CreationDate="2018-10-14T12:03:14.503" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="16709" PostId="5444" Score="0" Text="Main and meta themes are still different - main themes are colorful (depending on the site), meta are largely greyscale. The navigation are the same, as far as I'm aware - can you use some images to show what you mean by them being different? The visible layout of the sites has to be reformatted to fit a single unified back-end layout. We can't unify the back-end without changing the visible site. We need to have the links and menus in the same place on all of the sites. Some sites had the main logo in the center, for example, which we can't do any more." CreationDate="2018-09-24T16:19:34.620" UserId="202450" />
  <row Id="16711" PostId="5444" Score="0" Text="@Catija Unified back-end is fine. My question is about whether the front-end is gonna look different eventually? I have added two images. Except for different logo's there is no difference. This is unclear to me. What is the unification plan, just back-end or also front-end? What do we need to test, back-end or also front-end? In case of the latter, does this mean that the current similar front-end designs that are being tested are intentional and close to final?" CreationDate="2018-09-24T21:44:18.370" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16713" PostId="5444" Score="0" Text="The navigation is the same style but different in content (e.g search on cross validated vs search on cross validated meta). That is confusing because it is not easy to see what site is open in the active browser tab and one will use the navigation for the wrong site (or at least this happens to me now)." CreationDate="2018-09-24T21:53:36.950" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16714" PostId="5444" Score="0" Text="The views you have in your answer are the final views of what this site will look like once it's turned on. But I've looked at this site with the old style on and this isn't really a huge change. Being able to tell the difference between main and meta is just as difficult as it is because the CV.SE design colors aren't bold enough for the monochromatic version to be that different from the full-color one. The background on main is pale blue green and on meta, is grey. They're similar but not the same. The artwork in the upper right and the footer bar color are also absent on meta." CreationDate="2018-09-25T01:40:42.263" UserId="202450" />
  <row Id="16715" PostId="5444" Score="0" Text="On main, also, the question titles are blue while on meta they are black. Usernames/links on main are red and they're orange on meta. There are subtle differences. All of that said, if there are ways we can make these differences clearer for you, let me know. What, specifically makes the two too similar - particularly considering the old layout's similarities. What about the old design told you &quot;this is meta&quot; vs &quot;this is main&quot;?" CreationDate="2018-09-25T01:43:36.997" UserId="202450" />
  <row Id="16717" PostId="5444" Score="0" Text="@Catija the old site had a distinctive background colour." CreationDate="2018-09-25T06:29:33.203" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16721" PostId="5444" Score="0" Text="Very pale yellow is not what I'd call &quot;distinctive&quot;. Old main and meta https://i.stack.imgur.com/5UxNp.png New main and meta: https://i.stack.imgur.com/0X2Ok.png I'm not saying we can't make adjustments to this but I don't think that switching back to this very pale yellow is going to really do any good... and that's what I'm asking - **how** can we make this better?" CreationDate="2018-09-25T13:01:37.930" UserId="202450" />
  <row Id="16725" PostId="5444" Score="1" Text="@Catija the different background simply worked for me and helped me in making a distinction between websites. I can't help you much further except for stating this fact and telling you that the change is annoying me by making me not anymore able to distinguish the sites sufficiently such that I end up with more clicks (due to mistaking the websites) when navigating the websites. Possibly the slightly different colours of the links may help me in the future, but what I do know for sure is that the different background helped me for certain." CreationDate="2018-09-25T14:39:16.673" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16710" PostId="5445" Score="0" Text="With responsive design, the layout is designed to be functional on a variety of screen sizes, from large 4k monitors to smart phones. When browsing with a narrower page, that white space goes away. Also, we need the page elements to be in roughly the same place so they're easy to find. The top bar and banner are on every site (except for SO), and the header for each view is filled with slightly different content. Compare the Home page to the Unanswered Questions page, for example. There's much less whitespace on the latter because there's more content in the header." CreationDate="2018-09-24T16:23:45.747" UserId="202450" />
  <row Id="16724" PostId="5445" Score="6" Text="@Catija: Could we have a design like Stack Overflow's, with the site name on the top bar &amp; no banner? (What is the graphic on the top right by the way?)" CreationDate="2018-09-25T14:22:00.907" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16726" PostId="5445" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi I've had that asked on a couple of sites - we need all of the non-SO sites to have the same format for their layouts. There are a lot of sites that are already sad about the shorter height of the heading and how it hurts their unique designs. I'm not sure what the design here is supposed to represent but it looks like a data visualization sort of like the one used in this article: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/408104/mapping-the-internet/ I can see what we used for inspiration for it, though." CreationDate="2018-09-25T15:21:47.653" UserId="202450" />
  <row Id="16727" PostId="5445" Score="3" Text="@Catija: Why do you need non-SO sites to have the same format, if you're maintaining two formats anyway? What's special about SO?" CreationDate="2018-09-25T16:18:21.157" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16728" PostId="5445" Score="1" Text="Other than that it's SO? It's not a matter of having two formats. It's a matter of having three or four or dozens... or 174... We couldn't just give y'all the SO top bar. There are other things about it that don't apply here. We'd have to create a third top bar for the sites that don't want a header... which then means we have to make sure that when we fix things for one top bar, it gets &quot;fixed&quot; on the others. Also, this is the Stack Exchange Network. Having the SE logo in the top bar is practically our only network branding. We need the sites to be tied together. @Scortchi" CreationDate="2018-09-25T16:21:44.840" UserId="202450" />
  <row Id="16729" PostId="5445" Score="3" Text="@Catija: Sorry, I don't follow you. I meant: why's a banner a good idea for all sites except Stack Overflow? And the only thing I can see that would need changing in the top bar is the button site name &amp; logo - what else is there? And why would removing the banner for sites that don't want it imply you have to remove the header for sites that don't want it - is it a slippery slope?" CreationDate="2018-09-25T16:38:22.377" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16730" PostId="5445" Score="0" Text="Because many sites, particularly sites like Worldbuilding, SF&amp;F, M&amp;TV, Arqade... would hate not having a banner. They're already very upset that we're rescaling the banner to be shorter and removing or minimizing the artwork in it. These sites love their custom elements and don't want to lose them. We're already struggling to convince them that the changes we're making are necessary. Getting rid of the banner entirely would be even worse. Stack Overflow doesn't have that need. They've been using their top bar for navigation for a couple of years." CreationDate="2018-09-25T16:42:50.097" UserId="202450" />
  <row Id="16731" PostId="5445" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi The SO banner includes Teams integration, which doesn't exist for any other site on the network. It's also a different color." CreationDate="2018-09-25T16:44:33.180" UserId="202450" />
  <row Id="16732" PostId="5445" Score="5" Text="IMHO the less customized each SE is, the better. On Reddit they have an option to switch to the normalized template for each sub instead of suffering through all the customized templates, I very much enjoy the option. I just want QA." CreationDate="2018-09-25T18:44:16.910" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="16734" PostId="5445" Score="0" Text="That sort of thing may be possible in the distant future but won't be part of this update." CreationDate="2018-09-25T21:22:47.920" UserId="202450" />
  <row Id="16707" PostId="5447" Score="11" Text="Look through [these search results](https://stats.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&amp;q=assumption*%20residual*%20normal*%20score%3a1%20answers%3a1%20-logistic)." CreationDate="2018-09-23T16:10:51.667" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="16708" PostId="5447" Score="11" Text="@whuber: your search-fu leaves me speechless." CreationDate="2018-09-23T17:23:35.307" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16752" PostId="5447" Score="0" Text="Here is another search I have found useful for locating **already used** targets:  https://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=assumption*+residual*+normal*+++-logistic+duplicate%3Ayes   it is indirect, a direct way for searching for already used targets would be useful!" CreationDate="2018-09-30T09:50:41.320" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="16722" PostId="5448" Score="0" Text="Deciding where these break points should be is part of what the design team is still figuring out (along with what to do with the right sidebar when it does collapse away). They're not optimal right now, you're completely correct. Most of the narrower views are intended for mobile, which still has to be optimized." CreationDate="2018-09-25T13:39:02.353" UserId="202450" />
  <row Id="16723" PostId="5448" Score="0" Text="@Catija: The layout on my phone's not too bad now in fact. It's more the middle-width views where the layout's poor; &amp; that doesn't just affect people with mobile devices, but anyone who wants a PDF viewer or an IDE's script window, say, open on one side of the screen, &amp; a browser with CV open on the other." CreationDate="2018-09-25T14:13:10.963" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16735" PostId="5448" Score="0" Text="@Catija: By when do the design team plan to have it figured out? Before the changes go live?" CreationDate="2018-09-25T22:17:16.607" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16736" PostId="5448" Score="0" Text="I don't know. It's not something specific to this site, though. It won't prevent the theme update for this site going out any more than it prevented the other ~30 themes from going out." CreationDate="2018-09-25T22:23:47.137" UserId="202450" />
  <row Id="16745" PostId="5451" Score="11" Text="If it's a duplicate, I'd mark it as a duplicate, it's far more helpful then closing as off-topic. If it's not a duplicate and the non-software part can be answered, you can answer it mentioning briefly that you'd focus on the non-software part because we're not a software help list." CreationDate="2018-09-27T10:23:17.603" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="16746" PostId="5451" Score="2" Text="Thanks @Tim, that's very rational. I'll follow your advice. Of course only the non-software part would be a duplicate, thus I'll both flag and leave a comment explaining that the software part is OT." CreationDate="2018-09-27T10:40:58.167" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="16748" PostId="5451" Score="1" Text="I agree w/ @Tim. If you find a suitable duplicate target, leave a comment &amp; flag the thread. In the interim, I closed it as off topic (&amp; too broad)." CreationDate="2018-09-27T18:39:51.693" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16749" PostId="5451" Score="5" Text="@Tim: do you want to post your comment(s) as an answer? [Better to have a short answer than no answer at all.](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5326/1352) Anyone who has a better answer can post it." CreationDate="2018-09-27T19:34:30.560" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16790" PostId="5454" Score="1" Text="As noted in the comments of Frank's answer. This won't be possible as part of this round of design changes and I can't make any guarantees that it will ever be possible. At this time, all non-SO sites **must** have a header bar." CreationDate="2018-10-10T05:05:54.413" UserId="202450" />
  <row Id="16765" PostId="5456" Score="0" Text="That looks like [this post](https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/369191/202450), I think?" CreationDate="2018-10-04T16:39:57.613" UserId="202450" />
  <row Id="16766" PostId="5456" Score="0" Text="Yes - though I've seen it on others since, here &amp; on Mathematics. Sorry, I should've thought to include a link." CreationDate="2018-10-04T16:42:07.900" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16767" PostId="5456" Score="0" Text="I'll have them look into this. I'm not sure whether it's fixable or how it would be fixed. Is there a way to wrap the equation in the longest line that still makes sense?" CreationDate="2018-10-04T16:43:59.157" UserId="202450" />
  <row Id="16768" PostId="5456" Score="4" Text="@Catija: It's a bit like hyphenating words: there are good &amp; bad places to put the line break. Unless an algorithm  already exists it might be best to have a scroll bar appear when displayed maths doesn't fit in its column, as with code." CreationDate="2018-10-04T17:21:24.410" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="17087" PostId="5456" Score="0" Text="@Catija: Any news?" CreationDate="2019-01-08T14:07:30.010" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="17397" PostId="5456" Score="0" Text="Similar request got marked review on MSE, so should be getting some info soon. https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/325870/add-a-horizontal-scrollbar-to-mathjax-formula-blocks" CreationDate="2019-04-03T22:38:43.683" UserId="202450" />
  <row Id="17398" PostId="5456" Score="0" Text="@Catija: Thanks!" CreationDate="2019-04-03T22:40:12.493" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="17810" PostId="5456" Score="0" Text="@Catija: &quot;Soon&quot;?" CreationDate="2019-06-27T04:59:20.923" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="19640" PostId="5456" Score="0" Text="@Catija: Thank you, &amp; please pass on our thanks to the developer." CreationDate="2020-01-10T01:27:27.370" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16769" PostId="5458" Score="2" Text="Possible hesitance on that one because the earlier question is either more general (if the X's are independent) or less general (if they're not MVN). Question probably should have been clarified instead but I have closed as duplicate as you suggest and OP can still clarify and flag if that's not sufficient. [Edit: I see OP indicates independence in comments but has not said so in the Q; so the original is more general, in which case there may be closer duplicates]" CreationDate="2018-10-05T02:43:22.127" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="16771" PostId="5459" Score="2" Text="It looks on topic; but given this is not the actual question, it's not clear the extent to which you're better off asking here or there." CreationDate="2018-10-05T12:51:14.867" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="16772" PostId="5459" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b ok: I'll write the full question, so that it's more clear. Give me an hour, top." CreationDate="2018-10-05T12:57:55.197" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="16778" PostId="5459" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b done, let me know what you think about it now." CreationDate="2018-10-05T13:32:06.360" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="16779" PostId="5459" Score="8" Text="It's on topic on either site. I would guess it's a better fit on [math.SE], but as @Tim notes, you are likely to get different kinds / styles of answers between the two sites, so you should probably choose based on your preference for the style of answer that would most benefit you." CreationDate="2018-10-05T13:52:04.930" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16781" PostId="5459" Score="0" Text="@gung [question asked here](https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/370556/58675)." CreationDate="2018-10-07T08:10:51.110" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="16782" PostId="5460" Score="0" Text="[question asked here on CV](https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/370556/58675)." CreationDate="2018-10-07T08:11:01.763" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="16770" PostId="5461" Score="1" Text="It's a general bug. I've seen it reported a few times. Thanks for letting us know. We're working on fixing it. The profile pages are complicated!" CreationDate="2018-10-05T12:28:19.017" UserId="202450" />
  <row Id="16773" PostId="5462" Score="13" Text="It happens all the time." CreationDate="2018-10-05T13:00:19.193" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="16774" PostId="5462" Score="4" Text="Right, but is it the algorithm for surfacing questions on the main site or because someone is like &quot;I really like that whuber fellow let me just go and upvote all of his threads&quot;" CreationDate="2018-10-05T13:01:26.613" UserId="17359" />
  <row Id="16776" PostId="5462" Score="1" Text="It's not the former.  I couldn't tell whether it's the latter or not." CreationDate="2018-10-05T13:03:45.670" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="16777" PostId="5462" Score="0" Text="See https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5111/odd-upvoting-pattern to reassure you you are not alone." CreationDate="2018-10-05T13:08:52.330" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="16780" PostId="5462" Score="2" Text="Possible duplicate of [Odd upvoting pattern?](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5111/odd-upvoting-pattern)" CreationDate="2018-10-05T15:53:52.500" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16785" PostId="5462" Score="5" Text="I don't think stalking is ever funny. It can be horrific.  I don't want to edit out the mention but I would suggest that you do, or at least change the word. Watching out for someone's contributions  because you've admired their work is entirely natural, indeed a really good idea." CreationDate="2018-10-08T11:50:58.687" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16787" PostId="5462" Score="6" Text="It is an alien form of life that is trying to communicate to the most intelligent people on earth by placing secret messages in voting behaviors all over the forums in the world. People proficient enough to discover the patterns that are different from human effects will be allowed to obtain the secret knowledge from these aliens." CreationDate="2018-10-08T13:42:14.593" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16788" PostId="5462" Score="4" Text="@MartijnWeterings If so, there must be other aliens occasionally downvoting my answers without giving any reasons and certainly not without providing different answers. Those are the aliens I worry about." CreationDate="2018-10-08T13:58:24.297" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16789" PostId="5462" Score="0" Text="@generic_user I have done exactly what you describe on more than one occasion." CreationDate="2018-10-09T04:03:04.310" UserId="36229" />
  <row Id="16783" PostId="5463" Score="6" Text="Incidentally, sometimes questions with un-upvoted answers are bumped by Community with a message roughly like &quot;this question has un-voted-on answers that may be good or bad, it has been bumped so these questions can be reviewed&quot;." CreationDate="2018-10-07T20:36:53.953" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16784" PostId="5464" Score="8" Text="Thanks for doing this; it's a good thing to do. Bear in mind that if you give too many votes in too short a time, the system will automatically remove them as a check against people trying to cheat the system." CreationDate="2018-10-08T10:56:25.190" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16786" PostId="5464" Score="1" Text="That may have happened then - I'm not sure.  Sometimes I give a fair few up-votes in a pretty small space of time.  I'll try to spread it out more." CreationDate="2018-10-08T12:27:32.563" UserId="173082" />
  <row Id="16791" PostId="5465" Score="9" Text="It is certainly *possible* to do this w/i the SE system (delete the original 1st), but people will be annoyed if they discover you doing it. You should also question whether it is likely to be effective: if the 1st version got no interest, how much should you expect the 2nd posting of the same question to do better? The best thing to do is think about why it isn't generating interest, and edit to address that. You could also ask about it here or on chat, or add a bounty." CreationDate="2018-10-10T19:07:24.030" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16792" PostId="5465" Score="0" Text="I didn't do much substantive, but the edit should bump it onto the main page where it might get more attention." CreationDate="2018-10-10T19:18:13.127" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16793" PostId="5465" Score="0" Text="Thank you! So question always appear in the &quot;latest questions section&quot; after they are edited?" CreationDate="2018-10-10T19:23:37.890" UserId="119920" />
  <row Id="16794" PostId="5465" Score="3" Text="The top question listed on the main page is the thread that was most recently asked, answered or edited. As other questions are acted on, they move to the top and the rest move down. Eventually, a thread is dropped off the list on the main page.  The Qs that get the most attention (by far) are those displayed at the top of the main page.  After that, it tends to be 'out of sight, out of mind'." CreationDate="2018-10-10T19:27:09.643" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16800" PostId="5465" Score="1" Text="If you have an unanswered question (better yet: before asking in the first place), it is a good idea to read [how to ask a statistics question](http://www.statisticalanalysisconsulting.com/how-to-ask-a-statistics-question/) and to think about whether one has followed the guidance there. Note that the author of that list is our [@PeterFlom](https://stats.stackexchange.com/users/686/peter-flom)." CreationDate="2018-10-11T18:52:09.557" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16797" PostId="5466" Score="2" Text="Note that a re-post can only be closed as a duplicate of another question if that other question has at least one upvoted or accepted answer, so not in the present case of no answers to the original question at all. +1, nonetheless." CreationDate="2018-10-11T18:46:40.123" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16798" PostId="5466" Score="6" Text="@StephanKolassa actually, if both questions are asked by the same user, then the question can be closed as a dupe to another question without answers. This is a special case for closing reposted question by the same asker." CreationDate="2018-10-11T18:49:22.570" UserId="62336" />
  <row Id="16799" PostId="5466" Score="3" Text="Cool, thanks! I learn something new about SE every day!" CreationDate="2018-10-11T18:50:03.107" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16795" PostId="5467" Score="12" Text="Asking to clarify *what does OP understand about the problem* sometimes helps. It usually helps to clarify the misunderstandings that may need clarifying." CreationDate="2018-10-11T13:05:04.823" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="16796" PostId="5467" Score="15" Text="&quot;Have no idea where to start&quot; is  nonspecific and personal.  It makes for a poor question on our site.  @Tim's suggestion is a good one: find out what the OP might know so that *you* can figure out where to start.  For questions about proving things you might remind the OP that all proofs have to begin with premises and suggest that they begin by quoting relevant definitions or theorems they have learned.  That might get them started--and obviate any need for an answer--but even if it does not, it gives respondents a place to begin in formulating answers." CreationDate="2018-10-11T14:33:55.383" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="16823" PostId="5467" Score="4" Text="Suppose a person says &quot;I need to run a regression and don't know where to start.&quot;  One can't tell whether they've looked at any of their data; know univariate from bivariate from multivariate procedures; are thinking along predictive or causal lines; and so on.  They may as well be asking &quot;Please coach me in every phase of this work,&quot; for which we do close questions.  Thus, while asking for more background and referring people to our question guidelines is most considerate, closing such questions is acceptable too." CreationDate="2018-10-22T20:18:58.860" UserId="2669" />
  <row Id="16807" PostId="5470" Score="1" Text="Perhaps it'd help to say what browsers you're using." CreationDate="2018-10-14T13:29:48.103" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16808" PostId="5470" Score="0" Text="I will test this with multiple browsers!" CreationDate="2018-10-14T13:42:09.367" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="16811" PostId="5470" Score="1" Text="@kjetilbhalvorsen: I am using Debian 8 (Jessie) with GNOME and I don't have that problem. Maybe try to see if it is MATE related. (+1)" CreationDate="2018-10-14T23:20:10.040" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="16812" PostId="5472" Score="9" Text="It might be good to know that language tags allow the system automatically to markup any code blocks in the question and any answers.  For example, this is how various keywords and other lexemes get different colors for `R` code." CreationDate="2018-10-16T17:57:17.937" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="16813" PostId="5472" Score="2" Text="@whuber Had forgotten about syntax highlighting, then it would be simply easier to keep it. A cleanup might be good though." CreationDate="2018-10-16T17:59:21.277" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="16814" PostId="5472" Score="4" Text="Cleanup is always appropriate. I edited the excerpt to include usage instructions based on the `[r]` tag excerpt." CreationDate="2018-10-16T18:42:46.357" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16815" PostId="5474" Score="5" Text="It already looks good to me." CreationDate="2018-10-18T12:05:55.867" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="16816" PostId="5474" Score="6" Text="I might remove the phrase about a gratis app just in case that triggers rejection as a code request but otherwise looks fine." CreationDate="2018-10-18T12:21:50.523" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="16817" PostId="5474" Score="6" Text="To me to - data visualization &amp; exploratory analysis is certainly on topic." CreationDate="2018-10-18T12:25:12.937" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16818" PostId="5474" Score="1" Text="Thanks very much for the feedback. I always find it better to ask on meta or in chat before posting for the first time on a new site." CreationDate="2018-10-18T13:50:43.617" UserId="47980" />
  <row Id="16824" PostId="5477" Score="0" Text="Wondering if this should be community wiki" CreationDate="2018-10-25T23:29:07.267" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="16825" PostId="5477" Score="2" Text="I made a couple of my posts CW years ago, &amp; I was told that it wasn't necessary on meta. I think that's right; I see no reason why this would need to be CW." CreationDate="2018-10-26T00:21:26.087" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16826" PostId="5477" Score="2" Text="I guess there's no points at stake at least. Well, people should feel free to just edit anything they can support into the answer if they wish" CreationDate="2018-10-26T01:17:33.550" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="16827" PostId="5477" Score="0" Text="Yeah, that seems to be the point (or lack thereof...)." CreationDate="2018-10-26T01:20:00.180" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16830" PostId="5477" Score="0" Text="Imgur's help center has an entry: [What files can I upload? What is the size limit?](https://help.imgur.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000083326-What-files-can-I-upload-What-is-the-size-limit-), though it seems SE also customized some filter on the front end (e.g. [PDF was supported before, but not now](https://tex.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3457/is-imgur-pdf-upload-broken))" CreationDate="2018-10-27T17:38:50.807" UserId="62336" />
  <row Id="16831" PostId="5477" Score="0" Text="Thanks. I located that page in attempting to answer this question, but was unsure the extent to which that applied to uploads to stack.imgur.com --" CreationDate="2018-10-27T21:14:13.907" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="16835" PostId="5479" Score="0" Text="Martijn's answer in the linked Q does not have enough upvotes! Take a look." CreationDate="2018-10-28T21:31:07.273" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16840" PostId="5481" Score="8" Text="+1 I totally agree on both: that we migrate too much instead of closing and that there should be a notice about reproducible example. No reproducible example is the #1 reason for me not to migrate because the question would be closed on SO immediately." CreationDate="2018-10-30T08:40:29.483" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="16843" PostId="5481" Score="0" Text="It's hard to monitor this, let alone to insist on it, but my ideal is that votes to migrate should be based on someone knowing that the question is a good fit for the site suggested. In reverse I seem to be seeing many questions on SO that aren't suitable for either site, SO or CV. No site wants the rejected threads of another unless they are good questions in terms of public criteria." CreationDate="2018-10-31T18:44:32.243" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16845" PostId="5481" Score="1" Text="Mods have some limited ability to change the off topic close reasons in your step 1, but not to edit what's written in your step 2.  Changing the bottom option (ie, [SO]) to read, &quot;Q&amp;A for professional and enthusiast programmers (please ensure the thread has a minimal working example before trying to migrate to StackOverflow)&quot;, seems like it would be a good idea. However, I think it would need to be done by the developers. Moreover, it would presumably only be good for migrating to SO from CV, so I suspect it's too specific to actually get done." CreationDate="2018-11-01T01:54:16.247" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16851" PostId="5487" Score="6" Text="I can't accept most of your premises. This is behavior by design.  Comments are to solicit clarifications of questions and answers, not for discussion.  They automatically are of lower quality than answers because they are not voted on or accepted.  IMHO, comments would be better off if they automatically disappeared after a reasonable period, such as a month, because so many of them are junk.  I'm having a hard time with the characterization that they are &quot;useful accumulation of knowledge.&quot;  Accumulate the knowledge in appropriate *answers.*" CreationDate="2018-11-05T21:39:19.537" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="16852" PostId="5487" Score="0" Text="I apologize but this is not reporting a bug in the SE software so I removed the tag [bug] even though I appreciated your joke on human system. (I can also sympathize with your feelings to some extent.)" CreationDate="2018-11-05T21:46:59.997" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16853" PostId="5487" Score="1" Text="@whuber These are not premises, but observed regularities. Bits of useful knowledge come up in comments, useful clarifications come up in comments, clever ideas come up in comments, and these cannot be turned into answers. Sometimes they don't have anything to do with &quot;what the OP asks.&quot; _So what?_ By persecuting comments we lose all that. So it comes down to cost-benefit analysis: what is the harm done by comments?" CreationDate="2018-11-05T22:21:36.953" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="16854" PostId="5487" Score="4" Text="@AlecosPapadopoulos by design comments are second-class citizens in here: they are not voted, they are short, can be easily deleted, are made less visible then answers. *If* comments have meaningful and helpful parts, they should e included in answers. There is no open-access data on this, but I guess that most people won't even look at the comments, so they shouldn't be promoted anyhow." CreationDate="2018-11-05T22:40:16.803" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="16855" PostId="5487" Score="0" Text="@Tim ...and as is quite often the case in general, &quot;second-class&quot; citizens occasionally are more interesting than the first-class. And again, not everything useful and inspiring in comments can or should be made into an answer." CreationDate="2018-11-05T22:45:37.750" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="16879" PostId="5487" Score="0" Text="I doubt that this is being denied, but there is voting on comments in this sense: you can add your +1 to a comment you like. (I've often wanted to subtract 1 from a comment I didn't like, but perhaps it really is well that isn't on offer.)" CreationDate="2018-11-09T17:48:50.197" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16856" PostId="5488" Score="0" Text="This answer, together with the comments on the OP's post, re-iterates &quot;this is the policy&quot;. It is obvious that I challenge the wisdom of the policy." CreationDate="2018-11-05T23:02:12.093" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="16857" PostId="5488" Score="0" Text="HI Alecos; it occurred to me just after I posted that I may have misunderstood your question. I have addressed this above" CreationDate="2018-11-05T23:05:41.363" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="16858" PostId="5488" Score="0" Text="Indeed, thanks for adjusting your post. The issue for me is &quot;now that there are years of accumulated experience, I do not see the justification of keeping this policy&quot;." CreationDate="2018-11-05T23:08:42.410" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="16859" PostId="5489" Score="0" Text="(+1) Good points." CreationDate="2018-11-06T08:42:47.347" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="16861" PostId="5491" Score="0" Text="This is not exactly how we treat a crime. Crimes are adjudicated by an expert judge or an instructed jury of enough people to decrease the likelihood of false conviction. If two people agree, there is no conflict.  Two people disagreeing is a conflicting opinion. Up votes require a rep of 15+ and down votes from approximately 100+ to 150+ on StackExchange sites, which reflects the need for more expert opinion to determine wrongness." CreationDate="2018-11-08T04:01:43.027" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16862" PostId="5491" Score="4" Text="The spirit of this is that downvotes that are no longer deserved should be reversed. So far, so good, but it's not reasonable to expect moderators to do this for us. It's the downvoter's responsibility. I still remember a courteous reaction from a moderator very early in my CV career when I urged moderator action because an answer was very wrong: The reply: it's not a moderator's job to decide what's right or wrong. Nor is it their job to decide what's &quot;improved&quot;. So, downvote, ideally explain why if no one has already, and post a better answer or comment if you can." CreationDate="2018-11-08T15:16:39.547" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16863" PostId="5491" Score="0" Text="@NickCox I totally agree with you, but note the &quot;When individuals (users) use rights &amp; granted powers (downoting) in such an incomplete way, and there is no prospect for a change-of-mentality on the horizon&quot; point in my answer." CreationDate="2018-11-08T21:12:34.787" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="16893" PostId="5491" Score="2" Text="When I cast a down-vote I usually check the post for subsequent edits about a couple of times over the next week or so, if I remember. I think it's cheering for all concerned when a downvote becomes an upvote. But I don't have a bone to pick with anyone who simply down-votes what they don't find clear or useful at the time they happen to read it, &amp; leaves it to future readers to judge the clarity &amp; utility of any later versions that may appear." CreationDate="2018-11-13T11:58:38.833" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16894" PostId="5491" Score="3" Text="As @NickCox points out, your proposal would extend the purview of a moderator's role into new areas: I don't think there's a serious enough problem to justify that; I don't see unequivocally good posts languishing with negative scores owing to down-votes clearly accrued because of now-amended faults." CreationDate="2018-11-13T11:58:49.290" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16897" PostId="5491" Score="0" Text="I up voted your answer because I agree with the problem as you posited it. However, the solution you proposed is only one possible of many a few others of which I put in as a new answer." CreationDate="2018-11-13T22:06:10.570" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16909" PostId="5491" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi Certainly, as always with most problems, it matters how severe they are, meaning in our case how many/often are &quot;...unequivocally good posts languishing with negative scores owing to down-votes clearly accrued because of now-amended faults&quot;, to repeat this marvelous sentence of yours. And I do not argue that the problem is severe." CreationDate="2018-11-14T23:33:15.673" UserId="28746" />
  <row Id="16864" PostId="5493" Score="8" Text="You don't give the impression you're being critical - indeed you're asking politely; it's perfectly reasonable to ask questions about what happened." CreationDate="2018-11-09T00:27:05.263" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="16865" PostId="5494" Score="2" Text="Thanks, this is helpful!" CreationDate="2018-11-09T01:05:31.400" UserId="182174" />
  <row Id="16866" PostId="5494" Score="2" Text="I realize I didn't quite cover all of your questions in my answer, but I figured it would be worth posting a partial answer so you didn't worry overly much about an automatic and temporary issue." CreationDate="2018-11-09T01:09:29.240" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="16867" PostId="5494" Score="4" Text="You actually do cover most of my questions. I guess the one lingering question - from a community-building perspective - is whether it wouldn't make sense to give users more information on their accepted vs rejected reviews (though it might be the case that it's too much of a fringe issue to be worth too much thinking about it)." CreationDate="2018-11-09T01:14:57.127" UserId="182174" />
  <row Id="16868" PostId="5494" Score="5" Text="This may be a good idea; if you have a concrete proposal (for which something similar hasn't already been floated), it might be worth considering a post to the network meta (meta.stackexchange.com)." CreationDate="2018-11-09T01:17:10.677" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="16869" PostId="5494" Score="7" Text="I cleared the ban @Candamir, we have the ability to override the period before it's ended. I appreciate your efforts to improve the site." CreationDate="2018-11-09T02:10:39.550" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16870" PostId="5494" Score="3" Text="@gung thank you!" CreationDate="2018-11-09T02:34:00.297" UserId="182174" />
  <row Id="16871" PostId="5494" Score="3" Text="@Glen_b That's a good idea, I'll look into it tomorrow." CreationDate="2018-11-09T02:34:59.793" UserId="182174" />
  <row Id="16885" PostId="5494" Score="2" Text="@Glen_b I spent some time on meta.stackexchange.com and saw some posts ([here](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/228927/374164) and [here](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/303584/374164)) that suggest to me that the feature of telling users for how long they've been banned from reviews is available at least on SO. Can that be the case? Or maybe the issue is that what the user sees depends on whether he was banned automatically or banned manually by a moderator? I tried to look everywhere when I was banned and I don't think I saw *any* message explaining the nature or the duration of the ban." CreationDate="2018-11-10T17:26:10.490" UserId="182174" />
  <row Id="16886" PostId="5494" Score="2" Text="@Glen_b feel free to use me as a guinea pig for a manual ban if needed :)" CreationDate="2018-11-10T17:26:45.913" UserId="182174" />
  <row Id="16887" PostId="5494" Score="4" Text="If you get temporarily banned by a moderator you're definitely notified of the length (I'm not going to do it to show you though, since mention of it stays on your account). I expect that you should see even the duration of a temporary ban on your user page but maybe that's not the case; if it happens on stackoverflow it will already be in place here as well. [A moderator can look for you if it's an issue.]" CreationDate="2018-11-10T22:55:17.160" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="16875" PostId="5495" Score="3" Text="Ironically, this post is a duplicate of a post on Meta.SE: [What to do with cross-site duplicates?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/4708/256777). So I will do what is recommended in [the accepted answer there](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/4712/256777): propose to migrate to Meta.SE, close as duplicate there. Ah, I see that [I cannot propose to migrate Meta questions](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/55778/256777). Mods, please? (Flagged.)" CreationDate="2018-11-09T12:54:50.447" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16876" PostId="5495" Score="6" Text="@StephanKolassa: I think it may be useful to have some discussion here: (1) we may form a consensus differing somewhat from SE Meta, &amp; (2) there are perhaps particular situations arising commonly on CV that merit consideration." CreationDate="2018-11-09T13:24:48.910" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16877" PostId="5495" Score="1" Text="@Scortchi [I followed your advice](https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/376173/58675)." CreationDate="2018-11-09T14:10:36.587" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="16878" PostId="5495" Score="0" Text="Math SE serves as an example here. @Scortchi is clearly right in proposing focus here on any problems specific to CV. It seems that the generic issue is duplicates or near duplicates on CV and any other site, whether accidental or deliberate." CreationDate="2018-11-09T15:52:51.160" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16873" PostId="5496" Score="2" Text="Hi Nick, thanks for the answer, but just for clarity, the OP didn't cross-post. She just asked on CV a question which is basically identical to a question which had been asked an year before on Math SE by someone else." CreationDate="2018-11-09T11:04:35.323" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="16874" PostId="5496" Score="0" Text="I have to confess I jumped to an incorrect conclusion about your example without reading it. (He quickly jumped on a hobby-horse and rode as fast as he could go.) As some people liked my answer I will at least for now flag that this is when the duplicate is a cross-post." CreationDate="2018-11-09T12:17:57.160" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16888" PostId="5496" Score="1" Text="(+1) I think it'd be a good idea for us to explicitly adopt the same policy as Statalist with regard to off-site cross-posts." CreationDate="2018-11-12T11:34:15.553" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16898" PostId="5501" Score="2" Text="It is pointless to suggest here any changes to Stack Exchange core functionality. Such suggestions should be raised on the main Meta (and even then, have very low probability of being implemented). There is no sense in discussing your suggestions (1), (2), and (3) here on our Meta. They will never ever be implemented for Cross Validated alone. As such, I see this answer as &quot;not useful&quot; in this thread and am tempted to downvote 8-[]" CreationDate="2018-11-14T08:10:12.787" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16900" PostId="5501" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Understood. However, I care about this site more, and, pitching to main meta without understanding how things work here would not be taking our needs under advisement, would it? Moreover, I have discovered by looking at other sites, for example, that the reputation needed for down voting is variable from site to site, so our opinion is not as useless as one might think." CreationDate="2018-11-14T09:35:36.457" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16901" PostId="5501" Score="5" Text="The premiss is that downvoting is negative and to be avoided at almost any cost. When I downvote I do that because (a) an answer is wrong, so confused as to be useless, or quite irrelevant or (b, more commonly) a question is some mix of very poor, offensive or spam. I don't feel happy that anyone may be disappointed, dismayed, even maddened by receiving a downvote; almost always I have no sense of who they are and where they are on a spectrum from timid to obnoxious. I am downvoting what they wrote and trying to improve the site thereby. That's the spirit, I think, in which it is to be used." CreationDate="2018-11-14T10:09:34.850" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16902" PostId="5501" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Down voting is negative. Negative reinforcement without explanation given is ineffectual as behaviour modification for the recipient. So the effect is against the post, and for spam, a flag deletion request works better. It may be that you feel that you down vote meritoriously, not every one is your equal." CreationDate="2018-11-14T13:46:00.120" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16903" PostId="5501" Score="1" Text="Naturally nothing I say rules out downvoting being accompanied by specific explanation. I still remember a mark of 1/15 for a question circa 1968 together with the reason why. SE isn't a help line; questions or answers that aren't good aren't welcome either." CreationDate="2018-11-14T13:57:30.380" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16904" PostId="5501" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Just got two more down votes. So, you are suggesting that https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/320218/99274 and https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/376264/99274 were questions or answers that are not good and are not welcome just because someone decided to down vote? I see no rationality for either down vote, and if you do, would you mind explaining it?" CreationDate="2018-11-14T19:01:36.033" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16905" PostId="5501" Score="1" Text="No; as already said more than once, I can't infer anyone else's reasons for their downvotes unless they explain them. Moreover, my support of (down)voting as a mechanism doesn't imply that I think all votes are right any more than my preference for democracy over dictatorship means that I think all elections produce the right answer. I don't recollect studying either of those posts. That questions or answers that aren't good aren't welcome is abstract principle; it doesn't imply that it's always easy to tell which they are." CreationDate="2018-11-14T19:19:17.393" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16906" PostId="5501" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Would it not be better then to give a concrete multiple choice selection of reasons for down voting, and to train users to down vote for cause as contrasted to expecting down voting to be performed according to a hypothetical abstract principle of untested general acceptance? I think here that you may be projecting your own principled behaviour as a common pathway for users.  Historically, I have down voted significantly less frequently than you, I generally avoid it; e.g.,  I can edit things that are sloppy, and vote to close questions that are senseless." CreationDate="2018-11-14T20:06:25.887" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16907" PostId="5501" Score="0" Text="Not a contest, but I’ve also edited a great deal and often contributed by voting to close. As many have said, if you want a different set-up, you need to air proposals on SE Meta." CreationDate="2018-11-14T21:19:37.763" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16908" PostId="5501" Score="0" Text="@NickCox I know, but this has to be done in very simple sentences and in baby steps because the capacity for misinterpretation is apparently rather large see [link](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/318310/how-variable-is-the-minimum-reputation-needed-for-down-voting-privledges-across)." CreationDate="2018-11-14T23:12:22.287" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="17007" PostId="5501" Score="0" Text="@amoeba The point of posting here is that my colleagues on this site are most interested in sharing thoughts on downvoting, and on SE meta, they are not, as I have discovered through bitter experience, willing to discuss the matter. Our site meta is much better structured than SE meta, and our users a lot more knowledgeable for statistical analysis of whatever data is presented. If we can come to some agreement, it may be possible for a request to be presented on SE meta sensibly. The SE meta problem is that downvoting is frequently complained about, about 16,000 times..." CreationDate="2018-12-06T17:28:31.363" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="17008" PostId="5501" Score="0" Text="@amoeba ...such that anything other than a well documented and organized presentation on that site is likely to be dismissed out of hand, despite the obvious that downvoting really is problematic, or there would not be 16 k Q/A in which it is mentioned. This inexplicable reticence to evolve a better approach to downvoting I can only attribute to an irritation of the developers rather than an intellectual response. Sort of a 'don't bother us with that old saw' which is actually a 'flat earth' type of response. Confirmation bias at work." CreationDate="2018-12-06T17:34:34.490" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16912" PostId="5502" Score="0" Text="I don't see the accepted answer in the old question saying anything about more than 2 groups." CreationDate="2018-11-16T12:30:25.240" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16913" PostId="5502" Score="0" Text="In that case, the questions should be unmerged." CreationDate="2018-11-16T12:49:14.767" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="16914" PostId="5502" Score="0" Text="Jonas commented that it is easily extended to multiple groups, is that incorrect?" CreationDate="2018-11-16T12:50:42.273" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="16911" PostId="5503" Score="0" Text="Hmm. Does whuber's answer explicitly apply to the case of more than 2 groups?" CreationDate="2018-11-16T12:29:56.267" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16931" PostId="5507" Score="1" Text="+1 I liked especially your second paragraph and it matches my ideas that one should be more generous when the OP is actively engaged (but this creates a problem when this engagement is cut off). It confuses me however why you use the past tense &quot;I have long thought that the standards for closing old and unattended questions should be somewhat less generous&quot;, or do you still have this opinion?" CreationDate="2018-11-22T18:32:35.563" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16932" PostId="5507" Score="1" Text="Regarding the third paragraph. I personally like wilderness and weeds. As an analogy, I do not wish so much to delete them from stackexchange. But then again, I have never considered so much the copying of those weeds into a nice clean garden, a question of my own, where I try to simplify the problem or write it more easily (with this particular question, for me a simpler, easier, introduction-type question might be useful to have on the site)" CreationDate="2018-11-22T18:37:38.473" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16933" PostId="5507" Score="1" Text="@MartijnWeterings, I have thought &amp; continue to so think. Re: paragraph 3, they needn't be deleted, just closed. In fact, an option would be to close them as duplicates of the new, clarified Q." CreationDate="2018-11-22T19:05:29.047" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16934" PostId="5507" Score="5" Text="+1, I agree with everything here. Just want to add one more thing (@MartijnWeterings): an old thread that has 0 votes and some un-accepted answers with 0 votes can be effectively deleted by anybody by downvoting the Q. If it's downvoted, old, and does not have upvoted answers, then it will be automatically deleted pretty soon. I confess that I sometimes do this when I encounter clearly useless/confusing old threads." CreationDate="2018-11-22T20:32:16.703" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16958" PostId="5507" Score="4" Text="+1. &quot;It is not very easy to understand the exact problem&quot; sounds *precisely* like &quot;unclear what you are asking&quot; to me. Let's close such questions." CreationDate="2018-11-26T15:14:08.867" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="16935" PostId="5508" Score="0" Text="I am stuck in the first step. How to come to the page with &quot;Review   Close Votes    filter&quot;" CreationDate="2018-11-23T01:57:36.237" UserId="158565" />
  <row Id="16936" PostId="5508" Score="0" Text="It should be right at the top when you review a post. If you look at the Close votes queue, then as soon as you look at the first item in the queue it should say &quot;Review Close Votes&quot;, and so forth for any other queue." CreationDate="2018-11-23T02:08:25.800" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="16937" PostId="5508" Score="0" Text="Thank you, I found it finally. &quot;-&quot; before [machine-learning] means excluding [machine-learning]?" CreationDate="2018-11-23T02:24:10.240" UserId="158565" />
  <row Id="16938" PostId="5508" Score="0" Text="Yes, that's right" CreationDate="2018-11-23T02:39:26.350" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="16943" PostId="5508" Score="0" Text="My god, after I added -[machine-learning], I got 4 review requests, all of them have machine-learning tags. It seems the effect is opposite to what I expected." CreationDate="2018-11-24T23:56:41.120" UserId="158565" />
  <row Id="16944" PostId="5508" Score="0" Text="Odd. Hang on, let me double check. It may be a while." CreationDate="2018-11-24T23:58:34.627" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="16946" PostId="5508" Score="0" Text="after I typing in -[machine-learning], and click &quot;okay&quot; button, later I check the filter, it is machine-learning, -[] disappeared." CreationDate="2018-11-25T00:34:57.707" UserId="158565" />
  <row Id="16947" PostId="5508" Score="0" Text="Yes, I was just constructing the appropriate image to show that's what actually happens. This is not consistent with how tags work anywhere else." CreationDate="2018-11-25T00:41:17.397" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="16948" PostId="5508" Score="0" Text="My apologies for not carrying through to actually using the filter that way (I was trying to avoid actually filtering tags in my own account because I'm a moderator, but I should have actually tried a few to see that it was consistent with tag behavior elsewhere in the interface)." CreationDate="2018-11-25T00:51:32.460" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="16941" PostId="5509" Score="2" Text="The &quot;inverse prediction&quot; bit is *directly related* to 'adjustment of measurements' to (agree with some standard). Those first two items are not separate things at all. To me the third thing is much more of an outlier." CreationDate="2018-11-23T23:14:33.013" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="22320" PostId="5509" Score="0" Text="Should [this post](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/622188) which is basically adjusting quality scores for referee bias, have the tag `inverse-prediction`, `calibration` or both?" CreationDate="2023-07-26T09:55:29.990" UserId="237561" />
  <row Id="22321" PostId="5509" Score="0" Text="`inverse-prediction` seems to be a lesser known concept as such, so people will likely not google this term, but rather &quot;calibration&quot;. But once it is known, it is nice not to have to wade through all the unrelated `calibration` posts" CreationDate="2023-07-26T09:59:01.553" UserId="237561" />
  <row Id="16949" PostId="5512" Score="1" Text="Thanks, couldn't a website be used for something else than a reference while still being on-topic on this Stack Exchange website, e.g. to visualize models or output (example: https://playground.tensorflow.org)?" CreationDate="2018-11-25T04:11:50.943" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="16950" PostId="5512" Score="2" Text="It's certainly possible that a question about a website that isn't a reference request could be on topic, but it's hard for me to think of an example right now. The example you show looks plainly off topic; asking for a website that you could use to visualize a model sounds like software recommendation / plainly off topic as well." CreationDate="2018-11-25T04:41:10.703" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20027" PostId="5512" Score="0" Text="A practical detail is that threads based on websites are more likely to require maintenance. A decade or so on, it is possible that a good book is out of print, but still available in libraries or as a used (second-hand) book, but more likely that a website has disappeared or moved; or that whatever was up-to-date is now sadly neglected. But the principle that website recommendations can be welcome surely stands." CreationDate="2020-07-15T17:28:34.313" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16952" PostId="5513" Score="1" Text="Sometimes it is a good idea for edits to make evident both the original and the revised question; similarly the original and revised answer. But this is all case law. The over-arching principle must be what would be interesting and useful to others?" CreationDate="2018-11-26T09:32:08.723" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16954" PostId="5513" Score="0" Text="Even in the case you're referring to, it would be just as easy for the OP to ask a new question rather than changing the substance of their existing question.  That would be preferable in my view.  Creating new questions is essentially costless, and it has the advantage of leaving both questions; the original badly-worded question remains, along with an answer that points out the problems, and then a new question is asked with greater clarity, which can then receive a substantive answer." CreationDate="2018-11-26T09:33:57.397" UserId="173082" />
  <row Id="16955" PostId="5513" Score="2" Text="I've experienced an answer of mine being made redundant if not ridiculous in roughly this way. (1) OP asks a very confused and/or incomplete question perhaps with errors. (2) My answer explains what's wrong (and often what else is needed). (3) OP sees the error of their ways and revises the question, so I have to rewrite my answer. Although it's temporarily irritating if not annoying to have one's answer made irrelevant, such a process has to be seen as positive long-term. So I don't agree with a blanket declaration that &quot;it is not appropriate for the OP to change the question&quot;." CreationDate="2018-11-26T09:35:41.023" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16956" PostId="5513" Score="1" Text="Ben's comment refers to the comment that appears below his. (I corrected a mistake in wording.)" CreationDate="2018-11-26T09:36:45.967" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16957" PostId="5513" Score="2" Text="&quot;just as easy for the OP to ask a new question rather than changing the substance of their existing question&quot;.  Perhaps, but your suggestion again seems dogmatic, that there is only one right way to proceed. Long term, it would often be messy to have two versions of the same question from the OP. As a long-term member I know some fraction of my time here will be wasted; naturally I want that fraction to be small but I won't ever get the fraction down to zero. People really are allowed, indeed expected, to improve their questions whenever possible." CreationDate="2018-11-26T09:41:28.910" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20390" PostId="5513" Score="0" Text="Thanks for sharing this perspective that I overlooked: &quot; That wastes the time of the person who answered, and gives the false impression that they did not answer the question correctly&quot;." CreationDate="2020-12-24T22:44:15.670" UserId="228809" />
  <row Id="16960" PostId="5514" Score="17" Text="I can appreciate why this is somewhat confusing. My personal feeling is that upwards of 85% of the content on DSCI.SE and AI.SE is wholly on-topic here, and that we are needlessly duplicating that content and spreading expertise across these three sites.  The remaining 15% (or less) accounts for the  slivers of content which are on-topic on DSCI.SE and AI.SE that are not also on-topic here, mainly related to programming vice statistics (broadly conceived). The thread https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2253/cv-and-data-science-semi-identical-twins seems closely related to this one." CreationDate="2018-11-26T18:01:34.253" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16963" PostId="5514" Score="9" Text="I empathize with your consternation. I agree w/ @Sycorax. One additional point is that, re: $3$, *yes* cross-posting is explicitly frowned upon." CreationDate="2018-11-27T04:57:38.023" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17022" PostId="5514" Score="1" Text="Note that you ought to be able to find explanations of what's considered on-topic in the help pages for each site:&#xA;https://ai.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic, https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic, &amp; https://datascience.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic. But DS have been rather lackadaisical, despite some prodding on Meta - their page merely contains 5 examples of question titles (4 of which suggest the questions might well be perfectly on-topic at CV)." CreationDate="2018-12-12T17:05:43.097" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="16967" PostId="5518" Score="7" Text="Excellent analysis. On the very last point, I think SE has a long way to do before it is no better than Reddit, Twitter and Quora as a place to get technical answers. (I didn't even know there was a Yahoo! Answers.)" CreationDate="2018-11-27T18:16:14.263" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16968" PostId="5518" Score="9" Text="&quot;[T]he Area51 process... allows new SE websites to be created without the intervention of common sense.&quot;" CreationDate="2018-11-28T14:37:19.127" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16969" PostId="5518" Score="5" Text="This answer deserves a bounty." CreationDate="2018-11-28T14:37:46.723" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="16970" PostId="5519" Score="2" Text="If you suspect there's value in a canonical thread, you'll very likely be correct. That some questions will veer into quant.SE territory is just part of how any attempt to divide up knowledge is going to work; we'll always have to deal with such issues, so I doubt that's worth more worry than keeping it in mind when we migrate/close threads as having strayed off our topics." CreationDate="2018-11-28T23:41:10.177" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="16971" PostId="5521" Score="1" Text="+1 These are fair points. I suppose the statistical topics of stock trading are probably covered by our threads about time-series analysis, reinforcement learning, and the usual caveats about out-of-sample generalization and selection bias. No arbitrage/efficient markets and related topics seem to fall in the same bucket as gastric distress -- particular to the subject, not the mode of analysis." CreationDate="2018-11-29T16:35:28.410" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16973" PostId="5522" Score="8" Text="Nice job getting the data, but I don't see any evidence for two distinct clusters. Apart from a spike at 0%, the rest of the distribution looks unimodal to me." CreationDate="2018-12-05T11:34:19.977" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="16974" PostId="5522" Score="4" Text="Strong and sincere upvote (!) because you are throwing some data at the question. But your interpretation is, as you will recognise, one of many possible. Lots of people never downvote: I guess it's their personal rule not to be negative; I admire that in individuals, but they are doing nothing thereby to clear CV of poor questions and answers. Like @Amoeba I can't see strong clustering here, just a continuum, no surprise given impressions of people generally. Technical note: I am a great fan of transformations: here folded root `sqrt(x) - sqrt(100 - x)` is an alternative for your x axis." CreationDate="2018-12-05T13:22:52.160" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16975" PostId="5522" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Unfortunately, I couldn't get my SPSS to work which would allow choice of number of k-means clusters using least BIC. I did however try clustering in a dozen ways including methods for which the number of clusters is a variable. A single cluster was achieved only once, and only when the population at 0% downvotes was included. Obviously, cluster identification is a bit artsy, for example, with less data and higher reputation, look at my question **EDIT on 2018-10-21**, clustering is more obvious. A single cluster histogram has a dip in it at ~10% downvotes, and sometimes software..." CreationDate="2018-12-05T20:22:44.860" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16976" PostId="5522" Score="0" Text="...sees something the eye does not. That is why I left the choice up to k-means rather than my intuition. Even if one does not &quot;see&quot; three clusters, I think it would be less explanatory to mix the moderate and high downvote rates together, the medians are different by a factor of 6.8 times." CreationDate="2018-12-05T20:29:20.897" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16977" PostId="5522" Score="0" Text="@NickCox The point is that downvoting rates are very variable, thus, are a function of who is doing the reviewing more so than what is being reviewed. I  suggest that it would be preferable for the user to have a more stable expectation for downvoting. I get your point about removing low quality posts. See, addendum in post." CreationDate="2018-12-05T20:47:13.997" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16978" PostId="5522" Score="0" Text="You seem determined to assume that people disagree maximally with you when often the reaction is yes, there is variability but why are you surprised and what can or even should be done about it. Downvoting is a _signal_ of poor quality. Those who don't downvote are not sending that signal. If they also make positive suggestions about poor posts, that is excellent, but it is not covered by your data.  If OPs are unable or willing to improve their posts, what do you want to say on their behalf? Let's agree that that such failure to improve is disappointing." CreationDate="2018-12-06T00:30:48.020" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="16980" PostId="5522" Score="3" Text="@Carl *&quot;a downvote is rather easier to attribute to a random event than a rational one&quot;* it is a bit absurd to argue that downvotes have nothing to do with the post and everything with the random selection of people that happens to review a post. This would mean that votes received follow a Poisson distribution and do not cluster at people and/or posts. You should check https://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/941119/most-downvoted-users" CreationDate="2018-12-06T00:44:23.973" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16981" PostId="5522" Score="1" Text="also, if I look at down-voted posts than most often they are bad quality. This is why most down-voted posts are eventually deleted (I will check this statement one day by adding up all downvotes on posts that actually exist)" CreationDate="2018-12-06T00:45:02.187" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16982" PostId="5522" Score="2" Text="[how-much-downvotes-get-deleted](https://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/941134/how-much-downvotes-get-deleted) Total downvotes that have been given (sum downvotes from users). Plus total downvotes that are not deleted (by summing downvotes over posts that actually still exist). More than half of the downvotes are still remaining. Of the 48k downvotes that have been given only 17k are actually still on existing posts. This means 31k downvotes have been on posts that eventually got deleted (thus deemed unimportant by the people on this website)." CreationDate="2018-12-06T01:15:24.040" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16983" PostId="5522" Score="1" Text="also note that some of those user's in your graph, with high percentage of downvotes, actually vote very little in absolute numbers. There are a few bulk voters (half the downvotes come from ten users), among which community somehow does 6k votes or almost 1/6 of the total. Among these 10 users are some high rep users but they would fall, as you say, in the below 10% group (also in terms of votes per day they do not score high, they are just the dinosaurs of this website). The second highest downvoter with 4k downvotes is a suspended account." CreationDate="2018-12-06T01:30:47.140" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16985" PostId="5522" Score="0" Text="@MartijnWeterings I just ran the software for [most downvoted users](https://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/941119/most-downvoted-users). When sorted by ratios of downvotes to total votes, I ranked second most frequently downvoted of 500. I have been called a &quot;maverick&quot; several times on this site. I do not agree with that assessment, what I am is methodologist/physician diagnostician with publications in medical physics, pharmacokinetics, and nuclear medicine, and zero publications in statistics. I am also a very good code debugger and am fair in math." CreationDate="2018-12-06T04:21:09.673" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16988" PostId="5522" Score="0" Text="@MartijnWeterings One of the problems I commonly see is that there is a 'stats' bubble, where nonsense is sometimes published.  Every field is in a bit of a bubble where the conventional wisdom extends only to the walls of the bubble. However, the opposite is also true, in each field there are some truly exceptional people who know a lot more than just the contents of the local bubble." CreationDate="2018-12-06T04:42:47.437" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16989" PostId="5522" Score="0" Text="@MartijnWeterings Regarding &quot;*a downvote is rather easier to attribute to a random event than a rational one*&quot; the question is what is easier, and, in my case, the downvotes often do seem 'off the wall' (of the bubble). That does not imply that my, or anyone else's, experience generalizes to a Poisson model." CreationDate="2018-12-06T04:52:03.470" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16990" PostId="5522" Score="1" Text="@Carl, sure one may experience the downvotes that one receives as a random events. *But that does not make the downvotes less rational*, as if people are randomly making downvotes *without reason*. It is also very unclear how you see this as a consequence of the large variance/spread among the percentage of down-votes among the user's votes. Without this spread it is already obvious that voting has a strong random component. Posts do not get as many votes as views, and they have some probability to be voted up or down depending on a complex combination of factors, it's still rational however." CreationDate="2018-12-06T08:39:59.580" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16991" PostId="5522" Score="3" Text="@Carl, regarding the downvotes that you personally get. Posts like this one is how many of your post go. You put a lot of information out there, but the conclusion is small and sometimes weak and without a good connection with the stuff that you write down. While the complex thoughts behind the conclusion may be amusing and interesting it is also very verbose, confusing and all over the place. In this post, the first half is some cluster analysis and second half is a comments to Nick Cox, the conclusion does not connect well to the rest of the post and is difficult to distill out of your text." CreationDate="2018-12-06T08:57:44.117" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16992" PostId="5522" Score="0" Text="@Carl, sometimes a simpler post is better than a long and complex post. I often find myself writing a big story and find out that it's not working after which I reduce it. For instance recently I wrote [an answer](https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/379987/164061) I gave two examples, which wasn't necessary and overkill (and rightfully not well received) and I reduced it to one example ([KISS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle)). With several other posts I notice some simpler answer gets better votes. That's not a bad thing: on this medium we are not supposed to write book chapters" CreationDate="2018-12-06T09:05:10.713" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16993" PostId="5522" Score="0" Text="@MartijnWeterings The interpretation I am making is that downvoting results from an admixture of differing rationalizations; correct/incorrect and contributory/not-contributory, not to mention like(because of writing style)/dislike(because of writing style). It is not clean in its current form and downvoting should be much more cleanly motivated precisely because to downvote properly [demands a greater degree of expertise than upvoting](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0134269)." CreationDate="2018-12-06T09:10:24.203" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16994" PostId="5522" Score="0" Text="@MartijnWeterings Yes, I too often work my answers to be more succinct. This particular exchange is an exception because I do not want to invalidate the blow by blow of the comments. Even that can be problematic, as the downvotes on earlier versions are sticky." CreationDate="2018-12-06T09:15:33.483" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16995" PostId="5522" Score="0" Text="@Carl of course the voting is a mixture of multiple rationalizations. But that is part of the simplicity that makes the success of this website. It is a sort of thermodynamical system with a lot chaos but at the same it is very bulky as well. Because of the latter (simplicity leads to many users and posts) you do not need such a good filter to still find a good collection of nice answers and questions. The concept is that you filter out more good Q&amp;A with a bad filter (ie the voting system) on a lot of posts, than with a good filter on a few posts." CreationDate="2018-12-06T09:26:30.780" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16996" PostId="5522" Score="0" Text="@NickCox The `sqrt(x) - sqrt(100 - x)` transform of the population results in two vertically oriented clusters using default Mathematica v. 11.3.0.0 (the latest), which default automatically selects the best clustering. The third separate population at 0% downvotes had to be identified visually *post hoc*. I can post this (quite similar) result if you so desire." CreationDate="2018-12-06T09:27:40.100" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16997" PostId="5522" Score="0" Text="@MartijnWeterings My current suggestion is for a simplification: amalgamating a semantic collage of closure reasons into `contributory/not-contributory`, making similar procedures for questions and answers, and making downvoting more likely to be correct/incorrect than the more opaque current approach." CreationDate="2018-12-06T09:33:03.400" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16998" PostId="5522" Score="0" Text="Which of your suggestions is for simplification and makes downvoting more likely to be correct/incorrect?" CreationDate="2018-12-06T11:09:16.250" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="16999" PostId="5522" Score="0" Text="@MartijnWeterings The high reputation voters have a tendency of downvoting non-contributory posts to improve quality of posts. By closing those non-contributory posts by closure voting, the need to downvote is removed. Also, a non-contributory closure would obviate the need for several closure vote categories. The ability to close a non-contributory answer, if one could be instituted, would be simpler than downvoting it. We flag such things now, and closure of answers is actually done at the current time, awkwardly, but it is done." CreationDate="2018-12-06T11:54:27.913" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="17000" PostId="5522" Score="2" Text="I did not get that from your answer at all. So your conclusion is that we should have some close voting on answers in a similar way as we have on questions. You should make that much more salient in your answer. The cluster analysis (which is dubious) takes this out of sight. You are right that this 'prevents' down-votes. Or at least for me if I feel that if a post/question needs correction, then I vote to close instead of downvote, partly as well because of the stickiness of downvotes." CreationDate="2018-12-06T12:10:14.237" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17002" PostId="5522" Score="0" Text="Even with closing I sometimes refrain from this and just post a comment asking for clarification or similar (give benefit of doubt). I am not good at judging negatively. However, closing does have some indirect *function*. It's a bit like giving grades to students. I hate to give low marks. But if you don't give a low marks to those who 'deserve it', then it is not fair for the others. It is after all about separation, and separating out the 'bad' is a fair move because it helps the ones that are 'not bad'. You do want good posts to deserve credit by, among others, discrediting the bad posts." CreationDate="2018-12-06T12:22:45.503" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17003" PostId="5522" Score="0" Text="Getting back to closing answers. That would be a different concept than closing questions (which has mostly a function in freezing the possibility to answer, to prevent a mess of incomprehensible questions and answers). It would also be *not* a simplification. Simple is just pressing either the up or down arrow (it is a sort of three point Likert scale, the minimum you can get). More options would be *less* simple (although possibly they might be improvements, could you shape this into a more evolutionary path? Like [current F1 changes](https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1068905312143335424))" CreationDate="2018-12-06T12:27:19.630" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17004" PostId="5522" Score="0" Text="Carl: I just mentioned the transformation as transformations intrigue me. I doubt that using a different transformation would strengthen or weaken any of the arguments here of whatever sign." CreationDate="2018-12-06T15:19:22.597" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17005" PostId="5522" Score="3" Text="We could turn all this round and point to variations in fractions of upvotes and opine that some voters are being too generous and should rein in their positive inclinations. It's interesting that @MartijnWeterings raised the analogy of grading because he captured my feelings about grading. A failed submission is a personal tragedy but being a nice person, not wanting to disappoint or upset, etc.,  is neither here nor there; consistency requires that low marks be given to work that deserves them." CreationDate="2018-12-06T15:24:24.450" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17006" PostId="5522" Score="0" Text="For all that, I'll flag that recent campaigns have heightened my sensitivity so that I try to hard to distinguish (a) this question is not yet answerable or suitable, so vote to close and ideally explain why unless someone's done so already (b) all of that, plus this is (e.g.) really lazy, careless, even obnoxious; add a downvote too as a signal (a signal to others with the reputation to downvote, not just the OP)." CreationDate="2018-12-06T15:27:01.480" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17009" PostId="5522" Score="1" Text="Folded square root isn't `log(x) - log(100-x)` (which is just logit on percents). As your results start at -10, corresponding to 0,  it's clear that you did use folded square roots and the references to log are typos." CreationDate="2018-12-07T09:51:18.143" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17010" PostId="5522" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Thanks, indeed the log function was a typo now corrected. More stuff to follow, and a rewrite coming." CreationDate="2018-12-07T21:15:51.553" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="17012" PostId="5522" Score="1" Text="@amoeba I now present stronger evidence for multimodality. Beyond the 0% peak the data is not unimodal, but approximately bimodal Weibull distributed." CreationDate="2018-12-08T10:25:36.037" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="17019" PostId="5522" Score="0" Text="@Carl don't you think that this bimodal distribution is rather rough and arbitrary [like this](https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2048:_Curve-Fitting). If you want to provide stronger evidence then you should link it to certain other parameters by which the clusters can be divided as well." CreationDate="2018-12-11T15:59:26.557" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17020" PostId="5522" Score="1" Text="See for instance [this image](https://i.stack.imgur.com/H5dY7.png) obtained from data with [this query](https://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/944472/). The users that make relatively more up-votes are also users that make relatively more comments. Possibly you can add more variables and time (to track a change in tendencies and general behavior) only then can you really make stronger conclusions with this data. But, at least this image shows some alternative (sidenote: the fraction downvotes looks like a [logit normal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logit-normal_distribution))." CreationDate="2018-12-11T17:15:46.307" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17066" PostId="5522" Score="0" Text="@MartijnWeterings I get a stronger relationship between downvoting and commenting using that same query. The logit normal (AKA logistic distribution) was not selected by Mathematica to be a likely fit to the data." CreationDate="2019-01-06T04:36:23.690" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="16986" PostId="5523" Score="1" Text="I didn't mean to suggest that there is &quot;easy money&quot; to be made in strapping a home-brewed neural net to a web API. If I were to write such an answer, it would emphasize that making a profitable model would be extremely challenging." CreationDate="2018-12-06T04:25:15.597" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="16987" PostId="5523" Score="0" Text="I have been looking at the verification and validation of non-deterministic systems such as ANNs and I think the field needs a lot more formal mathematical research first.  I don't think the field is advanced enough, although there is general work on V&amp;V of ANNs by Marjorah Darrah and a few others.  The distributions and processes are a mixture of distributions with first moments and those without." CreationDate="2018-12-06T04:42:43.177" UserId="140300" />
  <row Id="17011" PostId="5524" Score="9" Text="https://meta.stackexchange.com/help/roomba" CreationDate="2018-12-08T06:59:36.277" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="17013" PostId="5524" Score="8" Text="Just to clarify a possible misperception: We are not a homework-checking site, so at best this Community-deleted question was skating at the very edge of the rules concerning what is on topic.  (We probably were too lenient in not closing it.) I'm sure that's why there were no responses." CreationDate="2018-12-08T15:01:39.060" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="17030" PostId="5524" Score="0" Text="@whuber Why do you think that was homework? Could not be possible that I am just curious about regression and I want to learn about it? Or that I am interested in it as a discipline?" CreationDate="2018-12-16T00:12:16.693" UserId="224971" />
  <row Id="17035" PostId="5524" Score="6" Text="I am using the term in the sense of our [tag:self-study] tag wiki.  We don't mean to suggest we have no respect for studying or learning.  The problem is that homework-style questions tend to be extremely different than actual statistical questions people face: they are usually based on artificial assumptions, devoid of realistic context, and--most importantly--are phrased as *imperatives*: &quot;show this,&quot; &quot;prove that,&quot; etc.  Consequently they require very different kinds of responses." CreationDate="2018-12-16T20:57:42.747" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="17036" PostId="5524" Score="0" Text="@whuber Ah. In other words this site is for professionals in statistics and related topics ?" CreationDate="2018-12-19T00:05:11.080" UserId="224971" />
  <row Id="17037" PostId="5524" Score="3" Text="I don't see how you arrived at that conclusion based on what I wrote.  I contended that routine textbook exercises are answered in a different manner than other questions arising out of real applications and research and pointed to some of the ways they differ.  I did not say that they were out of bounds or even that they aren't used by professionals.  (Indeed, I am a professional and I solve routine problems every day as part of my ongoing learning.)" CreationDate="2018-12-19T01:38:38.880" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="17038" PostId="5524" Score="0" Text="@whuber The thing is that I still consider that was unfair the deletion of my question. Clearly was about regression analysis, so about statistics, so fits here in this site. It's ok if no one answer my question (might be considered silly or out of interesting) but it's not ok to delete it. Could not be possible that someday someone would answer it? Or someone could learn from it in the future :)?" CreationDate="2018-12-19T03:16:16.890" UserId="224971" />
  <row Id="17039" PostId="5524" Score="4" Text="I'm sorry, but this site is not for every question that might mention &quot;statistics.&quot;  Our [help] offers an overview of what it is about.  As far as the deletion goes, the answer by Sycorax explains that the StackExchange *system* itself deleted your question, essentially because it attracted no interest from users of this site.  That automatic deletion is not something we can change through any amount of discussion here.  You are welcome to take this issue up on the SE Meta site, but beware that your quest will be perceived as quixotic." CreationDate="2018-12-19T15:40:05.130" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="17041" PostId="5524" Score="4" Text="@user459663 It seems necessary to underscore that this website's **software** deleted your question because the question satisfied a set of rules. No one is singling out you or your question. In the specific sense of your question having satisfied a list of criteria, your question was not &quot;unfairly&quot; deleted -- **every** question which satisfies these criteria is deleted automatically." CreationDate="2018-12-20T17:41:48.767" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="17094" PostId="5524" Score="1" Text="Just out of curiosity what you called 'puff!' is known in the Stack Exchange network as 'roomba'. See [here](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/19478/the-many-memes-of-meta/314070#314070) and [here](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/40353/stack-exchange-glossary-dictionary-of-commonly-used-terms/256420#256420). More on this [here](https://meta.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&amp;q=roomba%20is%3aquestion)." CreationDate="2019-01-09T02:10:07.303" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="17102" PostId="5524" Score="1" Text="@AndreSilva aha though I like more puff! (reminds me of mrs. puff) :P" CreationDate="2019-01-13T02:20:37.673" UserId="224971" />
  <row Id="17016" PostId="5525" Score="0" Text="Привет. Useless to downvote spam compared to flagging it for deletion. My aim is to make downvoting more relevant on the correct/incorrect axis by coming up with other procedures for deleting otherwise inappropriate posts." CreationDate="2018-12-10T18:49:20.243" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="17017" PostId="5525" Score="4" Text="The answer from @whuber at https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5526/do-you-flag-absolute-nonsense-questions specifically encourages downvoting complete garbage as well as flagging it. while emphasising that flagging is the most important thing a member not a moderator can do." CreationDate="2018-12-10T19:58:50.610" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17029" PostId="5525" Score="7" Text="downvotes also works as signals to users who can VTC. I often do that after seing downvotes on the frontpage. So those downvotes **are usefull**" CreationDate="2018-12-15T20:13:31.847" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="17018" PostId="5526" Score="4" Text="Don't be afraid to flag if you think it needs attention. whuber's list is correct in terms of importance; if it's very bad/spammy the higher up ones are things you want to do -- but some of the lower items in whuber's list can also be achieved if you do them before some of the ones above them. e.g. if you want to downvote to reduce the chance this account can post anything like that again, *and* you want to delete this post, first downvote, then vote to delete (because if it would be deleted by adding your vote, you can't then downvote)." CreationDate="2018-12-10T22:33:55.430" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="17028" PostId="5527" Score="3" Text="Thank you for making this site less noisy!" CreationDate="2018-12-14T23:40:46.573" UserId="858" />
  <row Id="17090" PostId="5527" Score="0" Text="What is '24/7'? 24 hours per 7 days/week? Wow, nice!" CreationDate="2019-01-08T23:56:10.873" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="17091" PostId="5527" Score="2" Text="@Andre That's correct.  Of course we don't promise this, but my experience--and some site statistics made available to moderators--suggest this is usually the case.  For instance, the site tells me that our average time to respond to user flags during the last quarter of a year was measured in minutes.  (I won't state how many minutes exactly, because I want to limit moderation information that could be picked up by any would-be spammers).  I monitor this average (over daily, weekly, and quarterly windows) and find it's pretty stable." CreationDate="2019-01-09T00:03:13.237" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="17031" PostId="5528" Score="0" Text="My question was deleted because the level was too low?" CreationDate="2018-12-16T00:18:25.453" UserId="224971" />
  <row Id="17032" PostId="5528" Score="0" Text="@user459663 what do you mean by level? Do you mean it’s score? Did you read the link in my answer?" CreationDate="2018-12-16T01:30:39.013" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="17033" PostId="5528" Score="0" Text="I meant that didn't receive answer and it doesn't fit here because it was misinterpreted as homework-check. Does it look like homework? I still cannot understand why was deleted." CreationDate="2018-12-16T02:27:23.183" UserId="224971" />
  <row Id="17034" PostId="5528" Score="0" Text="No, I'll read it in a few moments" CreationDate="2018-12-16T02:27:40.793" UserId="224971" />
  <row Id="17043" PostId="5528" Score="4" Text="It was deleted by a bot (a program, a piece of software). No person anywhere decided to delete it, and as far as I am aware, nobody here on CV even had any input into the criteria used by that program. The first comment under your question makes it explicit and describes the criteria that apply." CreationDate="2018-12-21T07:45:56.887" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="17093" PostId="5528" Score="1" Text="@AndreSilva Thank you! Looks great." CreationDate="2019-01-09T01:00:18.203" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="17099" PostId="5528" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b Yes I can understand that. thought its still not fair.. it took me time to write it and effort to think about it." CreationDate="2019-01-13T00:11:15.767" UserId="224971" />
  <row Id="17100" PostId="5528" Score="1" Text="Nobody here has anything to do with it. You're free to take it to meta.stackexchange.com ." CreationDate="2019-01-13T00:32:59.940" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="17101" PostId="5528" Score="0" Text="well maybe though the other mod said 'beware that your quest will be perceived as quixotic.'" CreationDate="2019-01-13T02:18:22.177" UserId="224971" />
  <row Id="17103" PostId="5528" Score="1" Text="@user459663 pursuing the issue in the comments on this thread is no less quixotic." CreationDate="2019-01-13T02:28:46.863" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="17021" PostId="5529" Score="2" Text="_deceptively_ rather than _deceiving_, I suggest." CreationDate="2018-12-12T01:57:35.913" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17023" PostId="5529" Score="0" Text="Ooops! Auto-correct!" CreationDate="2018-12-12T20:01:32.370" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="17046" PostId="5532" Score="2" Text="Given that this thread is pretty highly voted (partly through ending up on the HNQ list), I think it would be a good idea if DeltaIV or someone else added an answer addressing the specific aspect in question. After all, it *is* yet another reason why accuracy can be misleading. (Yes, I may be biased.)" CreationDate="2018-12-31T19:46:55.420" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="17047" PostId="5532" Score="0" Text="Could this be a case where OP (in this case, @Tim) edits the question to be slightly more broad than it is now? Or would creating a new question be in order?" CreationDate="2019-01-01T00:43:10.300" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="17050" PostId="5532" Score="0" Text="I agree that this is the closest answer, but I don't like with @StephanKolassa proposal of adding my answer to that question. I asked the question &quot;why can accuracy increase when loss decreases&quot;, I wouldn't accept an answer &quot;this is another manifestation of the inadequacy of accuracy as a classification metric&quot;. I would like to understand **how** accuracy could increase, when loss is also increasing." CreationDate="2019-01-01T23:29:07.257" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="17051" PostId="5532" Score="1" Text="@DeltaIV This question just got bumped to the front page by the Community user. It seems to be related. https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/317699/convolutional-neural-network-why-would-training-accuacy-and-well-as-validation" CreationDate="2019-01-02T00:45:43.927" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="17052" PostId="5532" Score="1" Text="I think I found *exactly* the question I was looking for: https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/282160/how-is-it-possible-that-validation-loss-is-increasing-while-validation-accuracy I think it should be used to close duplicates in the future. Looks like I won't be able to score some points by asking &amp; answering such a question, in the end ☺️" CreationDate="2019-01-02T07:14:57.073" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="17076" PostId="5532" Score="2" Text="@DeltaIV Happy new year! I only noticed this Meta thread now. Replying to your last comment above: I think  the Q that you found is great but the answers (including the accepted one) are really mediocre. They don't provide any direct evidence that these are the correct explanations, and don't cite any relevant literature... I'm pretty sure a better answer is possible. I'd be very interested to see an authoritative answer in that thread. If you can answer it better then please go ahead &amp; let me know in case I miss it." CreationDate="2019-01-07T22:48:15.040" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17086" PostId="5532" Score="1" Text="@amoeba thanks for the trust :-) I also think that the current answers are...improvable. However: 1) I think the comment that refers to https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/258166/good-accuracy-despite-high-loss-value/281651#281651 is spot on. It's still not *the* answer, but it's closer. 2) Holidays are over for me, and I just changed job function, so I don't think I'll be able to write an authoritative answer anytime soon." CreationDate="2019-01-08T13:30:10.387" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="17088" PostId="5532" Score="1" Text="@DeltaIV Hmm, congratulations, I guess ;-)" CreationDate="2019-01-08T14:35:50.120" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17089" PostId="5532" Score="0" Text="@amoeba thanks :-)" CreationDate="2019-01-08T16:12:20.360" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="17048" PostId="5533" Score="3" Text="Can anyone shed light on the tantalizing-intriguing difference between &quot;users destroyed&quot; and &quot;users deleted&quot;? Both have a rather *final* sound..." CreationDate="2019-01-01T20:39:43.573" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="17049" PostId="5533" Score="4" Text="Here you go, @Stephan: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/88994/what-is-the-difference-between-a-deleted-user-and-a-destroyed-user" CreationDate="2019-01-01T20:45:42.800" UserId="4454" />
  <row Id="17055" PostId="5533" Score="4" Text="How can non-diamond users handle comment flags?" CreationDate="2019-01-02T15:30:41.080" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="17057" PostId="5533" Score="4" Text="@kjetilbhalvorsen One way is [If a comment with zero votes and no trigger keywords (see below) is flagged by three users, it will be automatically deleted.](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/17365/215590)." CreationDate="2019-01-03T09:44:16.850" UserId="66276" />
  <row Id="17053" PostId="5534" Score="3" Text="What would be the utility for such tag? Why would it be helpful? Who would benefit from it? Notice that there is 15,237 questions in your query, nobody will tag them by hand, so creating the tag would not change anything for those questions." CreationDate="2019-01-02T11:56:39.703" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="17054" PostId="5534" Score="0" Text="I will use it, it would help to users interested in analyse sets. I would retag those question that fit as I found them (and I hope new questions will use the tag too)" CreationDate="2019-01-02T12:14:04.480" UserId="105234" />
  <row Id="17056" PostId="5534" Score="2" Text="Tags grow out of the needs of users. We have found that it is rare that a retrospective application of a tag is helpful.  In this case, if not a single one of the  thousands of users who had questions related to sets elected to create this tag, it's unlikely it will help to apply it to their questions now, no matter how appropriate it might seem to be." CreationDate="2019-01-02T22:25:50.473" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="17079" PostId="5536" Score="0" Text="This raises as many questions as it answers. Hiring for what? is key. My unsurprising guess is that high reputation people here are generally experienced and competent in computing, but that doesn't mean that they use GitHub to put software in the public domain.  Indeed, being available for hire may well mean that most if not all of your work is private. I have no data here, but it wouldn't astonish me if many people active in one place show little or no activity in other places, which could be all about limited time and inclination to do everything." CreationDate="2019-01-08T11:43:32.100" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17080" PostId="5536" Score="0" Text="I'll edit my answer as it was a little vague.  I meant to separate it into an &quot;either&quot; as I respect users from both sites.  The existence of them having one of the two isn't obviously what I look for singularly....there's a variety of attributes and it depends on the job/task.  Basically, I just use common sense if they happen to know of and furthermore participate on such sites." CreationDate="2019-01-08T11:50:33.513" UserId="28928" />
  <row Id="17082" PostId="5536" Score="0" Text="Let's just say the best way to know someone is to look at their fingerprints. Their fingerprints always have a tendency of leading to what I'm looking for.  And generally, they have no idea what I'm actually looking for. If I find the wrong person, they could royally mess the intended results up. So, honestly, and bluntly, I look at every single piece of information about them from every angle I can find online until dimishing returns become obvious.  Then, to protect myself, and really, them, I'll &quot;test&quot; them out.  I don't just blindly select variables." CreationDate="2019-01-08T12:13:29.043" UserId="28928" />
  <row Id="17083" PostId="5536" Score="1" Text="Btw Nick, ever considered making a better version of Grammarly? (this is a loose hypothetical) I'm not being patronizing either, all of your edits could be used....along with your other knowledge that is seems apparent prima facia and I know you know what I'm talking about.&#xA;&#xA;Perhaps that may give you some insight." CreationDate="2019-01-08T12:15:36.843" UserId="28928" />
  <row Id="17084" PostId="5536" Score="0" Text="I've never heard of Grammarly. I Googled it. Thanks for compliments -- but there is no way that I would try to write anything similar." CreationDate="2019-01-08T12:37:11.463" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17085" PostId="5536" Score="1" Text="You don't need to.  In fact, all your edits could be scraped and used as training data.  Then again, the fact that you know what training data is I'm sure...and many other things causes it all to synergize." CreationDate="2019-01-08T12:59:08.770" UserId="28928" />
  <row Id="17251" PostId="5537" Score="3" Text="(+1) This is very useful but might not be easy to subsequently find because of the title of this question. Perhaps it would be worth asking a new, more targetted meta question and answering it yourself?" CreationDate="2019-02-10T10:39:29.633" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="17252" PostId="5537" Score="0" Text="@mkt, tks for taking interest. With time, as other users also find this query helpful (or not), we can escalate the subject to a separate Q/A. Maybe you can do that after reviewing some of those questions and add your own feedback from such experience." CreationDate="2019-02-10T16:36:23.480" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="17098" PostId="5540" Score="1" Text="If I understand you correctly would it not be possible to post your new question with a link back to the old one and then post your answer there?" CreationDate="2019-01-12T17:46:45.557" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="17104" PostId="5540" Score="0" Text="@mdewey - So you would like me to start a new post with the same question, answer it, then link back to the original post? Can a moderator comment on whether or not that would be allowed (it seems like it would circumvent the whole StackExchange closing functionality by creating a duplicate)? The easiest thing to do would be for a moderator or voters to simply reopen the original question, so I can answer it and close it myself by accepting the answer. That's what the reopen-request tag on this Meta post is designed to set in motion." CreationDate="2019-01-13T15:43:50.240" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="17105" PostId="5540" Score="0" Text="I meant to say the reopen-closed tag - then &quot;reopen-request&quot; tag is used at other StackExchange sites for the same purposes, apparently. Thanks for the suggestion." CreationDate="2019-01-13T15:49:58.087" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="17106" PostId="5540" Score="1" Text="If I understood correctly your researches mean that your new question would be different from the original one, although related obviously. By linking back to the original closed one you would be able to state why it is not a duplicate." CreationDate="2019-01-13T16:23:56.683" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="17107" PostId="5540" Score="0" Text="@mdewey Actually I've already edited the original question at the link above to sharply reduce the scope, so there's no need to post a different question. It's the same question, just not as broad in the range of potential answers. All I need is to get the original one reopened, either with enough reopen votes by users or by moderator intervention, just long enough for me to post my detailed answer, accept it and close it myself. Thanks" CreationDate="2019-01-13T16:37:20.700" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="17110" PostId="5540" Score="0" Text="I've got 2 reopening votes on the original thread + 4 upvotes on this Meta post. I think it takes 5 votes to reopen a closed question, so if I can get 3 of the upvoters to cast a reopening vote, the issue will be resolved. I'll then write up my answer as quickly as possible, accept the answer and close the question. Thanks." CreationDate="2019-01-14T23:41:09.677" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="17115" PostId="5540" Score="0" Text="I can only speak for myself. Nevertheless I would be surprised if my position was unique. I won't vote for re-opening because this isn't my field and the proposition seems to be that you want approval for posting an answer when we can't see what it is. That doesn't make your motives, still less your answer, suspect; it just means that I won't vote for a candidate I can't assess. Further, this thread seems pointless: as @mdewey has clearly hinted, you can just post a new question and a new answer on the main site and then people can vote, add further answers or comment exactly as they please." CreationDate="2019-01-15T14:30:07.147" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17117" PostId="5540" Score="0" Text="A counter-proposal is just to delete the original. I can't see that there could be any objection to re-using some of the text in a new thread so long as all the other criteria of CV are met." CreationDate="2019-01-15T15:05:51.070" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17118" PostId="5540" Score="0" Text="@Nick Cox - I can post my answer ahead of time if you'd like for review, or run it by a moderator if you'd like (if that's permissible). The only reason I haven't so far is that it's likely to take significant effort write &amp; I want to make sure I'm not wasting my time. I'd rather reopen the original thread, in part because it got a lot of upvotes &amp; favorites; the people who responded to it will be looking for an answer there. Besides, deleting &amp; reposting circumvents the whole StackExchange reopening process &amp; isn't the preferred mechanism. Thanks for the suggestion though." CreationDate="2019-01-15T15:27:06.540" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="17119" PostId="5540" Score="0" Text="There is no pre-publication review here by moderators or anyone else. I can't help on whether your answer will be well received for simple but fundamental reasons already mentioned: it's not in my field and I can't begin to imagine what it would be like. I usually care a lot about following documented procedures, but they don't seem to be helping you here. The 4 upvotes here aren't matched by the votes to re-open on the main site. The only comments I can see at all are from @mdewey and I agree with everything he has said." CreationDate="2019-01-15T15:34:59.300" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17120" PostId="5540" Score="0" Text="The preferred procedure in the Meta post &quot;How do you reopen a closed question?&quot; I cited above Includes steps like a) rewriting the question to make it less broad and b) creating a reopening request post like this one in the appropriate Meta forum. Deleting the original and reposting it are not among the listed options; I'm just following the script the powers that be at StackExchange have established." CreationDate="2019-01-15T15:35:31.170" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="17121" PostId="5540" Score="0" Text="@Nick Cox Thanks for the suggestions. I'll see if more time can garner more reopen votes, or if a moderator reopens it; I only posted my suggestion for the 3 more reopening votes last night. It may be awhile before some of the original upvoters see this post, or the rewrite, or the comments. I'll stick to the StackExchange procedure for now if possible. Thanks" CreationDate="2019-01-15T15:40:12.503" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="17122" PostId="5540" Score="1" Text="Indeed; that's not encouraged for rather mundane and sordid reasons. Newbies with reputations of order 1 or 10 sometimes just post another version of the same question (or the same question yet again) if they get a disappointing response. That doesn't match this case. The Catch-22 here is that if you wait for 5 votes to re-open you are likely to wait a long time. Most active people act promptly or not at all." CreationDate="2019-01-15T15:40:17.927" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17123" PostId="5540" Score="0" Text="Thanks Nick. I will wait and see if I can reach my goal through the standard procedure; given enough time I should be able to reach it (as long as it doesn't get deleted; someone cast a delete vote, which is the worst-case scenario, 'cause I don't have many rep points and can't afford to waste the ones I accrued on that thread LOL). A Meta post like this one was actually the last recommended step, but I'll keep trying." CreationDate="2019-01-15T15:53:22.590" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="17124" PostId="5540" Score="0" Text="If anyone wants further explanation on what my answer will consist of, I'd be happy to post it here." CreationDate="2019-01-15T15:53:29.697" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="17125" PostId="5540" Score="1" Text="About as much effort has gone into this Meta post and comments as would go into a typical answer on the main site. You really don't have to be so diffident. Worst scenario: you lose 80 reputation on the main site if the original question is deleted. If your new post is any good, you will claw most or all of that back. (I lost about 1000 points once on SO when someone who likes my stuff got fed up with the site and withdrew, and their upvotes disappeared....)" CreationDate="2019-01-15T16:11:24.527" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17126" PostId="5540" Score="0" Text="@Nick Cox Thanks - I'll keep that in mind as a last resort. Losing 1000 in a day? Wow. I'm only at a moderate/beginner level in these topics, so it's taken me a couple years just to get past half that figure. If I do take that option, I'll cite your comment here as a justification since you're a mod with a lot more seniority than me :)" CreationDate="2019-01-15T16:20:35.960" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="17127" PostId="5540" Score="0" Text="Not trying to boast. Just saying: win some, lose some; it's only a game. (Not a moderator.)" CreationDate="2019-01-15T16:24:58.453" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17128" PostId="5540" Score="0" Text="@Nick Cox To me, losing that many points at once would have immediate practical consequences - I'd lose a lot of site privileges, plus get less attention to my answers and questions (low rep usually does that). I intend to stick around the site for years to come so I can learn as much as possible and get my questions answered, but my own contributions will be few and far between in comparison to the real experts here. So I will always be in that niche where rep points are low enough where I have to think about them for practical reasons, even when I'd rather pay them less attention." CreationDate="2019-01-15T16:31:57.420" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="17129" PostId="5540" Score="2" Text="I appreciate all that, but I don't think you'd lose many privileges if your reputation dropped by 80. Don't get me wrong: I much prefer my reputation to any smaller number, but once you can comment, vote and suggest edits you've made the biggest steps. My own case (I'm certainly not a statistician) suggests that going for low-hanging fruit can be a way to build up reputation." CreationDate="2019-01-15T16:49:07.347" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17130" PostId="5545" Score="0" Text="Thanks for the response, I will think this through. The reason I added the seemingly superfluous text was to illustrate what had changed in the interim between the original post and my edit. I could eliminate some of that, but the post will still be relatively long in terms of text, because it's a complicated issue that requires a lot of context." CreationDate="2019-01-15T17:06:39.003" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="17131" PostId="5545" Score="0" Text="My initial impression is that this would result in a thread that is even more top-heavy in the question, but with a shorter answer. I'd still have to enumerate the existing implementations in these fields, demonstrate that the list is a lot shorter than that of ordinary scientific applications, talk about why this is surprising in light of the widespread perception of a list of potential applications, etc. The difference is that all of this would have to be moved from the answer to the question &amp; be more awkward. At present, the answer and the question would be about the same length." CreationDate="2019-01-15T17:10:01.157" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="17132" PostId="5545" Score="0" Text="Questions and answers with explicit edits are often difficult to read. A question/answer is eventually the best when it stands on it's own without additional history how you came to the answer/question. If you like then you might refer with a small text to the edit-history and/or this meta-question (it is Q&amp;A, not a forum or chatbox, see for another example of separating discussion/history also Wikipedia which refers to discussion seperately)." CreationDate="2019-01-15T17:15:59.520" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17133" PostId="5545" Score="0" Text="How about the question in a single phrase and then a list (which I imagine, based on you texts, is small) as an example. So two sentences and a list, and you are done." CreationDate="2019-01-15T17:21:53.703" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17134" PostId="5545" Score="0" Text="@martjin Weterings I think you're right - this was my first attempt at a significant question edit on StackExchange and it probably led to unnecessary verbosity. Give me a few days to mull over yours and Nick's suggestions and see if I can think of a means of reorganizing the thread, without going to the other extreme of a top-heavy question as I mused about above." CreationDate="2019-01-15T17:22:33.213" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="17135" PostId="5545" Score="0" Text="I'd have to go longer than two sentences and a list, because I still have to explain why there's a perception of wide-ranging applicability to data mining, etc. - which still entails some kind of list of potential applications like the one in the original post. Let me chew on this for a few days. Thanks" CreationDate="2019-01-15T17:25:29.117" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="17136" PostId="5545" Score="0" Text="There's no way of getting out of providing a lot of context, which means several parargraphs of text at minimum; I've already cut out equations, function definitions, etc. But let me see if I can think of a more optimal way of going about it, in light of your suggestions." CreationDate="2019-01-15T17:28:12.500" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="17138" PostId="5545" Score="0" Text="Additional note to my first comment, at first I did not read your full question and did not come to the point where you say *&quot;In the two years since my original post, I've done...&quot;*" CreationDate="2019-01-15T17:29:47.667" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17139" PostId="5545" Score="0" Text="You are possibly making the question(ing) more complicated than it should be. You can always ask a simple question with a brief explanation/motivation, and make it more extended later." CreationDate="2019-01-15T17:37:06.620" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17140" PostId="5545" Score="0" Text="One thing I could do is to follow your advice and create a new question, but move the list of &quot;potential applications&quot; in my original post to the answer and explain why this set of uses cases is only tangentially related to chaos theory. if I don't mention them at all, others will bring them up - but they're really a separate class from the main use, which is ruling out chaotic effects in function approximation. Let me see if I can think of more workarounds like this. I'll get back to you in a few days. Thanks." CreationDate="2019-01-15T17:47:50.057" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="17142" PostId="5545" Score="0" Text="List of potential applications, set of use cases, those types of lists/sets have fuzzy borders which makes the question too broad here. But is it about the list? I guess you have something else with it in mind. Make the question about that and then care less about list which, if you really like, can add to your question or answer (by list I imagine just a list of 10 links with keywords or short sentences, or are you planning to fully explain each of them?)." CreationDate="2019-01-16T07:51:41.887" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17150" PostId="5545" Score="0" Text="@Martjin Weterings I am awaiting feedback in chat from a moderator on whether or not mdewey &amp; Nick's option of deleting/reposting is permissible. It's not my preferred option anyways. In the meantime I'm crafting another rewrite in lines with the Q/A format you suggested here &amp; should have it ready by early next week. I'll get back to you then. If the feedback on the format is positive, I'll accept your answer here and substitute the new rewrite. Thanks for your constructive suggestions." CreationDate="2019-01-17T14:42:55.003" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="17151" PostId="5545" Score="0" Text="*&quot; It's not my preferred option anyways&quot;* then why waiting for some moderator's approval for that option? (btw, I am not sure that the moderators here are waiting to make such decisions and like being placed in the position of some sort of higher court judge. You have already posted this meta-question here to let the jury decide. I do not think that people will be upset whatever you do regarding 'deleting-reposting versus editing' since you have tried your best to get a clear answer, and it turns out that it is not so clearcut.)....." CreationDate="2019-01-17T15:12:20.527" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17153" PostId="5545" Score="0" Text="@Martjin That's a good point. But if the moderators say that the deletion/reposting thing isn't an option, the people who suggested it might instead back your option, the one I prefer. I've seen a few Meta threads about how to contact mods about rule clarification so I thought it was the way to go. I'm moving forward with the rewrite in the meantime while I clear up that loose end, if possible. If the mods don't reply, I'll just press forwards on your option." CreationDate="2019-01-17T15:46:43.220" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="17158" PostId="5545" Score="0" Text="@Marjin Weterings I've rewritten the question in light of the suggestions in this thread and have also written up the answer in advance. I'm going to hold off on posting it for a day or two to sleep on it (sound advice/standard practice when writing technical or feature pieces that aren't on a time deadline, as I learned when writing around the clock as a reporter). It's still a little long, due to the need for context, but down to two paragraphs now, with some material transferred to the answer. Thanks for your input." CreationDate="2019-01-21T20:34:45.333" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="17159" PostId="5545" Score="3" Text="@SQLServerSteve Brevity is the soul of wit.—William Shakespear" CreationDate="2019-01-22T02:34:36.070" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="17168" PostId="5545" Score="0" Text="The thread was reopened today, a few hours before I was about to post my rewrite. Two answers are now up, including a further rewrite of the answer I was going to post today. Thank you to everyone who provided suggestions and reopening votes." CreationDate="2019-01-24T22:16:50.690" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="17169" PostId="5545" Score="0" Text="Yes, brevity may be the soul of wit, but Shakespeare wrote an awful lot. The difference is that he knew what to leave in and what to leave out. Brevity is not always a good thing; cutting out detail can lead to longer discussions over the long term, if it leads to misunderstandings. This is especially problematic in technical writing. It's a bit like being stuck in a local minima ;)" CreationDate="2019-01-24T22:20:35.343" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="17173" PostId="5545" Score="0" Text="@SQLServerSteve Yeah, we would have had much more discussion when your piece of writing would have been less complex and not so verbose. You do not agree there is not superfluous text?" CreationDate="2019-01-25T13:38:01.623" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17174" PostId="5545" Score="0" Text="1) Was it important for us to know that you were 'casually reading some mass market works'?." CreationDate="2019-01-25T13:38:17.340" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17175" PostId="5545" Score="0" Text="2) The 250 words from the paragraph &quot;In the two years since my original post, I've done more research into the issue and at this point...&quot; which may seem useful for people at the moment to understand what happened to the question (but is not really part of the question and should have been a comment) will be very confusing for people in the future that may ever hit uppon the question via a search on google or a search on the site. Are you ever gonna remove that part which is more like part of discussion rather than part of the question." CreationDate="2019-01-25T13:39:50.370" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17176" PostId="5545" Score="0" Text="Yes I agree there is superfluous text; as I explained, some of that was due to the need to explain the changes between the 1st and 2nd rewrites. The 3rd rewrite I made yesterday eliminated most of that &amp; cut the question down to 2 paragraphs, with the bulk moved to the answer. Then the question was reopened before I had the chance to post it, so I had to rewrite the answer again. I agree, I should go back and edit the question at some point to remove some of that, as I had planned. The only thing I'd object to is cutting useful detail just for the sake of shorter text (like the citations)." CreationDate="2019-01-25T13:49:39.723" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="17177" PostId="5545" Score="0" Text="So we're on the same page on that one. The other point about casual reading provides some useful context, because that's how many of us were introduced to chaos theory, through books like Gleick's works. It's not essential, but helps explain how the false impression of widespread applicability became to be. This is relevant to the stark disparity between expectations and reality." CreationDate="2019-01-25T13:52:41.933" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="17178" PostId="5545" Score="0" Text="@Martjin Weterings I just took care of the second edit; thanks for the reminder, I intended to cut it anyways but hadn't had the chance." CreationDate="2019-01-25T14:06:20.523" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="17179" PostId="5545" Score="0" Text="@SQLServerSteve I have given an example in my answer how I would cut away sentences from your question. (note: this is just my opinion. I am not saying that this is how it should be, I am saying that this is how at least one person would find it more pleasant to read.)" CreationDate="2019-01-25T14:19:15.843" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17180" PostId="5545" Score="0" Text="@Martjin Weterings I actually took your advice and cut out several more sentences (in addition to the ones I just removed an hour ago),mainly by moving the list of &quot;potential applications&quot; to the answer. The 3rd rewrite was in line with your answer here &amp; was just 2 paragraphs - but the thread was unexpectedly reopened a few hours before I was able to post it. Someone put a bounty on the question as it was, which was fine by me. I decided it was better to let sleeping dogs lie than post the 3rd rewrite and risk reclosure." CreationDate="2019-01-25T17:29:25.530" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="17181" PostId="5545" Score="0" Text="@Martin Weterings If you want I can send you the two-paragraph 3rd rewrite which was never posted, for curiosity's sake. Your ideas were sound &amp; I acted on most of them. It's too late to use that version now; the question's reopened and has answers. It problem was solved awkwardly but worked out in the end. Thanks." CreationDate="2019-01-25T17:32:14.997" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="17154" PostId="5548" Score="0" Text="So your suggestion is to add something like &quot;if it is really about AI, post it at AI.SE&quot; to the wiki?" CreationDate="2019-01-21T09:12:59.080" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="17155" PostId="5548" Score="3" Text="@Tim I would rather add &quot;If it is not really about AI, please use another tag&quot; :-)" CreationDate="2019-01-21T09:40:40.193" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17156" PostId="5548" Score="2" Text="@amoeba say, `[blockchain]` ? ;)" CreationDate="2019-01-21T09:47:03.667" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="17157" PostId="5548" Score="2" Text="@Tim I think the wiki could be a sharper about the contrast between AI and ML. We could also add something to the effect of &quot;AI.SE specifically specializes in questions about AI, so your question may get more specialized attention there.&quot; However, I also don't want to give people the impression that misnomer-AI (that is, questions about ML) are off-topic here (and I outline why in previous meta.stats.SE posts)." CreationDate="2019-01-21T14:47:23.657" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="22322" PostId="5549" Score="1" Text="very good points. I (cv newbie) have the impression that many of the incoming *unclear* questions with well known solutions come from people with little statistical background. They simply don't know the right key words to look for, and don't know where to start. This may explain the apparent ignorance wrt search tools. / / And sometimes, even if they had a link to an answer, they would not understand it without translation." CreationDate="2023-07-26T15:14:14.203" UserId="237561" />
  <row Id="17161" PostId="5550" Score="0" Text="I usually find sorting by votes to give more relevant results, unless the query is very broad, then it gives some irrelevant, very popular questions on top." CreationDate="2019-01-23T16:27:24.460" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="17162" PostId="5550" Score="0" Text="@Tim The relevance algorithm is pretty good, so I pay attention to it.  Sorting by votes will turn up good hits, too, but sometimes you have to look pretty far down the list to find them.  You can (sort of) combine the approaches by including something like `score:5` (with a relatively high vote threshold) in the search and focusing on the relevant hits." CreationDate="2019-01-23T17:47:45.123" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="17165" PostId="5550" Score="4" Text="One thing you could mention is use of wildcard: `valida*` to search for `validation` or `validated` or ... `valid*` woud also include `validity`" CreationDate="2019-01-24T10:09:01.567" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="17170" PostId="5551" Score="2" Text="I asked this last year as well and it was unanswered (I believe). How often are the community promotion adds gonna be shown when they pass the threshold? The most important consideration behind of the question is the question 'Do the promotion adds each gonna get a number of views that is fixed per add, or are they gonna share some total amounts of views (which means that they get fewer views per add if more adds pass the threshold)?  (yeah, I tend to think of these things)" CreationDate="2019-01-25T08:39:32.187" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17171" PostId="5551" Score="0" Text="It's not a question with a straight answer, @Martijn: it's different for registered and anonymous users, for instance. It also depends on the number of answers a question has. And then, if the site shows ads for SO jobs, it further complicates things... But I'll try to see if anyone has a bit more detail that could be explained succinctly :)" CreationDate="2019-01-25T09:47:00.530" UserId="72321" />
  <row Id="17172" PostId="5551" Score="1" Text="It doesn't need to be a detailed answer, but just sufficient to be able to help with the particular issue that I mentioned &quot;should I vote strategically on the few that I like best versus should I vote for anything that I like&quot;. If you like then you can simplify my question to &quot;If a certain add passes the threshold, does this decrease the rate at which other community promotion adds are shown?&quot; which should be able to be answered with a simple yes/no answer." CreationDate="2019-01-25T13:26:29.507" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17193" PostId="5551" Score="1" Text="@MartijnWeterings All of the &quot;leftover&quot; inventory goes to various ads, with varying priorities.  Community ads fall into this bucket, at a lower priority than paid ads.  So the more community ads we have, the less they will serve because they are all sharing those leftover impressions.  But the number of those impressions isn't fixed... it changes base on our amount of &quot;leftover&quot; inventory.  So it can also vary month to month based on how much we sell." CreationDate="2019-01-30T20:43:50.983" UserId="217619" />
  <row Id="17212" PostId="5551" Score="0" Text="It would really help if the community came up with some sort of guidance on what kind of ad they want to see. Last year I brought two community ads promoting R and mlr (a mainstream machine learning package written in R) and both were downvoted by the community." CreationDate="2019-02-04T17:58:17.737" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="17213" PostId="5551" Score="0" Text="Unless I misunderstand what you mean, @Firebug, the voting feature is _exactly_ meant for the community to express what they want and don't want to see :)" CreationDate="2019-02-04T18:44:18.067" UserId="72321" />
  <row Id="17215" PostId="5551" Score="0" Text="@JNat I meant a thread where this &quot;guidance&quot; was exposed and voted by the community, or at least a thread were we could expose community ads drafts (because otherwise your work is going to waste if it's downvoted, better to know it beforehand that's not what CV wants)" CreationDate="2019-02-04T21:15:45.630" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="17160" PostId="5552" Score="1" Text="This is a demonstration post to indicate how this should look when an ad is posted. It also doubles as your twitter ad, but it's up to you if you wish to promote it by voting" CreationDate="2019-01-23T11:41:38.253" UserId="72321" />
  <row Id="17163" PostId="5553" Score="5" Text="We sometimes get people coming to CV to ask for datasets. The [opendata.SE] SE site can help them. It is still in beta, but I hope it thrives &amp; I think we could try to support them with their logo &amp; link as a community promotion ad here." CreationDate="2019-01-23T18:43:05.703" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17164" PostId="5553" Score="0" Text="I have suggested this in previous years as well. I believe this is the preferred image." CreationDate="2019-01-23T18:43:48.893" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17166" PostId="5554" Score="2" Text="Is 'quantum machine learning' so different from 'machine learning' (which is already on topic here on [stats.SE], &amp; reduplicated to some degree (&amp; unnecessarily so, IMHO) on [datascience.SE], that we need *another* SE site for it? My gut reaction is *no*, &amp; we should not support this." CreationDate="2019-01-24T17:02:44.733" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17167" PostId="5554" Score="2" Text="I find it funny that there is already a quantum SE before we actually have large quantum computers that are practical to use and available to the mass. How many quantum computers are currently out there? And to make it statistic, what is the number of quantum computers as a function of the bits in the processor?" CreationDate="2019-01-24T19:32:05.173" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17182" PostId="5556" Score="1" Text="I think some of the reasons are covered in this thread: https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1305/please-do-not-migrate-low-quality-questions?rq=1 and this one https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2557/i-think-we-need-to-talk-about-the-so-cv-interface-again?rq=1" CreationDate="2019-01-25T19:30:47.373" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="17183" PostId="5556" Score="12" Text="The short answer is that most of the questions we close as off-topic because they're about programming are either so poor or incomplete (*e.g.*, without an MRE) that they would instantly be closed on SO if we migrated them there.  Questions that do obviously meet SO's standards are migrated.  We got flak from SO mods years ago when we migrated more questions: in effect, they have taught us what we might consider migrating and what we shouldn't." CreationDate="2019-01-25T20:09:35.400" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="17184" PostId="5557" Score="1" Text="Perfectly fair! Thanks for clearing that up." CreationDate="2019-01-25T20:29:15.343" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="19638" PostId="5559" Score="0" Text="Thanks for the edit @Scortchi" CreationDate="2020-01-10T00:39:35.460" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="19639" PostId="5559" Score="0" Text="You're welcome. They've done a nice job there." CreationDate="2020-01-10T01:26:01.367" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="17185" PostId="5560" Score="5" Text="NB We squished 4 custom close reasons into 3 because that's the most we were allowed: now SE can give us an extra one if we show them the need for it." CreationDate="2019-01-29T11:35:32.973" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="17186" PostId="5560" Score="3" Text="I am sympathetic to rewriting this, as it is so often misunderstood. But note that  there is a Code Review site on SE." CreationDate="2019-01-29T11:46:48.317" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17187" PostId="5560" Score="1" Text="@NickCox yes, but it focuses not on checking code with bugs, but improving working code https://codereview.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic , so &quot;my code doesn't work&quot; would be off-topic there as well." CreationDate="2019-01-29T11:50:19.660" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="17188" PostId="5560" Score="3" Text="Still true that &quot;code review is off-topic on the whole SE network&quot; is not the case." CreationDate="2019-01-29T11:51:02.410" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17232" PostId="5560" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi If we can get one more custom close reason, perhaps 'abandoned by OP after request for clarification was ignored' would be more useful? I encounter that quite often and it does not fall into any existing category." CreationDate="2019-02-07T10:48:04.477" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="17233" PostId="5560" Score="1" Text="@mkt: If that clarification's needed to answer the question, it should be closed as &quot;unclear what you're asking&quot;; if not, why close it at all? To put it another way, whether a question's clear enough to be answered doesn't depend on whether or not specific clarifications have been requested. Anyway, I believe we would be allowed yet another custom close reason, if we could convince SE we need it." CreationDate="2019-02-07T11:05:44.923" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="17245" PostId="5560" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi Hmmm, you're right. I thought that the relevant comments do not appear in the VTC queue. But I am now seeing comments when reviewing, so I guess I was wrong about that." CreationDate="2019-02-08T07:28:25.233" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="17406" PostId="5560" Score="0" Text="@Tim Re your update: Not sure why you say that we did not reach any consensus. There is only one answer there and is has 9 upvotes. Looks like a consensus?" CreationDate="2019-04-04T21:32:12.283" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17407" PostId="5560" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Nick suggests leaving both &quot;not about statistics&quot; and &quot;datasets&quot; reasons, and we can't do this given that our proposal was dismissed. So even though we agree on that, this can't be done." CreationDate="2019-04-04T21:51:12.560" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="17409" PostId="5560" Score="1" Text="@Tim No he does not. &quot;That was a useful reason to close, but sacrificing that reason seems practical.&quot;" CreationDate="2019-04-04T21:53:17.720" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17410" PostId="5560" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I must have not read carefully enough, sorry." CreationDate="2019-04-04T21:55:01.057" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="17189" PostId="5561" Score="1" Text="+1 It would be nice if we could work in error messages, package / software requests as well. (I suppose we cold say &quot;debugging&quot; covers error messages, but it isn't clear that people recognize that.) Also, how many characters is this &amp; how many do we have?" CreationDate="2019-01-29T14:25:41.287" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17190" PostId="5561" Score="0" Text="@gung: Oh! ... 428 characters with the URLs. As far as I know we still only have 400 characters. [I just checked - &quot;too long by 28 characters&quot;.]" CreationDate="2019-01-29T14:36:25.350" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="17191" PostId="5561" Score="2" Text="Maybe &quot;performing routine operations within a statistical computing platform&quot; $\to$ &quot;using statistical software&quot; to reduce chars count?" CreationDate="2019-01-29T14:52:41.360" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="17192" PostId="5561" Score="4" Text="@Tim: Good, that's 385. Or &quot;routine use of statistical software&quot; gives 394 - I like having &quot;routine&quot; in there." CreationDate="2019-01-29T15:03:36.547" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="17211" PostId="5564" Score="4" Text="(Note: &quot;tick&quot; is British for *check mark*.)" CreationDate="2019-02-04T02:28:13.223" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17214" PostId="5564" Score="1" Text="You seem to have misunderstood my question. I meant a thread on meta in which people post requests to reopen positings on main, and where they discuss pros and cons of reopening." CreationDate="2019-02-04T20:21:50.003" UserId="5176" />
  <row Id="17216" PostId="5564" Score="3" Text="@MichaelHardy: Sorry - no there isn't one of those. Discussion of the pros &amp; cons of re-opening usually takes place on the post in question, as comments. Sometimes people post on Meta about a particular question." CreationDate="2019-02-05T09:29:55.867" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="17237" PostId="5567" Score="3" Text="&quot;Why does my predictive model explain less than 100% of the variance?&quot; is IMHO too general for a canonical question." CreationDate="2019-02-07T16:11:53.107" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17238" PostId="5567" Score="4" Text="@amoeba: and it's a different question." CreationDate="2019-02-07T16:13:22.907" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="17239" PostId="5567" Score="1" Text="Hmm, why is it different?" CreationDate="2019-02-07T17:28:29.243" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17242" PostId="5567" Score="2" Text="Maybe a general question on &quot;what is regression to the mean, and what does it have to do with linear regression&quot;?" CreationDate="2019-02-08T01:34:32.123" UserId="74500" />
  <row Id="17244" PostId="5567" Score="8" Text="@amoeba: the difference is that the questions in question deal with out-of-sample predictions, whereas explained variance deals with in-sample fits. (Yes, I'll admit the two concepts are related. But I don't think someone posting the first kind of question will understand how an answer to the second kind will apply to *their* question.)" CreationDate="2019-02-08T06:56:31.013" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="17234" PostId="5568" Score="0" Text="https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/closed-questions" CreationDate="2019-02-07T15:55:51.253" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="17235" PostId="5568" Score="0" Text="Taking a tour of our [help] would benefit you, now that you have joined several SE sites.  That will answer a lot of questions you might have concerning how SE works." CreationDate="2019-02-07T16:05:57.010" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="17236" PostId="5568" Score="0" Text="@whuber thank you" CreationDate="2019-02-07T16:11:51.043" UserId="236336" />
  <row Id="17240" PostId="5568" Score="0" Text="@whuber I've read https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4689 as you suggested. It turns out I edited before asking this question. Could you please take a look at my question? https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/391199/estimation-of-parameter-hat-beta-in-the-linear-model" CreationDate="2019-02-07T17:29:00.547" UserId="236336" />
  <row Id="17254" PostId="5573" Score="6" Text="&quot;better suited&quot; is not especially relevant for decided whether something stays or is migrated; if it falls within our scope, we have no basis to move it unless the OP asks us to. i.e. we'd have to declare such posts *off-topic* before it would be acceptable to do anything the OP didn't ask us to (and I don't presently see a good reason to reduce our scope below what it was before AI got made). If it's on topic it's up to the poster to choose where they want to post their question. If there are participants at AI that can answer questions getting posted here, why not do so?" CreationDate="2019-02-13T00:22:03.730" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="17255" PostId="5573" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b I just think that websites should now start to focus more on specific topics (given the creation of new websites to address more specific problems). For example, if I am just interested in RL, I don't want to have multiple accounts and visiting multiple websites only because RL questions are on topic on multiple websites. This process of clear separation not only will help askers but also answerers." CreationDate="2019-02-13T00:35:35.500" UserDisplayName="user82135" />
  <row Id="17256" PostId="5573" Score="8" Text="If you're calling on us to reduce our scope, you should probably focus on that. Stats questions pop up on math.SE, stackoverflow, mathoverflow (and a couple of others) but I don't ask them to reduce their scope to suit me; as long as it's on topic for their site, I can't say much. There's naturally going to be overlaps." CreationDate="2019-02-13T00:38:43.970" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="17257" PostId="5573" Score="7" Text="About a third of *all* questions on this site are unanswered.  According to your logic, &quot;there [aren't] enough competent people on this website&quot; to answer questions about stats or machine learning, period.  Did you really intend to offend the many people on our site who *do* regularly answer RL questions by insinuating that no more than one of them is &quot;competent&quot;?" CreationDate="2019-02-13T00:50:04.390" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="17258" PostId="5573" Score="1" Text="@whuber I did not intend to offend anyone, even though that statement is a fact, I didn't mean anything more than the fact itself. I actually thought (but I didn't write it) that the situations regarding the unanswered questions could also apply to other topics and websites. I just think that questions related to RL are better suited for https://ai.stackexchange.com/. That's it. In fact, research in theoretical AI is mainly RL, nowadays. I'm not saying that there isn't an overlap, but it would have been better that most of those questions were asked on AI SE." CreationDate="2019-02-13T00:56:47.793" UserDisplayName="user82135" />
  <row Id="17259" PostId="5573" Score="3" Text="You *could* comment on OP's post and suggest that there is [AI.SE] that might be more suitable. However, as long as this community deems RL as on-topic, then no one can force all questions to be posted/migrated to there, unless this community decides to make it explicitly off-topic on here (just as Glen_b recommended)." CreationDate="2019-02-13T05:14:49.953" UserId="62336" />
  <row Id="17260" PostId="5573" Score="3" Text="I guess that what we are saying in here is that new stackexchange.com pages appear constantly and we have no control on this. If each time new page appears all the other pages needed to migrate all the questions that fall into scope of such page, we would be spending a lot of time on migrating questions between the pages. Scopes of different pages overlap." CreationDate="2019-02-13T09:59:57.137" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="17262" PostId="5573" Score="1" Text="Does this question really deserve $-7$ downvotes (and, I guess, they will increase)? Is the quality of the question really so bad? This question is actually somehow similar to https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1117/82135, which received a lot of upvotes." CreationDate="2019-02-13T16:16:32.117" UserDisplayName="user82135" />
  <row Id="17263" PostId="5573" Score="8" Text="Downvotes on Meta have different flavour. They are to be construed as &quot;I disagree with this proposal&quot;, not as &quot;This is a lousy question&quot;. Now I have trouble remembering where I first read that, but it's a frequent remark around here." CreationDate="2019-02-13T18:25:24.607" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17264" PostId="5573" Score="2" Text="e.g. see https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/195157/202463 or the question here: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/270/meaning-of-downvotes-in-meta-vs-main-sites" CreationDate="2019-02-13T22:06:30.643" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="17261" PostId="5574" Score="0" Text="Of course there are things to consider besides where a question's most likely to be answered, but I'll leave them for others, or for later." CreationDate="2019-02-13T14:38:02.847" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="17265" PostId="5576" Score="13" Text="I assume you are referring to [Determine if data is IID](https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/392582/). I'll have to read through it, but I see no reason you have to delete an answer just because someone downvoted it. You have no idea who downvoted it, or why. Downvotes just happen sometimes. Unless you've come to change your mind about your answer for some reason unrelated to the downvote, I'd leave it there." CreationDate="2019-02-16T01:56:06.663" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17266" PostId="5576" Score="1" Text="Thx. I can imagine a rewrite to make it stronger. Perhaps I’ll make time for that in the next few days." CreationDate="2019-02-16T04:10:46.137" UserId="219322" />
  <row Id="17274" PostId="5576" Score="3" Text="If a post doesn't gather much attention (and most don't), the resulting small sample of votes is an incredibly noisy signal." CreationDate="2019-02-22T23:30:09.887" UserId="97925" />
  <row Id="17275" PostId="5576" Score="1" Text="@gung -- Your comment would make a good answer." CreationDate="2019-02-24T21:40:11.527" UserId="229656" />
  <row Id="17271" PostId="5578" Score="4" Text="I don't know if this is still true, but it used to be that the red or grey dot would appear if there were tasks to do, regardless of whether or not **you**, a user with a specific level of privilege, were able to do those tasks." CreationDate="2019-02-20T22:56:16.023" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="17272" PostId="5578" Score="3" Text="It is not a good indicator. Best to check the queue occasionally anyway." CreationDate="2019-02-21T09:56:35.573" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="17276" PostId="5585" Score="3" Text="Most likely, no. Somebody liked one of your posts, looked around, and upvoted it and some others. But checks are run. Beyond some threshold, excessive upvoting (and perhaps more importantly downvoting) will be reversed as probably personal rather than on substance." CreationDate="2019-02-27T07:29:41.423" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17277" PostId="5585" Score="1" Text="Don't worry about it. In addition to the automatic reversal mechanism @NickCox mentions, there are reports that alert moderators to suspicious behaviour." CreationDate="2019-02-27T11:53:37.260" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="17278" PostId="5585" Score="1" Text="Thank you @Nick Cox and Scortchi. Sorry not to have found the similar question." CreationDate="2019-02-27T12:24:05.323" UserId="10479" />
  <row Id="17279" PostId="5585" Score="2" Text="No problem, @Yves, similar questions aren't always obvious." CreationDate="2019-02-27T12:25:32.807" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17282" PostId="5586" Score="7" Text="+1 Thank you for bringing this up.  I think you make a good case based on the need for statistical expertise.  But could you elaborate a little on (a) just how that expertise might be needed to answer such questions and (b) how posting such material on CV could provide anything that a search of CRAN wouldn't do?" CreationDate="2019-02-27T17:32:03.533" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="17283" PostId="5586" Score="2" Text="Re the edit: I want to believe that if you were to post the original question along with that explanation, the question would not only remain open but would also get useful answers.  Your explanation distinguishes a thoughtful, engaged inquiry from the kind of &quot;spaghetti&quot; posts we frequently get from people who couldn't be bothered to research or formulate a reasonable question in the first place.  (*Spaghetti:* throw it on the wall, see if it sticks; if somebody answers I'll download the software and point it at my data and then ask more questions about what its output means...)" CreationDate="2019-02-27T19:10:07.280" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="17284" PostId="5586" Score="0" Text="@whuber - on a different post that I flagged as (potentially) inappropriate for the reasons above, you asked me to pay attention to dates. You said that earlier in the site's history, similar posts were considered more acceptable (and yes, that was an older post). That's fair enough, but the help page only references is the current policy. Can you point me to where this is described? If not, I maintain that a reasonable person could perceive this as inconsistent moderation." CreationDate="2019-02-27T19:10:53.957" UserId="148503" />
  <row Id="17285" PostId="5586" Score="1" Text="Something ungrammatical happened to your comment which prevents me from understanding it.  The help page is supposed to be current--but it's always a good idea to search these meta pages for recent discussions of policy." CreationDate="2019-02-27T19:12:52.673" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="17286" PostId="5586" Score="5" Text="A further reason for disliking package recommendation questions on CV is empirical: the threads are often very disappointing. What posters want -- and it's easy to see why and to sympathise -- is a detailed comparison based on experience with all the candidates. What is usually included in answers is much more likely to be  &quot;Use X; I have good experience with it&quot; or &quot;Use Y; which happens to be mine&quot;. When the thread is about software one doesn't even use it's as uninteresting as a discussion about some sport one doesn't follow or a  kind of music you don't like." CreationDate="2019-02-27T19:31:20.443" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17287" PostId="5586" Score="0" Text="@whuber I'm still getting used to how StackExchange works, but it does seem like your comment #2 is not far from being an answer (which I'd likely accept) if you rework it a bit." CreationDate="2019-02-27T19:51:27.223" UserId="148503" />
  <row Id="17288" PostId="5586" Score="1" Text="We tend to do more commenting here in Meta, where the usual formalities are dropped.  Voting reflects opinions people hold rather than the quality of a post and acceptance typically means little." CreationDate="2019-02-27T19:53:47.337" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="17293" PostId="5586" Score="3" Text="Statistical package recommendations do require statistical knowledge, but are *often* not about the statistics (it is more about features of packages). You can get a lot of questions like 'which package can do statistics method X?'. It is similarly uninspired as questions like 'I have this data, what statistical method can I use?'. They are likely of low quality and because of *that* the question format should be avoided. It is much better when the OP does a bit more homework first and writes the question in a general format (ie comparing the *underlying statistical methods* in the packages)." CreationDate="2019-02-28T14:26:55.450" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17294" PostId="5586" Score="3" Text="@MartijnWeterings The help page says that Cross Validated is about statistical analysis *and* statistical and data-driven computing (and some other topics). If the site were only about statistical analysis, then I concede the question would be improper. But it is not. I concede that historically, this type of question has not produced good answers. But, by my reading of what Cross Validated is about, it does seem to be within bounds." CreationDate="2019-02-28T14:34:01.300" UserId="148503" />
  <row Id="17295" PostId="5586" Score="2" Text="*&quot;statistical and data-driven computing&quot;* what does that mean to you? Does it include a simple technical question like: 'how can I compute regression in C++ a question about statistical and data-driven computing?. Or should it be more a science oriented question like: 'what sort of algorithm will speed up computation of regression?'. Is a question 'where do I find the on-off button of the computer' the sort of computing question that is meant with that phrase?" CreationDate="2019-02-28T14:35:22.323" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17296" PostId="5586" Score="0" Text="To me, it means questions about statistical computer programs are potentially allowed. &quot;I tried to run a latent class model in `flexmix` but I got X error, what did I do wrong?&quot; would be more a programming question, which is maybe StackOverflow, or I would email the package's authors. The type of question I outlined in the main body seems to be about statistical computing." CreationDate="2019-02-28T14:38:52.530" UserId="148503" />
  <row Id="17297" PostId="5586" Score="3" Text="I agree that it is potentially allowed. But, the focus should be on 'computing' and not on 'programming' or 'software'. A question which is phrased as 'what package does...' is much like 'what program does...'. It is in the first place a programming or software question. It needs at least some additional twist to make it a question about statistics or computation. So questions about 'statistical and data-driven computing' is not like questions about 'statistical or data software'." CreationDate="2019-02-28T14:42:57.927" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17290" PostId="5587" Score="4" Text="Mentioning a library/package/language is not necessarily a problem, nor even including some code - see the [help/on-topic] under *Programming*. [However I strongly encourage people to avoid using code to convey what they're attempting to do, because it mixes together two different sorts of problems that should be kept separate and one of which would be off topic]" CreationDate="2019-02-27T21:36:01.160" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="17292" PostId="5587" Score="5" Text="I am with @gung that &quot;they/their&quot; is acceptable to be inclusive,. as is rewriting to avoid pronouns altogether. &quot;The OP mentions keras a couple of times but creditably doesn't include code&quot;" CreationDate="2019-02-28T09:38:16.360" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17289" PostId="5588" Score="7" Text="On an unrelated note, I think it's appropriate to use &quot;they&quot; in English as a 'common' gender pronoun." CreationDate="2019-02-27T21:12:29.503" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17291" PostId="5589" Score="5" Text="It's not an issue of merit--it's purely an issue of expressing yourself so you can be reliably understood by most site visitors.  Please clarify your question if you would like it reopened.  As you likely know, because you seem familiar with SE, we offer guidance on what is on topic and how to ask a good question in our [help]." CreationDate="2019-02-28T00:04:50.413" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="17301" PostId="5590" Score="0" Text="I think in its current form the Q is perfectly clear. Do you agree? If so, please vote to reopen (as I did). I also upvoted it because I think it's unfair that it has -2 score now." CreationDate="2019-03-01T14:07:19.510" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17303" PostId="5590" Score="1" Text="@amoeba I still find it difficult to find the essence of the question. Is it about the use of squared difference to benefit outliers (which is a false statement, in my opinion, or the term 'outlier' should not be taken explicitly, as I already sort of &quot;answered&quot; in a comment under the question)? Is it about the particular example given in the question (which lacks any information about background, circumstances and detail)? Is it about the benefit of using squared error in other circumstances?" CreationDate="2019-03-01T14:15:38.440" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17304" PostId="5590" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I'm on the fence about this.  I think the question in its current form needs considerable experience and imagination to make a good guess about what it's trying to ask.  My guess is that it might be inquiring how one can use outlier-detection tests that are (somehow) based on a sample variance.  This is a question that AFAIK has not appeared on our site, and so I would favor opening it, but in its current state it is so vague that the possibility of misunderstanding and confusion seems large.  I'm not voting to reopen it." CreationDate="2019-03-01T14:16:10.180" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="17305" PostId="5590" Score="3" Text="In addition I find the behaviour of the OP very uninviting to open the question. The toxicity should be removed from the question as well before I touch my hands on it." CreationDate="2019-03-01T14:16:14.920" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17306" PostId="5590" Score="0" Text="I think I already sort of &quot;answered&quot; the question (at least some interpretation and part of it) in two comments under the original question. And here I have hinted that a different use of terminology may help (variance is by definition the square) and that a question about dispersion or deviation would not be without merit. Yet, the OP has not shown any interrest to follow up on this. We could start answering your version of the question or my version of the question, but I rather see that the OP clarifies his question better." CreationDate="2019-03-01T14:20:17.250" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17307" PostId="5590" Score="0" Text="@whuber I have a feeling you are overthinking it! The OP seems to be asking a very basic question: why is &quot;variance&quot; (mean squared deviation) a useful estimator when it's so obviously non-robust, and why wouldn't one rather use mean absolute deviation instead, given that's it's more robust (in OP's simple toy example)." CreationDate="2019-03-01T23:45:45.397" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17308" PostId="5590" Score="1" Text="@amoeba I appreciate your position.  Mine is that we ought to take a poster's language seriously, even when it makes little or no sense, and that in this case the references to &quot;outliers&quot; strongly suggest the underlying concern might not be about variance *per se*.  This difference of interpretation, whose roots are plainly evident in the original text, is precisely the problem: this question can look entirely different to different people.  That sort of post often leads to good statistical questions *once it has been clarified,* but as it stands it is not appropriate for an SE site." CreationDate="2019-03-02T13:35:14.663" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="17298" PostId="5591" Score="1" Text="If i really know, where is the room for improvement in the given question I would have done it. Quite sarcastic to me- people are just downvoting and also happy to help! I am done with this, and I have no motivation to take help or improve this question for this forum. Thanks but you comments sounds of NO USE to me again," CreationDate="2019-02-28T17:19:07.997" UserId="239303" />
  <row Id="17300" PostId="5591" Score="7" Text="@VISHALDAGA At least 4 people, including Ruben above, have offered you feedback on your questions. They are being *generous* with their time in an attempt to help you. I suggest you calm down and take what they are saying to heart if you want to have a productive time on this site." CreationDate="2019-02-28T22:06:09.090" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="17302" PostId="5591" Score="0" Text="I think in its current form the Q is perfectly clear. Do you agree? If so, please vote to reopen (as I did). I also upvoted it because I think it's unfair that it has -2 score now." CreationDate="2019-03-01T14:07:44.280" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17571" PostId="5591" Score="0" Text="+1 For &quot;it is not a personal attack on you&quot;" CreationDate="2019-04-16T16:44:37.480" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="17315" PostId="5592" Score="1" Text="Ben, thanks for your comments. The question of exchangeability is exactly what I have been worrying about, and random permutations would make a natural test scenario. Thanks for pointing that out." CreationDate="2019-03-06T22:44:36.000" UserId="219322" />
  <row Id="17309" PostId="5593" Score="5" Text="It would help if you would *link* to the threads that motivate your questions here for context. Are you referring to: [Is there a standard way to treat events with unknown times (missing survival time data)?](https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/395075/)" CreationDate="2019-03-06T21:52:09.600" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17310" PostId="5593" Score="2" Text="+1, to whuber &amp; Tim's answers below. Be aware, however, that you are still free to attempt to help the OP &amp; provide an answer in the interim anyway. Eg, you can vote to close as off topic, &amp; nonetheless post an answer. (Nb, this advice pertains to off-topic Q's, not, say, unclear Q's, where an interim answer may make everything worse.)" CreationDate="2019-03-06T21:54:41.423" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17311" PostId="5593" Score="0" Text="@gung, yes, I am referring to that one, but my question is (I think appropriately) general so that it qualifies as a meta." CreationDate="2019-03-06T22:18:50.560" UserId="219322" />
  <row Id="17312" PostId="5593" Score="3" Text="Your question certainly qualifies for asking on [meta.stats.SE]. But it still helps to provide more specific context. You can ask the general question &amp; link to the thread that motivates it." CreationDate="2019-03-06T22:26:26.537" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17316" PostId="5593" Score="4" Text="A bounty doesn't make a question on-topic or even good. It just means, usually, that the OP is willing to spend reputation in pursuit of an answer. (I've been frustrated sometimes that votes to close as off-topic or otherwise deficient aren't allowed while a bounty is on offer.)  Note: Sometimes generous people offer a bounty on someone else's question, which they think is a good question. In those cases, it usually is a good question." CreationDate="2019-03-07T09:52:12.520" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17317" PostId="5593" Score="2" Text="@NickCox, be aware that you can flag such questions. If they need to be closed, we can refund the offered bounty to the OP &amp; close the Q." CreationDate="2019-03-07T12:29:19.860" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17318" PostId="5593" Score="0" Text="@gung Wait! Wait! It seems to be the will of the community that the pedagogical quality of the ANSWER is what saves the question. You really shouldn’t close such questions until the answers have come in. Some answers take longer than others. Please don’t leave me stranded with an answer and no question. (That’s a Jeopardy nightmare. Shall we call that a Jeopardy case?) You can refund the reputation, but you can’t refund the time spent on a quality answer." CreationDate="2019-03-07T13:23:44.013" UserId="219322" />
  <row Id="17319" PostId="5593" Score="0" Text="@gung Indeed. But the thinking behind the inhibition seems to be that bountied questions should be left as is to take their chance, so I tend to hold back. If -- as has not happened in my experience, but it's a thought experiment -- someone posted an offensive question and bountied it, I would not hold back." CreationDate="2019-03-07T13:31:12.370" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17320" PostId="5593" Score="1" Text="@PeterLeopold That's a grey area. I agree with you that a good answer can save a thread. But how long are we supposed to wait for a good answer to do that? The main principle behind zapping poor questions -- and fairly promptly -- is that if the OP has a better question if they try harder to be clear and specific, then that's fine; otherwise we are not missing anything valuable." CreationDate="2019-03-07T13:34:38.230" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17321" PostId="5593" Score="0" Text="@NickCox How long to wait? The bounty period? Well, I’m new here, and if I find myself in a Jeopardy state (answer with no question) then I expect the moderators would encourage me to ask-answer a new question so I’m not all-dressed-up-with-nowhere-to-go. ;)" CreationDate="2019-03-07T13:48:06.967" UserId="219322" />
  <row Id="17322" PostId="5593" Score="0" Text="Are you asking specifically about bountied questions? Or generally? I think you're asking about bountied questions and I am confusing the issue by commenting generally. As said, I wouldn't want to close a bountied question unless it was offensive or really bizarre. I once had, as a hypothetical and private example of a completely off-topic question, a question about personal relationships. But then one really did appear; it didn't last long and I wish sometimes I had kept a copy." CreationDate="2019-03-07T14:02:54.433" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17323" PostId="5593" Score="0" Text="@PeterLeopold, it is possible for an answer to save a question, but generally questions should be judged on their own merits. The time &amp; effort to post an answer aren't necessarily wasted. 1) They can help the OP. 2) For off topic Qs that are migrated (eg, to [SO]), the rep transfers there. 3) For off topic Qs that are closed, but stay here, you keep the rep, &amp; if there is an upvoted answer, the thread is not deleted. The only way to lose is if the Q is subsequently closed w/o any upvotes or comments &amp; the answer has no upvotes, then Q's that stay here will be automatically deleted over time." CreationDate="2019-03-07T14:20:45.613" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17324" PostId="5593" Score="1" Text="@Peter Waiting tends to be counterproductive, because during the wait period there is a relatively high likelihood that misleading or irrelevant answers will be posted.  Experience teaches that putting a question on hold immediately is the best action to take when there is any concern about what a question is asking.  On rare occasions users have flagged questions where they can offer a compelling interpretation and claim they have a good answer to offer; in such cases I have reopened those threads and I imagine other moderators have acted similarly to such flags." CreationDate="2019-03-07T15:57:16.853" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="17313" PostId="5594" Score="2" Text="OK, I will focus on how I can teach survival analysis by hand: minimize -log(likelihood) w.r.t. the parameters of the cumulative hazard function, which is should be on-topic, and then illustrate with code, etc.  I indicated in my original answer that this is easier than making sense of poorly written manpages, anyway." CreationDate="2019-03-06T22:31:22.943" UserId="219322" />
  <row Id="17314" PostId="5595" Score="5" Text="I like your pseudo-code test, and as @whuber suggests, I will keep the focus on the pedagogy." CreationDate="2019-03-06T22:37:21.563" UserId="219322" />
  <row Id="17332" PostId="5596" Score="0" Text="@gung I have amended my question to make clearer what is not discussed under the other threads." CreationDate="2019-03-12T11:10:25.203" UserId="24515" />
  <row Id="17333" PostId="5596" Score="2" Text="Re your edit: how is it a &quot;problem&quot;?" CreationDate="2019-03-12T11:19:03.250" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17335" PostId="5596" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Come on, isn't it strange that this is happening? Nobody complains about positive feedback, but it does not seem to reflect the trend/statistics of the past years. I think it is either some sort of stalker or a bot." CreationDate="2019-03-12T12:46:37.187" UserId="24515" />
  <row Id="17336" PostId="5596" Score="5" Text="I'm going to speculate a little here, because I don't have direct evidence, but I do have some data to support it (which unfortunately I cannot reveal).  At least one of our long-time members exhibits a pattern of actively seeking out sets of related threads, edits them, often upvotes the posts in them, and sometimes answers them.  Except for the fact that the editing clutters the page of &quot;active&quot; threads, the behavior is unobjectionable and indeed praiseworthy.  I suspect around a third of your posts might have been accessed in this fashion." CreationDate="2019-03-12T12:55:29.237" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="17338" PostId="5596" Score="2" Text="I really wouldn't assume or even guess at malice here without explicit evidence. Minimal disclaimer: It is not me." CreationDate="2019-03-12T13:16:00.747" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17339" PostId="5596" Score="0" Text="@whuber if my recent upvotes are indeed related to this practice, it would indeed be commendable." CreationDate="2019-03-12T14:17:02.137" UserId="24515" />
  <row Id="17340" PostId="5596" Score="2" Text="@tomka, the thing is that there's basically no way to know--not for users, &amp; not even for moderators. The result is that the answers given to the duplicates are the answers that can be given. Like amoeba, I don't see a problem here (&amp; I see no reason to suggest a bot)." CreationDate="2019-03-12T16:01:39.860" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17341" PostId="5598" Score="2" Text="Start with https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=community+bot and then try the same search on the SO Meta pages." CreationDate="2019-03-12T16:57:39.893" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="17344" PostId="5600" Score="7" Text="I'm afraid that with &quot;what's deep learning SOTA for X&quot; we would have to update the answers every week..." CreationDate="2019-03-15T15:40:33.540" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="17346" PostId="5600" Score="3" Text="Somewhat related is: https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5540/chaos-theory-thread-reopening-request-with-a-detailed-answer-ready  I believe that is very important for such questions to describe a clear scope, and this is a bit of a grey area. What is expected to be a sufficient answer? A question that is phrased as 'how does X deal with Y?' is already more specific than 'what are (latest) examples of X dealing with Y' (how big of a list is expected, does it need to be exhaustive, just provide a few of the most recent/important, how novel does it need to be to classify as sota, etc?)" CreationDate="2019-03-15T16:38:48.010" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17360" PostId="5600" Score="0" Text="No one objected to my question about SOTA for some image benchmarks https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/363640/what-are-the-current-state-of-the-art-convolutional-neural-networks/363641#363641" CreationDate="2019-03-23T16:36:34.913" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="17345" PostId="5601" Score="5" Text="In other words, specific problems presented with sufficient context can be considered on-topic? I'm just trying to rephrase this to make sure I understand." CreationDate="2019-03-15T16:17:55.763" UserId="29949" />
  <row Id="17347" PostId="5601" Score="0" Text="@Seanny123: Yes. The 2nd example could perhaps do with some clarification: what kind of explanation are you looking for? - global or local?" CreationDate="2019-03-15T18:00:03.027" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="17349" PostId="5602" Score="9" Text="Closed questions are searchable and readable--they haven't completely disappeared.  English is a sufficiently rich language that it's always possible to find a unique way to title your question." CreationDate="2019-03-19T22:30:12.017" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="17350" PostId="5602" Score="9" Text="If you want help choosing a just-different-enough title, I think that would be fine to ask here" CreationDate="2019-03-20T00:24:31.963" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="17357" PostId="5602" Score="0" Text="It's perfectly possible to use a different title, but it might not be as good." CreationDate="2019-03-22T01:41:44.363" UserId="51927" />
  <row Id="17359" PostId="5602" Score="1" Text="Cross-posted to Meta SE: [Question titles cannot be similar to those of a closed question](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/325583)" CreationDate="2019-03-23T06:56:08.197" UserId="62336" />
  <row Id="17356" PostId="5603" Score="1" Text="The answer to the question &quot;why shouldn't the same question be asked again?&quot; is that &quot;someone may find the original question [without answers] useful&quot;. They might well do, before it is deleted (which it will be), but whether it is visible or not, the new question would surely be visible too (and without the [closed] tag in the question). The user can look at both questions. When looking for answers, I often look at multiple questions. I assume that's normal." CreationDate="2019-03-22T01:39:58.250" UserId="51927" />
  <row Id="17358" PostId="5603" Score="2" Text="@user664303, if the original thread at issue is closed without any answers, upvotes, or comments, it will be automatically deleted by the roomba eventually. (But of course it is still in your way now.) So, if it's really inevitable that it will be deleted &amp; is blocking the creation of useful content, you could flag it &amp; we (the moderators) could delete it straightaway. If it isn't inevitable that the roomba will delete it, the situation differs." CreationDate="2019-03-22T13:29:37.850" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17361" PostId="5606" Score="0" Text="Follow-up discussion is welcomed in here: https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5607/sould-we-remove-the-datasets-close-reason-from-the-list" CreationDate="2019-03-28T07:57:43.837" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="17362" PostId="5607" Score="2" Text="Could we in place include the Open Data SE site in the list of migration targets?" CreationDate="2019-03-28T16:09:15.750" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="17363" PostId="5607" Score="2" Text="@kjetilbhalvorsen No. We don't generally establish migration targets to/from beta sites. You can always flag something for migration and let the mods decide whether it's appropriate or not, though." CreationDate="2019-03-28T16:38:41.530" UserId="202450" />
  <row Id="17366" PostId="5607" Score="5" Text="Personally, I'd much rather keep the data sets close reason and expand the number of reasons by 1 even though that means some additional effort." CreationDate="2019-03-29T10:58:30.600" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="17367" PostId="5607" Score="1" Text="I do not like the datasets reason for closure: the etymology of *statistics* is information about States and many professional statisticians' work is related to this so it should be on-topic here" CreationDate="2019-03-30T15:50:20.443" UserId="2958" />
  <row Id="17372" PostId="5607" Score="2" Text="@Henry, maybe we could italicize *specific*? I think there probably is room for questions like &quot;What are the benchmark datasets for X?&quot; but I'm much less excited about questions regarding where to download TinyImages or what paperwork you need to complete to download mental health data sets from the NIH." CreationDate="2019-04-01T13:48:46.253" UserId="7250" />
  <row Id="17405" PostId="5607" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b But this was explicitly declined by SE admins, so I guess this option is not available and we have to choose from the alternatives, right? We either do nothing, or split this closure reason in two and get rid of the datasets close reason. Which way do you prefer?" CreationDate="2019-04-04T21:29:39.590" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17412" PostId="5607" Score="0" Text="My preference is to continue to argue the toss, which I did (though as a comment). Of these two I'd slightly prefer the status quo, to be honest; the data reason isn't that common but it's very useful; there are good arguments for the other way, though and I don't disagree with the general points being made." CreationDate="2019-04-05T01:51:59.443" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="17427" PostId="5607" Score="1" Text="@glen_b maybe dataset-obtaining questions could be handled via &quot;belongs to another SE site&quot; and finally getting some choice there (data science, opendata)?" CreationDate="2019-04-07T07:37:39.427" UserId="7828" />
  <row Id="17428" PostId="5607" Score="4" Text="@Anony-Mousse this was discussed, the problem is that they are beta sites and can't be added. You can flag them and moderators can transfer them." CreationDate="2019-04-07T07:43:25.957" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="17374" PostId="5608" Score="1" Text="We could also add the &quot;obtaining particular datasets&quot; to the list of &quot;... because it focuses on programming...&quot;; that way we still have the &quot;obtaining particular datasets&quot; listed somewhere as an explicit reason to close." CreationDate="2019-04-01T19:47:52.027" UserId="7555" />
  <row Id="17375" PostId="5608" Score="1" Text="@jbowman but then we also end up with ambiguous close reason." CreationDate="2019-04-02T15:00:33.000" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="17376" PostId="5608" Score="0" Text="@tim - but if you're asking about datasets, you should be able to figure out that the &quot;obtaining particular datasets&quot; close reason is the one that applies to your question, whereas if you're asking &quot;why doesn't this program work?&quot; you should be able to figure out that it's being closed because of the &quot;focuses on... debugging&quot; reason, not the &quot;obtaining particular datasets&quot; reason." CreationDate="2019-04-02T15:40:22.777" UserId="7555" />
  <row Id="17377" PostId="5608" Score="0" Text="@jbowman Sympathetic to your aims, but I don't like reasons appearing to overlap and I think we should try to minimise the challenge to the OP of working out which nuance applies to them." CreationDate="2019-04-02T15:44:36.880" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17408" PostId="5608" Score="0" Text="You seem to suggest that we leave both reasons &quot;not statistics&quot; and &quot;datasets&quot;, but given that our proposal was declined, this is impossible. Also it would be infeasible to leave the datasets reason that is responsible for 0.5% of close reasons while removing the programming one, that is surely used more commonly." CreationDate="2019-04-04T21:52:56.750" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="17411" PostId="5608" Score="2" Text="No; I am suggesting removing the datasets reason but boosting the advice against asking for datasets in the Help Center. Remove one reason; split the Either/Or reason into two; same number of reasons." CreationDate="2019-04-04T22:06:49.603" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20574" PostId="5608" Score="0" Text="+1.  The datasets explanation, wherever it might appear, could use enhancement.  Often it is used now for questions that don't need a statistical or ML answer because they are really asking for application-specific advice: that is, they require data and/or knowledge of neurology, genetics, engineering, etc." CreationDate="2021-02-26T15:24:13.460" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="17368" PostId="5609" Score="5" Text="(A) and (C) are good questions that are worth discussing. But I suspect that the answer to (B) is that nothing can be done: the tag is too big and too generic/vacuous." CreationDate="2019-03-30T22:11:54.903" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17369" PostId="5609" Score="2" Text="@amoeba I fear that you might be right about (B). We don't have a [tag:statistics] tag because all on-topic questions are, in some way, about statistics (broadly construed). Statistical learning is also on topic here, and machine learning is the popular name and marketing buzzword for statistical learning." CreationDate="2019-03-30T22:20:04.507" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="17370" PostId="5609" Score="2" Text="[Here is an earlier related question.](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/4525/1352) Note that [tag:statistical-learning] is a synonym for [tag:machine-learning]. To be honest, I am so unhappy with the sheer vacuosity of &quot;machine learning&quot; that I am close to suggesting we burninate it." CreationDate="2019-03-31T13:49:05.637" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="17371" PostId="5609" Score="6" Text="Some users will add “mathematical statistics” to their questions just because they don’t know what it means but it does have the word “statistics” in it. A similar thing happens to a portion of “machine learning” questions." CreationDate="2019-03-31T14:22:59.843" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="17380" PostId="5609" Score="0" Text="What's the problem with a question on neural networks also receiving the tag &quot;machine learning&quot;? As you said yourself, neural networks are contained within the larger field of machine learning / statistical learning. If somebody wants to follow the ML tag, they should then expect to see questions on neural networks." CreationDate="2019-04-03T10:33:36.453" UserId="213470" />
  <row Id="17381" PostId="5609" Score="0" Text="@zxmkn That's addressed in (3): adding the machine learning tag to questions not about machine learning *as a field* makes the tag pointlessly broad. Nearly all questions would also be eligible for the tag." CreationDate="2019-04-03T14:29:58.800" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="17382" PostId="5609" Score="1" Text="@Sycorax You assume that people following the ML tag are following it in order to see meta questions about the field. Maybe, however, they are following it, since they'd generally like to have posts about any ML topic highlighted for them. They then don't need to follow every ML-related tag individually to get all the ML posts highlighted. Statistical learning is a large field, so that would be a lot of tag collecting.&#xA;Maybe the solution should be two separate tags: &quot;machine learning field&quot; (for posts of the nature you're referring to) and &quot;machine learning&quot; (as a catch-all)." CreationDate="2019-04-03T14:40:49.117" UserId="213470" />
  <row Id="17383" PostId="5609" Score="4" Text="@zxmkn The same logic would justify creating a &quot;statistics&quot; tag. The community already made the decision that the &quot;statistics&quot; tag was over-broad and burninated that tag. I think that &quot;machine learning&quot; is in the same boat. The small benefit of making this niche usage more convenient needs to be balanced against the minimal organizational utility of a tag so broad that nearly all the site can reasonably gain the tag." CreationDate="2019-04-03T14:42:05.493" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="17384" PostId="5609" Score="2" Text="@Sycorax If that's your standpoint, then renaming the tag &quot;machine-learning-meta&quot; (or similar) would likely help. In addition, the tag description should clearly identify the tag as marker of posts about the field in a broader sense." CreationDate="2019-04-03T14:49:12.617" UserId="213470" />
  <row Id="17385" PostId="5609" Score="3" Text="@zxmkn That sounds like a reasonable Answer to me." CreationDate="2019-04-03T15:12:33.773" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="17386" PostId="5609" Score="0" Text="Just noticed, there is a &quot;meta-regression&quot; tag, so a &quot;meta-machine-learning&quot; tag wouldn't be without precedent." CreationDate="2019-04-03T15:21:27.753" UserId="213470" />
  <row Id="17387" PostId="5609" Score="3" Text="@zxmkn That's not a good analogy. The tag [tag:meta-regression] is referring to a specific kind of regression modeling strategy per the tag description" CreationDate="2019-04-03T15:23:40.373" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="17388" PostId="5609" Score="1" Text="AFAIK [statisics] tag was blacklisted from the outset by SE admins because that's the topic of this forum. We, as a community, have burninated and/or blacklisted exactly zero tags since then. I don't see this happening with [machine-learning], so I'd say practically speaking it is not an option. I think we'll just have to leave with it, for better or for worse." CreationDate="2019-04-03T15:50:47.237" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17433" PostId="5609" Score="0" Text="Hey, so what do you think about the excerpt I suggested?" CreationDate="2019-04-08T08:53:49.927" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17437" PostId="5609" Score="1" Text="@amoeba I think the new tag description is a marked improvement over the old one. I was fretting about how to positively describe ML, but I suppose it's not entirely necessary if we're urging users to add a more specific topic to the question." CreationDate="2019-04-08T14:33:57.010" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="17797" PostId="5609" Score="0" Text="Came across this thread now -- do you think it was successfully resolved (then pls mark my answer as accepted) or do you think the issue is still &quot;pending&quot; in some way?" CreationDate="2019-06-26T09:53:48.393" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17379" PostId="5610" Score="3" Text="I am not clear that &quot;tidy data&quot; for example is a suitable topic for CV. That's all about how you hold data and is not intrinsically statistical. If you say that, then you're on a slippery slope to allow all sorts of questions about precisely how to reorganise data in R (or indeed any other software) of the kind that CV is reluctant to handle. A key criterion is: could this question be of use or interest regardless of what software people use? which rules out many of the questions that get posted here." CreationDate="2019-04-03T08:20:08.900" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17389" PostId="5610" Score="0" Text="Sorry, I meant Cross Validated. And I agree with you on the &quot;tidy data&quot; topic. I see it would be more appropriate to forward that topic to the data science site." CreationDate="2019-04-03T17:46:12.100" UserId="17908" />
  <row Id="17402" PostId="5610" Score="3" Text="I disagree in part with your revision. A large fraction of statistics concerns visualization -- or graphics, as old-timers are likely to say -- and long may it flourish as a topic here. I just checked and found &gt;2000 questions here on data visualization (and some may have easily escaped that tag) and &gt;300 there on visualization (same comment). I need to look to see what I am missing there, but I don't think that any proposal that henceforth visualization questions belong there, not here,  will work. Visualization is not just a popular topic; it is integral to most practice in statistics." CreationDate="2019-04-04T07:09:05.953" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17425" PostId="5617" Score="0" Text="(Not mine -1.) Only the three: &quot;self-study&quot;, &quot;data&quot; and &quot;software&quot; reasons are editable by us. So your proposal would not work for us, otherwise I agree with the first part." CreationDate="2019-04-07T06:58:38.977" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="17438" PostId="5617" Score="1" Text="The proposal that we have 4 close reasons was *declined* (as noticed in the question), this is not an option." CreationDate="2019-04-08T21:05:23.643" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="17440" PostId="5617" Score="0" Text="Yes, because this thread asks about alternatives to the fact that it was declined." CreationDate="2019-04-09T04:55:08.410" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="17441" PostId="5617" Score="2" Text="I wonder if by _authoritative_ you mean _authoritarian_." CreationDate="2019-04-09T07:31:57.917" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17430" PostId="5618" Score="2" Text="2-3 shouldn't be reverted. You needn't do anything about the fact that someone is upvoting your posts." CreationDate="2019-04-07T17:36:26.837" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17431" PostId="5618" Score="2" Text="@gung thank you for response. I will not think about it more in this case. But it's definitely not organic. I get 2-3 every day for a week now and each day the upvotes start from the place they left-off the day before (when ordering the answers by score)." CreationDate="2019-04-07T17:39:27.010" UserId="18417" />
  <row Id="17444" PostId="5619" Score="10" Text="+1 This is worth a discussion.  As far as the linked SO post goes, though: if it appeared here on CV I would close it with a comment &quot;what is your question?&quot;" CreationDate="2019-04-09T13:12:06.530" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="17445" PostId="5619" Score="4" Text="Another problem I see is that in such cases they often ask the yes / no kind of questions. If questions like this present some solution and ask specific questions about it, they rather receive their answers. Btw, it would be great if someone could post links to examples of such questions so we're not discussing abstract problem." CreationDate="2019-04-09T13:17:18.177" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="17446" PostId="5619" Score="2" Text="I encounter such questions regularly in the 'first post' queue, I'll try to collect some and link them here. On topic: as Tim stated already, many such questions are posed as yes/no questions, which I actually thought are to be avoided, but couldn't find any reference to it in the help center. I'm quite on the fence about these questions, but I think if properly describing the problem at hand and the approach in question, these questions could provide value to other users even if a short answer suffices. On the other hand, the problems described in such questions tend to be maybe too specific" CreationDate="2019-04-09T13:47:35.663" UserId="20221" />
  <row Id="17447" PostId="5619" Score="1" Text="@Tim This recent question seems to fit the bill: https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/401122/comparing-multiple-frequency-distributions-from-data-and-from-simulation" CreationDate="2019-04-09T17:29:19.003" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="17489" PostId="5619" Score="0" Text="This one asked for a review [Can someone help me out and check the results?](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/402348/binomial-distributed-random-sample-find-the-least-variance-from-the-set-of-all). It fell more specifically in the category self-study. I believe it is fine although it is not much great value for the site because these reviews and debugging of methods only occur on specific cases and may not be very general to a large public. I answered it because of the effort from the OP." CreationDate="2019-04-12T12:46:09.223" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17583" PostId="5619" Score="0" Text="I tend to downweight the &quot;Yes/No&quot; aspect of many, but not all, of these questions in favor of a more expansive interpretation as &quot;I have this problem, can you help me?  BTW, is this idea any good?&quot; that make reference to what's suggested in the OP.  It's human nature to try to solve problems, and human nature to wonder if one's proposed solutions are any good - and sometimes they are.  Better they ask than that they don't!" CreationDate="2019-04-18T19:25:44.207" UserId="7555" />
  <row Id="17448" PostId="5620" Score="2" Text="How exactly does &quot;&amp; Analytics&quot; extend the scope from OR?" CreationDate="2019-04-10T12:30:04.670" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="17449" PostId="5620" Score="14" Text="This sounds again like a site that is potentially quite similar to [stats.SE], leading to greater fragmentation of content in the SE system. That impression is reinforced by your comment that, &quot;Cross Validated has enough overlap with the proposed site that I would think many of its active users would be interested in the proposed new site&quot;. That leaves me mixed about the proposal. Can you address that issue?" CreationDate="2019-04-10T13:30:41.193" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17450" PostId="5620" Score="5" Text="Regarding the title question, asking here on meta.CV seems like a reasonable &amp; appropriate way.  You could also post an answer to our [Community Promotion Ads — 2019](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5551/) thread." CreationDate="2019-04-10T13:34:32.190" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17451" PostId="5620" Score="2" Text="@Scortchi See my mega downvoted thread, answer, and comments at https://area51.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/28585/change-proposed-forum-title-operations-research-and-analytics-to-operations-r .  In short, I hate the analytics word." CreationDate="2019-04-10T13:47:19.310" UserId="78964" />
  <row Id="17452" PostId="5620" Score="0" Text="@gung See my above comment, but also note that there is also a lot of underlap. Feel free to either respond to my thread in my comment above, or start your own thread at https://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/121892/operations-research-and-analytics with your views. I think Operations Research is bigger than the scope of Cross Validated, but almost everything in Cross Validated coudl be part of or contribute to Operastions Research." CreationDate="2019-04-10T13:50:29.647" UserId="78964" />
  <row Id="17453" PostId="5620" Score="0" Text="@gung I have passed your suggestion about Community Promotion site to one of the Operations Research and Analytics site organizers (who has &gt;1.6K rep on math stack exchange)" CreationDate="2019-04-10T14:00:39.393" UserId="78964" />
  <row Id="17531" PostId="5620" Score="3" Text="@gung There's an obvious overlap w/ sites like CV, DS, TCS, MO, Math, TeX, SO, etc. -- but still, as pointed out before, there's also quite an &quot;underlap&quot;: integer programming modeling + computation, constraint programming, &quot;soft aspects&quot; of OR ...and others don't fit any of the sites listed before (at least not in terms of a &quot;single hub&quot; for questions in these fields)" CreationDate="2019-04-13T19:45:23.260" UserId="653" />
  <row Id="17533" PostId="5620" Score="2" Text="@fbahr Except for the &quot;soft aspects&quot; (whatever those are), all those are on-topic on [so] or [cs.se], depending on whether you have a question about implementation or theory." CreationDate="2019-04-15T07:24:52.593" UserId="238501" />
  <row Id="17554" PostId="5620" Score="2" Text="@Discretelizard As a member of the OR community, I would much rather have a &quot;one stop shopping&quot; experience than have to monitor keywords on multiple sites (and develop a neural network to predict where my next question would best fit)." CreationDate="2019-04-15T14:19:55.663" UserId="244827" />
  <row Id="17557" PostId="5620" Score="2" Text="@prubin Well, wouldn't we all want a single site for our particular community? Not delving in clearly new topics does not mean you cannot have a new site, but it is a point against them. You can especially expect that those who like the sites you're overlapping with and are not in your particular community to have this attitude. Looking at the proposed questions, I see quite a few that can be asked on [cs.se] (such as number 1,2 and 4 Don't believe me? Why don't you try ;) )." CreationDate="2019-04-15T14:30:52.843" UserId="238501" />
  <row Id="17558" PostId="5620" Score="1" Text="On the other hand, I also see a question about supply models. Modelling business processes does seem like new ground, so that suggest that you highlight that when 'presenting' your proposal to people on sites where you have overlap." CreationDate="2019-04-15T14:30:56.093" UserId="238501" />
  <row Id="17626" PostId="5620" Score="1" Text="Why not invite that community here, and so extend the scope of cross validated?" CreationDate="2019-04-29T08:19:58.663" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="17629" PostId="5620" Score="1" Text="I think of OR as a set of math and computational tools for making decisions about complex systems. Its scope includes math modeling, optimization, applied probability, queuing theory, and simulation, plus applied areas like supply chain management, health care, military, energy, etc. More recently, DS/analytics/ML have intersected with OR. I don't think it's a subset of CV or any other SE site. (Part of the concern here stems from the fact that our proposal was originally called OR &amp; Analytics, hence a red flag for overlap with CV, but the &quot;&amp; Analytics&quot; part has now been dropped.)" CreationDate="2019-04-29T12:53:15.870" UserId="244353" />
  <row Id="17630" PostId="5620" Score="3" Text="By its nature, OR overlaps with lots of other fields, so it's not a surprise that there are OR questions on other SE sites. Plus, for years the OR community used a standalone SE-type site rather than hosting their Q&amp;A here -- so people wanting to ask OR questions on SE found homes for their questions at math, CV, SO, DS, MO, TCS, etc. In my opinion the fact that OR questions are being asked on these sites argues *in favor* of an OR SE site rather than against -- it means we are too dispersed and need a central location." CreationDate="2019-04-29T12:54:15.370" UserId="244353" />
  <row Id="17631" PostId="5620" Score="1" Text="I am sure that there will still be overlap, and that's OK with me. Someone who wants to ask a question about TSP might choose to ask it on OR or on TCS or on SO, depending on the nature of the question and the person's own bias. (Just as someone wanting to ask about mathematical statistics might ask it on CV or math or SO.) But right now there is no real home on SE for the OR community." CreationDate="2019-04-29T12:54:26.720" UserId="244353" />
  <row Id="17457" PostId="5622" Score="5" Text="CW is not used to &quot;remedy&quot; clearly off-topic content on [stats.SE]. It is *sometimes* used for borderline 'big-list / subjective' threads that do seem to hold a lot of value that would otherwise be lost.  It's not clear to me that that will be the case here, but it might.  In that sense, the CW status may be a workable compromise.  (Alternatively, if it doesn't seem to have great value in that sense, we can close, lock, &amp; even possibly delete the thread.)  I'm inclined to let it play out for a bit as CW to see if it becomes especially informative / valuable, and revisit its status then." CreationDate="2019-04-11T13:50:14.957" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17458" PostId="5622" Score="1" Text="I personally would close such questions, but since it's a borderline, I let the community decide. As far as the number of such questions is small, I see no harm is leaving some of them (same applies to other borderline questions as well)." CreationDate="2019-04-11T13:55:18.167" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="17459" PostId="5622" Score="0" Text="I personally find it is offensive to call it &quot;flattery&quot;. As I wrote this actually is the best website I know. I even asked if you can suggest another one where I can post the question which was not really the case in my opinion." CreationDate="2019-04-11T14:15:19.393" UserDisplayName="user213325" />
  <row Id="17460" PostId="5622" Score="1" Text="Yes, you've made this argument several times but have ignored the replies. Not knowing where to post a question doesn't make it on-topic at stats.SE. I've already suggested that reddit favors free-wheeling discussions, but you can also try Twitter or Quora. Your question is, essentially, &quot;What is important to know in statistics and machine learning?&quot; You don't have to post it as a question to find the answer! The best way to start learning is by reading prominent books in the field. We even have a tag for `[references]` on the main site. You can also look at popular tags for suggested topics." CreationDate="2019-04-11T14:43:04.300" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="17461" PostId="5622" Score="6" Text="If this had not already gone to discussion here, I would have closed the question without a moment of hesitation - I see it as nearly a canonical example of an overly broad (&quot;big list&quot;) question with no correct answers (there's too little context to call any one answer correct), just a load of opinions. It should be closed. Moreover, half the question is clearly off topic (it's meta discussion). It's a good *discussion* topic but this is not a site for discussion topics, such questions belong elsewhere (I think it would be fine on chat though and it would fit reddit's /r/statistics quite well)" CreationDate="2019-04-11T14:52:49.133" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="17462" PostId="5622" Score="6" Text="I agree with the arguments to close it and so have voted to close." CreationDate="2019-04-11T15:26:24.637" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17463" PostId="5622" Score="1" Text="Agreed. I've voted to close this and also the cartoon thread that inevitably gets brought up as a defence for these cases." CreationDate="2019-04-11T20:29:32.563" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="17491" PostId="5622" Score="2" Text="This meta question by now has 9 upvotes and 1 downvote after one day. I personally would say that this is about as close to a consensus as we will ever get. Can we close the question now before it hits the Hot Network Questions list? (Or won't it because it's CW?)" CreationDate="2019-04-12T12:54:49.257" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="17499" PostId="5622" Score="4" Text="@StephanKolassa: It did hit the HNQ list; I removed it." CreationDate="2019-04-12T15:11:07.457" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="17464" PostId="5624" Score="7" Text="Martijn's answer gets to the heart of the matter with his exposition about good-subjective versus bad-subjective. Right now, the line of reasoning in this Answer is more-or-less &quot;We have *other* subjective questions, so we should also have *this* subjective question.&quot; I think this Answer would be stronger if it addressed the problem in a slightly different way: &quot;This question is good-subjective because...&quot;" CreationDate="2019-04-11T21:46:52.673" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="17465" PostId="5624" Score="0" Text="Why then do we even have closing options for being opinion based or being too broad? Let's just stop closing questions altogether since we have these other cases that slipped through the net⸮ In the first place, a question should be having value on its own and this should be primarily discussed. Then, when we see it is a gray area we can argue how far it is acceptable and old cases may help to see how the community thinks about this. There are 5 cases presented that remained open. But as statisticians, shouldn't we look also at the rest of the data, all those other questions that got closed?" CreationDate="2019-04-11T22:20:51.587" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17466" PostId="5624" Score="2" Text="@MartijnWeterings the questions I mentioned as examples are not only notable for having remained open despite being opinion based, but also have a very large number of up-votes, so they didn't just slip through the net, clearly the community finds them useful." CreationDate="2019-04-11T23:55:40.343" UserId="89649" />
  <row Id="17467" PostId="5624" Score="0" Text="Excatly what I think. I don't argue &quot;there're other stupid questions and thus my stupid question is ok&quot;.I find the links of Skaner H. not stupid but helpful and obviously the community does the same as the votes indicate. But now it is almost impossible to tell whether my (subjective) question is one of the good once because adter all this hate probably barely anyone dares to post an answer. Ironically, the only thing that has made my question a discussion was all the questioning whether to close or not to close it. In the post itself there is very little discussion on opinions to the answers." CreationDate="2019-04-12T07:15:06.720" UserDisplayName="user213325" />
  <row Id="17468" PostId="5624" Score="4" Text="That is a fair point. I think it needs some more nuance however. 1) The issue here is not so much about the value of the single questions, but much more about whether these type of questions/discussions should be answered here on stackexchange (not a place for a poll that invites lots of opinions) instead of some other place like usenet or some other forum. 2) Voting here means in the first place that somebody voted, it is not to be directly translated to a single dimensional usefullness scale. For that, there is too much diversity in voting, and facebook-style popularity voting is among it." CreationDate="2019-04-12T07:17:00.757" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17469" PostId="5624" Score="0" Text="@igoR87 The answers all take different angles for what is understood by 'people' (people that are consultants, people getting consultants, people looking for a stats job) it is too much open in that way." CreationDate="2019-04-12T07:22:24.750" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17470" PostId="5624" Score="0" Text="@igoR87 if that is not the argument that you are making then you should not have referred to those cases." CreationDate="2019-04-12T07:23:26.570" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17471" PostId="5624" Score="0" Text="Yeah, I understand that. Retrospectively, I wouldn't have posted the question another time. I was thinking there will be some critic but I didn't see so much comming. But as you say, of course stackexchange must not become completely some opinion website. I would definitely hate that, too. So I understand the arguments for closing." CreationDate="2019-04-12T07:24:44.423" UserDisplayName="user213325" />
  <row Id="17472" PostId="5624" Score="0" Text="If the OP of that question is not enough happy with one of the current answers, which are all great, then it is not a good question for stackexchange format. This format is in principle that a single answer should be enough. Straightforward question, not something that turns into a 'mess' (no matter how many votes it gets). How much more answer does the OP need? Or how should they be improved to be acceptable?" CreationDate="2019-04-12T07:28:17.847" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17473" PostId="5624" Score="0" Text="@martijn-weterings: you are right about my first link to the cartoon. But the second link I posted was https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/133656/how-to-understand-the-drawbacks-of-k-means/133694?r=SearchResults#133694 which I find an relevant and acceptable question. At the same time the difference between the accepted answer and the most up-voted show that even in such cases there is some degree of subjective judgement since people vote better looking/ easier explained answers higher." CreationDate="2019-04-12T07:29:13.280" UserDisplayName="user213325" />
  <row Id="17475" PostId="5624" Score="0" Text="&quot;This format is in principle that a single answer should be enough&quot;. Yes, but... Talking about the last link I provided about k means it actually would answer the question to write the mathimatical proof and show the results of some simulation that show the drawbacks in only a few sentences.But of course people await an answer which explains the topic more easily and vividly. And if you have a look at the link the answers are really didactically great.Thus it is always quite subjective waht a good answer is or how many answers are needed (which depends on knowledge the reader has)" CreationDate="2019-04-12T07:44:23.873" UserDisplayName="user213325" />
  <row Id="17476" PostId="5624" Score="0" Text="@igoR87 you are right that it is a gray area when it is not a hard science. Also, even in mathematics, you can have multiple answers with different approaches and providing a different level of intuition. It is true that there is never truly a single answer possible and multiple approaches can reach the same goal and from a didactical point of view it would be even good to have multiple questions. However, the multiple questions that would be answered to polls like &quot;what do you think...&quot; are of a different kind (not like multiple ways to reach the same goal, instead more like different goals)." CreationDate="2019-04-12T08:18:40.227" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17477" PostId="5624" Score="0" Text="@igoR87 I must not add a disclaimer that I am in principle not entirely against the question that you asked. If the question leads to an answer like Gerard het Hooft's [How to become a&#xA;GOOD Theoretical Physicist](http://www.goodtheorist.science/) then it would be great. However your question is currently phrased in a very ambiguous and sujective way...." CreationDate="2019-04-12T08:23:56.890" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17478" PostId="5624" Score="0" Text="@Martijn Weterings: Yes I agree with that. I want to add to the previous sentence &quot;If the OP of that question is not enough happy with one of the current answers...&quot;. I am actually really happy! I'll wait for some more before accepting one. Here your critic proves to be true because it will be a subjective judgment me deciding what to accept. That is why I maybe rather leave it open and ordered by votes." CreationDate="2019-04-12T08:27:21.690" UserDisplayName="user213325" />
  <row Id="17479" PostId="5624" Score="0" Text="....Gerard's question (and answer) is more specific, it relates to 1) a clear *problem case* 'the many people that ask him how to become theoretical physicist, or the many people that suggest they found some new theory' (this is different than the problem case 'I am looking for inspiration' it makes the possibilities to answer too much variable) 2) It is about a clear field *theoretical* physics. Your question is about Statistics AND machine learning. That is an enormously broad field. This is potentially gonna generate a different answer (opinion) from each different user on this website." CreationDate="2019-04-12T08:27:27.760" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17480" PostId="5624" Score="0" Text="Again, I agree with that. There are going to be many different opinions. And it is important that stackexchange doesn't become subjective as a whole. But to me the great answers and the clarification I gained by the answers make my question one of the good subjective ones. The number of up-votes for the answers seem to indicate that this could be true for others, too. In that sense I find it a pity that at the same time my question got downvoted." CreationDate="2019-04-12T08:33:14.880" UserDisplayName="user213325" />
  <row Id="17481" PostId="5624" Score="0" Text="@Syxorax: &quot;This question is good-subjective because...&quot;. I did that in the edit. I wrote &quot;... the answers to my question can give a feeling for what needs to be known to be a statistician to many people that are at the beginning of their career....&quot;" CreationDate="2019-04-12T08:36:19.083" UserDisplayName="user213325" />
  <row Id="17482" PostId="5624" Score="0" Text="@Martijn Weterings: &quot;However your question is currently phrased in a very ambiguous and sujective way&quot;. I was afraid this would be the case. This can be partly due to my english. I don't know why there is no-one editing it more. Maybe because the question was questioned so mhch I don't know" CreationDate="2019-04-12T08:40:20.430" UserDisplayName="user213325" />
  <row Id="17483" PostId="5624" Score="0" Text="@igoR87 I have added an answer to your question that may prove my point about the subjectivity and fuzziness of your question. It is too much unclear what goal should be reached with your question, and what direction is necessary. This is also why nobody is correcting your question (because we do not know what you wanted to get out of it)." CreationDate="2019-04-12T08:43:40.940" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17484" PostId="5624" Score="5" Text="That some other opinion-based question felt to be similar is not closed is not a reason to keep this open; it may sometimes be a reason to close the other one." CreationDate="2019-04-12T08:45:31.720" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="17485" PostId="5624" Score="0" Text="@Martijn Weterings: I saw your cynical answer. To me you could rather edit the question than post a quite useless answer. All you wanted to point out me being not precise enough that it is not about &quot;a person&quot; but &quot;what must a statician know&quot;. Posting an answer for that doesn't make sense and actually also validtes rules since it is not a serious answer." CreationDate="2019-04-12T08:51:07.940" UserDisplayName="user213325" />
  <row Id="17487" PostId="5624" Score="4" Text="How about precedents where similar questions **did** get closed? I suspect there are multiple..." CreationDate="2019-04-12T09:50:13.270" UserId="163572" />
  <row Id="17502" PostId="5624" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b Yes but the similar questions I linked to are all highly upvoted questions, so clearly the community as a whole approves of them." CreationDate="2019-04-12T16:33:44.910" UserId="89649" />
  <row Id="17518" PostId="5624" Score="2" Text="@Jan  Many hundreds of posts more or less like the ones claimed to be similar have been closed. Between the moderators and the ordinary users with sufficient reputation to do so, we close quite a few every week. [That there's perhaps a few dozen - some deliberately grandfathered for historical reasons - still around doesn't indicate that the norm is to keep them open. They're nearly always closed.]" CreationDate="2019-04-13T00:43:15.833" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="17594" PostId="5624" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b: I have no understanding why someone brings this https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/151216/are-we-exaggerating-importance-of-model-assumption-and-evaluation-in-an-era-when post back to top on cv after arguing that subjective question don't belong on cv. The question *could* be objective if it were about the need of assumptions alone but the aspect layman vs. statician opens a subjective area what one can see in the answers. Aspects like &quot;I work with some doctors who are reasonably statistically competent...&quot; are mainly subjective experience (from your answer)" CreationDate="2019-04-20T09:18:45.783" UserDisplayName="user213325" />
  <row Id="17503" PostId="5626" Score="0" Text="I can't delete it at the moment. Maybe because it is on hold. I'll do so as soon as I can." CreationDate="2019-04-12T17:16:15.507" UserDisplayName="user213325" />
  <row Id="17504" PostId="5626" Score="4" Text="You call it childish, but I had not posted my cynical answer untill you started to be so difficult with the criticism to you question, dodging comments (by pointing to other non-closed Qs) instead of showing any movement towards improving it. If you do not make more clear what your question is about or give more detailed guideliness about desired answers (I had asked explicitly what an acceptable answer should entail) then you get what you ask. The cynical comment is my opinion and I should be entitled to this opinion. If you do not like this then do not ask questions that ask for opinions." CreationDate="2019-04-12T19:24:21.053" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17505" PostId="5626" Score="0" Text="You wrote that what wanted to do with your answer was to point out tat my question is bad. That is not constructive" CreationDate="2019-04-12T19:39:48.540" UserDisplayName="user213325" />
  <row Id="17506" PostId="5626" Score="1" Text="Yeah, vote it down. Cross validated appears to basivally ruled by some gathered group. You probably know each other for years and dislike a newbie being honest anout the contradiction in the application of the rules. If you simply like cartoons just say it. If yu really find the answer I quoted helpful I'm out." CreationDate="2019-04-12T19:42:12.773" UserDisplayName="user213325" />
  <row Id="17507" PostId="5626" Score="1" Text="You are seeing too much in my answer. The answer that I posted is how I imagined *my* answer to your question (how I first interpreted it). I understand that this is not what you are probably seeking for. Therefore I did not post such answer but started an enquiry about your question instead. But you did not clarify anything about you question which did not allow me to adjust my answer. So yes I posted the question to prove a point, but it is in order to be constructive. It clarifies how the question is unclear. Instead of complaining about it you could also try to improve the question" CreationDate="2019-04-12T19:57:11.467" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17508" PostId="5626" Score="0" Text="Your point wass correct: I was not specific enough with &quot;a person&quot;. But your answer was obviously cynical and thus offensive and not very constructive. We were writing here thhat much about the question. You could have simply mention it and I would have changed it. That simple" CreationDate="2019-04-12T20:00:06.563" UserDisplayName="user213325" />
  <row Id="17510" PostId="5626" Score="0" Text="I was among the upvoters, for all three answers." CreationDate="2019-04-12T20:22:20.880" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17511" PostId="5626" Score="0" Text="So if you enjoy the answers but not the question that makes even less sense to me why you didn't try to imorove my (bad) question" CreationDate="2019-04-12T20:40:43.597" UserDisplayName="user213325" />
  <row Id="17512" PostId="5626" Score="0" Text="I am sorry that the discussion developed in such a way that it makes you feel bad about it. But the most important point is that the question does not fit the *format* of this website. It is much less about whether or not the question is getting lots of votes or not. I have pointed out some ideas why the question is a difficult concept here. I have provided by way of example an answer that illustrates difficulties with the question...." CreationDate="2019-04-12T22:20:32.650" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17514" PostId="5626" Score="0" Text="....It is however now up to you to improve the question or at least respond to it in some way that allows others to help you further with improving the question. We can not know what *you mean* with the question. Defending the question (that it should remain in its current state and dragging all kinds of other old non-closed questions into the equation to prove that point) is not gonna help in this direction. Looking for how to change (explain better the problem behind the question and narrow down the scope), might however (maybe) lead to a solution." CreationDate="2019-04-12T22:28:13.330" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17515" PostId="5626" Score="0" Text="To be honest I dodn't think I can &quot;save&quot; the question because the question I have is as broad as I asked it.It doesn't nake sense to ask something that broad to many others obviously.But to me the answers were exactly what I was expecting and in fact I enjoy the reading that was inspired by the answer from ooloney.So I personally got what I wanted and I wanted to delete it because the whole discussion was really frustrating to me.But I simply wouldn't know how to edit it so that it is alrigh for cv even if I would want to because by tryung to do so I would try to make up a question I dont have" CreationDate="2019-04-12T23:16:43.823" UserDisplayName="user213325" />
  <row Id="17516" PostId="5626" Score="0" Text="To put it short: my question was obviously bad for cv. But for the reasons mentioned I don't know how to improve it. So anyone who wants to can edit however he wants to. But still, me pointing out all the other subjective questions not being closed is a valid argument. It is simply inconsistent to close some questions and other not. Inagine this would be how actual laws would work - some get in prison others not. Of course you would be happy if you are the lucky one. But how would you feel being the unlucky one?" CreationDate="2019-04-12T23:21:28.120" UserDisplayName="user213325" />
  <row Id="17517" PostId="5626" Score="0" Text="It is simply natural that everyone wants to be treated fair and wants that rules are applied consistently. A great example are experiments with monkeys that show how universal the need for fairness is. See here https://youtu.be/meiU6TxysCg for a short summary if you wish" CreationDate="2019-04-12T23:24:33.323" UserDisplayName="user213325" />
  <row Id="17519" PostId="5626" Score="7" Text="(@SkanderH pinging you here as this also applies to your comment) The least suitable questions for the SE network are frequently highly popular because they attract attention from people who don't normally vote  (they tend to invite speculation and controversy, for example and they're relatively likely to hit the HNQ list gaining votes from people who don't normally read here at all). I am completely sympathetic to the call for consistency (when the parallels are sufficiently clear), but it's not reasonable to expect complete consistency (e.g. site norms evolved a lot in the early years)...ctd" CreationDate="2019-04-13T00:48:38.193" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="17520" PostId="5626" Score="5" Text="ctd... If (for example) there have been a couple of thousand questions in a similar vein to this one and say 1,973 were closed, it's not reasonable to point to a couple of dozen open ones (some of which are open for good reason, some not, and some sufficiently close to the borderline that it's not clear what to do with them) and say &quot;look, those ones aren't closed&quot;. This is [survivorship bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias); look instead at the characteristics of the much larger number of similar posts that were closed; the post currently at issue fits among them very well." CreationDate="2019-04-13T00:55:35.407" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="17522" PostId="5626" Score="2" Text="@igoR you can't delete it now because it's locked, not because it's on hold; locking a controversial post protects it while its status is discussed here (it will stop it getting a lot of bad answers, for example). This is a normal thing to do in this situation." CreationDate="2019-04-13T01:01:24.533" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="17525" PostId="5626" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b: since I am a human being survivorship bias also applies to me. I wouldn't deny that. As I wrote, retrospectivelly, I shulouldn't have asked. But once I asked all the critic started. This &quot;question&quot; begins with the statement I was being flatgery and so on. Thus I wanted to delete the question which did not work either. I won't ask or answer stuff (in near future) at cv anymore. That saves frustration for me and for all of you. Although I had the feeling that there was some discussion initiated by my post that maybe was some benefit but I can't estimate that." CreationDate="2019-04-13T17:07:33.723" UserDisplayName="user213325" />
  <row Id="17529" PostId="5626" Score="0" Text="I just noticed that my post about the useless and cynical answer from Martijn Weterings was downvoted. As a passive member I didn't saw how much madness here is whch was maube because I didn't red the discussions. Unbelievable how far group thinking leads. That is simply to stupd to me. I am defiantly out." CreationDate="2019-04-13T18:24:19.017" UserDisplayName="user213325" />
  <row Id="17563" PostId="5626" Score="1" Text="@igoR87 It's a great pity to me that you say that you intend to leave, although good news that you seem to be still looking at the site. But I think you're over-reacting to what is just disagreement that is all part and parcel of being a forum. Compared with  many sites, CV is civil and courteous and people are taken seriously if (and only if) they have good arguments. Your own language here (&quot;shitstorm&quot;, &quot;useless&quot;, &quot;cynical&quot;) shows that you give as much flak as you get. Default style here is closer to British understatement, although that's not compulsory any more than being British is." CreationDate="2019-04-16T11:13:16.807" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17564" PostId="5626" Score="3" Text="Downvoting on Meta just means that people disagree with specific content, not at all that your opinion may not have merit or be respected." CreationDate="2019-04-16T11:15:55.143" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17570" PostId="5628" Score="15" Text="Statistics is harder. ;P" CreationDate="2019-04-16T16:38:40.947" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="17607" PostId="5628" Score="1" Text="not having the time to write a full answer, I don't think math.SE has as many &quot;How do I analyze images in Python?&quot; like question as stackoverflow." CreationDate="2019-04-25T15:22:38.207" UserId="76981" />
  <row Id="17526" PostId="5629" Score="12" Text="+1.  The ratio actually is between 3:1 and 11:1, depending on the statistic.  It may be worth remarking that the great majority of questions on the math site are routine and require little time to answer, while here it generally takes much more work to get most questions even framed in an answerable form." CreationDate="2019-04-13T17:27:49.940" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="17528" PostId="5629" Score="2" Text="@whuber I hope that my revision is not fatuous." CreationDate="2019-04-13T17:43:41.547" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="17532" PostId="5629" Score="3" Text="Not at all: it's informative and revealing.  Thank you." CreationDate="2019-04-13T22:38:43.337" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="17534" PostId="5631" Score="2" Text="I am with @gung here. The thread in question is off-topic and the answer doesn't make it less so. I really don't want to have to judge in deciding whether to vote to close on what is a &quot;non-trivial&quot; model; there's no Platonic standard for that." CreationDate="2019-04-15T08:30:54.990" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17540" PostId="5631" Score="0" Text="It is not necessarily about this particular question, nor is it a questioning of closing this very question. I didn't mean to give this impression, otherwise I'd have written &quot;Why was this question closed?&quot;. I think @Glen_b's answer captures a little more the point I intended to make." CreationDate="2019-04-15T08:54:30.607" UserId="163114" />
  <row Id="17541" PostId="5631" Score="2" Text="Sure, it's an example, but it's intended to represent your viewpoint. I find the example as well as the general case unconvincing. (I'm highly supportive of questions about statistical software and have been posting on such in various places for $&gt;$ 20 years -- but also of each site or forum setting its own policies.)" CreationDate="2019-04-15T09:02:08.780" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17543" PostId="5631" Score="4" Text="I think Glen_b makes a very compelling case in his answer. I agree with him (and hence disagree with this answer)." CreationDate="2019-04-15T13:27:16.897" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17546" PostId="5631" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, how much &quot;statistical expertise&quot; is required is just as fuzzy as how &quot;non-trivial&quot; the model is. What's difficult for one person is easy for another." CreationDate="2019-04-15T13:46:08.690" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17550" PostId="5631" Score="2" Text="@gung I agree; this means there will always be some gray zone. Our rule is that questions that &quot;take statistical expertise to answer&quot; are on-topic. What we are doing here is to debate where to draw the line." CreationDate="2019-04-15T14:11:44.897" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17553" PostId="5631" Score="1" Text="@amoeba, I'm not so much debating *where* to draw the line, but *how* to draw the line. Ie, what should &quot;requires statistical expertise&quot; be understood to mean? My contention is that a question &quot;takes statistical expertise to answer&quot; because the real answer to the question is *explaining a statistical concept*, not providing the code for a model that someone unfamiliar w/ statistics would not have heard of. There are many people who are unfamiliar w/ statistics who would not have heard of logistic regression." CreationDate="2019-04-15T14:19:02.033" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17555" PostId="5631" Score="3" Text="So under that definition, the question cannot be understood (&amp; thus answered) by someone without statistical expertise, &amp; a question asking for the R code to fit a logistic regression model would be on-topic here. I'm saying *no*. The actual way to understand this is much simpler: is the needed answer explaining a statistical idea (even if the question is asked in terms of code on the surface)? If so, it's on-topic, if not, it is not on-topic." CreationDate="2019-04-15T14:21:06.767" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17584" PostId="5631" Score="1" Text="I can see your point better now. May I suggest that you try to come up with a better wording for the help/on-topic and we discuss it here (or possibly start another Meta thread to discuss it)? I feel that the most natural interpretation of the current wording is the one developed in the Glen's answer. If we were to follow your interpretation then we should change that wording, but I'm not sure how exactly." CreationDate="2019-04-18T22:00:24.797" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17536" PostId="5632" Score="1" Text="I think this answer touches more the core of my question. There are often a bunch of packages seemingly doing the same, which confronts a scientist with the agony of choice. E.g. [CRAN Task views](https://cran.r-project.org/web/views/) is great list to get an overview, but the descriptions are also extremely brief, which is also to be expected from a simple list. I find cross validated answers extremely helpful in such cases and CV should remain this resource." CreationDate="2019-04-15T08:34:27.327" UserId="163114" />
  <row Id="17539" PostId="5632" Score="5" Text="@jay.sf If R and Stata-based questions and answers are allowed, we need to allow them in any software whatsoever. A simple criterion is whether a question or answer is of use or interest to people using quite different software. Although it's often thought puzzling or unsatisfactory by individuals, in principle and in practice there are questions that don't belong on either CV or SO or any other SE site, because &quot;we&quot; don't want them, and neither do &quot;they&quot;. (I write as someone active on SO too.)" CreationDate="2019-04-15T08:53:43.760" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17544" PostId="5632" Score="1" Text="+1. I think you are making a very compelling case. I had a similar feeling upon seeing this question, but did not manage to my finger on why exactly I think this question could be considered on-topic." CreationDate="2019-04-15T13:29:42.643" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17545" PostId="5632" Score="2" Text="*Whether expertise is necessary* is not really different from whether the model is &quot;far from trivial&quot;. If we're stipulating programmers without any statistical expertise, I doubt they would know what simple probit regression is either. What the question is about (in the sense of what needs to be explained to answer it) is much more straightforwardly assessable than the amount of expertise someone may need. What is difficult for one is trivial for another. Moreover, the &quot;programmers&quot; answering R questions on SO, or r-help, are much more statistically savvy than you're giving them credit for." CreationDate="2019-04-15T13:44:17.460" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17547" PostId="5632" Score="0" Text="My claim is that expertise is necessary in the current instance. (Edit: I am not sure I get the point you're trying to make about my post on that first thing; sorry to be dense about it). In relation to programmers on SO, I know for sure many of them are statistically expert; I made no claim about lack of expertise there -- instead I was trying to specify that we consider a collection of programmers who *did* happen to lack statistical expertise (because if they had it, we would not be considering the effect of adding statistical expertise - which was the main point of the hypothetical) ...ctd" CreationDate="2019-04-15T13:50:41.320" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="17548" PostId="5632" Score="0" Text="ctd... . I also didn't assume they were expert R programmers (otherwise there would be no need to supply R documentation). It feels like you're responding to things I didn't actually write there, though certainly it's possible I have been ambiguous in conveying my intent. [Edit; If I mistake what you're saying in your comments, I apologize]" CreationDate="2019-04-15T13:54:44.583" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="17549" PostId="5632" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b, the OP asserts that the thread should remain open because the model discussed is &quot;far from trivial&quot;. That's the subject of this meta.CV thread.  I contest that in my answer. As I understand your answer, you think the thread discussed should stay open because it requires statistical expertise to answer.  What I am saying here is that this conception of 'requiring statistical expertise' is ultimately the same as the model being 'far from trivial', and thus the same argument I made addresses both." CreationDate="2019-04-15T14:11:23.830" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17551" PostId="5632" Score="1" Text="Thanks @gung ... I see what you're trying to say in that part now. I completely misunderstood at first" CreationDate="2019-04-15T14:12:20.817" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="17552" PostId="5632" Score="1" Text="I'm not sure of the implication though -- are you thereby also saying that your comments in your answer apply to the wording in the help/on-topic? If so are you proposing that it be fixed?" CreationDate="2019-04-15T14:16:22.913" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="17556" PostId="5632" Score="4" Text="I have not (explicitly) suggested that the wording of the help/on-topic be changed, but I have thought that a number of times over the years, &amp; I wonder about it again now. I'm arguing for an interpretation of what &quot;takes statistical expertise to answer&quot; means. There is an interpretation of the phrase implicit in your answer (which is quite reasonable, BTW), but I argue that that should not be taken as the correct interpretation b/c the resulting rule isn't ultimately coherent. The interpretation I prefer leads to a simple &amp; coherent rule." CreationDate="2019-04-15T14:26:44.517" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17559" PostId="5632" Score="0" Text="Oh; I appreciate the clarification there, thanks." CreationDate="2019-04-15T14:38:28.257" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="17565" PostId="5632" Score="0" Text="@gung Thanks for your commitment, as I already wrote in a comment to your answer, my intention was not to demand that the question remains open, I apologize again if that didn't come across so crystal clear so far." CreationDate="2019-04-16T11:38:45.770" UserId="163114" />
  <row Id="17566" PostId="5632" Score="0" Text="I set &quot;far from trivial&quot; intentionally into quotes since I've read this phrase in several other (probably linked, or probably Angrist?) sources. In more detail, the model in concern can't trivially be solved by linking just two probits together in an 2SLS approach (the reason would be interesting, maybe a topic for a new question) whereas the solution in my answer yields the demanded correct estimates. It was quite an effort to find a non-proprietary solution and in order to spare others the pain and to let others benefit I wrote my answer to the question. [...]" CreationDate="2019-04-16T11:41:00.497" UserId="163114" />
  <row Id="17567" PostId="5632" Score="0" Text="[...] I also found several such solutions on CV before and wanted to pay it forward this time. BTW, I would never deny SO users statistical expertise, I know this because I am actually active there myself. Since I believe that @Glen_b has taken note of my request, I'm happy to accept that answer." CreationDate="2019-04-16T11:50:39.523" UserId="163114" />
  <row Id="17569" PostId="5632" Score="2" Text="@jay.sf, discussions like this typically need some examples to ground them, otherwise they become too vague &amp; abstract for the discussion to go anywhere &amp; people just talk past each other. You choose that question to motivate the discussion, which was perfectly fine. As [Nick Cox commented](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5630/5632?noredirect=1#comment17541_5631), I find both the specific example &amp; the idea it was intended to illustrate unconvincing. If you find a different example, my position may differ, but it is relevant here to note that that Q is clearly off-topic." CreationDate="2019-04-16T13:41:40.497" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17572" PostId="5632" Score="0" Text="@gung I'm not sure what you mean by &quot;clearly&quot;: Glen's answer saying that it's on-topic has currently more than 3x votes than yours." CreationDate="2019-04-16T19:00:05.947" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17573" PostId="5632" Score="1" Text="@jay.sf I suggest not to mark any answer as accepted until some sort of consensus is reached." CreationDate="2019-04-16T19:01:03.533" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17574" PostId="5632" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I am pleased that the discussion is continuing. Un-accepted as suggested to promote consensus." CreationDate="2019-04-16T19:15:01.467" UserId="163114" />
  <row Id="17575" PostId="5632" Score="0" Text="@gung I believe to have read on `CV` trivial questions, whose answers first pointed to the underlying statistical problem. This is what I appreciate on CV.  Furthermore, the OP asked how to estimate a bivariate probit model and not primarily how to realize a certain Stata command in R. Coding in R often means (and IMO should mean) to open a black box and doing it from scratch, which I'd term a lower level language. This is what I'd  have liked to have seen as a better answer, what actually happens (however the question is closed now). [...]" CreationDate="2019-04-16T22:11:44.170" UserId="163114" />
  <row Id="17576" PostId="5632" Score="0" Text="[---] I would draw the line somewhere between e.g. estimating OLS (implemented in R, i.e. lower level) and estimating OLS with robust standard errors (not implemented). Hence such a line should rather be sloped by methodology than by triviality." CreationDate="2019-04-16T22:11:53.203" UserId="163114" />
  <row Id="17577" PostId="5632" Score="0" Text="I am not sure there's much value in accepting my answer (nor even that my answer is in any reasonable sense better than @gung's)." CreationDate="2019-04-16T23:39:17.490" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="17579" PostId="5632" Score="2" Text="@jay.sf Suggesting a precise rule is constructive but ultimately not practicable if it just arises out of individual or subgroup experience. Yours, for example, as well as a reference to Angrist as if a familiar name, suggests that you are an econometrician or economist using econometrics. The difficulty is that the site extends in all sorts of directions and covers all kinds of expertise." CreationDate="2019-04-17T08:50:17.960" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17580" PostId="5632" Score="2" Text="[ctd] Wanting say some one who is expert in machine learning to decide whether the question they are looking at is as easy as OLS implemented in R or as difficult as OLS with robust SEs not implemented in R is unfortunately a non-starter. It's possible to be highly competent and to have enough reputation here to vote to close without having any idea of what that means. This is a grey area, has been for many years, and even moderators with very high reputation such as Glen_b and gung can draw the line in different places." CreationDate="2019-04-17T08:53:16.760" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17581" PostId="5632" Score="1" Text="[ctd] The main point is that contentious cases can always be discussed on their merits, which is where we started." CreationDate="2019-04-17T08:56:18.960" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19941" PostId="5632" Score="0" Text="+1. on cross validated the &quot;off-topic&quot; policy is enforced more strictly than in any other site of SE that I know. can't see why. if a question needs statistical expertise, or simply a statistical point of view, than it should be allowed to be asked here IMO." CreationDate="2020-06-22T21:03:24.780" UserId="141356" />
  <row Id="17542" PostId="5633" Score="8" Text="You're not being rude. The difficulty is knowing precisely what kind of question(s) you have in mind. It sounds as if you're wanting to read a discursive yet also detailed tutorial or review, not a concise answer to a  precise, specific question. Best practice in deploying time series models seems likely to run some risk of being voted to close, as being too broad, or unclear what you're asking, etc. Being on-topic usually means that you can find on CV that similar questions were answered and the question and answer(s) were upvoted." CreationDate="2019-04-15T11:57:55.640" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17560" PostId="5633" Score="1" Text="I would like them to on-topic because to my mind these are the actual applied statistics but I think most users would consider them off-topic. (And thus you get Data Science on occasion.) If the question is carefully worded it would pass as a somewhat methodological but then again... I have little hope that is will be answered. In fairness, I do not think any SE community adequately caters these questions. You might get one or two gold nuggets. Operational research people might be better listeners." CreationDate="2019-04-15T17:39:34.553" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="17561" PostId="5633" Score="6" Text="I agree with @usεr11852 Consider this: people able and inclined to write papers or textbooks are much more likely to write papers and textbooks than lengthy, detailed answers here. Many of us regard SE as some mix of (1) fun (2) instructive to us too (3) a kind of public service (the order of importance of those varies personally) but there is zero financial benefit and minimal career benefit to participation, which constrains the kinds of answers likely." CreationDate="2019-04-15T17:56:41.343" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17562" PostId="5633" Score="1" Text="All that said,  you could try a fairly short question and see what happens. If nothing much positive, we did fear so. If something positive, well and good." CreationDate="2019-04-15T17:58:37.997" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17568" PostId="5633" Score="2" Text="Difficult to answer without the actual questions but of the three you quote the last seems most likely to be on-topic so if you want to test the water why not start with that one?" CreationDate="2019-04-16T12:54:37.070" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="17606" PostId="5633" Score="0" Text="https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/404687/gpu-for-fully-connected-network this could be an example of such question." CreationDate="2019-04-24T12:11:00.170" UserId="163572" />
  <row Id="17651" PostId="5633" Score="0" Text="https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/406173/how-to-deploy-machine-learning-models is another example" CreationDate="2019-05-02T07:38:08.363" UserId="163572" />
  <row Id="17578" PostId="5635" Score="0" Text="It may also be a matter of interpretation. May I point at my last comment to @Glen_b s answer, where I state kind of a vision." CreationDate="2019-04-17T08:15:36.097" UserId="163114" />
  <row Id="17582" PostId="5635" Score="3" Text="I agree with @Nick Cox's reply to that comment. Though in fact we can postulate someone familiar both with using robust standard errors around OLS fits, &amp; with $X$, the subject of the question, &amp; *still* wonder if their line-drawing won't be forced &amp; capricious. Let $X$ range over Poisson regression, negative binomial regression, k-means clustering, CHAID, Fisher's Exact Test, linear discriminant analysis ... I've no idea how to apply your rule in any of these cases." CreationDate="2019-04-17T10:35:18.553" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="17605" PostId="5637" Score="1" Text="I don't know, but here's an old [meta.SE] thread about how long it would take for 2016's ads to start showing up ([When will 2016's community promotion ads start being shown?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/274572/187282)). My take away is that it is likely to take a while." CreationDate="2019-04-22T18:29:18.857" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17634" PostId="5639" Score="3" Text="Anyone knows it that would help us get some more [tag:neural-networks] gold badge user privileges out there?" CreationDate="2019-04-29T14:20:25.327" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="17642" PostId="5639" Score="4" Text="@Firebug Sycorax is just a few votes away from a gold badge in [neural-networks]. They will probably get it in a few days anyway. It does not look like anybody else would be close even after the suggested tag merge." CreationDate="2019-04-30T08:39:28.177" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17666" PostId="5639" Score="10" Text="Deep learning is mostly used as a marketing term. +1 for the merge." CreationDate="2019-05-03T02:27:11.300" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="17703" PostId="5639" Score="2" Text="the merge is ok if the neural-network tag is kept, not the other way around" CreationDate="2019-05-06T17:36:06.317" UserId="98506" />
  <row Id="17611" PostId="5640" Score="1" Text="I +1ed this but I suspect that it will make the life for users who actually have a deep learning question instead of a relative generic NN issue, harder." CreationDate="2019-04-27T22:36:17.670" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="17616" PostId="5640" Score="2" Text="@usεr11852 Thanks! Can you elaborate on how using the DNN tag instead of the NN tag would help? It seems like concerns peculiar to DNNs would be enumerated in a clear Question. But I might have missed something subtle." CreationDate="2019-04-27T23:27:46.140" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="17617" PostId="5640" Score="1" Text="I think that most users employ tags to bring things to their attention and this will create more noise (to an already  noise tag). Especially long and involved question on DNN will probably be harder to stand out. As mentioned, I am in favour of the merger because deep-learning tag has come to be (colloquially) used as a synonym with NN. I suspect that other tags like `cnn`, `lstm`, etc. will have to be used more prominently." CreationDate="2019-04-27T23:35:36.823" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="17618" PostId="5640" Score="4" Text="@usεr11852 I think I understand: the &quot;tag subscription&quot; feature will work differently. I suppose someone who subscribes to [tag:deep-learning] but has no interest in [tag:neural-networks] would lose a little bit of functionality. On the other hand, I think the merger improves things because something like 90% of questions about [tag:neural-networks] would appropriately have the [tag:deep-learning] tag and vice versa. I agree that the LSTM/RNN/CNN tags should be used more often." CreationDate="2019-04-27T23:39:33.103" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="17619" PostId="5640" Score="1" Text="Sure, fair enough. As mentioned, *I am in favour of the merger*. Probably the disruption to these DNN user will be small." CreationDate="2019-04-28T09:15:33.093" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="17668" PostId="5640" Score="2" Text="@Sycorax unrelated to this post, but: Congrats on the first golden one [neural-networks] badge of all times!" CreationDate="2019-05-03T10:01:57.043" UserId="163572" />
  <row Id="17696" PostId="5640" Score="0" Text="Sycorax &amp; @JanKukacka would you be willing to help to improve the [tag:neural-networks] tag wiki for the fact that now it covers both deep and shallow networks?" CreationDate="2019-05-06T06:53:11.150" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="17702" PostId="5640" Score="1" Text="@Tim I've taken a stab at improving the tag description. One concern: on the one hand, I think we need to explain why some models have this exotic name (&quot;neural networks&quot;) which might not be obvious to a newcomer. On the other hand, I really dislike the name because I think it gives newcomers some false expectations about how NNs should work (&quot;My brain is a neural network, therefore my model should be as good as my brain.&quot;). What do you make of this?" CreationDate="2019-05-06T14:25:02.380" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="17704" PostId="5640" Score="1" Text="@Sycorax agree, but I don't think that this is something to be explained on the tag page. Saying that it is &quot;loosely inspired&quot; by biological NNs is probably enough." CreationDate="2019-05-06T21:01:51.943" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="17715" PostId="5640" Score="0" Text="I made some further edits to the tag wiki. I felt the wiki excerpt was trying to give some lengthy explanations that are fine for the tag wiki but are not needed in a wiki excerpt. (CC @Tim)" CreationDate="2019-05-08T20:47:17.290" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17716" PostId="5640" Score="0" Text="I made some further edits in wiki (cc @amoeba)." CreationDate="2019-05-08T20:56:07.087" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="17610" PostId="5641" Score="2" Text="Great! Hope this will finally fly." CreationDate="2019-04-27T22:17:17.750" UserId="36678" />
  <row Id="17628" PostId="5641" Score="4" Text="I don't bear this particular proposal any ill-will but there are many good reasons why it's hard to get these proposals accepted. The trade-off between a big site with too much traffic for comfort and a small site with too little of interest to attract many participants is difficult and delicate." CreationDate="2019-04-29T12:05:52.303" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17635" PostId="5645" Score="2" Text="I agree with this action. But the post doesn't strike me as being a very good question, a quite different issue. It seems that the original authors didn't define their notation but my guess is that they would regard what they used as standard in their field.  More directly put, would we be happy with posts asking for definitions of $\pi$ or $\exp()$ because authors didn't explain them? Are we here to teach people the little bits of mathematics they should be finding out any way, e.g. by reading simpler papers, textbooks, Wikipedia?" CreationDate="2019-04-29T15:18:30.823" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17636" PostId="5645" Score="1" Text="(I stopped formal study of mathematics at 17, so the previous is not &quot;Let them all learn mathematics&quot; from someone with a mathematics or statistics degree.)" CreationDate="2019-04-29T15:19:23.217" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17637" PostId="5645" Score="10" Text="@NickCox, under the assumption that that happens, we would have $1$ question asking what $\pi$ is &amp; $1$ question asking what $\exp$ is (all subsequent Qs should end up marked as duplicates). Personally, I would be fine with that.  We don't have a lower bound on questions that are 'too trivial' &amp; thus off topic for that reason.  (OTOH, downvoting is fine for Qs that you believe 'lack research effort')." CreationDate="2019-04-29T15:22:42.150" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17638" PostId="5645" Score="0" Text="I think that's a fair summary." CreationDate="2019-04-29T15:30:20.663" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17678" PostId="5645" Score="0" Text="Though if a $\pi$ question pointed at something which actually said, for example, &quot;the prior density $\pi_0(\theta)$&quot;, it might not be the same question  as a question asking about the $\pi$ in &quot;the density $\dfrac{1}{\sqrt{2 \pi} \sigma}\exp\left(-\dfrac{(x-\mu)^2}{2\sigma^2}\right)$&quot;" CreationDate="2019-05-04T01:16:06.163" UserId="2958" />
  <row Id="17639" PostId="5646" Score="4" Text="The question is: there's 4300 questions tagged as [neural-network] and assuming that you need one minute to read question and re-tag it, are you willing to spend approximately 72 hours non-stop on re-taggig the questions? Also notice that nobody here considers neural networks and deep learning as completely the same. You don't seem to give arguments why it would be *useful* to keep separate tags, while there seem to be arguments against it that got some +1s." CreationDate="2019-04-29T15:55:41.437" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="17640" PostId="5646" Score="0" Text="@Tim The &quot;usefulness&quot; of seperate tags (deep and unspecified) is only when the question is intended to be about neural networks in general and not specifically about ***only*** deep ones. Perhaps the *solution* was too subtle, that being to find the few questions that are shallow and remove them from the tag, retagging them shallow, **then** merge; and from here on hopefully people will put the applicable tag on their questions. What you (and some others) propose is just lump them all together, a few minutes discussion, and a few seconds work to synonymize - that's what I object to." CreationDate="2019-04-29T16:59:59.647" UserId="197829" />
  <row Id="17641" PostId="5646" Score="3" Text="Could you give a few examples of questions that specifically ask about shallow neural networks? At the moment, this seems to me like a rather hypothetical scenario." CreationDate="2019-04-30T07:17:42.267" UserId="163572" />
  <row Id="17648" PostId="5646" Score="0" Text="@Rob: most of the results in this search are not asking specifically about shallow nets... Lots of them ask for &quot;differences between shallow and deep nets&quot;, which in my opinion is covered by tag [neural-networks]. Using [this query](https://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bneural-networks%5D+shallow+-deep+is%3Aquestion) brings us down to 10 questions..." CreationDate="2019-04-30T11:55:20.897" UserId="163572" />
  <row Id="17649" PostId="5646" Score="0" Text="@JanKukacka - Yes, that's the point made. It's easy to find a few, and miss a few. Even easier to just say everything is deep even when it's not. Take the [first example](https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/225826/197829) returned by the link you offered, it's tagged &quot;deep-learning&quot;. --- We only need to do a few [simple searches](https://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bdeep-learning%5D+shallow+-deep+is%3Aquestion) (we can see the last one is a false-positive, so that's 6 results). If it takes a couple of hours to do a half decent job that's the price, to do a better than minimum effort." CreationDate="2019-04-30T13:04:39.797" UserId="197829" />
  <row Id="17697" PostId="5646" Score="0" Text="Rob, we made the tags synonyms, but if you feel that there are questions that are specific for single-layer neural networks and not for multilayer ones, &amp; tagging them would be meaningful, then maybe you should start another thread and we will discuss creating a separate tag for such questions?" CreationDate="2019-05-06T06:56:24.400" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="17700" PostId="5646" Score="0" Text="@Tim Thanks for keeping me updated on the status. With a synonymization it can be undone, merge has a permanency. The link above shows there's ~ a dozen for someone to look at." CreationDate="2019-05-06T09:33:42.363" UserId="197829" />
  <row Id="17701" PostId="5646" Score="0" Text="Rob, the tags are only synonymized at the moment, they are _not_ merged (@Tim). Our usual policy is to merge tags some time (~1 month) after synonymizing if no problems are uncovered." CreationDate="2019-05-06T10:06:36.910" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17660" PostId="5648" Score="3" Text="I've felt that we needed a complete and comprehensive answer about backprop for some time, so I absolutely support your asking and answering of such a question. I look forward to reading and upvoting it when it's ready." CreationDate="2019-05-02T21:42:38.820" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="17717" PostId="5648" Score="0" Text="Note that there is already a thread describing backprop at length: https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/5363/backpropagation-algorithm/155658" CreationDate="2019-05-09T11:55:24.853" UserId="163572" />
  <row Id="17718" PostId="5648" Score="0" Text="@JanKukacka although the answer there isn't wrong, I feel that it falls into the pitfall of teaching &quot;manual automatic differentiation&quot;, and only shows how it is applied to feedforward networks (leaving unanswered how it is applied to arbitrary neural network architectures, which are the questions i see a lot). Also Neilsen's book, upon which that answer is based, seems to have some misunderstandings on what backprop requires (https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/365590/can-all-neural-network-cost-functions-be-written-as-an-average-of-individual-cos/367680)." CreationDate="2019-05-09T18:57:36.633" UserId="26948" />
  <row Id="17653" PostId="5649" Score="3" Text="I don't really agree with writing a perfunctory answer + voting to close as a duplicate. If it needs spelling out how the canonical answer applies; well, this question's not a duplicate &amp; an answer doing just that with a cross-reference is the way to go: if it doesn't need spelling out, then this question can be closed as a duplicate, with no need for an answer. Agree with everything else, of course." CreationDate="2019-05-02T18:17:38.413" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="17654" PostId="5649" Score="0" Text="That's a reasonable position, @Scortchi. I think it's a bit of a gray area.  Providing something in addition to VTC seems nicer to the OP (but also possibly unnecessary). I'm pretty sure I've done that before, but I can't figure out how to search for my answers on closed Qs." CreationDate="2019-05-02T18:31:39.247" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17655" PostId="5649" Score="5" Text="+1 One piece of advice I'd like to submit: if shimao (or anyone else) does go the route of writing &amp; answering a question that you hope will be canonical, do put some time into planning out your answer ahead of time, writing a draft, and then rewriting it. Well-articulated canonical threads can be viewed tens of thousands of times, so it's well worth the effort to write clearly and with full coverage of the topic and include citations and links to other questions as necessary. You can write a question and answer it *at the same time*, so there's no &quot;rush&quot; to hit submit." CreationDate="2019-05-02T18:35:56.303" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="17656" PostId="5649" Score="1" Text="@gung: If the something in addition is simply an assurance that once the OP's read the linked post they'll find that it does in fact apply to their problem, despite what a glance at it might suggest; then I'd put that in a comment. The important thing's that the two are linked, anyway. It's just that it could seem a bit off to close a question you've just answered - if you're providing information pertaining to the OP's specific situation, perhaps someone else  thinks they could provide more, or do a better job." CreationDate="2019-05-02T19:11:53.010" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="17657" PostId="5649" Score="0" Text="I'd +1 but I have the same reservation as @Scortchi." CreationDate="2019-05-02T20:19:29.783" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17661" PostId="5650" Score="9" Text="Your account would not be locked by any number of downvotes.  Voting issues of this nature are best raised with the mods through flagging.  We would have to consult with mods on those other sites in order to investigate the kind of pattern you suspect.  It would help if you could forward us the details.  If you want to engage in this way, then we can either (a) set up a private chat room or (b) send you an official &quot;mod message,&quot; which sets up a private e-mail thread you can use (which is recorded and monitored by the SE team).  The first is less formal and a bit more flexible." CreationDate="2019-05-02T21:52:47.293" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="17663" PostId="5650" Score="2" Text="@whuber I see. I tried to read about serial downvoting and came across something about an account lock--perhaps an ancient feature of SE. Anyway, I have no ax to grind, and I don't care about the reputation, although I find it an even mixture of funny and irritating, it's bad behavior especially if it's being imposed on other users. Mod mail is the way to go, I can just send you the links to the questions that were downvoted I supposed?" CreationDate="2019-05-02T22:52:55.553" UserId="8013" />
  <row Id="17671" PostId="5650" Score="6" Text="What's especially disappointing about this report is the impression that the culprits have enough reputation to vote in different places, but nevertheless don't get how SE works, mostly through sites having policies on what's on- and off-topic and then policing themselves. It's less surprising if there's flak from people new to CV who don't like their questions being put on hold or closed and haven't grasped the idea that we are not a helpline with an entitlement to getting an answer." CreationDate="2019-05-03T12:42:56.783" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17679" PostId="5652" Score="1" Text="I took the liberty of changing the title. The key aspect of the question is not that it came from RPG.SE - as the thread in their meta says, there is no RPG aspect whatsoever in it. Considering what the OP wanted to roll the dice for, they could just as well have posted it in Christianity.SE. Or Mi Yodeya. Conversely, I do think that elementary questions about rolling dice, which this one is, are definitely on topic here." CreationDate="2019-05-04T08:41:55.443" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="17683" PostId="5653" Score="1" Text="I don't think the question is too vague. Except for the request that the numbers be uniformly distributed (not stated, but implied, and obvious enough if you know how non-statisticians think - and this additional requirement would be easily elicited via comments), the question is not vague, but very clear - but simply *elementary*. Maybe we should discuss whether elementary questions are on-topic here. I would say yes. We might treat them as [tag:self-study]." CreationDate="2019-05-04T08:52:21.210" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="17684" PostId="5653" Score="2" Text="@StephanKolassa: I've changed 'vague' to 'broad'. I meant that it's the constraints &amp; requirements that are vague - that's why there are 13 answers already (14 if you count the one given in the question) with nothing to choose between them." CreationDate="2019-05-04T09:24:51.247" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="17676" PostId="5654" Score="0" Text="Well, I can't answer that since I'm not the OP of the question in question, but yeah.  Base 6 would be a bit of a pain in the neck for me, too.  Also, how do I link this answer?  It's a very good answer and I want to be able to reference it." CreationDate="2019-05-04T00:35:53.300" UserId="246829" />
  <row Id="17677" PostId="5654" Score="0" Text="This should work (it's the link to this answer from my profile page): https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5652/would-this-rpg-se-question-be-on-topic-if-it-was-posted-or-migrated-here/5654#5654" CreationDate="2019-05-04T01:11:26.923" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="17680" PostId="5654" Score="3" Text="@Stackstuck: there is a &quot;share&quot; link underneath every answer (and question), which generates a link. The number after &quot;/a/&quot; (&quot;/q/&quot; for questions) references the answer uniquely, and the number after that one is your user number, so if you include the full link, one knows who shared the link." CreationDate="2019-05-04T08:44:54.907" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="17681" PostId="5654" Score="0" Text="+1 for the first part of your second. Almost-(-1) for the second. As you write, pretty much any household owns dice, but not everyone has a computer or a smartphone at hand. (There are even people who own mobile phones that are not smart.) Rolling dice is a wonderful way of generating random numbers that does not involve some kind of magic you have to trust. ..." CreationDate="2019-05-04T08:49:14.883" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="17682" PostId="5654" Score="0" Text="... [I have used dice frequently to help my kids learn their multiplication tables](https://matheducators.stackexchange.com/a/11921/5845), and I would not have dreamt of using an app on my phone. Yes, I'm sure such apps exist, but I know what would have happened if I had pulled out my phone instead of my dice. (It would not have involved math, because my kids are smart enough to associate the phone with completely different things than random number generation, and those things are *much* more interesting.)" CreationDate="2019-05-04T08:50:25.993" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="17685" PostId="5654" Score="2" Text="@StephanKolassa Ah yes, the rarely-seen *sidevote*" CreationDate="2019-05-04T14:19:34.860" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="17686" PostId="5654" Score="0" Text="(+1) Another angle might be to put aside the practicalities of mapping a sample space to a set of integers &amp; to ask how to find out whether or not a particular discrete uniform distribution is obtainable from a given candidate set of dice; if it is, how many of them are needed; &amp; if it isn't, &amp; you need to reject some outcomes &amp; re-sample, what the expected number of rolls is." CreationDate="2019-05-04T21:57:49.283" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="17687" PostId="5654" Score="2" Text="@Scortchi I agree that the efficiency of any proposed scheme should be an important consideration. However, after reading the thread at RPG.SE and in our chat Ten Fold, it seems that this audience would consider any details beyond how to map dice to integers unimportant or even pointlessly arcane. (Apparently converting senary to decimal or vice-versa is simply too much work.) I chose to motivate my answer from the perspective of how to ask a question in such a way that its answers are *illuminating* to these readers: &quot;If you ask an  under-specified question, you'll get poor answers.&quot;" CreationDate="2019-05-04T22:04:35.953" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="17690" PostId="5654" Score="0" Text="In my view that would go fine -- with small edits -- as an answer on the main site. You just need to reverse engineer the question." CreationDate="2019-05-05T12:16:58.947" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17691" PostId="5654" Score="4" Text="@NickCox Fair. I've asked such a question: https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/406723/uniform-integers-at-random-from-1-to-n-using-fair-d6" CreationDate="2019-05-05T16:37:52.687" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="17689" PostId="5655" Score="2" Text="If anyone is wondering how to vote for a synonym, you can do so from the tag's page if you have sufficient reputation. Go to [tag:neural-networks] and then click Synonyms." CreationDate="2019-05-04T22:12:07.390" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="17698" PostId="5655" Score="0" Text="By the way, how did you -- as a mod -- manage to suggest a synonym without automatically approving it?" CreationDate="2019-05-06T07:37:40.003" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17699" PostId="5655" Score="0" Text="@amoeba I'm not sure. I found only this https://meta.mathoverflow.net/questions/3731/synonym-by-a-moderator-which-needs-approval" CreationDate="2019-05-06T07:45:18.087" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="20261" PostId="5655" Score="0" Text="The tags are synonyms now.  They need to be merged. A search on `nn` wiill not return the `dl`-tagged threads." CreationDate="2020-11-01T21:22:38.403" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17705" PostId="5656" Score="2" Text="These issues were recently discussed here on Meta at https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5650/community-moderating-vs-systemic-attacks: have you seen that thread?  As far as &quot;irregular voting patterns&quot; go, each case is considered on its own (but there are SE-wide rules to help make moderation consistent).  Suspending a user is the solution of last resort.  You will find that people give you somewhat cagey comments or answers, like this one, because we don't want to make it easy to circumvent our moderation by revealing the details." CreationDate="2019-05-08T03:03:34.040" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="17706" PostId="5656" Score="6" Text="We cannot comment on why any user was suspended (there would be some advantages if we could, as well as some disadvantages, but in any case the policy on moderation is not something we decide). I would say, however, that in many cases (not necessarily relating to anything in this post) there's more than one issue going on at a time, only some of which may be visible to ordinary users, and other issues that may only be briefly visible. As a result, it may sometimes turn out that what seems like it was the issue may not be -- it's useful to keep this in mind." CreationDate="2019-05-08T03:16:53.387" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="17707" PostId="5656" Score="0" Text="Okay that makes sense, I understand there are disadvantages to being specific about what is bannable. In that case, I'd just like to know whether I should report any suspicions if I have them and if so, where would be appropriate (a flag on a question/answer by the user?). Or are you saying mods will see irregular behavior anyway and we need not really do anything?" CreationDate="2019-05-08T03:25:03.763" UserId="176202" />
  <row Id="17708" PostId="5656" Score="5" Text="If it requires moderator intervention, you should normally [flag](https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/flagging) any behavior you see as particularly problematic. Issues of site policy can be raised here. We can normally comment on what sort of behavior is not okay (revenge downvoting, spamming, abuse, etc; if it seems like it's cheating or abusive it almost always *is*) but not exactly how much it takes to get yourself into trouble; in many cases it's 'as soon as we can spot it, by any means we have'. Ordinary users are important in helping to see bad behavior" CreationDate="2019-05-08T03:36:11.423" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="17709" PostId="5656" Score="0" Text="As far as what is or may be bannable, see information in the help and a few other places, including: [Our model](https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/stackexchange). &#xA;&#xA;[Expected Behavior](https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/behavior). &#xA;&#xA;[Reputation &amp; Moderation](https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/reputation). &#xA;&#xA;[Code of Conduct](https://stats.stackexchange.com/conduct). &#xA;&#xA;[Acceptable Use Policy](https://stackoverflow.com/legal/acceptable-use-policy)." CreationDate="2019-05-08T03:38:45.713" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="17710" PostId="5656" Score="3" Text="If you flag a lot, some flags may be declined (I have a couple myself). This doesn't mean you should be discouraged from flagging bad behavior; a few flag declines is not an issue. If more than a few flags get declined (especially if you have issued several similar flags), you should probably try to figure out why." CreationDate="2019-05-08T03:49:54.220" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="17711" PostId="5656" Score="0" Text="Although I am not really referring to revenge voting, I think this discussion has answered my question. Thanks!" CreationDate="2019-05-08T03:52:45.533" UserId="176202" />
  <row Id="17712" PostId="5656" Score="0" Text="Yeah, I understand - that was meant as an example of a serious issue; I presumed you were talking about [different but somewhat related issues that tend to arise](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/57682/how-should-sockpuppets-be-handled-on-stack-exchange) (I was skirting the actual specific issue I thought you were referring to but see the list in the top answer there. If you mean what I think, it's *obviously* not okay.)" CreationDate="2019-05-08T03:54:20.867" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="17713" PostId="5656" Score="5" Text="What was meant as a quick comment grew rather fast. I should probably convert to an answer when I get a few minutes." CreationDate="2019-05-08T04:01:01.330" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="17714" PostId="5656" Score="4" Text="I think there are just two simple lessons here for anyone not a moderator. The site software is smart enough to catch repeated antisocial behaviour, or at least to allow that to be caught sooner or later. Nevertheless too much shouldn't be read into downvoting. I've downvoted questions that I thought were very poor and answers that I thought were wrong. That's all part of the system too." CreationDate="2019-05-08T19:34:48.450" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17719" PostId="5657" Score="1" Text="Please visit https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/no-one-answers." CreationDate="2019-05-17T14:41:46.790" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="17720" PostId="5657" Score="2" Text="I'll leave the question in place and edit it to include the new formulation then. Thank you whuber." CreationDate="2019-05-17T14:45:29.010" UserId="10416" />
  <row Id="17722" PostId="5658" Score="0" Text="I think it's impossible to self-delete a question that has an upvoted answer." CreationDate="2019-05-17T20:44:30.453" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17723" PostId="5658" Score="0" Text="@amoeba That's a good point. I'm not completely sure about it though, because I haven't tested that proposition in a case where upvotes have been balanced by downvotes." CreationDate="2019-05-17T21:20:18.113" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="17724" PostId="5658" Score="0" Text="Oh now I see your point. I think you are right: it's impossible to self-delete a question that has an answer with a positive score. If an upvoted answer has net score zero, then AFAIK it wouldn't prevent self-deletion of the question." CreationDate="2019-05-17T21:26:03.897" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17737" PostId="5662" Score="11" Text="In principle +1, however posting an other person's email online without explicit consent is not really okay, and some people might get offended (imagine that an email contained some opinion that the author would not like to make public). If one is not absolutely sure that in this particular case it's okay, it's better to ask first." CreationDate="2019-05-27T12:19:28.350" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17738" PostId="5662" Score="1" Text="@amoeba good point, I assumed the consent." CreationDate="2019-05-27T12:21:01.350" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="17764" PostId="5662" Score="0" Text="+1 I think there is a very straightforward answer to the OP's question, and you have given it. I have [done exactly this](https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/387585/44269)." CreationDate="2019-06-02T15:40:33.163" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="17725" PostId="5663" Score="6" Text="I got -375 today. This is how the site works. This is not specific to CV, but all the SE ecosystem. See for further discussion and links: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/126470/what-does-user-was-removed-mean-and-why-did-my-reputation-change-because-of-it" CreationDate="2019-05-25T09:18:52.127" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="17726" PostId="5663" Score="6" Text="I got -645 today, 635 of that from one user..." CreationDate="2019-05-25T09:47:55.257" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="17727" PostId="5663" Score="5" Text="Someone fooled SE for a long time;  https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/328642/massive-user-removal-in-one-night; https://gis.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5069/user-was-removed-with-significant-amount-of-votes-withdrawn-was-it-a-fraud. More about “user was removed” in https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/125740/dont-throw-away-all-votes-when-a-user-is-deleted." CreationDate="2019-05-25T12:27:21.460" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="17728" PostId="5663" Score="5" Text="Please do not take it personally Carl it has happened to all of us today and many people (including me) lost much more than you." CreationDate="2019-05-25T12:53:28.393" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="17729" PostId="5663" Score="0" Text="@mdewey Wrong impression. I do not take it personally. It is just that removal of excessive reputation is not supposed to happen, and -635 like  Glen_b reports, seems excessive, and no corrective action was undertaken, which detracts from a wholesome site experience." CreationDate="2019-05-25T17:10:15.087" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="17730" PostId="5663" Score="0" Text="@Nick_Craver Note this: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/173699/341152 What about it Nick?  Can this type of thing be stopped?" CreationDate="2019-05-25T17:52:14.003" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="17736" PostId="5663" Score="2" Text="Q1 is very reasonable and very suitable for the Meta; I would happily upvote it. However, Q2 is almost unrelated and is formulated in a way that makes me want to downvote. Consider separating this question into two distinct ones." CreationDate="2019-05-27T10:49:22.663" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17739" PostId="5663" Score="0" Text="@amoeba Please explain. I cannot guess as to why you feel that way. Also, please consider that not everyone's  experiences are carbon copies of each other's." CreationDate="2019-05-27T23:09:51.827" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="17740" PostId="5663" Score="0" Text="&quot;snarky downvoting, snide remarks, personal deprecation, a punitive administrative approach to users&quot; In abstraction, no one is favour of any of these, but each accusation requires context and evidence. To start with the most discussed, who decides which downvotes are snarky? Most of them are silent, so you are imputing intent. Professionally we (should) know that imputation is very tricky! Most positively, to fight back against anything untoward you need (a) moderators on your side (b) other active users in support to vote, comment, flag, edit, etc." CreationDate="2019-05-28T13:48:18.930" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17741" PostId="5663" Score="0" Text="By far the most difficult person in my time on CV  (a long, long way from you, @Carl)  complained again and again about behaviour of which they were the most notorious exemplar....." CreationDate="2019-05-28T13:50:21.740" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17742" PostId="5663" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Understood. However, any discussion of anything involves projection whether from the ontogenetic  dichotomy of subjective versus objective or the [holographic principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle). In simplest terms, we do not experience reality, we experience personal models of it. And if our models do not agree, how common those models are, how democratic, contributes nothing objective." CreationDate="2019-05-28T14:31:55.450" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="17743" PostId="5663" Score="0" Text="I don't know how to decode that easily except as a reminder of the obvious. I doubt that anyone accepts that A is to be thought snarky (or whatever) just because B says they are. You have to convince the community or their elected moderators for anything to happen. They have to agree that A is snarky (and, very often, consider whether B is behaving as badly or worse)." CreationDate="2019-05-28T14:43:02.403" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17744" PostId="5663" Score="0" Text="@NickCox A scientist is someone who tests the veracity of dogma. Most do not, and science is not popular. Surely a lack of popularity is not scientific evidence but neither is dogma. Do I have to establish the obvious just because it is not obvious to everyone? Take downvoting. Two propositions 1) There are no problems with it.  2) There are problems with  it. Which proposition is scientific?" CreationDate="2019-05-28T15:00:42.240" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="17745" PostId="5663" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Regarding proposition 1; the popular consensus that is, there are numerous threads on StackExchange meta complaining about downvoting, and the consensus votes against those numerous threads, complaints have been posted about the high frequency of said posts, which speaks volumes about how many people do have a problem with downvoting. Fine, we can agree that it is a minority opinion ruthlessly discounted by its proponents, but, the criticism of downvoting will persist unless the deficiencies are better addressed." CreationDate="2019-05-28T15:19:09.767" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="17746" PostId="5663" Score="0" Text="Sure, downvoting can be abused. Some downvotes are in bad faith. Who is arguing otherwise? Some people have done or said some things to me on SE that I didn't like, but I didn't start any Meta threads on any of them. That's a repeated, invisible zero from anyone who thinks similarly. So, it's really, really hard, but you have to impute the number of those satisfied enough with the system to stay, and not complain much. I can't regard my views as &quot;ruthless&quot;.  I don't have any scope to be ruthless here." CreationDate="2019-05-28T15:29:08.650" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17747" PostId="5663" Score="0" Text="@NickCox No, no. You are good-natured. Some of the anti-anti-downvoting comments surely are not nice. However, I am not impugning motive here, rather methods. That is, the problem is that what people think is true, often is irreal. Problematic downvoting  occurs for true but unfamiliar statements. Uncommon truths are not easily digested, in fact if something new does not make someone uncomfortable, it probably was not worth saying." CreationDate="2019-05-28T15:58:34.230" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="17748" PostId="5663" Score="0" Text="Happy to have misunderstood then, but as before only so much can be said in abstraction. If I see specific cases, I can work out how far I agree." CreationDate="2019-05-28T16:01:09.063" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17749" PostId="5663" Score="0" Text="@NickCox I have taken out the emotional attribution that some have objected to as not properly communicating the objective character of my experience. There is also a subjective component to this, which is not invalid, just irrelevant to the point I am trying to convey. Perhaps that will help people understand." CreationDate="2019-05-28T16:15:36.467" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="17750" PostId="5663" Score="0" Text="@amoeba OK, changed wording, I do not care about downvoting. I assume that anything worth saying will be downvoted. Indeed, that is why I consider downvoting problematic." CreationDate="2019-05-28T16:27:53.970" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="17751" PostId="5663" Score="1" Text="I appreciate the intent but changing your wording to &quot;downvoting mistakenly, incorrect remarks, ad hominem argument, bizarre administrative posturing, e.g., ineffectually coercing pathetic niceties&quot; just seems like tinkering. I prefer vivid language to bland truisms, with nothing else said, but I still don't think Question 2 is a good question for Meta. It assumes too much and is based on so little that we can see, however much personal experience underlies it. Still, it's particularly pertinent to flag that I didn't downvote this. (As of this writing,  +3 -2 = 1 vote for this question.)" CreationDate="2019-05-28T17:30:00.310" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17752" PostId="5663" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Why? My thought is that losing a bunch of points through no fault of the recipient due to user removal is a negative experience, which more generally is part and parcel of the other causes of negative experiences, the likes of which might just be worthy of some consideration." CreationDate="2019-05-28T17:39:36.007" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="17753" PostId="5663" Score="2" Text="Again: for anyone to decide which downvotes were undeserved requires a view from above of who was right, who was wrong, and whether the reasons for downvoting were good or bad. No one has this view from Olympus. Anyone thin-skinned enough to react badly to how the votes fall should find a different home or hobby. (I recommended to the person alluded to several comments above that they start their own blog. Characteristically they didn't seem interested in anyone else's advice.)" CreationDate="2019-05-28T17:45:37.827" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17754" PostId="5663" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Einstein characteristically did not care much for the people in his department who so disliked his theories that they disliked him, which is why he wrote relativity while employed in the Swiss Patent Office. To this day there are people who are in love with disliking Einstein. There is more to this than Mount Olympus. Deep thought will never be popular, and voting is a popularity contest. Thinking about it is not heresy and if we could develop better methods it would be very rewarding for all concerned." CreationDate="2019-05-28T18:02:57.953" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="17755" PostId="5663" Score="2" Text="I guess we could lobby for downvotes received to be explicit in each person's profile if they are seen as badges of honour. As a statistical person I have to comment that for every maverick who turns out to be Einstein there are many more who turn out to be just mavericks." CreationDate="2019-05-28T18:05:17.580" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17756" PostId="5663" Score="0" Text="@NickCox For every maverick who is not ignored when correct there are ten who are ignored when correct. Works both ways." CreationDate="2019-05-28T18:17:04.543" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="17757" PostId="5663" Score="0" Text="That's one assertion each without supporting evidence. I think I'll let readers decide for themselves." CreationDate="2019-05-28T18:28:20.807" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17758" PostId="5663" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Aye! There is the rub. Letting readers decide without evidence. I rather thought that was the problem, not the solution to it." CreationDate="2019-05-28T19:18:16.970" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="17765" PostId="5663" Score="4" Text="-1 Specifically for &quot;down-voting mistakenly, incorrect remarks&quot; which seems deeply problematic, paternalistic, and colonizing. I would give a second down-vote for &quot;bizarre administrative posturing, e.g., ineffectually coercing pathetic niceties,&quot; since (here and on other SEs) creating a welcoming and friendly environment creates opportunities for people to learn in both asking questions &amp; answering them, fosters sharing of differing perspectives, and reduces bullying behavior." CreationDate="2019-06-02T15:54:22.373" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="17766" PostId="5663" Score="0" Text="@Alexis Are words like 'paternalistic' and 'colonizing,' whatever the heck that means, nice words to use toward a respected colleague? Or, do they signal a lack of respect and proper comportment? It is all too typical to overreact negatively on this site and that, for me if not for you, constitutes a barrier to proper discussion that mitigates against creative thought. I have had to delete some very good ideas because of that and from my perspective the site is not optimal. I do sincerely hope that your experiences have been more positive." CreationDate="2019-06-02T20:59:25.827" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="17767" PostId="5663" Score="0" Text="Carl, I appreciate your presence on the site and have said so before." CreationDate="2019-06-02T23:12:58.407" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="17768" PostId="5663" Score="0" Text="@Alexis Thank-you, one compliment is worth 10 less than flattering remarks. The expression of causes for concern is only in an effort to improve the site. I have seen a statement (to someone else, I think) to the effect that if someone wants a better site, they should start their own. And I have also heard that to learn to write a good book, one should read a bad one. It is my experience that one gets published by following reviewers' guidance. And so should this site." CreationDate="2019-06-03T00:54:29.013" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="19353" PostId="5663" Score="0" Text="@amoebasaysReinstateMonica Please allow me to remind you of Question 2. Do you still want to downvote it, or do you concede that there is an administrative attitude problem?" CreationDate="2019-11-03T07:12:11.183" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="17733" PostId="5664" Score="2" Text="OK (+1) Mind explaining the difference between fraudulent voting and incomprehensible voting from miscomprehension? I realize you do not own the opinion you have expressed, but, I also wonder what fraud could possibly mean in this context." CreationDate="2019-05-25T23:55:30.550" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="17734" PostId="5664" Score="3" Text="@Carl: Fraudulent voting's when a single person controls multiple accounts that vote for each other." CreationDate="2019-05-26T00:00:36.107" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="17735" PostId="5664" Score="2" Text="Thanks, that possibility never occurred to me. Since voting is next to worthless as far as I can tell, it did not occur to me that anyone would bother doing such a thing." CreationDate="2019-05-26T00:06:14.243" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="17760" PostId="5672" Score="5" Text="I think your question is perfectly understandable.  Due to the flaws in the quotation and the lack of any real context (which often helps overcome such problems), I'm a little uncertain about its appropriateness for our site.  It's not even apparent that the form in which these &quot;curves&quot; are given you is even amenable to PCA: the implicit assumption in the answer appears to be that they are all sampled at common times.  Moreover, it's amenable to many different (good) answers, which doesn't work well here. Perhaps focusing your question on the PCA issue might help us understand and answer it." CreationDate="2019-05-30T16:51:51.053" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="17761" PostId="5672" Score="3" Text="I agree w/ @whuber. I might have closed as *unclear* or *too broad*, as I'm not sure it's answerable from what's provided. That said, note that the various closing options all come w/ stock comments that may or may not actually be a good fit for the specific post. Ie, I wouldn't take the &quot;demanding an answer&quot; too literally." CreationDate="2019-05-30T17:02:49.470" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17762" PostId="5672" Score="0" Text="@whuber I've added context. Does it help?" CreationDate="2019-05-30T17:07:12.223" UserId="240216" />
  <row Id="17763" PostId="5672" Score="2" Text="Yes, it does.  At the same time I was completing a comment to your question indicating why it's not answerable in its general form." CreationDate="2019-05-30T17:08:07.650" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="17771" PostId="5675" Score="3" Text="I don't see a question anywhere in your post. Eg, I don't see a &quot;?&quot;, &amp; ctrl-f doesn't find one. If you really want &quot;to understand a statistical concept from a textbook&quot;, that should be on topic, but I can't tell that from *that post* (as opposed to here). Can you edit it to clarify what you're after?" CreationDate="2019-06-03T19:47:09.327" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17772" PostId="5675" Score="1" Text="Ok I have added a question to make it explicit. I'm happy to improve my question but how was I to know what the issue was?" CreationDate="2019-06-03T19:56:43.317" UserId="213434" />
  <row Id="17777" PostId="5675" Score="3" Text="Thank you for that. There seems to be some concern that the explicit questions are not your primary or only question, but that you also / really want the code debugged. Since you say you aren't after that, it might be less worrying for people if you were to delete the code &amp; your figure, so the only questions were the ones that are explicitly listed." CreationDate="2019-06-04T14:01:44.303" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17773" PostId="5676" Score="5" Text="Note that there are now 2 explicit questions, &quot;What exactly does the formula on the y axis mean? Is it just the kth beta being compared?&quot; I think these can be addressed w/o bothering with the code. Moreover, these questions seem on topic to me. (Otherwise, I agree w/ everything in this answer.)" CreationDate="2019-06-03T20:34:23.427" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17774" PostId="5676" Score="2" Text="@gung, I see you have already addressed my answer in a comment. Sorry, I read it after I posted it." CreationDate="2019-06-04T03:43:28.227" UserId="176202" />
  <row Id="17811" PostId="5676" Score="0" Text="Thank you for the detailed feedback, I have added a new question taking this into account https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/415420/understanding-equation-used-by-hastie-et-al" CreationDate="2019-06-30T16:45:36.040" UserId="213434" />
  <row Id="17776" PostId="5677" Score="4" Text="Thank you for these clarifying remarks--they have helped me better understand the issues.  +1 of course." CreationDate="2019-06-04T11:57:15.160" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="17812" PostId="5677" Score="0" Text="Thank you for the detailed feedback, I have added a new question taking this into account https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/415420/understanding-equation-used-by-hastie-et-al" CreationDate="2019-06-30T16:45:44.743" UserId="213434" />
  <row Id="17778" PostId="5679" Score="10" Text="[stats.SE] is an SE Q&amp;A site for machine learning questions." CreationDate="2019-06-10T14:22:09.920" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17779" PostId="5680" Score="1" Text="There is also the IBM sponsored [Artificial Intelligence SE](https://ai.stackexchange.com/)." CreationDate="2019-06-14T04:56:41.747" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="17780" PostId="5682" Score="6" Text="I think the main problem is that the answers depend less on statistics and more on other scientific approaches, and depend on the nature of the patterns you find. Ultimately it's just not something that can be addressed in a SE-length answer." CreationDate="2019-06-17T22:40:34.390" UserId="135291" />
  <row Id="17782" PostId="5682" Score="5" Text="I think it's both an interesting topic of discussion and completely unsuitable for CV, unfortunately. How one ought to deal with this would differ not just by field, but also by type of study (experiment/observation), possibility and cost of obtaining new data, nature &amp; complexity of the analysis that turned up such a pattern, the strength of the pattern, the financial/social/scientific implications of the pattern, and more. You have not really constrained any of these possibilities in your question, and even if you had, a general answer might be hard to provide." CreationDate="2019-06-18T09:26:47.933" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="17781" PostId="5683" Score="16" Text="You don't *necessarily* need a community wiki unless you expect others to edit it; just a single canonical version of the question with a good answer would suffice. Surely there are some good candidates already. If none are sufficiently generic, one could be chosen and edited to be made more generic -- or if substantial changes would be needed, a new one written and posted. [Whoever does the work to make it can get points for it as long as they properly credit anything they use. This is the model the network operates on. If you *want* to make it CW, you can, but I don't see it as required.]" CreationDate="2019-06-18T07:10:03.830" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="17784" PostId="5683" Score="3" Text="Go ahead! Please ..." CreationDate="2019-06-18T19:39:40.753" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="17787" PostId="5683" Score="4" Text="@Glen_b: do you want to post your comment(s) as an answer? [Better to have a short answer than no answer at all.](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5326/1352) Anyone who has a better answer can post it." CreationDate="2019-06-20T10:36:17.307" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="17783" PostId="5684" Score="1" Text="Would be useful, go ahead!" CreationDate="2019-06-18T19:38:30.167" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="17785" PostId="5684" Score="0" Text="@kjetilbhalvorsen Will do so soon, thanks!" CreationDate="2019-06-18T20:33:08.027" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="17789" PostId="5684" Score="1" Text="And when you do it please post here to point to it so it gets maximum publicity" CreationDate="2019-06-22T12:36:12.333" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="17792" PostId="5684" Score="0" Text="@mdewey Done, thanks! Link in the answer below." CreationDate="2019-06-23T20:09:29.657" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="17790" PostId="5688" Score="0" Text="If you really read about interpretability and about AUC and R^2, you would realize that interpretability and explainability contains that part of statistics that fundamentally inseparable from code or pseudo-code.  Dr. Moran is not the first statistician to make this point." CreationDate="2019-06-22T23:42:08.940" UserId="140504" />
  <row Id="17791" PostId="5688" Score="0" Text="Thus, I would hate to see mkt efforts struck down because we &quot;don't allow code questions&quot; on this StackExchange.  Because such a move fundamentally goes against the ethics of data science and the knowledge of machine learning when it comes to interpreting models and preventing overfitting.  **Machine learning should be transparent**" CreationDate="2019-06-22T23:48:31.780" UserId="140504" />
  <row Id="17793" PostId="5688" Score="3" Text="I appreciate your effort in writing this, but I am afraid I don't fully understand it. You are of course welcome to post your own answer to the question (now been posted, link in my answer)." CreationDate="2019-06-23T20:29:25.080" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="17881" PostId="5688" Score="0" Text="@mkt I realized after reading various post you linked to and other did stack overflow.  So I worked the last 2 months on a new thread:&#xA;https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5725/can-i-get-feedback-on-a-concept-map-on-interpetability&#xA;That the connection is poorly understood.  I am still working on the feature one to cite specific code, but the model on with links to code is mostly done." CreationDate="2019-07-30T06:33:10.253" UserId="140504" />
  <row Id="17884" PostId="5688" Score="0" Text="I'm afraid I don't follow the new post either. I hope someone else will be able to offer more useful feedback." CreationDate="2019-07-30T11:25:19.793" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="17795" PostId="5694" Score="0" Text="OK, but still there is the question how to signal to askers about &quot;reliability theory&quot; that the [tag:reliability] is the wrong one ..." CreationDate="2019-06-24T20:34:58.263" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="17796" PostId="5694" Score="0" Text="The tag excerpt has usage guidance that is clear enough, IMO. I suspect people just don't read the excerpts.  When someone has placed the tag incorrectly anyway, I usually just edit. If you want, you can also leave a comment." CreationDate="2019-06-24T20:41:59.663" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17798" PostId="5697" Score="1" Text="Thanks, that makes sense. Is there a reason we never burninate tags (I can ask that as a separate question too)?" CreationDate="2019-06-26T10:51:39.667" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="17799" PostId="5697" Score="4" Text="Hard as I tried, I could never find out what the reason is: https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3147." CreationDate="2019-06-26T11:28:42.070" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17800" PostId="5697" Score="2" Text="In my dreams ;-) I have imagined implementing a system in which the application of certain tags by the OP automatically raises a notice (for all to see) announcing that this person hasn't a clue what they're asking about :-) and automatically downvotes the post, thereby doing most of our work for us.  However, some of the people who apply [tag:modeling], [tag:fitting], [tag:mathematical-statistics], and so on, actually know very well what they're doing." CreationDate="2019-06-26T14:34:36.050" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="17801" PostId="5697" Score="5" Text="@whuber: can't you build a *Machine Learning* tool to do that? (*runs for cover*)" CreationDate="2019-06-26T15:06:36.720" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="17802" PostId="5697" Score="2" Text="@whuber It sounds like you are against burnination. If so, what course of action would you suggest for tags like this one? Are they worth retaining in their present form? Or adding the text suggested by amoeba, which seems like quasi-deprecation?" CreationDate="2019-06-26T15:35:09.303" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="17823" PostId="5697" Score="2" Text="In the absence of further information from the mods, I'm accepting this answer and have edited the relevant wiki tag guidance with your suggested text." CreationDate="2019-07-01T18:40:50.223" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="17804" PostId="5698" Score="0" Text="As said by @amoeba and myself above, there's no way do delete the tag other then manually removing then from all the 1800 questions. Are you willing to manually remove those tags from 10 questions a day, every day for half a year?" CreationDate="2019-06-26T15:59:38.183" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="17805" PostId="5698" Score="0" Text="@Tim Not proposing that we do - I was hoping for something like burnination, which amoeba discusses and recommends in his comment here: https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3031/tag-candidates-for-removal/5698?noredirect=1#comment14167_3031. No problem if that's not feasible, but that is far from clear from these threads on the topic." CreationDate="2019-06-26T16:40:34.587" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="17806" PostId="5698" Score="0" Text="@Tim It is not correct that there is no other way; I never said so." CreationDate="2019-06-26T18:56:41.803" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17807" PostId="5698" Score="0" Text="@amoeba agree, I oversimplified it, sorry. The other way is way is contacting community moderators that would remove the tag. However CMs have many other, more important things to do then removing one of possibly thousands of tags that are not really needed in SE network of sites. There's really no harm in having such tags, so if we can't do this by ourselves, we should just accept tags like this." CreationDate="2019-06-26T19:14:37.600" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="17808" PostId="5698" Score="1" Text="@Tim That's fine, but I am wondering what is the status of this opinion. Is it a public SE guideline? A recommendation that CMs privately communicated to the CV mods (e.g. you)? A common understanding between the CV mods based on their personal impressions? Your own personal opinion? :-) I would be interested to know. Thanks." CreationDate="2019-06-26T19:27:16.127" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17809" PostId="5698" Score="0" Text="@amoeba my own impression that considers (small) number of CMs, (large) number of SE sites, (exponentially large) number of tags, and observations about their usual response time." CreationDate="2019-06-26T19:30:38.293" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="17820" PostId="5699" Score="3" Text="I have reopened the question. I agree w/ others (eg, @mkt below) that the question does not appear obviously on-topic when read by someone who doesn't work on that specific issue. However, the answer makes it clear that the real issues are statistical, even if that's not obvious to most. (Nb, my test of on topic has always been: what does the OP need explained, if a statistical concept, it's on topic.)" CreationDate="2019-07-01T17:50:18.723" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17821" PostId="5699" Score="3" Text="That said, it is really difficult to see the statistical question until the answer has been read. Could you edit the Q to make the statistical issue more salient? The OP seems to agree w/ your interpretation of the Q, so I think adding a couple sentences at the end should be acceptable. Further, you could comment to the OP that if they disagreed with your edits, they could roll them back." CreationDate="2019-07-01T17:51:37.233" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17822" PostId="5699" Score="0" Text="@gung Thanks for opening the Q. It's good to hear that you and I are both using the same test to evaluate the topicality of questions! I'll suggest these edits to the question." CreationDate="2019-07-01T18:04:24.563" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="17813" PostId="5700" Score="1" Text="Good catch. We could probably improve things by adding a link to https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5020/mathjax-basic-tutorial-and-quick-reference" CreationDate="2019-06-30T21:53:23.780" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="17814" PostId="5700" Score="0" Text="@Sycorax That's just my second link under the &quot;this&quot; text :)" CreationDate="2019-06-30T21:54:28.797" UserId="6476" />
  <row Id="17815" PostId="5700" Score="2" Text="Great suggestion." CreationDate="2019-06-30T22:51:47.547" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="17824" PostId="5700" Score="3" Text="Should read this: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/246184/the-mathjax-help-link-should-point-to-a-more-specific-guide/288209#288209" CreationDate="2019-07-02T04:14:49.340" UserId="4454" />
  <row Id="17825" PostId="5700" Score="1" Text="@Shog9 Thanks! I didn't know; it seems I'm not the first to mention this issue..." CreationDate="2019-07-02T09:29:51.203" UserId="6476" />
  <row Id="21034" PostId="5700" Score="1" Text="Note for future readers, it now links to `https://legacy-www.math.harvard.edu/texman/` since the original link no longer exists." CreationDate="2021-11-04T17:39:28.583" UserId="176140" />
  <row Id="17816" PostId="5701" Score="3" Text="Don't think the 2nd is a programming issue: 'C:\Windows\Malicous' is a level of the categorical predictor 'ParentPath' that is missing from the training data. I'd say the q's on-topic, but agree it could do with some clarification." CreationDate="2019-07-01T08:34:40.970" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="17817" PostId="5701" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi I guess I misunderstood the question even after re-reading." CreationDate="2019-07-01T08:52:42.680" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="17818" PostId="5701" Score="2" Text="Thanks for the elaboration! I can see where you’re coming from!" CreationDate="2019-07-01T12:42:28.820" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="17819" PostId="5701" Score="0" Text="@Sycorax No problem!" CreationDate="2019-07-01T14:21:39.563" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="19709" PostId="5702" Score="0" Text="Thanks, but my Q is really about *Engineering reliability*, a third meaning. Or maybe just use the (underused) tag [tag:engineering-statistics]?" CreationDate="2020-03-12T10:02:25.707" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="17826" PostId="5703" Score="5" Text="This is mostly a question of how categorical variables should be encoded. We have a relevant tag already: [tag:categorical-encoding]. What might be helpful is to make a `[dummy-variable-trap]` tag &amp; make it a synonym of `[ce]`." CreationDate="2019-07-03T11:24:06.453" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17827" PostId="5703" Score="2" Text="I think it's econometricians' or economists' jargon but (1) I would be happy to get better informed (2) that's not a criticism, just a description. But as you say, it's not everyone's standard jargon, which gives me a little bias against making it a tag." CreationDate="2019-07-03T17:57:10.730" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17828" PostId="5703" Score="1" Text="FWIW I put a bounty on the linked answer by @Silverfish." CreationDate="2019-07-03T18:31:14.317" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17829" PostId="5703" Score="3" Text="@NickCox: I think that if a term is specific to a field, that would bias me *towards* creating a tag, because then we could explain exactly this in the tag wiki. (I am an incurable optimist: I still believe some people actually read those tag wikis. Someday I'm going to propose a new closure reason: &quot;Question is completely answered in the tag wiki of one of its tags.&quot;)" CreationDate="2019-07-03T20:29:45.517" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="17830" PostId="5703" Score="2" Text="My bias is unreasonably that I can't get excited about tags whereas conversely I quite enjoy copy-editing which clearly is of little or no appeal to many. Seriously, I am  all in favour of people who like working hard on tags doing what they like and do well.  I've come across a case in another part of SE in which a poster got flak most unfairly for a post on Meta giving some generic advice relevant to particular software, say FOO, from people knowing nothing about FOO. So, they promptly put the same material in a tag wiki where it is safe as non-FOO people would never dream of looking there." CreationDate="2019-07-03T21:11:24.193" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17831" PostId="5703" Score="3" Text="If you think it's an answer, I can convert my comment above." CreationDate="2019-07-04T12:21:53.653" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17832" PostId="5703" Score="1" Text="@gung: I would very much appreciate it." CreationDate="2019-07-04T13:43:21.790" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="17861" PostId="5703" Score="1" Text="Update: I have created a [tag:dummy-variable-trap] tag and started to retag a few questions at a time to avoid bump-flooding the landing page. I am a bit doubtful whether synonymizing it to [tag:categorical-encoding] makes sense, so I'll leave that decision to people who actually have upvotes on the tag." CreationDate="2019-07-17T09:10:31.303" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="17863" PostId="5703" Score="0" Text="I would really appreciate making the dummy variable trap as a synonym. It would help people not familiar with the topic. The answer to this question for example feels a little off until you realize that their talking about categorical encoding and multicollinearity. (When I first read it, I thought he was talking about something singularities in outlier detection. This is very silly, I now realize, but still.) https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/415841/which-ml-algorithms-are-affected-by-dummy-variable-trap/415871#415871" CreationDate="2019-07-17T01:14:32.477" UserId="140504" />
  <row Id="17836" PostId="5705" Score="2" Text="Please add to *... if you use a separate dummy code for every level of a categorical predictor* the qualification &quot;if there is an intercept in the model&quot;. Omission of that seems to confuse some people. Also, maybe, add &quot;in the context of unregularized linear or generalized linear(ish) models&quot;, as removing one dummy should not be done when regularizing (see https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/231285/dropping-one-of-the-columns-when-using-one-hot-encoding/329281#329281) and neither with trees or other very unlinear models." CreationDate="2019-07-06T18:49:46.047" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="17837" PostId="5706" Score="1" Text="The time of day effect is surely confounded with whatever numbers of questions arise from different longitudinal zones. For example, a peak around 15:00 UTC catches Europeans in mid-afternoon but also those 6 hours earlier and 6 hours later in time zones 6 hours away." CreationDate="2019-07-08T08:40:52.353" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17838" PostId="5706" Score="0" Text="@NickCox that is true. We don't have the (exact) location of users in SEDE so it is impossible for users of the public SEDE instance to analyze further and I doubt the private SEDE instance for SE staff has better data on that. One thing I considered adding was to see what the distribution (not sure if that is the right term) was for time to first answer when asked at a certain time. But I realize I'm on Cross Validated and wandering off in an area I've no background on might cause a few laughs. So I leave further analyzes to the crowd here. You're capable  of doing that." CreationDate="2019-07-08T09:02:16.003" UserId="38391" />
  <row Id="17839" PostId="5706" Score="0" Text="Also of interest https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3106/when-is-traffic-slow-on-crossvalidated and https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3046/is-there-an-ideal-time-of-day-to-ask-new-questions" CreationDate="2019-07-08T17:47:52.847" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="17840" PostId="5706" Score="0" Text="@mdewey those seem practical duplicates, better close this one as such." CreationDate="2019-07-08T19:00:41.820" UserId="38391" />
  <row Id="17855" PostId="5710" Score="0" Text="to clarify, the warning came up immediately after I entered the title...none of the post/question had even been typed into the system" CreationDate="2019-07-12T00:45:03.787" UserId="199063" />
  <row Id="17857" PostId="5710" Score="0" Text="as your post comment was clearly not intended to be helpful, I've appropriately flagged your post as abusive...unfortunately, I can't flag your comment as abusive...so I've screen shotted and will happily share with the moderators" CreationDate="2019-07-12T00:54:21.043" UserId="199063" />
  <row Id="17858" PostId="5710" Score="3" Text="It's in my post now (with further explanation and the comment was already gone) so your choice flagging of the post rather than the comment will be entirely appropriate. I believe there's a relevant point to be made there and I don't think the intended-to-be-humorous part of the comment (surprise that the AI somehow managed to guess that the post was a problem, which is directed at the AI, not you, since I was seeing it as having 'misfired') is abusive, but I will leave it to the other mods to consider. I'll happily make any requested changes the mods ask for." CreationDate="2019-07-12T00:58:24.017" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="17859" PostId="5710" Score="12" Text="Gregg, I am surprised you view Glen's response as &quot;abusive.&quot;  It's hard to see how you are reading it, but it certainly doesn't warrant such a reaction.  Might I suggest taking a more measured approach with people who are taking time and effort to help you and at least assuming they are well meaning?  BTW, I was able to reproduce the site behavior just by typing &quot;How do you calculate&quot; into the title.  Surely such an absurd situation would benefit from a little humor, especially since we cannot do anything about it." CreationDate="2019-07-12T02:37:25.570" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="17860" PostId="5710" Score="3" Text="In the end I did close it but I hope that you edit, and that it reopens" CreationDate="2019-07-12T03:36:40.617" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="17864" PostId="5712" Score="1" Text="It can be done. It is fine for me, I don't have any feelings for or against it." CreationDate="2019-07-18T08:52:15.463" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="17865" PostId="5712" Score="3" Text="I agree, especially your argument about the person asking is convincing: It may be hard to see how questions related by the tag `categorical-encoding` are useful for someone asking about the dummy variable trap. Simply looking through the questions currently tagged as `categorical-encoding` will show that this is the case." CreationDate="2019-07-18T12:46:08.470" UserId="176202" />
  <row Id="17868" PostId="5715" Score="2" Text="Thanks! I'll take a close look at those and consider how best to frame a usefully different question &amp; answer." CreationDate="2019-07-19T08:16:45.870" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="17870" PostId="5715" Score="3" Text="There is also quite a nice one about continuous by continuous interactions https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/4964/is-interaction-possible-between-two-continuous-variables with some graphical aids." CreationDate="2019-07-19T13:05:06.393" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="17871" PostId="5715" Score="0" Text="@mdewey Thanks for that link" CreationDate="2019-07-20T14:57:37.733" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="17869" PostId="5716" Score="1" Text="Your argument seems to hinge on the tag wiki excerpt for [dvt] still visible when trying to tag a new question with it. Right? However, this only happens because the synonym has not been yet merged. Once it's merged (SE encourages us to merge all well-established tag synonyms, and this has been our policy as well), nobody will ever see its wiki excerpt anymore. I think we had such a situation previously and you argued for never fully merging that synonym and leaving 1 Q with the synonymized tag (in this case [dvt]) intact but I still don't think it's a good approach." CreationDate="2019-07-19T09:06:47.387" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17872" PostId="5717" Score="3" Text="+1, but add the positive advice: Clear and concise explanation always  is a bonus." CreationDate="2019-07-23T14:41:58.590" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17873" PostId="5717" Score="1" Text="@NickCox Agreed, I try to be less cranky when commenting on the questions themselves." CreationDate="2019-07-23T15:15:20.503" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="17897" PostId="5718" Score="1" Text="The question was deleted by the OP, so (although it remains visible to at least some -- depending on reputation) it's hard to see that this Meta thread has value into the future." CreationDate="2019-08-08T08:58:35.257" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="17903" PostId="5718" Score="2" Text="I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because the OP has not been on this forum since weeks and this question has zero value to others." CreationDate="2019-08-08T09:32:42.247" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="17875" PostId="5719" Score="4" Text="I want to bold what is for me the crux of Glen_b's answer: **it's not remotely on topic on CrossValidated** which [is a site for asking questions about &quot;statistics, machine learning, data analysis, data mining, and data visualization&quot;](https://stats.stackexchange.com/tour). There are however, other sites in the StackExchange network which *might* (absent the need for grammatical coherence) be a better fit, including [Law.SE](https://law.stackexchange.com/) and [Philosophy.SE](https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/)." CreationDate="2019-07-27T17:01:46.507" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="17896" PostId="5722" Score="1" Text="It is not just CV that is decreasing in activity. https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5370/is-the-datascience-se-harming-cvs-answer-rate" CreationDate="2019-08-07T12:47:16.857" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19055" PostId="5722" Score="1" Text="From my end, I stopped answering questions due to sheer burnout, combined with life circumstances that have led to adjusting my personal priorities. I suspect that you will see the % of users contributing answers start to decrease before you see the answer rate itself decrease." CreationDate="2019-09-15T16:31:37.867" UserId="36229" />
  <row Id="22332" PostId="5722" Score="1" Text="It would be interesting to see an updated graph." CreationDate="2023-07-31T16:13:01.923" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="17876" PostId="5723" Score="2" Text="It would certainly be on-topic to have a question about the difference between them and give your hopefully canonical answer but I sense you have something else in mind?" CreationDate="2019-07-28T10:54:11.580" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="17877" PostId="5723" Score="2" Text="Be aware that there are a number of existing threads on this issue, so your question may be a duplicate (eg, [1](https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/1194/7290), [2](https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/269625/), [3](https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/409094/), [4](https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/108709/), etc)." CreationDate="2019-07-28T12:48:49.217" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17878" PostId="5723" Score="1" Text="When I first read the title, I figured this would be about questions seeking a tutorial, which (for better or worse) isn't something we do. Your specific question elaborated in the text is different from that. But a concern would be how could you choose which is the 'right answer' from several such posted examples? If you're not asking for code, you're not asking for a tutorial; your Q isn't a duplicate, &amp; it's easy to see how a particular response is the correct answer, I don't see any reason such a question should be closed." CreationDate="2019-07-28T12:53:11.933" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17879" PostId="5723" Score="1" Text="@gung Thank you for the links. While all of these discuss prediction vs explanation, *none* of these provide *model examples*, which would be a primary motivation driving my question." CreationDate="2019-07-28T15:52:46.230" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="17880" PostId="5723" Score="2" Text="@gung &quot;how could you choose which is the 'right answer' from several such posted examples?&quot; From my dictionary, 3rd definition of 'canonical': &quot;reduced to the simplest and most significant form possible without loss of generality&quot;. There might *not* be such an answer. One the other hand, there might be: if I were to ask for a canonical example of a measure of data centrality, I could see acceptable answers using the mean, median or both." CreationDate="2019-07-28T15:57:36.503" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="17885" PostId="5726" Score="2" Text="+1 I think it's a good point." CreationDate="2019-07-31T19:08:58.013" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="17886" PostId="5726" Score="0" Text="But see [should tags refer to the answer as well as the question?](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1525/should-tags-refer-to-the-answer-as-well-as-the-question)" CreationDate="2019-07-31T19:50:11.813" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="17887" PostId="5726" Score="0" Text="When the question is &quot;How do I handle &lt;situation&gt;?&quot; and the answer is something like &quot;Use a GAM&quot;, I agree it makes sense to add the GAM tag to the question. Here though, who is going to search for dummmy-variable-trap?" CreationDate="2019-07-31T21:13:08.123" UserId="7250" />
  <row Id="17904" PostId="5726" Score="0" Text="I see your point, but note that [we have 35 questions containing &quot;dummy variable trap&quot;](https://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=%22Dummy+variable+trap%22+is%3Aq). Skimming through them gives at least me the impression that there are indeed people out there who know what the DVT is, but are unsure about how to handle it. Or whether what they have encountered is actually a DVT. So I still believe the tag is useful." CreationDate="2019-08-09T16:55:42.043" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="17888" PostId="5727" Score="0" Text="What question are you talking about?" CreationDate="2019-08-06T01:21:46.460" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17889" PostId="5727" Score="0" Text="I do not remember the question, so I always go to &quot;all actions&quot;" CreationDate="2019-08-06T01:23:29.117" UserId="158565" />
  <row Id="17890" PostId="5727" Score="0" Text="I can't find anything. I don't see any deleted comments, eg. Are you sure you were connected to the internet when you posted? Maybe there was some glitch." CreationDate="2019-08-06T01:27:25.997" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17891" PostId="5727" Score="1" Text="I though maybe I forgot to click in button &quot;Add Comment&quot; at beginning. But later I found my old comments on that problem also disappeared from my &quot;All Actions&quot;. I saw my old comments appeared under that question several days ago." CreationDate="2019-08-06T01:30:59.960" UserId="158565" />
  <row Id="17892" PostId="5727" Score="1" Text="Not that it's necessarily related, but I did find yesterday that one comment of mine from the previous day had vanished (I also don't remember what question is was for). I assumed it had been removed as part of some moderator tidying, though I couldn't think of a more specific reason." CreationDate="2019-08-06T07:23:45.497" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="17893" PostId="5727" Score="1" Text="@mkt, can you identify what post your comment was on?" CreationDate="2019-08-06T11:35:35.437" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="17894" PostId="5727" Score="0" Text="@gung Unfortunately not - it's slipped my mind at this point." CreationDate="2019-08-06T11:41:08.687" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="17998" PostId="5735" Score="0" Text="When I read the original question I did not see it as meaning what the examples you cite above mean." CreationDate="2019-08-17T12:45:25.057" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="17999" PostId="5735" Score="0" Text="Hmm, okay I've added more details from this clarifying question" CreationDate="2019-08-17T12:49:15.913" UserId="8330" />
  <row Id="18016" PostId="5736" Score="8" Text="Data Science is statistics on a Mac." CreationDate="2019-08-21T10:21:09.707" UserId="143489" />
  <row Id="18018" PostId="5736" Score="5" Text="Also relevant: https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2026/data-science-se &amp; https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5514/overlap-with-ai-stackexchange-and-datascience-stackexchange" CreationDate="2019-08-21T12:11:30.857" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="18019" PostId="5736" Score="0" Text="what is &quot;meta&quot;?" CreationDate="2019-08-21T17:08:07.377" UserId="163146" />
  <row Id="18020" PostId="5736" Score="3" Text="@Ben https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/whats-meta" CreationDate="2019-08-21T17:23:49.097" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="18021" PostId="5736" Score="1" Text="@Ben This is a meta^2 question." CreationDate="2019-08-26T02:07:55.503" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="18024" PostId="5740" Score="12" Text="My personal experience is that it are the simpler matters that often get more upvotes. This has to do with the time that people have to invest in order to read and comprehend a question/answer. In addition it are the more popular issues, which get more views, that get the most upvotes. I would not be surprised if the data will show a correlation between votes and views. I can imagine that a lot of people here see their 'best' (as in complicate, high level, or something similar) answers end up with less votes and their highest voted answers could be some easy short answers on simple questions." CreationDate="2019-09-05T11:33:41.280" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="18025" PostId="5740" Score="4" Text="An example is this: https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/421795/164061 about the German Tank problem. It got 14 upvotes within a month, placing it currently in my top 3% answers based on votes. I was initially surprised about that. It is not such a great answer (from my view). But possibly it has attracted some people from other sites when it may have gotten in 'hot network questions' and then it helps that the German Tank problem is a well know question and can be easily understood by a broad public. What I also imagine is that an entire class of students may have passed by the question." CreationDate="2019-09-05T11:44:34.113" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="18026" PostId="5740" Score="7" Text="I've been on here quite a while, but trying to remember back - and also reflecting my current observations - very few answers get positive comments. I do recall this happening to me a few times - and it felt good! - but it was rare and it remains so.&#xA;&#xA;Upvotes are another matter. They seem pretty common. &#xA;&#xA;Of course, to get an upvote or a comment, the answer has to be seen and, with so many questions on CV, it's easy to miss questions (and answers)." CreationDate="2019-09-05T11:49:22.767" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="18027" PostId="5740" Score="4" Text="See the comparison with this answer to one of your questions. https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/359728/  I find the issue dealt with much more interesting. On the other hand it is also more in depth. It makes the question and answer both less appealing. So you can see that that question has only 250 views whereas the question that I linked to earlier has 2k views." CreationDate="2019-09-05T11:49:25.370" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="18028" PostId="5740" Score="5" Text="(1) I still feel like I am speaking into the void, more often than I would like. (2) I will happily admit that I'm part of the problem. My bookmark points at the &quot;new questions&quot; view, and I usually skim the new questions and answer whatever I feel like. Usually, by the time a question has received answers, it's already off my view. I feel like I should spend more time looking at and upvoting answers, but the deluge of new questions is coming too fast." CreationDate="2019-09-05T21:31:54.180" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="19057" PostId="5740" Score="3" Text="Honestly I just started answering in earnest about 3 weeks ago and I feel like the response has been reasonable--it'll be a somewhat specific question, I'll give some brief advice, get 2 upvotes and a couple clarifying comments, and move on, which is probably what should happen most of the time.&#xA;&#xA;Frankly, a large percentage of questions being asked are terrible. They don't meet the &quot;unsalvageable&quot; criterion so I don't flag them, but I'm not willing to go through the effort of coaching someone into asking a reasonable question." CreationDate="2019-09-15T22:06:02.307" UserId="103817" />
  <row Id="19079" PostId="5740" Score="1" Text="@SheridanGrant If they are terrible questions, [downvote them](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/4729/121522)!" CreationDate="2019-09-18T08:55:41.897" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="19081" PostId="5740" Score="1" Text="For now, I'll leave this as a comment: the &quot;speaking into the void&quot; phenomena has happened to me a bit, but in part it's because the tags where I'm most qualified to comment are very niche ones (latent class analysis and item response theory - ever heard of either of those?). Personally, I'm fine with receiving only one or two upvotes and the occasional positive comment. Maybe I'm a bit strange in that regard." CreationDate="2019-09-18T17:46:10.193" UserId="148503" />
  <row Id="19094" PostId="5740" Score="0" Text="@mkt I do every time--I presume that is preferable to flagging them?" CreationDate="2019-09-22T18:37:45.547" UserId="103817" />
  <row Id="19095" PostId="5740" Score="0" Text="@SheridanGrant If there's a valid reason to flag, by all means do that too." CreationDate="2019-09-22T18:44:15.860" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="20547" PostId="5740" Score="0" Text="To the questions in 1, I say yes and yes. One of my criteria for answering questions here is the likelihood of the questioner reading what I say, and disappointingly often I decide not to answer. By contrast, I've used MathOverflow, MathStackExchange, and MathEducators, and I never had to worry about speaking into the void on any of those sites." CreationDate="2021-02-08T23:45:45.907" UserId="225256" />
  <row Id="19048" PostId="5741" Score="0" Text="Have you seen our [help page on writing good answers](https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-answer)?  Or the myriad posts here on Meta about [good answers](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&amp;q=good%20answer)?" CreationDate="2019-09-13T20:05:56.607" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="18029" PostId="5743" Score="5" Text="I think accepting answers by the community is not necessary: an upvote for the answer should be enough to put the question out of &quot;unanswered&quot;" CreationDate="2019-09-07T06:04:22.690" UserId="73129" />
  <row Id="18030" PostId="5743" Score="3" Text="@MartinModrák is correct. Note also that when you do post an answer to an old question, it is immediately brought to the top of the front page where it can draw some attention (and upvotes). Regarding your idea about automatic accepting answer to old questions, this has been discussed [here](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3159/allow-moderators-to-accept-answers-in-old-questions-from-inactive-users) and [here](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2798/drive-by-questions-should-answers-be-accepted-by-proxy) (in short, the community does not like that idea)." CreationDate="2019-09-07T07:49:54.143" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="18031" PostId="5743" Score="0" Text="@MartinModrák ah, I didn't realize (or maybe forgot) that upvoted answers are considered &quot;answered&quot;. Thanks." CreationDate="2019-09-07T16:01:59.973" UserId="128284" />
  <row Id="18032" PostId="5743" Score="3" Text="@mkt oh, fair enough. Thanks for the links. That seems to be working alright here (on math SE my ratio of zero upvote answers is much higher, though of course that may just be an indictment on my answers). I still wonder if some kind of review-like queue could help tamper down the unanswered backlog though." CreationDate="2019-09-07T16:15:58.170" UserId="128284" />
  <row Id="18033" PostId="5743" Score="2" Text="Agreed, the ever-growing backlog is an irritant that many of us have spent time on too. But as someone here once said, worrying about the backlog can turn into an unproductive obsession. Getting to zero there is even less likely there than it is with most email inboxes. As an aside: a lack of accepts/upvotes is not an indictment of your answers; that's what *downvotes* are for. As I said above, if you tackle specialised topics (which from a quick look appears to be true), (i) you may not get many views, and (ii) many of us may not be able to understand them well enough to justify upvoting." CreationDate="2019-09-09T09:46:33.483" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="19046" PostId="5743" Score="0" Text="There *are* badges for voting: [Civic Duty](https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/badges/32/civic-duty), [Critic](https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/badges/7/critic), [Electorate](https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/badges/44/electorate)  (gold!), [Sportsmanship](https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/badges/63/sportsmanship), [Suffrage](https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/badges/62/suffrage), [Supporter](https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/badges/6/supporter), and [Vox Populi](https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/badges/77/vox-populi)." CreationDate="2019-09-13T20:00:06.060" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="19047" PostId="5743" Score="0" Text="Badges for answering old questions are [Revival](https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/badges/64/revival), [Necromancer](https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/badges/17/necromancer), and the somewhat related badges [Tenacious](https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/badges/50/tenacious) and [Unsung Hero](https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/badges/51/unsung-hero) (gold!).  There are also badges for resurrecting or improving old questions, such as [Excavator](https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/badges/86/excavator) and [Archaeologist](https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/badges/85/archaeologist)." CreationDate="2019-09-13T20:03:43.660" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20546" PostId="5743" Score="0" Text="How about sending questioners an email saying something stronger than &quot;there are new answers to your question&quot; if they haven't logged in for a couple of days after the answer is submitted? If people here consider it rude for a questioner not to look at answers to their question, then I hope we can find a way to persuade those questioners to look at the answers." CreationDate="2021-02-08T23:37:36.313" UserId="225256" />
  <row Id="18034" PostId="5744" Score="11" Text="We are limited in the number of targets.  If I remember correctly, we get at most three.  That implies Quant.SE should be a *more frequent* target than the current ones (CV Meta, Math.SE, and SO).  That seems unlikely based on the history of posts on CV." CreationDate="2019-09-10T14:04:40.980" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="18035" PostId="5744" Score="3" Text="Ah! I didn't realize we were limited in the number of targets. In that case, it makes sense that Meta, Math and SO would be the three we should pick." CreationDate="2019-09-10T14:16:47.387" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="18036" PostId="5744" Score="1" Text="See the original thread upon which the choice of the two current ones (besides meta) was based: [What migration paths should we allow?](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/505/what-migration-paths-should-we-allow) ... the answer from Jeff Atwood being the conclusion of the discussion" CreationDate="2019-09-10T23:33:15.557" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="18037" PostId="5744" Score="4" Text="See also this somewhat related thread [Would it make sense to add Data Science SE to the list of suggested sites for migration of a question?](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4929/would-it-make-sense-to-add-data-science-se-to-the-list-of-suggested-sites-for-mi)" CreationDate="2019-09-10T23:35:56.883" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="19036" PostId="5744" Score="7" Text="It isn't clear to me why we should have that constraint, though. On [SO] there are &gt;3 migration targets." CreationDate="2019-09-11T11:25:29.427" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20194" PostId="5744" Score="0" Text="I never heard of Quant.SE till now, please edit a link into the top of your question: https://quant.stackexchange.com/" CreationDate="2020-10-12T19:16:10.910" UserId="7291" />
  <row Id="19043" PostId="5745" Score="5" Text="Seems like that limit ought to increase as the number of sites on the StackExchange network increases.  I mean, if a limit of 3 sites was once appropriate when there were fewer potential migration targets, then presumably a limit of more than 3 would be appropriate now that there are more  potential migration targets." CreationDate="2019-09-13T14:00:45.437" UserId="143653" />
  <row Id="19044" PostId="5745" Score="2" Text="This would be an appropriate point to raise on the SO-wide Meta. I think 3 is just a default setting, chosen for no especially rigorous reason. What I've learned in the past from interactions with the SO staff and moderators is that they're reluctant to deviate from the default configurations on most websites (SE.SO being a &quot;special case&quot; due to its extraordinary volume of traffic)." CreationDate="2019-09-13T14:03:28.360" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="19037" PostId="5746" Score="7" Text="You are mistaken: the *question* is not CW; only mkt's *answer* is.  Everyone has a right to make their answers CW: why should we even want to override that?" CreationDate="2019-09-11T16:01:45.337" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="19038" PostId="5746" Score="3" Text="@whuber Thank you! I find community wiki to be somewhat opaque, and did not realize it applied to answers and questions separately. I have learned something, and see my error. :)" CreationDate="2019-09-11T16:03:06.473" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="19039" PostId="5746" Score="6" Text="CW is a bit of a vestige of earlier days.  Our site has tolerated certain kinds of questions that require lists of answers (quotations, jokes, etc) that have long since been wiped out of SO and some other sites.  Making those questions CW is one way to preserve them while making it clear they are exceptional. Making a question CW automatically makes its answers CW.  Making *answers,* but not questions, CW is rare.  This capability was intended to encourage community participation in the ongoing curation of an answer." CreationDate="2019-09-11T16:13:00.503" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="19040" PostId="5746" Score="2" Text="@Alexis On the Math SE, I've made 2 community wiki answers where I've just taken question comments, that basically answer the question but where the person has chosen not to write an answer (even in some cases where they've been asked). I've done this since the credit belongs to the commenters, not to me, so I don't think it's appropriate for me to receive reputation for the answers. In both cases, the answers received at least one up vote, so the posts are no longer part of the unanswered posts list, which is quite large (as I write this, it's 261,482 questions), so I try to help reducing it." CreationDate="2019-09-12T03:07:12.003" UserId="252490" />
  <row Id="19041" PostId="5746" Score="1" Text="@JohnOmielan That's cool. As an aside to my CW misunderstanding here, answer provided in no way answers my question satisfactorily according to community guidelines: it's essentially a list of links with no explanation." CreationDate="2019-09-12T04:06:29.477" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="19042" PostId="5747" Score="2" Text="But this answer applies only to the specific case, which is a misunderstanding. What about the question in general 'Is it possible to revert community wiki status?'." CreationDate="2019-09-12T13:41:48.613" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19073" PostId="5748" Score="0" Text="+1 These are all suggestions that will improve your scientific writing well beyond simply improving your linked and closed question. For further aid, I can recommend the textbook *Essentials of Writing Biomedical Research Papers* by Mimi Zeiger (which is applicable to scientific writing in general, although she's couched biomedical)." CreationDate="2019-09-16T23:04:00.627" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="19045" PostId="5749" Score="5" Text="This is about how to get good answers, a permanent concern, but not what this thread is about.  I think its main point &quot;The bounty is absolutely necessary if you are to have any chance at getting a quality answer to your question&quot; is empirically wrong as a generalization about threads here and indeed (no doubt unintentionally) even offensive to all those who have given good answers without receiving bounties." CreationDate="2019-09-13T16:09:08.037" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19049" PostId="5749" Score="3" Text="**The initial part of this post is wrong and misleading.**  For instance, a series of good questions can garner a lot of reputation, but this possibility seems to be completely ignored.  By contrast, anyone posting a series of answers that &quot;go by without comment, upvote, or acceptance&quot; either is choosing very obscure questions (you can tell by looking at their view counts) or needs to work on communicating answers.  And the strategy of gaming the system with frequent edits is *guaranteed* to backfire: you will eventually annoy enough people to get your post downvoted and even closed." CreationDate="2019-09-13T20:10:01.800" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="19050" PostId="5749" Score="2" Text="Well I'm glad other people have been able to get their questions answered without bounties; this by and large hasn't been my experience. To be fair, part of the problem I think is my active time zone (New Zealand), and the principal answerers tend to skew American, so by the time day rolls by in America, my question has already been buried under 70 others." CreationDate="2019-09-14T08:39:26.380" UserId="172392" />
  <row Id="19051" PostId="5749" Score="2" Text="@Ingolifs I generally agree with Nick Cox and whuber here, but your time zone point is a good one. Ultimately, [we need a larger pool of answer-writers](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5326/121522) to address this and many other related difficulties." CreationDate="2019-09-14T09:15:15.233" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="19052" PostId="5749" Score="1" Text="Well, @Glen_b heads the active users that are in similar time zones to you. From https://stats.stackexchange.com/users/172392/ingolifs?tab=questions I count 16 questions on the main site from you of which 4 are unanswered. I wouldn't want even to try to think about their quality -- that would be invidious and you're much nearer the machine learning side of this community than I am -- but (without wanting to dismiss personal experience) I would still call that a small and not very convincing sample given your assertions." CreationDate="2019-09-14T09:47:12.633" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19053" PostId="5749" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Ok. I'm looking at my 16 questions in chronological order. Beyond the first few newbie questions, things dry up substantially. Out of the last 9 questions, I have only had three answers - all of which came from bounties. The others either have inadequate answers or no answers at all. This includes a question where a bounty was left to expire unawarded because the answers didn't answer my question. I don't know about you but 9 times in a row is a pretty convincing sample for me. I don't mean to get argumentative, but I still stand by my assertions." CreationDate="2019-09-14T10:50:00.733" UserId="172392" />
  <row Id="19054" PostId="5749" Score="1" Text="You’re the expert on your personal experience. The wider assertions and even insinuations here remain open to discussion. For example, you seem to be implying that the voting culture here is not generous. I don’t know what data or data analysis could be relevant to that without raising more questions than it answers." CreationDate="2019-09-14T14:31:59.320" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19078" PostId="5749" Score="2" Text="I'm not sure what it is you think I'm insinuating. It seems you think that I think that this SE's problems stem from a moral failing on the part of the site's regulars and moderators. I don't think that. Once a question actually gets noticed, whether on the HNQ list or otherwise, the rate of votes seems about typical. It's just there's so many questions that never get that far. I attribute this to a poor asker to answer ratio, especially in my time zone." CreationDate="2019-09-17T20:24:55.937" UserId="172392" />
  <row Id="19058" PostId="5750" Score="0" Text="Could you explain why you think it's a bug?  The results are merely telling you there are no posts by user 4505 with 10,000 or more views.  That's plausible." CreationDate="2019-09-16T12:51:43.817" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="19059" PostId="5750" Score="0" Text="No, ..10000 is abbreviated 0..10000 that is from zero to 10000 views. I would expect that to be close to 812" CreationDate="2019-09-16T12:53:07.563" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="19060" PostId="5750" Score="2" Text="I don't follow.  Could you provide a link to a help page that explains your abbreviation?  BTW, if you think this is a bug, it's almost certainly system-wide and so your question belongs on SO meta rather than here." CreationDate="2019-09-16T12:54:16.787" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="19061" PostId="5750" Score="0" Text="Well, in other contexts it seems to work like that. Try `distributions views:0..100`" CreationDate="2019-09-16T12:56:05.957" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="19062" PostId="5750" Score="0" Text="Which syntax are you actually using: &quot;0..100&quot; or &quot;..100&quot;?" CreationDate="2019-09-16T12:57:14.150" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="19063" PostId="5750" Score="0" Text="For me those give the same result." CreationDate="2019-09-16T12:57:50.630" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="19064" PostId="5750" Score="1" Text="@whuber As per https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/searching, &quot;To search for only questions that fall within a particular range for score, number of answers, or number of views, you can enter an upper or lower parameter, or a range.&quot; Also https://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=user%3A4505+views%3A..10000 this page actually says `Search options: user 4505, views&lt;= 10000`" CreationDate="2019-09-16T12:57:55.887" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="19065" PostId="5750" Score="2" Text="Perhaps this is because user 4505 did not ask a single question?" CreationDate="2019-09-16T12:59:11.863" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="19066" PostId="5750" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, you mean that the use of `views` implies `is:question`? It would be reasonable to expect it, when used with `user`, to look at the views related to *that users posts*, that is, the views on the questions to which he answered?" CreationDate="2019-09-16T13:04:13.433" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="19067" PostId="5750" Score="3" Text="Thank you @amoeba.  I have the strong impression that `views` applies only to questions, too.  This makes a great deal of sense, *because a view count applies to the entire thread.*  It is therefore assigned to the question and not to the answers, all of which necessarily have smaller view counts than the thread." CreationDate="2019-09-16T13:08:38.210" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="19068" PostId="5750" Score="0" Text="Well, it makes sense as implementation detail, but for searches which include also answers, answers should inherit the views count from the question, if only because that breaks nothing and makes search more useful." CreationDate="2019-09-16T13:11:59.023" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="19070" PostId="5750" Score="3" Text="The problem of inheritance is that there is some problem with ambiguity of interpretation. The view-count of a question is not the view-count of an answer.  Example: an answer can be made to an very old question, and obviously that answer has not been viewed every time the question has been viewed (in addition we only know whether or not the webpage has been loaded, it is not an actual 'act of viewing' and for answers this discrepancy may be larger than for questions)." CreationDate="2019-09-16T18:16:21.007" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19077" PostId="5750" Score="0" Text="I can confirm that another user (me) who has never asked a question exhibits the same phenomenon as 4505 does." CreationDate="2019-09-17T11:57:41.853" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="19069" PostId="5751" Score="4" Text="You can ask for recommended references either way with brief annotation. Such threads exist on CV and are often declared Community Wiki. A good pattern is to ask for nominations from each person who answers of one excellent article (or the opposite), or more if the spirit moves anyone. Here, and indeed elsewhere, it's pertinent to ask how long do you expect people to spend on answers? Thinking about that implies to me that expectations, or hopes,  of a detailed tutorial or review are unlikely to be met. CV works best with very specific questions (that aren't trivial)." CreationDate="2019-09-16T18:06:51.730" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19071" PostId="5751" Score="4" Text="There is some potential for such a question to be considered *primarily opinion-based* (which is a reason for closing a question). Who gets to decide what constitutes &quot;done well&quot; &amp; by what criteria (other than their own opinions)? @NickCox is right that we sometimes let such things slide by making them CW, &amp; that might happen here. Bear in mind that any published paper has passed peer review, which is the typical standard of sufficient quality (grumbles aside). Applied statistics textbooks typically discuss examples &amp; you could look for a cited example the author thinks highly of." CreationDate="2019-09-16T18:29:29.330" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19072" PostId="5751" Score="5" Text="You can also read some papers that have made suggestions ([here's one](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28784624), it cites MA's it finds well done). You could check out the [PRISMA](http://www.prisma-statement.org/) guidelines, [MOOSE](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10789670) guidelines, &amp;/or [AMSTAR](https://amstar.ca/index.php) checklist.  You might also want to check out the [Cochrane reviews](https://www.cochranelibrary.com/about/about-cochrane-reviews)." CreationDate="2019-09-16T18:44:31.527" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19074" PostId="5751" Score="0" Text="Sounds like the question would only be tenuously appropriate if at all appropriate. However, the links provided by @gung meet my needs quite nicely. Many thanks!" CreationDate="2019-09-17T00:29:28.627" UserId="73619" />
  <row Id="19075" PostId="5751" Score="4" Text="Questions which invite answers where each answerer's personal opinion may differ but where each is a valid answer - which sort of question will tend to generate &quot;big list&quot; answers - are usually not suitable questions for StackExchange sites and they normally close as *too broad*. With very careful phrasing (especially if there's some sufficiently specific metric of good), in some situations such questions can be made specific enough, but usually the criteria cannot be made specific." CreationDate="2019-09-17T02:05:46.460" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="19076" PostId="5751" Score="2" Text="@Glen_b, has provided a more nuanced version of what I was getting at, Angela. My comment wasn't intended to be a firm *no*. It's just that it's a fine needle to thread." CreationDate="2019-09-17T02:18:02.987" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19090" PostId="5753" Score="3" Text="Compare say regression where the spectrum of opinion runs from say econometrics which is in many ways an entire field centred on regression to the late David Freedman who asserted that he couldn't find really good examples of regression working as claimed. Or P-values, where experienced opinion ranges from wanting them banned to regarding them as central to statistical practice. (+1)" CreationDate="2019-09-19T10:33:46.217" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19083" PostId="5754" Score="9" Text="In identifying good candidates, I search on tags, order on votes, and then look for one I like, especially if someone I think is very good at explaining wrote an excellent answer (no names here). But I agree that's a heuristic, not an algorithm. The experience of thinking that this must be a duplicate but failing to find a good thread to specify is surely common. Good grief! Yet another question on discarding outliers...." CreationDate="2019-09-18T19:11:00.527" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19084" PostId="5754" Score="4" Text="An alternative that I've been thinking about is starting a meta thread aimed at creating a list of canonical threads on various topics." CreationDate="2019-09-18T19:42:38.057" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="19086" PostId="5754" Score="3" Text="One technique I use when StackExchange's search doesn't turn up a good candidate is to employ a search engine to perform a site-search of CV. Because this will also search comments for keywords it often turns up additional hits (or changes their order)" CreationDate="2019-09-18T23:03:52.053" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="19091" PostId="5754" Score="1" Text="@mkt Such a thread could work but I fear it would quickly get out of hand due to its length.  It would also be cumbersome to use: in addition to searching our site, one would have to visit that meta thread and search it (somehow), presumably finding and then following additional links.  It would be far more convenient to create a mechanism to help the likely duplicate target appear among the first search hits." CreationDate="2019-09-19T13:24:36.757" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="19092" PostId="5754" Score="0" Text="@whuber It might, I'm not wedded to the idea. If getting likely duplicate targets to appear among the first search hits is feasible, it would be great. I thought it would require a lot of extra work at the SE network level and would be a non-starter. And given that the search functionality is so poor, I'd be surprised if they could make that happen." CreationDate="2019-09-19T13:54:15.010" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="19093" PostId="5754" Score="1" Text="Hint about better search strategies here:  https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5549/best-practices-for-searching-cv" CreationDate="2019-09-22T11:29:31.507" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="19082" PostId="5755" Score="4" Text="My experience with trying to maintain the organization &amp; use of tags on CV does not make me optimistic about this." CreationDate="2019-09-18T18:18:46.870" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19085" PostId="5755" Score="1" Text="@gung I'm being cautious here, but it occurs to me that if such a tag is applied by moderators *only* when questions are closed as duplicates, the curation might be fairly simple to execute." CreationDate="2019-09-18T21:21:10.510" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="19087" PostId="5755" Score="0" Text="I think the  idea is good, though I worry that people asking about statistical topics that contain the word *canonical* may outnumber the legitimate uses of the tag. However, if the concern isn't unfounded I expect we can figure out an alternative (perhaps `canonical-thread` or something similar)" CreationDate="2019-09-18T23:07:12.263" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="19088" PostId="5755" Score="1" Text="This answer makes me wonder how many other meta-tags already have a sort of 'function' beyond being keywords for *content*. For the moment `self-study` and `puzzle` comes to my mind. Are there any others? ( I remember once a suggestion in a metapost for a tag to be used for certain type of difficult or challenging questions )" CreationDate="2019-09-19T01:35:45.360" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19104" PostId="5755" Score="0" Text="As @gung, I am skeptical that this suggestion, in the long run, will work as intended. It also explicitly goes against the SE policy of avoiding meta tags, but we do sometimes purposefully ignore it, as with [self-study]." CreationDate="2019-09-27T14:33:30.187" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="19105" PostId="5755" Score="2" Text="@amoeba I appreciate your concern, but could not conceive of any way to evaluate the potential of this approach without performing some kind of experiment." CreationDate="2019-09-27T14:36:33.530" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="19106" PostId="5755" Score="1" Text="+1 to this, I do like experiments." CreationDate="2019-09-27T14:41:54.363" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="19096" PostId="5757" Score="9" Text="To me `careers` does not hint at ethics, so a new tag sounds fine to me." CreationDate="2019-09-23T08:18:37.583" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19097" PostId="5757" Score="5" Text="I have conflicting feelings about this, so I'm writing a comment and not an answer. On the one hand, I think that modern statistical methods can be extremely dangerous if they are unmoored from a sense of ethics and social responsibility, and I think that ethics in statistics should be a core part of a statistical education. On the other hand, I don't know how well-suited stats.SE is to provide ethical advice; a question mainly about ethics in statistics would fall outside of how I understand on-topic questions." CreationDate="2019-09-24T03:13:53.417" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="19098" PostId="5757" Score="5" Text="*Ethics* can have very different specific meanings in statistics. This includes topics such as medical ethics, in which we have a well defined goal of minimizing harm to test subjects, influence of social biases into ML models and p-hacking are three totally different and largely unrelated statistical ethics topics." CreationDate="2019-09-24T03:27:24.983" UserId="76981" />
  <row Id="19099" PostId="5757" Score="5" Text="How to preserve confidentiality in handling data and results is one of several areas in which an ethical imperative is clear and the discussion is all about how to do it. For such questions a tag would make sense and a thread need not get mired in moral philosophy." CreationDate="2019-09-25T07:26:20.450" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19103" PostId="5757" Score="1" Text="In my opinion, a lot of posts that would get the &quot;ethics&quot; tag should be posted in academia.stackexchange.com or workplace.stackexchange.com." CreationDate="2019-09-26T18:53:35.647" UserId="23801" />
  <row Id="19107" PostId="5757" Score="0" Text="You can add a tag, but the real questions to me are will it take off in terms of people using it and people searching for it? Naturally the same applies to any tag. My small principle is that if a tag does harm. people will notice and raise an issue. As the most obvious person for tag editing is yourself, Kjetil, I would say try it." CreationDate="2019-09-30T15:38:49.737" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19100" PostId="5758" Score="8" Text="This is not how the sites work. Either it fitted there, or here. So if it didn't fit there, you can flag it as a candidate for migration to our site. You should not post duplicates. Alternatively, you may delete and re-post the question on our site if it fitts here." CreationDate="2019-09-25T10:29:31.517" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="19101" PostId="5758" Score="3" Text="What @Tim says is documented at https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic Cross-posting is discouraged. Positively, do delete there and post here." CreationDate="2019-09-25T16:11:16.337" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19102" PostId="5758" Score="1" Text="Don't delete and repost unless you can't flag for migration as Tim suggested." CreationDate="2019-09-26T03:01:56.500" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="19108" PostId="5759" Score="11" Text="I think yes. I'd keep a very brief definition in the tag excerpt though. E.g. for tensorflow: `A Python library for deep learning, developed by Google. Use this tag... blablabla`." CreationDate="2019-10-01T14:49:54.643" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="19109" PostId="5759" Score="2" Text="@amoeba Thanks - I've started to edit these since your comment seems to have a fair bit of support and no opposing views have been expressed." CreationDate="2019-10-02T06:51:50.443" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="19111" PostId="5760" Score="0" Text="Thanks, it is helpful to see this data. I agree that it's hard to know whether such edits would materially change usage behaviour. Unlikely to have more than a minor effect,  but I'd take a small improvement for such little effort on our part." CreationDate="2019-10-02T15:20:41.680" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="19112" PostId="5760" Score="0" Text="My argument is not to balance the small improvement *versus the little effort of changing the tags*. But to balance it with keeping the tag descriptions simple and... *descriptive*. The part (b) of the description is now more about how to use the site rather than how to use the tag. For the cases 'r' and 'python' this seems fine because it may help a large amount of off-topic questions and most importantly reduce the meta discussions about it by people that refer to the presence of the tag as an argument that the site invites questions about r. But do we need this in every other tag?" CreationDate="2019-10-02T15:42:25.080" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19113" PostId="5760" Score="1" Text="I don't think you can infer anything much about quality from these data alone; still, interpretation is fun. One tag where I have some affiliations which you don't use is `stata`. Questions specifically on that often get closed because various of us are vigilant in advising posting on SO or more commonly Statalist. I think that is likely too with some of the other software tags. The extent to which very many high reputation users use R routinely makes them  likely to look at questions with R code and/or illustrate answers with R code. There is a feedback loop there." CreationDate="2019-10-02T16:16:51.563" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19114" PostId="5760" Score="1" Text="Conversely, my prejudice is that statistically clueless questions are more likely with software X, Y and Z. (Sorry, I have to run before I can spell out the details.)" CreationDate="2019-10-02T16:18:05.883" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19115" PostId="5760" Score="0" Text="I have added 'stata' now. I had a look at the most popular tags of the last year. Either 'stata' has lost popularity or I overlooked it." CreationDate="2019-10-02T16:23:02.027" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19116" PostId="5760" Score="1" Text="Thanks for adding `stata`. No offence implied or inferred!" CreationDate="2019-10-02T17:46:16.763" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19117" PostId="5760" Score="1" Text="&quot;*But do we need this in every other tag?*&quot; No, of course we don't *need* it. But my impression, based in part on [this answer by gung](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2851/121522) was that excerpts should offer usage guidance where helpful, and I think this meets that goal. FWIW, several of the excerpts previously contained a great deal of unnecessary detail about the programs, so I don't think these changes make them any more complex." CreationDate="2019-10-02T17:46:43.447" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="21144" PostId="5760" Score="0" Text="I downvoted not because of the lovely site usage tables (thank you!), but because I do not see you directly speaking to the OP's question *a la* should we edit `[J. Random software]` tags to conform to the usage of the `[r]` tag." CreationDate="2022-01-04T01:52:56.317" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="21145" PostId="5760" Score="1" Text="@Alexis I had it split up into two answers. In my other answer I say 'yes we should edit the tags because describing the *use* is conform Jeff's guidelines'. Under that question I commented that although I find that the tags should be edited, the r-tag description is a bit ugly long text and sounds more like a juridical language disclaimer than a description. Such longer text might be useful because these post seem to be problematic (closed often), *but* except for r and python there aren't many questions and the problem is small." CreationDate="2022-01-04T10:24:53.547" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21146" PostId="5760" Score="1" Text="Or maybe I am confused. Did you mean you downvoted because this answer is simply against the tag edit, or did you downvote because the answer doesn't address the issue? (I assumed the latter and that's why I re-explained this answer, but now I see that I might have misunderstood your 'directly speaking')" CreationDate="2022-01-04T10:27:28.163" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21147" PostId="5760" Score="0" Text="The latter. And your response is so thoughtful, thank you again." CreationDate="2022-01-04T19:27:09.757" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="19118" PostId="5761" Score="1" Text="I agree that it can be useful to explain the use of the software tags in the excerpt (and that's why I added this answer besides my other answer).  However, I have sort of split feelings about this. The phrase *&quot;(a) involves $x$ either as a critical part of the question or expected answer, &amp; (b) is not justabout how to use $x $&quot;* doesn't look so pretty to me (which may lead to the internauts not reading it fully) and it feels that it should be more concise/shorter/simpler (although on the other hand it already seems short, and it is just the feeling that it is an ugly extension)." CreationDate="2019-10-03T07:19:12.440" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19119" PostId="5761" Score="1" Text="I also feel that this addition is more as 'a disclaimer added in a sort of terms &amp; conditions that nobody is gonna reed, but shows up in discussions when a user complains that his question got put on hold' rather than a 'guideline' that is gonna warn users on the spot. (are the excerpts visible when the tags are selected while composing a question? I do not remember, haven't made much questions myself. I am currently on my phone and can only check it there, and there is no excerpt displayed when adding a tag)." CreationDate="2019-10-03T07:23:33.793" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19120" PostId="5761" Score="0" Text="Thanks for this second answer. I agree that a shorter formulation would be a good idea, if we can come up with one." CreationDate="2019-10-03T08:23:39.303" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="19121" PostId="5762" Score="7" Text="The best way to do that is to answer it yourself with a genuine answer. Naturally anyone can like a question without knowing an answer, but that's still true. The next best way is to make an edit that genuinely improves the question's presentation. Otherwise I think not. The converse of this is why is this not allowed as a direct action? Thinking about that is revealing." CreationDate="2019-10-03T16:21:55.207" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19122" PostId="5762" Score="2" Text="As @mkt implies, the &quot;I think not&quot; above is wrong. I just forgot to mention bounties. (The primary association for me of bounty remains that of a chocolate bar.)" CreationDate="2019-10-03T17:05:15.207" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19124" PostId="5762" Score="1" Text="I wonder whether the ability to bump a question would be a privilege that would be worth proposing. Perhaps for trusted users, e.g., people holding a silver tag badge for one of the tags on the question. Thoughts?" CreationDate="2019-10-04T06:14:37.303" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="19128" PostId="5762" Score="0" Text="There's also an unpolite way, but I guess that's obvious." CreationDate="2019-10-04T08:40:29.467" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19123" PostId="5764" Score="9" Text="What I have sometimes done is engage the OP in a conversation to help them figure it out for themselves. When they have, I convert the info from the comments into an official answer.  Another possibility is to post a hint that should be enough to get them past the stumbling block, but doesn't answer the Q for them, as an answer, &amp; have the discussion below that ([here](https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/58718/7290) is an example where I did that)." CreationDate="2019-10-04T04:18:46.313" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19125" PostId="5765" Score="35" Text="(+1) I'm appalled by SE's actions too, though I haven't yet decided what the best thing to do, for me, will be. After all you've contributed to this site, I'm sad &amp; angry that you've been forced to make this decision." CreationDate="2019-10-04T08:08:26.003" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="19126" PostId="5765" Score="38" Text="This will be utterly obvious but it needs saying: @Glen_b has been an outstanding moderator as well as an outstanding contributor here and his work for CV cannot be too much appreciated. I have glanced at some of the threads on this topic; already the volume of discussion is overwhelming, even just that accessible to non-moderators. I will not repeat points already excellently made but just underline my utmost personal sympathy and respect for this decision as well as extreme regret about the circumstances. I retain some hope that SE staff will reverse much of what should have never happened." CreationDate="2019-10-04T08:25:30.923" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19127" PostId="5765" Score="15" Text="I've been reading about this terrible situation for the past couple of days. I am outraged at SE's awful behaviour and support your decision. But I'm also sorry to see you step down - you've been a fantastic moderator (and contributor!) here, and your presence in that role will be missed." CreationDate="2019-10-04T08:39:02.110" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="19132" PostId="5765" Score="7" Text="Some answer from StackExchange is posted on this news website:&#xA;https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/01/stack_exchange_controversy/&#xA;&#xA;**&quot;We understand that a few other moderators have resigned, and they may or may not have full knowledge of the situation.&quot;** &#xA;&#xA;Beyond that this issue is so difficult to follow. Is there **anything** that StackExchange has done to improve the community's 'knowledge of the situation' and to better explain their position and viewpoint? (preferably a small post and not a big flame war of posts and dozens of links to more posts with more dozens of links)" CreationDate="2019-10-04T11:38:30.040" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19133" PostId="5765" Score="3" Text="They won't discuss the details publicly - and certainly shouldn't without the affected person's explicit agreement  (though my recollection is Monica has been essentially asking them to do so; they could certainly seek to find a way to collaborate with her to figure out what could be said). With or without that, they could certainly spell them out in detail to a mod that has been removed -- with a clear explanation of exactly how the present code of conduct has been violated in that discussion -- and so seriously as to apply a sanction in the manner they did." CreationDate="2019-10-04T12:07:58.697" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="19134" PostId="5765" Score="1" Text="Certainly they can not disclose entire emails or other large pieces of text. But, if there has been any clear violation of the code of conduct, then there should be no problem to quote a single sentence or paraphrase what has been written in order to qualify *how* the rules have been violated instead of the current statement which only tells *that* they have been violated. Monica's account seems to be that she was only inquiring about (and possibly discussing) implications of a new rule in the CoC. The least what SE can do is better explain how that is not a right description of what happened." CreationDate="2019-10-04T12:50:53.370" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19135" PostId="5765" Score="31" Text="Today's &quot;apology&quot; is so clueless and tone-deaf that it has persuaded me of the merits of following in glen_b's footsteps.  I can tolerate mistakes by a corporation--people err--but when SE doubles down like this, it becomes painful to retain an official association with them.  I wonder, though, just how constructive it ultimately would be to terminate that relationship: the message is good, but in the end what will it accomplish?  Perhaps the *threat* of a massive emigration of moderators might be more helpful than a trickle of resignations." CreationDate="2019-10-04T13:11:39.183" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="19136" PostId="5765" Score="3" Text="Yes, I definitely agree that there's doubt over how constructive it is and it's right to ask whether it will accomplish anything - it may be more productive in the long run not to do it. I simply felt I couldn't remain in the current circumstances and though that I ought to try to explain something of why I felt that way here, as best as I could manage." CreationDate="2019-10-04T13:41:21.443" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="19137" PostId="5765" Score="2" Text="@whuber: does &quot;it has persuaded me of the merits of following in glen_b's footsteps&quot; mean that you plan on resigning as moderator, too?" CreationDate="2019-10-04T14:40:24.477" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="19139" PostId="5765" Score="12" Text="@Stephan Unless SE corrects this issue very soon, that is one action I am considering.  What I'm trying to figure out is how to make the most of my present position (as a mod on two SE sites, BTW) to help effect a good solution." CreationDate="2019-10-04T15:01:47.510" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="19151" PostId="5765" Score="1" Text="thankyou for your service; respect your decision" CreationDate="2019-10-04T17:20:41.967" UserId="25936" />
  <row Id="19152" PostId="5765" Score="8" Text="This thread has now vanished from the Hot Meta Posts list. I'm sure that's not a coincidence." CreationDate="2019-10-04T18:09:48.830" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="19154" PostId="5765" Score="10" Text="@mkt: I noticed that, too, and was going to write that exact comment. Seriously, what are the folks at SE thinking? Yes, that may prevent this thread from being seen by some people, but it pisses other people off *majorly*. I think someone is very nervous at this point." CreationDate="2019-10-04T18:27:59.957" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="19157" PostId="5765" Score="2" Text="@StephanKolassa Huh, it's back on there!" CreationDate="2019-10-04T18:59:11.003" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="19158" PostId="5765" Score="6" Text="The [mealy-mouthed apology post](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/334248/an-update-to-our-community-and-an-apology) is now unlocked if any of you wish to register your opinion there." CreationDate="2019-10-04T19:29:18.210" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="19159" PostId="5765" Score="2" Text="Hi Glen, I hadn't seen this post was from you at first, and I'd skipped the second half until I saw it was you and went back. I hold you in the highest esteem, and I'm shocked to see you go as moderator. Thanks for everything, and I hope your contributions will keep on giving." CreationDate="2019-10-04T22:29:21.570" UserId="24808" />
  <row Id="19164" PostId="5765" Score="11" Text="Heartbroken at @glen_b leaving because he has made *so* much of a difference here and to me in one-on-one communication. I appreciate his thoughtfulness and his stand. Side note: I am transgender, and when I landed on the post about Monica the other day (on another SE) I was taken aback at (what I remember as) her stance against singular they pronouns: folks in several US states, and in several countries have legal identities that are non-binary, and state endorsement of gender aside, that position is deeply unfriendly to many trans folks and GNC folks. Still: unhappy w/ SE's process." CreationDate="2019-10-05T02:52:06.390" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="19177" PostId="5765" Score="3" Text="@Alexis I will still be around (a bit less often than I would as a moderator where I felt it necessary to be around at least once a day). I am still very keen to help people when I can and in fact I will still be 'moderating' in the same fashion any high rep user can without the diamond. Even more so - I have a lot of gold tag badge privileges, so I can unilaterally close a substantial proportion of posts without a moderator diamond. I worked out that I could do it with about 35% of new posts before I became a moderator; it'd be more than that now. (I just took the liberty of emailing you btw)" CreationDate="2019-10-05T05:39:50.410" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="19180" PostId="5765" Score="13" Text="Sigh. This is getting worse and worse. Yesterday, someone posted a feature request on Meta.SE, requesting a feature that displays a user's preferred pronoun in their user card, in anticipation of the new CoC non-mods have not seen yet. I took it as a bona fide question, downvoted it and wrote an answer saying that I for one do not want more noise. (Although the question is a valid one: assuming we will be required to use preferred pronouns, how do we find out what a particular user prefers?) Others took it to be trolling. Today the thread is gone without a trace." CreationDate="2019-10-05T09:45:58.793" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="19183" PostId="5765" Score="7" Text="Not very important, but since I mentioned its behaviour earlier: this thread has appeared and disappeared from the Hot Meta Posts list many times since yesterday, while the usual pattern is for posts to remain on the list for days at a time." CreationDate="2019-10-05T13:22:39.577" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="19185" PostId="5765" Score="3" Text="+1. As a person who has been taught Statistics by you on CV.SE I feel sad to read this. (And I hope you consider reversing your decision.)" CreationDate="2019-10-06T11:55:11.220" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="19191" PostId="5765" Score="2" Text="Thank you for your contributions and I respect your decision. CV.SE is a better place with you and hope you stay around, even if in a less-than-official capacity." CreationDate="2019-10-07T19:31:15.123" UserId="177387" />
  <row Id="19242" PostId="5765" Score="0" Text="I wholeheartedly support the broader goal of inclusion and welcoming that SE *claim* to want, but their handling of this entire incident has been egregious. Their behavior and the policies they're now pushing are, ironically, dehumanizing and contradictory to this goal. @Glen_b, I support your decision, even though it's loss for all of us here at CV. Much appreciation for all you've done here." CreationDate="2019-10-14T04:32:11.013" UserId="116440" />
  <row Id="19243" PostId="5765" Score="1" Text="Sorry to see you leave as a moderator for statistics, Stephen. And hoping to see some modus vivendi emerge about a middle ground for all." CreationDate="2019-10-14T16:59:09.547" UserId="7224" />
  <row Id="19255" PostId="5765" Score="0" Text="If you add the total points of moderators who are resigning vs. the total points of all active members of CV, what percentage of active points are really moving?  Nick, whuber, Stephan, Glen, … these are ~100k folks.  It may be that this cloud of PhD-level stats guys, the ones responsible for mentoring to some degree hundreds or thousands of aspirants to the community of scholars through the medium of CV is a majority of activity for the CV forum.  They are unarguably the absolute top of the forum, and have had absolutely exceptional answers.  I have loved their work for years." CreationDate="2019-10-17T14:40:40.857" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="19269" PostId="5765" Score="1" Text="We need to explore the possibility of migrating our answers to a different platform in addition to suspending contributions." CreationDate="2019-10-22T20:56:04.090" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="19270" PostId="5765" Score="1" Text="How did I fail to comment on this earlier?  I'm sorry!  Glen, thank you for your support, your kind words, and all you have done to build this site.  You have had an enormous impact." CreationDate="2019-10-22T21:23:08.150" UserId="261680" />
  <row Id="19271" PostId="5765" Score="1" Text="@Monica I didn't expect you to comment (though when you joined the site recently I thought you might see the post).  I'd have reached out to you directly with an email or a comment but I figured you were probably both too busy with the holidays and overwhelmed with all that was going on to bother you with such things. I'm hoping this gets properly resolved, but the longer it goes the less hope I have for it." CreationDate="2019-10-23T00:00:58.087" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="19272" PostId="5765" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b I joined to upvote and I intended to comment, but I guess it got away from me.  And feel free to send me email; there might be a delay (inbox overflow) but I don't want people to avoid contact just because of that." CreationDate="2019-10-23T00:04:09.483" UserId="261680" />
  <row Id="19368" PostId="5765" Score="1" Text="What a loss! Thank you for all your hard work, patience and generosity in sharing your vast amount of knowledge with neophytes and the general public. Hopefully things will get resolved to your liking, and you'll consider returning as a moderator." CreationDate="2019-11-08T19:01:51.403" UserId="67822" />
  <row Id="19369" PostId="5765" Score="0" Text="Hi Antoni. Thank you. I hope things are going well with you." CreationDate="2019-11-08T22:52:10.737" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="19140" PostId="5768" Score="8" Text="What has transpired over the last couple of months, and especially the last couple of days, makes me doubt your first paragraph. There have been many, many signs that the community has been unhappy with the way things have been going - but few signs that these grievances were being taken seriously." CreationDate="2019-10-04T15:02:39.030" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="19141" PostId="5768" Score="3" Text="SE has always emphasized that we *all* are moderators and that there's virtually no difference between a high-rep user (typically 20K+) and diamond moderators.  Are you therefore asking all high-rep users to make this decision (and to announce their positions)?" CreationDate="2019-10-04T15:03:40.160" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="19142" PostId="5768" Score="3" Text="I’m suggesting that organization across the SO website is the most effective path to change because the users are the website. This will involve users at all rep levels. I’ve edited my post to emphasize this." CreationDate="2019-10-04T15:07:38.907" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="19143" PostId="5768" Score="3" Text="Good moderators can also be rereplaced by the same moderators if they and the community wish to." CreationDate="2019-10-04T15:23:37.513" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19144" PostId="5768" Score="2" Text="@MartijnWeterings You're assuming SO doesn't retaliate against moderators who step down. I see no reason to believe that is the case." CreationDate="2019-10-04T15:25:28.663" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="19145" PostId="5768" Score="2" Text="@StephanKolassa If SO, Inc. hasn't heard these grievances before, that's a reason to raise our voices louder now." CreationDate="2019-10-04T15:48:28.730" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="19146" PostId="5768" Score="3" Text="@Sycorax: Given SE's absolute control over this platform it may become hard to organize unless alternative channels of communication are quickly arranged." CreationDate="2019-10-04T16:03:24.717" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="19147" PostId="5768" Score="3" Text="Related: [A very recent post asking people to go “on strike” was just deleted](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/334024/256777)" CreationDate="2019-10-04T16:07:05.867" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="19148" PostId="5768" Score="1" Text="I believe everyone on this thread knows how to get in touch with me. We can organize elsewhere." CreationDate="2019-10-04T16:11:11.003" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="19149" PostId="5768" Score="1" Text="If as a user I stop monitoring the review queues (which i have until this mess is cleared up) then the effects of that will be public in an ever lengthening queue. If I stop voting to close from the questions page then the queue will not lengthen which rather defeats the object of making a protest, however feeble." CreationDate="2019-10-04T16:48:41.890" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="19150" PostId="5768" Score="1" Text="@mdewey You're forgetting the reason that the queues exist: to govern the website. If empowered users (moderators, high-rep users) walk away, the website stops being governed. That's the power that SO has given us; by the same token, it's power we can withhold." CreationDate="2019-10-04T16:56:49.583" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="19153" PostId="5768" Score="2" Text="I share the goal of making SE management take notice of dissent, but I am not convinced. A strike would hurt mostly newish users whose questions will be less likely to be answered. I think the biggest risk is that the whole system collapses financially and then the website disappears." CreationDate="2019-10-04T18:26:49.457" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19155" PostId="5768" Score="9" Text="@NickCox The system is collapsing slowly now. Driving people like glen_b away make me less interested in participating, strike or not. I don't think I'm alone in this. (New users can get their questions answered later.)" CreationDate="2019-10-04T18:37:57.387" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="19160" PostId="5769" Score="9" Text="Thank you for sharing your experience, @anon. I have just reviewed the moderator thread &amp; I don't find her saying she's &quot;nauseated&quot; by referring to someone as 'they' anywhere. The discussion does get somewhat heated, though, with many people piling on her, &amp; her repeatedly saying, 'I respect trans people, I would never deliberately misgender anyone, I just want to refer to them using something (anything) other than *they*'." CreationDate="2019-10-05T01:53:06.660" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19161" PostId="5769" Score="2" Text="Thanks @gung. My understanding is that this wasn't something that happened last week on chat but earlier on a Teams post, but I'm not asking you to dig anything up that you're not supposed to share. That said, (a) piling on is of course not productive etc etc, (b) it's really holding this stance so strongly that I _do_ find somewhat dehumanizing and not the particular word &quot;nauseated.&quot;" CreationDate="2019-10-05T02:04:33.943" UserId="261720" />
  <row Id="19162" PostId="5769" Score="9" Text="That's what I looked at: the teams post. It isn't there.  Your position is reasonable.  I've read a lot of old stuff over the last week, &amp; no one comes out smelling like a rose, IMHO (this obstinate fixation on a stupid grammar rule is weird to me), nonetheless, my feeling FWIW, is that she was the most reasonable party in each of the several episodes I've reviewed.  (BTW, the least sympathetic party is the SE employee.)" CreationDate="2019-10-05T02:21:13.707" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19163" PostId="5769" Score="5" Text="$+\infty$ As a transgender individual I was taken back and leery the other day that an SE mod would assert a personal policy of not using singular they (a grammatical construct that was good enough in Chaucer's day so ought to be well enough established) in the context of transgender members of the community (and some cisgender gender-non-conforming folks, BTW). Non-masculine/non-feminine pronouns are *legal* pronouns: in some US states and in several other countries. Dishonoring that is deeply problematic. I wish the process with Monica did not escalate so far and fast." CreationDate="2019-10-05T02:46:24.217" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="19165" PostId="5769" Score="12" Text="I appreciate hearing your perspective, @Alexis. It helps me to connect this to real people.  This was blown out of proportion &amp; badly botched.  From a purely public relations standpoint, I find it hard to overstate the incompetence with which this was handled.  It is clear to me that Monica's issue is narrowly grammatical &amp; that she bears no ill will towards trans people." CreationDate="2019-10-05T03:11:01.403" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19166" PostId="5769" Score="2" Text="@gung I appreciate the wide upset of the community with SE, including your own. I have seen much less elsewhere than I have read on this page. What is to be done?" CreationDate="2019-10-05T03:28:08.633" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="19167" PostId="5769" Score="7" Text="I don't know, @Alexis.  It is clear that SE doesn't care &amp; isn't going to do anything substantive / meaningful.  (I'm sure there'll be a blog post in a month promising more respect for users.)  Everybody needs to make their own choice.  I'm not sure what my future status will be." CreationDate="2019-10-05T03:33:18.633" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19168" PostId="5769" Score="1" Text="Thanks for your perspective. (Edited to add a little context about historical usage; hope that’s okay, roll back if not.)" CreationDate="2019-10-05T03:33:49.067" UserId="9964" />
  <row Id="19169" PostId="5769" Score="3" Text="We should allow the OP to decide whether to add information about the history, @Dougal, I am rolling this back." CreationDate="2019-10-05T03:35:54.827" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19170" PostId="5769" Score="1" Text="@Dougal That edit would have made a great comment, BTW." CreationDate="2019-10-05T03:43:33.497" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="19171" PostId="5769" Score="0" Text="@gung Aside: I was browsing your &quot;profile&quot; a week or two back and was encouraged to read the Wikipedia bio on Gongsun Long. I am intrigued to read some of his stuff, but am unclear on what a good English translation might be. Can you recommend one? (Online, dead tree, whatever.)" CreationDate="2019-10-05T03:47:51.510" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="19172" PostId="5769" Score="3" Text="Yeah, I don't know why I edited. I was adding a link to an article about how [the usage for non-specific people is older than universal acceptance of singular _you_](https://public.oed.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-singular-they/)." CreationDate="2019-10-05T03:48:11.600" UserId="9964" />
  <row Id="19173" PostId="5769" Score="1" Text="Sure @Dougal, it's relevant – I added, as well as pointing to gung's very relevant comment above." CreationDate="2019-10-05T04:10:25.547" UserId="261720" />
  <row Id="19174" PostId="5769" Score="4" Text="@Alexis, [Perleberg](https://www.amazon.com/KUNG-SUN-LUNG-TZU-TRANSLATION-PARALLEL-ORIGINAL/dp/B00KJOD22A) did a translation of my stuff. He spells my name wrong, though." CreationDate="2019-10-05T04:20:57.733" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19175" PostId="5769" Score="0" Text="@gung :D :D :D :D" CreationDate="2019-10-05T04:27:25.130" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="19179" PostId="5769" Score="9" Text="+1 To clarify I was at least aware that Monica had some problems with singular they (its part of what she was asking about; I refer to this indirectly in my post) and I certainly don't say she must be completely blameless (I think it's reasonable for her to be at least asking on mod chat about trying to find a mutually acceptable alternative under a future policy, if its done with consideration and empathy) nor do I for a moment think that the new Code of Conduct (to the extent that I am aware of it) is nonsense, for all that I am now completely unsure how to moderate it: I support the aim." CreationDate="2019-10-05T09:31:32.407" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="19181" PostId="5769" Score="7" Text="I recognise there is uncertainty about what precisely was said because most of us have not seen the chats, but +1 to you &amp; Alexis for the helpful perspective." CreationDate="2019-10-05T11:33:14.007" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="19199" PostId="5769" Score="3" Text="FYI: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/334750/225179" CreationDate="2019-10-08T22:25:26.517" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="19182" PostId="5770" Score="3" Text="I imagine that many of the actors in this situation think they have been 'acting normal', but every culture defines what that means differently. And the remaining people think that what's considered 'normal' is the problem. Culture clashes are complicated." CreationDate="2019-10-05T13:17:39.857" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="19184" PostId="5770" Score="1" Text="Well said, Martijn Weterings." CreationDate="2019-10-05T16:14:01.680" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="19186" PostId="5771" Score="22" Text="+1 Excellent advice.  This happened to me 15 years ago with a site on which I had contributed 5K posts--and I still have the complete collection that I scraped just before it ceased operating.  Many thanks for the useful links; I was able to obtain all my SE posts and their linked images (around 50 MB total) in just a few minutes and split them into separate files on a local hard drive." CreationDate="2019-10-06T17:10:12.117" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="19424" PostId="5771" Score="1" Text="I am learning a lot about this. I had no idea that it was so serious that our top moderators are quiting!  My question for Glen_b and other moderators is will you continue to be members on the site. I have tried to contribute a lot to the site over the approximately 8 years that I have been a member. But I have learned a lot too especially from Gung, Huber, and Glen_b. In the early years there was also Cardinal &amp; Macro. It was nice to have other well known statisticians contributing, like Frank Harrell &amp; Christian Robert." CreationDate="2019-11-24T06:15:53.073" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="19187" PostId="5773" Score="13" Text="It's certainly an encouraging sign -- which I was editing my post to acknowledge at about the time you were writing this. I'm really not in any rush to jump back in - I'd prefer to see what the ultimate actions are - and if I were to decide to return my thinking is that it would probably be better to give our community a chance to choose someone else if they prefer. StackExchange will give me my diamond back on request (if they get around to removing it) without an election but if I decide I want back in I think the wider CV community should have some say in that. Anyway, we'll see how it goes" CreationDate="2019-10-07T01:48:14.753" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="19245" PostId="5773" Score="5" Text="More than a week later, followup on that apology has been...wanting." CreationDate="2019-10-15T20:19:27.817" UserId="261680" />
  <row Id="19188" PostId="5774" Score="0" Text="Yep - to clarify: the fact that resigning mods could return if they want was already the the situation before this began." CreationDate="2019-10-07T08:05:08.990" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="19189" PostId="5774" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b I should have said 'will', not 'can'. Edited." CreationDate="2019-10-07T08:12:44.523" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="19190" PostId="5774" Score="2" Text="I thought &quot;can&quot; was correct; just wanted to make it clear there was already a policy about that rather than something done in response to the recent events." CreationDate="2019-10-07T08:14:57.240" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="19192" PostId="5774" Score="7" Text="The issue has always been **whether @MonicaCellio could return**, not the tons of moderators who resigned in protest at her blatant mistreatment and the false accounts put out by SO corporate, namely that she did not violate the CoC in place. The second apology tries to shroud that in secrecy and obfuscation: *&quot;We’ll be reaching out to her directly to apologize for the lack of process[!], privacy, and to discuss next steps. We’ll keep those discussions completely private unless we both agree to share any of it with the community.&quot;*" CreationDate="2019-10-07T21:41:29.293" UserId="7291" />
  <row Id="19193" PostId="5774" Score="3" Text="@smci In case I wasn't clear, rectifying the situation with Monica Cellio was implied by &quot;Hopefully they will follow through well&quot;. There's plenty of discussion of the merits and problems with the apology at the linked thread; my goal was not to summarise the situation, but to make people aware of a recent development." CreationDate="2019-10-08T04:45:39.160" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="19194" PostId="5774" Score="3" Text="@smci For some moderators this crisis has been something like last nail in the coffin. I have seen meta posts where they say that they had been contemplating this decision for long. This crisis doesn't seem the right way for moderators to leave the community that they served with keen interest and devotion. They deserve much better." CreationDate="2019-10-08T05:47:10.813" UserId="168306" />
  <row Id="19195" PostId="5774" Score="2" Text="@mkt: ok but I don't understand why you couldn't just post the basic facts without the narrative, 'good sign', 'hopefully' etc. The second apology is less bad than the first, but still weasell, dishonest and utterly inadequate for the reasons I spelled out. So if the first apology scored an F, this is an E-. This matter is not over yet, not at all. I can't see that the phrase *&quot;We made a big mistake, we were wrong, we apologize to Monica Cellio and she was been reinstated&quot;* is so complicated to utter. 'Next steps' is simply weaselly..." CreationDate="2019-10-08T07:23:15.127" UserId="7291" />
  <row Id="19196" PostId="5774" Score="4" Text="...It's up to all us SO userbase to decide who in SO corporate needs to apologize or be fired for this garbage. One SO employee's name springs very much to mind, and she hasn't apologized. Also, why has new CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar been so very conspicuously silent? The buck stops with him. [Hiding behind David Fullerton](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/334551/an-apology-to-our-community-and-next-steps) is cowardly. Tell [Prasanth](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/pchandrasekar_rackers-stackoverflow-rackspace-activity-6582282554869641216-06ta/) all about this on LinkedIn." CreationDate="2019-10-08T07:26:31.237" UserId="7291" />
  <row Id="19197" PostId="5774" Score="4" Text="...also the fact that [ex-CEO Joel Spolsky, the man who volunteers opinions on almost everything, is also mysteriously silent since Sept 24](https://twitter.com/spolsky). Since telling us what a great leap forward Prashanth's appointment was, ironically. And Spolsky is still Chairman, so the buck stops with him too." CreationDate="2019-10-08T07:30:56.857" UserId="7291" />
  <row Id="19198" PostId="5774" Score="7" Text="@smci My primary goal was to inform, but I thought a minor, cautiously optimistic note was warranted (those few words hardly constitute a narrative). You're welcome to post more details in an answer or a new thread if this one offends you." CreationDate="2019-10-08T07:33:07.393" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="19200" PostId="5774" Score="10" Text="[Previously](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/334551/an-apology-to-our-community-and-next-steps#comment1097594_334551) I stated that I was retracting my upvote, but might reupvote or downvote later. In light of [the heavy handed change to the CoC](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/334900/187282) (which is inconsistent w/ my &amp; other mods' comments on the drafts), &amp; the lack of satisfactory action on Monica's case, I am forced to conclude that the 2nd 'apology' was insincere &amp; was a stalling tactic to buy time &amp; hope this blows over. I have now downvoted it." CreationDate="2019-10-11T03:45:36.370" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19201" PostId="5774" Score="6" Text="Certainly Monica is dissatisfied with he current situation. It sounds like she got sent one email after the second apology and then nothing since, so no actual discussion as was promised." CreationDate="2019-10-11T04:07:00.353" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="19203" PostId="5774" Score="1" Text="@smci It appears my optimism was misplaced. I have edited the positivity out of the title but left the remaining text in place, albeit with a short note about the negative developments." CreationDate="2019-10-11T07:14:36.397" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="19204" PostId="5774" Score="7" Text="This new CoC seems like trying to kill a fly with a hammer. Obligatory pronouns have little to do with respect for people. For uncommon pronouns, it should be respected when others have discomfort in using them. This is not pronoun-fobia but can be reasonable. The use of 'they' has strong associations with plural (even when it has a history of singular), and novelties like xe, zir, ne might turn social norms into a Christmas tree. If a person tries to avoid using these terms, without avoiding the person or having problems with his/her/their identity, then this should be equally respectable." CreationDate="2019-10-11T14:43:22.600" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19206" PostId="5774" Score="2" Text="@Martijn, personally I definitely understand some weirdness/discomfort with neopronouns (there are a *lot* of variations) and think the rules about people avoiding pronouns period are a little on the heavy-handed side. But I want to strongly reinforce that – particularly for they/them which it seems the *vast* majority of nonbinary people now prefer – it does _not_ feel very respectful to say 'oh, I respect your gender, but I respect _the sanctity of the English language_ more'. (Not saying that's what you said, but hopefully you can see how it can be hurtful to people.)" CreationDate="2019-10-11T18:48:00.007" UserId="261720" />
  <row Id="19208" PostId="5774" Score="3" Text="@Martijn right, but that's saying &quot;I respect you but not enough to make a [relatively minor accommodation](https://www.npr.org/2019/08/06/744121321/even-a-grammar-geezer-like-me-can-get-used-to-gender-neutral-pronouns) in how I use language when interacting with you.&quot; Can you see that this doesn't really feel like very much respect? (As an aside, I recently heard someone fairly senior and respected in my field tell a story about their &quot;daughter&quot; and how &quot;she&quot; requested to be referred to as they, but &quot;I have grammatical problems with that.&quot; This did not make me feel very welcome in the field.)" CreationDate="2019-10-11T19:51:55.497" UserId="261720" />
  <row Id="19209" PostId="5774" Score="7" Text="I can see that it might hurt, since the pronouns relate to gender classification and this might misrepresents ones identity which is hurtful when it happens often. However asking people to use pronouns which are weird to them should be a request and not a demand. And especially a rule set in  code of conduct goes much too far than neccesary and could be detrimental when it states that preferred pronouns are *obligatory*." CreationDate="2019-10-11T19:55:58.137" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19210" PostId="5774" Score="1" Text="I guess the point where we disagree is that you – and apparently a margin of hundreds of people on meta.SE – believe that a rule requiring that users take minor actions to not hurt a marginalized minority &quot;goes much too far than necessary.&quot; I suppose there's not much more to say after that." CreationDate="2019-10-11T19:59:19.173" UserId="261720" />
  <row Id="19211" PostId="5774" Score="2" Text="It is not neccesarily disrespectful when a person  avoids the use of pronouns on SE. I do this often, sometimes I write he/she when gender is unknown but also sometimes I try to avoid the need to write the pronoun altogether. Demanding that I should use 'they' and me not following up on that has little to do with me not respecting others 'by misgendering'." CreationDate="2019-10-11T20:10:57.007" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19212" PostId="5774" Score="1" Text="However,  it depends a lot on the weight that people give to this (how much does it help them when they have their own individual pronoun) and how much they demand (where does it stop?). There's large variations worldwide (like French vous/toi German Sie/du while English has only you) and on an international forum it can not (should not) be placed into a single specific rule. The problem with the rule is also that it turns gray into black-white. We should have respect for others based on plausible demands. If a person *needs* a lot to be called 'they' then they gets it, but spaghetti monster?" CreationDate="2019-10-11T20:12:59.510" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19217" PostId="5774" Score="2" Text="*&quot;a rule requiring that users take minor actions to not hurt a marginalized minority &quot;goes much too far than necessary.&quot;&quot;* I do not believe that the minor actions go too far (although I find them debatable and I will debate them, but in personal live I suspend judgement on most things and will just go with the flow) but I believe that the rule goes too far because it does more than necessary to reach the goal. It's like 'killing a fly with a sledge hammer'. It is the wrong way to get this language change." CreationDate="2019-10-11T20:24:26.063" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19218" PostId="5774" Score="0" Text="@Martijn After Twitter's recent clarification that persistent misgendering counts as abuse, there were very clear instances of transphobes &quot;not misgendering&quot; by either persistently using &quot;they&quot; after a trans woman had made it clear she uses &quot;she,&quot; or doing things like putting after each usage to expressly indicate it was &quot;forced speech.&quot; (Of course it's impossible to ever find anything again on Twitter, though I just tried for a bit.) This is what the COC is trying to avoid. Nobody is going to be banned for saying &quot;OP&quot; unless it's a clear, persistent pattern of not using someone's pronouns." CreationDate="2019-10-11T20:27:05.943" UserId="261720" />
  <row Id="19219" PostId="5774" Score="4" Text="That twitter stuf is more like intentional bullying and has little to do with regular daily language use. By the way, *you* can not say it is a minor adjustment, like  others can not say the wrong use of pronouns is not hurtful. It is up to the person who has to make the adjustment to decide how much the adjustment is. It is just as disrespectful for A to make this adjustment a requirement for B (and not acknowledge B's pain of the adjustment) as it is disrespectfull for B to not make the adjustment (and not acknowledge A's pain of the pronouns interferring with gender identity)." CreationDate="2019-10-11T20:37:50.783" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19220" PostId="5774" Score="1" Text="If people would be more respectfully to LBTQI would the use of pronouns also be less of an issue? Women  on StackExchange hide their female identity and the first time they 'come out' and say that other's can use 'she' is an important moment (at least, I read about an example of that on meta or in a blog). All these problems about gender related pronouns are actually not problems about pronouns but indirectly it is more about gender. It disturbs me that recently in Twitter/Facebook-land it has become so much about these symbolic issues rather than the real issue which is general intolerance." CreationDate="2019-10-11T20:56:39.287" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19221" PostId="5774" Score="1" Text="@Martijn It is 100% about the general environment, of which pronouns are the most easy-to-talk-about part. My reaction today more or less agrees with [this one](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/335190/621523). I realize that it doesn't feel like that to people who it doesn't affect. But respecting pronouns has become (in English) a strong issue that yes, may be mostly symbolic, but it's also _an actual thing that hurts people_ and is [very much intertwined with everyday acceptance for trans people](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/335098/621523)." CreationDate="2019-10-11T21:06:38.940" UserId="261720" />
  <row Id="19222" PostId="5774" Score="1" Text="@Martijn Sure, you can [say](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5774/fyi-a-second-apology-from-se-has-been-posted#comment19219_5774) that it's impossible to weigh someone's acknowledgement-of-gender-related pain against someone else feeling uncomfortable by being asked to adjust their language. Logically, I suppose I can't say anything to counter that, at least not that couldn't be used from the &quot;other side.&quot; Emotionally, I want you to know that _even you saying that is painful to me and people like me_. I don't think I can say anything further that will be useful here." CreationDate="2019-10-11T21:09:52.043" UserId="261720" />
  <row Id="19223" PostId="5774" Score="0" Text="I believe you should not make it personal when I argue that &lt;&lt; but that's saying &quot;I respect you but not enough to make a relatively minor accommodation in how I use language when interacting with you.&quot; &gt;&gt; is a statement that may incorrectly represent &quot;a relatively minor accommodation&quot;. All I am saying is that *we* can not make this judgement 'minor' for others." CreationDate="2019-10-11T22:21:08.413" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19224" PostId="5774" Score="1" Text="In addition I believe that we should not see it as an act of intentional disrespect (twitter bullies are different from persons that just feel uncomfortable with the pronouns intrinsicly and not because they have something against LHBTI)." CreationDate="2019-10-11T22:22:14.377" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19225" PostId="5774" Score="4" Text="The acceptance has become intertwined with the use of pronouns (and maybe it has become circular: it hurts because it's disrespect and it's disrespect because it hurts). But this goes *both* ways. The pronouns have become important for LHBTI as a sign of respect. But in the other direction this now turns people that have otherwise nothing against LHBTI into disrespectfull people when they do not like to use pronouns. And now since the Monica-SE quarrel it also has become disrespectfull to just state that it is problematic (even when you accomodate). This is going into the wrong direction." CreationDate="2019-10-11T22:22:30.350" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19226" PostId="5774" Score="0" Text="@Martijn, I'd suggest you read the discussion on [this answer](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/335267/621523) – I think ColeValleyGirl did a better job explaining essentially my point of view than I did." CreationDate="2019-10-12T17:24:10.507" UserId="261720" />
  <row Id="19227" PostId="5774" Score="1" Text="@anon I get there might be pain due to people not using certain pronouns (e.g. because people association with the acceptation of gender/identity). I am just bringing in that we don't need a forum to police on whether or not people are nice to each other, in terms of very strict descriptions of the use of pronouns. When I wish to use 'h*' instead of 'they', for instance, because it is shorter (like you use martijn instead of martijnweterings) then this is *my* choice and it is not about 'it's not so hard or little effort' but about *invading* my personal use of language." CreationDate="2019-10-12T18:11:29.530" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19228" PostId="5774" Score="0" Text="The goal is acceptance and language is only the means to get to it. This CoC seems to make language the goal by putting so much stress on it. That is in my opinion a wrong approach. In the first place it is about the respect and this can not be captured in strict and one-sided rules that favour, beforehand, only one side of the parties involved. We are not all like spouses rejecting certain pronouns *because we do not like the gender concept*. Bad intentions, like the people on twitter, is now assumed *beforehand* for situations where people omit the use of pronouns in a certain way." CreationDate="2019-10-12T18:13:47.550" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19230" PostId="5774" Score="1" Text="@MartijnWeterings, I've been using the short version because I didn't know doing so might bother you (and it gave me a few more characters to work with). Now that you've sort-of indicated it does, I won't anymore. If you established more clearly that it does and I continued to use the short version, that would be bad behavior on my part. This is _exactly_ analogous to the pronouns situation." CreationDate="2019-10-12T18:15:52.837" UserId="261720" />
  <row Id="19231" PostId="5774" Score="1" Text="I am not offended but it might have been, and this is just to show how conversations on internet are not so easy (btw you still do not know whether I prefer martijnweterings, maye I prefer an additional 'sir' 'prof' 'lord' or some other title). The point's it doesn't matter because you did not behave with bad intentions. This's the same way for the majority on stackexchange, there is no bad intentions with using pronouns in a certain way. The persistence that other's should abide with some strict rule because personal problems, and suggest it's only little effort, is invasive and disrespectful" CreationDate="2019-10-12T18:24:10.310" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19233" PostId="5774" Score="2" Text="Most p on StackExchange have good intentions and would not have problems with any rule that explains how to be polite to each other. Sort of house rules (like in many places the ways to speak to each other might be different, just see the many ways to start and end a letter, and need some explanation). Mi problem with the new CoC is that it pressures people to use a very particular house rule, instead of just stating that w all should be polite. How would ya think about a rule that *forces* that ya should use another's preferred way to greet instead of giving yo freedom to handle it yourselve?" CreationDate="2019-10-12T18:41:24.893" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19234" PostId="5774" Score="6" Text="@anon Interesting conversation. I am curious about your position on the following: if somebody is fine with saying &quot;he&quot; or &quot;she&quot; or &quot;they&quot; correctly as requested by another person, but refuses to say &quot;ze&quot; and similar invented pronouns (and would e.g. say &quot;they&quot; instead, or reformulate without pronouns), would you say this is also disrespectful and should be condemned?" CreationDate="2019-10-13T19:58:02.110" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="19239" PostId="5774" Score="2" Text="@amoeba, I don’t use a neopronoun, and I don’t think I really know anyone who does. It’s not super common. (I’ve been to a few in-person trans groups and am moderately active on trans Twitter; I’ve definitely seen a few accounts on the latter with neopronouns, but not many. My hunch is eg on tumblr it’s probably more common.) So, probably better to ask someone who does. My personal feeling is that using “they” for someone who’s explicitly requested, say, “ze” and not “they” is *rude* but perhaps not the same category as *misgendering*. But I’m really not the right person to ask." CreationDate="2019-10-14T02:25:16.413" UserId="261720" />
  <row Id="19240" PostId="5774" Score="1" Text="@amoeba, also see [this short conversation](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/335308/621523) which I think has some useful points." CreationDate="2019-10-14T02:36:05.003" UserId="261720" />
  <row Id="19235" PostId="5775" Score="5" Text="But what are the demands?" CreationDate="2019-10-13T23:12:42.383" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="19236" PostId="5775" Score="1" Text="It is difficult to put this into exact words (and I realize now that this drifts towards a yellow vest movement) but for me, the demand would be that the contributors to StackOverflow/StackExchange should be having more influence. Either by listening better to them (and show this in response) or by giving them more explicit and effective power in the decision process (although this second option I do not see happen for a commercial company)." CreationDate="2019-10-13T23:53:16.970" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19237" PostId="5775" Score="2" Text="The changes in the code of conduct an-sich are not so bad (just a bit odd specific focus on gender issues). But the FAQ relating to it goes out of hand. It is describing mores, what should be unwritten rules, in fine detail and examples with a one-sided point of view (no freedom for the community). The matter of bigotry explained in this FAQ is focussed on gender issues (ignoring religion), down to the extreme an obligatory accepting of neopronouns (not that this occurs in Overflow/Math/Phys/other-tech, but that does not change that the nonrespectful rule *is* there)." CreationDate="2019-10-13T23:59:12.537" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19238" PostId="5775" Score="2" Text="In social groups it's give and take. We wheigh our rights agains other's rights. Strict rules like the FAQ cut through the dynamics of this process. Most people don't care about pronouns like 'they' when this helps a sufficiently large group. But when you make it out of balance (e.g. neopronouns, or obligatory 'they' as standard genderneutral language when referring to a person with unknown gender, which is like almost everybody given the many anonimous users) then you get opposition. Instead, let the community develop the details more naturally, instead of these condescending pre-chewed laws." CreationDate="2019-10-14T00:09:23.017" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19283" PostId="5775" Score="5" Text="@Scortchi the two demands from [this recent post from Monica](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/336526/) are a minimum requirement (in addition it must become clear that this can not happen again and SE will take contributors more seriously instead of [regarding them as disposables](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/335173/se-inc-director-of-public-qa-retweets-bad-faith-misrepresentative-tweet))." CreationDate="2019-10-24T09:39:04.317" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19246" PostId="5776" Score="0" Text="How long can it be?" CreationDate="2019-10-16T13:17:53.650" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="19247" PostId="5776" Score="1" Text="I have to endorse &quot;gossip and grumbles&quot; as I even believe that I put that expression into play as a very minor meme. The harder question is whether there is a negative to be added. It's usually @gung who ends up advising people not to ask a substantive question, signalling tactfully that it's a waste of time to do that in a chat room. But I don't like summaries including the form &quot;Don't do X&quot;, as they seem unwelcoming, even with &quot;Please&quot; before, during and after, and a rationale. (No; that doesn't help much.)" CreationDate="2019-10-16T14:38:06.913" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19248" PostId="5776" Score="0" Text="@amoeba, it's unclear, but it can be long enough.  Some chat rooms have a description on the order of a comment (which I believe is 500 characters)." CreationDate="2019-10-16T14:46:32.480" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19249" PostId="5776" Score="5" Text="@NickCox, I agree that 'Don't do X' isn't very welcoming.  It might be OK to have a positive comment in the other direction, though.  Consider, &quot;Please ask substantive questions on the main site&quot;.  That communicates a similar message, in what seems to be to be a friendlier manner." CreationDate="2019-10-16T14:49:27.297" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19252" PostId="5776" Score="0" Text="I took the liberty of sharing this meta question in the chat." CreationDate="2019-10-17T12:38:28.920" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="19253" PostId="5776" Score="0" Text="@StephanKolassa which led me here, Thanks!" CreationDate="2019-10-17T13:00:21.033" UserDisplayName="user230053" />
  <row Id="19250" PostId="5777" Score="2" Text="I think &quot;substantive questions&quot; is a bit too vague; maybe &quot;statistical questions&quot;?" CreationDate="2019-10-17T08:20:46.110" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="19251" PostId="5777" Score="6" Text="@amoeba, how about, &quot;... ask questions about statistics or machine learning on...&quot;?" CreationDate="2019-10-17T11:24:26.103" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19266" PostId="5777" Score="1" Text="I actually *like* &quot;substantive questions&quot;; I think that's better than omitting it" CreationDate="2019-10-20T23:11:27.290" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="19257" PostId="5779" Score="29" Text="Is calling for new moderators at all appropriate when the self-suspension of two major moderators is an act pointing out that not all is sweet and rosy on SE..? The show must go on???" CreationDate="2019-10-18T07:43:42.800" UserId="7224" />
  <row Id="19258" PostId="5779" Score="11" Text="There are a couple of sites without any moderators, and a number with only 1 or 2. There are a lot of objections, but SE is digging in its heels." CreationDate="2019-10-18T11:24:04.527" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19259" PostId="5779" Score="4" Text="I admit I haven't been following this at all. I basically use CrossValidated and, once in a while, English Language Learners (where I answer questions) or the big progaming site (where I ask them).   I take part in almost none of the general community stuff. &#xA;&#xA;Looking over some of the linked threads, I find myself very confused - I am not at all clear who did what to whom or why. Is some sort of summary available? (@gung if you would like to write to me, off site, feel free).  (more to come)..." CreationDate="2019-10-18T13:13:43.973" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="19260" PostId="5779" Score="0" Text="(cont) &#xA;&#xA;I consider myself a strong ally of the LGBTQ+ community and, on some other sites, I am a vociferous supporter (e.g. Medium and Quora).  i would in no way want to support any anti-LGBTQ site." CreationDate="2019-10-18T13:13:56.280" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="19261" PostId="5779" Score="23" Text="@Peter Ultimately this has *nothing whatsoever* to do with the LGBTQ+ community.  It's about how SE (mis)treats its moderators. The quandary we are in is that moderators have no direct power over how SE runs: we cannot even freely post complaints because they can be (and sometimes are) taken down by the SE team.  But if we withhold our services, as Glen_b and now Gung have done, the people most directly affected are the communities we moderate. One [interesting proposal](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/335627/166924) is a **weekly day of silence.** That might be an effective compromise." CreationDate="2019-10-18T13:22:51.557" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="19262" PostId="5779" Score="6" Text="(I should add that I just learned about the day of silence proposal, which is why you see me participating today, but will not hear from me again for at least 24 hours.)" CreationDate="2019-10-18T13:23:16.877" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="19263" PostId="5779" Score="5" Text="@PeterFlom (and others). FYI, today is the first [proposed day of silence](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/335508/monicas-situation-continues-unresolved-is-se-hoping-the-problem-just-goes-away/335627#335627) (&quot;No proposals, no questions, no answers, no discussion&quot;)." CreationDate="2019-10-18T13:46:28.133" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="19264" PostId="5779" Score="4" Text="@PeterFlom [This answer](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/334417/364758)  and others in the same thread attempt to summarize the timeline in as neutral a fashion as possible. Though it arguably leans too far towards treating SE's behaviour as reasonable by omitting some of the details around Monica's dismissal." CreationDate="2019-10-18T13:54:03.647" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="19268" PostId="5779" Score="2" Text="I think that moderator resignations is not a strong enough action. They will ignore it but stalling and hoping things calm down. Much stronger impact will come from contributors who stop contributing, especially, the top contributors. That will hit them right where it hurts, and will bring their attention" CreationDate="2019-10-22T20:48:07.923" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="19273" PostId="5779" Score="10" Text="@Aksakal, it mostly isn't about the pronouns. The aspect of *coerced speech* is troubling, &amp; we're actually now working on that. The main issue is the way they have treated a moderator." CreationDate="2019-10-23T00:32:03.367" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19274" PostId="5779" Score="2" Text="@gung i understand your position. I stopped answering questions today. That’s my contribution to the discourse" CreationDate="2019-10-23T00:57:06.347" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="19275" PostId="5779" Score="10" Text="@Aksakal This isn't the appropriate place to get into a full discussion, but I wanted to let you know that as a closeted trans person in the field, referring to this as &quot;the pronouns nonsense&quot; is _exactly_ the kind of behavior that makes me feel unwelcome and afraid to come out. SE has certainly behaved very poorly and I don't at all begrudge people resigning/boycotting/etc because of that, but please be aware that the precipitating issue _is_ something that affects probably more of your colleagues than you realize." CreationDate="2019-10-23T02:08:47.150" UserId="261720" />
  <row Id="19276" PostId="5779" Score="11" Text="@anon i also feel unwelcome by introduction of coerced speech" CreationDate="2019-10-23T02:30:27.047" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="19278" PostId="5779" Score="3" Text="@Aksakal If you haven't seen it, there's [an updated FAQ](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/336364/621523). Comparing its vote patterns to the previous one, this seems to satisfy most people. I doubt anything more than minor clarifications will happen from here re: the COC that apparently is your complaint (and seems almost orthogonal to gung's)." CreationDate="2019-10-23T02:46:51.047" UserId="261720" />
  <row Id="19279" PostId="5779" Score="3" Text="@anon I share not all but many of his and glen_b points. You’re right that the owners are not about to change anything. They dont want to cave in to member demands to set a precedent. That’s cool with me, it’s a private enterprise and they’re free to do what they want with their property. They won’t get my content from now on though. I like sharing and helping but there are other venues for me to keep doing it" CreationDate="2019-10-23T03:08:37.913" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="19280" PostId="5779" Score="21" Text="Returning to the original post I want to flag how much -- enormous gratitude -- the community owes to @gung for moderation and more widely. This post has received less attention than that of Glen_b; I guess nothing more lies behind that than despair and weariness at this mess and a feeling that what can be said has already been put extremely well, often repeatedly." CreationDate="2019-10-23T07:17:33.660" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19281" PostId="5779" Score="8" Text="I completely agree, @NickCox, and gung, [what I said about Glen_b](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5767/176202) just as much applies to you." CreationDate="2019-10-23T08:01:07.300" UserId="176202" />
  <row Id="20112" PostId="5779" Score="0" Text="I think that if SE does anything that can be contrived by a lawyer as a tacit confession of wrongdoing it will cost millions in the court of law.  I don't think they appreciate how chasing off the best talent in this area stages for an overthrow by a competitor, perhaps they do not understand either the market or history.  They have two kinds of revenue: advertising and recruiting.  If good folks go elsewhere, recruiters will find them elsewhere." CreationDate="2020-10-02T14:40:57.260" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="20186" PostId="5779" Score="1" Text="Gung &amp; GlenB were good moderators, it will be a big loss to CV. I understand their goals but believe resigning in protest almost always backfires, for any cause. Analogous case in point: when the Soviet bloc walked out of the UN in 1950, clearing the way for the US to push through a vote on Korea. In your current positions, you have a voice, a little power &amp; can keep the issue in the public eye; if everyone resigns, the intransigent SE staff gets what they want. It's like retaliating against an alligator who bit your hand by sticking your whole head in his mouth." CreationDate="2020-10-10T20:39:38.157" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="20187" PostId="5779" Score="0" Text="What would worry the SE staff most is if the protesting moderators began to set up their own Q &amp; A site - run entirely by the user communities - using SE's own Q &amp; A format. Then they will take notice." CreationDate="2020-10-10T20:42:14.027" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="20255" PostId="5779" Score="0" Text="A  big thank you for your scholarship ... and courtesies you have shown ..." CreationDate="2020-10-29T21:04:57.477" UserId="3382" />
  <row Id="19284" PostId="5781" Score="1" Text="I am currently thinking about something like a system/platform that integrates blogrings related to Q&amp;A by using some shared standard and being a distributed system rather than being centralized. A sort of inverse process how Usenet (distributed) turned into Google Groups (centralized)." CreationDate="2019-10-24T14:28:40.383" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19286" PostId="5781" Score="1" Text="(+1) Certainly worth discussing. I've lightly edited one sentence that seemed ambiguous to me; please check to see that I've captured your meaning." CreationDate="2019-10-24T18:39:18.720" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="19287" PostId="5781" Score="11" Text="Recent events certainly have cast doubt on the future of SE as a reliable platform. However, the reason I contribute here, and not on reddit, Quora, Wikipedia, or whatever, is because of its (current) style. To win people over for a migration, there would have to be *a lot* of similarities between the new platform and CV. I would certainly encourage a more independent platform (+1), but the alternative must probably be compelling not *only* because it is more independent if we are to reach consensus." CreationDate="2019-10-25T05:05:13.437" UserId="176202" />
  <row Id="19288" PostId="5781" Score="10" Text="I am with @Frans Rodenburg here. I can imagine someone setting up a blog and saying Let’s run this like CV using the style we like. But, but, but: something like CV requires a secure server, more software than blogs run on, and a set of people doing a lot of work. Do I misunderstand? I would like it to work but I can’t imagine it working. Despite despair at the SE company I (we) have much sunk capital here and I am highly reluctant to part  company and start something new. Yes, I know that SE are betting on that attitude." CreationDate="2019-10-25T07:53:23.700" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19289" PostId="5781" Score="1" Text="@NickCox I agree, it will be difficult. And indeed the PhysicsOverflow does not look as nice, and a hard STEXIT is undesirable for all parties. But possibly we can at least shift it a little. Several people here already have blogs. We could highlight them better and make more possibilities available for others. Create some standards such that the blogs are more alike and link better to Q&amp;A here. Who knows in five/ten years from now there might be some open standard and an independent platform is more nearby. Then we are at least more prepared for it or made the first steps towards it." CreationDate="2019-10-25T08:04:13.057" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19290" PostId="5781" Score="1" Text="Maybe I am too much desiring the old-Internet back?" CreationDate="2019-10-25T08:06:29.950" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19295" PostId="5781" Score="3" Text="There are many reasons why people fall in here and stay, but seemingly they overlap. I was aware of SE for some years before I joined; my main hesitation was that it looked so extraordinarily complicated. But I first fell into SO because some questions I could answer were not being answered and then later into CV, where there was enough low-hanging fruit to engage. Wikipedia goes all the way from astoundingly good to utterly awful, but it's not for me to participate. My limited sample of Quora and Reddit is a mix of dismay and disappointment, and very little else." CreationDate="2019-10-25T16:27:02.300" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19296" PostId="5781" Score="5" Text="(ctd) But the mix here on CV of willingness to help and high standards for analysis, advice and exposition is deeply congenial. There are dozens of people whose identifiers I recognise and who I regard as virtual friends. I am unwilling to accept the distinct possibility that SE is doomed if community goodwill has been lost." CreationDate="2019-10-25T16:29:41.207" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19306" PostId="5781" Score="1" Text="CV is a great statistics resource. There must be a way to fork it to some other place. Answering people own copyright, we can port the content elsewhere. I think it is inevitable that tech folks will migrate elsewhere. There is no reason to contribute under the new CoC. If they felt they can annoy 99% to please 0.01% then only change in management can fix it and it’s not happening. We need to separate tech content from identity politics" CreationDate="2019-10-26T02:52:50.693" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="19309" PostId="5781" Score="3" Text="@Aksakal I fear the &quot;must&quot; here is wishful thinking. CV is thousands of threads, the software that binds them, the hardware that hosts them, and even if what you say about copyright is true there is more than that to the legal basis. Even if SE collapses their dying phase may not include acts of charity letting communities float free. Beyond the present crisis what a community also needs is a framework for dealing with trolls, spammers and various kinds of obnoxious visitors, some but by no means all transient in their postings. That needs to carry over too." CreationDate="2019-10-26T08:54:52.103" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19310" PostId="5781" Score="2" Text="@NickCox I think cv was dealing with all the issues you mentioned very well, it’s due to good work of moderators. New CoC is addressing the problem that didn’t exist here, and created a set of new problems. It’s a more general problem in online communities where liberal arts folks drag tech people into their mud wrestling matches. There had to be a way to abstain from their wars" CreationDate="2019-10-26T13:57:32.413" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="19312" PostId="5781" Score="1" Text="@NickCox, I also agree that forking would not be an easy ans straightforward operation" CreationDate="2019-10-26T20:02:06.457" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="19371" PostId="5781" Score="1" Text="I would very interested in a &quot;*statisticsoverflow*&quot; website if questions could be migrated. Otherwise as NickCox has said, we are throwing away hundreds (if not thousands) hours of work. @SextusEmpiricus: If you can afford the time, I would contact biostars' to learn more about their operating model. A working website/online community requires more than content creation. At the very least it requires hosting and it is totally unclearly who is going to foot the bill for millions of daily visits on a website." CreationDate="2019-11-10T02:36:51.520" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="19372" PostId="5781" Score="1" Text="@usεr11852saysReinstateMonic I would say that hosting would be the least of problems. StackOverflow is big, but CrossValidated is already small. It is not unlike other free (ie. University or otherwise sponsored) websites. For me the question is still whether the community *wants* to relocate, and if they want to, then *how* do they want to. So for me personally, I am still standing on the lowest step, the blog-model." CreationDate="2019-11-10T08:00:41.173" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19373" PostId="5781" Score="0" Text="Would you know a university willing to do this? I am not affiliated with one nowadays and I would be skeptical of a company. (I am not a fan of the blog idea, I cannot see how it would work.. Plus I find the majority of blogs somewhat preachy.)" CreationDate="2019-11-10T09:18:11.930" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="19285" PostId="5782" Score="0" Text="This answer is very vague. It is an idea in *development*. I have made it community wiki such that others can add to it." CreationDate="2019-10-24T14:38:32.097" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19291" PostId="5783" Score="23" Text="I am Spartacus." CreationDate="2019-10-25T09:05:23.627" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="19293" PostId="5783" Score="5" Text="Done. Thanks for posting this." CreationDate="2019-10-25T10:37:36.433" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="19294" PostId="5783" Score="8" Text="It'll be a bit confusing if lots of active users change their user names to be exactly the the same." CreationDate="2019-10-25T14:16:13.317" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="19308" PostId="5783" Score="11" Text="A substantial number of the top users on stats.SE have changed their name, their avatar or both! https://stackexchange.com/leagues/65/alltime/stats/2010-07-19/22311#22311" CreationDate="2019-10-26T03:52:34.340" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="19336" PostId="5783" Score="7" Text="An [appeal](https://www.gofundme.com/f/stop-stack-overflow-from-defaming-its-users) to raise money for Monica's legal fees, should SE force her to seek redress for defamation in court, has raised an impressive 6k$ in only half a day." CreationDate="2019-10-29T13:26:19.853" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="19352" PostId="5783" Score="3" Text="+1. I've also changed my username and avatar and my 'about me'." CreationDate="2019-11-02T01:16:01.440" UserId="9162" />
  <row Id="19355" PostId="5783" Score="4" Text="I don't know how to update my username.  I will see if I can update my icon.  I am very much into joining y'all." CreationDate="2019-11-05T08:22:00.483" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="19514" PostId="5783" Score="0" Text="Listen, It is annoying to keep seeing reinstate monica. First of all, all the moderators are on volunteer basis. So the site has the right to determine who gets to be moderator and who doesnt &quot;at will&quot;. You guys have not signed any contracts with the company so there should be no wining about it. Period." CreationDate="2019-12-27T14:28:53.077" UserId="249944" />
  <row Id="19520" PostId="5783" Score="8" Text="Just as the company is free to decide how they run their site, users are (supposedly) free to choose their own avatar and username, within a few conditions that are already specified, such as restrictions on particularly offensive ones. You may find that annoying, but you have no recourse. The company might change the rules (I expect they will), but until then, I doubt they're going anywhere." CreationDate="2019-12-27T22:29:13.983" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="19670" PostId="5783" Score="0" Text="The developer survey for 2020 should have in it a distinct indicator of the effectiveness of &quot;Reinstate Monica&quot;.  Those who have the raw data should be able to get to the concrete implication." CreationDate="2020-02-07T15:34:22.663" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="19298" PostId="5785" Score="2" Text="They look the same to me. I'm not sure I understand your question." CreationDate="2019-10-25T19:51:52.460" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19299" PostId="5785" Score="0" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica : This has happened to me on several different machines today, with various different postings on both stats.stackexchange.com and math.stackexchange.com $\qquad$" CreationDate="2019-10-25T20:06:05.280" UserId="5176" />
  <row Id="19300" PostId="5785" Score="0" Text="Don't see anything wrong either. Operating system &amp; browser detail might help." CreationDate="2019-10-25T20:19:42.557" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="19301" PostId="5785" Score="0" Text="It doesn't happen here neither. Could you make screenshots." CreationDate="2019-10-25T20:27:12.940" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19302" PostId="5785" Score="0" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica : I've added a screenshot. Just below the words &quot;This is a discrete probability distribution&quot; you see a display matching the description I wrote, and that's obviously not what it should look like." CreationDate="2019-10-25T22:45:46.823" UserId="5176" />
  <row Id="19303" PostId="5785" Score="0" Text="@SextusEmpiricus : Done. $\qquad$" CreationDate="2019-10-25T22:46:03.203" UserId="5176" />
  <row Id="19304" PostId="5785" Score="0" Text="I can see it in your screenshot, but not on my screen, neither here nor on the linked thread. I'm not sure what the problem is." CreationDate="2019-10-26T00:41:02.417" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19305" PostId="5785" Score="2" Text="Everything above looks fine to me, using the HTML-CSS renderer with FireFox $70.0$ on Windows $7$. This may be related to the Math SE meta questions [MathJax formulas hidden behind text](https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/30842/mathjax-formulas-hidden-behind-text) and [Sometimes MathJax does not render some valid symbols: an example.](https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/30843/sometimes-mathjax-does-not-render-some-valid-symbols-an-example), with it stating that it appears to occur with certain versions of Chrome." CreationDate="2019-10-26T00:55:08.047" UserId="252490" />
  <row Id="19311" PostId="5785" Score="0" Text="@JohnOmielan : I'm viewing this on Google Chrome, not on Firefox. The same thing happened on my laptop and on several machines in labs on a university campus." CreationDate="2019-10-26T17:58:23.593" UserId="5176" />
  <row Id="19313" PostId="5785" Score="0" Text="If I view this page using Chrome, I can still see both lines." CreationDate="2019-10-27T12:23:55.887" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19314" PostId="5785" Score="0" Text="That is odd because when I view it from Chrome I get the same wrong display as the OP." CreationDate="2019-10-27T15:27:42.890" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="19321" PostId="5785" Score="0" Text="Here it is again: https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/3412692/how-to-calculate-the-region-in-u-v-plane-in-transformation-of-variables#comment7018747_3412692" CreationDate="2019-10-28T18:42:37.003" UserId="5176" />
  <row Id="19337" PostId="5787" Score="3" Text="Do you have a specific question about how to write a good answer? I think that the general explanation at https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-answer provides a general outline: directly answer the question and provide specific reasoning. A rhetorical question might be helpful as a comment, but a rhetorical question on its own is not an Answer to the question." CreationDate="2019-10-29T17:09:06.397" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="19342" PostId="5787" Score="0" Text="You might also be interested in: [How should questions be answered on Cross Validated?](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1390/7290)" CreationDate="2019-10-29T19:57:53.950" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19338" PostId="5788" Score="5" Text="FWIW, if I were actively moderating, I would have deleted the post, possibly while converting it to a comment." CreationDate="2019-10-29T17:10:17.477" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19339" PostId="5788" Score="3" Text="OK. This is an answer to my question here so I'll accept it. Obviously I disagree with the opinion on the answer itself, which addresses a fundamental issue masked by the specificity of the question itself. Perhaps too laconically." CreationDate="2019-10-29T17:11:56.947" UserId="68527" />
  <row Id="19340" PostId="5789" Score="1" Text="We disagree, but see my comment on the answer here I accepted." CreationDate="2019-10-29T17:13:22.210" UserId="68527" />
  <row Id="19341" PostId="5789" Score="7" Text="What do we disagree about, exactly?  Do you maintain your post answers the question? Do you believe it would not serve as a good comment?  Do you disagree it is framed as a question?  I'm struggling to find any evidence for any of those interpretations." CreationDate="2019-10-29T17:15:55.987" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="19380" PostId="5791" Score="5" Text="I wish there were an easy copy-paste that worked with links. This is a good suggestion, gung. … also, fwiw, I got my new (excellent) job through careers, and have referenced others there.  That is a source of revenue and credibility.  If CV &quot;goes evil&quot;, then I can't in good conscience point folks I know or companies that I know to use their careers product." CreationDate="2019-11-14T18:03:10.710" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="19381" PostId="5791" Score="5" Text="@EngrStudent-ReinstateMonica, I suppose I didn't think of that.  If you click &quot;edit&quot;, you should be able to copy &amp; paste." CreationDate="2019-11-14T19:34:37.157" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19344" PostId="5792" Score="0" Text="Stack Exchange uses some flavour of markdown for posts and there are wikis that use markdown as syntax, so the technical part of the conversions shouldn't be too hard. Rewording Q&amp;A content to wiki pages is a different story." CreationDate="2019-10-30T08:38:54.477" UserId="39900" />
  <row Id="19345" PostId="5792" Score="1" Text="@Josef . Indeed, in terms of keeping the formatting intact the content is easy to copy-paste. One of the problems is changing framework from Q&amp;A to WIKI. For this I am thinking about some format like a FAQ page where the fruits (questions) are brought together in bunches based on similar topic, style, keywords, etc. The 150k fruits on stack-exchange can be brought down to much less bunches. StackExchange has single fruits, the wiki will have bunches of fruit (not ordinary grouping but with added content)." CreationDate="2019-10-30T09:39:38.323" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19346" PostId="5792" Score="1" Text="The bigger problem is how we are gonna deal with credits and licensing. Ideally an already existing organization might come to help with these issues, like R-foundation or Wikimediafoundation. Ideally StackOverflow embraces the project and will themselves start up this foundation that can become an independent partner which is run by the community rather than the company. Let StackOverflow deal with questions  and answers and related software (it seems like they want to go that way), let the community deal with the IP and collection of (open/free cc by-sa) information that comes out of this." CreationDate="2019-10-30T09:45:26.233" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19347" PostId="5792" Score="0" Text="I guess that some sort of version control system which keeps track of all changes in the wiki and also incorporates the changes that had been done before in the copied content from CrossValidated will be a way to give credit to all people that have added their contributions to the wiki articles. (I wonder how this would go when the CrossValidated site ever seizes to exist, how would one credit the previous contributors when they only have a nickname like user234412 and their profile page with possible additional information does not exist anymore)." CreationDate="2019-10-30T09:54:49.747" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19349" PostId="5793" Score="0" Text="It's common practice in science to identify effects by changing one parameter at a time while holding others constant. This would allow us to change *ownership* without changing *format*." CreationDate="2019-10-30T14:50:57.130" UserId="86176" />
  <row Id="19350" PostId="5793" Score="2" Text="I find the biostars more closely resembling the SE format than physicsoverflow. It might be the easiest solution to copy everything. 72k questions is a good number and a good example that it can be done." CreationDate="2019-10-30T15:23:14.970" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19362" PostId="5793" Score="0" Text="The physicsoverflow FAQ might be the best place to start reading, rather than the homepage:&#xA;&#xA;https://physicsoverflow.org/faq" CreationDate="2019-11-06T17:00:26.557" UserId="86176" />
  <row Id="19356" PostId="5795" Score="3" Text="I would suggest thinking about how to apply the tags consistently rather than merging them, because they make potentially useful distinctions: not all questions related to graph theory are about networks or social networks; not all networks are social networks." CreationDate="2019-11-06T13:41:29.850" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="19357" PostId="5795" Score="1" Text="@whuber, that's reasonable, but if those distinctions are too subtle for the typical OP to understand intuitively, the tags will inevitably lead to threads that are less well organized." CreationDate="2019-11-06T15:04:16.443" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19358" PostId="5795" Score="1" Text="@whuber True, not all questions related to graph theory are about networks; but are &quot;pure math&quot; graph theory questions relevant to this site?" CreationDate="2019-11-06T15:09:21.623" UserId="239844" />
  <row Id="19364" PostId="5795" Score="4" Text="Graph theory, including the parts concerning random graphs, and probabilistic graphs, have *many* applications that have *nothing* to do with social networks, including in microbiology, proteomics, genetics, evolutionary biology, linguistics, transit and transportation studies, etc." CreationDate="2019-11-06T18:49:32.470" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="19365" PostId="5795" Score="5" Text="I would agree that most pure math questions about graph theory are not on topic here.  I did answer one about *definitions* recently (https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/431261/919), believing that could be useful background for statisticians interested in the subject.  The lack of attention (the thread has only 28 views after three weeks) suggests it's not a popular topic here." CreationDate="2019-11-06T19:04:30.970" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="19366" PostId="5795" Score="1" Text="@Alexis - you're absolutely right! But in this contest, the term &quot;social networks&quot; is also used to describe those other applications. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network_analysis: &quot;Social network analysis has emerged as a key technique in modern sociology. It has also gained a significant following in anthropology, biology, demography, communication studies, economics, geography, history, information science, organizational studies, political science, public health, social psychology, development studies, sociolinguistics, and computer science.&quot;" CreationDate="2019-11-07T07:08:07.303" UserId="239844" />
  <row Id="19367" PostId="5795" Score="0" Text="@ItamarMushkin We disagree about the history of graph theory and its application in other sciences: while I do not argue that social network analysis has spread beyond its origins in sociology, neither the theory nor the breadth of the methods used in other sciences were developed there. As an example, the analysis of the *community matrix* – a graph representation of complex causal systems – in population biology and ecology entails several graph analytic approaches, some of which are statistical, and *none* of which developed from social network theory." CreationDate="2019-11-07T18:51:18.933" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="19370" PostId="5795" Score="0" Text="I don't think we disagree on the history of the field; at least, I don't disagree with anything in your comment (should this discussion be in an answer? Sorry, new to stats.meta). However, I don't think the history should determine tag partition, but rather current use - especially since the current tag description reflects current use. Let me ask it this way - if &quot;social networks&quot; refers only literally to social networks, why should it have a tag in stats.se?" CreationDate="2019-11-09T05:28:56.580" UserId="239844" />
  <row Id="19386" PostId="5800" Score="17" Text="On your 3rd point: some also fear this is how SE will treat the rest of us if we let them think they can get away with it." CreationDate="2019-11-18T17:41:40.447" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="19387" PostId="5800" Score="1" Text="Thanks @gung. You seem to have answered all my questions. I wasn't aware of any of this until a few days ago when I saw that you &amp; Bill Huber were among the ones that changed their avatar. Just before submitting this question I learned something about it from S Kolassa's question on CV meta. You say that Stack Exchange is stubbornly resisting reinstatement. But it was SO that removed her. Is SO taking the same position as SE." CreationDate="2019-11-18T17:45:59.053" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="19388" PostId="5800" Score="2" Text="@MichaelChernick: It's a bit confusing: see https://stackoverflow.blog/2015/09/15/were-changing-our-name-back-to-stack-overflow/  &amp; https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/270037/225179. Now either 'SO' or 'SE' in this sort of context refers to the company." CreationDate="2019-11-18T18:06:54.933" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="19389" PostId="5800" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi-ReinstateMonica I have always considered SO as a site just like CV. SE is the governing body that manages all the sites." CreationDate="2019-11-18T18:16:48.853" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="19390" PostId="5800" Score="1" Text="So now I see that SO was the original name of the company. I guess that is because  the site initially consisted of one site. But the SO site is for computer programming enthusiast &amp; often topics are considered off topic for CV &amp; are referred to the site SO. I guess in 2015 the legal company name returned to being SO but in practice the name SE is still used. I can see why @Scortchi-ReinstateMonica said that it was confusing. But I guess the answer to my question is that regarding the company policy on reinstating Monica I should treat SE &amp; SO as one in the same." CreationDate="2019-11-18T18:28:25.743" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="19395" PostId="5800" Score="5" Text="Is &quot;she misgendered trans users&quot; really official? I thought the company merely stated (&quot;officially&quot; by statements from the director of public Q&amp;A) that [*&quot;we’ve had to remove a moderator for a Code of Conduct violation&quot;*](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/334248/an-update-to-our-community-and-an-apology). But, there was no further specification how and where the violation was made. 1) People have been *guessing* that it is due to words spoken in chats while discussing the future CoC. But that is not official. 2) That discussion was about the use of 'plural they', not about misgendering." CreationDate="2019-11-19T09:09:18.860" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19396" PostId="5800" Score="3" Text="AFAIK, SE has never given an official statement of what exactly she did, even to her. However, it has been implied in a number of places that she was misgendering trans users." CreationDate="2019-11-19T18:31:02.087" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19397" PostId="5800" Score="5" Text="@SextusEmpiricus: [According to the Register](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theregister.co.uk/AMP/2019/10/01/stack_exchange_controversy/):- [...] *a company spokesperson said, &quot;Cellio (she/her) would not use stated pronouns, which violates our current CoC. We are soon publishing an update to the CoC to even more explicitly cite misgendering users or moderators as a violation.&quot;*" CreationDate="2019-11-19T19:03:18.627" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="19399" PostId="5800" Score="4" Text="@Scortchi-ReinstateMonica that's a bit of an indirect accusation (besides being not official, it is originally from a spokesperson but presented a bit indirect as a quote or paraphrasing and not first source). Stating to not use a particular pronoun (which is not disputed by Monica that she did that) is not directly equal to misgendering. The new FAQ (added to the CoC) even states that (in order to be gender neutral) it is a possibility to not use pronouns as long as it is not done in an obvious way (although it is a bit ambiguous about that, it does explicitly mention 'not using pronouns')." CreationDate="2019-11-20T11:07:35.693" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19400" PostId="5800" Score="8" Text="@SextusEmpiricus: I agree with you; that was an example of the disingenuity gung referred to above. BTW Monica stated that she didn't use singular *they* about a year ago, since when SE made her a moderator on Meta. When changes to the CoC were announced, she didn't say what she would do in future, she asked questions." CreationDate="2019-11-20T17:41:13.980" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="19417" PostId="5800" Score="1" Text="@Scortchi-ReinstateMonica &quot;BTW Monica stated that she didn't use singular they about a year ago, since when SE made her a moderator on Meta&quot; I have read a transcript, and—while I think SO/SE has done a *very* poor job with this imbroglio, and done Monica a disservice—at least at one point her poor choice of language gave many of us credible reason to interpret it as transphobic. My sense is that this was privileged ignorance, and not actual animosity, but &quot;didn't say *they*&quot; is minimizing the impact of her specific language." CreationDate="2019-11-22T22:38:08.500" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="19418" PostId="5800" Score="6" Text="@Alexis: I read the transcripts too, &amp; honestly can't guess what you're referring to. Monica says that she avoids singular they, but is happy to use neopronouns for non-binary people. She certainly doesn't refer to people by pronouns they don't want to be referred to by." CreationDate="2019-11-23T01:26:26.183" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="19419" PostId="5800" Score="5" Text="@Alexis, I'm not sure what you've seen, most of this stuff is in mod-only spaces. I've read the transcripts &amp; I'm on the same page as Scortchi.  In addition, there have been other things said by other people that were quite unambiguously not nice &amp; transphobic." CreationDate="2019-11-23T01:30:43.460" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19420" PostId="5800" Score="1" Text="@gung: Yes: antagonistic &amp; derisive comments about transgender people - lest anyone suspect you're using 'transphobic' in a wide sense." CreationDate="2019-11-23T01:45:43.150" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="19421" PostId="5800" Score="0" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica &quot;In addition, there have been other things said by other people that were quite unambiguously not nice &amp; transphobic.&quot; Absolutely!" CreationDate="2019-11-23T05:21:33.587" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="19422" PostId="5800" Score="7" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica and those people are still moderators." CreationDate="2019-11-24T04:33:07.177" UserId="261680" />
  <row Id="19423" PostId="5800" Score="1" Text="Wow! We got to hear from the real Monica! I hope you get a fair shake. It sure seems that you have amazing support on Cross Validated." CreationDate="2019-11-24T05:52:56.470" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="19425" PostId="5800" Score="0" Text="Who &amp; how many moderators are quiting as moderators over this?" CreationDate="2019-11-24T06:20:55.680" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="19426" PostId="5800" Score="0" Text="@MichaelR.Chernick, you need to read the meta.SE thread I linked. It has much of the information, or links to it. It specifically has a list of which moderators quit, who has suspended activity, etc." CreationDate="2019-11-24T14:00:04.297" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19427" PostId="5800" Score="0" Text="Thank you gung." CreationDate="2019-11-24T15:12:54.383" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="19428" PostId="5800" Score="0" Text="@gung Can you put the link you reference here? There is so much on this in so many posts that I am having difficulty searching for it." CreationDate="2019-11-24T15:25:23.413" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="19429" PostId="5800" Score="0" Text="@MichaelR.Chernick, if you look at my answer above, there are 2 links: one to the meta.SE main page, &amp; one to a specific thread. That's what I'm referring to." CreationDate="2019-11-24T16:04:44.317" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19430" PostId="5800" Score="0" Text="Thank you. I looked at the link. I see that the only moderator on Cross Validated officially resigned as moderator is Glen_b. @gung it seems that you have suspended activity? What does that mean?" CreationDate="2019-11-24T16:34:19.223" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="19431" PostId="5800" Score="1" Text="@MichaelR.Chernick, I am still 'officially' a moderator, but I'm not actually doing any moderating.  A lot of mods across the network have stopped moderating without stepping down (yet).  Other mods have resigned, &amp; many high-rep users have reduced their activity in one way or another (e.g., no longer reviewing, or no longer answering questions)." CreationDate="2019-11-25T00:47:07.470" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19432" PostId="5800" Score="2" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica Thank you very much for the clarification on what &quot;suspended activity&quot; means &amp; how you are applying it &amp; I appreciate the additional information. This has been illuminating and shocking." CreationDate="2019-11-25T00:55:15.693" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="19433" PostId="5800" Score="1" Text="@MichaelR.Chernick some, like me, decided to stop contributing" CreationDate="2019-11-26T20:00:22.870" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="19437" PostId="5800" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi-ReinstateMonica For some people (and the majority of those who do not use he or she), however, their personal pronoun *is &quot;they&quot;* - this is the issue that Monica ran into, though I agree with the rest of your characterization (that she would not intentionally use the wrong pronoun to describe someone, that she posed it as a question, and that nothing she said had any intent of antagonism or derision). I think this is what Alexis is referring to, as well." CreationDate="2019-12-04T20:54:00.220" UserId="135291" />
  <row Id="19438" PostId="5800" Score="0" Text="@BryanKrause: Well, yes - I thought it was already clear that was the context." CreationDate="2019-12-04T22:36:08.680" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="19440" PostId="5800" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi-ReinstateMonica I was mostly referencing your reply to Alexis' comment that you said was not clear. Being happy to use neopronouns and not singular they isn't the same as being happy to use peoples' pronouns, because some peoples' pronouns **are** *they*." CreationDate="2019-12-04T23:30:12.553" UserId="135291" />
  <row Id="19441" PostId="5800" Score="2" Text="@BryanKrause: (1) I didn't say Alexis's comment was unclear; just that I couldn't see what in particular she was referring to. A &quot;poor choice of language&quot;, &quot;at least at one point&quot;, doesn't seem to be criticism of Monica's position on pronouns *per se* but rather of something else she said during the discussion. I may be wrong. (2) They're not the same, &amp; I never said they were. Nor is  expressing unwillingness to use a particular pronoun to refer to people of non-binary gender the same as declaring opposition to the very idea of non-binary gender." CreationDate="2019-12-05T01:25:26.600" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="19434" PostId="5803" Score="4" Text="There are a strictly limited number of migration paths we can have, &amp; migrations to [datascience.SE] would be *much* less common than the paths we have." CreationDate="2019-12-02T13:00:35.453" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19435" PostId="5803" Score="0" Text="Oh, didn't know that we can't have a 4th one" CreationDate="2019-12-02T14:04:45.817" UserId="239844" />
  <row Id="19442" PostId="5805" Score="6" Text="The whole of the question is &quot;How to prepare a table to list down the variables in the data set with their corresponding scale of measurement? And how to find whether the variable is discrete or continuous where appropriate?&quot; and the one tag is R. Ignoring the first sentence I have to agree that the second sentence is very unclear. I didn't vote here and I see your main point but if one ground for closing is disputable I still think it's a poor question that needs clarification." CreationDate="2019-12-07T08:51:34.620" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19443" PostId="5805" Score="3" Text="I paid most attention to the second question, since it's also the title (figuring that signifies the central issue in the OP's mind). I agree it's a poor question that needs clarification, but the present close reason makes improving it both more difficult (why would the OP improve it if it's closed for being off topic?) and likely pointless (since it probably won't get enough votes to reopen)." CreationDate="2019-12-07T12:39:21.243" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="19444" PostId="5805" Score="6" Text="Given how sparse the question is, it needs a great deal of interpretation.  My interpretation, at first blush, is that they're looking for an R function (like `str()`) that will tell them what type their variables are.  Of course, it's possible they have something else in mind.  But if you lean away from off topic, you should be leaning into unclear, IMHO.  I would have closed this question, too." CreationDate="2019-12-07T13:08:18.537" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19445" PostId="5805" Score="3" Text="I think this would be an argument to reopen and close as unclear. (I wouldn't be posting here in that case)." CreationDate="2019-12-07T21:20:47.117" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="19447" PostId="5805" Score="4" Text="Re-opening for one reason and then closing for another has a certain logic, but the psychology is hardly better.  Note that the OP posted the same question ~90 min later on Stack Overflow https://stackoverflow.com/questions/59214945/how-to-find-whether-the-variable-is-discrete-or-continuous-where-appropriate That question was promptly closed too. Scope for interpretations all the way from &quot;the OP didn't get help twice over and was failed by SE&quot; to &quot;the OP posted questions that showed no evident attempt to understand how each site works and little effort in explaining what they needed&quot;." CreationDate="2019-12-09T18:08:17.317" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19451" PostId="5805" Score="2" Text="My thoughts are: If the aim is to improve/focus a question that is partly on topic, it should close for a reason that indicates that. If the aim is to teach a new user how to write a suitable question for the site, it should close for a reason that indicates that. Closing it as off topic when it seems an important part of the question is on topic seems unlikely to lead to a user who asks better questions." CreationDate="2019-12-10T13:06:15.963" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="19470" PostId="5805" Score="2" Text="I'll be heartless here. I think that someone who posts this kind of question - twice! - is so confused (to put it kindly) that it does not matter what closure reason we use. The reason will *not* help them clarify the question. Nothing short of major hand-holding will do so." CreationDate="2019-12-12T13:38:54.350" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="19448" PostId="5807" Score="1" Text="the link no longer works." CreationDate="2019-12-10T01:35:37.483" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="19449" PostId="5807" Score="0" Text="@MichaelR.Chernick Which link? Both the Youtube and meta SE links for me." CreationDate="2019-12-10T02:02:16.497" UserId="261340" />
  <row Id="19450" PostId="5807" Score="1" Text="It's the stackexchange meta link for changing the avatar." CreationDate="2019-12-10T02:17:30.853" UserId="11032" />
  <row Id="19471" PostId="5807" Score="1" Text="The link obviously has *your* userid in it, and does not work for anybody else." CreationDate="2019-12-17T21:17:02.870" UserId="18215" />
  <row Id="19472" PostId="5807" Score="2" Text="@ErichSchubert Sorry - I copied the link from here: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/268743/how-do-i-edit-my-profile.  When I clicked it, it automatically changed.  The correct link that should work for everyone should be https://meta.stackexchange.com/users/edit/current.  I've updated my answer." CreationDate="2019-12-17T23:28:41.847" UserId="261340" />
  <row Id="19501" PostId="5807" Score="0" Text="Latest update from Sara Chipps here: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/340906/update-an-agreement-with-monica-cellio?cb=1.  Monica has been &quot;invited ... to apply for possible reinstatement&quot;.  So she has still not been reinstated.  They've just added insult to injury." CreationDate="2019-12-23T22:58:48.160" UserId="261340" />
  <row Id="19452" PostId="5808" Score="3" Text="I agree that the duplicate I selected for closure was not a duplicate, but was based on a misreading.  However, I had no qualms about closing it because this issue (of computing partial regression coefficients) has occurred so frequently that anyone familiar with the site should have no problems finding excellent duplicates.  The problem with not closing questions fast enough is that later on we have to merge the answer threads, which is a pain and can leave some puzzling dangling references for future readers." CreationDate="2019-12-10T14:57:42.930" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="19463" PostId="5808" Score="1" Text="@whuber *&quot;has occurred so frequently that anyone familiar with the site should have no problems finding excellent duplicates&quot;* The problem is that not everybody is familiar with the site, and those is who the site should serve. So now we see five questions linked as duplicate. But, they all see different to me, which one is the real duplicate? Maybe it doesn't seem so excellent after all? (or do we from now on divert to vague links or indirect hints to answers instead of clear full answers?)" CreationDate="2019-12-10T21:01:55.200" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19464" PostId="5808" Score="0" Text="Right--not everyone is that familiar with the site.  Only a few thousand people at most can do a good job of identifying duplicates in most instances.  That's why we can be helpful to everyone else." CreationDate="2019-12-10T21:10:22.563" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="19467" PostId="5808" Score="0" Text="Fair enough anyone can make a mistake misreading a question, but making the mistake worse by linking to questions that simply do not provide what the OP is asking for is not in my opinion being »helpful«." CreationDate="2019-12-10T21:35:59.533" UserId="16367" />
  <row Id="19453" PostId="5809" Score="4" Text="On the contrary, the best thing to do is to find the duplicates.  After ten years and over 100K answered questions we can be confident that any basic question about a fundamental statistical tool will have good answers somewhere on the site.  Searching the site is not easy: it requires understanding the question and experience and creativity in guessing how else the question might have been phrased before.  One of the greatest services our regular readers can provide is to suggest suitable duplicates." CreationDate="2019-12-10T15:08:15.293" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="19454" PostId="5809" Score="1" Text="@whuber Indeed, I've memorized somewhat arcane sets of words which are unique to specific, high-quality duplicates so that I can search them more easily..." CreationDate="2019-12-10T15:51:54.323" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="19455" PostId="5809" Score="1" Text="@whuber, my answer was specific for the case when somebody feels that the close reason is not entirely correct (because the duplicate is not a close enough duplicate). Sure, if there are even more potential duplicate questions then it could help to look them up and link them (this is not so trivial for people &lt;100k rep who do not know all questions by heart). Even then, I am personally feeling helped by the fact that this question has received an answer instead of being immediately closed. Due to the new answer by the OP, I have learned something which I had not learned otherwise." CreationDate="2019-12-10T16:43:06.853" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19456" PostId="5809" Score="1" Text="@whuber Closing a question because it is duplicate, but none of the linked questions being duplicates of each other.... I find that something like a double standard. Neither do I see any of those duplicate questions where the answer by Jesper would be a good fit. The specific question might be *very close* to the others, but I believe that the real issue should be whether the specific question is *the same*. Each of the new duplicate links that you have added is still different." CreationDate="2019-12-10T16:47:06.677" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19457" PostId="5809" Score="1" Text="@whuber a closing with a *big* list of alternative questions (I count five, but somehow none of them are duplicates of each other)... does that really help the OP? I guess that any person that has this same question about an expression for a coefficient $\beta_i$ instead of the vector $\beta$ will only be *more* confused after being directed to that big list of &quot;duplicate&quot; questions." CreationDate="2019-12-10T16:52:50.423" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19458" PostId="5809" Score="1" Text="I figure that pointing to five different ways of answering the question has a better chance of communicating a solution to the OP than pointing to just one way.  Your implicit assumption that &quot;duplicates&quot; is a transitive relation is incorrect: a thread can be considered a duplicate when it concerns a different question but nevertheless happens to answer the current one.  The answer received by this thread is so close to several existing answers that I'm pretty sure we'll need to merge it with one of the dups." CreationDate="2019-12-10T18:51:06.827" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="19459" PostId="5809" Score="1" Text="@whuber you were pointing to five different ways to *ask* the question, but *zero* of them provide a good way to *answer* the question. I get that &quot;duplicates&quot; do not need to be transitive, [but at the same time we should not believe that there is *one* (or five) questions that can ask any other variation.](https://stackoverflow.blog/2010/11/16/dr-strangedupe-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-duplication)." CreationDate="2019-12-10T20:34:22.460" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19460" PostId="5809" Score="1" Text="It is a grey/nuanced area. My answer here is just based on the colored viewpoint from somebody that was helped by the particular question and answer (and not by any of the suggested duplicates). Therefore, I strongly disagree with [the suggestion](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5808/why-was-the-question-closed/5809?noredirect=1#comment19453_5809) that it would have been better to close the question (since for me, personally, it was not better)." CreationDate="2019-12-10T20:38:50.030" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19461" PostId="5809" Score="1" Text="I can not find the link (help documentation is difficult to find back on SE) but I remember the 'rule' that the idea of duplicate questions is not whether or not an answer to another question is also answering the question but about whether the question is the same as the other question." CreationDate="2019-12-10T20:43:12.327" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19462" PostId="5809" Score="1" Text="*&quot;I figure that pointing to five different ways of answering the question has a better chance of communicating a solution to the OP than pointing to just one way.&quot;* This might also be considered as: 'we do not like to consider your question, but you might try to figure out the answer yourselve by looking in one of these five questions', while at the same time the current answer under the question is answering the question better (more specifically) than any of the answers under the alternative questions. (the *vaguely* pointing to five other questions makes the duplicate reason only weaker)." CreationDate="2019-12-10T20:51:47.047" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19465" PostId="5809" Score="1" Text="There's no vague pointing: the close reason gives explicit links.  As far as I can tell, each of those links has a clear explicit answer to the question.  The non-antagonistic interpretation of the state of affairs is that people here have worked hard to identify a wide array of solutions likely to appeal to just about anyone." CreationDate="2019-12-10T21:12:11.670" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="19466" PostId="5809" Score="1" Text="It is vague because you select five options and follow it with &quot;has a better chance of communicating a solution&quot; (that is like saying, 'here is a bunch of questions that are a bit the same *maybe* you are lucky to find something useful'). What I would expect from a duplicate is another *single* question that clearly asks *the same* and also has answers that *directly* help the OP. If you can not bring down the list to *one* single duplicate, then is it really a duplicate?" CreationDate="2019-12-10T21:14:24.500" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19468" PostId="5810" Score="0" Text="Seems out-of-date. The question is not closed as I write. But emphasising again and again that you want advice on what to do in R was presumably what triggered any closure. The trick is to write a question without any reference to software whatsoever!  Otherwise the question of when to add quadratic terms is fair, but a good answer is hard beyond whenever the data or theory seem to imply that they are a good idea." CreationDate="2019-12-11T18:29:35.707" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19469" PostId="5810" Score="5" Text="I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because the question concerned is no longer closed." CreationDate="2019-12-11T18:30:09.467" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19476" PostId="5811" Score="3" Text="I'm not sure quite what constitutes the distinction between &quot;educational&quot; &amp; &quot;technical&quot; sites, whether the scope is other Stack Exchange sites or here plus other non-SE sites about Statistics, or what it might have to do with a propensity to post questions in chat. Could you expand on this a little?" CreationDate="2019-12-19T12:29:10.977" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="19482" PostId="5811" Score="0" Text="yes. **1** I used technical sites for SOFU, AD, code review, mechanics, and educational for: Science, physics, maths, chemistry, English, this site, AI, Computer science etc. **2** scope of welcome answers is just this site as I asked here only, otherwise main meta was open. But as for the scope of terminology I used, I just listed them. **3** The slight shyness that seems to be stemmed from the classrooms, and later on in lecture halls psychology.stackexchange.com/a/20683/  can be attributed to the online shyness too. none of us has the stats for this, but I speak from personal experience." CreationDate="2019-12-19T15:35:44.173" UserDisplayName="user230053" />
  <row Id="19485" PostId="5811" Score="0" Text="Also, it's easy to say on technical sites &quot;python noob&quot; &quot;no education on computers whatsoever&quot;, but it's just hard to admit &quot;stats noob&quot;, &quot;ML noob&quot;, &quot;no idea about quantum mechanics&quot; while studying(/ searching for answers on) the same topic online.  \\ (All this is personal speculation) I don't know why my thoughts were seen so crucial to be expanded." CreationDate="2019-12-19T15:43:29.087" UserDisplayName="user230053" />
  <row Id="19481" PostId="5812" Score="0" Text="I don't know why it was closed--but it certainly isn't about [tag:mathematical-statistics]! Consider applying relevant tags." CreationDate="2019-12-19T15:10:56.477" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="19486" PostId="5812" Score="3" Text="I didn't (cannot) vote for closure, but it seems to me like a puzzle problem, or HW problem. and didn't show efforts to solve it (?)" CreationDate="2019-12-19T15:47:29.200" UserDisplayName="user230053" />
  <row Id="19487" PostId="5812" Score="0" Text="Upon reading it through, I cannot find an answerable question.  I posted an explanatory comment in that thread." CreationDate="2019-12-19T20:09:47.327" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="19488" PostId="5812" Score="0" Text="@whuber - I just posted an answer to your comment there." CreationDate="2019-12-20T08:42:41.727" UserId="268996" />
  <row Id="19477" PostId="5813" Score="3" Text="+ a reason sometimes stated by askers in chat is that they believe their question's too elementary for the main site." CreationDate="2019-12-19T12:51:46.310" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="19478" PostId="5813" Score="2" Text="@Scortchi-ReinstateMonica Often the opener is that this is a quick or simple question, while frequently the  question may not be simple and a good answer may not be quickly given," CreationDate="2019-12-19T13:22:59.637" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19479" PostId="5813" Score="1" Text="@NickCox: And the answers to apparently elementary questions are sometimes quite advanced. In any case, a simple, elementary question that can be answered quickly isn't unsuited for the main site on that account." CreationDate="2019-12-19T13:40:57.023" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="19480" PostId="5813" Score="1" Text="@Scortchi-ReinstateMonica, yes. My typical interpretation of those is that they are slightly embarrassed to be asking a &quot;simple&quot; question &amp; like the fact that it will soon disappear (my #3), but I can add that to the list." CreationDate="2019-12-19T14:01:49.200" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19484" PostId="5813" Score="0" Text="very possible reasons! \\ I also posted my POV above." CreationDate="2019-12-19T15:38:57.520" UserDisplayName="user230053" />
  <row Id="19489" PostId="5815" Score="0" Text="(1) First of all, thank you for your time and for such a detailed answer.&#xA;“*it is already not clear who wins even when the timers working correctly*”&#xA;&#xA;– That’s, in fact, what my whole question is all about. By the end of the competition each contestant comes up with at least two results (for a moment let’s just assume that they all spend equal amounts of time to complete their tasks): the result B, that is, the number of boxes he has opened, and the result C, that is, the number of cards he has gathered." CreationDate="2019-12-20T10:20:52.440" UserId="268996" />
  <row Id="19490" PostId="5815" Score="0" Text="(2) Because each contestant has two numbers as a result, instead of just one number (like that would be, say, in racing), I don’t know how to decide the winner. I mean, if we have only two contestants with B1 smaller than B2, and with C1 bigger than C2, then it’s clear that contestant 1 is the winner. However, what if I have three contenders? Than, how am I supposed to decide who the loser is, who takes the second place and who the winner is?" CreationDate="2019-12-20T10:21:13.827" UserId="268996" />
  <row Id="19491" PostId="5815" Score="0" Text="(3) Should I divide B by C in each case and then compare the quotients ( B1/C1 ~ B2/C2 ~ B3/C3 )? Or should I compare the C/B quotients ( C1/B1 ~ C2/B2 ~ C3/B3 )? Or, perhaps, should I compare the averages ( (C1+B1)/2 ~ (C2+B2)/2 ~ (C3+B3)/2 )? Or should I, perhaps, come up with some other formula that would also involve the number of boxes in each room, which 40, and the number of cards in each room, which is 840 (1+2+3+4+5+6+7+…+37+38+39+60 = 840)?" CreationDate="2019-12-20T10:21:22.487" UserId="268996" />
  <row Id="19492" PostId="5815" Score="0" Text="@brilliant your problem does not sound like a statistics question. It seems, for the moment, more like a game-theory to me. So there are two elements missing. 1) the question is missing the link with statistics and this needs to be explained (when I first saw the question and was wondering why you post it here I was imagining that maybe you wanted to incorporate some computations of randomness and probability into your analysis). ....." CreationDate="2019-12-20T14:09:54.780" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19493" PostId="5815" Score="1" Text="....2) The questions is missing information (no sufficient information to answer: should you divide or do something else... it depends on what you want). Without information there is no way to decide how to decide. It is of course possible that you have troubles with expressing this information as you may not know what sort of information is neccesary. But something that should be easy is explaining *why/whatfor* you have this question. If you explain the background then people might infer the information from that or provide you with more directed questions that ask you for this information." CreationDate="2019-12-20T14:11:58.700" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19494" PostId="5815" Score="0" Text="I see. Thank you. I am working now on re-writing my question using the points you've brought up. I firstly asked this question on math.se ( https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/3480917/comparing-entities-by-their-three-different-parameters ) and later was told that math deals more with consequences rather than a process. I didn't understand what it meant. Later the question was closed there, so I came here because I thought it was more related to statistical analysis." CreationDate="2019-12-20T14:18:00.480" UserId="268996" />
  <row Id="19496" PostId="5815" Score="0" Text="@moderators - I have just re-written my question. Please, re-open it." CreationDate="2019-12-22T16:10:21.447" UserId="268996" />
  <row Id="19497" PostId="5815" Score="0" Text="@brilliant, you should note that it is not a guarantee for reopening. (is it about statistics now?)" CreationDate="2019-12-22T17:18:01.000" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19500" PostId="5816" Score="7" Text="+1 I have recently approved a large number of such edits because they reflect a concerted attempt to make our site friendlier: they targeted self-deprecating phrases including words like &quot;dumb&quot; and &quot;stupid.&quot;  Eliminating &quot;best regards&quot; looks like an extension of that program.  However, editing out &quot;best regards&quot; may have crossed some (invisible, hard-to-describe) threshold between improving the site and making trivial changes." CreationDate="2019-12-23T13:52:43.223" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="19498" PostId="5817" Score="0" Text="Something along the lines of your second point has also been raised in [this meta question](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/122567/623682). However this question is fairly old, it doesn't seem to me that anything came of it." CreationDate="2019-12-23T11:25:04.327" UserId="20221" />
  <row Id="19499" PostId="5817" Score="1" Text="@deemel You're right on all important levels. Ironically or otherwise: the post there cries out for minor edits. It's chock-full of sentences that are independent clauses strung together with commas. I resisted." CreationDate="2019-12-23T12:36:44.060" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19513" PostId="5817" Score="0" Text="There is a fourth irritation. There are good constructive edits and there are small nitpicking edits. On the one hand I always like it when Nick Cox is edditing my posts and improves spelling and grammar. On the other hand things like removing a 'thank you' are style edits and this can be anoying for the person that originally used that style. Yes, somewhere in the help of SE there is a style guide that tells that such informal pieces like 'thank you' are not neccesary and ideally we all use same style. However, it comes across as nitpicking, strict, extremely uniform when it get's edited." CreationDate="2019-12-26T19:54:08.543" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19495" PostId="5819" Score="2" Text="It seems like the first place to start making the differences apparent would be to edit the titles to more closely ask the central quesion" CreationDate="2019-12-20T15:40:03.197" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="19502" PostId="5821" Score="9" Text="There's no need to continue to have the GoFundMe information--her GFM campaign is closed. From my point of view, the result is unsatisfactory &amp; she should still be reinstated. I recognize that SE isn't going to do anything they aren't forced to do &amp; the lawsuit is over, but that doesn't change what should still be done. I intend to keep my avatar &amp; username for now. I don't know if / when I'll change or to what." CreationDate="2019-12-24T13:51:10.850" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19503" PostId="5821" Score="3" Text="I agree that Monica should be reinstated. However, based on the agreement, it sounds like she herself is not pushing for this any more (otherwise she would not have agreed to this wording), and I can't blame her. I personally do not see the point of agitating for something Monica herself apparently does not push for. I'll change back when I can bring myself to do it. It's all very sordid and not at all what I want to ruminate on this time of year." CreationDate="2019-12-24T14:16:35.703" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="19504" PostId="5821" Score="8" Text="Not quite. She stated on the agreement thread (now deleted) that she wants to be reinstated; if I recall the phrasing correctly, &quot;to have the removal reversed&quot;. In place of that, SE has reoffered for her to go through the moderator reinstatement process that they set up after she was fired (the one she already declined). The issue there is that the reinstatement process assumes the person is guilty / was correctly removed, &amp; her agreeing to go through that process amounts to her implicitly acknowledging that. That's why they want her to do it &amp; she doesn't want to." CreationDate="2019-12-24T14:26:22.413" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19505" PostId="5821" Score="1" Text="Yes, I get all this. My point is that she agreed to the agreement. Which does not include her reinstatement. I take her agreeing to it that she will not pursue reinstatement outside the new process. (And *in addition*, she will not go through the new process. Two different things.) Am I mistaken?" CreationDate="2019-12-24T14:31:42.233" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="19506" PostId="5821" Score="5" Text="It's plausible that Monica sincerely believed that this agreement was the best that was going to actually happen, &amp; so it was that or nothing. It's hard to say if the agreement is something she actually finds agreeable on its merits. Her statement that she would like the removal to be reversed implies the agreement is not fully acceptable." CreationDate="2019-12-24T14:39:26.157" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19509" PostId="5821" Score="5" Text="Yes, Monica signed a contract. But she may not actually agree with it, and it could be something that she was forced to do. That you find 'the agreement utterly unsatisfactory' says enough how this could have gone. SE/SO has won a legal battle and has *not* reinstated Monica or has *not* shown to have done anything that would be a *satisfactory* agreement for Monica. I am not gonna remove my avatar now and do as if this *legal* settlement settles the case sufficiently. Sadly SE/SO believes it is just enough to handle it legally, but to me this is not a legal issue." CreationDate="2019-12-25T22:54:20.863" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19510" PostId="5821" Score="0" Text="Could one change a username to 'fire some managers' or something like that? According to the cc-by sa license I have the right to my name, or a pseudonym, being associated with my contributions but I imagine there are limitations." CreationDate="2019-12-25T23:00:34.607" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19521" PostId="5821" Score="3" Text="The offered process for reinstatement was flawed - essentially it was not in any sense designed to be a fair process - and as structured was tantamount to an admission of guilt; in the circumstances I wouldn't have accepted it either, no matter how keen I might be to get the diamond back. The company is still able to offer her reinstatement *without* conditions and it could *then* apply the actual processes for removal of a moderator. The non-acceptance of the flawed application process was not a new thing, Monica rejected it for publicly stated reasons months ago. ... ctd" CreationDate="2019-12-27T22:35:48.710" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="19522" PostId="5821" Score="3" Text="ctd ... as far as I can see from the announcement, the only substantive change to the various positions from well before any of us had &quot;Reinstate Monica&quot; avatars is that the company have removed a couple of posts of theirs that could be seen as defamatory.. Everything else seems to be exactly the same as the situation then. I'm happy they're at least taken a small step to stop defaming her (but apparently only because lawyers made that happen) -- but because nothing else has changed, I see no good reason to stop asking them to simply reinstate her (or at least offer it) to undo the ... ctd" CreationDate="2019-12-27T22:38:13.687" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="19523" PostId="5821" Score="3" Text="... capricious removal. They didn't apply proper process in removing her and there's no good reason to require she follow a process for reinstatement that builds in the assumption she *was* properly removed in the first place (but even in the case of a properly applied removal is not in a process many mods seem to think to be fair or reasonable)." CreationDate="2019-12-27T22:43:11.313" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="19526" PostId="5821" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b-ReinstateMonica: I agree with *every single word* you write here. My point is that Monica herself apparently does not pursue reinstatement any more, given that she signed off on that agreement, and that I don't see any information to the contrary. It is against this background that I don't see the continued usefulness in calling for it. YMMV." CreationDate="2019-12-28T06:39:28.153" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="19528" PostId="5821" Score="2" Text="@S.Kolassa-ReinstateMonica, she says she still wants to be reinstated, so I'm not sure it's correct to say that she &quot;does not pursue reinstatement any more&quot;. She did accept the agreement, whatever it entailed, but my guess is she was strongly advised that this was all she could get." CreationDate="2019-12-28T13:35:08.233" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19529" PostId="5821" Score="0" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica: can you give a link where she says so? I would have expected such a statement on her GoFundMe page, and there is nothing there. Someone mentioned a post that has meanwhile been deleted. I wouldn't use deleted posts as expressions of intent." CreationDate="2019-12-28T13:53:30.707" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="19532" PostId="5821" Score="2" Text="@S.Kolassa-ReinstateMonica, she said so in a comment to her answer [here](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/340914/187282), which has since been deleted. [Here](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/340906/update-an-agreement-with-monica-cellio#comment1139733_340914) is the [dead] comment link." CreationDate="2019-12-28T18:09:52.533" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19551" PostId="5821" Score="0" Text="Yes, that was my understanding. So why would Monica not note explicitly on her GoFundMe page that she still wants to be reinstated? I can only imagine that either (a) she does not want to be reinstated, or (b) she does want it, but the agreement she signs precludes her from publicizing it. And crucially, *there is no way for us to decide between (a) and (b)*. If this was important to her, I find it hard to believe she could not have left the possibility of at least *mentioning* it out of the agreement she signed. Which only leaves me with the conclusion that it is *not* crucial to her. ..." CreationDate="2019-12-29T07:11:39.267" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="19552" PostId="5821" Score="0" Text="... Where is my error in logic?" CreationDate="2019-12-29T07:11:49.523" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="19556" PostId="5821" Score="1" Text="I don't understand your reasoning. *She said quite clearly that she wants to be reinstated.* Is your question just, 'why did she only say it on meta.SE &amp; not also say it on her GFM page?' That distinction doesn't seem as important to me as it does to you. I find it suspicious that the only thing posted on the GFM page is exactly the same as the OP from the meta post. I suspect part of the non-disclosure agreement was that exact text be all that's posted there. I don't know, of course, &amp; I don't know who deleted the comment, or why, but I do know that she said she still wanted to be reinstated." CreationDate="2019-12-29T15:16:55.463" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19561" PostId="5821" Score="0" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica: Just to clarify: she wrote that she wanted to be reinstated as a comment to her answer saying that she cannot comment further? And that comment was later deleted? Can you remember what the comment said, exactly? (I think we can assume she deleted it herself, realizing/remembering that the settlement does not allow her to comment further.)" CreationDate="2019-12-29T15:50:29.503" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="19563" PostId="5821" Score="1" Text="@amoebasaysReinstateMonica, yes: she wrote that as a comment under her answer that she isn't allowed to say more. It's reasonable to imagine she deleted it herself. It was a brief comment in response to someone else's comment. It said something like, 'yes, I still want to be reinstated, or more accurately, I want the removal to be reversed'. I can't see it, as I'm not a mod on meta.SE, but that was the gist of it." CreationDate="2019-12-29T15:57:12.750" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19565" PostId="5821" Score="1" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica: I am sorry I am being unclear. To be honest, I don't quite see how I could make my reasoning clearer. If she still wants to be reinstated, why does she not say so at the GoFundMe site, or anywhere else she will not be deleted? If she is precluded from stating so by an agreement she signed, why did she sign the agreement? If she did sign it, I can only conclude that the agreement provided some compensation she found sufficient. My bottom line is that I don't see the point of calling for a reinstatement that Monica herself is not calling for any more." CreationDate="2019-12-29T16:09:25.057" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="19566" PostId="5821" Score="1" Text="It sounds like you're making a distinction b/t 2 places a statement can be posted. It sounds like you're saying, 'b/c she said she wanted to be reinstated in 1 place, but didn't say she wanted to be reinstated in another place, I conclude she doesn't *really* want to be reinstated'. Whereas my take is that I think she still wants to be reinstated b/c she said she does. I don't put much stock in *where* she says it." CreationDate="2019-12-29T16:39:48.197" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19567" PostId="5821" Score="1" Text="I don't know any more about the agreement than you do, but I suspect that it implies she is very constrained in what she can say. I'm guessing it dictated what was posted on the GFM page, eg. I suspect she wanted more, but her lawyer strongly advised her that there was no way reinstatement would be part of any agreement. My guess the agreement was a simple payout &amp; NDA, &amp; her lawyer told her it was that or nothing. Lawyers typically get a slice of the payout, so their incentives are to settle as quickly as possible for as much as possible." CreationDate="2019-12-29T17:01:01.837" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19568" PostId="5821" Score="0" Text="Even if they are being paid along the way, they don't typically favor a long, uncertain process. So given that she says she wants to be reinstated, I conclude that she wants to be reinstated, even though there was a (secret) agreement that didn't include reinstatement. These are all guesses. You guesses may differ &amp; mine may be wrong. By far, the largest part of my thinking on the matter is that she says she wants to be reinstated." CreationDate="2019-12-29T17:06:31.503" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19569" PostId="5821" Score="0" Text="No, I am not concerned about her posting her intentions at one vs. at two places. My point is that her comment at one place was deleted, so it is not visible any more, and she apparently does not make any effort to comment *visibly* that she still wants to be reinstated. &quot;She says she wants to be reinstated&quot; - she could do so very easily by making a comment somewhere visible. *She chose not to do so.* Without a visible statement somewhere, whether or not she still wants to be reinstated is a matter of thought-reading, which I am not good at. That's the entirety of my point." CreationDate="2019-12-29T17:34:54.153" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="19570" PostId="5821" Score="5" Text="Stephan, but the settlement is apparently prohibiting Monica to say anything this matter publicly. If so, then she cannot make a comment anywhere; I'm not sure why you say that &quot;she could do so very easily&quot;. Doing that would probably break the terms of the settlement with whatever legal consequences this entails. (cc @gung-ReinstateMonica)" CreationDate="2019-12-29T20:05:45.370" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="19571" PostId="5821" Score="1" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica That said, I personally don't understand why she signed this settlement. How much money could she have been offered that she was willing to sign a pretty embarrassing agreement that effectively makes SE &quot;win&quot; + sign NDA that puts here in a stupid situation she is currently in when she cannot comment on that anymore. I truly cannot imagine. Can it be million(s) of dollars? If it's not a huge sum of money then why would she sign that instead of choosing &quot;nothing&quot;? I am really confused by that." CreationDate="2019-12-29T20:11:33.323" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="19572" PostId="5821" Score="1" Text="Those are reasonable points, @amoebasaysReinstateMonica. I don't know. None of us really know, b/c we don't know what's in the agreement. My *guess*, FWIW, is that the lawyer negotiated a quick payout &amp; strongly encouraged her that it was this or nothing. Obviously, I don't know, but that's a fairly common set of events. She was at a substantial disadvantage, vis-a-vie the negotiation: it isn't clear her complaint would hold up legally, except for the defamation part, &amp; that could be muddied by a good lawyer in court. Moreover, SE could have dragged this out over a long time &amp; bled her dry." CreationDate="2019-12-30T00:50:54.453" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19574" PostId="5821" Score="0" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica I understand that her case might have been weak and I can easily imagine that her lawyers argued it was &quot;this or nothing&quot;. I don't understand why she did not choose &quot;nothing&quot;. She could have dropped her case (assuming it was hopeless) and walked away. I cannot imagine being in her shoes and choosing to sign an NDA, given all the public attention *she had herself worked hard to attract to this situation*." CreationDate="2019-12-30T09:54:27.323" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="19575" PostId="5821" Score="0" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica I think what Stephan is getting at here, is that Monica's decision to (presumably) choose money over the possibility to keep her stance seems to undermine the cause for us to keep fighting for her." CreationDate="2019-12-30T10:35:11.440" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="19577" PostId="5821" Score="1" Text="You're an idealist, @amoebasaysReinstateMonica, that's a hard line for a normal person. I see your point, now. I suppose I'm a little more lenient." CreationDate="2019-12-30T13:46:48.657" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19584" PostId="5821" Score="1" Text="Yes, @amoebasaysReinstateMonica's [comment](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5783/reinstate-monica/5821?noredirect=1#comment19575_5821) precisely encapsulates my thinking. After all, it seemed to me like her legal bills were covered by her GoFundMe site, and there was no countersuit by SO. It's good that we now understand each other's point, even if we draw different conclusions." CreationDate="2019-12-31T15:46:31.197" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="19589" PostId="5821" Score="1" Text="@amoeba My understanding of the legal action was to get StackOverflow to stop harming her reputation. We don't know what was in the agreement, but that was the stated aim." CreationDate="2020-01-03T04:12:01.677" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="19590" PostId="5821" Score="1" Text="@S.Kolassa The gofundme page says she still wants to be reinstated because (apparently) she does, as she indicated previously. SO can certainly do just that, simply by saying &quot;since we removed her improperly, let's just reinstate her&quot;. I don't see anything anywhere that changed that. What she was not prepared to do (inferring from her public statements) was submit to the procedure SO laid out for moderators to be reinstated after having been properly removed, which they admitted was not the case with Monica. This seems to be the present situation (though she could also decide to apply later)." CreationDate="2020-01-03T04:54:45.737" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="19591" PostId="5821" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b-ReinstateMonica: where on the GoFundMe site does she say so? The last thing she seems to have posted is the precise wording of the agreement that is also on Meta.SE, with a few words on what she will do with any surplus funds, nothing on her still wanting to be reinstated. Nor is there anything on [her blog](https://cellio.dreamwidth.org/)." CreationDate="2020-01-03T06:21:22.387" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="19592" PostId="5821" Score="0" Text="@S.Kolassa-ReinstateMonica Sorry, I was repeating (/ responding to) something you said earlier, not re-reading the page myself; I may have read it out of context. If I screwed up, I apologize. But in any case, to my recollection she said so earlier on meta.SE, and I don't think that changed." CreationDate="2020-01-03T06:25:44.680" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="19593" PostId="5821" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b-ReinstateMonica: yes, earlier she said that. The problem (for me) is that the last communication we got from her was that *agreement*, which to me suggests she does not wish for reinstatement any more (at least in the absence of any clear communication to the contrary from her), so as per above, I don't see the point in calling for it any more... And I agree that this comment thread is getting unwieldy." CreationDate="2020-01-03T08:34:32.690" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="19594" PostId="5821" Score="0" Text="She did not apply for the reinstatement process SO developed; she had previously indicated why she would not (while still seeking reinstatement). There was ***nothing new*** in the meta post - by the very person that publicly defamed her, for goodness sake - it was simply a re-statement that she wasn't doing what she had already told us she would not do -- which is to undergo an unfair process that assumed her guilt, and which had numerous flaws (which were discussed at length by her and others on meta). You act as if this was new; but it isn't, she already said that before the gofundme." CreationDate="2020-01-03T09:24:31.983" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="19595" PostId="5821" Score="0" Text="I expect that the conclusion you drew was very much what SO sought to get people to conclude by the way they phrased it, but it doesn't actually indicate *any change* from Monica's position as I understood it in November." CreationDate="2020-01-03T09:28:30.173" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="19597" PostId="5821" Score="0" Text="To clarify, if I recall right, the post by Sara Chipps says Monica &quot;has not applied&quot; for reinstatement (i.e. by their current process). Monica already indicated she had problems with it; no surprise there. It doesn't tell us that she doesn't want reinstatement. It doesn't tell us she will not apply. It just tells us that at the time of that post she had not applied; a fact at that point in time. We should be very careful not to assume it means any more than that she has not (by then) applied. . You should be free to do what you like with your username &amp; icon, of course." CreationDate="2020-01-03T10:03:01.130" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="19598" PostId="5821" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b-ReinstateMonica: to be honest, it seems like we are repeating the entire conversation over again I already had with gung. I see the agreement. Monica has signed it. *If I do not see anything else than such an agreement*, yes, I indeed believe that is the end of the story. If I should draw any other conclusion, I believe Monica should clarify. She has many other venues for mentioning that she indeed still wants to be reinstated. She chose not to do so. Concluding from this silence that her pre-agreement views still hold seems to me quite a leap." CreationDate="2020-01-03T11:04:50.150" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="19599" PostId="5821" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b-ReinstateMonica: and no, I am not acting like there was anything new in that agreement. Please don't put words in my mouth. The only thing I am commenting on is that (a) Monica has signed that agreement, which in itself is indeed a new development, and (b) she has nowhere since then indicated that she nevertheless would prefer to be reinstated. Why would she not do so? The only conclusion I can draw from this is that she has closed this chapter of her life and moved on." CreationDate="2020-01-03T11:07:31.990" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="19600" PostId="5821" Score="0" Text="&quot;I am not acting like there was anything new in that agreement&quot; -- AFAIK we're not talking about the agreement but about the separate statement by Sara Chipps that Monica has not applied for reinstatement." CreationDate="2020-01-03T11:23:40.267" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="19601" PostId="5821" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b-ReinstateMonica: where did I act as if this specific statement was new? It wasn't, and I am quite aware it wasn't, and I don't think I ever implied I wasn't." CreationDate="2020-01-03T11:24:49.583" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="19602" PostId="5821" Score="1" Text="In your post you quoted the statement and then specified an action you were taking as a result. What else changed between the quote and the stated action? [The offer and Monica's concerns about were all there before any of us changed avatars or usernames to call for her reinstatement. If Sara Chipps pointing out that she had not reapplied changes your behaviour, it does seem to suggest you think something new occurred]" CreationDate="2020-01-03T11:27:36.913" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="19603" PostId="5821" Score="1" Text="Seems that SE contacted the Register again: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/01/02/stack_overflow_settles/" CreationDate="2020-01-03T11:44:02.907" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="19604" PostId="5821" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b-ReinstateMonica: Monica agreed to a statement that did not include the reinstatement she had been calling for. This is a new development. And she didn't mention anywhere else that she was *still* pursuing reinstatement. I took these as meaning she doesn't pursue reinstatement." CreationDate="2020-01-03T14:01:38.790" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="19605" PostId="5821" Score="1" Text="To be honest, I am a little exasperated at reiterating my understanding over and over *and over* **AND YET OVER** again. I fail to see what's unclear about it, I truly do. I recommend [amoeba's statement](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5783/reinstate-monica/5821?noredirect=1#comment19575_5821), which says exactly what I have been trying to convey, and [at least gung appears to understand my position now](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5783/reinstate-monica/5821?noredirect=1#comment19577_5821)." CreationDate="2020-01-03T14:04:12.267" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="19606" PostId="5821" Score="1" Text="I think it's time for me to take a little break. I will not be commenting in this thread any more." CreationDate="2020-01-03T14:04:30.427" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="19607" PostId="5821" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b-ReinstateMonica The quote in Stephan's post is not a &quot;separate statement by Sara Chipps&quot;, it is [presumably] part of the agreement itself. I am not sure what you meant here." CreationDate="2020-01-03T15:28:50.147" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="19614" PostId="5821" Score="1" Text="@amoeba I really don't see that it can itself part of an agreement, it's a description of historical fact. That the offer and her declining to take it up at present could be explicitly mentioned in such a post *might* have been agreed, but that's not at all the same thing. It might even have been agreed that one or both parties stipulate to the offer having been made and declined, but again, that doesn't make the offer itself part of the agreement (I don't even see how that could make any sense)." CreationDate="2020-01-04T03:08:02.433" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="19615" PostId="5821" Score="1" Text="... since an agreement is where two parties each have a list of things they want and which they negotiate over and one or both compromising until both sides agree. If Monica was not seeking such an offer (and clearly wasn't), they're free to offer it or not offer it independently of an agreement (what's the leverage here? what's to gain for either side in &quot;making the offer&quot; and its declining being part of an agreement - they freely offer what was already on offer, she declines for already clear reasons). What's to agree anywhere in that?" CreationDate="2020-01-04T03:19:49.263" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="19618" PostId="5821" Score="2" Text="@Glen_b-ReinstateMonica I meant that the quote is taken from the *statement* that the lawyers of Monica and SE have presumably agreed upon (because the same identical statement appeared on meta.SE and Monica's gofundme page). That's all I meant. I imagine Monica and SE signed something and this something included this statement." CreationDate="2020-01-04T15:02:34.887" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="19512" PostId="5822" Score="3" Text="The minimum number of characters requirement is system-wide. In general, people believe edits should be larger / more substantial the older the post (see: [Handling “suggested edits” to posts](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1284/)). I agree w/ your concern about &quot;self-shaming&quot; language--I've approved a number of those. Ideally, &quot;Thanks&quot; etc should go, but are also probably too minor on their own to bump an old thread, IMO. When you edit, go through the entire post &amp; take care of everything that needs to be addressed (cf, [here](https://stats.stackexchange.com/posts/403756/revisions))." CreationDate="2019-12-26T14:09:44.987" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19573" PostId="5824" Score="0" Text="If answers to one will serve as answers to the other, the questions should normally be merged under the best (most canonical) version of the question." CreationDate="2019-12-30T04:03:52.367" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="19576" PostId="5824" Score="0" Text="Merge as in https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/19977/guideline-merging-so-questions-answers ?" CreationDate="2019-12-30T10:47:14.777" UserId="239844" />
  <row Id="19578" PostId="5824" Score="0" Text="It's talking about the same kind of thing, though the process in the answer there is more involved and formal that what has usually happened in practice here for most merges (it's a good process though). More directly, merging is something a moderator can do (e.g. in response to a flag or because they conclude there's a need to do so themselves), which copies all the answers to one question into the answers on another question, and marks the question those answers came from (the source) as having been merged. Ideally the target post is already in a state suitable to act as a canonical question" CreationDate="2019-12-30T14:43:20.003" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="19579" PostId="5824" Score="0" Text="... at the time, but it can be edited (as suggested at the link you offer) to make it so. However, we don't have a `canonical-answer` tag. We do have a `canonical-question` tag, though, if it is one, but many of our merged questions don't have it." CreationDate="2019-12-30T14:44:15.127" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="19582" PostId="5824" Score="0" Text="Thank you for your explanation. I didn't find a specific flag to suggest a merge, so I flagged a moderator with an explanation. The question might be considered canonical, but since we only have two questions with the `canonical-question` tag to use as an example, I don't really think I can judge that." CreationDate="2019-12-31T06:22:39.320" UserId="239844" />
  <row Id="19583" PostId="5824" Score="1" Text="Sounds like the right kind of thing to do. If you're not sure about the tag, just leave it." CreationDate="2019-12-31T06:37:43.550" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="19611" PostId="5824" Score="0" Text="IMHO these two Qs can and should be merged, as I commented over there back in 2016 ;) It's a tough call to choose the merging target because both have good and accepted answers and both threads are well upvoted. However, one has considerably more views and more upvotes; I think that one should be used as the merging target. CC @Glen_b-ReinstateMonica." CreationDate="2020-01-03T21:05:42.740" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="19511" PostId="5825" Score="0" Text="Thanks Sextus for the response and sorry for the uncalled comment. This is the first time I've complained on &quot;... Meta&quot; (I am a member of  27 sites and have asked questions in over 15). It is always possible to dig into someone's question and find something to argue about. It is not necessary for one to read the cited paper in my question (it is just an example showing that such papers exist). My question is not perfect but I had spent quite some time to make it understandable.&#xA;&#xA;I delete my question but put its screen-shots in the present Meta question to make it self-contained." CreationDate="2019-12-26T04:05:21.600" UserId="246844" />
  <row Id="19515" PostId="5826" Score="12" Text="And we have the right to be upset by it too, since we are customers of the services SE offers. Don't get your point at all." CreationDate="2019-12-27T18:10:49.040" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="19516" PostId="5826" Score="0" Text="As a customer, you have no right to tell the company officials how to run their company. Its simple, you dont like their service or decisions, you can seek help elsewhere, its free market. I cant go to McDonalds and tell the management, why did they fire Bob." CreationDate="2019-12-27T19:50:55.180" UserId="249944" />
  <row Id="19517" PostId="5826" Score="13" Text="I think you've got the reasoning backwards. I can make a criticism of anyone or anything for any reason -- but they're under no obligation to do anything about it. Following your reasoning to its logical conclusion, you're suggesting that no one should be allowed to criticize BP for poisoning the Gulf of Mexico, or Boeing for killing hundreds with the 737MAX, or Arthur Anderson for cooking Enron's books. I don't know about you, but I'd prefer marine life to not be poisoned, aircraft to be flightworthy, and financial criminals pilloried... Of course, you're allowed to disagree." CreationDate="2019-12-27T20:25:21.273" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="19519" PostId="5826" Score="0" Text="@SycoraxsaysReinstateMonica, You comment is the classical example of misdirection. You are equating apples to bananas.  There are protocols in place by the government and other parties in the form of conformity that is unlawful to neglect. Violations of those conformities by the company makes the company accountable by law. However, &quot;the general policy&quot; of the company to decide if they should have a printer in all the offices or only one or should the pantry be equipped with expresso machine or not or monica be fired or not, is the matter of the company only. Its not that hard to understand." CreationDate="2019-12-27T22:21:19.697" UserId="249944" />
  <row Id="19524" PostId="5826" Score="13" Text="Even if we restrict the consideration to employment, (1) I'm still entitled to express an opinion about firing Monica; (2) firing Monica, besmirching her character, and disparaging her to the press is wrong; (3) and possibly illegal. If the crux of your argument is that I have no power over SO, then you're correct, but completely missing the point: **people who do dumb or bad stuff should be criticized**; that criticism has moral value; any legal characterization is *at most* one-third of the issue. Perhaps you believe SO wasn't wrong to fire Monica, but no one is above reproach." CreationDate="2019-12-27T22:47:45.480" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="19525" PostId="5826" Score="6" Text="Anyway, my point about BP, Boeing and Arthur Anderson is that *I can criticize them*. It seems that you've confused criticism and legal liability. These two things are different. Even if there's no underlying *legal wrongdoing*, I can still have an opinion and express that opinion." CreationDate="2019-12-27T23:10:51.217" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="19527" PostId="5826" Score="0" Text="@SycoraxsaysReinstateMonica I understand your point, me and my collegue have suffered even worse, we were laid off from a tech firm due to their yearly loss, the management decided to lay us off because we were among senior member who were paid high and entitled to benefits (Not because of our performance), hence, we accepted it because we &quot;signed a contract&quot; before joining that the company is entitled to fire the staff without any reason. This clause in the contract mentioned &quot;at will&quot; and thats it. Now should we decide to be SJW and create a union, the free market wont be free anymore." CreationDate="2019-12-28T12:19:12.077" UserId="249944" />
  <row Id="19530" PostId="5826" Score="3" Text="I'm sorry that you were laid off. That must have been a very trying time for you and your colleague. Your claim appears to be that because you were laid off, anyone anywhere can be laid off for any reason. But I don't understand why *your firm* laying *you* off justifies *SO* firing *Monica* and smearing her. This is an apples and bananas comparison." CreationDate="2019-12-28T15:03:53.423" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="19531" PostId="5826" Score="5" Text="If your point is that corporations are cruel and the American economy gives workers little recourse, then of course I agree with you. If you're somehow trying to use this as an example of why unions or social reforms are bad, or to show that the so-called &quot;free market&quot; is good, then I'm afraid you've gotten your argument backwards again." CreationDate="2019-12-28T15:08:36.863" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="19534" PostId="5826" Score="0" Text="@SycoraxsaysReinstateMonica for your first comments, I am not using my example to justify anything. Thats how world works. Coming to the case of Monica, she was a moderator on volunteering basis, so she was not actually fired or her account was blocked. Her privileges were removed but she still could access her account, so i dont see much of an issue here. When the management decides to change the team captain of say football, should the captain start crying? No one forced her to become moderator in the first place nor the company swore any obligation to keep her as moderator indefinitely." CreationDate="2019-12-28T18:49:09.957" UserId="249944" />
  <row Id="19535" PostId="5826" Score="0" Text="Anyways I dont think i can add anything to this to change your mind, it is one of those political discussions where one discusses logic and other discusses morals." CreationDate="2019-12-28T18:50:38.543" UserId="249944" />
  <row Id="19536" PostId="5826" Score="7" Text="Which of your statements should be read as arguments and which are merely unrelated anecdotes? We’re not talking about an abstract situation involving football, we’re talking about what happened to Monica. Given the strange leaps of logic and selection of weird, unrelated examples to justify your position (what position? Why was it **good** to fire and disparage Monica?), it seems out you have neither logic nor morality on your side. Anyway, logic and morality aren’t exclusive positions. An entire field of philosophy dedicated to *reasoning* about what is right and just." CreationDate="2019-12-28T19:14:14.127" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="19537" PostId="5826" Score="2" Text="Ultimately, if you think that logic and morality are mutually exclusive, either you’re subscribing to bad logic or you’re subscribing to bad morals. I’ll let you sort out which is which. But I really hope you take a moment and rigorously think through why you think it’s true that it’s impossible to be both logical and moral." CreationDate="2019-12-28T19:49:59.050" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="19539" PostId="5826" Score="0" Text="@SycoraxsaysReinstateMonica What i am saying it is neither **good** or **bad** to **demote**, (**not fire**) Monica, it is just what **owner** wants, whether you like it or not. If Mark Zuckerberg doesnt want me to open up Facebook account, I wont be able to. Now I can start SJW forum to discuss this all day long and even start GoFundMe to fight back that Mark Zuckerberg doesnt want me to be on Facebook, it wont mean a thing. Thats not how corporate world works. If my friend excludes me and invites other to his house, I will not go crazy over social media no matter how insulting it could be." CreationDate="2019-12-28T20:32:15.297" UserId="249944" />
  <row Id="19540" PostId="5826" Score="0" Text="@SycoraxsaysReinstateMonica your arguments will work well in communist setting, where public jointly holds the rights to an entity." CreationDate="2019-12-28T20:37:57.877" UserId="249944" />
  <row Id="19541" PostId="5826" Score="6" Text="Are you really suggesting that just because someone *has* power, it is right use that power to do *anything* that is not explicitly illegal? Because there's a wide gap between what's right and what's illegal. **People who do bad and dumb things can be criticized.** That's my argument. Criticism won't necessarily change it, but that does nothing to invalidate the moral basis of the criticism. Our orientation to power is the most important political stance we can take, and your orientation towards power suggests an entirely authoritarian view: might makes right. As to that, *sic sepmer tyrannis*" CreationDate="2019-12-28T20:44:04.390" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="19542" PostId="5826" Score="0" Text="@SycoraxsaysReinstateMonica Are you suggesting that if I come to your **property** to sleep in for one night because I am so tired and cant drive, you have no **right** to deny me entrance? I mean offcouse, it will be nice of you to let me in and let me sleep because &quot;by your logic&quot; a house is meant to be for **people to sleep in** and inviting me in is &quot;morally right thing to do&quot;." CreationDate="2019-12-28T20:58:16.587" UserId="249944" />
  <row Id="19543" PostId="5826" Score="0" Text="If your answer to above is &quot;yes&quot; then by that logic, yes, whatever happened with monica was not good." CreationDate="2019-12-28T20:59:45.257" UserId="249944" />
  <row Id="19544" PostId="5826" Score="5" Text="I've let my friends sleep in my house when they're not able to make it home safely. But I wasn't *legally required* to do this. If I'd refused, my friends could say &quot;Sycorax is a jerk! They made me get a cab home,&quot; and perhaps they'd be right (depending on the circumstances). My argument is that you can criticize people who do dumb and bad things. Your hypothetical doesn't disprove that claim. Another flaw with your hypothetical is that it confuses legal rights and moral stances. This is a flaw with every one of your arguments so far. Another flaw is that it places power above reproach." CreationDate="2019-12-28T21:08:49.617" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="19546" PostId="5826" Score="0" Text="Depending on the circumstances, I might be wrong. For example, I'd be wrong if I refused to let my friends stay for bad or dumb reasons, and they would be correct to criticize me. If you agree that my friends can criticize me if I made a bad or dumb decision, then you agree that we can criticize SO for demoting Monica and disparaging her. It seems you've got the argument backwards again." CreationDate="2019-12-28T22:33:22.320" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="19547" PostId="5826" Score="0" Text="@SycoraxsaysReinstateMonica, exactly thats my whole point, your friends can claim &quot;Sycorax is a jerk! They made me get a cab home&quot; but that &quot;doesnt make you wrong!&quot;, did you understand now? ...in this analogy just replace &quot;your friends&quot; with &quot;all the people in this page who are making an issue&quot; and replace &quot;yourself&quot; with &quot;SE&quot;." CreationDate="2019-12-28T22:33:42.047" UserId="249944" />
  <row Id="19548" PostId="5826" Score="0" Text="@SycoraxsaysReinstateMonica I doubt your statement that depending upon circumstances you might be wrong. We are not even questioning the reasoning. Its your property, its your will." CreationDate="2019-12-28T22:35:25.387" UserId="249944" />
  <row Id="19549" PostId="5826" Score="4" Text="Again, you're making a legal claim, but my arguments hinge on the distinguishing between legal and moral arguments. Until you acknowledge that moral arguments have value, we will be at an impasse." CreationDate="2019-12-28T22:50:16.167" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="19550" PostId="5826" Score="0" Text="@SycoraxsaysReinstateMonica I am speaking purely on the logical bases. Logically there is no right or wrong here, morally there might be opinions, but living in a world where different people have different morals and opinions, we can at-least rely on that fact that logical grounds and legal ground separates us from those personal biases." CreationDate="2019-12-28T22:55:59.483" UserId="249944" />
  <row Id="19553" PostId="5826" Score="0" Text="@SycoraxsaysReinstateMonica, looks like she has [settled on agreement with SE](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/340906/update-an-agreement-with-monica-cellio?cb=1), despite all that fundraising campaign. She wont speak about the settlement amount or deal. This is **exactly** what I expected." CreationDate="2019-12-29T12:09:12.403" UserId="249944" />
  <row Id="19554" PostId="5826" Score="0" Text="I'm not sure what your point is. The fundraising campaign raised money to hire attorneys who negotiated the settlement, whatever that entails (it's secret). Why are your expectations an relevant to this conversation?" CreationDate="2019-12-29T14:55:24.507" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="19555" PostId="5826" Score="2" Text="Anyway, your argument from legality finds itself in a hard spot. Either you're assuming that all of today's laws are just, so you are implicitly making a moral argument, or you don't care if today's laws are unjust, in which case you'll tolerate any atrocity that the legal code permits. This is it is dangerous to blindly follow the law just because it's *final*, instead of seriously engaging with moral philosophy. Your legalist argument also can't answer &quot;Should we write a new law? What should it say?&quot; because it has no basis to reason about what a good or bad law is." CreationDate="2019-12-29T15:12:22.800" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="19557" PostId="5826" Score="0" Text="@SycoraxsaysReinstateMonica so i guess you got me wrong. What i meant was that you guys raised funds, so that you can see the &quot;physical outcome&quot; of the process or policy change, but instead what happend was out of court settlement in secret. Usually, individuals do &quot;out of court&quot; settlement to profit from the situation, not because of the &quot;cause&quot; itself. If the &quot;cause&quot; was the priority then she should have fought in the court so everything would have been public and your donations would be fruitful as the &quot;cause&quot; was being upheld, not a &quot;compromise&quot;" CreationDate="2019-12-29T15:28:17.560" UserId="249944" />
  <row Id="19558" PostId="5826" Score="2" Text="@GENIVI-LEARNER, you've repeatedly referred to people advocating for Monica as 'social justice warriors'. Your analogy is flawed. To the extent either party is analogous to SJWs, it would be the company, which fired Monica in order to create a more welcoming environment for trans people. (Note that they failed badly on this goal.) Personally, I support a welcoming environment for everyone, but it is obvious that some of the people complaining the most are transphobes &amp; trolls who don't really care as much about Monica. The company is explicitly following a SJW-type policy. They have said so." CreationDate="2019-12-29T15:28:57.350" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19559" PostId="5826" Score="4" Text="The company's decisions don't make sense from a hard-nosed business perspective. They have alienated many more people than are actually trans users on the site. They have lost some of their most prolific and highest rep contributors. Those are the people who generate value for the company." CreationDate="2019-12-29T15:30:44.363" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19560" PostId="5826" Score="1" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica, Ok, can you then explain me that if the &quot;cause&quot; was legit, how come we didnt get to the the outcome? Instead, what we got was a confidential deal has been reached and this case is now settled. So much for the all the campaign and stuff." CreationDate="2019-12-29T15:45:11.843" UserId="249944" />
  <row Id="19562" PostId="5826" Score="6" Text="I don't understand your question. The lawyers for the 2 sides negotiated &amp; came to some agreement. Part of the agreement was the rule that they don't discuss it. We don't know exactly what the agreement entails, but there's no question Monica was at a disadvantage. My guess is her lawyers advised her that the agreement was the best she was likely to get. That's pretty typical of this sort of thing. Whose cause is just has nothing to do with it." CreationDate="2019-12-29T15:53:38.523" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19564" PostId="5826" Score="0" Text="Allright, i thought it was for a holistic cause and not just monica. Offcourse she is not at disadvantage at all." CreationDate="2019-12-29T16:00:07.617" UserId="249944" />
  <row Id="19518" PostId="5827" Score="14" Text="Sorry to see you go!" CreationDate="2019-12-27T21:01:56.973" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="19693" PostId="5827" Score="0" Text="*Cross-site duplicates*. Ditto [DataScience.SE](https://datascience.stackexchange.com), which has tons of duplicates of things answered on SO or CrossValidated." CreationDate="2020-02-17T00:14:01.127" UserId="7291" />
  <row Id="19696" PostId="5827" Score="2" Text="I've pretty much stopped answering questions for the same reason: too many cross-site duplicates. Feel like a waste of time. (Not to mention https://ai.stackexchange.com/ which is also another almost exact duplicate. I have raised the issue in dozens of posts on DS and AI SE but weirdly virtually nobody cares.) I'm also very much again the script that does auto-deletion of questions, which caused hundreds of my questions being removed. Basically I don't feel stack exchange cares much about user content, probably because they think they have too many users to care." CreationDate="2020-02-20T08:41:18.927" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="20493" PostId="5827" Score="0" Text="Not bright are they.  There are ways of contriving the answer to this that is win-win, that drives more views AND has fewer duplicates (aka less memory, compute overhead)." CreationDate="2021-01-12T17:15:42.467" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="19580" PostId="5828" Score="9" Text="Questions about general SE capabilities need to be posted on the [SE Meta site](https://meta.stackexchange.com/) because we cannot do anything at all about changing them here.  If a question requires readers to read a substantial part of an article, then (arguably) the question is not sufficiently well focused to be on topic here, anyway." CreationDate="2019-12-30T22:12:06.523" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="19585" PostId="5829" Score="3" Text="Thanks gung. What a world it would be if we had free access to journal articles." CreationDate="2019-12-31T19:12:54.137" UserId="13634" />
  <row Id="19586" PostId="5829" Score="3" Text="There is some work on that, @RobertF. Maybe someday..." CreationDate="2020-01-01T01:42:15.393" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19701" PostId="5829" Score="2" Text="@RobertF &quot;What a world it would be if we had free access to journal articles.&quot; `https://sci-hub.tw` (the current mirror of [Sci-Hub](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub)) will grant (most of) your wish." CreationDate="2020-03-01T17:02:10.877" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="19596" PostId="5831" Score="9" Text="We'd much rather you paused and reflected and reinstated Monica." CreationDate="2020-01-03T09:32:12.640" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="19608" PostId="5831" Score="9" Text="How many stats.SE moderators stepped down from moderation positions during 2019?" CreationDate="2020-01-03T17:47:00.130" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="19610" PostId="5831" Score="6" Text="-1. I am downvoting to express my continuing disappointment with the company." CreationDate="2020-01-03T20:54:16.907" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="19616" PostId="5831" Score="3" Text="the last sentence looks ominous..." CreationDate="2020-01-04T03:35:29.883" UserId="192854" />
  <row Id="19617" PostId="5831" Score="0" Text="Naw, @xavier... Ominous is [Happy Birthday](https://youtu.be/l417iA7iQeo)" CreationDate="2020-01-04T03:45:45.620" UserId="4454" />
  <row Id="19626" PostId="5831" Score="1" Text="The previous link is to a tuneless piece of noise that I imagine is one kind of rock music. I lasted about 30 seconds before giving up in some pain. You may enjoy it..." CreationDate="2020-01-07T10:07:34.473" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19587" PostId="5832" Score="18" Text="You can add a bounty to the question and explain that you would like an authoritative answer with citations, perhaps explaining what, exactly, you'd like to know more about in the bounty message." CreationDate="2020-01-02T16:52:11.937" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="19641" PostId="5832" Score="0" Text="Notice though that @AlexR says one of the answers is the correct one in his opinion" CreationDate="2020-01-13T22:00:01.703" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="19642" PostId="5832" Score="0" Text="@Firebug given the disparity between what he's stated and where the votes are placed it seems a bit confusing to me still... are these votes because people understand the problem and have agreed with the top-level post? Or are they beginners like myself who are just saying thanks (and leaving with the wrong info as a result)." CreationDate="2020-01-13T22:24:48.483" UserId="137921" />
  <row Id="19643" PostId="5832" Score="0" Text="Do you trust more AlexR or the rest of the answers? You must be able to judge this yourself." CreationDate="2020-01-14T15:45:33.320" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="19644" PostId="5832" Score="0" Text="Also, notice that if you created a &quot;new&quot; question, AlexR already said he thinks that one answer is correct. So adding the &quot;new&quot; question would be pointless anyways." CreationDate="2020-01-14T15:46:15.673" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="19609" PostId="5833" Score="9" Text="This has bothered me, too: it's almost impossible to read or think clearly with those insistent ads flashing in the margins.  Notice that &quot;reduce&quot; does not mean &quot;hide all,&quot; though.  I installed AdBlock Plus just to handle these nuisances on SE.  It has been working well.  As far as I'm concerned, a non-negotiable condition of moderating on SE is that in return for my time and effort, the ads must behave themselves." CreationDate="2020-01-03T20:32:40.970" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="19619" PostId="5833" Score="0" Text="I only see a small image with a logo/text 'sponsored by AWS machine learning'. It looks a lot like the ugly/silly logos that Edward Tufte complains about in his essay [the cognitive style of PowerPoint](https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_pp)  But is that the &quot;loud and prominent&quot; advertising that others see? I do not see a flashing add but maybe it is my computer (although I've never installed add blockers). Would it possible to add a screen shot, to make sure that we all talk about the same thing." CreationDate="2020-01-05T16:32:53.753" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19620" PostId="5833" Score="1" Text="@SextusEmpiricus Yes! To be particular, though, that is the &quot;loud and prominent *dumbass* advertisement&quot; in my question. It is **loud** because it breaks from the visual coherence of the rest of CV.SE and CV.meta.SE. It is **prominent** because it is located directly under the profile/actions button bar which I use every session. It is **dumbass** both for the reason Tufte mentions (nice cite), and because fuck the contemporary incarnation of capitalism." CreationDate="2020-01-05T18:15:13.760" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="19631" PostId="5833" Score="2" Text="@SextusEmpiricus **Update:** loud and prominent dumbass advertisement now featuring garish color choice!" CreationDate="2020-01-09T17:28:11.317" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="19633" PostId="5833" Score="1" Text="@Alexis: Crikey! Some person - whose *job* this is - was actually sitting there, thinking &quot;Great logo, but something's lacking - I know!  ....&quot;" CreationDate="2020-01-09T17:49:57.990" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="19635" PostId="5833" Score="1" Text="@Scortchi-ReinstateMonica maybe it was artificial intelligence coming up with this colour choice  (Or the AI is still learning in some sort of AB testing. What colour do you get? I have some strange bright green colour)." CreationDate="2020-01-09T18:37:57.013" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19636" PostId="5833" Score="1" Text="Actually the colour green is the same as in the logos like the images in your answer. So probably the previous darker green colour was an error and the bright colours should have been used from the start." CreationDate="2020-01-09T18:41:17.000" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19637" PostId="5833" Score="1" Text="@SextusEmpiricus: It's a lurid colour, somewhere between that of Soylent Green &amp; what I imagine to be that of radioactive waste. You're right: it seems to be the same throughout now." CreationDate="2020-01-09T19:50:35.177" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="19621" PostId="5834" Score="0" Text="See also https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/341662/which-stack-exchange-sites-have-dedicated-sponsors for a list of other sponsored sites." CreationDate="2020-01-06T13:27:43.010" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="19630" PostId="5834" Score="2" Text="In my case those black-green coloured banners are not showing. Also not when I am logged out. The block and logo on the right may be called ugly or awkward but I would consider it fair use by stackexchange to earn a little money in exchange for their service hosting the site. However that banner *inside* the question connects the work of the author directly with the advertisements and changes the presentation of the work considerably. This is undesirable and violates the author's rights." CreationDate="2020-01-09T08:19:21.490" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19632" PostId="5834" Score="1" Text="&quot;though I've not yet come across any AWS adverts flashing or beeping at me&quot; Huh... I wonder if anyone has told them about the MARQUEE tag? :)" CreationDate="2020-01-09T17:30:31.173" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="19634" PostId="5834" Score="1" Text="@Alexis: Don't tell them!" CreationDate="2020-01-09T18:33:35.063" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="19612" PostId="5835" Score="3" Text="Thank you! Has there been any movement to creating/migrating CV to an SE-independent site?" CreationDate="2020-01-03T21:21:19.473" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="19613" PostId="5835" Score="6" Text="@Alexis: [Codidact](https://codidact.org) sounds promising, but it's still in its early stages." CreationDate="2020-01-03T22:26:42.453" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="19628" PostId="5835" Score="1" Text="I think it should be clarified whether the CV community has any relationship to the sponsors and if it affects in it in any way. Do they get to appoint moderators or special privileges to ask or allow certain questions, for example." CreationDate="2020-01-07T10:49:31.973" UserId="229" />
  <row Id="19629" PostId="5835" Score="0" Text="@James, no. They aren't *sponsoring* the site in any way like that. It's just an ad." CreationDate="2020-01-07T12:21:26.037" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19622" PostId="5836" Score="4" Text="Isn't a post highlighting all the work that moderators and community curators do towards the site exactly in support of the risk of losses in moderating? These are exactly the numbers that would be at risk: not the numbers of questions or answers, but the numbers of handled flags and other tasks. It's possible to disagree with the overall direction of the company without being negative towards everything a representative of the company posts." CreationDate="2020-01-07T00:34:58.630" UserId="135291" />
  <row Id="19623" PostId="5836" Score="0" Text="@BryanKrause I agree that the effort from the Shog9 is appreciable and these sort of numbers can indeed be pitched to show that the work of moderators and other contributors is a risk of loss. But, what i dislike (an allergy of mine) is managers posting a bunch of numbers (meaningless, without context and depth) and put a talk/story around it that has very little to do with those numbers and is just whatever they wish to say and not what those numbers support." CreationDate="2020-01-07T07:13:38.660" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19624" PostId="5836" Score="2" Text="@BryanKrause I feel that it is *neccesary* to be negative towards this post from the company because the company is trying to cover up what happened last year and pretends that nothing happened. We, contributers to this site, should nit do the same and continue as if nothing happened. A more humble position from their side would be more nice. You can't go play the nice guy telling how much you like the moderation, and especially refer to 'self-regulating' while this completely failed last year. **Actions speak louder than words.**" CreationDate="2020-01-07T07:20:15.170" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19625" PostId="5836" Score="3" Text="It's just a form post that goes out on every site. Same one that went out last year. Bit of an update, something of the kind people have asked for in the past. It's especially useful on the smaller sites, where there is constant curiosity of the impact of diamond moderators compared to community moderation. These sorts of posts are in fact action, even if it seems small and even if it isn't particularly new. I don't disagree with your general intent, I just feel like there's  a bit of a toxic attitude lately. To be better than the activities you oppose I think it's good to have some nuance." CreationDate="2020-01-07T07:41:14.357" UserId="135291" />
  <row Id="19627" PostId="5836" Score="1" Text="I am with @BryanKrause here, although I recognise and respect strong opinions on this topic." CreationDate="2020-01-07T10:09:54.377" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19647" PostId="5839" Score="9" Text="One of the strongest arguments is that such questions can &amp; are asked, &amp; in many cases of the re-occuring questions already have been answered on StackOverflow.com, so it is pointless to duplicate it." CreationDate="2020-01-28T09:24:12.817" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="19648" PostId="5839" Score="10" Text="Some variant of this is perhaps the most commonly recurring question on Meta but I'd argue that &quot;statistical questions in which the user may be experiencing difficulties with their software&quot; are already allowed here and frequent. The long-standing dividing line is whether the question requires statistical expertise to answer, in which case mentioning the software is germane. Otherwise the leading response is that given by @Tim that this is what Stack Overflow is for." CreationDate="2020-01-28T10:26:26.480" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19649" PostId="5839" Score="4" Text="I have some scope to comment specifically on Stata. Statalist has seen nearly 250,000 posts since relaunch as a web forum on 31 March 2014. Stack Overflow has seen about 3000 Stata questions since 10 October 2009. Even with a multiplicative factor to turn threads into posts and an addition of whatever threads were deleted. SO is way behind and Statalist is way ahead. No hostility or negativity there: I am active on SO too answering Stata questions." CreationDate="2020-01-28T10:30:30.130" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19651" PostId="5839" Score="1" Text="Naturally anybody with more experience can and should comments on R, SPSS, etc. It's my impression that _de facto_ SO is the leading R forum, having superseded R-help some while back." CreationDate="2020-01-28T10:37:03.347" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19650" PostId="5840" Score="3" Text="You touch on the grey area, but I don't think writing more guidelines would help. There are blatant newbie questions of the form &quot;What software should I use?&quot; that unfortunately are all too obvious. There are intricate questions with a heavy software component where often it is not formal rules that would decide for or against migration but detailed expertise in the software and the statistical topic, which should inform voting." CreationDate="2020-01-28T10:34:27.623" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19652" PostId="5840" Score="3" Text="Here's one rule of thumb: If the same question could easily if the OP were using different software, it is possibly a statistical question. It's fallible: how do I loop in X? is a programming question, regardless." CreationDate="2020-01-28T14:56:07.867" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19653" PostId="5842" Score="15" Text="I was happily diffident about joining SE until I realised it was a big deal and going strong. Now I am unhappily diffident about leaving SE until everyone of note does so too. I have a lot of sunk capital here, starting with emotional capital and genuine admiration and regard for many key people here, most of whom I have never met and will never meet. I don't care two hoots about the company as such; its goals are not mine beyond providing the site. Yes, I do know that this kind of modified loyalty is what the company is banking upon, but there you go. So, I will watch these places." CreationDate="2020-02-04T18:24:13.750" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19654" PostId="5842" Score="15" Text="Both Codidact and TopAnswers would be happy to discuss your needs with you if you are interested." CreationDate="2020-02-04T18:38:19.977" UserId="261680" />
  <row Id="19657" PostId="5842" Score="0" Text="@NickCox there is indeed a lot of work on the website here. A possible solution might be to copy the content (or some of it), but it will split up the 'discussion/development/answers' that may continue uncoordinated on parallel sites. We already have this on the Stack Exchange platform with the slightly related sites, but it will be worse when a site has the exact same topic." CreationDate="2020-02-05T08:37:57.363" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19660" PostId="5842" Score="1" Text="There is a simple but big question I don't know the answer to: namely who has any rights here? For myself, I have no objection to anybody copying any answers or comments I gave to other sites so long as they remain intact." CreationDate="2020-02-05T18:29:36.337" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19661" PostId="5842" Score="2" Text="The part *&quot;so long as they remain intact&quot;* is difficult. The current license currently means that anybody can copy and republish (*but also edit*) the contributions (as long as there is attribution, including the name of the original author with a link to the user SE profile, and a copy of the license). Now there are also author rights but they are difficult; it means that you can control where and how any of your contributions (which remain your property and the license doesn't change that) are being used... within reasonable terms." CreationDate="2020-02-05T19:15:15.993" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19662" PostId="5842" Score="5" Text="My two cents: I loved participating here but got thoroughly sick of SE's behaviour and silently stopped participating when things blew up a few months ago; I now just check in once in a way. So I'd be happy to start afresh on a new site, though I know the barriers are substantial (network effects in particular)." CreationDate="2020-02-06T09:06:19.733" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="19658" PostId="5843" Score="11" Text="&quot; people do not get in the right place to ask and answer &quot;: this is going to happen on **_any_** site. Every forum I know has a long tail of people who are confused or desperate or clueless or lazy, or some combination." CreationDate="2020-02-05T09:19:08.837" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19659" PostId="5843" Score="3" Text="@NickCox I agree with you. This answer is more like a small brainwave (not an answer/solution to the question) where I also see lots of objections. But, I hope to see and get more of these sort of ideas." CreationDate="2020-02-05T09:30:31.420" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19691" PostId="5843" Score="0" Text="I think this idea has a lot of potential. But could it be too unwieldy in practice? I wonder if it would really be better than doing an internet search." CreationDate="2020-02-14T01:42:57.930" UserId="261340" />
  <row Id="19655" PostId="5844" Score="6" Text="This kind of reviews happen, or at least should happen, automatically via votes &amp; comments, where each user (with some minimum number of reputation points) can participate. That is the point of sites like this. What if some user reviewed your answer and said it is correct? Would this invalidate comments by other users? Unless question gains really poor attention, usually flaws in the answers are pointed by users and wisdom of the crowds guards us from such problems." CreationDate="2020-02-04T21:13:36.010" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="19656" PostId="5844" Score="0" Text="@Tim &quot;What if some user reviewed your answer and said it is correct?&quot; I understand the concern, but I would also hope that others uses might provide constructive criticism as opposed to just voicing approval or disproval." CreationDate="2020-02-04T21:18:15.547" UserId="89649" />
  <row Id="19679" PostId="5844" Score="2" Text="@Tim's comment effectively answers this in totality and could be turned into an answer. Otherwise put, posting _anything_ is tacitly laying yourself open to what the rest of the community thinks, with the distinct possibility that no one wants to say anything about it either. But there isn't a special process for asking for extra views. In principle, you can do that in precisely this way, by asking a question in Meta about a question in main, but in practice you need a really special reason to do that convincingly." CreationDate="2020-02-10T15:28:17.213" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19663" PostId="5845" Score="10" Text="I heard of people being forced by supervisors to replace any of the publications available on the Internet with &quot;reliable&quot; and &quot;serious&quot; paywalled journal articles and expensive handbooks, to sound more distinguished. This kind of nonsense makes people leave the academia. I'd totally do it if I were you, but can't tell on &quot;what others may think&quot;." CreationDate="2020-02-06T22:48:13.100" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="19664" PostId="5845" Score="9" Text="Yes, it would be fair and not at all silly. The fact you used a (potentially) anonymous helping hand does not mean you cheated. It means you know how research the Internet, ask for help and explain a complex problem and incorporate that help to your own work. You might want to see the Math.SE.Meta threads [Do I cite Mathematics Stack Exchange in my thesis/paper?](https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4259) and [Papers that originated on math.SE](https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2970) for a bit more context." CreationDate="2020-02-07T02:35:21.697" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="19665" PostId="5845" Score="8" Text="Wanting to acknowledge sources of information, ideas and support is always admirable. But the wording &quot;CV sets up my model for me/verifies my model&quot; does not fit the facts. Individuals posting separately make suggestions or discuss your work. That's the essence. There is no collective entity with a group mind otherwise. If I were a reviewer seeing a statement that CV endorsed your work, I would want you to rewrite it." CreationDate="2020-02-07T08:47:40.140" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19666" PostId="5845" Score="0" Text="@NickCox would you suggest naming the individual users on CV that contributed instead?" CreationDate="2020-02-07T11:11:24.143" UserId="153364" />
  <row Id="19667" PostId="5845" Score="1" Text="Reviewers and editors differ and journals may or may not have rules on this. I've seen comments that crediting unnamed individuals is pointless or at least not a good use of space. Conversely, if advice was really valuable, then there is an argument for not just naming the person(s), but giving URL(s) for the post(s), but journals will differ mightily in how far that is allowed." CreationDate="2020-02-07T11:54:14.753" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19680" PostId="5845" Score="2" Text="I cited a thread on mathematics stack exchange in my PhD thesis, including the username of the user who helped me. As a bonus they used their real name as their username. It might have sounded a bit odd thanking dragonslayer27xx for their help explaining near epoch dependence..." CreationDate="2020-02-10T22:18:04.133" UserId="16319" />
  <row Id="19681" PostId="5845" Score="4" Text="In the case of odd user names, it might be fair to cite a user according to their system-ID rather than their display-name.  For example, while my alias is currently &quot;_Nat_&quot;, clicking for my profile leads to `https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/users/143653/nat`, where it can be seen that I'm User-143653.  Both references are equivalent in the quality of identifying this account at the moment, however for most users, the system-ID is probably more immutable and less likely to collide (and thus a more reliable reference) than their display-name." CreationDate="2020-02-11T07:11:39.877" UserId="143653" />
  <row Id="19682" PostId="5845" Score="0" Text="Actually, looks like there are identifier-collisions with my current display-name (e.g., [1](https://stats.stackexchange.com/users/52667/nat); [2](https://stats.stackexchange.com/users/139186/nat))." CreationDate="2020-02-11T07:21:53.410" UserId="143653" />
  <row Id="19687" PostId="5845" Score="0" Text="Contra @NickCox, I might acknowledge &quot;the CV community&quot; or something if a *thread* with multiple posters (via multiple answers, comments, etc) answers a question; individual names would better if there's only one or two relevant posts." CreationDate="2020-02-12T23:56:11.563" UserId="7250" />
  <row Id="19688" PostId="5845" Score="0" Text="I have quoted CV members by name in documentation of my programs, where I have control of what I say. But I have often seen the reverse argument from people pointing out that they don’t use their real names because they don’t care about, or even seek to avoid, public recognition. People are different." CreationDate="2020-02-13T00:58:07.313" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19700" PostId="5845" Score="0" Text="Paze, lovely question. I just want to plug that the acknowledgements section seems spot on for where—absent editorial guidelines to the contrary—to do so in an academic journal. Also: if it helps bolster making the case in a particular circumstance, you might approach a CV user, request chat or email correspondence, and develop a &quot;personal communication&quot; in support of this kind of acknowledgement (of course, there are sometimes editorial guidelines *against* citing personal communications, so YMMV :)." CreationDate="2020-03-01T16:57:20.690" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="19704" PostId="5846" Score="2" Text="Thank you. I did acknowledge CV in my recently submitted manuscript. We'll see if they comment on it." CreationDate="2020-03-05T08:30:41.637" UserId="153364" />
  <row Id="19708" PostId="5846" Score="2" Text="It was accepted, so now CV has a bit of exposure in the field of neurosurgery :) I will continue to cite CV in my manuscripts for as long as I receive the quality of assistance as I have thus far." CreationDate="2020-03-10T20:15:45.470" UserId="153364" />
  <row Id="19668" PostId="5847" Score="2" Text="But note that in the case of multiple contributors to a single post this cite button only adds one of the contributor names in the citation (the first to create the post)." CreationDate="2020-02-07T13:24:01.440" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19671" PostId="5848" Score="3" Text="See https://forum.codidact.org/t/proposed-code-of-conduct/462." CreationDate="2020-02-07T17:35:46.817" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="19672" PostId="5848" Score="3" Text="FWIW, I think &quot;be nice&quot; is a perfectly fine policy. It just needs to be clear that referring to people in a way they don't like is not nice." CreationDate="2020-02-07T17:41:27.473" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19673" PostId="5848" Score="2" Text="Better link: https://github.com/codidact/core/wiki/Codidact-Code-of-Conduct" CreationDate="2020-02-07T18:32:17.247" UserId="261680" />
  <row Id="19674" PostId="5848" Score="5" Text="Every forum seems to start with the idea that the essence of good behaviour can be stated concisely. That's correct -- until you need protocol for dealing with unclear, confused or off-topic questions; or until you need protocol for when being nice to those who are being nasty doesn't work. For all its limitations a merit of SE is an intricate set of procedures for questions which aren't that good in some sense, from technically to in human terms. I see other places where clueless questions and poor behaviour generally are often indulged, and that has downsides as well as upsides." CreationDate="2020-02-07T18:57:47.207" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19675" PostId="5848" Score="5" Text="Note also that there wouldn't appear to be any obstacle to our augmenting the Codidact Code of Conduct for our site if we wished to." CreationDate="2020-02-07T19:57:44.673" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="19676" PostId="5848" Score="1" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica I have seen transphobia, queer-phobia, and sexism expressed in communities with similar policies, and find value in express and explicit language around inclusion and anti-harassment." CreationDate="2020-02-07T20:45:44.880" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="19677" PostId="5848" Score="2" Text="@MonicaCellio Thank you (and @Scortchi-ReinstateMonica) for the links." CreationDate="2020-02-07T20:47:44.460" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="19678" PostId="5849" Score="3" Text="We have several data-oriented answers to this question here, so perhaps reprising these analyses could provide a quantitative answer: https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5325/we-have-a-very-large-widening-gap-between-questions-and-answers-how-do-we-fix/5326#5326 Keep in mind that due to how the Roombas work, there will tend to be a larger fraction of unanswered questions in the past 12 months compared to posts older than 1 year." CreationDate="2020-02-09T20:18:03.267" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="19683" PostId="5849" Score="0" Text="The OP doesn't have to produce numbers, and nor does anyone else, and I am not inclined to work at it either. But unless _someone_ does produce numbers, I have to suggest that there is no point in a question that just invites speculation." CreationDate="2020-02-11T11:54:51.677" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19715" PostId="5849" Score="0" Text="The pattern of the plot in Sycorax's post (linked above) continues -- smoothing the data from the query by eye since then, broadly it seems like raw answer rates have slowed since early 2017 and continue to do so (I can't discern any clear impact on that trend since Sept/Oct last year, though a more careful analysis might reveal a small effect), while questions have been more or less stable (/slowly growing) over the last year. The gap is wider. Losing active answerers has continued and it sure won't help in the long term but there didn't seem to be any instantaneous impacts." CreationDate="2020-03-17T00:56:07.197" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="19716" PostId="5849" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b-ReinstateMonica thanks, your comment is the answer I was looking for." CreationDate="2020-03-17T08:15:42.513" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="19684" PostId="5850" Score="5" Text="Related: [Are very elementary questions off topic on CrossValidated?](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/4576/7290), &amp; [Is this the place for simple questions?](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/4948/7290)" CreationDate="2020-02-11T19:46:28.477" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19685" PostId="5850" Score="2" Text="In addition, note that adding another close reason like that would either be a system-wide change implemented by the developers, or would require us to eliminate one of our existing site-specific off-topic reasons (ie, homework, data request, not about stats / about programming)." CreationDate="2020-02-11T20:01:15.903" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19686" PostId="5850" Score="0" Text="@gung I was not so much aiming for an entirely new close category, and more like trying to see whether there are ways to put it under an existing close category (which would either need a different text or there must be some standard way to inform the user about the reason to close). But, more important than just closing questions (I am actually not so much a fan of closing questions), is to find some ways to curate these type of questions as part of the *entire* collection of 150k questions. If stats.SE would be a museum would it make sense to just mix all these questions together?" CreationDate="2020-02-12T09:36:01.280" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19689" PostId="5851" Score="3" Text="Unfortunately asking on a site like this is precisely what many people think of as looking up something. I encounter people daily who think the way to learn something is to watch lots of videos rather than find a good text, or who think &quot;research&quot; means using Wikipedia (and I use Wikipedia daily too). But I agree strongly with your stance. There is no future in &quot;low level&quot; as a criterion. There is scope for simple questions that raise interesting issues even about bar charts or means and medians." CreationDate="2020-02-13T12:45:05.153" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19690" PostId="5851" Score="2" Text="Glad you agree. And one might almost say that &quot;low-level&quot; can only apply to answers, not to questions." CreationDate="2020-02-13T15:54:41.720" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="19692" PostId="5851" Score="2" Text="You might almost include your no low-level question only answers in your actual answer. When I used to teach students I remember being told there are no bad questions which is more or less the same." CreationDate="2020-02-14T13:40:30.897" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="19694" PostId="5851" Score="0" Text="Interesting, if it is convergent, a geometric mean (GM) of random data can be calculated. But, I was not aware that there are solutions for all pdf for which convergent GM for random variates exist. Certain ones, yes, but not generally." CreationDate="2020-02-18T00:35:41.017" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="19695" PostId="5851" Score="2" Text="*&quot;&quot;low-level&quot; can only apply to answers, not to questions.&quot;* I find this a very strong expression which makes me accept the answer. Regarding my question however, it was mostly motivated by some desire to filter the questions somehow (and not to argue about the *validity* of questions). To some extend one may wonder about the searchability of questions and some way to seperate different levels of questions would be nice (like MathOverflow is seperate from math.SE, and on MO some *questions* are less acceptable than on the other site, this ain't bad per se)." CreationDate="2020-02-18T22:20:59.877" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="19713" PostId="5855" Score="2" Text="For the design of new materials: solar cells, photovoltaics, bio-materials, organic LEDs for smartphone screens (same brightness while being less susceptible to cracking), new materials for better batteries, energy storage materials, stronger glass for windows and better heat insulation, molecular magnets, energy conversion materials, superconductors for quantum computing, better semi-conductors for computer hardware, stronger and lighter materials for cars, bikes, planes, spaceships, etc." CreationDate="2020-03-15T01:27:17.633" UserId="211119" />
  <row Id="19706" PostId="5858" Score="3" Text="In practice this hinges on an old question resurfacing or someone setting a diary note to post an answer if the question is still there 6 months later and unanswered. In principle I note that posted answers could frustrate a teacher setting the same question in a later year and/or teachers using the same textbook! In practice I doubt that would happen often. In practice if it's really elementary why would the question be worth the time of anyone active here?" CreationDate="2020-03-08T08:23:37.633" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19707" PostId="5858" Score="3" Text="As a teacher too I want there to be no support for students trying to outsource their assignments, although a clever idle student can often disguise the assignment flavour." CreationDate="2020-03-08T08:24:14.563" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19710" PostId="5859" Score="4" Text="You can always use https://data.stackexchange.com/ that is open-access. Moderators additionally have access to some internal site analytics, but this is not meant to be shared with anyone, so sorry, but we cannot post them." CreationDate="2020-03-13T09:00:33.157" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="19711" PostId="5859" Score="2" Text="@Tim Why do you say that? It says [&quot;we *prefer* you don't share the *raw data*&quot;](https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/privileges/site-analytics). Are your mod stats significantly different from hi-rep stats? I thought questions from users *can* be answered by mods having access to these tools &amp; data (though they of course don't have to react to such inquiries)?" CreationDate="2020-03-13T11:57:10.263" UserId="218643" />
  <row Id="19712" PostId="5859" Score="7" Text="@LangLang Through the SE data site users can collect more statistics than moderators have ready access to.  However, to become mods we executed agreements that enjoin us from sharing certain forms of information that are made available to us through simple interfaces.  The fact that such information can be found, albeit more painstakingly, through other means does not absolve us of that commitment." CreationDate="2020-03-13T13:40:25.673" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="19714" PostId="5859" Score="2" Text="I do not need stats to note the difference. There are longer review queues on cross-validated now. Also, There is an annoying 'sponsored by' advertisement with a sometimes link. Taken with the unresolved other problems like tactical downvoting, my enthusiasm for the site has waned considerably." CreationDate="2020-03-16T10:45:13.317" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="19728" PostId="5859" Score="0" Text="@Carl I agree, although I am not a frequent user of the site, I have been using it for years prior to the issues till now months after and have anecdotally noticed a decrease in activity and quality, whether it be unedited/unfixed poorly worded questions left unchanged or questions left unanswered for a long period of time. However with this being the stats stackexchange, I was hoping there might an answer with more robust evidence actually indicating this so." CreationDate="2020-04-01T05:53:46.920" UserId="176173" />
  <row Id="19729" PostId="5859" Score="1" Text="That would require writing a program to query the database which would be, as whuber says &quot;painstaking&quot;. I've done that kind of thing before. See https://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/new" CreationDate="2020-04-01T07:26:40.930" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="19718" PostId="5865" Score="9" Text="Why a separate tag from [tag:bayesian]?" CreationDate="2020-03-24T18:07:12.960" UserId="135291" />
  <row Id="19720" PostId="5865" Score="3" Text="I always perceived the tag &quot;bayesian&quot; as a rather generic tag for distinguishing between bayesian and frequentist statistics." CreationDate="2020-03-25T15:00:14.377" UserId="128677" />
  <row Id="19724" PostId="5867" Score="1" Text="I am unable to find any definition or description of what &quot;dark mode&quot; might be (I've read the beta notice, I've seen some of the Meta threads, etc.).  Is this just an alternative theme in which most graphical elements are dark? Or is there more to it?" CreationDate="2020-03-30T19:23:18.587" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="19725" PostId="5867" Score="0" Text="Well when I visited stack overflow 2 minutes ago (30-03-2020) I was given the option to change my preferences to see the site in Dark Mode. Now the background color is dark grey (blackish) and text is white or blue. So yes just an alternative graphical scheme as far as I know. I havn't yet figured out how to reset the preferences." CreationDate="2020-03-30T19:26:58.823" UserId="16367" />
  <row Id="19726" PostId="5867" Score="0" Text="It is described here: https://stackoverflow.blog/2020/03/30/introducing-dark-mode-for-stack-overflow/?cb=1, where it seems only to be about graphical design." CreationDate="2020-03-30T19:29:33.030" UserId="16367" />
  <row Id="19727" PostId="5867" Score="4" Text="Right: that's the beta notice.  I still find no definition and not even the beginnings of a description.  The Meta post at https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/111399/having-a-dark-theme-for-stack-exchange-sites is much more revealing and suggests we're discussing graphic design only--no modification to functionality." CreationDate="2020-03-30T19:44:13.787" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="19730" PostId="5867" Score="7" Text="Much as I'm a fan of dark mode when it's late (or early), this would create issues with the many transparent images used by users, which often become all but invisible when placed against a dark background." CreationDate="2020-04-02T00:54:05.547" UserId="176202" />
  <row Id="19735" PostId="5867" Score="1" Text="@FransRodenburg that can be solved with simply setting a white background div behind images retrospectively. Just like they did migrating everything to https" CreationDate="2020-04-06T14:18:02.403" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="19732" PostId="5868" Score="1" Text="There is a lot of advice and discussion at the cited thread. Asking again on Meta is certainly allowed but is in practice not especially helpful unless you can raise some extra issue, e.g.. unfair treatment in some sense." CreationDate="2020-04-04T12:06:15.540" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19733" PostId="5868" Score="1" Text="Unfortunately, when a question is said to be unclear almost always people voting, commenting or closing to that effect are genuinely uncertain about what you want. We are not in the position of teachers who know what the answer should be and are criticising students because they don't explain clearly. It is quite uncommon in that circumstance that we can guess confidently what you really want -- and if we did, closing as unclear would not be the right outcome. People would just try to answer the question." CreationDate="2020-04-04T12:10:00.030" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19734" PostId="5868" Score="0" Text="As I see it, I have answered/followed that advice as far as it was clear/possible to follow. Hence the reason I posted it on meta. I'm not a statistician, nor claiming to be one. I come here with a question for which I am unable to find an answer in literature. (Either because I'm not familiar with the relevant literature or because it doesn't exist. For me either case is as valid an answer as the other.)" CreationDate="2020-04-04T16:44:24.500" UserId="279388" />
  <row Id="19731" PostId="5869" Score="5" Text="You've in effect written a much better question, which you might well post on CV itself. I didn't see it earlier, but I don't think the original question is a good one. It ends up focused on what to do in R, which is also off-topic. There is a statistical core, but it's not made a good question just because someone like yourself can imagine a better one." CreationDate="2020-04-04T11:56:36.040" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19736" PostId="5870" Score="0" Text="Glad to hear there's a simple solution to the problem. In that case, I'm all for it." CreationDate="2020-04-08T02:44:16.310" UserId="176202" />
  <row Id="19738" PostId="5872" Score="0" Text="Thanks. Can you please link to the ' three other questions with &quot;Berkson's Paradox&quot; in the title that are now deleted'?" CreationDate="2020-04-10T18:23:25.223" UserDisplayName="user157457" />
  <row Id="19739" PostId="5872" Score="0" Text="I don't believe @gung or anybody else can do that. gung is a moderator, but what has been deleted is otherwise not accessible to you or anyone else not a moderator or SE staff." CreationDate="2020-04-11T08:54:26.083" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19740" PostId="5872" Score="0" Text="@NickCox, it is possible to recover them, but I think we're not supposed to. I've searched, but I don't see a specific prohibition anywhere so I'll supply the links this time." CreationDate="2020-04-12T15:32:26.547" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19741" PostId="5872" Score="2" Text="@Greek-Area51Proposal, see my comment to Nick above.  I've edited my answer to include the links." CreationDate="2020-04-12T15:34:00.307" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19742" PostId="5873" Score="14" Text="If anybody else is being paid to answer questions, please let me know directly, as I am missing out on my share. Otherwise put, and apart from being off-topic here, I think this question shows a misunderstanding of CV. Everyone answering is giving their time and effort voluntarily and for nothing. A low answer rate has often been discussed on Meta. In short, I think it follows mostly from those who ask questions and the kind of questions they ask." CreationDate="2020-04-13T13:02:21.117" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19743" PostId="5873" Score="2" Text="The main aim of CV is to build up a resource of well-answered questions. That isn't necessarily maintained or enhanced by those who want to use it as a help line." CreationDate="2020-04-13T13:03:47.100" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19744" PostId="5873" Score="4" Text="I participate on SO too. On what I know, the response rate is low because too many people expect that SO is a code-writing service. On mainstream languages, it can be much easier for experienced or expert programmers to see immediately what the problem is with precise questions showing explicit code fragments. Questions of the form How should I write a program? would not survive. Here questions of the form How should I analyse my data? are remarkably common." CreationDate="2020-04-13T13:18:58.097" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19745" PostId="5873" Score="0" Text="(My first comment above was written when this was on the main site. The question is  more nearly on-topic here on Meta, although I doubt that much fruitful discussion is possible. A real underlying issue is whether the answer rate is lower than one might expect (or hope)  and if so why, but many posts here address that.)" CreationDate="2020-04-13T14:13:05.530" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19764" PostId="5873" Score="0" Text="There are several threads about low answer rates here.  The idea of paying people has to be taken to the management: not even moderators here get paid and we have no money to spend. What ideas do you  have? To get a better answer rate, things that would help are: Better questions; More volunteer helpers. What incentives or ideas do you offer? Statistics is a field such that many people who use it have too little time, inclination or even ability to get much better, which affects what is asked mightily. That isn't so true of programming and certainly not true of e.g. hobbies or games." CreationDate="2020-04-15T19:26:43.850" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19769" PostId="5873" Score="0" Text="I've seen many comments on social media and outside SE complaining how badly people think they were treated in technical forums like ours. The desire seems to be for a site in which (1) a reply is guaranteed (2) those who answer should not criticise or patronise. I can understand why people want that, but push-back on questions is, at least here, almost always because those answering don't understand what is being asked or the question is off-topic." CreationDate="2020-04-16T12:45:31.437" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19749" PostId="5874" Score="6" Text="Paying people to answer is not just unlikely; arguably, it would not solve the problem at all. Giving infinite patience to threads that are stalled -- or not even started -- would not do much better to get them going, or going faster.  Having looked at perhaps hundreds or thousands of threads that failed here, it's my impression that most failed because the OP did not have a clear and distinct question at all. If they did, it was just Will you do my homework please?" CreationDate="2020-04-13T14:45:26.047" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19750" PostId="5876" Score="1" Text="Sweet, this is nice!" CreationDate="2020-04-13T19:36:57.560" UserId="16367" />
  <row Id="19762" PostId="5877" Score="4" Text="See https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/86997/225179" CreationDate="2020-04-15T00:55:17.247" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="19752" PostId="5878" Score="0" Text="But those questions are closed." CreationDate="2020-04-14T21:50:04.777" UserDisplayName="user209249" />
  <row Id="19753" PostId="5878" Score="6" Text="You got suspended *because* many of your questions got closed as off-topic." CreationDate="2020-04-14T21:51:53.453" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="19754" PostId="5878" Score="0" Text="I cannot even see these questions anymore and all my other questions are related to machine learning." CreationDate="2020-04-14T21:52:23.967" UserDisplayName="user209249" />
  <row Id="19755" PostId="5878" Score="2" Text="Because closed questions get automatically deleted after some period of time." CreationDate="2020-04-14T21:52:55.603" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="19756" PostId="5878" Score="0" Text="But I am still penalized for those?" CreationDate="2020-04-14T21:53:31.747" UserDisplayName="user209249" />
  <row Id="19757" PostId="5878" Score="0" Text="I can understand that people who spam the platform are banned, but I asked 10 questions in like three years??? And now out of the blue I cannot ask questions anymore?" CreationDate="2020-04-14T21:54:08.003" UserDisplayName="user209249" />
  <row Id="19758" PostId="5878" Score="0" Text="And why can you see those questions and I don't??" CreationDate="2020-04-14T21:55:59.843" UserDisplayName="user209249" />
  <row Id="19759" PostId="5878" Score="0" Text="Well, this platform seemed always a too bit limited in scope and it has been pretty useless." CreationDate="2020-04-14T21:57:13.097" UserDisplayName="user209249" />
  <row Id="19760" PostId="5878" Score="3" Text="I can see those questions, because I'm a moderator. You would be able to see them with more reputation points." CreationDate="2020-04-14T22:02:02.237" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="19761" PostId="5878" Score="10" Text="@Sören, no one takes pleasure in your frustration here. At the same time, disparaging CV won't win any converts to your cause. Thousands of questions here and many people helped by a lot of hard work by many dedicated volunteers and the best you can come up is &quot;pretty useless&quot;. I say no more." CreationDate="2020-04-14T22:02:51.647" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19774" PostId="5880" Score="7" Text="I would add being aware of what your reputation allows you to do by looking at https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/privileges For example, some not so great questions are often not very well presented. Just going in and subdividing into paragraphs, tidying up the English, editing out repetition and minor irrelevance, and so forth can (a) keep a question in sight (b) make it more likely than others will work at it (c) allow you to understand what the question is about!" CreationDate="2020-04-24T07:04:59.200" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19777" PostId="5880" Score="3" Text="I should have said ... this is an excellent answer." CreationDate="2020-04-25T10:05:33.310" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19778" PostId="5880" Score="1" Text="@NickCox Thanks! I appreciate your helpful addendum too." CreationDate="2020-04-25T14:25:01.617" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="19785" PostId="5880" Score="0" Text="@NickCox That is a great point! Thanks" CreationDate="2020-05-01T23:03:05.260" UserId="257939" />
  <row Id="19786" PostId="5880" Score="2" Text="Thank you so much for providing this information. Following finals, I plan to sit down and give back to this amazing community. I always felt bad that I'd ask so many questions without finding questions to answer. Thanks so much!" CreationDate="2020-05-01T23:03:57.660" UserId="257939" />
  <row Id="19787" PostId="5880" Score="0" Text="@RonSnow You're welcome! Good luck on your finals and we look forward to seeing more of you around here." CreationDate="2020-05-02T08:27:55.353" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="21425" PostId="5880" Score="2" Text="Thank you, @RonSnow, for asking what I have been thinking about lately—and thanks, mkt, for the strategy you provided, and the link to another question about contributing with limited math knowledge (which is also the case for me)." CreationDate="2022-08-10T12:40:19.597" UserId="142674" />
  <row Id="19775" PostId="5881" Score="5" Text="This is a general SE system issue, so it may be better to ask on [meta.SE]." CreationDate="2020-04-25T01:29:40.670" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19776" PostId="5881" Score="2" Text="I am not an R person either, and no criticism either way. But ignoring the R tag in practice just means ignoring many, many posts that have an R tag only because the poster is using R. In fact if a post is more than incidentally about R it is likely to be off-topic any way...." CreationDate="2020-04-25T10:02:19.783" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19788" PostId="5886" Score="2" Text="Agreed. Less confusion is better." CreationDate="2020-05-02T09:49:55.590" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="19789" PostId="5886" Score="3" Text="A mixture of two normal distributions might be regarded as a compound of normal &amp; Bernoulli distributions, in general or not depending on what you allow to count as parametrization. If you want to make a distinction, I suspect it's that compounds are mixtures of &quot;an infinite&quot; number of&quot; distributions, or suchlike." CreationDate="2020-05-02T10:21:14.547" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="19790" PostId="5887" Score="1" Text="I appreciate your answer, but I'm downvoting, because I do not believe this is a good approach. Yes, I agree that the two senses of &quot;mixture&quot; are not all that distinct, and on a sufficiently abstract level, the two notions pretty much coincide. (I'm a mathematician by training, I'm all for unifying concepts by abstraction.) However, most people have very different toolsets for and very different questions about the two  problems on a less abstract level. ..." CreationDate="2020-05-03T12:47:23.657" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="19791" PostId="5887" Score="1" Text="... Judging from the questions with the [tag:mixture] tag, conflating them with [tag:compound-distributions] will *not* be helpful - neither for the original askers, nor for anyone who later comes along and searches by tags for particular questions that may be helpful, either by answering their problem or as duplicates." CreationDate="2020-05-03T12:48:23.287" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="19809" PostId="5891" Score="3" Text="I don't think anyone explicitly did not create the tag because of some argument against it. No one has simply created it yet. If you see the need, go ahead." CreationDate="2020-05-14T11:30:54.547" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20032" PostId="5891" Score="2" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica I have explicitly created the tag  (and engaged in some exuberant new tag-application) precisely to give folks the opportunity to explicitly unmake the tag. :)" CreationDate="2020-07-16T17:52:40.703" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="19811" PostId="5893" Score="3" Text="What was it, when you clicked on it?  Are you sure it isn't from SE?" CreationDate="2020-05-15T13:29:19.177" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19812" PostId="5893" Score="2" Text="It was one question that could be relevant, and then it started to ask about unrelated websites ... I doubt that SE would start a questionaire about CV without some information on meta!" CreationDate="2020-05-15T15:33:30.527" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="19816" PostId="5893" Score="14" Text="&quot; I doubt that SE would start a questionaire about CV without some information on meta!&quot; - Haha." CreationDate="2020-05-17T13:56:33.193" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="19813" PostId="5894" Score="1" Text="If you see a need, you may create the tag. If you do, please at least make an excerpt to help guide usage." CreationDate="2020-05-16T05:11:03.310" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19814" PostId="5894" Score="1" Text="Makes sense to me. I think we'll start to see more of these questions in the future. I second gung's request to make an excerpt." CreationDate="2020-05-16T16:33:50.583" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="19820" PostId="5896" Score="9" Text="Thanks for letting us know.  In light of Stephan Kolassa's [comment](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5893/inappropriate-ad-in-sidebar#comment19816_5893), it might be helpful in the future to let us know it's coming here in [meta.stats.SE]." CreationDate="2020-05-18T16:56:30.473" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19824" PostId="5896" Score="5" Text="No advertisements at all is my preference. (You did ask.)" CreationDate="2020-05-19T06:57:50.047" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19825" PostId="5896" Score="3" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica - Thanks for the feedback :),  I'll try to let y'all know when I can, and I'm always happy to answer questions about ads as things come up here." CreationDate="2020-05-19T08:17:11.203" UserId="285533" />
  <row Id="19826" PostId="5898" Score="1" Text="Could you give more detailed example, e.g. linking to a particular question that you have in mind?" CreationDate="2020-05-20T10:35:23.130" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="19827" PostId="5898" Score="0" Text="Thank you, I included the reference to the particular question I had in mind, in the question." CreationDate="2020-05-20T11:04:27.137" UserId="238766" />
  <row Id="19828" PostId="5898" Score="3" Text="[Glen_b's comment to your original question](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/467428/how-to-computing-the-x-coordinate-of-the-nth-quantile-of-a-distribution-usi?noredirect=1#comment863710_467428) gets to the point: when a question is posed in such generality that it will receive multiple different answers, depending on additional assumptions adopted by readers, then it is not sufficiently specific." CreationDate="2020-05-20T11:05:29.240" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="19829" PostId="5898" Score="0" Text="@whuber, thank you, that is clear, I will include a particular distribution when find one." CreationDate="2020-05-20T11:08:07.333" UserId="238766" />
  <row Id="19848" PostId="5903" Score="4" Text="+1 I can attest to relying on the last four methods you mention and would add a fifth: using CV to find expositors to emulate, trying to formulate clear answers to questions, and improving those answers in the crucible of community comments and criticism." CreationDate="2020-06-03T21:19:30.340" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="19840" PostId="5905" Score="1" Text="What kind of questions? Could you elaborate a little bit more?" CreationDate="2020-06-03T10:00:12.897" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="19841" PostId="5905" Score="0" Text="@Tim, it depends of the example. Relevant (I think) discussion: https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/263951/misunderstandings-of-spurious-correlation. Some correlations are obviously random noise (people who drowned... vs Nicholas Cage films); another correlations are a trivial consequence of the almost-linear time-dependence of both variables (science spending vs. suicides)... but in some (interesting) cases, the correlation can be the consequence of some no obvious common cause." CreationDate="2020-06-03T10:20:20.290" UserId="103180" />
  <row Id="19842" PostId="5905" Score="6" Text="This doesn't sound like on-topic for our site. If you want to discuss &quot;why&quot; some things correlate with each other, then this is not about statistics, but the &quot;things&quot; themselves. It'd be on topic if you wanted to ask general questions on things as correlation, regression, spurious correlation etc." CreationDate="2020-06-03T10:30:01.200" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="19843" PostId="5905" Score="0" Text="@Tim, OK. Thanks." CreationDate="2020-06-03T10:34:10.393" UserId="103180" />
  <row Id="19844" PostId="5905" Score="5" Text="My sampling -- apart from being dismayed by the spurious waviness of the curves, which looks like use of an MS Excel option all too often misapplied -- is that all the examples are variations on one single point, that correlations can arise because variables trend in the same way over time for quite different reasons. It's an important point in any introduction to statistics, but questions on yet more examples would seem likely to be duplicates of each other, unless some very specific content makes any a worthwhile different question." CreationDate="2020-06-03T11:51:02.810" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19845" PostId="5905" Score="1" Text="@NickCox, &quot;... unless some very specific content makes any a worthwhile different question.&quot;, as I expected. Thanks." CreationDate="2020-06-03T13:10:50.850" UserId="103180" />
  <row Id="19849" PostId="5906" Score="6" Text="As you might imagine, such questions are fundamental and surely, after this site has operated almost ten years, will have been formulated and answered in many ways.  Your first thought, then, should be to *search our site* for those answers.  One that has worked well for this particular issue is [regression significant change](https://stats.stackexchange.com/search?tab=votes&amp;q=regression%20significant%20change%20score%3a5)." CreationDate="2020-06-04T12:59:31.920" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="19850" PostId="5906" Score="0" Text="@whuber Thanks, I understand that, and did search the site before posting. However I couldn't really find an explanation that fits my situation (and one that I can understand as non-statistician). Therefore posted as separate question, with specific sample data, in hope to get more specific ideas or suggestions to understand the problem. If that's too much to ask per the policy of CrossValidated that's fair enough, then I withdraw my request. (P.S. link #3 is actually the most similar one to my question, perhaps this should be associated)" CreationDate="2020-06-04T13:27:18.147" UserId="148562" />
  <row Id="19851" PostId="5906" Score="0" Text="As you can see, we had already a number of other questions that answered very similar questions. Three of them are now marked as duplicates of yours. Is there any reason why they don't answer your question?" CreationDate="2020-06-04T13:34:48.970" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="19852" PostId="5906" Score="0" Text="@whuber I now see that my question does appear on the website, it's just marked as &quot;duplicate&quot;. Initially it seemed that trying to enter my question automatically redirects to the associated older question, which is why I posted here to try to revert the situation. If the question still appears then it's fine, thanks for correcting this!" CreationDate="2020-06-04T13:36:18.727" UserId="148562" />
  <row Id="19853" PostId="5906" Score="0" Text="@whuber answer #3 does give possible reasons *how* this may happen, but my question (two bullet points at the end) were actually more practical-oriented: Can I still conclude X1 affects Y? What kind of tests and diagnostics should I run and report in such situation?" CreationDate="2020-06-04T13:40:20.053" UserId="148562" />
  <row Id="19854" PostId="5906" Score="2" Text="@MichaelDorman when you add or remove variables from the model, you assume that this would impact the model, otherwise why would you do this? *Controlling* on other variables, some variables may have different impact on the model than before. That's what the other threads discuss." CreationDate="2020-06-04T13:44:40.777" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="19855" PostId="5906" Score="3" Text="I appreciate your constructive engagement with the issues (+1).  Some actions that often help are (a) if possible, shorten the text; (b) explicitly discuss the relevance (or lack thereof) of apparent duplicates on the site (or even elsewhere); (c) focus the post on a single clear question.  Because the change of sign or significance of variables in regression has been so extensively discussed, the challenge for you is to demonstrate how your question is different.  (I suspect it might be, which is why I'm writing these suggestions.)" CreationDate="2020-06-04T13:46:24.720" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="19856" PostId="5906" Score="1" Text="@whuber Thanks! I edited the question to clarify that I'm looking for practical advice rather than theoretical considerations on why this happens." CreationDate="2020-06-04T13:53:35.467" UserId="148562" />
  <row Id="19857" PostId="5907" Score="0" Text="I appreciate it, thank you!" CreationDate="2020-06-04T18:39:02.860" UserId="148562" />
  <row Id="19858" PostId="5909" Score="1" Text="Got it, thanks. Next time I will start with 50 and gradually build up." CreationDate="2020-06-08T17:40:17.160" UserDisplayName="user272422" />
  <row Id="19860" PostId="5909" Score="1" Text="@Glorfindel I guess I screwed up then. Hopefully if people tolerate my snark comments and upvote my answers and I will get the 200 to offer the bounty again." CreationDate="2020-06-08T20:27:40.387" UserDisplayName="user272422" />
  <row Id="19904" PostId="5911" Score="2" Text="Sometimes a post of yours gets traction without you knowing. For example, people might link to your answer elsewhere, and then it starts having more exposure due to the number of pageviews. Increased visitors might translate into more upvotes, if the visitors have an account here" CreationDate="2020-06-17T18:54:23.310" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="19905" PostId="5911" Score="0" Text="But from what @gung said in their answer, it seems like you got upvotes in different posts, so that wouldn't be the case" CreationDate="2020-06-17T18:55:14.277" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="19900" PostId="5912" Score="2" Text="Nice use of data to build a hypothesis!" CreationDate="2020-06-16T21:50:36.610" UserId="11867" />
  <row Id="19906" PostId="5913" Score="0" Text="And we have ai stackexchange and data science stack exchange so it can be confusing. https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/130524/which-stack-exchange-website-for-machine-learning-and-computational-algorithms" CreationDate="2020-06-19T03:46:05.643" UserId="140662" />
  <row Id="19901" PostId="5914" Score="0" Text="Great answer.  I think the reason it's called *deep learning* rather than *deep architectures* is because it's easy to build a deep architecture.  The hard part is learning the parameters!  I think in the long run, the deep-learning tag shouldn't be mapped to neural networks, but it's true that deep neural networks are an example of a deep architecture." CreationDate="2020-06-17T02:17:46.230" UserId="858" />
  <row Id="19936" PostId="5914" Score="0" Text="@NeilG, there was a [question](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5639/) last year about making `[deep-learning]` a synonym of `[neural-networks]`. The consensus was *yes* &amp; it happened. The tags haven't been merged, so the synonym can be undone, but there was a big discussion &amp; the result was fairly clear." CreationDate="2020-06-22T15:20:04.590" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19888" PostId="5915" Score="10" Text="You don't seem to be out of line. In general, trivial edits shouldn't be approved, &amp; the standard can get stricter as posts are older. But also, sometimes things slip though." CreationDate="2020-06-16T15:38:10.230" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19889" PostId="5915" Score="5" Text="What you did was definitely not out of line.  Edits to older posts (usually more than a few days) and small edits to answers usually shouldn't be approved unless they obviously correct errors." CreationDate="2020-06-16T15:51:34.213" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="19890" PostId="5915" Score="1" Text="Sadly so many other packages live in the tidyverse that many users (like me) find they have it installed already without ever wanting it directly." CreationDate="2020-06-16T16:02:08.103" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="19891" PostId="5915" Score="1" Text="@mdewey Not sure why &quot;sadly&quot;? I don't actually care one way or another about this ideology; I find tidyverse has it's uses and use it when it does, and don't when it's easier to use something else. I've developed packages that use either base R or tidyverse code, so it's not like I'm anti-tidyverse." CreationDate="2020-06-16T16:18:47.297" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="19892" PostId="5915" Score="4" Text="I think this question mixes small issues on two quite different levels. The first level is general, about small edits and how far they are distracting, In my view, poor presentation is itself distracting to many, regardless of whether the question is clear overall. In that sense, minor edits can help every reader." CreationDate="2020-06-16T18:18:47.333" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19893" PostId="5915" Score="1" Text="If I understand correctly, the second level is to do with how, and how far, R code should be explained -- in certain specific senses. I think there is also an assumption here that the R issues called &quot;ideological&quot; are self-evident to readers on Meta. I don't think they are likely to be self-evident to all of those who mostly or entirely use quite different software." CreationDate="2020-06-16T18:20:09.107" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19894" PostId="5915" Score="0" Text="Previous threads on editing include https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2810/editing-questions-dos-and-dont&#xA;&#xA;https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5816/preventing-minor-stylistic-edits-on-old-duplicated-posts-or-not-pushing-those&#xA;&#xA;So far as I am aware R ideology is a new issue on Meta." CreationDate="2020-06-16T18:25:22.257" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19895" PostId="5915" Score="3" Text="@NickCox The size of an edit is not really in question (by me anyway); I would hope that a good but small edit that improved the post would be acceptable. What I meant by &quot;trivial&quot; was that it added nothing (&amp; likely cost more to run the code, and also was incomplete - if you have a tibble you shouldn't be using `with()` etc), didn't change the practical behaviour, etc, etc. I'd be just as miffed if someone came in and edited the entire post to use tidyverse tools, because what's the point, aim? It wouldn't change anything other than make it more difficult for non-tidyverse-users to understand" CreationDate="2020-06-16T18:30:50.260" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="19896" PostId="5915" Score="2" Text="@NickCox This kind of thing (&quot;ideology&quot; based edits) occurs on [so] from time to time, especially on older posts. I almost always reverse the edits there for the same reasons. Invariably it's done by low-rep users and not by the people who actually develop the tools of interest." CreationDate="2020-06-16T18:34:17.530" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="19897" PostId="5915" Score="2" Text="@Gavin Simpson Fine by me, but detail crucial to understanding your question is appearing in the comments, and on Meta as well as on the main site we then encourage posters to edit the question itself when that happens. If you don't have a question about small edits in general the only hint in the title about your focus is &quot;ideological&quot;, which itself is hardly a neutral word. I would be happy if this question were focused on edits to or about R code, on which I should remain silent, except that i don't have enough space in this margin to express thoughts about the tidyverse adequately." CreationDate="2020-06-16T18:38:28.517" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19898" PostId="5915" Score="2" Text="@NickCox I see what you're getting at; I'll get my editing pen out and add some info from the comments to the question." CreationDate="2020-06-16T19:29:11.927" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="19902" PostId="5915" Score="6" Text="I personally have an aversion to the `tidyverse`, [which I explain here](https://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/18?m=53969787#53969787). This particular edit only made your post harder to read - before, any user of base R could understand it, now it requires (some small) knowledge of the `tidyverse`. As such, it is a clear [disimprovement](https://ell.stackexchange.com/q/184436/90016), and I would see rejecting the edit as a no-brainer. I honestly don't see any ideology at work here. (Then again, it's probably me that is the ideologue, and I just don't see it.)" CreationDate="2020-06-17T13:15:31.333" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="19899" PostId="5916" Score="3" Text="Thanks; I have clarified what I mean by trivial" CreationDate="2020-06-16T21:11:14.530" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="19903" PostId="5917" Score="5" Text="Ah, I see the `group` issue now; this (original) answer required *a lot* of digging around in what *mgcv* was doing and at the time it also wasn't clear how well *mgcv* handled tibbles (now we know this doesn't matter). In my script that I wrote to prepare the answer I had defined `group` externally but that didn't make it into the code in the answer. I'll rectify that." CreationDate="2020-06-17T15:44:25.943" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="19908" PostId="5918" Score="0" Text="@AndreSilva We differ only as to emphasis. If a reviewer for a peer reviewed journal makes a suggestion that is not harmful, I usually default to that opinion. To do otherwise is to argue just for the sake of stylistic issues, and granted some people cannot resist arguing about unimportant points, however, there are more interesting ways of spending time. If you want I can change the style of the above, or, if you wish, you can do it for me, please." CreationDate="2020-06-20T03:10:26.693" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="19910" PostId="5918" Score="0" Text="@AndreSilva I would do more on this site, but have concerns about authorship rights, treatment of users, misuse of downvoting (e.g., for kicks), etc. On the plus side, I have learned how to communicate with statisticians a bit better, which is no mean feat since the concepts are sometimes quite isolated from the rest of scientific language usage. I did the edit you were suggesting, nothing wrong with that suggestion. Thanks for the compliment, you made my day." CreationDate="2020-06-20T04:43:13.130" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="19911" PostId="5918" Score="1" Text="You've made negative comments and posts about downvoting before. If I wanted to stir things up, I'd say that there is more negativity in those remarks attributing poor motives to downvoters than is really manifest in the downvotes themselves. I don't know what people's motives are unless they explain them! Does anyone else know more? . Anecdotes: (1) I've experienced occasional unexplained downvotes and they are puzzling, but what the heck, there is plenty of evidence that I irritate some people." CreationDate="2020-06-20T07:53:47.810" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19912" PostId="5918" Score="0" Text="(2) In 7 years here I think I've experienced just one &quot;enemy&quot; who dislikes much of my posts but regard hundreds of people here as virtual friends because I recognise their identifiers and appreciate what they do. (3) Least personally, I suggest it's exceptional here to see any post with more than say 5 downvotes, and in the vast majority of cases it is a bad post and &quot;piling on&quot; is a collective way of flagging spam or rudeness or something outrageously wrong. That's voting working as it should. (In politics too, many of us vote to keep poor candidates out rather than mediocre candidates in.)" CreationDate="2020-06-20T07:56:30.867" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19913" PostId="5918" Score="0" Text="On editing, explaining edits is not worse than not explaining them, but the suggestion here is even the wrong way round. **If an edit needs explaining, it's an inappropriate edit.** Edits should be of presentation only, so start with spelling, punctuation, grammar, style, Markdown, etc. Is it the case that people with poor English or sloppy presentation want to be told emphatically that is the case? (And, yes, in many cases it's because English or American is not their first language.) Naturally, if people want to see messages like &quot;small edits to your English&quot; as a summary, that's a view." CreationDate="2020-06-20T07:59:49.480" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19914" PostId="5918" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Geepers, cool it will ya? I react to stimuli different than you do, and have a different approach to problems than you. That does not make me wrong about everything, just different. It is fair to discuss our differences but not if it is causing you pain. How is &quot;If I wanted to stir things up, I'd say that there is more negativity in those remarks attributing poor motives to downvoters than is really manifest in the downvotes themselves.&quot; not stirring things up? I do not understand why criticizing downvotes sets users off." CreationDate="2020-06-20T08:54:02.160" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="19915" PostId="5918" Score="0" Text="@NickCox ...But it does. All I said is that it dissuades me from wanting to contribute to this site. Try to understand that. If you want me to explain, please ask. If not then don't ask." CreationDate="2020-06-20T08:58:00.797" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="19916" PostId="5918" Score="0" Text="@Carl Goodwill here, really. You missed the attempt at irony, or tongue in cheek. &quot;I disagree with you&quot; is always pretty close to &quot;I think you are wrong&quot; but having a discussion at all shows respect for the other side, and here too. You have criticised downvoting  repeatedly, even when Meta thread after Meta thread shows if anything that you are in a small minority on that issue. I don't expect to change your view but won't let your throw-away comment pass without expressing a different one." CreationDate="2020-06-20T09:05:18.987" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19917" PostId="5918" Score="1" Text="When I referee papers for journals I do not expect authors to accept what I say but I do expect them to provide a reasoned explanation of why I am wrong which, being human, I may well be. I think that more nearly parallels what should be happening with edits." CreationDate="2020-06-20T15:44:57.963" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="19918" PostId="5918" Score="0" Text="@NickCox I was captain of my high school chess team and the most successful player, but didn't like it. Took a long time to figure out why I didn't. It boils down to engaging in spurious competition in a zero sum game whereas cooperation, e.g., in a science project, is open ended positive sum. Sure, there are people who are enamored of competition in zero sum games, may you enjoy it, although if I do not I hope you will at least try to understand." CreationDate="2020-06-20T19:21:03.283" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="19919" PostId="5918" Score="0" Text="@mdewey My last serious research paper had 12 referees refuse to do the review, My response in the last review round by 6 reviewers went to 14 pages. Most of the changes were cosmetic, many of them were correct, some of them asked for tons of unnecessary extra work driven more by curiosity than reason. If I would have argued that the extra work was unnecessary, I would have had to do the work to prove that anyway. Did I disagree with the reviewers? Yes, but only about things that did not matter anyway, and that only for a small minority of things." CreationDate="2020-06-20T19:32:06.200" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="19920" PostId="5918" Score="0" Text="@mdewey If I had addressed the reviewers as if they were competitors rather than what they actually were, sincere readers concerned with creating something good, it would not have gone well. As it was, it took 5 or so review sessions to get the paper accepted. Why so many? Because the theory was new enough and so different, antithetical to existing material, that presenting that new material was very difficult as even the terminology used was at ground zero. In turn when I review something, I expect the authors to pay attention, and often they cannot because of lack of adequate training." CreationDate="2020-06-20T19:41:37.197" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="19921" PostId="5918" Score="0" Text="@mdewey Now a naive approach to writing anything is to view it as a competition between the text and &quot;good enough&quot; to make the cut. When I review my criterion for acceptance is whether the material is constructive and represents something that adds to knowledge or destructive and represents a step backwards. I recommend acceptance of 1 paper in 5, approximately, which is in line with the acceptance rate for the nearly two dozen journals I review for. Am I wrong about my comments during review? Sure it could happen, but nothing comes to mind. For me, it is a minor consideration." CreationDate="2020-06-20T19:57:39.157" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="19922" PostId="5918" Score="0" Text="@Carl Your approach to paper reviewing shows that your standards are high, and long that may continue. Editing and voting (down as well as up) are some of the means we use here to maintain standards, including variously improving what we can and  criticising poor questions and answers. Everyone's contributions here are utterly optional -- except for moderators who have obligations while they serve -- and yours like anyone else's are just whatever is congenial to you." CreationDate="2020-06-21T09:44:49.183" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19923" PostId="5918" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Thank-you. I hear you, downvoting is what is done currently, and my claims are heresy. My downvoting claims go to efficiency. Downvoting tends toward zero sum competitive gamesmanship, whereas editing and commenting (and upvoting) are more cooperative and open ended in nature. I would not design a site to include ineffectual competitiveness. It is possible that the quite negative reaction to my downvoting heresy is more due to confirmation bias than due to consideration of merit." CreationDate="2020-06-21T10:24:42.107" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="19924" PostId="5918" Score="0" Text="@NickCox I am not saying that negative reactions to a post should be eliminated. I am saying that downvoting is an inefficient method of reacting negatively; it is flawed, there are better methods." CreationDate="2020-06-21T10:35:15.457" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="19925" PostId="5918" Score="0" Text="Meanwhile over at https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/398537/what-can-we-do-to-encourage-downvoting vigorous advocacy for more downvoting...." CreationDate="2020-06-21T12:19:31.730" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19933" PostId="5918" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Yes, and they are delusional. More bad vibes, they deserve themselves." CreationDate="2020-06-21T22:31:12.607" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="19926" PostId="5920" Score="9" Text="Assuming [this policy](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1629/62336) still stands, then literature/reference requests are on-topic. However, is &quot;the proportion of font parameters within plots&quot; really related to statistics, compared to, let's say... [ux.se], or maybe [graphicdesign.se]?" CreationDate="2020-06-21T12:51:12.710" UserId="62336" />
  <row Id="19927" PostId="5920" Score="3" Text="@Andrew Your point is a good one: this is an &quot;edge case&quot; of a topic that straddles several disciplines.  But isn't the relevant issue whether the topic is appropriate on CV, rather than whether it is appropriate (or even most appropriate) on some other site, given the OP has elected to post it here?" CreationDate="2020-06-21T13:25:12.457" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="19928" PostId="5920" Score="2" Text="@whuber fair point, I only gave alternative sites in case it's really off-topic since I don't know if it's on-topic or not on here." CreationDate="2020-06-21T13:36:54.563" UserId="62336" />
  <row Id="19929" PostId="5920" Score="2" Text="@AndrewT. yes - I would say that it is within statistics given things such as tufte's ink ratio. Basically - it's something that I think is reasonable to expect someone to have considered and written about within the context of statistics." CreationDate="2020-06-21T15:40:25.263" UserId="137921" />
  <row Id="19930" PostId="5920" Score="2" Text="@baxx I won't argue if the question is on-topic or not since I'm not a regular here. I just have a feeling the question might fall into the [boat programming](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/14486/241919) issue (in this case: just because it's used in statistics doesn't make it a question about statistics), but the mod has spoken, so..." CreationDate="2020-06-21T15:46:28.437" UserId="62336" />
  <row Id="19931" PostId="5920" Score="1" Text="@AndrewT. I'd completely disagree that this is a &quot;boat programming&quot; question. Unless you'd also argue for material such as Tufte to be in graphic design, I'd also disagree with that though." CreationDate="2020-06-21T17:21:53.407" UserId="137921" />
  <row Id="19935" PostId="5920" Score="4" Text="I can understand why you are puzzled, indeed annoyed. but the tone of this and indeed the question itself is a little disconcerting. In the original you state &quot;Suitable Answer&#xA;The answer does not have to be in Python or use the above code, that is just to illustrate the point.&quot;  Indeed, the stance on CV is that code is never more than by way of example to give substance to a statistical question. A secondary objection to your question is that it is dominated by your code. I am not clear it is off-topic, despite @Tim's well argued rationale. but I doubt there is a really useful answer." CreationDate="2020-06-22T07:17:19.733" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19938" PostId="5920" Score="1" Text="It's open again." CreationDate="2020-06-22T16:15:51.550" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19943" PostId="5920" Score="0" Text="@NickCox i appreciate your points there - but Python is what I use and I wanted to make it as straightforward as possible for others to quickly reproduce what was in the question. I think it's reasonable to do so, given that I explicitly state that the question isn't about the code it seems to fit in with the CV stance? Personally I feel as though it's better with the code than without, as it enables things to be reproduced, removing that for the sake of people who aren't going to read doesn't seem worth it." CreationDate="2020-06-23T14:33:20.880" UserId="137921" />
  <row Id="19944" PostId="5920" Score="2" Text="The code does no harm and certainly it is available for anyone wishing to use it. My own feeling is that the question would be perfectly clear without the code. Even with free software that one uses (my text editor and my TeX implementation fall under that heading) it's easy to overestimate (1) how far everyone else uses what you do (2) how easy it is to run code even if it's reproducible (there are usually key details obvious to the experienced but not the learner). (All software one doesn't use is plausibly wonderful but overrated by its fans,)" CreationDate="2020-06-23T15:31:45.270" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19945" PostId="5920" Score="0" Text="good points, I suppose I'm so used to trying to produce a MWE that I didn't consider it actually obfuscating things wrt the core question" CreationDate="2020-06-23T18:18:24.650" UserId="137921" />
  <row Id="19946" PostId="5920" Score="1" Text="Cross Validated != Stack Overflow." CreationDate="2020-06-23T22:15:04.373" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19947" PostId="5920" Score="0" Text="@NickCox i'm aware, reproducibility is usually a pretty valuable thing though, so I'm not saying that I *don't* think the code should be in the post I made (or posts in general where available). I'm just saying that I didn't consider it being something that would throw someone reading it, in future I would provide more clear disclaimers." CreationDate="2020-06-23T22:21:38.677" UserId="137921" />
  <row Id="19948" PostId="5920" Score="2" Text="I naturally agree: reproducibility is important for coding questions. I am active on Stack Overflow, although only on Stata questions. Lack of a MWE is a major issue limiting the value of many questions. Other way round, many people post here expecting we will debug or write code for them. If a statistical question is at the heart of their question, it may be on-topic here,  but usually it isn't." CreationDate="2020-06-23T22:27:57.923" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20031" PostId="5920" Score="0" Text="&quot;tufte's ink ratio&quot; is a design and communication prinicple articulated by Ed Tufte, but which often suffers when put to the empirical test: e.g., his dot-dash plots are less legible to educated audiences than box and whisker plots used to communicate the same information." CreationDate="2020-07-16T17:23:58.850" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="19937" PostId="5921" Score="0" Text="Thanks for answering. Still, the comment &quot;*the question needs more detail before we can tell if it is a duplicate or not*&quot; by a moderator does not fit rejecting a flag for the same reason. especially since mods are in no way obliged to act on a flag &quot;now&quot;, and they can always wait." CreationDate="2020-06-22T16:10:39.960" UserId="93018" />
  <row Id="19939" PostId="5921" Score="0" Text="@desertnaut I can't guess the real reason behind the mod's action. This answer just tries to explain that your flag was not directly rejected by the mod, but instead automatically declined by the system. The mod might not even realize your flag when choosing &quot;leave open&quot; from the review queue. Might also note that [the mod is very active and also the top reviewer on the close vote reviews](https://stats.stackexchange.com/review/close/stats)" CreationDate="2020-06-22T16:35:10.803" UserId="62336" />
  <row Id="19940" PostId="5921" Score="0" Text="OK, you are right - didn't look closely to your #3. Makes sense, accepting..." CreationDate="2020-06-22T16:37:00.150" UserId="93018" />
  <row Id="19959" PostId="5922" Score="0" Text="I interpreted the question as asking whether there were any guidelines *beyond* personal preference and &quot;looks nice.&quot; There is literature indicating that people have a harder time extracting information from &quot;area&quot; cues (e.g., a pie chart) vs length ones. Similarly, certain colormaps are seem worse, in terms of perceptual consistency as well as accessibility, than others. Jet, which was the Matlab default for ages, is particularly bad in that regard, so &quot;trust the defaults&quot; also isnt a great solution IMO." CreationDate="2020-06-25T13:18:46.813" UserId="7250" />
  <row Id="19960" PostId="5922" Score="0" Text="@MattKrause I'd agree if the question was more general, but here it asked about font size to be used in title, something very specific and totally related to graphical side, rather then accessibility (unless the answer would be &quot;use font not smaller then...&quot;)." CreationDate="2020-06-25T13:23:58.817" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="19961" PostId="5922" Score="0" Text="Eh...the relative &quot;badness&quot; of jet isn't just related to accessibility: it's not perceptually uniform, so some 1 unit changes *look* bigger than others. Ditto for areas vs lengths. Other than some vague notion of &quot;crowding&quot;, I can't think of a psychophysical/perceptual principle that would give you much guidance about the relative size of the titles vs axes, but...that's an actual answer to the question." CreationDate="2020-06-25T13:31:10.940" UserId="7250" />
  <row Id="19942" PostId="5924" Score="6" Text="+1. When the post is particularly insistent that we reply, and do so immediately, I also downvote it, even (as is typical) the OP is new to the site.  I strongly support making newcomers welcome, but I don't lose any sleep over carrying out this particular voting policy.  It proactively improves the site, because when the same person repeats their attempt in another post--which frequently happens--a second downvote (by me or anyone else) will cause the system to block them from posting any new questions until they have improved their existing posts." CreationDate="2020-06-23T12:24:13.327" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="22597" PostId="5924" Score="0" Text="Not just homework. I've seen it from people whose thesis is due in 48 hours or less - I've even seen it as short as six hours. These posters have (apparently) not even begun some crucial-to-the-thesis statistical analysis. This has cropped up not just once or twice but many times; I see this last minute &quot;thesis data analysis&quot; typically with &quot;my supervisor went on vacation&quot; question multiple times a year. How thoughtless of the supervisor to assume the student would begin their analysis before the last possible moment." CreationDate="2023-12-05T03:19:27.010" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="19966" PostId="5926" Score="3" Text="I found this discussion on meta.SO interesting: [It's time to reward the duplicate finders](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/394048/its-time-to-reward-the-duplicate-finders). I don't know if this has gained traction with corporate SE but it seems necessary to incentivize greater participation in the queues." CreationDate="2020-06-25T21:01:37.240" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="19973" PostId="5926" Score="2" Text="Math.SE has this problem much worse, largely due to far lower question quality combined with far higher question volumes. The Close queue has been near 400 for months, now, and it's staggering how many close votes are cast every day - well into the hundreds. Of interest to me would be the mean time to leave the queue, either closed or kept open or aged out." CreationDate="2020-06-26T17:55:15.127" UserId="76484" />
  <row Id="19974" PostId="5926" Score="2" Text="I'd like to know that myself, @AdrianKeister, but I'm not sure how to get it from the SE data dump.  I don't see an existing query for it.  I tried to see if I could fork a related query, but I couldn't figure out where that information is stored in the database exactly.  My SQL-fu is somewhat sub-par, though, maybe someone else can figure it out." CreationDate="2020-06-26T18:02:50.400" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19975" PostId="5926" Score="3" Text="Aging out after only four days is too fast. That must be increased, in addition to whatever else is done." CreationDate="2020-06-26T18:59:48.640" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="19977" PostId="5926" Score="2" Text="To me the boundary for the vote-to-close privilege also seems on the high side. Perhaps we should consider lowering that a bit? Admittedly I am only an occasional user and can usually only answer simple questions so gathering rep is also not all that fast. If the bar for privileges is so high I can never help. Then again as I said I may be biased." CreationDate="2020-06-27T15:26:26.530" UserId="130497" />
  <row Id="19978" PostId="5926" Score="0" Text="Linking related discussions on SO; the following was the final result; previous discussion were closed as duplicates from this one: [We’re lowering the close/reopen vote threshold from 5 to 3 for good](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/391832/we-re-lowering-the-close-reopen-vote-threshold-from-5-to-3-for-good)" CreationDate="2020-06-27T22:18:07.673" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="19988" PostId="5926" Score="0" Text="Maybe your problem is, at least in part, due to your (plural!) being too eager to cast &quot;close&quot; votes?" CreationDate="2020-06-30T16:14:23.337" UserId="169343" />
  <row Id="19989" PostId="5926" Score="6" Text="@Igor That's a possible explanation, but it doesn't stand up to the record, which shows that the community (with 5 votes) or the mods have supported the vast majority of the proposed closures.  Reviewing 100 threads to keep 15 open is a common experience." CreationDate="2020-07-01T19:23:31.650" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="19990" PostId="5926" Score="1" Text="@whuber: Two points: 1) Are these community votes independent events? As a statistician, you are certainly aware of the repercussions... 2) If there is such a high agreement, where does the problem stem from? Too few users with vote-to-close privilege? If so, why not lower the threshold reputation and have more such users?" CreationDate="2020-07-02T07:04:34.497" UserId="169343" />
  <row Id="19991" PostId="5926" Score="0" Text="@IgorF., lower the threshold to what value? And why 'that' value? Voting events are not independent, but why do they should? For example, do you think an ignored comment by OP from someone requesting improvements in Q who cast a closure vote should be ignored by the following reviewer?" CreationDate="2020-07-02T16:13:15.183" UserId="22468" />
  <row Id="19992" PostId="5926" Score="3" Text="@IgorF., bear in mind that this is an option for discussion because this is something SE has decided it will do. There many be many other changes we could dream up that might work better for some reason, but they aren't going to happen. There are plenty of people with the close vote privilege, but many don't  work through the queue regularly. FWIW, our close rates are not out of line with other top SE sites. If you want to make a positive case that our close rate *should* be some other amount, you should start a new meta thread to discuss the issue." CreationDate="2020-07-02T16:38:56.233" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19993" PostId="5926" Score="3" Text="I mainly made the earlier comment because the threshold for the privilege is actually lower at economics.se so I figured it would be possible here as well. Then again economics is in beta and has fewer users so perhaps that's the reason." CreationDate="2020-07-02T18:21:13.613" UserId="130497" />
  <row Id="20038" PostId="5926" Score="0" Text="There must be the time now to close this and implement the proposed change! I have seen little disagreement here.  And the queues are growing ..." CreationDate="2020-07-24T16:22:08.760" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="20039" PostId="5926" Score="3" Text="There's no need to *close* this Q, @kjetilbhalvorsen. The SE community mods have been notified that CV has consensus on the issue &amp; that we should be added to the list of sites where this should be implemented.  From here, it's however long it takes the developers to get to it.  Unfortunately, there's no telling when it will happen." CreationDate="2020-07-24T16:26:41.010" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19970" PostId="5927" Score="11" Text="I agree strongly. It's important detail that (1) we are down one moderator as compared with the period before recent troubles. My further guesses include (2) some measure of dissatisfaction and so lesser engagement with CV among several experienced users (3) many of us tend to vote to close directly on questions of interest to us, and looking in this queue for more poor questions is not enticing. I sense beyond SE an increasing frequency of questions assuming that the poster is entitled to an answer, regardless of how little effort they put into a question -- or in working it out themselves." CreationDate="2020-06-26T12:54:43.920" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="19971" PostId="5927" Score="5" Text="These are good points.  I hadn't thought of the number of possible votes as a factor. Something that occurs to me is that I think an ordinary user can only review 20 threads per day in the review queue, even if they get 24 votes.  So it might be worth pairing increasing the number of reviews you can do in step with increasing the allowed number of votes to 50." CreationDate="2020-06-26T12:56:52.050" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="19979" PostId="5927" Score="3" Text="I agree with this but just one extra point. Although I often hit the 20 close votes barrier there are seldom many left for me to do at that point so increasing my number would have less effect than reducing the threshold. Mind you I hardly ever see one in the queue with more than one vote already but that may reflect my time zone (currently UTC+1) versus that of other users who close a lot." CreationDate="2020-06-28T12:45:51.090" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="20162" PostId="5927" Score="0" Text="Anything new on the request to SE about lowering the threshold to 3 votes?" CreationDate="2020-10-08T07:29:05.813" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="20703" PostId="5927" Score="0" Text="@StephanKolassa [New development](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/364007/testing-three-vote-close-and-reopen-on-12-network-sites#364007)" CreationDate="2021-05-03T20:14:14.297" UserId="246271" />
  <row Id="19984" PostId="5929" Score="11" Text="Basically, if someone asks several low quality questions in a row (many -1 and/or closed), then the system automatically blocks them from asking." CreationDate="2020-06-30T12:26:52.097" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="19985" PostId="5929" Score="1" Text="Great, thank you for the response @Tim" CreationDate="2020-06-30T13:10:42.840" UserId="284660" />
  <row Id="19987" PostId="5929" Score="4" Text="This question has bothered me for a long time.  The automatic system blocking mechanism sort of works.  With experience, I have figured out its parameters.  The problem is that any user who has collected some upvotes (which invariably happens if they post enough questions or answers, even when those are all pure junk) will be given *much* more latitude to abuse the site than a new user with only downvotes.  These are the ones we need to be vigilant about." CreationDate="2020-06-30T13:17:58.823" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20001" PostId="5929" Score="1" Text="If you have VTC privileges and the two questions are (1) written by the same user and (2) very similar in content, then the system will let you mark one as a duplicate of the other even if the target does not have an answer with positive score nor an accepted answer." CreationDate="2020-07-07T01:12:45.390" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20004" PostId="5929" Score="1" Text="Is there anything to prevent a sufficiently desperate OP to open new accounts that keep asking the question again?" CreationDate="2020-07-08T09:49:21.133" UserId="67799" />
  <row Id="20012" PostId="5929" Score="0" Text="@ChristophHanck If you mean anything that automatically prevent that, no, there isn't anything that prevent that. A user who creates new accounts to continue to write low quality posts would get the attention of moderators, though." CreationDate="2020-07-11T18:36:19.757" UserId="5720" />
  <row Id="19986" PostId="5930" Score="2" Text="Thanks, I immediately flagged it when I saw it and will keep doing so in the future" CreationDate="2020-06-30T13:12:48.703" UserId="284660" />
  <row Id="19994" PostId="5931" Score="3" Text="&quot;paste your data into your question as actual text and numbers&quot;: even if people don't use R, data in the form of your screenshot are manageable in many different programs, so long as they (a) can be copied and pasted as text (b) have clear, informative headers (c) are clearly separated into columns, meaning variables." CreationDate="2020-07-03T17:28:05.467" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21226" PostId="5931" Score="2" Text="&quot;Please don't expect us to type your data off ourselves!&quot; Oh. Totally. Yeah. I am sure [none of use would do that](https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/114628/44269). ;)" CreationDate="2022-02-13T23:36:09.633" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="19998" PostId="5933" Score="4" Text="@whuber's answer is good. If you want to bring it to the moderators' attention even faster, you can flag it with a custom note." CreationDate="2020-07-04T16:04:08.557" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20000" PostId="5933" Score="7" Text="This AI vs. CV vs. DS separation is ridiculous. Should be on the same SE website." CreationDate="2020-07-06T21:03:27.883" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="20002" PostId="5935" Score="7" Text="One of the reasons for closing a question is &quot;This question appears to be off-topic because EITHER it is not about statistics, machine learning, data analysis, data mining, or data visualization, OR it focuses on programming, debugging, or performing routine operations within a statistical computing platform. If the latter, you could try the support links we maintain.&quot; Some useful discussion here: https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5286/why-do-we-have-a-tensorflow-tag-if-questions-about-programming-are-off-topic" CreationDate="2020-07-07T05:36:23.917" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20003" PostId="5935" Score="3" Text="The policy is in one word No, which does nothing to stop decisions being difficult in grey areas. We could speculate about an alternative history if Stack Overflow hadn't started first. Some standard points to ponder: If R questions are allowed, what extra volume of questions would be implied? If questions in any statistical or other programming language or software environment you care about are allowed, so also are  questions in all other software you don't care about. Naturally every user's private fantasy criterion is &quot;questions of interest to me are allowed, and no others&quot;." CreationDate="2020-07-07T11:10:49.480" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20061" PostId="5935" Score="1" Text="There's a criterion that qualifies a question that relates to code (though perhaps subject to some substantial differences in interpretation) -- that it *requires statistical expertise to understand or answer*." CreationDate="2020-08-23T16:57:40.400" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="20005" PostId="5937" Score="7" Text="I'm reluctant to identify any &quot;best practice,&quot; because it seems like the response ought to vary with the circumstances.  Often you can offer a constructive answer and, in passing, demonstrate why an existing answer is incorrect.  If you don't want to do that, your third option (use a new thread as a reference) works well." CreationDate="2020-07-08T15:37:13.493" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20006" PostId="5937" Score="4" Text="That's a good point, and it hadn't occurred to me because, in the specific case I have in mind, I don't know the answer to OP's question. So I'll work on writing a question and answer to show the claim is false." CreationDate="2020-07-08T15:50:16.543" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20007" PostId="5937" Score="8" Text="I'm frequently in a position of not knowing a good answer, but being able to recognize a bad (or wrong) one ;-).  As a moderator I focus my comments on encouraging the poster to improve their answer.  That doesn't usually require that I offer a definitive proof of incorrectness: it suffices to suggest the reasons for reconsidering the answer.  Some people take this the wrong way, though, so take care... ." CreationDate="2020-07-08T19:00:30.353" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20008" PostId="5937" Score="4" Text="Yeah, it's tricky to get the comment to read *just right* so that your meaning is clear and that the reader doesn't take it as an affront. But in the meantime, someone else has offered a concise comment that points out the deficiency, so I guess I'm off the hook for correcting this answer." CreationDate="2020-07-08T19:06:02.553" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20013" PostId="5940" Score="4" Text="I found the question interesting and made comments (and specifically comments, not an answer, because what I could offer fell a long way short of the answer you were asking for). But it was closed as lacking in focus because you asked several things at once, and that closure makes sense to me too. The issue is not that it **cannot** be reopened, as people with enough reputation can certainly vote to reopen, but so far no such votes.  Equally a moderator could reverse the decision, which hasn't yet happened. Your editing it remains possible, but not sufficient to ensure re-opening." CreationDate="2020-07-13T08:06:56.013" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20014" PostId="5940" Score="2" Text="Indeed, you have edited it several times since it was closed, but you have made just minor changes, and I don't think these are anywhere near enough for re-opening to be likely, but that is just one guess." CreationDate="2020-07-13T08:11:41.160" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20015" PostId="5940" Score="0" Text="I generally agree with Nick Cox. But perhaps the question might be acceptable as a community wiki?" CreationDate="2020-07-13T12:43:15.043" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="20016" PostId="5940" Score="5" Text="@mkt CW is not a mechanism for allowing questions that do not meet site standards.  I have not voted to reopen the question because (in its current form) it is far too broad: it asks us to &quot;organize the origin of terms and the field of study.&quot; That may be interesting and suitable on other sites, but it doesn't work here." CreationDate="2020-07-13T14:23:53.510" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20017" PostId="5940" Score="0" Text="@whuber Fair enough. I vaguely remember a CW question dealing with lists of terms and thought it might be similar, but closing also seems entirely reasonable." CreationDate="2020-07-13T14:49:49.103" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="20018" PostId="5940" Score="3" Text="@mkt CW is weird.  Different SE sites use it differently.  I have reserved it for questions that are on topic, clear, as focused as possible, but obviously will--or at least potentially can--receive multiple correct answers.  That's primarily requests for references.  I think other mods take a similar approach." CreationDate="2020-07-13T16:09:24.927" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20019" PostId="5940" Score="0" Text="@whuber How about I limit the list of terms I'm curious and ask for the answer for the limited list? Does it satisfy the condition?" CreationDate="2020-07-14T06:51:13.163" UserId="276972" />
  <row Id="20020" PostId="5940" Score="0" Text="I am sympathetic to that approach.  There is a problem, though, which is already apparent in your current list: these terms are not synonymous.  Consider instead offering one term (along with a clear definition for it) and ask for its synonyms and their origins.  Even that is skirting the edges of what is officially on topic, but we generally don't close such questions when they are so clearly posed and relevant to statistics." CreationDate="2020-07-14T12:20:59.483" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20025" PostId="5940" Score="0" Text="@whuber I edited my question. Let me know if it's still not suitable. Thanks." CreationDate="2020-07-15T14:11:26.263" UserId="276972" />
  <row Id="20035" PostId="5941" Score="0" Text="When an answer that has been accepted is has a negative number of votes and is &quot;not even wrong,&quot; but its author starts trying to defend the indefensible when this is pointed out in several comments by different people, there comes a time when &quot;not causing an affront&quot; is rather beside the point. (There was a recent example of that on Engineering SE - but I'm not going to post a link to it. I would guess the answer was accepted because it was what the OP wanted to hear, not because he/she was able to evaluate the truth of it.)" CreationDate="2020-07-19T20:22:18.167" UserId="180746" />
  <row Id="20036" PostId="5941" Score="0" Text="What's your desired outcome in that scenario? As you've said, the post already has a negative score, and a number of comments describing why it's wrong. It seems like the SE mechanisms are working correctly, so why would causing an affront be helpful? After all of this negative feedback, it seems unlikely that causing an affront will suddenly compel the Answerer to understand engineering better, and thereby write a better answer." CreationDate="2020-07-19T20:54:27.317" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20024" PostId="5942" Score="3" Text="This site already exists at http://www.rossmanchance.com/applets.html." CreationDate="2020-07-15T12:38:06.530" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20026" PostId="5942" Score="1" Text="@whuber Oh thank you. It answers my another question on main site. https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/477242/website-or-app-recommendation-for-visualising-statistics-concept-comparable-to This is great answer to that." CreationDate="2020-07-15T16:08:25.380" UserId="161877" />
  <row Id="20021" PostId="5943" Score="0" Text="I have seen different times in some other SE, feature requests for tools etc had been discussed such as this one https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3636/redesigning-biology-stack-exchange-extended." CreationDate="2020-07-15T08:09:10.783" UserId="161877" />
  <row Id="20022" PostId="5943" Score="8" Text="@AlwaysConfused: How many have been implemented? It's a nice idea, &amp; no harm in discussing it; but the chance of SE's implementing it is, in my opinion, negligible." CreationDate="2020-07-15T08:44:06.653" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="20023" PostId="5943" Score="9" Text="@Scortchi-ReinstateMonica is an optimist. I don't see this as happening ever." CreationDate="2020-07-15T11:35:35.860" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20041" PostId="5943" Score="0" Text="Probabilities are never zero, even when something is impossible." CreationDate="2020-07-29T16:14:40.453" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="20030" PostId="5945" Score="1" Text="I doubt that there are any principled objections to asking for explanations at any of several different levels. The practice is how far that is possible. A personal rule of thumb is that _intuitive_ usually translates as _familiar_. &quot;The user interface you will find to be intuitive&quot; == &quot;... once it has become familiar to you&quot;.  We've all (well, almost all) been caught one way or another, by someone not seeing what we regard as obvious -- or more painfully by not seeing what others regard as obvious." CreationDate="2020-07-16T15:58:27.017" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20033" PostId="5946" Score="1" Text="Good *gravy!* I never noticed we had an intuition tag!" CreationDate="2020-07-17T17:00:41.280" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="20034" PostId="5946" Score="1" Text="557 questions and counting, @Alexis. See you at Thanksgiving!" CreationDate="2020-07-17T17:05:17.130" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20049" PostId="5955" Score="1" Text="Looking at the history it seems that it went into the reopen queue and received two votes to reopen but also two votes to remain closed which is why it remains closed." CreationDate="2020-08-21T16:11:57.580" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="20050" PostId="5955" Score="0" Text="And what is the ambiguity, so I can resolve it?" CreationDate="2020-08-21T17:00:59.473" UserDisplayName="user280191" />
  <row Id="20058" PostId="5955" Score="0" Text="I made some minor changes to the post, to address why someone doesn't understand that the null hypothesis says the overall mean of Var1 (groups combined) is equal to the mean of Var1 in each of the groups.  I also added a statement that I'm not addressing whether the F-statistic from lm() addresses my hypothesis, as I'm trying to make the focus EXTREMELY narrow to remove the claim of ambiguity that is keeping my post closed." CreationDate="2020-08-21T21:33:43.730" UserDisplayName="user280191" />
  <row Id="20059" PostId="5955" Score="3" Text="It looks as if this is a dead issue, but while this thread remains open, one simple principle perhaps deserves emphasis. An  attempt to clarify a question closed as unclear is **not** sufficient to reverse that closure. It has to appear clear to a moderator and/or those with enough reputation to vote to reopen. It is sad but not especially surprising that such asymmetry can seem obnoxious to those on the receiving end, as also do personal attacks or ridiculous exaggerations about the quality of the site." CreationDate="2020-08-22T14:42:20.040" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20062" PostId="5955" Score="1" Text="I’m voting to close this question because it has no enduring value. It refers to a question now deleted and so visible only to some and it concerns behaviour by people no longer on CV." CreationDate="2020-08-24T08:26:07.563" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20063" PostId="5955" Score="0" Text="@NickCox, it concerns the behavior of a single person (operating through many accounts) no longer on CV." CreationDate="2020-08-24T12:45:04.407" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20064" PostId="5955" Score="0" Text="@gung Indeed. As a non-moderator that seemed implied to me, but I went for the slightly more benign interpretation." CreationDate="2020-08-24T13:02:49.967" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20051" PostId="5956" Score="2" Text="No, I am not asking if comparing the overall mean to the sub-group means is the same as comparing the sub-group means to each other.  The null hypothesis says the overall mean is equal to each of the subgroup means.  --  Can you suggest a revision of the null hypothesis so this is more clear?" CreationDate="2020-08-21T17:04:58.267" UserDisplayName="user280191" />
  <row Id="20052" PostId="5956" Score="0" Text="I added a NOTE to my post, below the hypothesis, that I am not asking what you are saying above, and rather, I am testing whether the overall mean is equal to each of the sub-group means.  Thanks for the suggested update (even though I don't understand how you read the null hypothesis the way you stated it)." CreationDate="2020-08-21T17:23:17.067" UserDisplayName="user280191" />
  <row Id="20054" PostId="5956" Score="2" Text="@mdewey - How in the world do you read the null hypothesis that way?  I'm talking about &quot;Is it meaningful to compare the overall mean with the mean of one of the sub-groups which comprise it and if it is, is that the same as testing for equality of the sub-group means?&quot;  There is nothing in the question that is posted at stats.stackexchange that suggests that." CreationDate="2020-08-21T17:31:35.377" UserDisplayName="user255758" />
  <row Id="20055" PostId="5956" Score="1" Text="Thank you for noting &quot;that people got distracted by issues which were possibly not core to your question.&quot;" CreationDate="2020-08-21T17:48:25.183" UserDisplayName="user280191" />
  <row Id="20057" PostId="5957" Score="8" Text="This user's account was closed as a sockpuppet of the OP." CreationDate="2020-08-21T21:15:22.090" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20060" PostId="5957" Score="3" Text="@whuber, w/ all the accounts now deleted, it's interesting to see that all of the votes for this answer, all but 1 of the votes for the Q, &amp; the downvotes for mdewey's A all came from the OP via their various socks." CreationDate="2020-08-23T11:51:03.480" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20066" PostId="5957" Score="1" Text="FWIW, I don't think that it's good to delete this answer. The comments here are a reminder that sock-puppets are not permitted, and will be met with severe sanctions." CreationDate="2020-08-26T16:13:15.737" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20077" PostId="5957" Score="1" Text="@Sycorax The principle is good, but in practice how likely are people tempted to offend going to find this and be scared off by it? There are two kinds of antisocial behaviour on CV: new people behaving badly with outcome that they are removed quickly or leave the site in a huff on being reprimanded; and people convinced over a long period that they are right, or have a right to their views, and that moderation or peer pressure is undermining their freedom of expression. I don't think threads like this are a deterrent to either kind of behaviour." CreationDate="2020-09-04T10:38:25.340" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20078" PostId="5957" Score="0" Text="@NickCox The observation of antisocial behavior in a small number of users doesn't give us any information about the larger balance of users, who are likely a mix of pro-social people and people who *are* deterred by sanctions in incidents like this." CreationDate="2020-09-04T16:19:29.740" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20079" PostId="5957" Score="0" Text="I readily sign up to any idea that few people want to seem impolite or unappreciative of help. But it's the deterrent effect of such threads on people who might behave badly that I have to wonder about. I don't really expect testimonies to be easy to find, so we're just guessing." CreationDate="2020-09-04T16:52:35.847" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20056" PostId="5958" Score="0" Text="No.  Re: &quot;Does that mean that you want to test that some group has a nonzero mean?&quot; --- The null hypothesis is that the overall mean is equal to each of the individual group means. ---  I really don't understand why that's so hard to understand.  It's plain English." CreationDate="2020-08-21T21:13:43.497" UserDisplayName="user280191" />
  <row Id="20065" PostId="5962" Score="5" Text="(+1) And the phrasing of your comment can help a bit: &quot;Please edit your question to include/explain *X*&quot; is less of an invitation to discussion than the direct question &quot;What about *X*?&quot;." CreationDate="2020-08-26T12:13:10.503" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="20067" PostId="5965" Score="0" Text="Is there any way to rewrite the thread, or start a new one, with a sharper focus to transform it into the &quot;list of&quot; formats of the other Community Wikis? I'm having a hard time discerning what makes that one an &quot;arbitrary ragbag of case studies&quot; and the others well-ordered; all I can see are arbitrary, disconnected lists of jokes, cartoons, etc. But maybe I'm missing something." CreationDate="2020-08-27T18:26:15.370" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="20068" PostId="5965" Score="1" Text="The jokes and cartoons threads are barely tolerated at stats.SE. Technically, they are not supposed to exist at all, as a matter of SE policy, but moderators have made exceptions for those two exact threads, and no others." CreationDate="2020-08-27T18:43:54.037" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20069" PostId="5965" Score="0" Text="Indeed, but jokes and cartoons don't need to be systematic." CreationDate="2020-08-27T18:57:56.363" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20854" PostId="5969" Score="3" Text="Very respectable indeed!  They get the first opportunity to reject all my papers." CreationDate="2021-08-26T17:03:31.927" UserId="887" />
  <row Id="20855" PostId="5969" Score="2" Text="I forgot to say, congratulations!" CreationDate="2021-08-26T17:17:21.703" UserId="887" />
  <row Id="20094" PostId="5972" Score="3" Text="Thanks, @C8H10N4O2, it's nice to hear." CreationDate="2020-09-29T16:28:47.950" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20111" PostId="5972" Score="10" Text="There are a lot of people who share your sentiment, @C8H10N042." CreationDate="2020-10-02T14:37:58.407" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="20254" PostId="5972" Score="2" Text="one more thank you !" CreationDate="2020-10-29T21:03:45.687" UserId="3382" />
  <row Id="20088" PostId="5973" Score="24" Text="-1 to express my annoyance with the entire situation: the election is needed because two of our great moderators stepped down as a protest against the irresponsible actions of SE." CreationDate="2020-09-28T21:40:55.507" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="20090" PostId="5973" Score="12" Text="I am **strongly** tempted to ask candidates to comment on [gung's](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5779/1352) and [Glen_b's](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5765/1352) resignations, which were the impetus for this election. Then again, I don't see what the use of such comments would be in helping us decide who to vote for, so I'll refrain. Those comments would need to come from SO, and they haven't - for over a year now." CreationDate="2020-09-29T10:52:34.170" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="20097" PostId="5973" Score="1" Text="@StephanKolassa I still think it should be a question. To comment on recent resignations and on why the candidate is willing to step up despite all of this. I'm not saying that nobody should nominate themselves; but I would definitely like to see what people who do nominate themselves think about it." CreationDate="2020-09-30T07:28:20.007" UserId="28666" />
  <row Id="20098" PostId="5973" Score="7" Text="@amoeba: I fear the only imaginable answer would be &quot;I know that SE does not have my back, may indeed screw me over for no good reason at all, then ignore any pleas for an excuse, explanation or amends - but someone has to moderate the community in spite of SE.&quot; How much would we learn from that? It's akin to asking a job applicant: &quot;This is a shitty company, and everyone knows it, so why do you still want to work here?&quot;" CreationDate="2020-09-30T08:31:12.647" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="20099" PostId="5973" Score="1" Text="FWIW, this type of question [has been asked previously](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6542/33683), so y'all can do it here too. I also wanna take the chance to acknowledge everyone's frustration, but to highlight that there is an actual need for this election to be successful, and that it was set after talking with the current moderator team and assessing their needs." CreationDate="2020-09-30T09:22:00.003" UserId="72321" />
  <row Id="20100" PostId="5973" Score="6" Text="This question has been downvoted so badly [it no longer shows up in the &quot;active&quot; questions at Meta.CV](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/?tab=active). This community is Not Happy. I don't think we all want to see everything crash and burn, so just to get the conversation started, I'll point to [the questions proposed for the 2017 elections](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/4887/1352) and [for the 2015 election](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2432/1352) and [for the 2013 election](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1769/1352)." CreationDate="2020-09-30T20:10:25.503" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="20101" PostId="5973" Score="9" Text="At some point, it may be more enlightening to ask [*current* moderators why they are still around](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5765/moderator-resignation?noredirect=1&amp;lq=1#comment19135_5765), rather than ask new volunteers about their motivation." CreationDate="2020-09-30T21:21:50.487" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="20102" PostId="5973" Score="3" Text="FWIW, I don't think that how people answer awkward questions is a big deal here. The only criterion I ever use myself is does this person have a good track record on CV as competent, conscientious and civilised. Some elections ago, someone had as part of their pitch that electing them as moderator would encourage them to remain a member as they felt lukewarm about participating. That was, fortunately, so  bizarre a platform that they got nowhere (and indeed left CV shortly afterwards)." CreationDate="2020-10-01T11:40:38.483" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20103" PostId="5973" Score="5" Text="@JNat This election won't be successful if people at SE continue to piss off moderators and the community. We've lost good moderators over this and in the absence of any sign from SE that they intend to change their approach I can only foresee continued problems, and any new Mods elected here will have to deal with all that BS *and* the usual Mod tasks. Holding an election is like trying to use a band aid to treat an arterial bleed. The current Mods wouldn't be overwhelmed if SE had't driven several of them to leave. Address the real problems, then we can hold elections." CreationDate="2020-10-01T15:14:02.107" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="20104" PostId="5973" Score="3" Text="@GavinSimpson: I understand where you are coming from and myself wish SE would at some point address the actual issue. *But they won't.* They haven't done so for over a year now, so why would they start doing it now? We will need to adapt to this reality, each of us in their preferred way - but hoping that SE will change is IMO not helpful. Note that [Workplace.SE managed to have a successful election](https://workplace.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6615/17125)." CreationDate="2020-10-01T15:29:20.180" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="20105" PostId="5973" Score="0" Text="@StephanKolassa So we're turkey's voting for Christmas. What is the point? This place is rapidly becoming a place I don't want to contribute too, not because of the community, which is great, but because of SE. I feel I have contributed to what SE is in a substantive way and SE are burning all that down anyway, so either I jump ship and abandon something I help create or I continue to voice my displeasure with the way SE is managing this and other places. The only way a successful election can take place is if the candidates don't care about what is going on with SE or can swallow it (IMHO)" CreationDate="2020-10-01T15:35:36.057" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="20106" PostId="5973" Score="1" Text="@amoeba Your inference about why the election is needed is understandable, but it is flatly incorrect.  The evidence is that we have had no problems moderating this site during the past year during which *three* mods became inactive.  The reason for the election now is that it has been in the works for a long time and several more of the *currently active* mods have expressed interest in doing less work.  In my case, at least, I have been contemplating this move for the last three years, well before there was any controversy." CreationDate="2020-10-01T19:47:34.330" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20107" PostId="5973" Score="1" Text="@Gavin I dispute your assertion that &quot;current mods are overwhelmed,&quot; because I haven't seen evidence of that.  What is your basis for it?" CreationDate="2020-10-01T19:49:12.477" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20108" PostId="5973" Score="0" Text="@whuber I was reading in to JNat's comment above that we need an election perhaps more than was warranted. If you and the mods aren't overwhelmed why do we need an election? (I appreciate we've had two (IIRC?) mods leave recently.)" CreationDate="2020-10-01T22:16:36.167" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="20109" PostId="5973" Score="1" Text="And reading your response to amoeba, &quot;overwhelmed&quot; could just as easily be interpreted as doing more work than they'd like to be doing in an ideal world right now." CreationDate="2020-10-01T22:19:26.813" UserId="1390" />
  <row Id="20110" PostId="5973" Score="3" Text="@Gavin: Thank you, that's the correct interpretation.  Add to it that the work some of us would like to be doing right now is much less than we have been doing on average for a very long time.  Include a sense of growing stale after such a long time and the picture ought to become clear... ." CreationDate="2020-10-01T22:28:34.103" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20113" PostId="5973" Score="2" Text="I think we owe potential candidates a promise that we regard their offered service as intended as supportive of CV and won't regard them as responsible for any perverse decisions by SE management. But I hope that any candidates won't stand on an anti-management platform, even though I have no right to do anything much except vote!" CreationDate="2020-10-03T01:28:42.007" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20114" PostId="5978" Score="3" Text="I considered editing your post to work on small points of English, but judge it better to leave it in your words, beyond noting that Stack Exchange is the name you intend. If you make that edit I will delete this comment." CreationDate="2020-10-04T08:19:15.130" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20117" PostId="5979" Score="0" Text="Ok, let's appeal evidence. 1- &quot;Note that a post like yours is not invisible&quot;. False. When I paste the link to my post after logging out it's no longer there and therefore not visible to anyone. 2- In your words moderators do not have to understand the question asked: &quot;.. is neither possible nor necessary that moderators understand all question..&quot;. If that was the case why then label my post as duplicate? Are you insinuating that moderators can do anything they want without understanding what is asked? 3- the poor and useless answers given to my post were utterly inconsistent. From one hand.." CreationDate="2020-10-04T10:00:50.157" UserDisplayName="user298019" />
  <row Id="20118" PostId="5979" Score="0" Text=".. whuber said that of course he read my code and that is why I should get familiar, in his mind, with CLT, from the other hand Richard clearly confessed he did not read my code at all. I simulated thousands of samples and plotted averages aiming at visualize a normal distribution. That was the question. 4- &quot;.. What doesn't help one bit is to make general accusations without the slightest scrap of evidence beyond your own post..&quot;. What you called accusations I call laziness on your part to see what is asked and do what a moderator is supposed to do: understand the question and ask for clarity" CreationDate="2020-10-04T10:08:29.987" UserDisplayName="user298019" />
  <row Id="20119" PostId="5979" Score="9" Text="1. How on earth could I possibly read your post if it is not visible to anyone? 2. Moderators are accountable as well as fallible. Sorry, but escalating your reaction to a closure as duplicate to a generalised rant about moderation does not help your case or enhance your credibility. 3. In my view you got sensible comments on your original posts and the tone of your replies to them didn't help. It is fine to be new here, as we all were once, but even if you were highly experienced on CV statements like yours without evidence are just insults that don't help your case." CreationDate="2020-10-04T10:09:58.800" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20120" PostId="5979" Score="0" Text=".. if needed. And by the way, after all these arguments you have not yet explained why you think I should read and familiarise with CLT" CreationDate="2020-10-04T10:11:28.680" UserDisplayName="user298019" />
  <row Id="20121" PostId="5979" Score="4" Text="I note your assertion about my &quot;laziness&quot;. You make my point for me. Making this _ad hominem_ is not a good way to convince me that you have a point. I read your Meta post, I read your original post, I thought carefully about replying here. I agree with the remarks made by people so far, whuber and Richard Hardy. ." CreationDate="2020-10-04T10:13:30.807" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20122" PostId="5979" Score="0" Text="&quot;How on earth could I possibly read your post if it is not visible to anyone?&quot;. Exactly. Why on earth whuber labelled my post as duplicate and made it invisible to people like you??" CreationDate="2020-10-04T10:15:37.427" UserDisplayName="user298019" />
  <row Id="20123" PostId="5979" Score="4" Text="I could read your post. It is visible to me. These are facts. I don't understand why you are claiming otherwise. Sorry if my command of English is insufficient to make this clear." CreationDate="2020-10-04T10:17:38.143" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20124" PostId="5979" Score="0" Text="When logging out and scrolling through my question I got redirected to https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/3734/what-intuitive-explanation-is-there-for-the-central-limit-theorem. This is fact. Your command of English is more than fine. What I found unbelievable is the way how moderators are allowed to intervene and basically lie proposing false solutions to answers they have not understood in the first place. BTW I am not a newbie and held an account I left after keeping due distances. Now I remember why" CreationDate="2020-10-04T10:35:21.493" UserDisplayName="user298019" />
  <row Id="20125" PostId="5979" Score="1" Text="I note that you are not new to CV. Your profile implied otherwise. But that makes your actions and statements here even more puzzling and even less defensible. I think it's best to let others say what they think, noting that silence connotes lack of support for you." CreationDate="2020-10-04T10:43:24.307" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20127" PostId="5979" Score="9" Text="I would be genuinely interested in any example of a technical forum that isn't improved on balance by moderation, peer pressure and documented guidance about what to do and what not to do. The price that some users don't accept decisions on or reactions to their posts is a predictable side-effect." CreationDate="2020-10-04T10:56:49.537" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20128" PostId="5980" Score="0" Text="I finally see some evidence of inspection and attempt to understand my question. I actually resampled again df, increased the number of observations as well as the sample sizes and managed to come out with a perfect normal curve, so I somehow corroborated the CLT. What really set me off was the way how moderators closed my question and refused to engage in constructive arguments. At this stage I don't wish to reopen the question but hope moderators and experienced users having rights to close and reopen issues will follow a different code of conduct. Thank you" CreationDate="2020-10-04T14:19:45.817" UserDisplayName="user298019" />
  <row Id="20129" PostId="5980" Score="7" Text="It's good that you have a better understanding of your original question. But your (closing?) comment should not remain unchallenged. The pattern of upvoting and downvoting and detailed discussion shows much disagreement both with your complaint and with how you expressed it. I can take some flak but insults and absurd accusations -- you do accuse several people of lies and dishonesty as well as much else --  remain here and rather undermine your stance that you are the injured party and have right on your side." CreationDate="2020-10-04T15:49:35.943" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20130" PostId="5980" Score="0" Text="Nick, I will make it clear once again. What you call insults and accusations I call legitimate reactions. Also I believe you have totally lost the thread (please don't feel insulted, I don't mean to): &quot;.. good that you have a better understanding of your original question...&quot;. I was always very clear about my original question. It was you, Richard and whuber who were not. And who should I upvote? Myself for finding the solution to my own question? Apart from mdewey who bothered running my code and understood what was asked, none of you took a similar effort" CreationDate="2020-10-04T16:48:25.187" UserDisplayName="user298019" />
  <row Id="20131" PostId="5980" Score="0" Text="My complaint is about the way you all handled my question that is all. If you expect me to apologise, I am willing to, on the condition that you, Richard and whuber do the same to me. Or just let us be adults and move on, hoping similar occurrences will not happen again. Thank you" CreationDate="2020-10-04T16:48:33.393" UserDisplayName="user298019" />
  <row Id="20132" PostId="5980" Score="6" Text="I don't want to prolong this any more than you do, but I can't accept your tone or assertions as civil,  let alone correct.  While this thread remains anyone curious can read it and come to their own conclusions." CreationDate="2020-10-04T16:59:52.343" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20134" PostId="5980" Score="12" Text="@user5989376: There's constructive discussion about site moderation, &amp; there's impugning the character of people who've taken actions you disagree with: please note that only the former is acceptable here." CreationDate="2020-10-04T17:44:51.520" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="20216" PostId="5981" Score="0" Text="Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been [moved to chat](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/115059/discussion-on-question-by-jnat-2020-moderator-election-qa-questionnaire)." CreationDate="2020-10-13T12:49:40.913" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20217" PostId="5981" Score="3" Text="That two candidates for election have taken the time and effort to provide full answers to the questions speaks volumes about their qualifications to become moderators.  I heartily thank them both." CreationDate="2020-10-13T12:51:19.363" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20136" PostId="5983" Score="3" Text="Some general info. here: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/135360/225179" CreationDate="2020-10-06T07:14:48.023" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="20138" PostId="5983" Score="0" Text="Good question, also did not really understand how the election works (my first election on CV). Will nominated candidates appear on the link that @Scortchi-ReinstateMonica shared? Also, can I chat in the chatroom about users that I think could be nominated?" CreationDate="2020-10-06T08:06:13.900" UserId="284660" />
  <row Id="20139" PostId="5983" Score="4" Text="@Stochastic: the link that Scortchi shared is common to all SE sites and has nothing to do with our specific election here at CV. Candidates can self-nominate at the [2020 Community Moderator Election](https://stats.stackexchange.com/election?cb=1) link in the sidebar. There is an [election chatroom](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/113762/2020-cross-validated-moderator-election-chat) for election-related chatter, so a discussion about users that need nominating would probably make most sense there." CreationDate="2020-10-06T08:17:22.353" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="20141" PostId="5983" Score="0" Text="Thanks a lot! Appreciate the clarity @StephanKolassa" CreationDate="2020-10-06T08:26:09.173" UserId="284660" />
  <row Id="20142" PostId="5985" Score="1" Text="Agree with you on the first example, though with the second one I'd probably consider voting to close. Agree that it's subjective." CreationDate="2020-10-06T20:32:38.657" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="20143" PostId="5985" Score="1" Text="Re the first one: I closed that one immediately upon seeing the problem was failure to invoke the function correctly. I don't see this as being a particularly close call, because anyone with the minimum amount of knowledge needed even to use this function would understand what that argument means. Re the second one: I did *not* VTC precisely because I try to moderate cautiously and, despite having no familiarity with this software, suspected an answer *might* require some statistical expertise.  Thus, I maintain that the right decision was made in both cases and nobody &quot;jumped to conclusions.&quot;" CreationDate="2020-10-06T22:18:33.050" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20144" PostId="5985" Score="5" Text="Having written that, I should add that I have had similar feelings about the apparent haste to close some questions as software-only.  Perhaps we can come up with better examples of the edge cases and use that as the springboard for characterizing them and providing constructive guidance to the community." CreationDate="2020-10-06T22:19:44.437" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20145" PostId="5985" Score="3" Text="I don't disagree with the stance here but I boggle a little at the thought that there are R programmers who don't know statistics, or more precisely at the thought that there might not be enough statistical expertise on SO to apply also to questions mixing statistics and programming. (I only use R occasionally and am no expert on the community.) Another criterion I sometimes apply is How far could this possibly interest someone who doesn't know or care about the language concerned?" CreationDate="2020-10-06T22:53:46.027" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20146" PostId="5985" Score="3" Text="Let's agree that -- although the examples here concern R and that seems by far the most common single language -- the principles cover all kinds of software." CreationDate="2020-10-06T22:55:31.217" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20147" PostId="5985" Score="5" Text="@NickCox: this phenomenon might be more prevalent among Python users. There are lots of people who learn Python for &quot;general&quot; use and later start doing Machine Learning using `sklearn` and similar. These people typically know very little statistics, and they may indeed not know about the Python equivalent of the `family` parameter. If you learn R, you typically do it for statistics from the very start. As such, my examples may have been ill-chosen." CreationDate="2020-10-06T22:56:49.503" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="20148" PostId="5985" Score="12" Text="A nuance here is that some users come to stats.SE after becoming familiar with the standards of SO.SE, which typically requires a MRE for questions. I surmise that these users sometimes include large blocks of code which are not really essential to their question, but attempting to adhere to the SO.SE standards for questions. Appearing as such in the stats.SE context, the questions appear to solely concern programming or debugging but are in fact statistical at their core. It requires a careful reading of the question to decide which is which, and sometimes I've only realized I was wrong after" CreationDate="2020-10-06T23:13:58.447" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20149" PostId="5985" Score="5" Text="Indeed. I boggle even more when I see &quot;I am learning Python and new to machine learning and I want to program X&quot;, where X is some highly challenging goal like detecting  fraud or predicting stock prices. I am sure there is a joke in there about snake oil somehow." CreationDate="2020-10-06T23:29:46.533" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20155" PostId="5985" Score="4" Text="@NickCox You joke, but there's a lot of entry-level work in the world of fraud prevention, in the sense that some high-level executive will tell their IT staff or database team to &quot;figure out some patterns using big data&quot; and suddenly folks with deep knowledge of their computer systems have to become experts in statistics. I've seen this pattern at a number of organizations. It's alarming in retrospect, but also how I got started in this field." CreationDate="2020-10-07T02:49:49.790" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20156" PostId="5985" Score="4" Text="@NickCox: [what Sycorax says](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5985/closing-software-questions?noredirect=1#comment20155_5985). I have seen this exact dynamic at play in time series forecasting. And the saddest thing about it is that *if* there is any snake oil involved, then it's people selling it to *themselves*. (Or top management insisting on it.) And as a matter of fact, [we have a Meta question on pretty much precisely this.](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3104/1352)" CreationDate="2020-10-07T06:37:24.087" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="20157" PostId="5985" Score="0" Text="Thanks for reminding me of that Meta thread, to which I contributed but did not recall." CreationDate="2020-10-07T06:44:35.030" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20158" PostId="5985" Score="2" Text="No one wants to make a wrong decision, but making a prompt decision can be in the OP's best interests as well as the community's, especially whenever a question is in good shape for SO and should just be migrated. @whuber's &quot;apparent haste to close&quot; might indeed mean a kind of reflex reaction &quot;but this is just another programming question&quot;. I've noticed that I vote more to close software-linked questions than some others, but my vote to be decisive depends on others agreeing." CreationDate="2020-10-07T09:06:42.047" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20160" PostId="5985" Score="0" Text="I mean above that @whuber is identifying an apparent haste to close, not that he is responsible for any such." CreationDate="2020-10-07T11:15:12.623" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20163" PostId="5985" Score="2" Text="I agree that there is much haste on closing software related questions. domain expertise is often requiered to answer programming question, and it is much more so in the case of statistical software which is so far from low level programming. of course not every question requires statistical expertise, but many ones that get closed, in my opinion, do." CreationDate="2020-10-08T11:38:55.737" UserId="141356" />
  <row Id="20173" PostId="5985" Score="4" Text="I have a similar impression, @Carlo, but I would suggest refining your focus to consider only the software-related questions *that would not otherwise be closed because of other defects.* The majority of questions that we close ostensibly because they are software-focused would nevertheless still be closed because they are not well-formulated questions. The ones that are good questions get migrated to [SO], but that happens in only a tiny fraction of cases (on average, that happens once per day but we close over 100 questions per day)." CreationDate="2020-10-08T20:28:37.733" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20220" PostId="5985" Score="1" Text="On Meta upvoting the question often means &quot;this is a good question&quot; and not necessarily that OP's stance is agreed on exactly We have criteria to follow on what is acceptable here on CV -- but if experienced people disagree on where posts fall the problem may be (a) the criteria are just not precise enough (b) the criteria are clear but there is still a judgement problem -- academics use criteria in grading but that doesn't stop them disagreeing on whether work is good, or excellent, or whatever, and the same problem is universal (c) the fault lies in the individuals who disagree with you." CreationDate="2020-10-14T12:19:45.653" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20221" PostId="5985" Score="1" Text="(c) is an allusion to an assertion made elsewhere." CreationDate="2020-10-14T12:20:06.947" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21387" PostId="5985" Score="1" Text="This problem is still pervasive, so this question do now need an official answer!" CreationDate="2022-07-12T13:42:18.700" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="20150" PostId="5986" Score="17" Text="Many thanks for standing. I think you're an outstanding candidate straight away, and not just because of your machine learning expertise, but because of your track record generally contributing on so many levels. Whatever else follows from me is small print or additional." CreationDate="2020-10-07T01:22:00.870" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20151" PostId="5986" Score="6" Text="Spam is usually obvious when it occurs. Bigotry I've hardly ever noticed, but it is undoubtedly obnoxious when it does.  The bigger deals that I've noticed more often are (a) people new to the site who won't accept that their questions are poor by our standards (b) longer-term users whose style sometimes strikes others as too pugnacious and/or whose content is often erratic. (a) is more common while (b) can be more of a challenge to moderators or high-reputation users interacting with them. Do you have any comments on such cases?" CreationDate="2020-10-07T01:27:25.923" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20152" PostId="5986" Score="3" Text="More specifically, I note that comments can be deleted (or deleted and rewritten), and (as @Scortchi points out elsewhere) if you are elected you can go back and edit them any way." CreationDate="2020-10-07T01:29:44.947" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20153" PostId="5986" Score="4" Text="@NickCox Thanks for your support. The odd thing about contributing to stats.SE is that one often &quot;works in parallel' to other contributors whom they come to regard highly, but rarely ever actually interact or express that admiration. All that to say -- it means a lot. Thank you for your confidence." CreationDate="2020-10-07T02:42:03.180" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20154" PostId="5986" Score="5" Text="Guiding new users in how to ask a good question is a challenge. There were two recent meta threads where new users asked that their questions be re-opened without making any significant progress towards articulating what it was that they wanted to know. We, as a community, can provide feedback about what is unclear and ask probing questions, but if that becomes an impasse, I don't know what more could be done. Indeed, these meta threads have become stalemates. Some comments even include some insults. At a certain point, the obstacle is not statistical in nature." CreationDate="2020-10-07T02:44:06.807" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20159" PostId="5986" Score="13" Text="Thank you for standing, +1. I look forward to voting for you. That said, your first paragraph makes it sound like you are more in it so the election does not fail, less so you can be a good mod. I believe I recall a mod at some time estimate that modding takes about half an hour per day. Are you prepared to invest this time, or will you consider your &quot;duty&quot; done if the election finishes with two newly elected moderators, and then ghost CV? (Sorry if this sounds accusatory; I honestly don't mean this question seriously, but simply wanted to have this out in the open.)" CreationDate="2020-10-07T09:39:46.920" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="20161" PostId="5986" Score="4" Text="@StephanKolassa That's a fair point. I should have clarified that I'll gladly serve if I'm elected! I've edited my answer." CreationDate="2020-10-07T12:49:36.900" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20179" PostId="5986" Score="2" Text="@StephanKolassa Have you already made your mind up who you shall be voting for ? &quot;I look forward to voting for you&quot;" CreationDate="2020-10-09T19:58:34.677" UserId="6884" />
  <row Id="20180" PostId="5986" Score="3" Text="@PSellaz: good point. I have three votes. I am almost-sure no three people more qualified than Sycorax will self-nominate. I would be happy to be able to reject this null hypothesis." CreationDate="2020-10-09T20:00:17.840" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="20181" PostId="5986" Score="0" Text="@PSellaz voting is ranked choice, and right now there are only 2 candidates, which is not enough for the election to award any moderation positions. Unless more users nominate themselves, it will be moot whether or not Stephan's mind is made up or not." CreationDate="2020-10-09T20:01:32.050" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20182" PostId="5986" Score="0" Text="@StephanKolassa I don't disagree, but what about yourself ;)" CreationDate="2020-10-09T20:06:29.357" UserId="6884" />
  <row Id="20183" PostId="5986" Score="1" Text="@Sycorax I think there are 3" CreationDate="2020-10-09T20:06:40.810" UserId="6884" />
  <row Id="20184" PostId="5986" Score="1" Text="@PSellaz: are you asking whether I will stand for election? If so, thank you, but [I will not](https://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/55763575#55763575)." CreationDate="2020-10-09T20:09:26.880" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="20196" PostId="5986" Score="0" Text="You seem to have the lowest # upvotes and highest downvotes relative to other contestants, and in general in stackexchange. &#xA;33% of your votes are down votes, can you explain why so much downvotes and what criteria do you use to downvote a question? Conversely why so little upvotes?" CreationDate="2020-10-12T20:20:56.397" UserId="29137" />
  <row Id="20197" PostId="5986" Score="3" Text="Some downvotes are per a suggestion by Stephan Kolassa in https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5325/we-have-a-very-large-widening-gap-between-questions-and-answers-how-do-we-fix/5326#5326 Another reason is that some answers have 0 score and are bumped by the robots; I try to engage up/down voting those answers whenever I notice a robo-bump, but often these overlooked answers are poor. I also regularly review all of the questions asked on certain &quot;high activity&quot; tags like [tag:machine-learning] or [tag:neural-networks] and these tend to attract poor questions." CreationDate="2020-10-12T20:30:36.203" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20198" PostId="5986" Score="3" Text="If you're looking at voting overall, a large portion of these votes were attached to a dedicated effort to clean up low-quality questions which accumulated over years of neglect in these tags. This concerted effort meant that I was giving a large number of downvotes in a short duration of time; people who did not engaged in this concerted effort will not have this pattern present in their voting histories." CreationDate="2020-10-12T20:31:54.363" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20199" PostId="5986" Score="1" Text="I don't know where you're getting your 33% number. In my stats.SE profile, I have cast over 5000 upvotes and 520 downvotes, so the percent of downvotes is $100 \times \frac{520}{520 + 5148}$ which is less than 10%." CreationDate="2020-10-12T20:35:24.353" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20200" PostId="5986" Score="3" Text="Some of the criteria I most commonly use to decide whether to downvote a question or answer are &quot;Does this answer address OP's question?&quot; and &quot;Is this answer more than a link?&quot; and &quot;Does this question show any research effort, or is it just a photo of a homework assignment or a vague ramble?&quot; I leave comments in cases where I think some elaboration or explanation could be beneficial, but these are contextual -- have I read other of the user's posts? How does this user react to feedback?" CreationDate="2020-10-12T20:41:05.560" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20201" PostId="5986" Score="0" Text="This is what I see “ Of the votes cast, 5,304 were upvotes and 1,748 were downvotes. Sycorax voted on questions 3,815 times and 3,237 times on answers.”" CreationDate="2020-10-12T20:43:15.323" UserId="29137" />
  <row Id="20202" PostId="5986" Score="0" Text="Where? What are you clicking on to view that? Because if I click on my SE profile, I see tabs for &quot;all actions&quot;, &quot;responses&quot;, and &quot;votes.&quot; If I click on &quot;votes&quot; I get different numbers than what you've quoted here, and it's enough to move the percentage from 33% to less than 10%." CreationDate="2020-10-12T20:44:56.580" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20203" PostId="5986" Score="0" Text="It’s  25% not 33% it’s still very very high not sure why you have different #?" CreationDate="2020-10-12T20:45:19.583" UserId="29137" />
  <row Id="20204" PostId="5986" Score="0" Text="https://stats.stackexchange.com/users/22311/sycorax?tab=topactivity" CreationDate="2020-10-12T20:46:22.253" UserId="29137" />
  <row Id="20205" PostId="5986" Score="4" Text="It must be the difference between posts that are still live and posts that were deleted (either automatically or by users). Since I undertook a concerted effort to remove low-quality posts in specific tags which were not amenable to getting good answers, it's not surprising that I'd have a higher number of down-votes compared to a person who did not undertake that effort. If I were a moderator then, such an action would not have been necessary because I could simply close the poor questions unilaterally and robots would eventually remove them." CreationDate="2020-10-12T20:48:20.960" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20207" PostId="5986" Score="0" Text="@forecaster Another way to look at it is that I've cast more votes in total than 2 candidates, or more upvotes than 2 candidates. Another way to look at it is that kjetil has cast a large number of upvotes; compared to whuber, kjetil has cast double the upvotes. I just learned about how to find this statistic this afternoon, but making comparisons is tricky and without systematic data collection, it seems challenging to infer whether my voting behavior is out of the mainstream. And, since I'm seeking moderatorship, &quot;mainstream&quot; may not be the right way to think about it." CreationDate="2020-10-12T21:09:25.900" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20218" PostId="5986" Score="4" Text="@forecaster For moderators (among whom I include high-rep, active users), voting is a tool to encourage (or, sometimes) discourage behaviors.  Different moderators use different strategies, they focus on different kinds of topics and tasks, and engage with the site in different ways.  Their voting records simply aren't comparable.  In moderating several SE sites over the last decade, about the only rules I have found that stand up to scrutiny over time are (1) a good, active moderator votes extensively and (2) wise moderators strongly favor upvoting over downvoting." CreationDate="2020-10-13T12:56:52.400" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20219" PostId="5986" Score="2" Text="@whuber thank you. I very much like and agree  “ wise moderators strongly favor upvoting over downvoting.”" CreationDate="2020-10-13T19:43:20.350" UserId="29137" />
  <row Id="20244" PostId="5986" Score="1" Text="@Sycorax indeed, the downvoting that others see is only the *total* downvoting and people do not see the number of downvotes on non-deleted posts." CreationDate="2020-10-22T13:13:22.630" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="20256" PostId="5986" Score="1" Text="@whuber Agreed. A *big* person shows kindness and consideration toward others, i.e., has *charity*. I think a *small* person, is not charitable, and is frequently someone who is hurting. Speaking of which, the company has recently taken a turn for the small side. Sycorax (congrats) and I have had heated discussions that I have learned from, and quality of discussion is somewhat unrelated to how charitable the participants are toward each other, provided it is not disruptive, but one does attract more flies with honey than vinegar; kindness is self-serving." CreationDate="2020-10-31T05:52:48.110" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="20164" PostId="5987" Score="1" Text="The same issue arises for just about every other language I know about -- and it's worse for anything based on a series of menu choices. But in terms of R and any similar language (it's certainly true of Stata which I know quite well) there can be a bonus in (a) showing code and results AND ALSO (b) showing code that can be copied and pasted by a serious reader. The balance depends on the question: (1) sometimes a reader familiar with the language doesn't need to run anything as the question makes sense immediately (2) sometimes only playing with the code is going to point to an answer." CreationDate="2020-10-08T18:24:57.030" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20165" PostId="5987" Score="1" Text="Naturally this intersects with other issues, including whether the OP has posted a reproducible example." CreationDate="2020-10-08T18:26:51.510" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20166" PostId="5987" Score="0" Text="@NickCox I agree that sometimes it is obvious which approach to take, but on a daily basis I find myself in a situation where it isn't obvious and we usually don't know how proficient the OP is in the language and then we also need to consider other users who may be interested in the question/answer.  The 3rd solution I suggested is OK for those who are not so proficient in the language, but again, for those who want to run the code, they have to either copy/paste one block at a time, or copy the whole thing and then cut out the commentary. I have found myself preferring the 1st option usually" CreationDate="2020-10-08T18:32:40.977" UserId="7486" />
  <row Id="20167" PostId="5987" Score="0" Text="Indeed. But remember that the criterion here should be that the question should be _statistical_ in essence, so how the code is presented shouldn't matter too much if it is clear." CreationDate="2020-10-08T18:42:19.180" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20169" PostId="5987" Score="3" Text="FYI: for syntax highlighting, you can add `&lt;!-- language-all: lang-r --&gt;` anywhere in the body of the message (it will be invisible)." CreationDate="2020-10-08T19:04:16.970" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="20170" PostId="5987" Score="1" Text="@Tim thanks, I didn't know that. Presumably that's for the cases where the OP doesn't contain the `R` tag ?" CreationDate="2020-10-08T19:08:28.343" UserId="7486" />
  <row Id="20171" PostId="5987" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Quite. I am probably overthinking this :/" CreationDate="2020-10-08T19:10:23.833" UserId="7486" />
  <row Id="20172" PostId="5987" Score="0" Text="@RobertLong correct." CreationDate="2020-10-08T19:26:31.070" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="20174" PostId="5987" Score="4" Text="I don't think you're over-thinking. Good presentation of code helps any question greatly, just like good writing." CreationDate="2020-10-08T21:39:05.993" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20176" PostId="5987" Score="1" Text="I comment out the output (eg, [here](https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/185532/7290)).  I'll try to put an answer together later." CreationDate="2020-10-09T11:37:31.137" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20178" PostId="5987" Score="1" Text="Robert, occasionally I have resorted to presenting the code block by block and then appending the complete code to the post.  See https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/129786/919 for an example." CreationDate="2020-10-09T13:19:48.087" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20168" PostId="5988" Score="2" Text="(+1) thanks, I hadn't thought of that. I have always used quoting only for quoting from the original post  !" CreationDate="2020-10-08T18:49:55.097" UserId="7486" />
  <row Id="20175" PostId="5988" Score="6" Text="Hm. Interesting. This is the first time I see this &quot;new method&quot;, did I miss an announcement? But if I understand correctly, then it's still hard to show a longer snippet with code and output interspersed, as [in this recent answer of mine](https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/490530/1352) (the second code block, scroll down a bit). It's still not possible for the user to just collect everything and copy-paste it into the console, right? (I know I'm badly mixing up styles of code presentation there.)" CreationDate="2020-10-09T09:24:45.173" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="20177" PostId="5988" Score="1" Text="@Stephan Code is code.  It sounds rather like you're referring to pasting a long list of lines on the `R` console in which function calls and `print` output are intermingled.  IMHO, such long sequences won't work well in a post here: consider breaking them into smaller sections with interleaved explanations or captions.  But if you really want to present such a monolithic block, then simply paste it into the textbox, press the icon for formatting code, and then go through separately selecting the `print` output portions and pressing the quote icon for them." CreationDate="2020-10-09T13:17:41.643" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20188" PostId="5992" Score="8" Text="I'm looking forward to voting for you! +1" CreationDate="2020-10-11T22:26:14.540" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20206" PostId="5992" Score="2" Text="Thank you for your contribution for this site." CreationDate="2020-10-12T20:49:39.957" UserId="29137" />
  <row Id="20208" PostId="5992" Score="2" Text="Voted because I've seen you around :)" CreationDate="2020-10-13T00:50:59.590" UserId="245759" />
  <row Id="20190" PostId="5993" Score="1" Text="Was there a &quot;real&quot; answer in the thread, and did pointing out the OP's error actually answer their question? If there was no better answer, and if this answer actually addressed the concern, then [I would rather have a short answer than none at all](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5326/1352)." CreationDate="2020-10-12T15:14:56.340" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="20191" PostId="5993" Score="1" Text="@StephanKolassa No, there were already two other answers that seems like they answer the question. I use &quot;seems like&quot;, because I don't come from a very mathematical background and therefore could not follow the maths all the way. The OP has not accepted any of the other two answers though..." CreationDate="2020-10-12T16:51:09.597" UserId="284660" />
  <row Id="20189" PostId="5995" Score="7" Text="Quite often a new user is clearly well informed and keen from the start and starts posting good stuff straight away. Such users may be frustrated by their inability to make comments too. I agree with @gung that anyone who merits the ability to post comments will quickly get enough reputation. Nevertheless many of us -- and I think I have seen gung do this -- will look around for a post to upvote to nudge the person over the threshold. A purist would maintain that posts should be upvoted on their own merits, but I don't feel guilty helping someone out in this way." CreationDate="2020-10-12T15:10:27.603" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20242" PostId="5995" Score="1" Text="I have been once on that frustrated side. I had once made the mistake to give a bounty on the math site when I still did not have a lot of reputation there and it prevented me from being able to comment on the question to which I gave the bounty. I see this happen with others on stats as well occasionally. People that provide bounties which kill all their privileges including the ability to comment." CreationDate="2020-10-21T20:19:39.867" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="20246" PostId="5995" Score="0" Text="@SextusEmpiricus I see bounties as a separate issue. despite the similarity. Bounties are in effect a penalty that it is presumed is willingly paid. Having enough reputation to comment depends on the approval of others for your work." CreationDate="2020-10-25T13:29:17.820" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20223" PostId="5996" Score="6" Text="The name is there and familiar. It needs an extraordinarily compelling change of circumstances for us to need to change it. I wasn't a member at the time, but I read the title as far from being narrowly literal: I like to think of it as hinting strongly at the community aspect, in that we collectively support, refine, extend, and even correct each individual's expertise, experience, and judgement as applied in questions, answers and discussion. So long as there is a flag somewhere about statistics and machine learning visible to those who read carefully, the title is good." CreationDate="2020-10-15T07:23:21.090" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20222" PostId="5997" Score="0" Text="What do you mean by &quot;glory&quot;? How would we know that datascience.SE has taken it?" CreationDate="2020-10-14T22:35:41.437" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20226" PostId="5997" Score="0" Text="The glory is being recognized by historians as the first community on this platform to recognize that machine learning is being hampered by current &quot;best&quot; practices of cross-validation.  When we start seeing higher-quality posts on datascience, and/or if they change their name first, we would lose the opportunity." CreationDate="2020-10-15T13:27:24.077" UserId="272731" />
  <row Id="20224" PostId="5998" Score="3" Text="There does seem to be an asymmetry in the process and I assume it's by design. Thus if I review something and click &quot;Leave open&quot; that doesn't change anything that I can see except that is recorded in a history. As I understand it, 4 votes to close are not reduced to 3  because I choose Leave open. You're blowing against a wind." CreationDate="2020-10-15T11:50:22.363" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20225" PostId="5998" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Thank you, I did not know that. Will drop a comment next time instead." CreationDate="2020-10-15T12:03:30.640" UserId="264" />
  <row Id="20227" PostId="5998" Score="0" Text="But how does one prevent closing it as soon as it is in the queue ? If the only options are &quot;add another close vote&quot; or &quot;do nothing&quot; which is equivalent to &quot;Leave open&quot; ?" CreationDate="2020-10-15T14:27:48.420" UserId="264" />
  <row Id="20228" PostId="5998" Score="3" Text="You can't prevent it; you can only refrain from voting to close. The wider context as I understand it: the machinery is intended to promote the removal of poor questions, with scope for the OP to improve the question and for people to vote to re-open and for close decisions to be discussed. Setting aside what moderators can do unilaterally, the CV rule is that 5 people have to vote to close for that to be effective. The most negative view of this, which has been expressed, is that that gives a lot of freedom for any 5 misguided and malevolent people with enough reputation to be destructive." CreationDate="2020-10-15T14:46:25.430" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20236" PostId="5998" Score="1" Text="Functionalities like this one are common to all SE sites, so it's best to look at [Meta.SE](https://meta.stackexchange.com) as to whether this has been asked before. Searching for &quot;vote to leave open&quot; or similar turns up [&quot;Allow voting “Vote to not close” from the question without being in a review&quot;](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/151476/256777)." CreationDate="2020-10-20T15:43:43.703" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="20241" PostId="5998" Score="0" Text="Not a solution, but a way to deal with it: you can also comment on the question and explain why you believe it should remain open." CreationDate="2020-10-21T20:13:53.470" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="20229" PostId="6001" Score="7" Text="I couldn't tell you from experience, because for as long as I have been moderator -- almost ten years now -- I believe we have never had that many flags accumulate before the problem was addressed.  We have been fortunate to have active moderators situated around the world in almost evenly spaced time zones (with special thanks to our Australian mods)." CreationDate="2020-10-16T15:07:22.257" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20230" PostId="6002" Score="4" Text="I've seen that happen, but it happens so fast that you hardly notice. The cases are so extreme that even the poster is unlikely to be surprised that the post was zapped. In one marginal case a poster protested that their post was, in their view, within the terms of the site, so should be answered. Somebody then commented that a question on (say) marriage guidance would be clearly out of scope, and the existence of out of scope questions showed that there must be a limit to our elasticity. But then -- bizarrely -- someone did post a question on marriage guidance, which did not survive. ." CreationDate="2020-10-16T17:25:48.303" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20231" PostId="6003" Score="11" Text="If the answer is about the statistical principles at issue &amp; how they play out in that situation, then the Q belongs here, not on SO. Use option #1, &amp; vote to close there (it won't be possible to migrate it at this point). If the answer is about how the function works / how to use the code, then it belongs on SO, not here. Use option #2." CreationDate="2020-10-19T11:35:24.030" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20232" PostId="6003" Score="1" Text="It's definitely option #1, thanks!" CreationDate="2020-10-19T19:07:27.420" UserId="58602" />
  <row Id="20238" PostId="6006" Score="31" Text="Congratulations to Sycorax &amp; Kjetil." CreationDate="2020-10-20T20:34:58.857" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20239" PostId="6006" Score="23" Text="Many thanks to @Peter Flom for his extensive and diligent service over 7 years as a moderator, always moderate, sensible and sensitive." CreationDate="2020-10-21T01:18:28.433" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20240" PostId="6006" Score="8" Text="Congratulations to @Sycorax and @kjetilbhalvorsen!" CreationDate="2020-10-21T12:06:24.753" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="20248" PostId="6008" Score="7" Text="If you have a question which applies across the network the answer can often be found somewhere on Meta Stack Exchange." CreationDate="2020-10-27T14:07:16.733" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="20247" PostId="6009" Score="11" Text="It may seem unfair that having earned the respect of a community you may lose privileges by offering a bounty. But it seems to be a general rule that thresholds work this way." CreationDate="2020-10-27T13:14:25.927" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20257" PostId="6010" Score="0" Text="googling leads to [this](http://cameron.econ.ucdavis.edu/e240a/ch04iv.pdf) using *Wald estimator* in the context of instrumental variables. This meaning might be used in https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/322862/covariance-bernoulli-distribution-and-instrumental-variables.  Also https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/219367/how-can-i-compute-the-standard-error-of-the-wald-estimator" CreationDate="2020-10-31T22:12:44.097" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="20279" PostId="6010" Score="2" Text="Unless someone protests soon, I will start cleaning up this. First retagging to wald-test when appropriate (more than 50%). I don't think a synonym to wald-test is correct, since there are appropriate non-synonym uses of the name (but probably not enough to warrant a tag.)" CreationDate="2020-11-05T11:10:38.540" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="20298" PostId="6010" Score="0" Text="The tag is now emptied." CreationDate="2020-11-11T12:47:40.713" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="20249" PostId="6011" Score="3" Text="It is not really my area but it strikes me that it contains a number of different questions. Perhaps nobody feels competent to answer all of them?" CreationDate="2020-10-29T15:07:33.310" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="20250" PostId="6011" Score="5" Text="I didn't see this originally but as in the rest of life whatever you do will be wrong from somebody's point of view. Sometimes I can read a question and think that I know what different question it should be, but in statistics it seems surprisingly common that OP and people answering are talking past each other. Many discussions here circle round &quot;I want to do X. Is this right or can you help me to do it?&quot; and &quot;Why do you want to do X?&quot; So, I would say it's more common here that people who answer lots of questions aren't clear what many questions are." CreationDate="2020-10-29T15:44:43.593" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20251" PostId="6011" Score="2" Text="In your case, you provide a lot of detail, which is often essential, but not always likely to lead to good answers. It's hard, but trying to reverse roles mentally can be instructive. Two points: 1. How much time do you expect people answering to give you? I want questions that I can answer in about 3 minutes, although I will often end up writing for 30 minutes if the subject interests me.  2. Can you imagine answering this yourself if you knew a bit more than you do? That's really hard, but the questions people want to answer are not really easy ones, but those with good focus and some bite." CreationDate="2020-10-29T15:49:49.757" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20252" PostId="6011" Score="0" Text="@mdewey Thanks for the suggestion. I've gotten rid of the coding component which could be perceived as a question in itself." CreationDate="2020-10-29T19:58:05.743" UserId="92324" />
  <row Id="20253" PostId="6011" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Thanks for the comment. I have tried to improve the questions focus. And as you pointed out, I may have made the mistake of providing far too much information. Hopefully the question will be better received now." CreationDate="2020-10-29T19:59:37.917" UserId="92324" />
  <row Id="20263" PostId="6015" Score="4" Text="To find such questions, see https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/13203/225179." CreationDate="2020-11-03T08:55:13.277" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="20265" PostId="6015" Score="0" Text="Which question was it?  You can see all your deleted questions in your profile: they never disappear permanently (unless you make a special request of the SE software team)." CreationDate="2020-11-03T14:08:48.073" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20278" PostId="6015" Score="0" Text="For more information on post deletion, see the network Meta:  https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5221/how-does-deleting-work-what-can-cause-a-post-to-be-deleted-and-what-does-that" CreationDate="2020-11-05T11:07:47.957" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="20262" PostId="6016" Score="0" Text="my question had an answer before it was closed, but has gone missing. and according to that list, since the post would have fallen in either the 9-day or 30-day category, &quot;no answers&quot; is not a criteria for 9-day like how you say. could a moderator have deleted it with prejudice" CreationDate="2020-11-03T08:50:45.053" UserId="250716" />
  <row Id="20264" PostId="6016" Score="5" Text="@devalarist: The criterion with regard to answers for nine-day deletion of a post is its having no answers with a score of greater than nought or that have been accepted." CreationDate="2020-11-03T09:06:24.413" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="20266" PostId="6017" Score="1" Text="It looks like a similar question has been asked before on meta.SE https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/240736/what-should-moderators-or-passing-editors-do-about-suspected-plagiarized-or-co Does this answer your question?" CreationDate="2020-11-03T19:25:49.180" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20267" PostId="6017" Score="0" Text="Wow, whuber is fast!" CreationDate="2020-11-03T19:26:16.037" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20268" PostId="6017" Score="0" Text="Thanks a lot for all the links, and apologies for not finding them before (I thought I had searched enough for them but clealy I didn't)" CreationDate="2020-11-03T19:32:12.730" UserId="258451" />
  <row Id="20269" PostId="6017" Score="4" Text="No harm done; no need to apologize. Asking a duplicate actually helps the website because it improves the page rank of the linked questions and helps people who phrased the question using the language in your post (as opposed to the other posts)." CreationDate="2020-11-03T19:33:20.753" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20275" PostId="6018" Score="2" Text="Whenever possible, I use the Wayback Machine to fix them.  I do it fairly commonly." CreationDate="2020-11-04T12:26:08.477" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20276" PostId="6018" Score="2" Text="If you have given enough detail for the reader to put into their favourite search engine like the title and first author of an article then I think there is little cause for concern here." CreationDate="2020-11-04T13:45:58.847" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="20277" PostId="6018" Score="0" Text="Thank you both for your comments." CreationDate="2020-11-04T19:44:36.907" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="20270" PostId="6019" Score="0" Text="(+1) Is the Wayback Machine the best (and only) way to go then? Sometimes I just delete link to PDF since I provided a full reference. i'm just wondering whether relying on WBM is really a good idea. E.g., links might fade away for good reasons, or not." CreationDate="2020-11-03T21:56:31.807" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="20271" PostId="6019" Score="0" Text="I don't know. If possible, I use more official sources, but also WBM sometimes." CreationDate="2020-11-03T22:00:53.787" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="20272" PostId="6019" Score="0" Text="That's what I do too. Was just checking if there's an official policy on SE nowadays." CreationDate="2020-11-03T22:01:57.620" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="20273" PostId="6019" Score="5" Text="No policy that I'm aware of.  A very few users routinely find dead links and suggest edits to replace them, an activity that obviously takes effort and for which I am very grateful.  When we make those changes we should try to include visible identifying information to help people track down the references the next time the links rot... ." CreationDate="2020-11-03T23:05:06.820" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20274" PostId="6019" Score="1" Text="Thanks, A fully qualified reference is probably the best option, as a default." CreationDate="2020-11-04T09:05:24.913" UserId="930" />
  <row Id="20280" PostId="6020" Score="5" Text="I also wondered that---the owner of the stolen name is aware." CreationDate="2020-11-05T21:10:17.883" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="20281" PostId="6020" Score="2" Text="I saw some tangential questions on meta https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/188555/fake-moderator-using-a-moderator-icon &amp; https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/37942/policy-on-display-names Nothing too conclusive" CreationDate="2020-11-05T21:16:42.813" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="20282" PostId="6021" Score="0" Text="Do you take the last sentence to mean that I can't post your display name, even though it's publicly accessible?" CreationDate="2020-11-05T21:17:58.390" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="20283" PostId="6021" Score="4" Text="@Firebug I added edit to clarify. I wouldn't go that far, but this case is pretty special." CreationDate="2020-11-05T21:20:25.750" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="20284" PostId="6021" Score="3" Text="I saw some discussions on impersonating Jon Skeet &amp; Jeff Atwood (it seems like users got the hammer that time) in meta https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/99914/what-are-the-rules-governing-display-names-and-avatars?noredirect=1&amp;lq=1" CreationDate="2020-11-05T21:21:50.680" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="20285" PostId="6021" Score="0" Text="i.e. matching your interpretation" CreationDate="2020-11-05T21:22:01.477" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="20286" PostId="6021" Score="15" Text="I think this threads indicate we can do something, first contacting the user and asking they to change back, if not we could escalate this. This is a case of trolling, clearly." CreationDate="2020-11-05T22:10:09.760" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="20299" PostId="6021" Score="2" Text="I missed the details, perhaps fortunately, as that means the question can be answered as  a matter of principle. The benign interpretation is that this was a prank or arose from a particular sense of humour, but it is not acceptable and should always be reversed, ideally by persuasion rather than force or censure." CreationDate="2020-11-13T10:21:11.663" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20295" PostId="6025" Score="5" Text="Oh dear, I hope I didn't hype it up, it's really nothing big and it's very specific to one problem. I'll write it up when I have time over the next few days. Thanks!" CreationDate="2020-11-10T07:47:26.540" UserId="144520" />
  <row Id="20302" PostId="6026" Score="1" Text="Here's how I interpret the name: You come here to validate your understanding of statistics through other statisticians. We cross link to other posts to build a network of improved understanding for future visitors of the site. It is vaguely, if at all related to the statistical concept of cross validated, but the goal is analogous. I see it as how a layman would interpret what crossvalidation might be." CreationDate="2020-11-16T23:05:45.863" UserId="176202" />
  <row Id="20303" PostId="6026" Score="0" Text="Yeah cool. But that's true for any Stack Exchange site. Most of us come here, be it Math, Stat or CS, in order to validate our understanding of the subjects. So, by that logic, any of the networks could be named &quot;Cross Validated&quot;. :P" CreationDate="2020-11-17T04:44:15.057" UserId="263886" />
  <row Id="20304" PostId="6026" Score="3" Text="Crossvalidation is a *statistical* technique. It wouldn't be a play on words for any of the other sites." CreationDate="2020-11-17T07:14:28.217" UserId="176202" />
  <row Id="20300" PostId="6027" Score="0" Text="I went through the link which you shared. Is it true that name &quot;Statistics Stack Exchange&quot; was never proposed for this site ? If so, I must say that I'll be quite surprised." CreationDate="2020-11-16T09:25:20.313" UserId="263886" />
  <row Id="20321" PostId="6031" Score="1" Text="I'll take a stab at it tonight, unless someone else gets there first." CreationDate="2020-11-24T16:59:02.740" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20335" PostId="6031" Score="0" Text="@Sycorax: Do you get arond to it?" CreationDate="2020-11-25T18:11:46.077" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="20322" PostId="6032" Score="0" Text="Related: https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5549/best-practices-for-searching-cv" CreationDate="2020-11-24T17:17:55.323" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="20323" PostId="6032" Score="0" Text="That thread isn't just related: it is identical and was created for exactly the same purpose.  If you would like to contribute to it -- or even improve the question part of it -- please feel free to do so!  The issue of searching the Web generally strikes me as being off topic here on CV Meta, though." CreationDate="2020-11-24T17:21:28.657" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20324" PostId="6032" Score="2" Text="Maybe, but it has not been much  advertized, I managed to not see it before today!" CreationDate="2020-11-24T17:23:44.753" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="20325" PostId="6032" Score="3" Text="No harm in a duplicate -- the dupe draws attention to the canonical question." CreationDate="2020-11-24T17:49:01.187" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20326" PostId="6032" Score="0" Text="@whuber: Can I then edit the other thread into a more FAQ style, as the example I mentioned?" CreationDate="2020-11-24T19:13:52.000" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="20327" PostId="6032" Score="1" Text="I believe you can just edit the original question.  As the author, I welcome your improvements." CreationDate="2020-11-24T19:27:08.523" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20328" PostId="6032" Score="2" Text="@Sycorax That's right.  The main issue--and I believe we would all agree to this--is to keep all the answers together rather than splitting them across multiple threads." CreationDate="2020-11-24T19:28:05.433" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20329" PostId="6032" Score="0" Text="@whuber: Is there some way we can edit a reference to that main thread inti the SE site search help page?" CreationDate="2020-11-24T19:48:58.493" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="20331" PostId="6032" Score="1" Text="That dup so far has 246 views, needs more advertisement!" CreationDate="2020-11-24T20:34:59.937" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="20342" PostId="6033" Score="0" Text="Can you please have a look at https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1200/current-tag-synonym-candidates/6030?noredirect=1#comment20341_6030" CreationDate="2020-11-26T20:45:49.283" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="20348" PostId="6035" Score="2" Text="Is the subfield statistics or machine learning?  It isn't obvious to me that this would be off topic." CreationDate="2020-12-01T12:33:27.980" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20349" PostId="6035" Score="1" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica I think it's more a question of whether asking for research is off topic. But the field could be both statistics or machine learning. I'm sure you're aware that they are closely related, and in this case it doesn't make a difference to me. They both have an extensive front in time series analysis." CreationDate="2020-12-01T12:48:28.607" UserId="211258" />
  <row Id="20383" PostId="6043" Score="6" Text="It's very difficult to advice someone on what to do if you can't figure out what they're trying to do. I would have closed that question, too.  It would be better to describe your situation (perhaps a scientific study), what the data are (eg, number correct on a test), &amp; what your goals are (eg, you need the distribution to conduct a power analysis), etc. Then we'd be much better able to help." CreationDate="2020-12-20T13:12:08.887" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20384" PostId="6043" Score="5" Text="Many questions lacking the &quot;why&quot; explanation are in fact [XY problems](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/66377/what-is-the-xy-problem). We do not want to answer the wrong kind of question." CreationDate="2020-12-20T20:01:19.390" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="20385" PostId="6043" Score="0" Text="@Tim I already answered why. Most people when they have such data use Normal or Truncated Normal at best. I don't think the ease to manipulate a continuous distribution warrants the approximation." CreationDate="2020-12-20T20:51:32.547" UserId="226383" />
  <row Id="20391" PostId="6043" Score="0" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica I tried rewording the entire question." CreationDate="2020-12-28T12:40:47.163" UserId="226383" />
  <row Id="20392" PostId="6043" Score="0" Text="@Tim I tried rewording the entire question." CreationDate="2020-12-28T12:40:55.413" UserId="226383" />
  <row Id="20394" PostId="6043" Score="0" Text="I still don't know what it is about. What is the situation where this occurs? What are the data? What do you want to do with / learn from the data? What will you use the distribution for? Etc." CreationDate="2020-12-28T13:24:27.537" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20395" PostId="6043" Score="0" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica I want to describe the distribution (the allocation/the division of something with exactitude and methodicity i.e. as the word distribution is used in the English language and not in Statistics). What use is there in a distribution (statistical technical term) other than to describe the distribution (a common natural word in the English language)? The situation occurs any time we are describing the distribution (the English word) with Normal or Truncated Normal while knowing that the data (and the general population/distibution) is both bound from both ends and discrete." CreationDate="2020-12-28T21:21:04.303" UserId="226383" />
  <row Id="20396" PostId="6043" Score="0" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica I just asked https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/556068/usage-of-distribution-and-alternatives-synonyms?noredirect=1#comment1370860_556068 What I want to do with my Distribution is to Describe the Distribution of the Object of my Study. In this example that my data are Grades I want to describe the Distribution of Grades in the Class." CreationDate="2020-12-30T00:52:00.073" UserId="226383" />
  <row Id="20405" PostId="6043" Score="0" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica I once more editted the question explaining what I want to do with the Distribution (Describe the Spread)." CreationDate="2021-01-03T20:21:30.443" UserId="226383" />
  <row Id="20430" PostId="6043" Score="0" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica Isn't the question now clear and unambiguous?" CreationDate="2021-01-05T22:01:42.030" UserId="226383" />
  <row Id="20439" PostId="6043" Score="0" Text="Not to me.  All my questions above still hold.  Maybe it's clear to someone else." CreationDate="2021-01-06T06:56:11.353" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20445" PostId="6043" Score="0" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica Even the last 2 questions? What do you want to do with / learn from the data? Describe the spread in the grades of the population (including the studen't that didn't self-select). What will you use the distribution for? Describe the spread of the grades (or any other variate)." CreationDate="2021-01-06T11:50:05.727" UserId="226383" />
  <row Id="20446" PostId="6043" Score="0" Text="If you want to describe the spread, try computing the SD. The question isn't clear to me; maybe it is to someone else." CreationDate="2021-01-06T12:30:53.213" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20448" PostId="6043" Score="0" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica I want to use a Distribution for describing. Statistically nothing is more informative than a distribution. That is why the result in Bayesian Statistics is often the posterior in itself. It contains all the information that may be infered. It is Frequentists who ask them to give a Point Estimate or an Interval Estimate. The same SD may belong to 2 completely different distributions. The SD alone is not descriptive or informative enough." CreationDate="2021-01-06T12:50:16.103" UserId="226383" />
  <row Id="20454" PostId="6043" Score="0" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica All your questions above still hold; why? Does the body of my main question not answer your questions (in the way I have answered them here in the comments not in a way you would like them to be answered), or is it a matter of disagreement (aesthetic maybe)? Does the body lack information I have given in the comments or do you simply disagree with using a distribution to describe the spread? Infinite distributions have the same SD and that is why I strictly want a distribution to describe the spread and not simply the SD." CreationDate="2021-01-11T05:29:51.707" UserId="226383" />
  <row Id="20474" PostId="6043" Score="0" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica Please check my wording in the original question once more. I edited it to restrict it to grades." CreationDate="2021-01-11T13:06:42.807" UserId="226383" />
  <row Id="20479" PostId="6043" Score="0" Text="Maybe the question makes more sense to someone else. If I wanted to describe the spread, I would probably use the SD, although I might use something like the interquartile range. I wouldn't care that the same SD can come from multiple distributions. There's no reason to believe that the actual data follow any named / studied distribution. If the real point is that you need a distribution to use for a Bayesian prior, that's potentially sensible, but should be clarified &amp; would be better answered by someone other than me. I think this will be the end of this conversation for me." CreationDate="2021-01-11T16:20:49.530" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20480" PostId="6043" Score="0" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica You didn't answer if it is a matter of ambiguity or aesthetic disagreement. Why your questions above still hold." CreationDate="2021-01-11T16:33:12.727" UserId="226383" />
  <row Id="20488" PostId="6047" Score="0" Text="Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been [moved to chat](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/118352/discussion-on-answer-by-sextus-empiricus-why-is-motivation-important)." CreationDate="2021-01-12T04:46:23.527" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20399" PostId="6049" Score="1" Text="Are you concerned about the excerpt or the full wiki?" CreationDate="2021-01-02T13:19:22.487" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20400" PostId="6049" Score="3" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica, mainly the full Wiki. If the excerpt can be improved alongside, it would of course be nice. (The [`tag-excerpt`](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/tag-excerpt) tag I used was likely misleading, thus I have replaced it.)" CreationDate="2021-01-02T13:21:54.170" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="20401" PostId="6049" Score="0" Text="The mischievous part of me wonders if the world would be a worse place if the tag disappeared. It is very unspecific." CreationDate="2021-01-02T17:00:10.653" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="20402" PostId="6049" Score="0" Text="@mdewey, I would not say it is *that* bad. We do not have tags to cover all possible tests, and sometimes the general one comes in quite handy. But this is just my impression." CreationDate="2021-01-02T17:53:21.057" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="20403" PostId="6049" Score="1" Text="@mdewey: There are enough questions on the general principles of hypothesis testing to justify its having its own tag; though I might question whether we need *hypothesis testing*, and *p-value*, and *statistical significance*." CreationDate="2021-01-03T10:38:46.477" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="20404" PostId="6049" Score="2" Text="@Scortchi-ReinstateMonica well I did say it was a bit mischievous. I agree though about the overlap with p-value and statistical significance." CreationDate="2021-01-03T13:26:18.047" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="20406" PostId="6050" Score="7" Text="Readers of this post may be interested to read the discussion in OP's previous meta thread about this idea. https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5573/questions-on-reinforcement-learning-topics-would-be-better-suited-for-ai-stack-e" CreationDate="2021-01-04T19:00:02.463" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20407" PostId="6050" Score="0" Text="@Sycorax The formulation of that post is completely different. It seems that you're just linking to that post for other reasons than the ones you mention (i.e. to bias people against this new post). In this new post, I'm suggesting something different and I'm also showing facts." CreationDate="2021-01-04T19:01:15.297" UserDisplayName="user82135" />
  <row Id="20408" PostId="6050" Score="1" Text="+1 because it's a reasonable question and worth discussing, whatever one might think the resolution should be." CreationDate="2021-01-04T19:07:25.560" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20418" PostId="6050" Score="6" Text="It is rather obnoxious to preemptively declare that the motivation of people who downvote this proposal is to protect their 'turf' (&amp; thus by implication only the upvotes on this proposal reflect its merits). I also note that nowhere in the linked thread does anyone say that askers posting elsewhere hurts CV. Moreover, we have 28,714 Q's on the site from 2020, of which only 197 (0.69%) carry the `[rl]` tag; it is clear that if askers posted somewhere else instead, the effect on our activity would be very small." CreationDate="2021-01-05T15:14:36.057" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20419" PostId="6050" Score="0" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica I was not expecting to come to your house, ask for some food (for free) and get it: not everyone is so generous and reasonable. I understand the downvotes, but I don't agree with them, because RL is an AI topic (if not **the** AI topic). If there's something that should be asked on an AI site is RL. Stats is not an AI site (although some AI topics are on-topic here, of course, because AI also uses statistical methods). As I said in the comments below, there are frameworks for general intelligence, such as AIXI, which are built on top of RL. You should wonder why." CreationDate="2021-01-05T15:17:18.127" UserDisplayName="user82135" />
  <row Id="20420" PostId="6050" Score="5" Text="@nbro After I posted my answer, you revised the first sentence to &quot;Reinforcement learning (RL) is *currently* on-topic here,&quot; adding the word &quot;currently.&quot; What is the intended meaning of &quot;currently&quot; here? Should I understand the emphasized word &quot;currently&quot; to mean that this post is asking about a revision of the stats.SE scope to exclude RL?" CreationDate="2021-01-05T15:25:29.040" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20423" PostId="6050" Score="0" Text="@Sycorax I do think that RL is related to some statistical methods. Clearly, almost everyone will consider RL a sub-field of ML and, of course, ML is very related to statistics and I doubt that everyone will ever say that ML is not on-topic here. However, RL is a very specific sub-field of ML, which has been used and studied primarily by AI researchers, such as Richard Sutton, David Silver, and so on. My point is that RL is on-topic here only because ML is on-topic here and not because people interested in statistics are also interested in RL." CreationDate="2021-01-05T15:49:38.640" UserDisplayName="user82135" />
  <row Id="20424" PostId="6050" Score="0" Text="I don't think you should completely exclude RL as a topic from this site, but, as this post suggests, I do think that RL questions should be asked on AI SE, because 1. people interested in AI are usually very interested in RL (if not just interested in RL), 2. people interested in statistics typically have no interest in RL (as far as I recall), 3. we could have a more cohesive group of people (for instance, recently we get a question on AI SE about hypothesis testing and I suggested the user to ask their question here on Stats SE: that's fine to me because hypothesis testing is stats!)." CreationDate="2021-01-05T15:49:43.793" UserDisplayName="user82135" />
  <row Id="20425" PostId="6050" Score="0" Text="Moreover, in [our on-topic page on AI SE](https://ai.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic), we visibly link to Cross Validated (or Stats SE, or how it is called now) and also suggest where certain topics (that are also on-topic there) are also on-topic on Stats SE. This is what all SE sites should do, but this is another issue. My point is that certain topics are better asked on certain sites than others. RL is one of those. Evolutionary algorithms is another." CreationDate="2021-01-05T15:57:18.750" UserDisplayName="user82135" />
  <row Id="20427" PostId="6050" Score="9" Text="Statistics, broadly conceived, includes machine learning. And I agree that machine learning includes quantitative questions about RL. So while it's true that *not all* people interested in statistics are interested in RL, it *is* true that all people interested in quantitative RL are interested in (a branch of) statistics. My answer has addressed the remainder of your arguments. It's perfectly fine to feel that AI.SE is the best place to ask RL questions, but that doesn't preclude users asking topical RL questions here, because they may disagree with your assessment." CreationDate="2021-01-05T17:26:35.690" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20409" PostId="6051" Score="0" Text="Your reasoning is also not sound. Saying that AI is a buzzword just to help your cause does not make any sense. In fact, AI, as a field, exists since the 50s, so it's more than 60 years that it exists. So, no, it's not just a buzzword. AI is not just about statistical questions, although you could also view the world in the a mathematical way, so you could also ask &quot;Why does Stats SE exist if there's already Math SE?&quot;. The idea of having multiple SE sites is to group people interested in more specific topics than the general &quot;Everything SE&quot; would also cover." CreationDate="2021-01-04T20:22:08.283" UserDisplayName="user82135" />
  <row Id="20410" PostId="6051" Score="0" Text="You then say &quot;The communities are not competing for users. &quot;. This is not true at all. People have limited time, so they need to decide which community to visit. This answer is really bad, not just because of what I've just said but also for several other reasons. Anyway, I was expecting this type of answer. And, of course, I was not expecting anything to improve/change at all." CreationDate="2021-01-04T20:22:43.317" UserDisplayName="user82135" />
  <row Id="20411" PostId="6051" Score="5" Text="I'm familiar with the history of the term. I didn't say AI is a buzzword, I said AI has buzz in the press, which has no relation to age. It's not hard to find articles in the popular press about how &quot;artificial intelligence&quot; will revolutionize some industry, or change how consumers complete a task, or &quot;make the world a better place.&quot; I can't recall ever reading an article about how &quot;statistics&quot; will do the same, even though there are lots of applications for &quot;statistical learning&quot; and other statistical topics. Most popular articles aren't really even about RL-as-AI, but statistics-as-AI." CreationDate="2021-01-04T20:27:30.460" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20412" PostId="6051" Score="0" Text="Most people that worked or are working on neural networks, RL, and stuff like, would most likely call them &quot;researchers in AI&quot; and not &quot;researchers in stats&quot;, although I completely understand that a great part of AI is also about statistics. Why is that the case? Because the goal of AI is different than the goal of statistics. In AI, we want to develop intelligent agents, though most people focus on specific topics, such as natural language understanding. This similar to the difference between physics and chemestry. They're all talking about the physical world, but with different perspectives." CreationDate="2021-01-04T20:31:32.820" UserDisplayName="user82135" />
  <row Id="20413" PostId="6051" Score="6" Text="I don't know whether &quot;most people&quot; would say that or not. Depending on the researcher, they might say &quot;I'm a professor of computer science&quot; or &quot;I'm a professor of statistics,&quot; or &quot;I'm a data scientist.&quot; But how researchers describe themselves doesn't seem to be the most important consideration in organizing a Q&amp;A website." CreationDate="2021-01-04T20:35:30.337" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20414" PostId="6051" Score="0" Text="It's actually relevant because the website was created to address some purpose and this purpose is the need to answer questions related to some topic and to group people with similar interests. I would like to note I and other people that have suggested that RL questions are more appropriate for AI SE because AI is about intelligent agents and RL is the main way (that we are aware of) to achieve that successfully are doing research on RL or have master's in AI (including myself). So, I'm not here just talking about AI and RL without knowing what I'm saying." CreationDate="2021-01-04T20:39:43.927" UserDisplayName="user82135" />
  <row Id="20415" PostId="6051" Score="1" Text="In the past, I have also questioned the need for AI SE and DS SE, given the high overlap that they have with Stats SE. However, now, I understand that DS, AI and Stats are all different. We have different purposes. AI is different than DS and Stats. This difference is higher than the difference between DS and Stats. In fact, I would say that DS is just applied ML and stats. AI is about creating intelligence. That's the goal. Creating intelligent algorithms and agents. People in DS and Stats may not care at all about the concept of intelligence, to start with." CreationDate="2021-01-04T20:48:25.067" UserDisplayName="user82135" />
  <row Id="20416" PostId="6051" Score="1" Text="On the other hand, people that do research in AI are really interested in this concept and question: What is intelligence? How can we build intelligent systems? Every person that researches some AI topic has the dream of seeing/creating an AGI (there are already theoretical frameworks of general intelligence, such as AIXI: btw, AIXI is based on RL framework!!!). That's why the field of AI is also associated with philosophical arguments, such as super-intelligence or the singularity. This has little (or nothing) to do with statistics or data science." CreationDate="2021-01-04T20:56:54.523" UserDisplayName="user82135" />
  <row Id="20417" PostId="6051" Score="11" Text="I hope you didn't read my answer or comments as any sort of indictment of your expertise. I've enjoyed reading several of your questions and answers, here and elsewhere. But I will point out that RL is on-topic on AI.SE, and that does not preclude RL being on-topic on stats.SE. You're right that philosophical questions (super-intelligence, singularity) are better-suited to AI.SE, but I struggle to see why that's a reason RL questions on stats.SE should be encouraged to go to AI.SE. This is my point about users choosing where to ask questions: users get to decide what kind of answers they want." CreationDate="2021-01-04T21:02:44.207" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20426" PostId="6053" Score="4" Text="We at stats.SE don't have control over how the SE software works. You could raise the issue on meta.SE, though. In the meantime, the search syntax supports filtering to different criteria. I believe you want `answers:0`." CreationDate="2021-01-05T17:07:40.867" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20428" PostId="6053" Score="3" Text="For this purpose I often use something like `&lt;specific terms&gt;  answers:0 closed:no duplicate:no`.  See https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5549/faq-best-practices-for-searching-cv.  This [Meta post](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/250623/how-do-the-various-means-of-finding-unanswered-questions-differ) is of interest" CreationDate="2021-01-05T17:26:56.187" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="20437" PostId="6053" Score="0" Text="I hate to ask this, but could you bump this question over to the appropriate matter forum? I’m probably asking it in the wrong spot again." CreationDate="2021-01-06T01:04:06.083" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="20438" PostId="6053" Score="1" Text="If you mean Meta, then I guess it would promptly be closed as dup. Doesn't my link in the other comment suffice?" CreationDate="2021-01-06T02:43:53.753" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="20444" PostId="6053" Score="0" Text="The answers are about how. I know how. I found out. The question isn’t about how. Question is twofold: why, and a suggestion of changing the default to get many more answers to unanswered questions." CreationDate="2021-01-06T10:10:54.497" UserId="22452" />
  <row Id="20509" PostId="6053" Score="2" Text="The reason for this behavior may be the following: if no answer was accepted, this means that the OP did not feel his question was satisfactorily answered, no matter how many answers have been posted in the thread. As such, adding another answer may well give the OP what they were looking for. So &quot;unanswered&quot; seems to be taking the POV of the OP, not use &quot;answer&quot; in the SE meaning of a post in a thread. One can discuss which semantics of &quot;answer&quot; one wants, but either one is definitely defensible. (Also, this runs afoul of drive-by posters who don't accept answers, even ones that helped.)" CreationDate="2021-01-18T09:15:19.460" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="20432" PostId="6054" Score="0" Text="I like this answer (especially the part that &quot;In principle a question should be placed on the site that is most suitable&quot;), except for the last part where you say that cohesive communities sounds the opposite of collaboration. Cohesive only means that communities focus more on certain aspects. However, to achieve this, we need collaboration between the different SE sites. I think you're mixing concepts here. So, what I'm saying is that AI is most suitable for RL questions, that's why RL questions should be asked on AI SE and we should encourage users to ask them there." CreationDate="2021-01-05T23:09:49.463" UserDisplayName="user82135" />
  <row Id="20433" PostId="6054" Score="1" Text="@nbro your idea/method to create more cohesive communities on specific StackExchange sites is by reducing the attractive forces between different sites and have sharper boundaries. This sort stronger cohesiveness within sites goes along with less cohesion in between sites." CreationDate="2021-01-05T23:13:31.503" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="20434" PostId="6054" Score="0" Text="Yes, sure, I'm suggesting that SE communities focus more on certain aspects so that to avoid the high overlap between certain communities (i.e. to have sharper boundaries). This not only clarifies more what certain communities cover (so users seeking help know better where to go) but also groups better people interested in certain topics. For instance, I'm not interested at all in certain statistical concepts, that's why I don't visit Stats SE often. However, there are some questions asked here that could interest me, such as RL questions, but I often miss them." CreationDate="2021-01-05T23:15:56.463" UserDisplayName="user82135" />
  <row Id="20435" PostId="6054" Score="0" Text="This would be like having a Slack or Discord group where the administrator divides the group into channels and topics. People interested in RL, should go to that room/channel, and so on. This would only have benefits. Note that now I'm not saying that this should be applied only to RL, but other topics too, and would not be applicable only from Stats SE to AI SE but also vice-versa. We could discuss this and other topics, but I guess that people here on Stats are not very open to these ideas, unfortunately." CreationDate="2021-01-05T23:24:40.330" UserDisplayName="user82135" />
  <row Id="20504" PostId="6054" Score="0" Text="@nbro I wouldn't say that the division of StackExchange into multiple subsites is like the division of a Slack or Discord group into multiple rooms/channels. That division occurs at a different level and happens within a single group/community. It is a bit like the function of 'tags' on StackExchange which allow a division of the sites. Instead..." CreationDate="2021-01-16T21:43:08.827" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="20505" PostId="6054" Score="0" Text="... Instead a better comparison, using the same analogy, would be like *different* groups (say one on Slack and one on Discord) that decide to make a division into channels and topics in such a way that they do not have an overlap. The division makes little sense, the Slack group uses the topics A till K and the Discord group uses the topics L to Z." CreationDate="2021-01-16T21:43:26.420" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="20440" PostId="6055" Score="4" Text="Thanks for taking the time to raise this matter. My practice has been to ensure that links are provided to the cross-posts &amp; that OPs are aware that cross-posting is discouraged - but I don't usually go so far as to delete posts that are squarely on-topic here unless someone's making a habit of cross-posting. It's worth a Meta discussion to determine what CV users want &amp; to make sure we're fairly consistent." CreationDate="2021-01-06T09:15:58.483" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="20441" PostId="6055" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi-ReinstateMonica,  Thank you for letting me know your practice.  I would be interested to hear about the position of other moderators as well.  And, if not all moderators take the same position, is it OK for me to re-flag if I don't like the outcome I got from one moderator?  A note of clarification: I am talking about closing, not deleting.  I consider that an important difference, because someone who finds a closed copy and wants to answer can always follow the link to the other copy that is open and answer over there." CreationDate="2021-01-06T09:20:04.310" UserId="2921" />
  <row Id="20442" PostId="6055" Score="0" Text="We shouldn't take different positions! We'll see what the outcome of the discussion here is &amp; then you won't need to re-flag anything (unless the decision doesn't seem consistent with what's been decided). I'll try &amp; post an answer (arguing for a fairly liberal, case-by-case approach) this week." CreationDate="2021-01-06T09:40:08.323" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="20443" PostId="6055" Score="0" Text="By the way - would it be all right to post links to any of the other posts you've flagged as cross-posted, the ones that remained closed? It could be of interest to compare outcomes - I notice that I plus one other moderator left the ones you link to open, &amp; none have yet been answered here," CreationDate="2021-01-06T09:59:16.087" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="20447" PostId="6055" Score="0" Text="FWIW, my policy, when I was a mod, was to close the threads." CreationDate="2021-01-06T12:39:12.100" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20449" PostId="6055" Score="5" Text="Although cross-posting is discouraged on SE, it is not forbidden.  I do not close questions *solely* because they might be cross-posted, but I do evaluate them with less lenience.  For instance, if a question has been cross-posted on Math and has a good answer there, then if that question is not squarely, obviously on topic here I will close it.  I appreciate flags that point out cross-posts and I hate to reject those flags, but the system doesn't provide any other option than accept or reject." CreationDate="2021-01-06T13:54:48.617" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20450" PostId="6055" Score="0" Text="D.W., would you suggest the post should always be closed on CV rather than on the other site? Otherwise it is a question of which of the duplicate posts should be closed. Perhaps it is the other sites that should be closing those duplicates. If you got as many as 11 of 15 closed here, perhaps the remaining ones should be closed elsewhere?" CreationDate="2021-01-06T16:04:10.570" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="20451" PostId="6055" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi-ReinstateMonica, sure, that's fine. Would you like me to update my post with those links?" CreationDate="2021-01-06T17:15:58.427" UserId="2921" />
  <row Id="20452" PostId="6055" Score="1" Text="@RichardHardy, no.  When I see something that has been cross-posted to N sites, I try to form a subjective judgement, and then flag it on N-1 of the sites (except where I know from experience that a site tends not to act on those flags).  There were other posts that were cross-posted here that I didn't flag here because I thought here was the best place for them; instead I flagged them elsewhere." CreationDate="2021-01-06T17:17:15.430" UserId="2921" />
  <row Id="20453" PostId="6055" Score="0" Text="I see. It might be that the moderators thought differently and decided the post fits best on CV and should instead be closed somewhere else. And perhaps they did not act on the latter thought." CreationDate="2021-01-06T17:46:10.107" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="20481" PostId="6058" Score="0" Text="It sounds like this proposal amounts to keeping the policy on the books in principle but not in practice, by treating it as an ideal but usually not enforcing it.  In what ways is that a fair summary and in what ways is that unfair?" CreationDate="2021-01-11T16:57:06.613" UserId="2921" />
  <row Id="20482" PostId="6058" Score="0" Text="To respond to your specific comments: (1) giving OP the choice: I've tried that but my experience is that most OP's never respond if the questions are left open; if OP's do respond and the wrong one was closed it is easy enough to re-open and change which one is closed; (2) my perspective is that it is the cross-posting that causes the wasted work; closing all but one allows those to be focused on a single question in the future, whereas leaving them open continues to fragment edits and comments and leads to more wasted work;" CreationDate="2021-01-11T17:01:05.117" UserId="2921" />
  <row Id="20483" PostId="6058" Score="0" Text="(3) regarding question quality, my sense is that it'd be more useful to refocus askers on improving the quality of their question rather than the quantity of sites they reach (and if they do that, it can also address the issue of wasted work)." CreationDate="2021-01-11T17:07:31.190" UserId="2921" />
  <row Id="20484" PostId="6058" Score="0" Text="@D.W.: A little unfair, perhaps: most people won't continue to cross-post when they've been asked not to, &amp; I wasn't suggesting no action should be taken against those that do. (I'll edit to clarify the latter point.)" CreationDate="2021-01-11T19:09:41.160" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="20485" PostId="6058" Score="0" Text="Got it.  So is your proposal/position that a person's first cross-post might not be closed, but if they cross-post a second time (after receiving a comment indicating that they should not cross-post the first time), then moderators will close the second one?  Is that an accurate understanding?" CreationDate="2021-01-11T19:52:28.790" UserId="2921" />
  <row Id="20486" PostId="6058" Score="2" Text="@D.W.: Yes, close, or delete, or even suspend the user if they refuse to stop cross-posting (believe it or not, this has in fact happened)." CreationDate="2021-01-11T19:56:24.907" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="20487" PostId="6058" Score="0" Text="OK, thank you for helping me understand how you plan to handle this.  Are there any other criteria?  For instance, whuber [mentions](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6055/handling-of-cross-posted-questions-when-flagged/6058?noredirect=1#comment20449_6055) that if the question has been cross-posted and has a good answer elsewhere and isn't &quot;squarely, obviously&quot; on-topic here, he'd close it; is that something you plan to follow as well?" CreationDate="2021-01-11T20:03:37.850" UserId="2921" />
  <row Id="20489" PostId="6058" Score="0" Text="@D.W.: Yes, that approach is the one I try to follow; what I *plan* to follow depends on the outcome of this Meta discussion. You make some good points above (1-3) - if you have time you might roll them up into an answer (if you don't I can put them in my &quot;firmer line&quot; answer)." CreationDate="2021-01-12T09:05:37.110" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="20490" PostId="6061" Score="1" Text="The first solution may be a good one (and you already suggested it somewhere else), but the second solution is not appropriate, as there are topics covered in AI SE that are not covered in Stats SE and nobody cares about those topics here. To do that, Stats SE would need to loosen up their scope and be about AI too and not only about statistics. I don't think this is beneficial, as AI and statistics have a quite different goal, as fields." CreationDate="2021-01-12T09:52:50.733" UserDisplayName="user82135" />
  <row Id="20492" PostId="6061" Score="6" Text="AI.SE could change its scope to not overlap with Stats.SE." CreationDate="2021-01-12T16:06:17.213" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20494" PostId="6061" Score="1" Text="@Sycorax The same can be said about Stats SE. I don't think that your approach is productive, to be honest. It would be absurd to exclude, for example, RL from a site about artificial intelligence. Literally, look up books like &quot;Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach&quot; (just 37166 citations, according to Google Scholar) to see what topics they cover and also acknowledge its title." CreationDate="2021-01-14T19:02:51.940" UserDisplayName="user82135" />
  <row Id="20495" PostId="6061" Score="5" Text="@nbro When folks proposed the third iteration on the AI.SE site, a number of people pointed out that it had a large amount of overlap with existing websites. Nevertheless, the proposal made it to the public beta stage. Now, four years later, the AI.SE overlap is a concern for an AI.SE moderator. My approach didn't lead to this problem." CreationDate="2021-01-14T19:10:34.067" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20496" PostId="6061" Score="0" Text="@Sycorax I didn't create this meta-post because of the overlap. Sure, it's somehow a problem that could have a better solution. My main motivation for this meta-post is somehow summarised in the following sentence (from [this answer](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/6054/82135)): _In principle a question should be placed on the site that is most suitable._ I claimed (and showed some evidence) that AI SE is the most suitable place for RL. This doesn't necessarily make RL off-topic here, but being on-topic doesn't mean it's the best place to ask questions related to that on-topic topic." CreationDate="2021-01-14T19:12:26.043" UserDisplayName="user82135" />
  <row Id="20497" PostId="6061" Score="3" Text="The quoted sentence is well and good as a principle, but it provides no criteria for knowing whether a website is &quot;most suitable&quot; for any particular question or topic. To that sentence, you add a claim that AI.SE is most suitable. You're entitled to your opinion; however, by the same token, other people can ask their RL questions wherever they're on-topic. RL is on-topic here, and people can decide if this is the most suitable site for their RL questions. Citations to popular books about AI don't disprove this claim." CreationDate="2021-01-14T19:19:03.770" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20498" PostId="6061" Score="0" Text="@Sycorax Another book &quot;Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction&quot; (2nd edition, just a few more 40k citations), aka the bible of RL, starts like this: &quot;_In this book we explore a computational approach to learning from interaction. Rather than directly theorizing about how people or animals learn, we primarily explore idealized learning situations and evaluate the effectiveness of various learning methods.1 That is, we adopt the perspective of an **artificial intelligence researcher or engineer**_&quot; Why do they do that? Hm. For no reason, &quot;people can still decide what is the most suitable site&quot;." CreationDate="2021-01-14T22:53:17.513" UserDisplayName="user82135" />
  <row Id="20499" PostId="6061" Score="0" Text="I think I have very good arguments to support my claim. I can find many many more, but honestly I don't have time for this (I'm sure you can find them too). The thing is: Stats SE is more about statistics and is _not_ an AI site, and that's what makes RL more suited for AI SE. If Stats was an AI site, then RL would be perfect for Stats, but it's not. Most people here are probably not interested in intelligence, AGI, superintelligence, AI safety, stuff like that." CreationDate="2021-01-14T22:59:00.230" UserDisplayName="user82135" />
  <row Id="20500" PostId="6061" Score="0" Text="Statistics is significantly different from AI (that's why I think there should be 2 separate sites) and most research in RL is done in AI and by AI researchers (i.e. people interested in intelligence and AGI, and stuff like that). These are facts that you cannot really deny." CreationDate="2021-01-14T23:05:23.497" UserDisplayName="user82135" />
  <row Id="20501" PostId="6061" Score="1" Text="@nbro (1) I agree that AI.SE has topics that are not on-topic on stats.SE. (2) AI.SE &amp; Stats.SE have other topics that overlap. (3a) A quotation from a book doesn't change what's on-topic on either site. (3b) This particular quotation doesn't illustrate your argument, because it says that the perspective of *that book* is that of an AI researcher. A different book could investigate AI from the perspective of stats. (4) An asker can choose which community is best for their question, even if you disagree, because the asker knows best what kinds of answers they want." CreationDate="2021-01-15T00:19:56.780" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20502" PostId="6061" Score="0" Text="@Sycorax What does it mean that an asker knows the best what kinds of answers they want? Do you mean that people that answer questions on Stats SE will give a different answer to the same question than people that answer it on AI SE? As I pointed out in my post, in many cases, people that give answers on AI SE and Stats SE are the same. Moreover, in most cases, there's little to argue what the correct answer to an RL question is. If you know the answer, fine, otherwise, you don't know it. Your argument doesn't make much sense, also because, no, in many cases askers don't know what they want." CreationDate="2021-01-15T10:29:22.267" UserDisplayName="user82135" />
  <row Id="20503" PostId="6061" Score="1" Text="@nbro I don't want to take up too much of your time, but this is a point I make in my answer. Asking a community of DIY hobbyists about how to build a fence is different than asking a community of lawyers about legal issues for building a fence. With respect to RL, you might be right, that for a specific type of question, it makes little difference if you ask a community of AI specialists or statisticians, but if you are right about that, it would seem to negate large portions of your argument. Alternatively, if the community *does* make a difference for answers, we should preserve that option" CreationDate="2021-01-15T14:13:51.157" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20510" PostId="6066" Score="5" Text="I lean towards #1.  That the right way to do it, &amp; it should have been done long ago." CreationDate="2021-01-27T12:39:40.973" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20511" PostId="6066" Score="4" Text="If anything should be done, it seems like they should be migrated here (option 1)." CreationDate="2021-01-27T14:13:55.887" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20518" PostId="6066" Score="2" Text="Please also visit the related MSO thread: [Let's gift wrap our (good) Machine Learning theory questions for Cross Validated](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/404799/1217536)." CreationDate="2021-01-28T13:45:20.563" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20533" PostId="6066" Score="1" Text="See the response of the SO community to this question I asked them in 2018: [In 2018, why high profile off-topic \[machine-learning\] questions remain open?](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/373969/in-2018-why-high-profile-off-topic-machine-learning-questions-remain-open)" CreationDate="2021-02-02T17:33:59.623" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="20512" PostId="6067" Score="0" Text="According to @CodyGray over on SO, it should simply be a matter of a CV mod requesting migration of a closed SO question to a Community Manager.  There is some backlog of worthy candidates on SO that haven't been closed yet, so SO would probably want to do a concerted push to close them and then have a second wave later if this group works." CreationDate="2021-01-27T18:12:08.853" UserId="156974" />
  <row Id="20513" PostId="6067" Score="1" Text="@Daniel F: Could you start the making of such a list? It could be made either here, or maybe better at the SO Meta, and then others could contribute to the list  when it is started ..." CreationDate="2021-01-27T22:25:03.720" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="20517" PostId="6067" Score="2" Text="I've asked a question on MSO [here](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/404799/lets-gift-wrap-our-good-machine-learning-theory-questions-for-cross-validated#404799)" CreationDate="2021-01-28T11:57:44.607" UserId="156974" />
  <row Id="20521" PostId="6067" Score="0" Text="Is there any concern from the CV mods that the 3rd and 4th questions are more opinion-based?" CreationDate="2021-01-29T08:30:01.760" UserId="156974" />
  <row Id="20522" PostId="6068" Score="13" Text="We almost never delete in cases like that.  It's possible that they are merged, but that's not very common, either. Even if one of them were closed (which isn't actually guaranteed), it would be better to have them both here &amp; cross-linked to each other, IMO." CreationDate="2021-01-29T12:55:50.757" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20523" PostId="6069" Score="4" Text="This is doable.  You make a synonym, merge the tags, then delete the merge.  Now the tag has been renamed.  If you thing the prior name led to the tag being used when it shouldn't, you may want to go through the threads &amp; remove the tag where needed." CreationDate="2021-01-30T13:23:50.280" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20524" PostId="6069" Score="5" Text="Why can nothing be done with *chi-squared*? I'd be very much in favor of adding *-distribution* at the end, to distinguish questions about the distribution from those that should have a suffix *-test*." CreationDate="2021-01-30T15:05:41.580" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="20525" PostId="6069" Score="0" Text="@Stephan Kolassa: I would too,  but there are 2.5k Qs to wade through ... doing 20 a day that is about 4 months ... so it is doable" CreationDate="2021-01-30T15:08:23.690" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="20526" PostId="6069" Score="3" Text="@kjetilbhalvorsen, if you don't get every last one, it's OK.  It doesn't have to be perfect. Do a search on `[chi-squared] distribution is:question` &amp; switch the ones that need it &amp; then change the rest to `[chi-squared-test]`.  Even if you got every last one, people will misuse the tags in the future, so there will always be the ebb &amp; flow of inattentive users mistagging, &amp; the occasional reader who stumbles across the thread editing it." CreationDate="2021-01-31T13:45:16.623" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20527" PostId="6069" Score="1" Text="So as people are positive to this I will start out! Add ideas ..." CreationDate="2021-01-31T21:56:31.900" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="20543" PostId="6074" Score="0" Text="The boundary between general structuring and formatting and specific presentation points is fuzzy. Your answer is excellent, but I wouldn't have thought of referencing as being a general presentation matter. Other way round, areas in which many posts allow improvement include trimming content (apologies for question, thanks in advance, gratuitous context, pleas of urgency or desperation) and presentation of mathematics, code and data --- but I'd see all of these as specific." CreationDate="2021-02-06T18:02:31.617" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20560" PostId="6074" Score="0" Text="@NickCox: That is a good point.  I have edited the question to ask more generally about any best practices for editing to improve a post.  I don't wish to get hung up on scope, so answers that address any kind of good edits are welcome." CreationDate="2021-02-19T00:38:47.047" UserId="173082" />
  <row Id="20539" PostId="6075" Score="6" Text="I don't quite agree that external references that are only said to be &quot;not helpful&quot; are always, well, not helpful. Quite often, there is some standard answer one would suggest, and if the OP explicitly points out they did think of this answer and *why it does not help them in this particular instance* can be very useful indeed (and also shows they did their homework). Otherwise very nice question and self-answer, +1!" CreationDate="2021-02-05T16:26:15.107" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="20541" PostId="6075" Score="3" Text="(+1) But I'd say enough bibliographic detail ought to be included to enable the source still to be found if the link breaks. And there's a case for including the titles of articles or books so someone can come across them by searching the site." CreationDate="2021-02-06T15:18:01.507" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="20542" PostId="6075" Score="4" Text="(+1) Excellent. A pet peeve of mine is references to a lengthy video with no detail on when in the video something is discussed." CreationDate="2021-02-06T17:05:43.057" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20554" PostId="6075" Score="1" Text="A pet peeve of mine is that to understand a question, you must be able to say Table 4 in the linked paper. But the paper is behind a paywall." CreationDate="2021-02-14T01:02:43.353" UserId="17072" />
  <row Id="20559" PostId="6075" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi: Regarding giving bibliographic information in case the link breaks: I think this depends on the stability of the link.  For most academic papers there is a stable JSTOR link that is likely to be a permanent feature of the internet.  In these cases I tend to think that the Harvard-style citation with a link is enough, and additional bibliographic detail is then just a distraction.  Nevertheless, I concede that this is a subjective issue, and others might disagree." CreationDate="2021-02-19T00:31:47.450" UserId="173082" />
  <row Id="23772" PostId="6075" Score="0" Text="@Ben: Two things I've rather recently found out:- (1) The [Digital object identifier (DOI)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_object_identifier) purports to provide a more stable link for books &amp; papers than a particular URL, &amp; (2) if you don't want to distract with more bibliographic detail than a Harvard-style citation provides, you can put it in a [tooltip](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tooltip) &amp; it will only appear when the reader 'hovers' over the citation (I've taken the liberty of adding such a tooltip to your Carroll &amp; Pedersen reference by way of illustration)." CreationDate="2024-02-28T12:18:23.943" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="23773" PostId="6075" Score="0" Text="(Risk of link-rot aside, I find it a little distracting to have to navigate away from the site just to see which book or paper's being referenced; I'd prefer to be able to recognize it just from reading the post. Perhaps the tooltip's a good compromise.)" CreationDate="2024-02-28T13:29:05.207" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="23792" PostId="6075" Score="0" Text="Unfortunately @Scortchi the [Tooltip advice](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/editing-help#links) offered in the editing help doesn't work for most mobile users; which comprises [~ 64%](https://hypestat.com/info/stackexchange.com) of our visitors, so they remain blind to your helpful addition, which could have simply been placed in parentheses after the link (which is also friendly to motor impaired and screen readers)." CreationDate="2024-03-09T17:53:30.830" UserId="197829" />
  <row Id="20540" PostId="6076" Score="0" Text="I too have written, on several occasions, software later made publicly available given the stimulus of someone else's question in a forum. So yes, I agree strongly and this is worth saying. But it does not bear directly on what you should or should not do on CV given a question." CreationDate="2021-02-06T11:38:13.133" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20548" PostId="6078" Score="1" Text="We also have [tag:survey] which looks more like [tag:polling] at a quick glance." CreationDate="2021-02-09T15:22:47.903" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="20549" PostId="6078" Score="3" Text="We also have [tag:voting-system] which is distinct and for which I have just proposed wiki info." CreationDate="2021-02-09T15:28:40.067" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="20593" PostId="6078" Score="2" Text="Looking at this again I see we also have [tag:survey-weights] which I would have thought was a proper subset of [tag:survey-sampling]" CreationDate="2021-03-06T13:41:49.073" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="20596" PostId="6078" Score="1" Text="@mdewey: I think I will ask this as an independent question, to get more people involved. Seems complicated!" CreationDate="2021-03-08T02:02:17.947" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="20557" PostId="6080" Score="3" Text="(+1) Excellent as before. I'd add that a surprisingly common omission is not even to name the language or environment being used, which never hurts and often helps. (The common implication &quot;obviously, I use R&quot; is insensitive.)" CreationDate="2021-02-18T12:28:04.893" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20558" PostId="6080" Score="2" Text="As for &quot;You may assume that the user has the relevant software and has downloaded all required packages&quot;, well, you can assume the moon is made of chocolate but wishing doesn't make it so. More seriously, I would want to see a firmer overall stance that (1) code should be illustrative of a statistical problem; questions mostly about code are usually off-topic (2) the more you assume that readers should run software to see what the problem is, the less likely good answers will be." CreationDate="2021-02-18T12:29:15.490" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21127" PostId="6080" Score="2" Text="For small codes in R, I sometimes prefer to refer to the package name by placing it in the call to the function `package::function` instead of extra lines of code in the beginning. It's an alternative compromise longer lines versus less lines." CreationDate="2021-12-24T12:06:47.703" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22482" PostId="6080" Score="1" Text="You might want to add using syntax highlighting, if possible.  In a comment prior to a block of code, you can put, eg, `&lt;!-- language: lang-r --&gt;` or `&lt;!-- language: lang-python --&gt;`, etc, which should apply the relevant syntax highlighting.  If there are multiple blocks that all use the same language, you can put, eg, `&lt;!-- language-all: lang-r --&gt;` prior to the first block.  (Hmmm, maybe it doesn't work on meta.CV?)" CreationDate="2023-09-10T12:24:58.587" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20572" PostId="6086" Score="2" Text="Did you mean to post this on the main meta site? It seems to be about the whole network rather than just CV." CreationDate="2021-02-26T12:08:18.790" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="20573" PostId="6086" Score="2" Text="What is the &quot;Cross Validated Newsletter&quot;??" CreationDate="2021-02-26T14:05:16.587" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20577" PostId="6086" Score="1" Text="@whuber thats an email that comes once a week with the most popular questions that I subscribe under &quot;Email Settings&quot; under my profile: https://stats.stackexchange.com/users/email/digests/6884" CreationDate="2021-02-26T17:54:50.127" UserId="6884" />
  <row Id="20580" PostId="6086" Score="0" Text="I didn't know about this either. I guess it's there for anyone who wants it and does no harm. Any comments or evidence on who finds it useful?" CreationDate="2021-02-27T11:30:12.600" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20581" PostId="6087" Score="1" Text="Does that mean that requests for datasets would be on-topic from now on? Presumably not. Would we need to add &quot;requests for specific datasets are off-topic&quot; to the general &quot;off-topic&quot; notice, with a link to OpenData.SE? Can we do that, or are we limited in terms of characters in that closure reason?" CreationDate="2021-02-27T16:37:37.880" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="20582" PostId="6087" Score="3" Text="@StephanKolassa Removing a vote-to-close reason doesn't change what's on- or off-topic on this site, it just changes the menu options when a person opens the VTC dialogue. A user can still select &quot;this is not about statistics as described in the [help],&quot; or  they could select &quot;other - add comment&quot; and paste the text of the current &quot;data set request&quot; option." CreationDate="2021-02-27T16:55:45.127" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20583" PostId="6087" Score="0" Text="So do you propose to remove one particular option and stop there or to replace it with another option (and if so, what/which)?" CreationDate="2021-02-27T21:22:39.730" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="20584" PostId="6087" Score="2" Text="@Richard Hardy: When this is decided surely there will come a discussion of how to use the liberated spot ..." CreationDate="2021-02-27T21:47:16.910" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="20585" PostId="6087" Score="3" Text="@RichardHardy It’s a discussion we’ll have on meta, but speaking for myself, I feel that the best option would be to split the EITHER/OR closure reason into two distinct reasons." CreationDate="2021-02-27T22:10:57.197" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20578" PostId="6088" Score="0" Text="Thanks. The page on the site is called the community digest, but the actual email that I receive is called the &quot;Newsletter&quot; (that's the subject of the email that I received, not &quot;digest&quot;). Anyway, I'm looking for that from the Feb 18th one" CreationDate="2021-02-26T19:19:38.063" UserId="6884" />
  <row Id="20579" PostId="6088" Score="1" Text="That Web page doesn't even have a date.  Because the links go to recent questions, I suppose it presents only the most recent digest.  It looks like a living document that is constantly updated." CreationDate="2021-02-26T19:40:34.043" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20586" PostId="6090" Score="0" Text="Am I correct in reading this as a statement about the *timing* of the retirement, but not opposition to the proposal in principle? In other words, you support retiring &quot;data set request,&quot; but only once the community has agreed on what the replacement (in whatever form) should be? I agree with the timing concern -- no one benefits from having an empty VTC for a protracted period, so we should only effect this change once we know what will replace &quot;data set requests.&quot;" CreationDate="2021-03-01T14:42:34.873" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20587" PostId="6090" Score="1" Text="Not exactly, @Sycorax. I think we should evaluate whether to swap dsr for a specific option. It may be dsr is better than anything else people think of, in which case, we should leave it. I'm not necessarily saying that's likely, but I'm also not really opposed to dsr, either. Your suggestion (splitting ~stats/software) seems reasonable, but I'm not sure there's a huge benefit--it's not clear people who've had Qs closed would've been better off w/ a stated reason just half of what's currently posted, eg. I do think it would be best to add od.SE to our migration paths, but I don't think we can." CreationDate="2021-03-01T18:29:56.483" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20588" PostId="6090" Score="1" Text="I think you're right about migration targets -- my recollection is that we're capped at a certain number $k$, and the migration targets in use now are the most frequent destinations for migrated posts. I'm not even sure that od.SE would be the next-highest migration destination; another site might be the $k+1$th-most-used site." CreationDate="2021-03-01T18:34:34.873" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20594" PostId="6092" Score="2" Text="At 1. You could add probability." CreationDate="2021-03-08T01:39:24.217" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="20595" PostId="6092" Score="0" Text="@kjetilbhalvorsen Good point! Splitting up the closure reasons means we're not as tightly limited in character count." CreationDate="2021-03-08T01:42:14.363" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20600" PostId="6092" Score="0" Text="Thanks for asking this.  Having a concrete alternative makes a lot more sense than just getting rid of dsr.  That said, I'm not sure if this is better.  Is there a positive case for this option?  Eg, if we were granted an extra close option, is this what we would do with it?  How much is this believed to help?  What is the situation where having these would be good, but the status quo would be inferior?" CreationDate="2021-03-08T13:51:56.893" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20605" PostId="6092" Score="0" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica I think it's clear that we will not be receiving an additional closure reason right now, for the reasons that Catija laid out. This is addressed in the previous thread. I think the only path to getting an additional closure reason (brining the total to 4 custom reasons) is if we (i) retire &quot;data set request&quot; and (ii) use the freed slot and (iii) demonstrate a credible need for an *additional* reason. I don't think we have a need for an additional reason right now, but I do think that clarifying the EITHER/OR option would be helpful, as I've elaborated in my revision." CreationDate="2021-03-08T19:58:06.527" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20606" PostId="6092" Score="0" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica That said, I'm not married to dividing the EITHER/OR reason into two. If there's another suggestion that makes more sense, I'm open to the suggestion and think we should make a thoughtful comparison of the alternatives." CreationDate="2021-03-08T20:09:42.950" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20607" PostId="6092" Score="0" Text="I know we aren't getting another closure reason, I'm asking hypothetically to help frame the what the positive case for this change it.  At any rate, the revision does provide a coherent positive case for the proposed change. +1, I'm OK w/ the chage" CreationDate="2021-03-08T20:23:18.177" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20608" PostId="6092" Score="0" Text="I like the idea. Which closure reason would we use for requests for data sets? I would assume 1, but then again, finding good data is &quot;about statistics&quot; in a sense. So would it make sense to add &quot;, or it requests a specific data set (you may want to look at OpenData.SE)&quot; to the first reason? Or is that again too cumbersome?" CreationDate="2021-03-14T07:58:19.357" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="20609" PostId="6092" Score="1" Text="@StephanKolassa When I had first proposed this, I had assumed that closure with the &quot;Other - leave a comment&quot; reason would be an acceptable replacement; we could even have a meta thread (perhaps even this one) that has a boilerplate &quot;data set request&quot; reason that a person could copy/paste into the Other - leave a comment space. But I can see an argument for appending an instruction about data set requests to the &quot;not about statistics&quot; closure reason." CreationDate="2021-03-14T17:48:48.677" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20624" PostId="6092" Score="1" Text="@StephanKolassa How would you feel about putting &quot;data set request&quot; with (2) instead of with (1)? See also: the comment thread below my answer." CreationDate="2021-03-22T17:41:58.310" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20625" PostId="6092" Score="1" Text="I could live with putting it under (2)." CreationDate="2021-03-22T18:33:02.497" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="20638" PostId="6092" Score="0" Text="I see we have new closure reasons. Good! Unfortunately, the relevant reason now reads &quot;Questions about how to obtain data sets are not on topic at stats.SE, but are on-topic on the Open Data site.&quot; Can we be a little more explicit than &quot;the Open Data site&quot;, e.g., explicitly say &quot;OpenData.SE&quot; and link there?" CreationDate="2021-04-05T19:49:39.710" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="20639" PostId="6092" Score="0" Text="@StephanKolassa The Open Data SE link is provided in the &quot;post owner guidance.&quot;" CreationDate="2021-04-06T15:06:47.570" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20604" PostId="6094" Score="0" Text="This approach appears problematic because you are asking multiple questions and your answers address different questions altogether." CreationDate="2021-03-08T18:27:09.473" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20603" PostId="6095" Score="1" Text="The wikis make it clear that the weighting is related to a special kind of survey designing, indicating it would be erroneous to make them synonyms.  The implication &quot;is a proper subset&quot; =&gt; &quot;should be synonymous&quot; is erroneous.  Consistent application of it would reduce all tags to a common parent, &quot;statistics or machine learning&quot;! ;-)" CreationDate="2021-03-08T18:25:41.363" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20617" PostId="6098" Score="1" Text="`dput` will not work for very large datasets." CreationDate="2021-03-18T16:40:52.983" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="20629" PostId="6098" Score="0" Text="This is helpful too to people who don't use R routinely, but either you need to edit out a lot of stuff before you can read the data into your own software or you need to open R, run this and then export.  In fact the biggest single reason I have R installed is to read data from posts on CV presented this way.  The method presented by AdamO is easier for more people. More generally, the first priority here is that data are presentable in a form that people who will answer the questions will read, so that they can post good answers." CreationDate="2021-03-30T10:07:49.127" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20620" PostId="6099" Score="1" Text="In (2), &quot;within a statistical computing platform&quot; may be overly narrow, because frequently the question refers to Excel, a database platform, or something not devoted to statistics.  Also, do you plan on including a link to the list of support links?" CreationDate="2021-03-22T17:21:22.667" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20621" PostId="6099" Score="0" Text="@whuber Thanks for the feedback! How would you feel about removing &quot;statistical&quot; from &quot;statistical computing platform&quot;? I do plan on including links -- they just weren't copied over when I copy-pasted the text. I'll revise to fix the hyperlinks." CreationDate="2021-03-22T17:32:44.330" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20622" PostId="6099" Score="1" Text="Brevity is the key to writing VTC text, so why not omit the phrase &quot;within a statistical computing platform&quot; altogether?  When that's done, it could leave room to include the dataset VTC reason as an alternative.  That might make a little more sense (given we're trying to lump three reasons into two slots) because &quot;software-only&quot; and &quot;data-only&quot; are somewhat related reasons." CreationDate="2021-03-22T17:36:51.410" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20623" PostId="6099" Score="1" Text="I see what you're saying. In your suggestion, option (1) says &quot;This is blatantly off-optic,&quot; while option (2) says &quot;This is statistics-adjacent, but still off-topic; here are some potential resources.&quot;" CreationDate="2021-03-22T17:41:04.650" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20626" PostId="6099" Score="2" Text="@whuber I've reworked the closure reasons to reflect your feedback &amp; Stephan's input. LMK what you think." CreationDate="2021-03-22T18:41:08.590" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20627" PostId="6099" Score="0" Text="It's not entirely obvious that the context &quot;performing routine operations&quot; is &quot;with analytical software&quot;. Is there space for that? Or for &quot;routine use of software&quot;?" CreationDate="2021-03-23T08:48:43.513" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="20628" PostId="6099" Score="1" Text="@Scortchi-ReinstateMonica The honest answer is 'I don't know'. I've looked into doing a &quot;dry run,&quot; but it seems I'd have to deactivate an existing reason, then type the comment, to see if it's too long. I don't really want to do an experiment in the &quot;live system&quot; until I have to make the change for real, and I won't do that until April (to allow for more discussion). But when I make the change, I'll see if I can fit more detail into the allotted space." CreationDate="2021-03-23T13:51:32.763" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20632" PostId="6102" Score="5" Text="At first blush, this seems reasonable to me.  It might be worth quoting the explicit arguments where you want help finding the weak points." CreationDate="2021-04-03T12:51:42.820" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20636" PostId="6102" Score="0" Text="Thanks, I'll proceed to ask then." CreationDate="2021-04-04T16:56:50.437" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="20637" PostId="6102" Score="0" Text="Done: https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/518183/how-to-answer-critiques-about-the-inapplicability-of-the-framework-of-frequentis" CreationDate="2021-04-04T17:51:35.983" UserId="58675" />
  <row Id="20641" PostId="6102" Score="0" Text="Now that the question is posted on the main site. and fine, does this Meta question have enduring value? I know there's an accepted answer, and thanks to @gung for saying what I guess many of us would like to have said, but it now seems redundant." CreationDate="2021-04-07T17:10:06.700" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20643" PostId="6102" Score="0" Text="@NickCox, at this point, the mods would have to delete this thread. You can flag it, if you want. (FWIW, I'm OK w/ it, if they say 'yes'.)" CreationDate="2021-04-07T17:29:39.930" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20644" PostId="6102" Score="0" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica Thanks for that, but as it's not a nuisance thread and everyone who has contributed  is in very good standing I'd rather ask here first. I don't have any compunction in flagging threads that seem perverse or obnoxious, the complete opposite from what is here." CreationDate="2021-04-07T17:46:09.273" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20640" PostId="6104" Score="1" Text="Relevant older posts:  https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/832/comments-that-are-actually-answers, https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4501/when-to-post-a-separate-answer-even-when-answered-in-comments," CreationDate="2021-04-06T17:12:10.530" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="20652" PostId="6104" Score="1" Text="I see that the comment in the link is mine converted to an answer by @kjetilbhalvorsen. But I am not personalising this. My comment was intended as a brief reaction so that a question would get some response.  It was not posted as an answer, but I am happy that a moderator saw enough merit to re-post it. So, on the fence here." CreationDate="2021-04-08T08:09:06.660" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20642" PostId="6108" Score="3" Text="It seems to me that you got a great deal of attention, so any implication that the question was largely ignored is incorrect (and accidentally disrespectful of the total effort).  I don't have a suggestion for rewording your question on the main site, as I don't follow what you want at all. But on the Meta issue: It seems to me that you're best advised trying to rephrase it there. If the people who responded  are all missing the point as far as you're concerned then you face an uphill struggle to resurrect the thread." CreationDate="2021-04-07T17:23:09.597" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20645" PostId="6108" Score="0" Text="@NickCox There was no implication that the question was ignored (largely-or at all). It didn't get ignored. It got enough attention for it to get closed and reopened. De facto it didn't get enough atention to get more than 1 attempt to answer. Advice on how to rephrase it is what I am seeking with this question. I know it is an uphill strugle. But I believe that the question got clear for it to get re-opened. Probably people don't feel there is any need for a discrete Normal and that continuous distributions are an excellent approximation for discrete situations(there is no problem with them)" CreationDate="2021-04-07T19:27:26.873" UserId="226383" />
  <row Id="20648" PostId="6108" Score="5" Text="&quot;I can't seem to get enough attention&quot; remain your words and what I was reacting to and that seemed (seems) a disappointingly negative summary given 1 answer and 45 comments. In any case, the response should be judged by quality as well as quantity given who participated. Sorry that you are disappointed with the thread.  I am afraid that a high ratio of comment to answer often implies uncertainty about what the sharp question is and how best to react to it." CreationDate="2021-04-07T20:51:46.040" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20649" PostId="6108" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Not getting enough attention to get multiple attempts to answer is not the same as largely ignored. The question went throught multiple edits. The question was always clear. What was not clear was the motivation (at least that was I was told multiple times the problem was that it was not clear why I was asking not what I was asking). What got it reopened was that the motivation got clear." CreationDate="2021-04-07T21:02:49.650" UserId="226383" />
  <row Id="20650" PostId="6108" Score="2" Text="We're at cross purposes. I did not follow the original thread and never knew, and therefore do not recollect, its troubled history. My comment was, and remains, a reaction to what you said and still say here in this Meta question. It seems unfair to me and I guess you won't get a better reaction from those who participated by downplaying how hard they tried to engage. Still, that is one thing. If this Meta question provokes either a good suggestion for rewording your question or a better response for  you to your original question, then excellent, but I doubt that I can help at all there. ." CreationDate="2021-04-07T21:13:04.270" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20662" PostId="6108" Score="2" Text="I’m voting to close this question because although asking for advice is completely in order, I can't see that this thread raises any more general issue directly or has any long-term value for the community." CreationDate="2021-04-14T11:14:42.797" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20663" PostId="6108" Score="3" Text="My standards for meta.CV are somewhat looser than my standards for the main site. It seems to me that a discussion of how to improve a (main site) question is reasonable for meta.CV. Therefore, I am voting to leave open. However, @NickCox has also raised reasonable points about the phrasing of this Q. I urge the OP to take them to heart and try to edit the Q in light of them to make it less objectionable." CreationDate="2021-04-14T13:14:50.953" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20664" PostId="6108" Score="0" Text="@NickCox In the Help Center I don't see any need (any requirement) to raise more general issues directly or any neeed to have long-term value for the community." CreationDate="2021-04-14T13:23:29.323" UserId="226383" />
  <row Id="20665" PostId="6108" Score="0" Text="Sure, but &quot;not useful&quot; is a ground for downvoting and in my view &quot;not useful&quot; is also a ground for removal. Other way round, questions that are useful to at most one person, the OP,  are certainly allowed, but how can they be _indefinitely_ useful? You've asked your question here and the response is, in essence, that nobody has any detailed suggestions about rephrasing your original question on CV. Nor did the question here provoke any further contribution there on CV. So, sorry, you didn't get what you asked for, but what point is served by this remaining?" CreationDate="2021-04-14T13:54:51.907" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20666" PostId="6108" Score="0" Text="@NickCox There were comments but no answers in the meta-question. Do comments count as response (I doubt so)? But the fact that 2 people other than the OP don't have suggestions to provide nor do the viewers that didn't comment does not mean that in a couple of weeks (months, years) some viewer may have a suggestion to provide." CreationDate="2021-04-14T14:28:39.813" UserId="226383" />
  <row Id="20667" PostId="6108" Score="0" Text="The way I use the word &quot;response&quot; includes comments and also those several views of the question to date that led to people thinking that they had no suggestions to make. The probability that at some much later date someone might stumble across this and come up with an answer is not zero, but I have to guess it's utterly minute. I have voted to close and argued why, so I will leave the matter there." CreationDate="2021-04-14T14:37:37.337" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20646" PostId="6109" Score="0" Text="I appears to me that your second and third bullet point apply precisely to interview questions as well. The idea of the interview is to gauge the understanding of the candidate. I would say it's in this exact spirit to expect posters here to explain their thinking before we hand them the answer on a silver platter." CreationDate="2021-04-07T20:29:16.330" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="20647" PostId="6109" Score="3" Text="@Stephan Kolassa You've made a specific proposal and in doubting it my main goal is not to change your mind but to address others. Again, my line is that members can decide for themselves. Interviewees who ask for advice still have to be smart enough to  apply it. In the case of student assessments, if I answer then to that extent I am undermining teaching and learning. In the case of interviewees, if I post public advice it is there for  anyone to read. I am not undermining interviewing. The art of interviewing in any case is to ask questions that can only be answered through understanding." CreationDate="2021-04-07T20:40:42.803" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20651" PostId="6109" Score="2" Text="FWIW I agree with this sentiment of @Nick Cox-&gt; &quot;The art of interviewing in any case is to ask questions that can only be answered through understanding.&quot; If someone memorizes an answer to a question if you ask a couple follow up questions you can (usually) determine quickly if the person has memorized an answer to a specific problem or whether they understand the concept(s)." CreationDate="2021-04-08T01:45:57.327" UserId="150025" />
  <row Id="20653" PostId="6109" Score="2" Text="Interview questions, in the sense you frame them, strike me as analogous to a student studying from an old exam. You raise good points, but I wonder if everyone involved is best served by the OP coming to understand the relevant principles &amp; how they can apply to situations, rather than just getting 'the answer' that they can later parrot." CreationDate="2021-04-08T11:23:24.863" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20654" PostId="6109" Score="3" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica I don't (want to) disagree with you. But it seems to me that we aren't collectively or even all individually consistent about student assignments either, despite a policy. Several of us have zero tolerance towards outrageous copy and paste of assignments, but yet I and I think others often soften dramatically if there is just a smidgen of effort visible. It's been a while since I was an interviewer but I am confident in my ability to detect a parrot. In fact any element of bluff, and no go: I would rather someone said &quot;No idea, but I would look it up&quot;." CreationDate="2021-04-08T15:22:31.480" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20655" PostId="6109" Score="2" Text="Also after reflecting a bit more on this, the risk of adding a description to the tag is that people visiting the site start using questions from the tag as interview questions and people who are interviewing start to memorize them. A similar trend has occurred with programming interview questions, e.g. the author of 'cracking the coding interview' even acknowledged this in the first pages and makes suggestions not to use the questions in the book as interview questions because of this trend." CreationDate="2021-04-09T00:53:03.513" UserId="150025" />
  <row Id="20657" PostId="6110" Score="3" Text="It was closed only three hours ago, so some patience is needed. People following the queues know it can typically take two days or more, since too few people contribute. I have reopened it now." CreationDate="2021-04-09T16:21:05.967" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="20658" PostId="6110" Score="0" Text="Thanks a lot! I appreciate the help." CreationDate="2021-04-09T16:44:33.007" UserId="296197" />
  <row Id="20659" PostId="6111" Score="0" Text="Thanks for the advice!" CreationDate="2021-04-09T16:44:40.167" UserId="296197" />
  <row Id="20660" PostId="6113" Score="0" Text="I have modified the question and removed the code which was misleading" CreationDate="2021-04-12T09:30:30.560" UserId="154990" />
  <row Id="20668" PostId="6115" Score="0" Text="I don't think discussion here would add much to what a simple reading suggests: first, there is a  suggestion that trust in science is associated with scientific literacy and then there is a suggestion that trust leads to literacy.  The second is fairly clearly implied to be more speculative than the first. I have not read much beyond the quotation, but in terms of how this is best handled, my advice would be that interested people here head over to the other forum to make comments.  I can't see that the question would be better off on CV." CreationDate="2021-04-15T09:18:04.893" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20669" PostId="6115" Score="2" Text="What is trust in science any way? If it means a tendency to respect the advice of virologists, immunologists, or epidemiologists in their fields, over say politicians or pundits, to pick a random example, then sign me up. On the other hand, science is based on personal and collective distrust in data, methods, hypotheses or theories that are often misleading, confused, or plain wrong." CreationDate="2021-04-15T09:22:33.820" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20672" PostId="6115" Score="0" Text="I understand (1) ELL = https://ell.stackexchange.com/  (2) you to be implying that the question has been asked there. If so, please give the link. If not, are you asking whether the quotation _could_ be  the basis for a fair question on CV? It uses statistical language in part, but in my view it has too little statistical substance to  merit posting here. Otherwise put, if there was a question about the quotation on CV, I would vote to close." CreationDate="2021-04-15T09:38:38.400" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20673" PostId="6115" Score="1" Text="Second time round, and being less dumb, I understand this to be about whether &quot;What does the embolden phrase mean? Does it mean that even if the evidence isn't causational, the next phrase still makes sense? And what the evidence in here is?&quot; would be better asked here or on ELL. I can't see that either is a place to get good answers, but that is just one view." CreationDate="2021-04-15T10:52:15.767" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20675" PostId="6115" Score="0" Text="I have a feeling that on ELL this might be closed as off-topic since you could look up correlational in a dictionary. I am not saying that is fair but it could happen. Some people on that site think technical vocabulary is off-topic as well." CreationDate="2021-04-15T12:51:16.610" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="20689" PostId="6115" Score="1" Text="Update: This was asked at https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/520346/what-does-even-if-the-evidence-remains-correlational-mean and has received several answers to date, one accepted." CreationDate="2021-04-19T10:36:55.783" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20685" PostId="6116" Score="0" Text="I'll take care of it." CreationDate="2021-04-17T00:03:12.783" UserId="155836" />
  <row Id="20686" PostId="6116" Score="0" Text="Update: just submitted it. I don't have tag wiki edit privileges yet, so please take a look at that queue." CreationDate="2021-04-17T00:31:01.377" UserId="155836" />
  <row Id="20687" PostId="6119" Score="3" Text="Thank you for a very nice tag wiki!" CreationDate="2021-04-18T08:37:28.957" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="20688" PostId="6119" Score="0" Text="you may want to put this link on your answer: https://stats.stackexchange.com/tags/normalizing-flow/info" CreationDate="2021-04-19T06:20:59.183" UserId="59765" />
  <row Id="20690" PostId="6119" Score="2" Text="Seems redundant as it’s already in the question." CreationDate="2021-04-19T12:53:06.297" UserId="155836" />
  <row Id="20692" PostId="6121" Score="0" Text="A typewriter font like $\texttt{this}$? But most people use the code markup like `this`." CreationDate="2021-04-20T08:26:42.080" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="20693" PostId="6121" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi-ReinstateMonica, I guess this is quite like what I meant. How is it called? And what is the $\LaTeX$ command for it?" CreationDate="2021-04-20T08:28:32.957" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="20694" PostId="6121" Score="2" Text="@RichardHardy, when you see $\TeX$, you can right-click on it &amp; select `Show Math As &gt; TeX Commands` to see the latex code used to create it. Scortchi used `\texttt{}`. There is more here: [Instructions on how to use LaTeX on CrossValidated](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1604/7290)." CreationDate="2021-04-20T11:27:35.320" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20696" PostId="6121" Score="0" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica, this was helpful! Thanks!" CreationDate="2021-04-20T11:39:46.970" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="20697" PostId="6121" Score="0" Text="You're welcome, @RichardHardy." CreationDate="2021-04-20T13:38:50.033" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20698" PostId="6124" Score="4" Text="Is there any problem skipping to the last page when ordered by &quot;newest&quot; and working back from that?" CreationDate="2021-04-27T17:54:08.603" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20699" PostId="6124" Score="1" Text="You can use the advanced search options to set a date range." CreationDate="2021-04-27T18:06:23.717" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20707" PostId="6124" Score="2" Text="+1 I like being a necromancer also. :)" CreationDate="2021-05-04T15:54:21.620" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="20700" PostId="6125" Score="2" Text="I've used cartoons &amp; jokes from those threads in my classes &amp; talks. The benefit seems rather clear to me." CreationDate="2021-04-28T11:21:32.787" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20704" PostId="6129" Score="9" Text="The question is a complicated request to explain why $a/b=c$ implies $a=bc$ for real numbers $a,b,c.$  As such I recognized it was of no interest here (or even on the Math site) and, casting about for a reason to close it, felt that characterizing it as &quot;self-study&quot; might be the gentlest closure reason to offer.  I am open to suggestions of other reasons to close it (there are many valid ones, IMHO)." CreationDate="2021-05-04T14:24:48.243" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20706" PostId="6129" Score="2" Text="@whuber. Thank you for taking the time to assist in this way. I've placed my comment in the box below" CreationDate="2021-05-04T15:22:48.817" UserId="294515" />
  <row Id="20708" PostId="6130" Score="7" Text="I appreciate your tactful criticism. It is good to receive such thoughtful reactions: they help us learn and get better. I will point out briefly, though -- not in self-defense but only to suggest there are nuances -- that there is a richer context to this particular post. It includes a history of comparable posts by the OP as well as experience showing that how some users respond is of consequence but not dispositive concerning how to proceed (occasionally, some very highly upvoted and well-crafted posts need to be closed). Finally, the community had its chance and did *not* vote to reopen." CreationDate="2021-05-04T16:01:55.787" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20709" PostId="6130" Score="0" Text="@whuber. Thank you for taking the time to address my query. There is no criticism, nor is any of what I have stated meant to be read adversarially. I am just raising what I have perceived to be an issue on the basis of my relative inexperience with this site so far.&#xA;&#xA;When I wrote community, I meant the community at large through conventional voting, not the ~0.32% of users with more than 3000+ rep who can vote to re-open or close posts which you are referring to. And I wasn't sure whether this was voted on, or if it was closed unilaterally, so thank you for clarifying." CreationDate="2021-05-04T19:41:50.960" UserId="294515" />
  <row Id="20710" PostId="6130" Score="0" Text="However, you have said that there are nuances, a richer context and a history of comparable posts from the OP that I assume warranted closure of this particular question. So if you don't mind my asking, what precisely is the previous pattern of behaviour that has influenced the collective decision to close this particular question? If you feel it might be inappropriate to comment in any specifics, then I would be grateful if you could supply a succinct general statement of what the issue is." CreationDate="2021-05-04T19:42:00.257" UserId="294515" />
  <row Id="20711" PostId="6130" Score="1" Text="Lastly, I sincerely appreciate that you have taken the time to address my query, in the sense that resolving moderation queries can be seen to detract from the reason why I guess we all participate in this community - for the purposes of enhancing others' and in the process, our own, statistical understanding." CreationDate="2021-05-04T19:56:46.033" UserId="294515" />
  <row Id="20713" PostId="6130" Score="7" Text="@microhaus, &quot;what precisely is the previous pattern of behaviour...&quot; be aware that there can often be more going on that moderators are obliged to keep confidential." CreationDate="2021-05-05T11:30:54.603" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20714" PostId="6130" Score="1" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica. Unless I am mistaken, I believe I have addressed that possibility when I wrote &quot;If you feel it might be inappropriate...if you could supply a succinct general statement of what the issue is&quot;. I am happy to open a new general question soliciting a general answer if you feel that is more appropriate?" CreationDate="2021-05-05T12:39:08.907" UserId="294515" />
  <row Id="20715" PostId="6130" Score="6" Text="No, I don't think a new question is necessary.  I'm just emphasizing the possibility of limits on what can be said." CreationDate="2021-05-05T13:00:00.173" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20716" PostId="6131" Score="2" Text="I don't know if this is the best place for feedback, but I can say that I haven't done much reviewing in a while. I have been discouraged by various things. At any rate, I have seen the changes to the review queues, &amp; for my part, I found them annoying. FWIW. I do think changing the threshold to 3 will be beneficial, though." CreationDate="2021-05-05T19:58:26.590" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20717" PostId="6131" Score="4" Text="If you're able to identify specific things that are frustrating or get in the way or are confusing (maybe not including the recent popups/info boxes) but stuff with the actual review queues themselves, see if they're addressed on the MSE post about the changes? I know, for example, that the side-by-side for suggested edits is very narrow compared to what it was - many things have already been mentioned and I think we're taking those things into account regularly because we do want them to be easy to use. So if there's anything that hasn't been said, feel free to." CreationDate="2021-05-05T20:00:48.157" UserId="202450" />
  <row Id="20718" PostId="6133" Score="2" Text="I see. I'd thought that there is only one concept of correlation and one concept of intersection. It seems that I have to role up my sleeves to read more, because if I don't have the sufficient vocabulary then even experts can't see how to answer the question. That's sad because I expect experts can help me unclear it." CreationDate="2021-05-10T17:21:57.163" UserId="59765" />
  <row Id="20719" PostId="6133" Score="5" Text="I won't rise to that bait--you're coming awfully close to trolling us, now." CreationDate="2021-05-10T17:22:40.687" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20720" PostId="6133" Score="6" Text="Trolling? Can you tell me which part I'm trolling? I just sharing my emotion for what I experience. I don't blame you, or beg you to help me. I just state a phenomenon happening many times in many Stack Exchange sites when a novice asking a question and the experts see it's unclear. You may read [another example](https://biology.meta.stackexchange.com/a/4170/6786) in Biology. Sharing experience and emotion isn't trolling." CreationDate="2021-05-10T17:33:40.573" UserId="59765" />
  <row Id="20728" PostId="6134" Score="1" Text="This is purely a curiosity question: what makes your system fonts less readable? I find the change jarring, though I imagine I’ll grow accustomed to it. I’d love to learn if there are other aspects to this." CreationDate="2021-05-12T15:45:52.050" UserId="155836" />
  <row Id="20729" PostId="6134" Score="2" Text="@AryaMcCarthy I have been sensitive to font choices for a bit over a decade: noticed this when students would hand in assignments set with different type faces. The sensitivity is enough that it can take me 30 to 45 seconds to adjust and start reading. (Which, when multiplied across many homework assignments is a few hours of my life per term. :) Sometimes though, there is no adjustment: a type face is so distinctive that it just constantly insists &quot;Look at me!&quot; instead of allowing me to see word forms, numerals, etc. The deplorable font in this case is 'Ubuntu' on one of my primary machines." CreationDate="2021-05-12T15:53:38.097" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="20731" PostId="6134" Score="0" Text="They've now moved from _Ubuntu_ to the still ugly, but IMO more readable, _Liberation_." CreationDate="2021-05-18T10:48:51.510" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="20722" PostId="6136" Score="1" Text="Thank you. Can't we set up bounties for Meta questions?" CreationDate="2021-05-11T10:36:17.817" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="20730" PostId="6136" Score="1" Text="Thank you Alexis! The Ubuntu font is so repellent that I was planning to use the site solely from my 'phone while I saved up for a Windows licence." CreationDate="2021-05-12T23:32:57.497" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="20743" PostId="6146" Score="1" Text="You need to supply details: which browser, in particular?" CreationDate="2021-05-25T19:42:35.940" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20744" PostId="6146" Score="0" Text="I'm using Safari - the latest version, although the problem was already there in the previous version. It doesn't;t happen in Chrome" CreationDate="2021-05-25T21:23:21.450" UserId="21167" />
  <row Id="20745" PostId="6146" Score="1" Text="Clean the cache of the browser for start." CreationDate="2021-05-26T10:59:22.863" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="20746" PostId="6146" Score="0" Text="@Tim, thanks.  Already done that - its still there...." CreationDate="2021-05-27T15:31:15.353" UserId="21167" />
  <row Id="20751" PostId="6149" Score="4" Text="The OP has an interesting history as someone who has earned reputation mostly through questions -- and given lots of it away through bounties." CreationDate="2021-06-03T23:49:34.050" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20752" PostId="6149" Score="4" Text="There are some software rules in place that discourage this. Under certain circumstances, a pattern of repeatedly deleting one's own own questions can cause a user's account to be locked out of asking questions for a period of time. It's deliberately a bit opaque, but the reasoning is that asking then deleting a question is not consistent with the goals of the site." CreationDate="2021-06-04T16:12:17.930" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20759" PostId="6149" Score="0" Text="Thanks for the information friends.&#xA;IMHO when the OP wants to delete his question, it should be allowed [With a mechanism to punish abuse by being able to flag the question as suggested by @Nick]. What would be neat is an user-option so that you can choose to be notified when a question you participated in is going to be deleted, so you get a last chance to copy an interesting conversation, or archive it for yourself or somethign along those lines." CreationDate="2021-06-09T08:22:24.560" UserId="217348" />
  <row Id="20760" PostId="6149" Score="0" Text="@xilef Your suggestion is really at Stack Exchange level. It's hard to know how that would work (e.g. how much time warning) or even that it is overall a good idea. At one extreme, spam or very rude posts should disappear as fast as possible. In practice (a) this happens most often to people with enough reputation to see deleted questions (b) the answer is not usually especially valuable to the person who posted it. It's the irritation that is the issue. But in general if a post is valuable to the poster, saving a copy for yourself is always a good idea." CreationDate="2021-06-09T09:07:21.733" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20761" PostId="6149" Score="2" Text="@Xilef It's a bit of a chore, but we can use the Search feature to find out when our answers have been deleted. A question that has at least one answer with *positive score* can't be deleted except by a diamond mod, so all we have to do is search for the deleted, zero-score answers `user:me score:0 deleted:yes` and then sort by date to get the most recent among them." CreationDate="2021-06-10T21:12:13.810" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20753" PostId="6150" Score="8" Text="*There are dozens of people active here who I have never met and in some cases they remain unidentifiable to me, but I have immense respect for all their work* I feel the same, and you are one of those people!" CreationDate="2021-06-04T21:25:23.050" UserId="176202" />
  <row Id="20754" PostId="6153" Score="7" Text="Note that your question automatically joined a review queue for potential re-opening after you edited it. So you can hope for it to be re-opened or to receive further requests for clarification." CreationDate="2021-06-06T06:49:17.933" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="20755" PostId="6153" Score="0" Text="Ah, good to know. I'll monitor for comments for additional clarification; that's where I will see the requests for further clarification, right?" CreationDate="2021-06-06T19:39:34.270" UserId="183484" />
  <row Id="20756" PostId="6153" Score="0" Text="The question on the main site has now been re-opened." CreationDate="2021-06-07T12:05:21.363" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20757" PostId="6155" Score="1" Text="Nb: if closed, the reason is posted on the thread for the OP to see." CreationDate="2021-06-08T11:29:47.670" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20758" PostId="6155" Score="5" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica That's a good point, but a comment does seem more personal and invites the OP to ask for pointers to improve the question." CreationDate="2021-06-09T06:23:16.880" UserId="176202" />
  <row Id="20762" PostId="6157" Score="0" Text="Thank you very much! This was fast and efficient." CreationDate="2021-06-11T20:04:52.113" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="20763" PostId="6157" Score="0" Text="... for appropriate values of &quot;naturally&quot;." CreationDate="2021-06-14T08:37:57.287" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="20764" PostId="6159" Score="9" Text="Thanks for chiming in here. For future reference, there's a better course of action open to you: post the answer that you figured out and accept it!" CreationDate="2021-06-15T15:15:19.427" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="20765" PostId="6159" Score="5" Text="@ThePointer In the future, just publish your answer." CreationDate="2021-06-16T08:22:18.147" UserId="64833" />
  <row Id="20766" PostId="6159" Score="3" Text="@Beginner I asked in the comments if what I had was correct, but no one responded; I wasn't sure if what I had was incorrect or people just weren't responding. In the end, I thought it best to just delete the entire post. If I knew at the time that what I had done was indeed correct, then I would have posted it as an answer." CreationDate="2021-06-16T08:27:48.850" UserId="163242" />
  <row Id="20767" PostId="6159" Score="1" Text="@ThePointer Thank you for your ideas! You could have written that your were not sure about your answer. In general, an idea is better than no idea :) :) :)" CreationDate="2021-06-16T18:01:25.567" UserId="64833" />
  <row Id="20768" PostId="6159" Score="2" Text="@Beginner Thanks for the feedback. In similar situations in the past, when I thought I had figured out the answer to my own question, I have indeed posted it as an answer (with the disclaimer that I'm not completely sure that it's correct and would appreciate review). Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for the answer to just be downvoted in such a situation, with no comment or review." CreationDate="2021-06-16T20:28:46.987" UserId="163242" />
  <row Id="20769" PostId="6159" Score="1" Text="@ThePointer I understand you. I had a similar problem before. I am remembering that the solution that I found was to add my solution to the question, and not as a solution. Mentioning that I was not sure if my solution was correct." CreationDate="2021-06-17T00:44:49.140" UserId="64833" />
  <row Id="20770" PostId="6159" Score="1" Text="There is a meta-Meta-problem here. The answer says &quot;I figured out the answer&quot; which (in my view understandably) provoked upvoted comments with the flavour of so why didn't you post it then? But later comments change the picture: you were uncertain about your answer, which makes deleting the original thread much more understandable. The problem is that people often ignore comments. The suggestion therefore is to edit your answer slightly, as I think it doesn't catch your situation sensitively." CreationDate="2021-06-17T12:19:48.847" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20771" PostId="6160" Score="0" Text="No one will ever bother proposing ads. To reasons unknown to me, the community shoots down most proposals" CreationDate="2021-06-17T21:25:34.840" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="20796" PostId="6160" Score="2" Text="@Firebug Your opinion is contradicted by our experiences with community ads over the last decade." CreationDate="2021-06-29T20:45:11.670" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20797" PostId="6160" Score="0" Text="@whuber I'd love to be proven wrong on this, but community ads have very high rejection here, and I have no idea why. Last year [three ads were proposed](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5854/community-promotion-ads-2020), two reached threshold. In 2019, [4 ads were proposed](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5551/community-promotion-ads-2019?noredirect=1&amp;lq=1), two reached threshold again. In 2018, [8 ads were proposed](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5138/community-promotion-ads-2018?noredirect=1&amp;lq=1) (counting deleted ones), 3 reached threshold." CreationDate="2021-06-29T22:29:15.617" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="20798" PostId="6160" Score="4" Text="@Firebug Characterizing those statistics as &quot;shoots down most proposals&quot; seems exaggerated.  It's a *feature* of the system that not all proposals will receive enough votes.  Your initial comment seems like an attempt to discourage people from proposing or voting ads, which--if successful--would merely be self-serving.  That makes it hard to interpret it as a constructive contribution to this thread." CreationDate="2021-06-30T13:21:34.107" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20799" PostId="6160" Score="0" Text="@whuber This is mostly a rant. The tone is simply due to my current feeling towards how this community treats community ads. I see no clear pattern across all years I looked into. Most don't receive comments, there is no discussion threads for ads, and also most don't reach threshold. I hope some more ads pass threshold this time, but, with the exception of questions (which were not so straightforward to propose in other years), we already see the damage (only two original proposals, and both have been proposed in the past)." CreationDate="2021-06-30T14:10:23.867" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="20800" PostId="6160" Score="3" Text="@Firebug This is as good a place as any for a rant, so I have no objections to that.  But your remarks appear to rely on the implicit premise that all ad proposals are good and ought to be voted up.  As someone who has, over the years, looked at every one of those proposals and decided whether or not to vote, my opinion differs: some are not worth voting up and I would not like to see them reduce the frequency of appearances of the more worthy ads." CreationDate="2021-06-30T15:49:23.827" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20777" PostId="6165" Score="6" Text="Please see https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/455/results-of-site-name-poll.  https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/21/what-should-our-site-be-called-what-should-our-domain-name-be might be helpful, too.  Given your previous attempts to raise this issue on Meta and the extreme downvoting they received (especially https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5996/919), this post comes across as quixotic." CreationDate="2021-06-23T16:45:20.130" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20779" PostId="6168" Score="6" Text="The question seems contradictory and based on assertion with no evidence whatsoever.  You say &quot;overlap is high&quot; but also that each site has different views about what is on-topic and that it is &quot;rare&quot; that users contribute to even two of these sites, let alone all.  So the question seems to be  a mix of a suggestion that people here may be missing out on interesting and useful threads elsewhere, yet asserting that, broadly speaking, active CV users appear indifferent to the other sites. There could be an element of truth in both, but the question seems confused to me." CreationDate="2021-06-25T10:13:42.390" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20780" PostId="6168" Score="2" Text="Personally, I don't doubt that I am missing out on some useful threads. I don't mind anything being sent to Hot Network Questions, because I hardly ever look at them. No one else should care about my preferences, so see what anybody else says." CreationDate="2021-06-25T10:15:40.713" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20781" PostId="6168" Score="6" Text="I don't understand what you're proposing, exactly. It has something to do with the overlap between DS.SE and stats.SE, but I don't know what you're trying to address and how you're trying to address it. Can you [edit] your post to clarify?" CreationDate="2021-06-25T19:14:59.930" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20782" PostId="6168" Score="0" Text="I am proposing a 'related network questions' stream on the main page, so that users can know that questions are asked on the related stack site and may increase the possibility of contributing to other related sites also.  @Sycorax" CreationDate="2021-06-25T23:12:21.907" UserId="42883" />
  <row Id="20783" PostId="6168" Score="5" Text="Ok, thanks for clarifying. Please note that anything that changes how the website software behaves is out of our hands -- that's done by the Stack Exchange company, not the individual websites. You might raise the question on the main meta site for Stack Exchange." CreationDate="2021-06-25T23:15:55.730" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20784" PostId="6168" Score="1" Text="@Sycorax They are asking the approval from all the three sites. So, I asked to know whether community is okay with such `hot related network questions` idea. If all the three communities accept to the idea, then I can post on Meta." CreationDate="2021-06-25T23:18:34.247" UserId="42883" />
  <row Id="20785" PostId="6168" Score="1" Text="Can you link me to the main Meta page for that discussion?" CreationDate="2021-06-25T23:19:29.987" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20786" PostId="6168" Score="0" Text="[This](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/366843/friendly-agreement-for-the-betterment-of-user-involvement-in-interest-intersecti) and [this](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/366848/is-it-not-allowed-to-ask-a-question-regarding-multiple-sites-in-the-stack-exchan)." CreationDate="2021-06-25T23:21:17.270" UserId="42883" />
  <row Id="20791" PostId="6168" Score="7" Text="Perhaps related is that many users here don't feel like data science and AI SE should have been separate from CV anyway [1](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5518/176202), [2](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2253/176202). The AI SE for one came across like it was just made so a certain company could boast about sponsoring it." CreationDate="2021-06-26T17:44:31.480" UserId="176202" />
  <row Id="20794" PostId="6168" Score="5" Text="(1) There's no chance that the company will add a new feature that affects only three sites (unless perhaps one of those is Stack Overflow). Your best bet is to write a general feature request on Meta SE, flesh it out a bit more than you have, &amp; then post on the Metas of sites you think will be particularly interested. (Even then don't get your hopes up too much.) (2) Your SE Meta question was closed as a duplicate of a different proposal, viz to allow 'Related questions' - an algorithmically generated list relating to each specific post - to come from ..." CreationDate="2021-06-28T10:22:43.597" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="20795" PostId="6168" Score="3" Text="... other sites. You might want to edit it to clarify the difference. (3) See https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/364556/the-future-of-community-promotion-open-source-and-hot-network-questions-ads. If the trial goes well, you'll be able to pick questions from AI to promote across all sites on the network." CreationDate="2021-06-28T10:23:02.340" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="20787" PostId="6169" Score="7" Text="Our policies for self-study questions are listed [here](https://stats.stackexchange.com/tags/self-study/info)." CreationDate="2021-06-26T12:28:49.420" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20790" PostId="6169" Score="13" Text="Someone you don't know and will not be rewarded for it in any real way took the time to read your question, and even gave you a hint. &quot;Be a little considerate&quot; is just not applicable here, they were more than considerate." CreationDate="2021-06-26T17:32:56.433" UserId="176202" />
  <row Id="20827" PostId="6169" Score="1" Text="@simran SE is attempting an optimization strategy for increasing quality. It doesn't maximize everything good about Q&amp;A, nor does it minimize everything bad about Q&amp;A. But it does certain things quite well. You should use it for the things that it does well at, and use other resources for the things it does poorly at." CreationDate="2021-07-26T22:49:04.550" UserId="69508" />
  <row Id="20788" PostId="6170" Score="1" Text="Help for the variant of $\LaTeX$ used at this sites is at https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5020/mathjax-basic-tutorial-and-quick-reference" CreationDate="2021-06-26T16:00:17.553" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="20789" PostId="6170" Score="0" Text="@Robert long , thank you sir , I will use your valuable advice to frame the upcoming questions" CreationDate="2021-06-26T16:51:26.677" UserId="324659" />
  <row Id="20793" PostId="6170" Score="1" Text="There is also information here: [Instructions on how to use LaTeX on CrossValidated](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1604/7290)." CreationDate="2021-06-27T12:02:48.797" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20824" PostId="6178" Score="1" Text="This one is great, not only because it attracts users with relevant interest, but also because it is something so often misused by those familiar with only the computational side of statistics." CreationDate="2021-07-15T18:31:09.537" UserId="176202" />
  <row Id="20801" PostId="6181" Score="2" Text="I support making our high-quality, broad interest questions widely visible &amp; thank you for taking the initiative to collect this list together. But I notice that for each of these suggestions includes &quot;Site(s) to be displayed in: all&quot;. I wonder if these questions are really interesting to all of Stack Exchange. For instance, Arqade might have some ML/stats folks among its readers, but those readers are also likely participants on the ML/stats fora. Would it be better to limit distribution to just SO, DS, and AI?" CreationDate="2021-06-30T16:47:42.510" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20802" PostId="6181" Score="0" Text="@Sycorax: I don't know. If (1) there's no positive harm in having a question shown on a site where it turns out no-one's interested, &amp; (2) if there isn't a fixed quota of C.V. questions to be distributed across other sites (so we'd get more bang for our buck from concentrating on the likely sites), then we might as well display them on all." CreationDate="2021-06-30T18:56:43.327" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="20803" PostId="6181" Score="0" Text="A fair point! I don't have strong feelings either way." CreationDate="2021-06-30T19:36:46.197" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20805" PostId="6181" Score="0" Text="@Sycorax: If we did go the way of picking sites, it still might be a good idea to cast a wider net than SO, DS, &amp; AI. The more applied questions could be relevant to sites concerned with the natural &amp; social sciences; the more theoretical to sites concerned with the formal sciences." CreationDate="2021-06-30T22:34:52.817" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="20825" PostId="6181" Score="0" Text="I cannot see any of these being relevant to the other three sites I use, English Language Learners, Spanish Language, Travel. If SO is one of the selected sites then the international versions of SO might be worth including as many users there can read English even if they prefer to ask in their own language." CreationDate="2021-07-22T12:40:40.267" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="20826" PostId="6181" Score="0" Text="It might be difficult for users here to judge which sites are most interesting for this, maybe the algorithms are better? One site I dis not see mentioned, but which should be included, is economics. Probably others --- astronomy, physics, ,.." CreationDate="2021-07-23T14:41:46.843" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="20804" PostId="6183" Score="9" Text="I would urge caution, because many questions don't contain enough information to be answerable.  We can foresee people objecting that this comes about because they were following instructions to be concise.  Thus, we need to make sure that concision is not confused with omitting useful information.  As far as &quot;unnecessary context&quot; goes -- you are politely referring to completely irrelevant passages -- everyone is encouraged to edit that out.  It's routine even to eliminate, without comment, the &quot;please answer this question&quot; or &quot;thanks in advance&quot; clauses that often appear." CreationDate="2021-06-30T22:05:18.330" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20813" PostId="6183" Score="2" Text="@whuber, why don't you turn that into an official answer?" CreationDate="2021-07-11T11:47:55.740" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20814" PostId="6188" Score="11" Text="Our views don't matter: this is how the SE platform works. When a question is ambiguous, answering it only creates confusion and error.  Ultimately, this curation is what makes SE sites superior to other Q&amp;A platforms.  Please read through our [help pages](https://stats.stackexchange.com/help) to learn how to ask good questions and how to get closed questions reopened." CreationDate="2021-07-13T13:28:05.240" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20815" PostId="6188" Score="0" Text="And with no reason , I have two downvotes , thank you !" CreationDate="2021-07-13T13:37:31.803" UserId="324659" />
  <row Id="20816" PostId="6188" Score="12" Text="There doesn't have to be a reason: on this Meta site, downvotes indicate agreement or disagreement with proposals rather than an assessment of the quality or clarity of a question or answer.  It really is time to learn how CV works, rather than complaining about it!" CreationDate="2021-07-13T13:39:53.973" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20817" PostId="6188" Score="10" Text="The good news about SE can be that well-informed people willingly give their time to write good answers that you can read, for free. The bad news about SE -- if your wishes or expectations are different -- might be that it is not a help line in which there is entitlement to answers and that reputation carries privileges and responsibilities to maintain standards, which can mean downvoting or closing questions. You've benefitted too, as your reputation is well above 1 and you've received answers to questions and upvotes." CreationDate="2021-07-13T14:54:58.687" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20819" PostId="6188" Score="6" Text="@simran SE is attempting an optimization strategy for increasing quality. It doesn't maximize everything good about Q&amp;A, nor does it minimize everything bad about Q&amp;A. But it does certain things quite well. You should use it for the things that it does well at, and use other resources for the things it does poorly at." CreationDate="2021-07-13T22:47:57.703" UserId="69508" />
  <row Id="21816" PostId="6189" Score="4" Text="This is a system wide policy and I guess that you can better post this question on the main meta site. Probably there are already questions about it. I imagine that the restrictions exist to restrict potential malicious actions, like preventing people to destroy a large amount of questions which is a lot of work to undo. Similar restrictions exist for other actions, like there are limits to the amount of votes one can give and the amount of reputation that one can acquire." CreationDate="2023-01-26T09:31:02.503" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="20820" PostId="6190" Score="0" Text="This doesn't answer my question." CreationDate="2021-07-13T23:40:48.780" UserId="69508" />
  <row Id="20821" PostId="6190" Score="4" Text="I think my answer very clearly addresses the &quot;motivation behind this limitation&quot;: **The purpose of this website is to create a durable repository of questions and answers**." CreationDate="2021-07-13T23:42:20.797" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20822" PostId="6190" Score="0" Text="SE also has specifications on what constitutes &quot;good&quot; questions. Many of the questions I have asked do not meet these specifications, so their deletion is not counter-purpose." CreationDate="2021-07-13T23:48:40.923" UserId="69508" />
  <row Id="20823" PostId="6190" Score="1" Text="In that very specific case of closed questions, I agree that deletion doesn’t harm the repository. However, it’s worth noting that closed questions with no answers with positive score  are automatically deleted after a certain period of time. So there’s no action needed from you to clean up closed questions — unless you would instead prefer to edit the question to improve it." CreationDate="2021-07-14T00:10:21.313" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20838" PostId="6194" Score="1" Text="Yes, with a caveat. This is possible as long as you either (a) have saved the question before it was deleted or (b) have the reputation to view deleted questions." CreationDate="2021-08-16T20:40:34.677" UserId="155836" />
  <row Id="20839" PostId="6194" Score="1" Text="@AryaMcCarthy (c) ping me." CreationDate="2021-08-16T21:08:38.617" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="20840" PostId="6194" Score="0" Text="Well, there is that!" CreationDate="2021-08-16T22:29:39.007" UserId="155836" />
  <row Id="20833" PostId="6196" Score="13" Text="It is useful to clarify that the comment resolved your doubts!" CreationDate="2021-08-13T15:25:05.347" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="20834" PostId="6196" Score="4" Text="Ok, then thank you too!" CreationDate="2021-08-13T16:44:44.903" UserId="283126" />
  <row Id="20835" PostId="6196" Score="8" Text="I'd say that CV is more indulgent to comments than is common elsewhere on SE, especially Stack Overflow. A good reason for that: what to do or even what to think can be an open or controversial question on CV. Another good reason is that many questions aren't clear-cut and comments often ask for more details.  Particularly after several comments, it's good to see some thanks. An extra reason for that is that an answer saying Thanks is highly likely to be removed." CreationDate="2021-08-13T23:55:06.707" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20836" PostId="6196" Score="1" Text="The site wide policy is in the [help](https://stats.stackexchange.com/help), specifically for thanking people, see [here](https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/someone-answers), but in practice there's a little more leeway on what comments can contain is typcally given here, but a bare thank you comment is likely to be removed as Nick suggests." CreationDate="2021-08-14T01:03:45.893" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="20837" PostId="6196" Score="7" Text="There are many threads in which the comments are more interesting and/or better informed than the answers, but it would be indelicate to give precise examples. Naturally, if one has scope to give a better answer than the existing answers, it would be good to write it down, but life is short and complicated. For example, many questions on outliers just presume that outliers should just be removed, period, but explaining again and again that  this is far from the only view in town is more than I want to do." CreationDate="2021-08-14T09:51:35.510" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20850" PostId="6196" Score="0" Text="Ideally any information in the comments that's particularly useful and relevant to the general question or answer would make its way into a post, and the corresponding comments would be deleted, in which case whether or not you thank them shouldn't matter all that much. Comments are not really built for the long-term storage and presentation of useful information. Although in practice this ideal doesn't always make sense or work so well." CreationDate="2021-08-24T09:52:29.950" UserId="280632" />
  <row Id="20849" PostId="6202" Score="6" Text="I agree with you that we don't want generic workplace questions. But what kinds of questions could appeal that **aren't** matters of opinion as much as experience and expertise, e.g. advice on careers, courses, etc.? FWIW, I am not a statistician." CreationDate="2021-08-24T08:20:13.643" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20851" PostId="6202" Score="8" Text="We do have a [tag:careers] tag. There are some questions that are considered on-topic, but also some of those are legacy questions from a time when we were less strict. I think it's just difficult to ask a good question that threads the needle." CreationDate="2021-08-24T11:24:29.113" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20852" PostId="6202" Score="14" Text="The main problem I have with such questions is not whether they are of interest, but rather that most of them invite opinions and speculation: that doesn't fit our framework.  The one you reference is no exception." CreationDate="2021-08-24T12:49:17.553" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20853" PostId="6202" Score="0" Text="This seems like the kind of topic for which the Data Science Stack was created." CreationDate="2021-08-24T19:50:25.280" UserId="247274" />
  <row Id="21238" PostId="6202" Score="0" Text="Anything about &quot;the&quot; statistics profession would be suspect to me -- which professionals and which of their activities would be included?" CreationDate="2022-02-18T16:09:29.950" UserId="225256" />
  <row Id="21239" PostId="6202" Score="1" Text="I'm not really convinced that opinion answers are so bad in this context.  We have strong evidence that our most active users (high-rep users) are all professionals in the statistics profession and surrounding professions.  That seems like a useful resource to me, where the majority opinion is likely to yield useful insight into the profession." CreationDate="2022-02-19T02:53:00.490" UserId="173082" />
  <row Id="20893" PostId="6205" Score="3" Text="&quot; For anyone who I can already identify based on publicly available information, I will assume that it is okay for me to disclose your details unless you write to me and specifically tell me not to do this.&quot; -- Hmm, for research specifically I don't believe it's so simple." CreationDate="2021-08-27T21:06:38.997" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="20894" PostId="6205" Score="4" Text="Specially when you are identifying them publicly" CreationDate="2021-08-27T21:07:03.947" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="20895" PostId="6205" Score="1" Text="@Firebug: Yes, edited --- I'll think about that more.  In any case, it seems that I am getting responses from just about everyone so it might become a moot point." CreationDate="2021-08-27T22:35:08.063" UserId="173082" />
  <row Id="20897" PostId="6205" Score="1" Text="It may be best to remove the comments  where you ping users by pointing here (once they have contacted you), since they don't relate to the posts they're on." CreationDate="2021-08-29T03:40:18.727" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="20898" PostId="6205" Score="4" Text="@Glen_b: Thanks Glen, I just got rid of a whole bunch of them; I'll do another pass once I get responses from the remaining people." CreationDate="2021-08-29T04:03:48.720" UserId="173082" />
  <row Id="21038" PostId="6205" Score="4" Text="I’m glad you published this! But with the suggestion that students “view and upvote at least ten questions/answers from a favourite user”, I would have changed it to a favorite tag." CreationDate="2021-11-14T14:33:12.210" UserId="225256" />
  <row Id="21039" PostId="6205" Score="0" Text="@MattF: Also a good suggestion." CreationDate="2021-11-14T20:33:58.257" UserId="173082" />
  <row Id="21050" PostId="6205" Score="1" Text="That's a sweet conference paper! Thank you!" CreationDate="2021-12-02T00:35:09.453" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="21051" PostId="6205" Score="1" Text="@Alexis: Glad you liked it Alexis.  I figured *someone* should write about the good work we are doing here!" CreationDate="2021-12-02T01:28:33.637" UserId="173082" />
  <row Id="21222" PostId="6205" Score="0" Text="Hi Ben, do you have a website/google scholar page so I can learn more about your research area? The top google hit (at ANU) seems to be dead. I've seen some of your papers posted to arXiv recently, but I haven't been able to infer a central theme." CreationDate="2022-02-07T18:59:20.370" UserId="203822" />
  <row Id="21305" PostId="6205" Score="0" Text="This article is interesting. It is also completely positive about CV; there is no discussion of any possible negatives or weaknesses. For example, the text actually hints at lack of diversity among the &quot;top echelon&quot; but doesn't really discuss it." CreationDate="2022-04-14T09:08:04.947" UserId="237901" />
  <row Id="20899" PostId="6206" Score="4" Text="Site mods can edit the profile, I believe.  (I have never tried to do this, but there is a control for it.)" CreationDate="2021-08-30T12:59:32.373" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20903" PostId="6206" Score="3" Text="@whuber: I did it once. It's straightforward." CreationDate="2021-08-30T17:12:52.760" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="20906" PostId="6206" Score="1" Text="@whuber: Thanks for letting me know that; I have updated the question to reflect this." CreationDate="2021-08-30T22:35:45.247" UserId="173082" />
  <row Id="20905" PostId="6207" Score="0" Text="I think it might be a good idea to seek consent of the family of the bereaved *before* any measures are taken, and without presuming that they will take a particular stance on the matter." CreationDate="2021-08-30T17:24:27.030" UserId="294515" />
  <row Id="20907" PostId="6207" Score="1" Text="@microhaus: I disagree; see my edit to the answer." CreationDate="2021-08-30T22:39:38.003" UserId="173082" />
  <row Id="20911" PostId="6207" Score="8" Text="Once a death has been made public it's entirely factual so far as we are concerned. So long as the edits don't go beyond bare facts of birth and death I can't see that there are any sensitivities here to be clarified. Newspapers and Wikipedia daily carry such information; I can't see that anyone on CV is obliged to clear publication with family or executors. So, I agree with Ben." CreationDate="2021-09-01T09:10:31.657" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21022" PostId="6207" Score="2" Text="Transgender perspective here: families of origin—often those who's reportage is given the greatest weight around obituary time—are often hostile to aspects of the lived experience of the deceased. Gender issues aside (and I am not the only regular gender minority contributor on CV), a family's motivations in representing or misrepresenting a deceased individual's life (including through erasure) probably do not bear much on the public record of such a person's activity here on CV. I agree strongly with Ben's position." CreationDate="2021-10-28T17:22:02.887" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="20900" PostId="6208" Score="8" Text="(+1) I think this approach is prudent. Perhaps including a link to an obituary wouldn't be out of order." CreationDate="2021-08-30T16:40:46.483" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="20902" PostId="6208" Score="5" Text="@Scortchi-ReinstateMonica yes, good point especially if it is in a statistical source." CreationDate="2021-08-30T17:10:00.943" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="20912" PostId="6208" Score="5" Text="https://magazine.amstat.org/blog/2021/03/01/obituary-michael-ross-chernick/ is an announcement in a standard statistical source." CreationDate="2021-09-01T09:11:24.047" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20919" PostId="6208" Score="1" Text="Is it time now to do this edit, or have we not yet concluded?" CreationDate="2021-09-05T18:01:19.943" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="20924" PostId="6208" Score="2" Text="@kjetilbhalvorsen as I understand it only mods can implement this but opinion here seems clear (18 upvotes as I type and 0 down)." CreationDate="2021-09-07T15:24:59.097" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="20925" PostId="6208" Score="2" Text="@mdewey: I have done some editing" CreationDate="2021-09-07T15:36:52.847" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="20908" PostId="6209" Score="4" Text="The question is perfectly on-topic here. I'm not sure why your comment got upvotes -- there's no need to migrate it. The tricky thing about asking a detailed, specific question in a high-level topic like your question about V&amp;C is that you need someone with similarly niche knowledge to answer. Means your audience is smaller -- but there's nothing wrong with the question. Offering a bounty might help draw attention." CreationDate="2021-08-31T16:35:13.620" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20909" PostId="6209" Score="0" Text="@Sycorax. Thank you for taking the time to provide with me input. How about if I replaced 'on-topic' i.e. not inviting closure, with a more slippery notion of likelihood of being answered? From my experience, I've found that more involved theoretical questions on important results in modern machine learning, theoretical statistics and statistical learning theory tend to go unanswered, possibly indicating a greater orientation on this site towards data analysis. As a moderator who's probably been on here for longer than I have, is that coherent with your experience on here?" CreationDate="2021-08-31T16:43:02.450" UserId="294515" />
  <row Id="20910" PostId="6209" Score="1" Text="@Sycorax. Thanks, your edit answered my queries. It is really helpful for me because I had become hesitant to post further questions about the proof of the result here." CreationDate="2021-08-31T16:49:10.050" UserId="294515" />
  <row Id="20913" PostId="6210" Score="3" Text="I think this is a result of our preference to have short excerpts. W/ a little elaboration, it'll be fine." CreationDate="2021-09-01T11:24:25.737" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20914" PostId="6210" Score="3" Text="Maybe I'm overthinking it, but the right definition depends on whether you want the tag to encompass all forms of hypothesis testing, including Bayesian alternatives (e.g. [BEST](https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/BEST/)), or whether it should strictly be about null-hypothesis significance testing." CreationDate="2021-09-02T06:16:58.433" UserId="176202" />
  <row Id="20915" PostId="6210" Score="4" Text="@FransRodenburg, my first concern is to remove whatever is misleading or incorrect. After that I think [tag:hypothesis-testing] should cover hypothesis testing in general (including Bayesian), not only specific instances (frequentist)." CreationDate="2021-09-02T06:28:10.357" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="21031" PostId="6210" Score="0" Text="Do you disagree with the spirit behind the description or only with the particular way that it has been phrased?" CreationDate="2021-11-01T23:28:28.320" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21032" PostId="6210" Score="0" Text="@SextusEmpiricus, hmm, at the moment I find it hard to add anything to what I have already written." CreationDate="2021-11-02T05:06:44.673" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="21033" PostId="6210" Score="2" Text="@Frans Rodenburg: It should be about all forms of hypothesis testing, including Bayesian ones (and others). At least, that is how it is used until now ... . Then other tags can modify that!" CreationDate="2021-11-03T15:46:39.483" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="20920" PostId="6211" Score="1" Text="I prefer your second definition to your first, which seems to encompass all binary decisions in decision theory (and much else besides)" CreationDate="2021-09-07T05:33:46.293" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="20926" PostId="6211" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b I tried to write something as short as possible, but I agree it is too broad like that, so I've crossed it out." CreationDate="2021-09-07T15:49:04.280" UserId="176202" />
  <row Id="21020" PostId="6211" Score="1" Text="+1 Frans I like these, but I would reframe the conclusion of the NHST sentence as decides whether evidence to support the alternative hypothesis was found or not, since substantive conclusions from NHST are always about the alternative, not the null." CreationDate="2021-10-28T16:58:33.193" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="21026" PostId="6211" Score="0" Text="@Alexis I find it difficult to do so while still conveying that the procedure relies on evidence against the null, and not *for* the alternative. What do you think of the edit?" CreationDate="2021-10-29T17:23:34.437" UserId="176202" />
  <row Id="21028" PostId="6211" Score="0" Text="Well I disagree that evidence against the null is not evidence for the alternative. But again: I think conclusions are always about the alternative. Also: not all null hypotheses take the form $\text{H}_0\text{: }\theta=0$, for example $\text{H}_0\text{: }|\theta|=\Delta$ is the null of an equivalence test, and does not fit with the edited conclusion (i.e. rejecting that null one concludes that there is evidence for equivalence (within $\pm \Delta$), not difference)." CreationDate="2021-10-29T18:30:47.887" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="21035" PostId="6211" Score="0" Text="@Alexis Of course there are exceptions to the rule, but wouldn't you agree that the name is derived from some statement of *no* difference, or *no* effect? Like kjetil mentioned in the comments above, for an equivalence test you can just write in the description how it differs from the usual. On a different note, if we are going with the most general description rather than one that pertains only to NHST, what do you think of the other suggestion?" CreationDate="2021-11-05T14:35:53.617" UserId="176202" />
  <row Id="21036" PostId="6211" Score="0" Text="No I would not. In general, (and leaving aside the omnibus test hypotheses corresponding to all **four** of these forms), I see: $\text{H}_{0}\text{: }\theta \le 0$, $\text{H}_{0}\text{: }\theta \ge 0$, $\text{H}_{0}\text{: }\theta = 0$, and $\text{H}_{0}\text{: }| \theta | \ge \Delta$ as viable and important forms of null hypothesis in every day application." CreationDate="2021-11-05T16:25:59.167" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="20916" PostId="6212" Score="3" Text="It might be a SE-wide issue. We (stats.SE mods and users) don't have much insight into how the software works, if anything is broken or bugged, etc. I think asking on https://meta.stackexchange.com/ will have more information, because SE employees monitor it." CreationDate="2021-09-04T21:24:34.120" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20917" PostId="6212" Score="3" Text="Ah, I see it's already on their radar screen. Check out the answer **No way to correctly handle non-answers in First answers** on this thread: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/369013/review-queue-workflows-final-release" CreationDate="2021-09-04T21:56:07.117" UserId="76484" />
  <row Id="20918" PostId="6212" Score="3" Text="Good find! Feel free to write your comment as an answer to this question." CreationDate="2021-09-04T22:08:08.807" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20921" PostId="6214" Score="1" Text="If you add a break, they will disappear." CreationDate="2021-09-07T12:41:30.997" UserId="176202" />
  <row Id="20922" PostId="6214" Score="1" Text="@FransRodenburg you are right :) Thanks" CreationDate="2021-09-07T13:04:42.523" UserId="154990" />
  <row Id="20923" PostId="6214" Score="1" Text="@FransRodenburg feel free to add that as an answer." CreationDate="2021-09-07T13:08:25.740" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="20927" PostId="6215" Score="1" Text="Definitely a bug" CreationDate="2021-09-07T18:42:09.267" UserId="154990" />
  <row Id="20928" PostId="6218" Score="2" Text="This seems fastidious to a fault. All that anyone seems to be suggesting is that if (and only if) there is a public announcement of a death, then that information might helpfully  copied to a user profile.  Imagining that we need to identify and contact family and/or executors or to ascertain what the deceased would have wished seems exaggerated to me." CreationDate="2021-09-11T15:45:21.893" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20929" PostId="6218" Score="2" Text="@NickCox I didn't say we should proactively reach out to the family. In fact, what I said clearly implies that we *shouldn't* do that: &quot;profiles should just be left as is, unless the family reaches out&quot;. If there were a verifiable public announcement, all the points in my answer would still apply, except the last one (and even that one would actually arguably still apply, especially if we're going to make this a habit or policy)." CreationDate="2021-09-11T16:35:33.503" UserId="171828" />
  <row Id="20930" PostId="6218" Score="2" Text="So, you seem to be saying that we can't be certain what the family would wish and we should not ask them, so do nothing. It's a consistent position. I just think it's too fastidious." CreationDate="2021-09-11T17:21:43.867" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20931" PostId="6218" Score="3" Text="@NickCox The default position, that best aligns with Stack Exchange's views on user-focused content, is to do nothing. If we want to do something, there should be a convincing case for that, which I don't feel there is. There's also the risk of upsetting some, which should greatly bias us towards the default position (even if that risk isn't that great in absolute terms). This seems *much less* likely to upset people, and is much more justifiable if it does end up upsetting someone." CreationDate="2021-09-11T19:21:41.970" UserId="171828" />
  <row Id="20932" PostId="6218" Score="2" Text="The only arguments I see here in favour of editing the profile are that some information may no longer be accurate and to let users know, but both of those seem practically negligible. If someone hasn't logged in for a while, it's already obvious that that information is likely outdated (and it's not our place to edit that for someone else) and letting users know is largely irrelevant and inappropriate for the reasons given in my answer." CreationDate="2021-09-11T19:21:45.107" UserId="171828" />
  <row Id="20933" PostId="6218" Score="1" Text="@NickCox I'm not really sure how to interpret you saying this is too fastidious. I'd hypothesise you mean it's an overly detailed explanation of why we shouldn't do this, it's an overly analytical analysis and/or the risk of actually causing harm is too small. The first 2 would imply a thoughtless, poorly reasoned or careless approach would be preferred, which seems absurd (except, perhaps, again for the default position of doing nothing). Regarding the risk potentially being too small: the benefit seems even smaller (although I'd happily read an actual solid argument against that)." CreationDate="2021-09-11T20:57:39.970" UserId="171828" />
  <row Id="20934" PostId="6218" Score="2" Text="I see the idea of posting a notification of death as factual, informative and practical. That’s all." CreationDate="2021-09-11T21:04:50.563" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21021" PostId="6218" Score="2" Text="Just a note that I have had occasion to reach out to people active on CV via email for interactions that are not a good fit within the site, and the profile has facilitated that kind of interaction a few times (not always, for example, folks conversing in Chat might exchange contact info). Others have reached out to me after encountering my activity on CV (my profile gives enough info for them to easily track me down). A factual, informative, and practical indication of death provides an indication that this kind of outreach is no longer possible." CreationDate="2021-10-28T17:16:47.970" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="20935" PostId="6219" Score="1" Text="I might prefer `[distance-metric]`, dunno, but otherwise, absolutely." CreationDate="2021-09-13T11:30:39.907" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20936" PostId="6219" Score="0" Text="Do you mean the $d$ on the metric space $(M, d)$ as opposed to a metric like the AUC of a machine learning model?" CreationDate="2021-09-14T22:04:48.903" UserId="247274" />
  <row Id="20937" PostId="6219" Score="0" Text="@Dave, yes, our current tag 'metric' is specifically for this, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_(mathematics). A distance satisfying the metricity axioms." CreationDate="2021-09-15T05:31:31.490" UserId="3277" />
  <row Id="20945" PostId="6219" Score="1" Text="Looking at some of the questions tagged with metric it seems relatively few of them are about metric in the sense intended so it might almost be better to give up and rename it distance." CreationDate="2021-09-21T15:02:27.840" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="20952" PostId="6219" Score="1" Text="@mdewey:  and everybody: I will have a look!" CreationDate="2021-09-23T20:29:57.533" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="20941" PostId="6220" Score="2" Text="Examples of questions with answers having a higher score than the accepted answer can be found with this SEDE query: https://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/1458649" CreationDate="2021-09-18T16:17:32.487" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="20953" PostId="6220" Score="0" Text="As I write, https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/544711/is-wikipedias-page-on-the-sigmoid-function-incorrect is a thread in which the accepted answer is being heavily downvoted (In my opinion rightly so)." CreationDate="2021-09-29T11:58:54.737" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20938" PostId="6221" Score="9" Text="(+1)  When there is a really big difference, the explanations seem to range from timing (the OP accepted an early answer and didn't change even though a much better answer came in later) to perversity (the OP accepted what they wanted to hear, despite being told that their question was misguided or that there is a much better idea).  Again, quantifying those various reasons would be interesting but difficult.  Optimists would emphasise timing, pessimists perversity." CreationDate="2021-09-15T09:15:47.390" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20944" PostId="6221" Score="1" Text="@NickCox Indeed. Your comment reminded me of this entertaining example, which  happens to hold the CV record for biggest score difference between most upvoted and accepted: https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/20836/algorithms-for-automatic-model-selection" CreationDate="2021-09-21T12:44:25.997" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="20942" PostId="6224" Score="4" Text="*&quot;the green-ticked answer accumulates votes more rapidly to catch up or surpass the previously best-voted answer&quot;* This is a very interesting mechanism that should be easy to test. In [this question on meta](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/338680/is-the-voting-and-reputation-system-sustainable-how-can-we-improve-it-or-maybe) I assembled a bunch of graphs displaying how the voting system works. I will see if I can get some time to make insightful graphs about the 'battle between answers' and the effect of being on the top of the page." CreationDate="2021-09-20T15:39:23.277" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="20943" PostId="6224" Score="1" Text="My comment cited optimistic and pessimistic guesses at why voting doesn't match a perception of quality without saying how often I lean towards either. There is no evidence there for how charitable or uncharitable I am compared with anybody else. I'd say anyone  who answers just one question on CV is thereby more charitable than the large tribe of those who lurk but don't even try, despite having appropriate expertise and experience. (Not offended or irritated at all ; I take your comments as typically good-natured.)" CreationDate="2021-09-21T09:29:51.587" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20946" PostId="6224" Score="1" Text="@NickCox Duly edited to better represent what I intended to convey!  (I do think there's some truth in your inner pessimist's observation that some people are just waiting for an answer that agrees with their preconceptions, and mkt's example is one of the more famous cases. But often the perverse choices strike me as occurring when some minor, obscure or idiosyncratic point was the trigger that allowed the OP's penny to drop. I suppose I might restrict myself to saying that most of the time I feel more charitable about perverse green-tickers' intentions than Nick Cox's inner pessimist!)" CreationDate="2021-09-21T19:28:35.790" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="20947" PostId="6224" Score="2" Text="&quot;*Answers even a few minutes earlier than another have a few more votes, get a higher position on the page, and as a result tend to attract even more votes, since not all readers/voters scroll down far enough to see the newer answers.*&quot; Slightly off-topic, but I think this is a good argument for randomising answer order for perhaps 1 day or 1 week after the question is asked." CreationDate="2021-09-22T08:19:53.127" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="20948" PostId="6224" Score="1" Text="@mkt Indeed, is an answer that has been on the site for 10 hours and accrued 15 upvotes &quot;really&quot; better than one that has been on the site for 4 hours and accrued 12 upvotes? Rather than a purely random order, you might take the current vote totals and fuzz them a bit by adding some random noise, perhaps granting &quot;younger&quot; answers more standard deviation to their noise to reflect greater uncertainty about their ultimate vote count. Ultimately, we want answer order to reflect usefulness for future readers. But ordering interacts with vote count which interacts with ordering..." CreationDate="2021-09-22T12:32:44.127" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="20949" PostId="6224" Score="1" Text="@mkt Answers are originally written for the benefit of the OP, who likely reads all answers &amp; ordering matters little to them. The initial viewership wave largely is site users who saw the question on a feed (or sister site users via Hot Network Questions) who also form the main votership. Perhaps presenting a &quot;correct&quot; ordering to &quot;browsing &amp; just curious&quot; viewers/voters is less important than getting ordering &quot;right&quot; for future readers who *actually have that problem* and arrive via search engine. If randomising during the main voting wave improves ordering, it may be a worthwhile tradeoff" CreationDate="2021-09-22T12:40:58.747" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="20955" PostId="6227" Score="8" Text="This is an interesting observation and potentially useful proposal.  But since it applies to how all of SE works, the stats Meta isn't really a suitable place to post it.  Consider reposting it on the [main Meta site.](https://stackoverflow.com/help/whats-meta)" CreationDate="2021-10-01T16:50:54.643" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="20956" PostId="6227" Score="2" Text="@whuber: Well, perhaps. The thing is, though, that part of the issue is how few questions there are on stats.se versus, say, math.se or so. It wouldn't surprise me if this effect is negligible on the really big sites, and much more useful on smaller sites. I could see how it's site-wide, though. Will repost." CreationDate="2021-10-01T16:54:04.807" UserId="76484" />
  <row Id="20976" PostId="6227" Score="0" Text="*&quot;If the question I'm currently writing is that similar to previous problems, I wouldn't be very likely to ask it.&quot;* The question might be different enough in order to be asked, but does that make the questions not similar?" CreationDate="2021-10-02T18:50:19.147" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="20981" PostId="6227" Score="0" Text="@SextusEmpiricus It means that even if they are similar, if the answers to those other questions had been helpful enough to answer the current question, I wouldn't be asking the current question. The Similar Questions box, to my mind, is about being able to easily find out if someone else has asked my question before so I can avoid duplicates. I'm not going to duplicate my own question, so I want to know other people's questions that are similar to mine." CreationDate="2021-10-03T01:02:12.503" UserId="76484" />
  <row Id="20982" PostId="6227" Score="0" Text="That makes sense. Of course you are not gonna ask a question you that is a duplicate of something you got already answered. However, I was thinking about the similar questions box also being useful to formulate your question based on the similar questions and for instance, draw relationships with other questions as an introduction (this is like question A bit here we do B). In that case, the reminder of ones own questions might be useful." CreationDate="2021-10-04T19:40:47.213" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="20957" PostId="6228" Score="5" Text="I haven't had a chance to investigate yet, but if your question is asking for code, that is a reason for closing." CreationDate="2021-10-02T12:31:45.277" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="20959" PostId="6228" Score="0" Text="but their reason for closing my q is that &quot;I don't know what I want?&quot;!!!! &#xA;lots of possible solutions are there to help me and it's not only about me asking for code beside if then have a code that would be a lot better. please please read these 2 links and tell me ur opinions. they(answerers) can provide details how to do method easier myself, lots and lots of ways of helping as I said." CreationDate="2021-10-02T12:40:00.587" UserId="322887" />
  <row Id="20960" PostId="6228" Score="7" Text="You're asking for views and here's mine. I didn't vote or comment on either of the original threads but I now consider both as suitably closed at present, on any of several grounds, principally the extent to which there is seemingly a request for code and that each question is written unclearly and without a simple focus. It strikes me that different moderators have tried patiently to deal with your points. The way is to move forward is to rewrite your questions, not allege unfair treatment by moderators who are doing what they are supposed to do, and doing it very well." CreationDate="2021-10-02T13:13:55.107" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20961" PostId="6228" Score="8" Text="A thread has to be based on a clear and specific question. If you don't have one and you just want to start a broad discussion then (a) that's risky because the question is likely to be closed as too broad or lacking focus (b) no one else is obliged to try to guess what your real question is, or should be." CreationDate="2021-10-02T13:23:15.340" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20962" PostId="6228" Score="0" Text="how broad do u think my question is? it's focused on specifically `nn.embedding` trying to understand underlying code better, trying to how to get a variant of it, if with code better. then u r saying &quot;lack of focus?!&quot;, please specifically tell me about lack of focus in these two." CreationDate="2021-10-02T13:28:04.690" UserId="322887" />
  <row Id="20963" PostId="6228" Score="0" Text="uncountable number of questions are there lacking much lot focus, asking to explain something better is one the key types of questions here" CreationDate="2021-10-02T13:31:46.523" UserId="322887" />
  <row Id="20964" PostId="6228" Score="0" Text="I suppose all your sayings are correct, so let my question be open for a while, if someone know more about this topic comes and ask me more precise questions ,then I have explain him what I want, throwing some &quot;lack of focus&quot;,&quot;need to add details&quot; without addressing it, is not helping, respects" CreationDate="2021-10-02T13:37:45.607" UserId="322887" />
  <row Id="20965" PostId="6228" Score="7" Text="I can't be surprised that you disagree with my view, But you're raising the same points again and again. The burden is on you to withdraw or rewrite your questions until the community accepts them. That's how CV -- and SE generally -- works. Also, the existence of other poor questions is neither here nor there, as it's your threads that are problematic." CreationDate="2021-10-02T13:46:13.797" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20966" PostId="6228" Score="0" Text="I did the thing u say at second try trying not get into debate, providing more detail, stating it more clear, but then again no one answers my questions, u just label it some way and when u r asked to address it again don't write about anything related." CreationDate="2021-10-02T13:50:55.063" UserId="322887" />
  <row Id="20967" PostId="6228" Score="0" Text="what could I have done to be more clear? when u don't address what details I should add, why u don't answer it? when u don't know what should I add why u insist on ur opinion?" CreationDate="2021-10-02T13:53:05.323" UserId="322887" />
  <row Id="20968" PostId="6228" Score="0" Text="I had a question about this topic and they answered it less than half of an hour, https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/543324/word-embeddings-with-nn-embedding-except-glove but you without knowing anything seems just trying backing up ur comoderators, and I ask again please say what should I add?" CreationDate="2021-10-02T13:59:22.440" UserId="322887" />
  <row Id="20969" PostId="6228" Score="8" Text="I am bowing out here. You asked for opinions. You got one, mine. The issue here on Meta is **Have you been badly treated by the moderators?** and my answer is **No, not on the evidence I see** Being disappointed at the closure of threads is one thing. Showing anger and making personal comments won't help your case,  (I am not a moderator, as my profile makes clear.)" CreationDate="2021-10-02T14:00:00.527" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20970" PostId="6228" Score="0" Text="I usually don't talk like this, I know im a bit harsh, bit when I feel u r not being fair just because we r not in a same teams it messes me up. ofc I also understood u didn't know the answer to &quot;what should I add&quot;, had no answer to &quot;why u don't let if anyone knows that help me&quot;, &quot;what I should focus more on&quot;" CreationDate="2021-10-02T14:05:53.380" UserId="322887" />
  <row Id="20971" PostId="6228" Score="0" Text="do u think I like to just repeat my 10 reasons again and again? believe me, im not, but when I just here someone labeling my question with something without saying where that label matches ofc its frustrating for me." CreationDate="2021-10-02T14:08:52.267" UserId="322887" />
  <row Id="20972" PostId="6228" Score="0" Text="btw on &quot;(I am not a moderator, as my profile makes clear.)&quot; why I should have something against someone being a moderator, I don't make things personal, unless it's about several clueless reasoning, exactly when they label sth to my q but they don't provide why, or don't give any alternative. I tried to move on and ask a new more clear more focused q. but someone again without know anything jumped in. :|, people should address there points" CreationDate="2021-10-02T14:14:14.210" UserId="322887" />
  <row Id="20973" PostId="6228" Score="0" Text="If I was trying to just be irrational Id post constantly more posts here, but does help? no so I don't do it. u say make a new question more focused I say ok, but more focused on what? more details about what? its bloody funny" CreationDate="2021-10-02T14:17:17.007" UserId="322887" />
  <row Id="20974" PostId="6228" Score="0" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica please Id like to hear more, at least maybe helps me to figure what to add" CreationDate="2021-10-02T14:18:34.293" UserId="322887" />
  <row Id="20975" PostId="6228" Score="2" Text="That was and remains a factual correction. Your comment could easily be read as implying that as another moderator I am unsurprisingly agreeing with the moderators concerned. But as said I am not a moderator.  My comments here rest on what I read but do draw on my experience on the site.  If there are other views, people will add them." CreationDate="2021-10-02T14:19:31.147" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="20977" PostId="6228" Score="0" Text="what does these downvotes means? please consider higher values for yourselves,  u r not anonymous  social media bully. either u have a point about me being wrong and speak about it or not. such a shame these great community sometimes act poorly and thats even worse when u realize some of them are really high ranks. note that Imnot ur enemy, I don't want just to argue, eventhough my tone some times in these argument was off color which im kinda sorry but if u note Ive followed ur instructions alot, like in1st post I edited it alot, made2nd post more clear, so all these show Im not here to fight" CreationDate="2021-10-02T18:55:54.913" UserId="322887" />
  <row Id="20978" PostId="6229" Score="0" Text="in order of ur bullets:1.&quot;what you mean by 'embeddings for float variables'&quot;: one implementation on that may be my bullet 3 here&#xA;|2.&quot;using a dense layer&quot;:answered here https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/546775/how-nn-embedding-algorithm-makes-embedding-vectors?noredirect=1#comment1003971_546775&#xA;3.&quot;got no response [there]&quot;:my exprience shows its more likely asking about neural nets don't get answers and people interested to neural nets usually hang around here, likewise u and syxxxx didn't know I have a question there to close it :/ :p" CreationDate="2021-10-02T23:19:21.400" UserId="322887" />
  <row Id="20979" PostId="6229" Score="0" Text="4. &quot;you do not clarify what you want to achieve by this and what kind of problem you are trying to solve&quot;: I have detailed method I want to implement through post and also here https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/546430/nn-embedding-similar-general-purpose-for-float-values#comment1003415_546430&#xA;     if Ive missed sth comment, and also kinda read &quot;How to ask a &quot;good&quot; question on CrossValidated?&quot; rn :/ was no help but I should read it later" CreationDate="2021-10-02T23:19:27.140" UserId="322887" />
  <row Id="20980" PostId="6229" Score="0" Text="I think have followed ur instructions or noted ,answered them somehow, at least I tried to." CreationDate="2021-10-02T23:25:22.700" UserId="322887" />
  <row Id="20985" PostId="6230" Score="0" Text="1.&quot;The point number 3 is about a request for code implementation.&quot;:no its obviously is requests to give resources to me to get to know how to do that, beside Ive appreciated the code also. is that clear? 2.&quot;tell me about why my bullet no.3 can't or may can't be implemented?&quot;: this means I say all readers of my question yet haven't added any useful suggestions(ofc except dense layer which is not help to satisfy for replicating transformer for float data cause it is just not truly cloning embeddings) so im looking for possibility of implementing such, or in other words, is that possible to do?" CreationDate="2021-10-06T04:26:48.680" UserId="322887" />
  <row Id="20986" PostId="6230" Score="0" Text="3.&quot;not about 'how to write code'&quot;: isn't looking for resources for 'how to do algorithm' is on topics of this site? 4. I don't know how to do algorithm nothing code related,where should I ask it for resources and insights?" CreationDate="2021-10-06T04:26:58.477" UserId="322887" />
  <row Id="20987" PostId="6230" Score="4" Text="@Farhang The question is not about a topic that I know much about so it is difficult for me to comment much more about it.   But... plainly asking for a code that does some algorithm only in some different setting than what is currently available (without clear significance what the value is for statistics) or resources about it is a gray area...." CreationDate="2021-10-06T08:06:36.333" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="20988" PostId="6230" Score="0" Text="... The format of Q&amp;A here prefers quick twitter style with simple questions and simple answers (in terms of size, the concepts might be complex). The way that you ask your question is heavily making use of python code. At least for people that are not directly into the field it is hard to get what you are doing. Sure there might be specialist that could possibly get what you are trying to do, but a good standard would be to write your question to people as to a broader public. Stack Exchange has a broad public and is not like a specialist journal..." CreationDate="2021-10-06T08:08:23.440" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="20989" PostId="6230" Score="0" Text="... again I am not a specialist and have no idea what 'embedding' means. And it seams like you want to embed floating numbers. That seems like a simple question. Why not refere to some journal article instead of all this python code and referring to error messages (which maybe obscures the point about statistics that could be underlying in your question)? ..." CreationDate="2021-10-06T08:13:18.117" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="20990" PostId="6230" Score="1" Text="... For instance something like this *&quot;In this paper (add link) a description is given of a method for embedding words which is implemented in the python package `torch`. This solves problems like such and such. My problem is slightly different and is as such. Because of that I would like to do embedding with floating point variables. Would this be possible and are there descriptions solutions of this?&quot;*" CreationDate="2021-10-06T08:16:43.680" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="20991" PostId="6230" Score="0" Text="first of all I get ur point to not adding code, but for concepts by experience, Ive learned people don't get mixedup by codes(ofc easy to read, non specific syntax codes) and my code was simple except one specific syntax which my whole question was about its underlying algorithm, so technically any answerer probably should know how the torch works(another example would be how the algorithm method a in package a1 is different than the algorithm in the method b in package b1) so for answering this u probably should know how to read syntaxes package a1,b1.but anyway thanx to reminding me" CreationDate="2021-10-06T17:17:35.483" UserId="322887" />
  <row Id="20992" PostId="6230" Score="0" Text="anthor thanx for ur last comment depicting how such question should be asked." CreationDate="2021-10-06T17:18:22.123" UserId="322887" />
  <row Id="20993" PostId="6231" Score="0" Text="its really appreciate that you tried to clear up my question even though lots of accusations of not following the rules (asking for code, having a code in q's text etc )was thrown to my question. and  in this answer by clearing attributes necessary for q like mine, and by providing how exactly those should been written in the question made a great contribution to this debate." CreationDate="2021-10-06T17:37:59.080" UserId="322887" />
  <row Id="20999" PostId="6233" Score="1" Text="Even adding `&lt;!-- lang-all: lang-r --&gt;` doesn't seem to work :-(." CreationDate="2021-10-19T11:32:25.043" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="21000" PostId="6233" Score="1" Text="It's a bug, probably not only related to CrossValidated.com, but likely also other sites, so I'm moving it to the Meta site." CreationDate="2021-10-19T12:54:34.103" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="21001" PostId="6233" Score="2" Text="@Tim you can fix it yourself, at the bottom of [this page](https://stats.stackexchange.com/tags/r/info). On SO, the setting is correct: https://stackoverflow.com/tags/r/info" CreationDate="2021-10-19T13:00:21.330" UserId="79696" />
  <row Id="21002" PostId="6233" Score="1" Text="@Glorfindel thanks, I wasn't aware of this setting." CreationDate="2021-10-19T13:06:10.367" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="21003" PostId="6234" Score="3" Text="I wonder how it got changed. The setting for the `[r]` tag used to be correct.  Also, I tried `&lt;!-- lang-all: lang-r --&gt;` on the linked page &amp; it didn't turn on the correct syntax highlighting, but I spent very little time on it." CreationDate="2021-10-20T11:19:57.497" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="21004" PostId="6234" Score="0" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica unfortunately I have no idea as well." CreationDate="2021-10-20T11:48:31.687" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="21006" PostId="6236" Score="2" Text="If the purpose of those questions was to provide context, you could have just made a section of your question labeled “context: “, and then it would have been less likely to be closed." CreationDate="2021-10-21T13:55:16.840" UserId="338467" />
  <row Id="21007" PostId="6236" Score="17" Text="The very fact that your question is prefaced by &quot;3.&quot; already indicates the post asks too much!  Indeed, this is the third item under &quot;my questions.&quot;  We need each thread to ask a single clear question.  Otherwise, the discussion grows confused and complex and any voting becomes almost meaningless.  For more guidance, please look at the links under &quot;Ask&quot; in the [help]." CreationDate="2021-10-21T15:35:42.473" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21008" PostId="6236" Score="8" Text="Some role reversal sometimes helps. FIrst, how long do you think it would take someone competent in your field to read and understand your question. Second, how long do you think that someone would spend answering your question and how much would they write. The first question is hard and the second harder still, but they are key. Hoping for lengthy answers sometimes is realistic, but usually not. If your expectation is that people might answer part of your overall questions, then by CV expectations you're asking several questions." CreationDate="2021-10-21T16:23:09.527" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21009" PostId="6236" Score="8" Text="The complaint about unhelpful feedback is problematic. We can't rewrite your question for you because it is not our job to decide what is central, essential or most important as the core of your question." CreationDate="2021-10-21T16:24:06.203" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21010" PostId="6236" Score="1" Text="@NickCox of course it's not your job to to write questions for me, but I know that my problem isn't trivial, I've been trying to solve it for good few months now. Now either that means I'm trying to solve a wrong problem, or the problem itself isn't simple. It's rather hard to show that's the case without providing multiple paragraphs of introductory text." CreationDate="2021-10-21T16:32:49.717" UserId="289885" />
  <row Id="21011" PostId="6236" Score="7" Text="CV (and the parts of SE I know best) operates quite differently from say a paper reviewer or academic examiner who ideally should explain in detail and constructively what is wrong with some writing and how to improve it. Questions here are candidates that may be closed given sufficient downvotes or moderator action. You know this, but it is a brutal model compared with others. Closure just means a request to rewrite, not an absolute rejection." CreationDate="2021-10-21T16:33:40.463" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21012" PostId="6236" Score="7" Text="So, you have, I am happy to believe, a very good and very serious series of linked questions. On the face of it, however, the post  is too long and too complicated to fit our format. That is the main point if not the only point.  I too would be disappointed at best if I put that amount of work into a question and it was closed, but sympathy is not a criterion here." CreationDate="2021-10-21T16:35:56.633" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21013" PostId="6236" Score="1" Text="And that's precisely my problem: I wrote a detailed question, that was closed without a single comment. It would be sufficient to add a &quot;Please single out a question you want solved&quot; as a comment to make my experience *vastly* better and more welcoming." CreationDate="2021-10-21T16:40:15.960" UserId="289885" />
  <row Id="21014" PostId="6236" Score="8" Text="So, now the complaint is about tone of reply. I see in your second link the wording &quot;Please edit the question to limit it to a specific problem with enough detail to identify an adequate answer. Avoid asking multiple distinct questions at once. See the How to Ask page for help clarifying this question.&quot;  I read that as polite and as positive as possible. It's not saying Go away, Get lost, or anything more extreme." CreationDate="2021-10-21T16:44:37.053" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21015" PostId="6236" Score="1" Text="@NickCox the problem is the difference between general FAQ entry vs specific case. From my point of view, the question is already asking a single question &quot;How to deal with this problem&quot;. It's the difference between inviting solutions at different levels vs asking a very specific question that may actually not solve the problem. I feel like it's a difference in culture between StackOverflow and CrossValidated..." CreationDate="2021-10-21T16:54:19.600" UserId="289885" />
  <row Id="21016" PostId="6236" Score="7" Text="Well, I am active on Stack Overflow too -- as witness my profile -- and although I answer only questions on one program I look at their Meta too. I see SO as often utterly ruthless in closing questions and CV as more broad-minded about discussion. Sorry your perception is different." CreationDate="2021-10-21T16:59:07.837" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21017" PostId="6236" Score="3" Text="I've posted a new, singular, question: https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/549223/289885" CreationDate="2021-10-21T17:22:34.277" UserId="289885" />
  <row Id="21018" PostId="6236" Score="8" Text="&quot;... that was closed without a single comment. &quot; -- that's not true. The close notice contains a link to the help article which explains what &quot;needs more focus&quot; means" CreationDate="2021-10-21T19:17:44.607" UserDisplayName="user338449" />
  <row Id="21019" PostId="6236" Score="1" Text="My read of the quoted language &quot;Would using something like…&quot; is itself unspecific and unfocused. Contrast with &quot;Could a Kalman filter apply to X? Why or why not?&quot; I encourage Hubert Kairo to take the requests for editing and revision (including the close votes) in the spirit that they are intended: can you narrow down your ask? If you have many (narrow) asks, make many questions." CreationDate="2021-10-28T16:48:56.447" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="21023" PostId="6236" Score="1" Text="@Alexis My ask is that I don't know which exact question is worth looking the answer for. It's useless for me to look for door key in the barn when it's under the flower pot, next to the entrance. Now, maybe I'm wrong in thinking that describing all the places _I_ can think of where the key may be is a waste of everybody's time. But that's what  was my experience on pretty much all help forums I interacted with, and for a good reason, as solving a problem with the wrong approach is frustrating to everybody involved." CreationDate="2021-10-28T20:11:15.407" UserId="289885" />
  <row Id="21024" PostId="6236" Score="3" Text="@HubertKario None of us know what your exact question is, either. Maybe take all the feedback you have been given here in good faith and run with it? Maybe a stackexchange does not work for your needs?" CreationDate="2021-10-28T20:14:46.953" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="21025" PostId="6236" Score="1" Text="@Alexis I'm not saying it's in bad faith, I'm saying that it's not helpful. Yes, maybe when data acquisition is hard and you can't change the experiment, and you have to work with the data you have, asking for help with the specific data set is your only option. But it's not the case for me, it's definitely not the case for some other people, and &quot;designing experiments&quot; *is* in scope for this site: https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic" CreationDate="2021-10-28T20:33:20.147" UserId="289885" />
  <row Id="21037" PostId="6238" Score="14" Text="[Shiny](https://shiny.rstudio.com) is useful for that kind of thing. Anyway, it sounds like that would be on topic at the Software Recommendations S.E. site." CreationDate="2021-11-13T09:25:51.830" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21115" PostId="6238" Score="1" Text="Many, many people are producing Web apps for elementary statistical procedures.  A few are producing apps to support conceptual learning.  See https://artofstat.com/web-apps for a nice example of the latter.  (It's not the only one--clever searching should be able to find many more hosted at institutions of higher learning to support their beginning stats students.) It's perfectly suited for high school stats." CreationDate="2021-12-22T23:11:40.817" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21040" PostId="6239" Score="1" Text="Please give us a link to this page.  Our &quot;new users&quot; page at https://stats.stackexchange.com/users?tab=newusers has no reference to &quot;articles.&quot;" CreationDate="2021-11-15T16:49:58.057" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21041" PostId="6239" Score="0" Text="Hi @whuber. I've added an example link and an image." CreationDate="2021-11-15T16:52:43.897" UserId="203822" />
  <row Id="21042" PostId="6239" Score="0" Text="Thank you.  I have reopened your post on the evidence of the image, but the specific page you link to contains no reference to &quot;newest articles.&quot;" CreationDate="2021-11-15T16:55:34.737" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21043" PostId="6239" Score="0" Text="Hi @whuber, the screen capture was taken on that page. It may be that different users see differently." CreationDate="2021-11-15T16:56:04.423" UserId="203822" />
  <row Id="21044" PostId="6239" Score="0" Text="Yes, I suspect so!  Could you tell us where on that page this portion appears?" CreationDate="2021-11-15T16:56:54.690" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21045" PostId="6239" Score="0" Text="@whuber, i've included a larger screenshot of my view of your page. Hopefully it helps place this portion." CreationDate="2021-11-15T17:02:27.783" UserId="203822" />
  <row Id="21046" PostId="6239" Score="8" Text="Thank you--that helps.  Your question was [posted on Meta.SE](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/371837/articles-on-mse) a couple days ago and still hasn't been answered--that's why we're all a little in the dark.  A *comment* in that thread asserts &quot;This is a bug, and we're on it.&quot;" CreationDate="2021-11-15T17:35:40.837" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21048" PostId="6241" Score="0" Text="Duh. I'm sorry, I thought I had looked for such a tag, but obviously I missed it." CreationDate="2021-11-25T12:53:32.620" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="21049" PostId="6241" Score="1" Text="No need to apologize, @StephanKolassa.  I found these because I already knew about them." CreationDate="2021-11-25T15:22:57.123" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="21089" PostId="6243" Score="1" Text="In practice, I think some people kind of cheat, right? Add some statistics around the question when they actually want the code. What's the appropriate protocol when this happens? Answer, right?" CreationDate="2021-12-14T12:08:26.950" UserId="263742" />
  <row Id="21108" PostId="6243" Score="2" Text="@mribeirodantas The appropriate protocol is to flag off-topic but otherwise clear posts for migration to a suitable SE site (or to vote to migrate them, if you have that privilege)." CreationDate="2021-12-18T23:58:05.997" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21109" PostId="6243" Score="0" Text="Thanks, @whuber!" CreationDate="2021-12-19T00:00:15.090" UserId="263742" />
  <row Id="21052" PostId="6244" Score="2" Text="Diamond moderators and users don't have any control over the SE software itself, which is the origin of this change. You could ask this question on meta.SE, but the tenor and language of the question would probably be unwelcome." CreationDate="2021-12-08T01:15:51.793" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21053" PostId="6244" Score="0" Text="+1 Thank you for the reminder, @Sycorax." CreationDate="2021-12-08T01:17:33.510" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="21054" PostId="6244" Score="1" Text="I’m voting to close this question because this isn't an issue that stats.SE users &amp; moderators can fix, and the tenor of the question is emotionally charged and provocative. It's closer to a complaint than a topic of discussion, or solicitation of a way to convince SE, inc. improve the Ux." CreationDate="2021-12-08T01:21:59.120" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21075" PostId="6245" Score="3" Text="*Spam* is a defined, technical word, within this SE network of sites. For the definition, see https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/58032/what-are-the-spam-and-rude-or-abusive-offensive-flags-and-how-do-they-wor" CreationDate="2021-12-10T02:17:50.843" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="21077" PostId="6245" Score="0" Text="Okay, so when a user critiques these types of posts by linking to their website, Twitter, and/or textbook without disclosing the affiliation then that meets this network’s definition of spam" CreationDate="2021-12-10T02:57:40.963" UserId="204292" />
  <row Id="21078" PostId="6245" Score="10" Text="You're allowed to disagree with a method, practice, or advice, but the fact that you disagree doesn't make the method, practice, or advice an instance of *spam.* The definition of spam is **very** specific." CreationDate="2021-12-10T03:12:02.917" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21063" PostId="6246" Score="0" Text="To address your comment that I have too much faith in statistical journals etc. if you read the question, I state that I don't believe that their existence in journals makes it valid, but I also don't believe that a few posters on cross validated agreeing makes it invalid. By continuously posting on every topic that these methods are bad, the user is attempting to shift the narrative rather than inform. It is not settled that these methods are bad. See for example the original example I linked. Another very respected user argues for these methods in the comments" CreationDate="2021-12-09T15:49:47.170" UserId="204292" />
  <row Id="21064" PostId="6246" Score="7" Text="Thanks for your comments. If posting similar comments to similar questions counts as spam, then  many of us are spammers too. You're misusing a useful word there." CreationDate="2021-12-09T16:30:45.603" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21065" PostId="6246" Score="5" Text="We have a concise community definition of spam, as allowed grounds for flagging an answer: Exists only to promote a product or service, does not disclose the author's affiliation." CreationDate="2021-12-09T16:51:42.583" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21067" PostId="6246" Score="3" Text="I basically agree with all of this, but regarding the last paragraph, I don't see such a need for extensive evidence.  The pattern is pretty familiar to me from my experience here.  I'm happy to believe that when someone asks a question about, say, stepwise regression, that some users will immediately comment that it's a bad thing to do." CreationDate="2021-12-09T20:07:45.997" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="21069" PostId="6246" Score="0" Text="Again, I think the thing missing in all of this is whether or not these methods and metrics have been proven bad. You can read through the comments in the first example I provided that show enough argument about them that maybe you’d agree they haven’t" CreationDate="2021-12-09T21:42:38.000" UserId="204292" />
  <row Id="21088" PostId="6246" Score="6" Text="@gung makes a very good point. Many of us do have hobby horses -- mine include thinking that normality tests, quantile binning and several popular plots are oversold. Hence posters with prejudices -- which should be based on reasoned stances -- can often be observed making the same points in different threads. As Richard Feynman almost said, the same questions have the same answers (or in CV provoke the same comments).  The issue is whether this is a problem, and I don't think it is." CreationDate="2021-12-12T12:37:57.017" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21066" PostId="6248" Score="4" Text="Particularly if the question is along the lines of &quot;If I want to run faster, what should I use to shoot my foot?&quot;" CreationDate="2021-12-09T19:05:10.040" UserId="247274" />
  <row Id="21068" PostId="6248" Score="0" Text="Just because you think I am going to shoot myself in the foot doesn’t mean I am. And all your warnings about me shooting myself in the foot turn my question about how to use my gun into debates about why my gun is bad. As I said the fact that these methods are bad is not solidified. Just as you believe that statistical papers/textbooks using these methods doesn’t mean they are correct, I don’t believe that a few persons on cross validated thinking they are bad makes them bad. I am not taking a position on whether they are valid or not. I am just saying it’s not as final as you think it is." CreationDate="2021-12-09T21:38:21.273" UserId="204292" />
  <row Id="21076" PostId="6248" Score="4" Text="@Stephan Kolassa: I propose that you continue to warn against foot-shooting!" CreationDate="2021-12-10T02:25:24.253" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="21090" PostId="6249" Score="1" Text="I can't even get Google to tell me that :-(." CreationDate="2021-12-16T22:00:05.050" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21091" PostId="6249" Score="3" Text="You might be able to query your answers &amp; download to text using the Data Explorer, and then search for the URL string. Failing that, you could write a script to scrape your answers directly." CreationDate="2021-12-16T22:08:02.570" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21098" PostId="6252" Score="4" Text="I have nominated to migrate this question to [meta] but the short and obvious answer is that everything on the Stack Exchange network is explicitly licensed under the CC-BY-SA 4.0 license. You should be able to find this information on every page on the site. The link to https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing is in the lower right corner on the desktop version of the site." CreationDate="2021-12-17T07:43:41.647" UserId="23810" />
  <row Id="21099" PostId="6252" Score="1" Text="Per triplee's comment, there is no need to obtain permission, but it would still be a nice gesture to notify the author of the post. If there is no obvious contact information, you can simply leave a comment, especially for authors who drop by regularly." CreationDate="2021-12-17T08:22:25.257" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="21100" PostId="6252" Score="0" Text="(Separate question about why the link is to Stack Overflow rather than to the current site: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/374161/why-does-the-license-link-take-me-to-stack-overflows-license-page)" CreationDate="2021-12-17T08:36:57.503" UserId="23810" />
  <row Id="21107" PostId="6252" Score="1" Text="@tripleee: actually, that is not *precisely* correct (and where better to nitpick than Meta.CV?). The precise license depends on the date on which the content was created." CreationDate="2021-12-17T22:38:50.120" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="21114" PostId="6252" Score="1" Text="Turns out it was my figure! As has already been stated the copyright on the figure is not problematic due to the CC BY-SA-3.0 licensing. Leave a comment here if you're interested - it's possible I have a better copy of the diagram lying around somewhere, potentially in vector form rather than as a PNG, which I can release under the same licence.  If I'm correct you're faculty at UBC then your institutional email address is publicly available so am happy to send it to you there. (Would have slight advantage to me to the acknowledgement in my real name rather than to a wingless insect!)" CreationDate="2021-12-21T18:09:39.710" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="21101" PostId="6254" Score="2" Text="The problems with these three examples are numerous and our system does not readily permit them all to be listed when a thread is closed.  The first link is far too broad and asks multiple questions.  The second is about `R` and filled with financial jargon.  The third is too general and vague.  In my experience, a relatively large proportion of questions related to portfolios are ill-considered, poorly-researched, badly-worded posts by people pursuing get-rich-quick schemes.  They have no place here.  The remainder arguably belong--and are rarely closed for being off-topic." CreationDate="2021-12-17T18:51:33.557" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21102" PostId="6254" Score="0" Text="Thank you for a quick reply; I gather your take is that these questions are not off-topic, just my examples were poor. But even then - I feel something is still a bit vague. Questions that are too broad can be closed as not focused. Questions about R can be closed as related to programming. And jargon just depends on the context - there are many questions with biological jargon as an example, with no one complaining. To me it seems like all these are different issues unrelated to the typical given response &quot;this belongs on quant SE&quot;." CreationDate="2021-12-17T19:03:56.203" UserId="18417" />
  <row Id="21103" PostId="6254" Score="1" Text="Without appropriate examples, though, it is hard to assess whether you have even identified a problem or how extensive it might be.  I know that I close biological-jargon questions (especially those about genomics) just as readily as I do jargon-laden questions in any other field.  Suggesting that some people complain about poor financial-related questions while pointing out that not everyone complains about certain other forms of poor questions seems to lack relevance and doesn't help us understand whether there is an issue or how to resolve it." CreationDate="2021-12-17T19:31:47.353" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21104" PostId="6254" Score="1" Text="It's likely not a big issue, there aren't many questions related to this topic. I was just curious for myself, as after reading the questions quite a few of them had suggestions for migration over to quant SE. So, personally for me, the question whether these are on topic here remained vague, and I got a sense that many users consider them off-topic. But now I see that, probably, they belong here with not too many jargon and an additional &quot;finance&quot; or &quot;econometrics&quot; tag. If that's correct, that would answer my question." CreationDate="2021-12-17T19:45:46.560" UserId="18417" />
  <row Id="21105" PostId="6254" Score="3" Text="Note, too, that other sites (such as quant.se) don't like us to migrate poor questions.  Good targets for migration are questions that are (a) on topic over there, (b) meet their standards for clarity etc. and (c) are unlikely to get good answers here.  In &quot;edge cases,&quot; where questions might be on topic here and on the target site, my policy is to accept the OP's decision to post their question here and (therefore) not forcibly migrate it, unless it has sat around for a week or more with no responses.  (We can't migrate after a month.)" CreationDate="2021-12-17T20:22:50.480" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21106" PostId="6254" Score="5" Text="For the purposes of completeness, I want to point out to future readers of this question that Quant.SE has a very narrow scope. They basically only want people who are professional quants or studying to be professional quants to ask questions. From their help pages: &quot;Basically, your question must be one that someone who is&#xA;&#xA;earning a living at this, or&#xA;is studying this specifically in graduate school&#xA;would confront in the course of their job or studies.&quot; https://quant.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic (I know that this doesn't address Karolis's question, but it is germane.)" CreationDate="2021-12-17T21:19:25.413" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21110" PostId="6255" Score="1" Text="+1, but it's also worth emphasizing that editors *should not change the substantive content* of the post. People should not edit a Q to make it ask a different question.  People should not edit an A to make it give a different or additional answer." CreationDate="2021-12-19T13:11:56.030" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="21111" PostId="6255" Score="0" Text="@gung: Good suggestion --- I've edited to add this as the last point." CreationDate="2021-12-19T20:04:41.150" UserId="173082" />
  <row Id="21112" PostId="6255" Score="0" Text="Thanks, @Ben.  I don't mean to be a pest here.  One of my pet peeves is people thinking, 'this is wrong, I'll just from x=y to x=z' &amp; editing the post." CreationDate="2021-12-20T01:26:22.283" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="21113" PostId="6255" Score="0" Text="@gung: Not a pest at all --- it is definitely worth raising these things to improve the post as much as possible.  Re editing other people's posts, yeah, I agree --- it is problematic to correct errors in a question because the error raises an issue in itself." CreationDate="2021-12-20T02:58:09.083" UserId="173082" />
  <row Id="22481" PostId="6255" Score="0" Text="+1. However, it can be difficult for some people to distinguish if context is gratuitous or not. Sometimes people asking questions are urged to provide more context -so eventually they might think it's always a good thing to provide context in future questions they have. It may be worth considering, in case we want to give them a short explanation as to why gratuitous context has been removed." CreationDate="2023-09-09T17:33:21.380" UserId="164936" />
  <row Id="22483" PostId="6255" Score="0" Text="I find myself to ask for more context quite often - questions like &quot;I have data Y and X, measured repeatedly, how should I model this?&quot; cannot be answered without knowing what kind of data X and Y are." CreationDate="2023-09-17T20:33:12.340" UserId="237561" />
  <row Id="21116" PostId="6257" Score="3" Text="Which posts are you referring to?  Your most recent closed post at https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/557680 explicitly asks &quot;I think I misused prop test. What should I do?&quot;  That appears to ask for help with your `R` code.  If not, the problem lies in ambiguous communication, not in this site's policies.  Please be aware that when a question is closed, the site permits us to post only one standard reason, even when the question ought to be closed for many reasons." CreationDate="2021-12-23T23:38:46.497" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21117" PostId="6257" Score="0" Text="My last post has got closed .https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/557680/how-should-i-compare-counting-values. This one not even being programming based  https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/155523/r-prop-test-chi-squared-approximation-may-be-incorrect." CreationDate="2021-12-23T23:41:49.327" UserId="318298" />
  <row Id="21118" PostId="6257" Score="0" Text="I see no evidence that https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/155523/r-prop-test-chi-squared-approximation-may-be-incorrect was ever closed, nor that it's even a question that you've asked!" CreationDate="2021-12-23T23:53:06.400" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21119" PostId="6257" Score="0" Text="It was not closed, where is the cap which differs a programming based asking from a question where use coding but doesn't got closed?" CreationDate="2021-12-24T00:00:36.207" UserId="318298" />
  <row Id="21120" PostId="6257" Score="7" Text="I think you've misunderstood what https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/155523 is about. It's statistical in nature because it asks about how to compute p-values and the statistical meaning of an warning message. Answering these questions requires statistical knowledge to answer. Asking someone to write R code for you is just a programming question. (But if you want to know something else, then perhaps you have an on-topic question -- but https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/155523/ seems to be a duplicate, because it addresses what the Warning in your question means)" CreationDate="2021-12-24T00:22:07.160" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21125" PostId="6257" Score="3" Text="https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic explains CV Policy: &quot;If your question is about Programming, ask on Stack Overflow. If the language is statistically oriented (such as R, SAS, Stata, SPSS, etc.), then decide based on the nature of your question: if it needs statistical expertise to understand or answer, ask it here; if it's about the implementation of an algorithm, routine data processing, or details of the language, then please refer to the collection of links to resources we maintain.&quot;" CreationDate="2021-12-24T11:55:01.227" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21126" PostId="6257" Score="4" Text="This kind of distinction was made in closing your post, and I don't see that your question here raises any new issues.  There is a grey area where it's hard to decide and no doubt some decisions not to close now appear wrong to some people, but discussing marginal cases can only be fruitful if based on close study of specific examples." CreationDate="2021-12-24T11:57:49.947" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21128" PostId="6257" Score="0" Text="... and some decisions to close now appear wrong to some people ..." CreationDate="2021-12-24T12:31:25.043" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21121" PostId="6259" Score="0" Text="I was thinking about put it on stack overflow but I think there aren't many people using statistics there." CreationDate="2021-12-24T00:38:09.673" UserId="318298" />
  <row Id="21122" PostId="6259" Score="4" Text="It's not entirely clear to me what your specific question is/would be, so I'm not sure of the best place to ask it." CreationDate="2021-12-24T01:16:13.007" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21123" PostId="6259" Score="0" Text="just look over if my code is doing the test correctly" CreationDate="2021-12-24T01:22:15.507" UserId="318298" />
  <row Id="21124" PostId="6259" Score="4" Text="Unfortunately, &quot;is my code correct?&quot; questions don't fare well anywhere, even on Stack Overflow. The best kind of question there identifies a specific problem with your code and asks how to fix it. Other way round, there are many, many users of statistics active on Stack Overflow. It's my impression, for example, that it has long since superseded R-help as the best single place to ask questions on R code.  Just now a check on the R tag reports 430,924 questions -- and naturally the number will be higher when anyone reads this." CreationDate="2021-12-24T10:20:11.823" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21129" PostId="6259" Score="4" Text="@DaviAmérico, I have trouble imagining what such a question would be.  There really isn't much of anything you need to do in R to &quot;do a test correctly&quot;.  R does all the work for you, &amp; it's set up that way intentionally, eg, `t.test(x, y)`, will run a t-test correctly w/o you having to worry about how R is calculating the pooled SD. Maybe you could ask, 'how can I check that I got the right answer?' or something like that." CreationDate="2021-12-24T13:12:52.123" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="21137" PostId="6262" Score="0" Text="thanks - although the question currently doesn't fulfill the criteria in the last bullet point (it does not have at least one answer scoring 0). Either (1) the existing answer scored zero at the time it was bumped and someone has upvoted it since or (2) the criteria are slightly different on CV?" CreationDate="2021-12-27T21:03:43.600" UserId="2126" />
  <row Id="21138" PostId="6262" Score="3" Text="I doubt the criteria are different here.  More likely they have been modified everywhere.  The record shows the answer was upvoted in 2016." CreationDate="2021-12-27T21:12:23.363" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21141" PostId="6264" Score="3" Text="Interesting idea but I would see using one tag only as more likely indicating a naive poster not used to tags rather than an off-topic post.  Otherwise said, looking at the content as well as the tags remains crucial." CreationDate="2021-12-30T17:58:07.670" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21148" PostId="6266" Score="2" Text="I believe there is a consensus: see glen_b's post at https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2813/919." CreationDate="2022-01-04T19:42:51.673" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21155" PostId="6266" Score="1" Text="Wouldn't there be some tools like 'google lens' that could do this conversion? (Not criticising your admirable effort, but wondering whether it could be done more efficiently. It's amazing that this type of stuff still needs to be done manually. There should be some point that computers can do this work without much human effort in setting up and managing the computer)" CreationDate="2022-01-10T10:07:47.563" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21156" PostId="6266" Score="2" Text="@SextusEmpiricus: There may well be, but I'd expect a human who understands the content to be more accurate, especially for the low quality images." CreationDate="2022-01-10T12:31:57.333" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21157" PostId="6266" Score="1" Text="@Scortchi maybe that background/content is the last step that separates AI from humans. We can make algorithms perform a specific task but it is not yet running automatically because the learning is too specific for a task and we do not exactly copy human capacities, let alone exceed them." CreationDate="2022-01-10T12:36:35.533" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21158" PostId="6266" Score="1" Text="My comment was more some rant/frustration. I wonder why, by now, we are not there yet that we can order a computer in simple language." CreationDate="2022-01-10T12:37:20.790" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21159" PostId="6266" Score="2" Text="A petty consideration: in posts where OP posts a long complicated equation, I often go to &quot;edit&quot; mode to copy swaths of latex code when supplying an answer. There's only so many times I can write \sqrt{n} \left( \bar{x} - \mu \right) \rightarrow_d \mathcal{N} \left(0, \sigma^2 \right) for $\sqrt{n} \left( \bar{x} - \mu \right) \rightarrow_d \mathcal{N} \left(0, \sigma^2 \right)$" CreationDate="2022-01-10T22:24:55.793" UserId="8013" />
  <row Id="21149" PostId="6267" Score="11" Text="Another reason not to bump old posts is that rendering $\LaTeX$ for old posts might introduce errors, either by transcription error or because the original image/notation is simply unclear. For a user who is active, it's plausible that they could correct the error or make a comment, but for an old post authored by an inactive user, that feedback is unlikely to appear." CreationDate="2022-01-04T19:52:43.550" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21150" PostId="6267" Score="4" Text="@Sycorax: I wouldn't advocate anyone's LaTeXing an equation they don't understand, which ought to mitigate the risk of introducing errors." CreationDate="2022-01-06T10:50:08.963" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21151" PostId="6267" Score="6" Text="I think whether to edit &amp; bump an old Q is a judgement call. If the OP uses their judgment, it's likely to be OK." CreationDate="2022-01-07T12:22:07.860" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="21234" PostId="6267" Score="0" Text="I think editing any existing Q or A to render in LATEX/MathJax what was originally presented as an image or plaintext is more or less always desirable. Also, I wonder if there is a poorly conceived notion of 'realness' of content bumps at play here, as though &quot;people are polluting the algorithmic measurement of 'real' interest with their 'ersatz' interest!&quot;. Algorithmic bumping of Qs is ephemera: if you do not share whatever algorithmic interest is currently active, wait 30 minutes, right?" CreationDate="2022-02-15T23:09:36.930" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="21153" PostId="6268" Score="0" Text="A short reply is that it all depends. Sometimes a little work by yourself is enough while at the other extreme a question is such an awful mess that the OP needs to work at cleaning it up, or else the question is just not suitable for CV. On downvoting the issue is longstanding; some lean towards extreme gentleness to anyone new in particular, while others want to send a strong signal that a very poorly presented question is no use to anyone, including the OP, given that an answer is unlikely. CV is not a help line; it is intended to be an archive of good questions and good answers." CreationDate="2022-01-08T12:37:50.233" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21154" PostId="6268" Score="1" Text="Thank you @NickCox - the question you suggested as duplicate had all the answers and more." CreationDate="2022-01-09T08:53:53.707" UserId="18417" />
  <row Id="21160" PostId="6270" Score="11" Text="Exciting! 1k problems are a lot, and over that is more than a lot!" CreationDate="2022-01-11T07:43:12.800" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="21161" PostId="6270" Score="3" Text="That's quite an effort. Where next? Volume I of Kendall and Stuart? :) ... I did so many exercises out of that." CreationDate="2022-01-13T02:04:33.400" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="21162" PostId="6270" Score="2" Text="@Glen_b What's next is *Linear Models in R, 2nd Ed.,* by Julian J. Faraway. I'm basically self-studying my way to a B.S. in Statistics, and I'm loosely following Virginia Tech's curriculum, if not their book choices. After Linear Models, I want to do analysis and design of experiments." CreationDate="2022-01-13T03:15:37.803" UserId="76484" />
  <row Id="21163" PostId="6270" Score="2" Text="Studying linear models is a good choice at that point, yes." CreationDate="2022-01-13T04:05:22.913" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="21205" PostId="6271" Score="0" Text="+1 Solely for the &quot;*exciting* stats&quot; link." CreationDate="2022-01-31T17:28:42.387" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="21745" PostId="6271" Score="0" Text="Have you any plans to post a similar thread about 2022?" CreationDate="2023-01-04T13:36:21.770" UserId="56940" />
  <row Id="21746" PostId="6271" Score="0" Text="Yes! We are currently working on making some changes to the script that posts these as per last year's feedback, but you can expect these to be posted Soon™." CreationDate="2023-01-04T14:03:57.990" UserId="72321" />
  <row Id="21164" PostId="6272" Score="4" Text="What problem do you imagine this tag solves that is not solved by the existing tags?" CreationDate="2022-01-17T14:35:40.273" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21165" PostId="6272" Score="3" Text="Our policy is to grow tags organically, typically by letting new questions suggest their need.  Sometimes, a collection of existing questions about related matters will suggest a new tag; at other times, it becomes clear that an existing tag is overloaded and needs to be disambiguated by creating one or more new related tags.  Could you please explain what your reason is for creating this tag?" CreationDate="2022-01-17T15:04:02.240" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21167" PostId="6272" Score="0" Text="@whuber you don't think maths se has *more* use for this highly specific tag than stats se does do you? sounds like having a [catholic se](https://christianity.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3884/) that doesn't have say catholic canon law tag while christianity se does. or do you mean the analogy is that there can be even further specific tags than catholic canon law namely all the probability limit theorems? well 1 thing i had in mind is like [i had a feeling some limit theorem applied but i didn't know which 1](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/560742)" CreationDate="2022-01-17T16:52:40.137" UserId="44339" />
  <row Id="21168" PostId="6272" Score="7" Text="We are not the math site.  The existence (or absence) of a tag on that site is irrelevant for us.  BTW, it's not a good sign that the one post you reference in support of your tag proposal has been closed!" CreationDate="2022-01-17T16:58:24.643" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21169" PostId="6272" Score="5" Text="We also lack a tag for `statistics`: https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/statistics which seems to dramatically undercut your argument from analogy about Catholicism." CreationDate="2022-01-17T18:34:04.470" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21183" PostId="6277" Score="0" Text="Weird. On mobile, the post didn’t have an edit button, but it did on my laptop." CreationDate="2022-01-26T04:06:22.897" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21184" PostId="6277" Score="0" Text="I am on my phone, but it was just that one question that lacked the edit button, and now it’s back. // Wait…even a diamond mod had a lack of edit ability?" CreationDate="2022-01-26T04:06:43.783" UserId="247274" />
  <row Id="21185" PostId="6277" Score="8" Text="I have a feeling that the user interface is doing more weird things recently and is continuously changing a bit, as if they are testing out some things." CreationDate="2022-01-26T10:19:21.137" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21186" PostId="6277" Score="3" Text="I’m voting to close this question because it appears to be transient behavior, perhaps related to recent revisions to the SE layout. I haven't been able to reproduce it. I'm not aware of a rule (e.g. related to reputation, or moderator status) that would remove the edit button. If the issue persists &amp; is reproducible, then posting to meta.SE is the best place, because it tracks bugs in SE software (diamond mods have no power over the SE software)." CreationDate="2022-01-26T16:24:08.490" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21188" PostId="6277" Score="1" Text="I couldn't edit a post yesterday for some unknown reason, and just gave up. I agree that's not much information, but it ties in with the general chatter here. (Clearly, I am not a moderator either.)" CreationDate="2022-01-27T11:46:19.810" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21192" PostId="6279" Score="9" Text="In either case we could perhaps, subject to agreement here on Meta, prepend or append a note to the question explaining the circumstances." CreationDate="2022-01-30T16:39:50.447" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21193" PostId="6279" Score="2" Text="Sometimes CMs will give Mods access to special notices. The World Building SE has a custom post notice to draw attention to the fact that some questions request answers based on hard science." CreationDate="2022-01-30T16:42:36.683" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21194" PostId="6279" Score="2" Text="That sounds useful. We'd need a post here on Meta tagged with `feature-request` to discuss it - alert CMs." CreationDate="2022-01-30T17:45:18.697" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21195" PostId="6279" Score="6" Text="+1 because I find this an important problem, but I have little idea how to solve it. The problem is strongly related to the simplisitic voting system that is based on simply acquiring a lot of votes. The voting is not a rating but only indirectly measures quality by popularity. This is not sustainable for very old questions where new answers are not gonna catch up 600 votes which has little to do with popularity or quality. Possibly the problem is not *that* big. It is maybe only a few questions with highly voted but problematic answers...." CreationDate="2022-01-30T23:05:00.317" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21202" PostId="6279" Score="0" Text="If you ask a new question which is essentially the same and answer it then surely the old one can be closed as a duplicate of the new one? Or do I not understand the rules about duplicates?" CreationDate="2022-01-31T16:02:49.650" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="21203" PostId="6279" Score="2" Text="@mdewey Well, that's a bit subtle. Some questions have answers which are essentially unchanged over time -- the answer states a proof, and math hasn't changed, so the proof is still valid. But NNs are an active area of research, so a person could argue that old answers are interesting for historical reasons, or that old answers were valid *at the time they were written*. This is one of the areas where I want to solicit feedback -- what does &quot;duplicate&quot; mean in this setting? SO faces a similar, but distinct, problem with software versioning (new software obsoletes answers)." CreationDate="2022-01-31T16:05:41.863" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21209" PostId="6279" Score="0" Text="I think making the old a duplicate of the new might be possible here, &amp; might be a good solution." CreationDate="2022-02-01T12:22:10.630" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="21278" PostId="6279" Score="0" Text="[SO's Outdated Answers Project](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/405302/13138364) seems relevant, but it's not clear if/when the resulting features will be available to the SE network at large (or if those features will even be generalizable). The announcement includes a section about how the discovery/testing efforts will be limited solely to SO for the time being." CreationDate="2022-03-26T04:53:14.040" UserId="313631" />
  <row Id="21279" PostId="6279" Score="0" Text="Currently they're A/B testing some vote-decaying functions for a [trending sort option](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/416486/13138364) that would theoretically help to surface updated answers to old questions." CreationDate="2022-03-26T04:54:27.740" UserId="313631" />
  <row Id="21204" PostId="6280" Score="5" Text="I think this brings in a related but distinct issue, which is how much credit you get for improving existing threads. Short answer is None (once your reputation is high enough to edit freely), apart from perhaps bringing badges in its wake. Implication: If you care about getting reputation for work of this kind, you should devote your efforts to asking and especially answering new questions.  I can't sense that SE cares about any of this as much as some of us do. Its business model seems to hinge on continually attracting new users." CreationDate="2022-01-31T17:12:05.067" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21199" PostId="6281" Score="0" Text="What exactly is the connection between the headline and the rest of the answer?" CreationDate="2022-01-31T10:50:35.163" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="21201" PostId="6281" Score="1" Text="@RichardHardy I should improve that headline a bit more. I wrote it down too swiftly. It relates a bit to the idea of managing the questions which already happens by generating canonical questions. An alternative is that several questions could be sort of 'bundled' by making references between them. The new question becomes the 'main' question and the older question could either be edited with a reference to the new question, or it could be even marked as a duplicate." CreationDate="2022-01-31T12:19:46.400" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21212" PostId="6286" Score="7" Text="The R code was not indented, it was highlighted with the code fence:  ```r ..... ``` construction (and some other small edits), I find this code highliting to make the posts more readable, so is preferable." CreationDate="2022-02-04T18:33:33.123" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="21213" PostId="6286" Score="6" Text="This is a clash of an old and new method.  The old method of indenting code has been superseded by preceding and following it by &quot;```&quot;.  When that is added to indented code, the indentation is rendered literally.  The best solution is to unindent the code when converting to the new style (an onerous task with long code blocks).  But generally, there is no imperative to replace the old style with the new.  cc @kjetil" CreationDate="2022-02-04T18:40:40.500" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21214" PostId="6286" Score="3" Text="@whuber: There is no imperative, yes, but I find the results of the new style (with code coloring) to be more readable. But I will fix the indenting!" CreationDate="2022-02-04T18:43:07.640" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="21215" PostId="6286" Score="1" Text="@kjetil The code gets marked up in the old style, too, if you include a suitable comment or if you include the language among the tags." CreationDate="2022-02-04T18:46:57.537" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21216" PostId="6286" Score="1" Text="Previously, I've found the new style didn't necessarily work well, but the old style did.  I sometimes edit to get proper code highlighting. Maybe it's finally been fixed." CreationDate="2022-02-05T13:37:52.573" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="21224" PostId="6286" Score="1" Text="OK, now I found the comment to include to get highlighting:    &lt;!-- language-all: lang-r --&gt;" CreationDate="2022-02-11T18:59:27.243" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="21219" PostId="6287" Score="1" Text="Not that it matters but for future reference they are backticks not backslashes." CreationDate="2022-02-06T14:00:05.400" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="21220" PostId="6287" Score="0" Text="@mdewey Ha! Typo fixed, thanks." CreationDate="2022-02-06T14:52:34.800" UserId="5503" />
  <row Id="21227" PostId="6289" Score="1" Text="I welcome encouragement to be polite and supportive. But disagreement here on CV is rarely personally directed. An OP starts a thread and may accept an answer. Yet the SE goal is to be not a helpline for individuals but a set of high quality threads, including discussion whenever there is room for different approaches. (Supposedly, Fisher defined variance as the attitude of one statistician to another.)  While we can all be irritated at whatever we think is petty or picky or worse, I don't see that as a major problem on this site. The unsurprising problem is low quality questions." CreationDate="2022-02-15T16:15:37.740" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21228" PostId="6289" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Thanks for the edit, I wanted to use the word genteel, not a common word, so I misspelt it. Yes, I agree, about poor quality questions, but, I also don't know what to do with them. For example, if a question is not incorrect but at a grade school level, like &quot;Why do we sum all the values and divide by $n$ and call that the mean?&quot; we don't have a category that says too simplistic for this site, and answering a question like that without jargon the OP cannot understand, e.g., &quot;Because the mean is a very common, but hardly universal measure of location,&quot; is problematic." CreationDate="2022-02-15T16:59:48.480" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="21229" PostId="6289" Score="1" Text="Larry Wall, the prime mover of Perl and by reputation a really nice guy, said somewhere &quot;No question is too stupid to ask, but some questions are too stupid to answer&quot;. I read that as saying: people shouldn't be too embarrassed by low level questions -- we all have them in territory strange to us -- while if you think a question is really stupid you should probably just move on and let someone else tackle it. Also true that Google first, or even do try reading a textbook, remains good advice." CreationDate="2022-02-15T17:28:44.943" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21235" PostId="6289" Score="1" Text="@NickCox What do you suggest for self-conflicted questions that are zero sum worth? I comment, but such things could be removed, and answers look like &quot;do this, don't do that.&quot; Maybe in some cases the mistakes are so common that despite that the question has some teaching value. Do we need a closure category called &quot;No didactic value&quot;?" CreationDate="2022-02-16T00:33:31.877" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="21237" PostId="6289" Score="0" Text="If that category existed, it might be used, but to me it fits most really poor questions as the main point is to be of use to others, so to teach something. Better to be more specific, I guess. We’re limited in the number of reasons for closure, and one new reason means an existing one has to go." CreationDate="2022-02-16T23:20:05.427" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21255" PostId="6289" Score="0" Text="I was going to write a similar response to the frame challenge at the start of your answer here. So thank you for that! Perhaps statistics is an area where it is just much easier to write a poorly-received question, than Sci-Fi &amp; Fantasy.SE, Physics.SE, etc. In other words: what problem?!" CreationDate="2022-03-01T19:32:13.833" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="21240" PostId="6290" Score="12" Text="&quot;Random&quot; probably should be relegated to the set of tags that are so non-specific as to be worthless, such as &quot;statistics.&quot;" CreationDate="2022-02-21T13:21:18.857" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21241" PostId="6290" Score="5" Text="At a quick glance many could have the tag deleted without loss of information and others re-tagged. I will have a go when it is clear we have a consensus. I assume then the mods can ban the tag in some magical way." CreationDate="2022-02-22T16:48:04.843" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="21242" PostId="6290" Score="2" Text="Looks like a consensus for me now!" CreationDate="2022-02-22T20:54:56.450" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="21243" PostId="6290" Score="4" Text="[Burninate and blacklist it.](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/120640/what-does-it-mean-to-burninate-a-tag)" CreationDate="2022-02-23T07:26:50.440" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="21244" PostId="6290" Score="1" Text="OK, I have started. I plan to do between 5 and 10 a day but no more than 5 at a time." CreationDate="2022-02-23T13:18:57.417" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="21245" PostId="6290" Score="0" Text="@mdewey: That's fine, I do a few also. I will look into what  proposes ..." CreationDate="2022-02-23T13:56:45.100" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="21256" PostId="6290" Score="1" Text="&quot;seems to be used for a lot of different things&quot; Wow. Almost like people ascribe meaning to it at ran— ;)" CreationDate="2022-03-01T19:33:46.133" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="21257" PostId="6290" Score="1" Text="@Alexis: That is a very precise observation!" CreationDate="2022-03-01T19:54:39.333" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="21248" PostId="6291" Score="6" Text="*Scaling* seems more generic. Maybe `[n]` &amp; `[st]` should be grouped under `[fs]`, &amp; we could even create a `[centering]` tag to be a synonym as well?  Dunno what's best here...  We probably don't need 3 tags for this, though." CreationDate="2022-02-24T14:00:30.127" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="21358" PostId="6291" Score="0" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica Is centering the same thing as scaling? I always thought scaling was a specific application of the multiplication function, but centering is a specific application of the addition function. (Leaving aside that multiplication itself is repeated addition. :) Do you have a new insight for me, gung?" CreationDate="2022-06-12T03:32:00.783" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="21359" PostId="6291" Score="1" Text="[here](https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/70555/7290) is my standard answer on the specific use of these terms, @Alexis, but I'm guessing `fs` is a *generic* term.  I think these should be grouped together somehow, but how best to do it is unclear to me.  The best superset name would probably be `linear-transformation`, but that doesn't seem like it would be a good choice for our situation." CreationDate="2022-06-12T11:47:17.257" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="22135" PostId="6291" Score="1" Text="I agree with gung -- `[normalization]` $\to$ `[feature-scaling]` and `[standardization]` $\to$ `[feature-scaling]` seems like the better solution." CreationDate="2023-06-02T20:07:08.727" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21252" PostId="6294" Score="1" Text="For that matter SO explains itself as &quot;Stack Overflow is for professional and enthusiast programmers, people who write code because they love it.&quot; but it's unclear how far that fends off many people who don't have code at all or any real idea about coding." CreationDate="2022-02-28T19:27:36.107" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21254" PostId="6294" Score="4" Text="I like that &quot;Don't migrate crap&quot;  denotes **Only migrate good stuff**, but also connotes **Be hesitant to migrate anything**. Also, thank you for this thoughtful answer: changed my mind." CreationDate="2022-03-01T19:29:17.207" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="21258" PostId="6294" Score="2" Text="Also, not all programming related topics are on-topic on SO. [Code review](https://codereview.stackexchange.com/), for example, is sometimes a better destination when the question, as the name implies, asks about how to make something that already works work better or more efficiently." CreationDate="2022-03-03T14:15:28.280" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="21259" PostId="6294" Score="1" Text="@Firebug Yes, that's what I'm trying to get at in the second &amp; third paragraphs; it's rare that a good SO question is posted to CV. The point about Code Review is a good one; I recall a while back there was a meta post somewhere where Code Review users were exhorting SO to not mention Code Review when closing questions, because the exact problem I outline here was happening for the SO $\to$ CR questions: it was closed as off-topic, someone mentioned Code Review, the asker copy/pasted the question there, and then it was closed on Code Review, also." CreationDate="2022-03-03T14:22:51.383" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21265" PostId="6294" Score="3" Text="+1 Typically, if a user doesn't undertake to make a post that's on topic here, they also won't undertake to make a post that's on topic elsewhere; there's a small level of effort required to locate the necessary information (i.e. to locate the (?) menu at the top in the menu bar or the &quot;Help&quot; link at the bottom). Many programming-related questions that are closed here would strictly be off topic on all the other SE sites." CreationDate="2022-03-09T02:22:32.607" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="21260" PostId="6295" Score="1" Text="Better get in quick as they seem to come in frequently." CreationDate="2022-03-08T14:50:28.573" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="21261" PostId="6295" Score="0" Text="There is a (modes-only?) list of new tags that I frequent, and nuke a lot! I will ask another question about a list for blacklisting ..." CreationDate="2022-03-08T15:05:26.407" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="21262" PostId="6296" Score="10" Text="+1.  I like the idea.  But 1500 might be a little severe as a threshold.  Ideally, any new tag that is applied would go through a quick voting process, expedited by an appropriate queue, so that one or two other people could lay eyes on it and screen out obvious errors and dups.  But I don't think the SE machinery supports that." CreationDate="2022-03-08T18:54:39.330" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21263" PostId="6296" Score="2" Text="@whuber: That would probably require new implementations ... but if 1500 is too high, what about 1000? (same as mathSE)?" CreationDate="2022-03-08T19:03:50.943" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="21264" PostId="6296" Score="2" Text="I can see arguments for both higher and lower than 1500.  My principal source of unease is that I wonder how much of an effect increasing the threshold would really have.  Perhaps many of the problematic tags are created by people not very familiar with English or perhaps don't type well and don't re-read their posts carefully; and none of those characteristics is going to be closely related to how much of a reputation one has." CreationDate="2022-03-08T19:14:52.387" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21266" PostId="6296" Score="8" Text="@whuber: I have been following on the new tags list, and my impression (but I did not take notes) is that most bad tags are by &lt;1000 users.  While unfamiliarity with English can be reason, I think it is mostly unfamiliarity with SE" CreationDate="2022-03-09T14:44:26.650" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="21267" PostId="6296" Score="3" Text="I think there's 2 layers of unfamiliarity with SE: generic issues about how to add a tag, their purpose, procedures for discussing/merging/deleting them, etiquette about mass (de)tagging... And a more specific issue: our forest of tags is the result of arbitrary historic decisions (which change over time, eg as we realise some have got overpopulated &amp; should be split up) &amp; it takes time to get accustomed to them. Even a seasoned statistician won't immediately know the best way to tag their questions; if they're frustrated in the meanwhile, it's easy to add a tag that's overly broad or narrow" CreationDate="2022-03-10T00:53:23.537" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="21268" PostId="6296" Score="0" Text="I've not been active with tagging for a while now, but my recollection is a sizeable proportion of the new ones are not inherently unreasonable - you could imagine another site, perhaps one of a different size, where they would work okay - but it's just &quot;not how we do things around here&quot;. Personally I think raising the limit is fine: there's quite a few reviewers who add good tags to questions, sometimes ones that the OP wouldn't have known exist. That will usually work out better than the OP just having a guess and making up their own tag unless they've got familiar with what we have already" CreationDate="2022-03-10T00:58:15.573" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="21271" PostId="6296" Score="1" Text="It would be useful to know how the distribution is for good and bad new tags as a function of reputation. At the moment this measure seems to mainly restrict the quantity and reduces the problems of 'too many' new tags (which is a problem that might need to be tackled differently, e.g create better detection systems that currate new candidates) but it is not clear how this improves the quality. Unless we believe that we do not need too many changes anymore and this measure is effectively just a way to fix the current tags" CreationDate="2022-03-18T14:59:18.393" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21269" PostId="6297" Score="7" Text="+1, I'd also add that we have a lot of tags that should already cover the vast majority of the topics that are relevant for the Q&amp;A page, so I won't hesitate in having the high threshold." CreationDate="2022-03-11T09:33:06.107" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="21325" PostId="6297" Score="4" Text="I just nuked a newly introduced tag `stat` by a sub-400 user" CreationDate="2022-04-30T14:12:03.750" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="21361" PostId="6297" Score="0" Text="@kjetilbhalvorsen How often have users tried to create that particular tag? If it's happened repeatedly, it may be worth requesting that it be blacklisted as an intrinsic tag." CreationDate="2022-06-14T16:11:02.830" UserId="148698" />
  <row Id="21280" PostId="6300" Score="2" Text="It's certainly a concern if data-sets appear to include information that might identify patients (names, health systems IDs, post-codes, names of clinics, &amp;c.). That's not the case here; &amp; there are a lot of such anonymized (or faked) health data-sets published on the web, or in papers or textbooks. Still, adding something about it to the help pages is a good idea." CreationDate="2022-03-28T08:09:46.497" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21281" PostId="6300" Score="2" Text="@Scortchi You are right! The dataset seems to be (a version of) this one: https://sahirbhatnagar.com/casebase/reference/support.html. Maybe then the OP should have referenced it in their questions. [The fact the questions weren't enhanced by including all this data remains.... but that's up to the OP.]" CreationDate="2022-03-28T08:18:38.763" UserId="237901" />
  <row Id="21282" PostId="6300" Score="2" Text="I'd guess the OP is a student, &amp; perhaps not even aware of the data's origin. The help pages do contain guidance on what to do if you've inadvertently included sensitive data in your post.&#xA;[I've thought better of my question; can I delete it?](https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/what-to-do-instead-of-deleting-question), &amp; there is guidance on Meta on what to do if you spot it in someone else's:&#xA;[What should I do if a user posts sensitive information as part of a question or answer?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/132117/225179)." CreationDate="2022-03-28T08:59:40.143" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21285" PostId="6302" Score="1" Text="There's a subtle difference between propriety and confidentiality. The former has legal protection, the latter ethical - of course, breaching confidentiality may lead to legal action, but a whistleblower reports data breaches to an ethics board." CreationDate="2022-04-06T16:53:50.730" UserId="8013" />
  <row Id="21286" PostId="6302" Score="0" Text="I agree, there's a gray area between &quot;legal&quot; and &quot;ethical&quot; - I think &quot;not legal but ethical&quot; posts and data should be deleted because it creates risk to downstream users of stack overflow (eg potential fines for GDPR violations etc), and the &quot;not ethical but legal&quot; should at least be cause for discussion if not deletion as well." CreationDate="2022-04-06T18:01:54.113" UserId="6378" />
  <row Id="21295" PostId="6303" Score="0" Text="+1 To be clear, though, HIPPA does not apply to data sets containing those variables ***if they are not collected in a health care context***. So I, epidemiologist and not clinician, can use, say, a spirometer to collect spirometric measurements giving indications for COPD in a research context, while a clinician can use the same instrument and protocol to collect the same data in a diagnostic and health care context: my data are covered by IRB and the Common Rule, but not by HIPPA, whereas the clinician's data are covered by HIPPA (and maybe IRB, depending). I am in the USA." CreationDate="2022-04-08T16:42:23.943" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="21296" PostId="6303" Score="0" Text="Also, for anyone interested, &quot;anonymity&quot; most often does not and cannot mean &quot;impossible to identify&quot; in an IRB context. Given that &gt;90% of people in the USA can be uniquely ID'ed by birth date, zip code, and sex… before even getting into variables of substantive interest. See Ohm, P. (2009). [Broken Promises of Privacy: Responding to the Surprising Failure of Anonymization](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1450006) (Legal Studies Research Paper No. 9; pp. 1–64). University of Colorado Law School." CreationDate="2022-04-08T16:46:23.573" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="21297" PostId="6304" Score="0" Text="It is interesting that our [Tour](https://stats.stackexchange.com/tour) does not suggest any criteria for upvoting." CreationDate="2022-04-13T14:01:05.897" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="21298" PostId="6304" Score="0" Text="@RichardHardy personally, I wouldn't find such criteria neither needed nor useful. It is up to every user themselves to vote how and on whatever they want." CreationDate="2022-04-13T14:03:16.763" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="21300" PostId="6304" Score="0" Text="Sure, one can think that way. But I think I remember there being some criteria previously, and now they seem to have been removed. Or am I mistaken?" CreationDate="2022-04-13T14:08:42.380" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="21323" PostId="6304" Score="0" Text="@kjetilbhalvorsen I admit that I probably should upvote questions more often than I do. However, I participate in CV and SO primarily to support my R packages, and sometimes I can tell just enough in a question to know that the person posting the question does not understand what they are doing. In such cases, I am able to answer and try to set them straight. I will try to remember to upvote reasonable questions. However, I will not upvote a question that reveals that the asker is lost at sea and doing things completely wrong. And I did not appreciate your policing me on this recently." CreationDate="2022-04-27T19:18:15.563" UserId="52554" />
  <row Id="21287" PostId="6305" Score="1" Text="Is that mico or micro?" CreationDate="2022-04-07T17:57:59.243" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21288" PostId="6305" Score="3" Text="@Nick Or maybe &quot;myco,&quot; as in a mushroom-like economy? :-)" CreationDate="2022-04-07T18:47:07.517" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21289" PostId="6305" Score="3" Text="The following search `answers:1 score:0 closed:no duplicate:no`  shows that there are (as of april 7 2022) on this site 24,467  posts with at least one answer, and 0 (net) upvotes!" CreationDate="2022-04-07T22:19:56.607" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="21294" PostId="6305" Score="5" Text="I confess every now and then I run across a question I answered, but did not upvote, and I am most often like &quot;Huh?! What was I thinking?&quot; In general I am sympathetic to your and Tim's takes." CreationDate="2022-04-08T16:36:40.590" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="21299" PostId="6305" Score="3" Text="Regarding *It especially bothers me when I see an answered question with no upvotes...*, I have a different view. I have answered a ton of questions that I think did not deserve an answer based on the quality of the question. I just felt like helping the person. Yet I cannot with good conscience upvote a question that hardly shows any effort and is riddled with typos. It is a bit like showing mercy to a criminal (for lack of a better example!) by not punishing them proportionately to how much harm they have caused. Mercy is not supposed to imply the crime was negligible." CreationDate="2022-04-13T14:04:34.270" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="21301" PostId="6305" Score="0" Text="@Richard Might I suggest improving the question -- either before or after answering it -- so that it does merit an upvote?" CreationDate="2022-04-13T15:10:54.567" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21302" PostId="6305" Score="2" Text="@whuber, I do routinely fix typos, add relevant tags and improve titles. In some cases (under 50%) this does elevate the question to a level where it could be worthy of an upvote. I have been reluctant to upvote such questions as I view voting not only as a form of evaluation of the quality of the post but also as a form of attributing credit to the author. (I do not mind other users upvoting an edited post, though.) Perhaps I have been wrong about including the latter in my consideration." CreationDate="2022-04-13T15:39:08.097" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="21303" PostId="6305" Score="3" Text="@RichardHardy I understand your feelings.  But after I answer a question, I reason there must have been *something* worthwhile to prompt that answer and so, despite any misgivings, I upvote the question.  Almost all the time I have no regrets. The (very rare) exceptions are when the point of my answer is to explain why the question doesn't work." CreationDate="2022-04-13T16:41:55.267" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21304" PostId="6305" Score="1" Text="Thank you for your thoughtful comments!" CreationDate="2022-04-13T17:22:30.680" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="21322" PostId="6305" Score="2" Text="@kjetilbhalvorsen I admit that I probably should upvote questions more often than I do. However, I participate in CV and SO primarily to support my R packages, and sometimes I can tell just enough in a question to know that the person posting the question does not understand what they are doing. In such cases, I am able to answer and try to set them straight. I will try to remember to upvote reasonable questions. However, I will not upvote a question that reveals that the asker is lost at sea and doing things completely wrong. And I did not appreciate your policing me on this recently." CreationDate="2022-04-27T19:16:10.083" UserId="52554" />
  <row Id="21678" PostId="6308" Score="1" Text="This is very unfair.  Of course people who are still learning don't know what they don't know." CreationDate="2022-12-20T20:46:11.330" UserId="340812" />
  <row Id="21684" PostId="6308" Score="3" Text="@Blaze it is very well possible to know what you don't know. This is not a logical contradiction because the meaning of the two times 'know' in the sentence are different. For instance: &quot;I know that I don't know the proof of the Riemann hypothesis&quot;." CreationDate="2022-12-21T13:41:03.240" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21690" PostId="6308" Score="1" Text="See my answer below.  For folks beginning their journey, it's best to ask them what their specific goals are rather than answer specific and potentially unhelpful questions.  This is what's done on other stackexhanges" CreationDate="2022-12-22T07:35:45.883" UserId="340812" />
  <row Id="21679" PostId="6309" Score="1" Text="These are good answers for someone who has a very specific and well defined gap in their knowledge.  I can promise you, such a person really has no need for this q/a you've self answered.  A word of advice - maybe wait for someone else to answer it.  You might learn something useful." CreationDate="2022-12-20T20:48:07.683" UserId="340812" />
  <row Id="21680" PostId="6309" Score="8" Text="My advice is to learn how this site works. But more generally, the most valuable skill you can learn is *learning how to learn*. This answer outlines a general procedure that you can follow to figure out the main areas in some unfamiliar topic. Instead of focusing on online courses about statistics and machine learning, perhaps you would find it more helpful to read about research skills and become familiar with your library." CreationDate="2022-12-20T20:52:16.313" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21681" PostId="6309" Score="0" Text="Yesterday, I read and surveyed over 30 different papers on the topic of bioinformatic and deep learning.   I am a university graduate with over 30 years of working experience.   I can assure you - I know how to learn.  What I don't know is where to get good recommendations for online courses about statistics and ML.   Now here is my advice -  rather than giving advice, I strongly recommend that you take some time off and reflect on why you are giving advice." CreationDate="2022-12-20T21:32:26.837" UserId="340812" />
  <row Id="21682" PostId="6309" Score="8" Text="&quot;What is a website that gives recommendations for online courses?&quot; is not a statistics question as described in the help center. I get it, you're mad that your question was closed, but it's a real stretch to make the act of closing a question as off-topic some kind of profound mark against my character." CreationDate="2022-12-20T21:42:40.320" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21685" PostId="6309" Score="0" Text="I don't know you, so I can't make a mark against your character.  I do know however that folks need to figure out their motivations if they really want to help.  The question wasn't for recommendations of online courses, but rather recommendations of online courses about stats and ML..  IT's very telling you purposely misinterperted my words, imho." CreationDate="2022-12-22T07:13:45.347" UserId="340812" />
  <row Id="21687" PostId="6309" Score="0" Text="As for the question being closed, it was closed because people don't know the answer.  For universities, it's easier, because there are well known resources for reviewing and picking out the best universities.  But ML / stats online courses, I don't know where to go.  It is however a profoundly important question, because these courses have the potential to be great sources of learning.  The majority are not great, but there are likely some fantastic gems out there that only experts like you could help judge." CreationDate="2022-12-22T07:22:04.720" UserId="340812" />
  <row Id="21688" PostId="6309" Score="0" Text="My guess, if I had to guess, is that you agreed with the closing because either a) you some personal bias against ml &amp; stats online courses or b) you are unfamiliar with them, or most likely both." CreationDate="2022-12-22T07:24:42.590" UserId="340812" />
  <row Id="21689" PostId="6309" Score="5" Text="Since you insist that I deliberately misinterpret your words, there does not seem to be a way for me to have a productive conversation with you &amp; I will withdraw. Indeed, it may be impossible for anyone.&#xA;&#xA;Your comment says &quot;The question wasn't for recommendations of online courses, but rather recommendations of online courses about stats and ML.&quot; But the first sentence of the question is &quot;This isn't a question for a recommendation of online courses for statistics and machine learning.&quot; How can anyone interpret your words fairly when you say one thing &amp; later insist it was the opposite?" CreationDate="2022-12-22T07:34:28.987" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21691" PostId="6309" Score="0" Text="It wasn't a question for a recommendation of online stats courses!  It was a question about where/how I should go about getting recommendations&#xA;&#xA;It's unfortunate you simply can't just admit you were wrong, at least in part.  I can start though, I realize now that I should have explained what my goals were and that might have avoided all the drama here." CreationDate="2022-12-22T07:40:35.717" UserId="340812" />
  <row Id="21692" PostId="6309" Score="0" Text="The reason I got frustrated was I saw so many questions being closed as duplicate with pointers to deeply obsolete and outdated answers.  Maybe if someone provided an updated answer on the original question before closing the dupe, that would have been less frustrating to see." CreationDate="2022-12-22T07:49:06.330" UserId="340812" />
  <row Id="21693" PostId="6309" Score="1" Text="https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/599477/best-way-place-to-get-online-course-recommendations-for-statistics-and-machine#comment1110831_599477" CreationDate="2022-12-22T07:52:47.413" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21702" PostId="6309" Score="8" Text="It is best not to prolong this unhappy exchange, except by underlining that it is perfectly standard practice for people to accept their own answers." CreationDate="2022-12-22T14:54:05.547" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21306" PostId="6310" Score="3" Text="I am trying to reproduce this behavior, but to no avail.  I was able to fix the bad link at https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/571910/919.  Could you provide a little more detail about how these links are being changed?  What exactly is happening?" CreationDate="2022-04-17T19:01:24.350" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21307" PostId="6310" Score="0" Text="Regular links like https://hbiostat.org/rms or https://fharrell.com/post/... are being changed to https://fharrell.com/p/blog-page.html and I'm fairly certain there was nothing I did to make that happen.  That's because my google analytics don't show hits on /p/blog-page.html until very recently." CreationDate="2022-04-17T19:52:58.957" UserId="4253" />
  <row Id="21308" PostId="6310" Score="2" Text="I get that, but what do you actually observe?  For instance, does the change happen when you post something, or does it occur quietly over time to existing posts?  Does it happen right when you type or paste a link into a post?" CreationDate="2022-04-17T20:43:24.150" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21309" PostId="6310" Score="1" Text="IIRC any kind of automated link correction subsequent to posting ought to show up in the post history as an edit by the 'Community' user, &amp; I haven't found any of those." CreationDate="2022-04-18T08:12:40.667" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21310" PostId="6310" Score="0" Text="Sorry @whuber - the change is made weeks after the post was made in some cases without me editing the post." CreationDate="2022-04-18T11:10:53.933" UserId="4253" />
  <row Id="21311" PostId="6310" Score="0" Text="I notice [all the ones that remain were posted in 2017](https://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=www.fharrell.com%2Fp%2Fblog-page.html).  This makes me wonder whether something happened in that year alone that you have just discovered.  Are you aware of any other flawed URLs besides those?" CreationDate="2022-04-18T13:44:56.963" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21312" PostId="6310" Score="1" Text="I don't know of any other flawed URLs.  The first attempted access to blog-page.html was Jan. 8, 2018.  If the number of replaced URLs doesn't grow I can go back and edit the 8 or so occurrences." CreationDate="2022-04-18T14:33:05.720" UserId="4253" />
  <row Id="21313" PostId="6311" Score="1" Text="Thanks for the exceptional investigation.  I can only guess that when I copy and paste from the browser addressbar that some kind of extraneous URL pieces were brought in by my system.  I'll hand edit all the occurences and I added a reply to that tweet with the correct address." CreationDate="2022-04-19T16:57:28.973" UserId="4253" />
  <row Id="21314" PostId="6311" Score="1" Text="@FrankHarrell there are also 12 comments (aside from the answers). You can see them in this image: https://i.stack.imgur.com/jT4rM.png You can obtain them with a query on this page https://data.stackexchange.com/stats/revision/1581447/87442/search-your-comments (I can't copy paste the links from the CSV file because my phone does not read CSV files)." CreationDate="2022-04-19T17:12:40.537" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21315" PostId="6311" Score="1" Text="On twitter it is more than just that single example. See my recent update of the answer." CreationDate="2022-04-19T17:18:20.960" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21316" PostId="6311" Score="2" Text="If you have the capabilities on your webserver or if your host allows it, you might be able the redirect the traffic to a different webpage instead of the standard 'page not found'. This would require access to the [rewrite engine](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rewrite_engine). A simpler solution would be to manually create a page on the physical address and have the redirecting done by using JavaScript or by making a custom-made 'page not found' page." CreationDate="2022-04-19T17:27:02.087" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21319" PostId="6311" Score="2" Text="+1 for &quot;I don't have a twitter account&quot;.  I'm not on twitter &amp; I'm perfectly content with that state of affairs.  I often read about other people tearing their hair out about some nonsense on twitter." CreationDate="2022-04-20T11:13:44.433" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="21320" PostId="6311" Score="1" Text="Thanks for the super help @SextusEmpiricus - I made all the corrections manually.  To bad you can't edit comments; I just added additional comments." CreationDate="2022-04-20T16:27:32.883" UserId="4253" />
  <row Id="21338" PostId="6314" Score="7" Text="I am not gonna give a full answer but just leave a comment. I believe that in statistics it may also play a role that it is not always possible to give a conclusive answer but people still want to provide comments. After all, how many statisticians does it require to change a light bulb? It's many." CreationDate="2022-05-13T14:32:48.553" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21340" PostId="6314" Score="5" Text="@Sextus I thought the answer to that joke was &quot;it depends.&quot; ;-)" CreationDate="2022-05-17T17:39:07.590" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21342" PostId="6314" Score="1" Text="@whuber, I thought the answer was 3, one to change the light bulb and two to comment on it. But sure, statisticians might criticise this number. Anyways, it is more than one." CreationDate="2022-05-17T19:05:04.070" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21343" PostId="6314" Score="3" Text="@Sextus Be quantitative!  One answer is $2.32 \pm 0.59.$" CreationDate="2022-05-17T19:19:49.147" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21344" PostId="6314" Score="0" Text="*&quot;Anyways, it is more than one&quot;* Actually, a statistician might approximate it with a normal curve and state something like $1.32 \pm 0.59$, including less than one." CreationDate="2022-05-17T19:55:26.747" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21339" PostId="6315" Score="2" Text="Sometimes answers are converted into comments when the answers are not substantial enough. So there is some basis for a need to use the commenting feature instead of the answer field. (I would agree if one would counter with an argument that often these conversions are made when the answer field is abbused by somebody to place a comment, but at least sometimes these conversions occur because some answer is considered as not enough answer)." CreationDate="2022-05-13T14:59:29.367" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21341" PostId="6315" Score="4" Text="I occasionally convert poor answers to comments to protect the respondent from suffering from too much downvoting ;-).  The moral of this is that even when you post an answer in the form of a hint, you ought to be sure it's a well-founded one!" CreationDate="2022-05-17T17:41:58.370" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21336" PostId="6316" Score="4" Text="This. I often leave comments when I don't have a full answer for reasons like those mentioned, or I guess that someone  knowing much more on the topic will answer. If the best approximation to an answer lies in someone's comments, then it's encouraging to ask (or be asked) to write up those comments as an answer. My main experience outside CV is on SO, where comments are often viewed dimly. A good reason for that is that good answers with code should be possible on SO, or else it's a bad question. Here on CV, a large fraction of questions are hard to answer without more on data, goals, etc." CreationDate="2022-05-13T10:07:34.640" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21337" PostId="6316" Score="2" Text="(ctd) -- so comments are needed to encourage more detail or focus. Occasionally the discussion in comments is as or even more interesting than any answer...." CreationDate="2022-05-13T11:36:39.733" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21345" PostId="6317" Score="2" Text="Homework-type questions needn't of course be homework (in fact we tag them with ['self-study'](https://stats.stackexchange.com/tags/self-study/info)). But they are all *exercises*; homework or not, the point's to practise by completing them rather than to obtain the solution. When a student's stuck the best help's the least needed to enable them to complete the exercise for themself." CreationDate="2022-05-21T12:14:49.003" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21346" PostId="6317" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi-ReinstateMonica disagreed. homework-type questions&quot; may very well appear outside a classroom, so the hints will waste my time when I run into the same issue. Also, some students like myself learn faster with full answers." CreationDate="2022-05-21T12:24:01.097" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="21347" PostId="6317" Score="0" Text="Our policy does allow for providing fuller solutions when appropriate: &quot;In the spirit of creating a resource, you may come back after a suitable amount of time and edit your response to include more details, if the question seems like such information will have lasting value.&quot; In most cases, though, it would be pointless - &amp; tedious." CreationDate="2022-05-21T19:35:06.290" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21348" PostId="6317" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi-ReinstateMonica thanks, I vote to amend it to &quot;you may write the entire answer&quot;. The &quot;after a suitable amount of time&quot; is what I dislike as a student: not my learning style, as if I wait then I'll likely forget my chain of thoughts and why I got stuck. Also answers shouldn't be written with the OP in mind, but any reader." CreationDate="2022-05-22T00:28:32.743" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="21349" PostId="6317" Score="0" Text="Your chain of thoughts &amp; why you got stuck ought to be documented in the question. The suggested delay here is so as not to facilitate students' cribbing." CreationDate="2022-05-22T07:18:19.087" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21351" PostId="6319" Score="6" Text="Far from being nonsensical, that construction is a polite way of letting the author know that we are aware of their repeated posts on the same topic.  BTW, you can see that comment appear immediately after you vote to close and, at any time, you have the option to delete it.  (I have often done this after my own votes.)  I realize that's an imperfect solution, but it works." CreationDate="2022-05-25T14:22:32.970" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21350" PostId="6320" Score="1" Text="Thank you for the quick answer. That explains why I did find nothing in the CV help pages." CreationDate="2022-05-25T14:13:08.470" UserId="295673" />
  <row Id="21354" PostId="6332" Score="4" Text="If any question counts as yours and has no upvoted answer, you should be able to delete it yourself." CreationDate="2022-06-03T09:54:38.817" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21355" PostId="6332" Score="0" Text="@NickCox . I don't understand, the post is locked, I can't delete it" CreationDate="2022-06-03T10:17:57.460" UserDisplayName="user226073" />
  <row Id="21356" PostId="6332" Score="0" Text="OK, so you need more help and should get it here in Meta" CreationDate="2022-06-03T11:31:06.103" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21357" PostId="6332" Score="0" Text="@NickCox I have contacted Meta and it seems they can't do nothing about the deleting or removing of my post." CreationDate="2022-06-03T19:47:22.970" UserDisplayName="user226073" />
  <row Id="21360" PostId="6336" Score="2" Text="I hope small edits do not distort your intended meaning." CreationDate="2022-06-12T15:12:11.297" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21362" PostId="6336" Score="7" Text="It seems to me the title does not match the body quite well. The title is very catchy and that is OK, but it should better be reflective of the content first." CreationDate="2022-06-16T20:14:41.710" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="21367" PostId="6336" Score="0" Text="Whether or not this platform is losing significance, depends on which model you use." CreationDate="2022-06-23T14:51:32.943" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21384" PostId="6336" Score="0" Text="I find people at CV far less unpleasant than math.se" CreationDate="2022-07-09T01:35:51.040" UserId="2958" />
  <row Id="21457" PostId="6338" Score="2" Text="This should be disseminated in megaphone: __SE is not a forum__ and, imo, that differentiates it from others in the internet. That's a blessing. No nonsense Q&amp;A site. +1 for the concise articulation." CreationDate="2022-08-25T19:37:09.770" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21363" PostId="6339" Score="1" Text="Thanks for taking care of this, Catija! Just to be completely clear, what amount of reputation is required to create a new tag?" CreationDate="2022-06-17T00:23:54.117" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21364" PostId="6339" Score="0" Text="Wait, you can't read between the lines and know what I was thinking??? Hahaha. It's 1000." CreationDate="2022-06-17T00:36:28.200" UserId="202450" />
  <row Id="21366" PostId="6340" Score="5" Text="Can you be more precise than &quot;unpleasant&quot;? I guess that new users finding a question closed quickly or never answered would be disappointed or upset by that. I've seen new users fling insults at moderators. I've never seen anyone or any question called ignorant or stupid by an experienced user, for example, although I suspect that such comments would be deleted rapidly. (I can of course think of worse insults that are just routine on many sites.)  Also, what is implicit that should be explicit? I just looked through the Help Center which is very detailed about expectations." CreationDate="2022-06-17T17:41:40.760" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21370" PostId="6342" Score="3" Text="Ah, thanks. Someone was *quick* in the review queue." CreationDate="2022-06-27T21:15:32.613" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="21371" PostId="6343" Score="4" Text="We see comments about the *inadvisability* or *potential unforeseen or bad consequences* of proposed procedures all the time.  However, comments that cross the line over to insinuations or accusations of ethical impropriety would generate the same kinds of reactions here as they did on the *Mathematica* site." CreationDate="2022-06-29T19:17:17.987" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21373" PostId="6343" Score="2" Text="@whuber It was not the removal of outliers but rather the erasing of inconvenient data points from a display created with those outliers.  That &quot;defacing&quot; of the original graphic caused me to make the comment about data tampering." CreationDate="2022-06-29T20:02:59.010" UserId="79698" />
  <row Id="21375" PostId="6343" Score="5" Text="The pushback appears to be not against the message (which is correct and needed to be articulated) but against the way in which it seemed to accuse the OP of intending something nefarious.  One way to get your message across would be to ask it as a question rather than employing the imperative, categorical &quot;don't do it.&quot; For instance, &quot;Because one point of the boxplot is to *highlight* such 'outlying' data and their automatic removal could be misinterpreted, maybe there are other options. Could you explain what you hope this will accomplish?&quot;" CreationDate="2022-06-29T20:26:26.753" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21376" PostId="6343" Score="2" Text="@whuber Good point.  I still have a ways to go on my diplomacy skills." CreationDate="2022-06-29T20:42:35.707" UserId="79698" />
  <row Id="21372" PostId="6344" Score="2" Text="I see that I wasn't very clear with my objections about the Mathematica SE question.  My objection was not about outlier removal but that a standard graphical display was going to be modified to erase the outliers.  Had the outliers been removed and then a new box-and-whisker plot created with the remaining data, that would not warrant my response.  It was the erasing of the inconvenient data points from the original display which is what the OP was asking for." CreationDate="2022-06-29T19:59:56.883" UserId="79698" />
  <row Id="21374" PostId="6344" Score="1" Text="The question's perhaps ambiguous, but I'd say the same thing anyway. (Plotting individual outliers isn't *so* standard - the `boxplot` function in R has an argument controlling whether they're plotted or not, &amp; I often see boxplots in which they're not, especially for large data-sets. There's certainly no sin when you're clear about what you're showing, as the comments on the post you link to also state.)" CreationDate="2022-06-29T20:22:55.893" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21377" PostId="6345" Score="1" Text="Thanks for asking.  This is on the edge.  I, for one, would view it as appropriate for our site assuming the function really is related to stats or machine learning." CreationDate="2022-07-04T14:47:21.187" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21378" PostId="6345" Score="0" Text="@whuber It is indeed related to stats as it is calculating chi2." CreationDate="2022-07-04T14:49:38.283" UserDisplayName="user69189" />
  <row Id="21379" PostId="6345" Score="6" Text="It wouldn't hurt to post your question.  At worst it might collect a few downvotes (depending on the mood of the readers on any particular day...) and get closed, but even then you're likely to get some helpful comments." CreationDate="2022-07-04T14:54:14.337" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21380" PostId="6345" Score="0" Text="@whuber I posted my question and I deleted. One of the users comments here (Josef) pointed me in the right direction. The getchi2 method that I have corresponds to scipy.stats.ppf. I upvoted his answer and his comment. Do I need to undelete my question as I think it was of poor quality ?" CreationDate="2022-07-05T11:09:20.593" UserDisplayName="user69189" />
  <row Id="21381" PostId="6345" Score="4" Text="Asking for code is generally off topic here.  Your question seems like it was borderline.  If you got what you need, I think leaving it deleted is fine." CreationDate="2022-07-05T11:15:22.130" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="21383" PostId="6346" Score="1" Text="I agree the distinction is not large enough to merit two tags." CreationDate="2022-07-09T00:35:22.910" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="21385" PostId="6346" Score="1" Text="It's worth noting that these have different meanings between statistics &amp; econometrics." CreationDate="2022-07-11T17:38:24.243" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="21386" PostId="6346" Score="3" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica That's interesting - the distinction is not evident in the tag info. If the distinct econometrics definition is sufficient reason to retain both tags, it may be worth a tag edit to clarify." CreationDate="2022-07-11T18:01:27.687" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="21388" PostId="6348" Score="1" Text="`ss` vs `ht` has been discussed before. I see a subtle distinction, but that doesn't mean they will be used well by typical askers. `pv` -&gt; `ss` may be a viable merge." CreationDate="2022-07-15T13:57:39.970" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="21389" PostId="6348" Score="0" Text="I'm not sure here ... why is p-values more related to statistical significance than to hypothesis testing? By the way, p-values have their own existence, now, without regard to where they come from ... and some uses of p-values can be seen as descriptive." CreationDate="2022-07-19T17:12:24.873" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="21390" PostId="6348" Score="1" Text="@kjetilbhalvorsen To your first point, Bayesian hypothesis testing exists although I doubt it appears often in questions with that tag. And as for the second, I'd be curious to see if that is a common view. I would have thought statistical significance and p-values would be hard to divorce from each other. To me, they seem much closer to each other than to hypothesis testing (which could itself be made a synonym quite reasonably, I think)." CreationDate="2022-07-19T17:29:44.097" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="21391" PostId="6348" Score="1" Text="All reasonable comments, I will think more about this and come back later ... we could also compare posts under the tags and see if there is much sign of difference in use ..." CreationDate="2022-07-19T17:33:06.403" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="21392" PostId="6349" Score="3" Text="It is possible to close a question as a duplicate of not 1, but up to 5 other questions.  It might be worth starting to close existing questions as dups of the top set.  That will elevate them further.  Then we start closing new Qs as dups." CreationDate="2022-07-21T11:14:05.277" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="21393" PostId="6349" Score="2" Text="A place to start would be to identify one (or a handful) of canonical threads and tag them with [tag:faq].  That enables a quick search whenever you encounter a similar post, streamlining the process of identifying a duplicate and closing the new thread." CreationDate="2022-07-21T13:35:46.223" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21394" PostId="6349" Score="0" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica: I think that would be a great way forward. Can only moderators close as a multi-dupe? Or how do mere mortals do that?" CreationDate="2022-07-21T17:22:18.487" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="21395" PostId="6349" Score="1" Text="@whuber: great idea. I concur with mkt that the four threads above would be a great place to start. I started adding the FAQ tag to all four, they already all carry the unbalanced-classes one. Question: the &quot;FAQ&quot; tag says it it applied by mods, but I could add it just fine. Should I have been prevented from doing so? If not, perhaps we could revisit the tag excerpt." CreationDate="2022-07-21T17:26:06.307" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="21396" PostId="6349" Score="3" Text="@StephanKolassa, mere mortals can only close a thread as a dup of 1 other thread.  After that, you can leave a comment with links to other dups, &amp;/or you can flag for mods to add the others." CreationDate="2022-07-21T17:33:25.977" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="21397" PostId="6349" Score="1" Text="We cannot enforce the applied-only-by-mods rule.  The intention is to be sparing in our application of the [tag:faq] tag and to monitor it to avoid abuses (such as someone applying it to their own threads or their favorite threads)." CreationDate="2022-07-21T18:02:38.740" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21399" PostId="6349" Score="1" Text="whuber notes that multi-dupe closing is a lot of work for the mods, and proposes to use a single dupe target, where we link to the others. I would suggest we use [When is unbalanced data really a problem in Machine Learning?](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/283170/) as a canonical dupe, and edit links to the other threads into that question, at the very top. Thoughts, anyone?" CreationDate="2022-07-21T19:17:15.283" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="21401" PostId="6349" Score="0" Text="@StephanKolassa Part of my concern was that no single question seems to have answers that address the topic comprehensively, so the information is diffused. My hope was that those of you who understood the topic better could identify threads that could be merged so that all bases were covered (and then we could designate it canonical). If that's not feasible, I agree with your suggestion." CreationDate="2022-07-22T09:12:30.690" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="21402" PostId="6349" Score="1" Text="@mkt: I see your point. I think that this would be very hard, simply because there are so many variations of the &quot;problem&quot;. Some come from using accuracy as a KPI, some don't mention their KPI at all and treat imbalance as a *prima facie* problem without explaining why it isn't. The, ahem, lack of statistical sophistication does not help, either (&quot;but I'm using precision, not accuracy, so [this](https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/312780/1352) is not a duplicate!&quot;) I think a comprehensive treatment would be more of a journal paper than a useful CV thread. ..." CreationDate="2022-07-22T09:41:28.637" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="21403" PostId="6349" Score="5" Text="... Does anyone want to write a paper for *The American Statistician* or *Chance*, so we can petition SO to be able to close as duplicates of a journal paper?" CreationDate="2022-07-22T09:42:07.550" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="21404" PostId="6349" Score="1" Text="@StephanKolassa Alright, then I agree with your suggested target for a canonical thread, though perhaps we can ask Tim to broaden it a little to include statistics in the title." CreationDate="2022-07-22T12:42:43.107" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="21405" PostId="6349" Score="1" Text="@StephanKolassa I think you are too modest. Your effort to which the OP links approvingly seems to me a good target." CreationDate="2022-07-22T13:07:00.127" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="21426" PostId="6349" Score="0" Text="I just saw [this](https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/316114/247274) answer for the first time, and I didn't see it referenced anywhere in here. // @StephanKolassa It's awfully tempting to write something for *The American Statistician*..." CreationDate="2022-08-11T05:15:03.217" UserId="247274" />
  <row Id="21486" PostId="6349" Score="1" Text="[And it’s even coming up on the economics Stack…](https://economics.stackexchange.com/q/52528/32979)" CreationDate="2022-09-13T03:07:12.380" UserId="247274" />
  <row Id="21565" PostId="6349" Score="0" Text="These questions are accumulating a large number of Linked Questions, so that the ones displayed in the right pane are subsetted.  It would be really nice if the ones selected for display were customizable (sorted by votes e.g.).  Barring that SE team solution, I'd suggest cross-referencing them prominently in each question (or maybe linking here?)." CreationDate="2022-10-01T16:09:06.727" UserId="232706" />
  <row Id="21824" PostId="6349" Score="0" Text="[This](https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/603663/247274) seems like a useful link, and the [Wynants article](https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-019-1425-3) seems to cover the high points about predicting probabilities rather than categories. While that is not explicitly about imbalanced classes, predicting probabilities rather than classes tends to come up in that context." CreationDate="2023-01-30T18:22:50.193" UserId="247274" />
  <row Id="21421" PostId="6353" Score="0" Text="To be clear, this option means that _new_ questions would be closed as duplicate of _one of_ the four (or possibly another), depending on nuances between them as perceived by the close-voters?" CreationDate="2022-08-03T17:59:42.410" UserId="232706" />
  <row Id="21422" PostId="6353" Score="0" Text="@BenReiniger That's probably the best-case scenario, yes." CreationDate="2022-08-03T18:17:12.613" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="21406" PostId="6357" Score="2" Text="This has some appeal, but I'm not sure how possible it is to collapse all the nuances into any 1 of those Qs." CreationDate="2022-07-25T21:20:00.720" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="21407" PostId="6357" Score="0" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica Yes, I am coming around to this view. 3 of the 4 questions I mention cover very similar ground (except for the one about logistic regression) but the difference in framing and detail are quite useful." CreationDate="2022-07-26T05:23:53.297" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="21408" PostId="6359" Score="1" Text="I am not aware of any method to destroy a tag wholesale, but it is possible to create synonyms (which preserves the tag but links everything to a different tag and tag wiki) and to merge tags (which destroys the tag, replacing it with the target)." CreationDate="2022-07-30T15:12:48.857" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21409" PostId="6359" Score="1" Text="comparison is akin to [tag:hypothesis-testing], and that is the tag with which it co-occurs most frequently. So we could first remove it from posts having notthing to do woth h-t, and then declare synonym?" CreationDate="2022-07-30T18:36:42.537" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="21410" PostId="6359" Score="1" Text="@kjetilbhalvorsen Sounds good to me. I would be happy to help with that." CreationDate="2022-07-30T18:40:29.050" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="21411" PostId="6359" Score="1" Text="@mkt:  But let us wait a bit and see if others chime in." CreationDate="2022-07-30T21:50:50.717" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="21412" PostId="6359" Score="1" Text="@whuber, there's 1 more step: after the merge has completed, you need to delete the mapping.  Then the tag is completely gone.  I used to do it every so often." CreationDate="2022-07-31T11:38:31.400" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="21413" PostId="6359" Score="1" Text="@gung I'm not sure that deleting the mapping is what we want.  By retaining it, we have a system that handles future attempts to apply the deprecated tag.  Re [tag:hypothesis-testing]: that's such a specific form of &quot;comparison&quot; that I would hesitate and do more research before replacing one by the other." CreationDate="2022-07-31T12:21:14.440" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21414" PostId="6359" Score="2" Text="@kjetilbhalvorsen I have not looked at the tagged questions but I think comparison is potentially broader than h-t. For instance: distance measures, correlation, ... I agree those are extended uses of comparison but we are, perhaps, not typical users." CreationDate="2022-07-31T12:33:10.753" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="21415" PostId="6359" Score="1" Text="@whuber, if that's what you want, but it isn't really &quot;deleting&quot; the tag.  I agree w/ mdewey that comparison is not really the same as `h-t`, &amp; w/ mkt that it's mostly pretty useless here--almost like the proverbial 'statistics' tag. I would just get rid of it." CreationDate="2022-07-31T17:43:20.757" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="21416" PostId="6359" Score="1" Text="@gung The problem (I believe) with a full deletion is that it does not prevent someone from recreating the tag any time.  It's always difficult to determine what might happen on this site because often there is no reliable harmless way to test an operation beforehand." CreationDate="2022-08-01T11:58:47.377" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21417" PostId="6359" Score="0" Text="My experience is that irrelevant tags do little harm. But I've often edited out a useless tag e.g. `mathematical-statistics` on things that really don't deserve or benefit from the invocation. I would see `comparison` as just as useless. (As another example, it's often argued that statistical graphics is about comparison, even if the comparison is by implication.)" CreationDate="2022-08-01T12:04:20.523" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21418" PostId="6359" Score="1" Text="@whuber, that's true.  There is no guarantee that it won't be created again.  FWIW, the tag wasn't created until 2018--I'm just less concerned about that." CreationDate="2022-08-01T13:45:59.387" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="21419" PostId="6359" Score="1" Text="@Nick I have come to see [tag:mathematical-statistics] as being informative: either it is obviously applicable or it indicates the OP is paying no attention at all.  The latter posts tend to be poor ones ;-)." CreationDate="2022-08-01T16:30:10.783" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21420" PostId="6359" Score="0" Text="@whuber I agree that many posts with that tag are poor." CreationDate="2022-08-01T16:41:49.423" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21435" PostId="6359" Score="0" Text="@kjetilbhalvorsen Checking in about this - how would you like to proceed? Not an urgent issue, but I can help with editing out the tag from most (maybe all?) questions, if that's the best way forward." CreationDate="2022-08-16T19:55:42.553" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="21440" PostId="6359" Score="1" Text="@mkt: I think the best way is to start removing the tag completely, but in each case see if some other tags should replace it. I will try to write an answer tomorrow." CreationDate="2022-08-20T02:54:31.767" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="21441" PostId="6359" Score="0" Text="@kjetilbhalvorsen Thanks, I've started doing so. So far, [tag:model-selection] often seems to be a good replacement. But many don't need any additional tags." CreationDate="2022-08-20T18:34:02.160" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="21492" PostId="6359" Score="0" Text="Just a note that &quot;comparison&quot; also brings to mind **measures of contrast**, such as relative risks, risk differences, odds ratios, etc. irrespective of any kind of inference, including hypothesis tests, about the measures of contrast." CreationDate="2022-09-16T15:29:29.417" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="21423" PostId="6360" Score="5" Text="I share your concerns about statistics and data science. I am routinely gobsmacked by some ideas that hard, complicated problems such as cleaning data,  detecting outliers and identifying fraud can all be made routine just by some code that a programmer can write. But so far as I am concerned this is like an advertisement that I can ignore and abstractly I approve of others being able to think differently. Stack Exchange is really odd, even though experienced users are used to the oddness. Members write most of the content for free but the framework needs money to support it!" CreationDate="2022-08-04T08:49:23.250" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21431" PostId="6360" Score="0" Text="@NickCox A free software not-for-profit version of Stack Exchange without all the poor decision making of Stack Exchange Inc I believe is possible. See Wikipedia and other mass collaborative works like ArchWiki." CreationDate="2022-08-13T00:34:33.833" UserId="140662" />
  <row Id="21432" PostId="6360" Score="0" Text="@qwr You may be right. As said, the fact that there is a company behind this doesn't affect how I contribute here. . I'd want to see any alternative running successfully for some time before I contributed. I remember a Wiki type proposal for software documentation: discussions were mostly about what work other people needed to do. Then a newbie piped up, &quot;I am just learning X, so I could write a few articles&quot; and this was encouraged. I lost interest in a proposal that was doomed. Nothing ever happened. Still, one anecdote is no kind of analysis." CreationDate="2022-08-13T00:50:34.370" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21434" PostId="6361" Score="3" Text="If you agreed with @dipetkov, it would be better to delete this suggestion, &amp; then add another.  It's better not to change the suggestion entirely." CreationDate="2022-08-14T06:54:34.480" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="21424" PostId="6362" Score="5" Text="Tags are created by users, I think. If nobody's seen fit to tag their question with that, it won't exist. As for a wikipedia tag, I don't think it would serve much purpose - why do we need to group questions that refer to wikipedia? It would be like having a google tag, too generic to be useful." CreationDate="2022-08-05T09:07:13.743" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="21436" PostId="6365" Score="5" Text="Math pages rather an exception, than the rule in the SE ecosystem, aren't they? Engineering, Physics, Biology, Economy, etc sites don't have sister sites." CreationDate="2022-08-17T13:25:32.047" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="21437" PostId="6365" Score="0" Text="Hi, @Tim! That's a good point. I wonder if math is also an exception in terms of having more users who engage in modern research." CreationDate="2022-08-17T22:12:05.620" UserId="365540" />
  <row Id="21439" PostId="6365" Score="4" Text="There are some questions (many unanswered!) here that are exceedingly technical." CreationDate="2022-08-19T13:31:31.720" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="21452" PostId="6365" Score="0" Text="Related: https://physics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9822/how-did-mathematics-end-up-with-two-stack-exchange-sites-while-physics-only-got mathoverflow was created before math stackexchange" CreationDate="2022-08-25T04:25:29.873" UserId="140662" />
  <row Id="21460" PostId="6365" Score="0" Text="There's only one other site pair in the network separating research-level Q&amp;A from the rest: [cstheory.se] and [cs.se]. Though [networkengineering.se] may be another exception, but it doesn't really have an 'amateur' counterpoint; [su] covers more than just networks." CreationDate="2022-08-27T19:56:13.253" UserId="79696" />
  <row Id="21453" PostId="6367" Score="0" Text="I also think Data Science could plausibly be merged into Stats and maybe AI be merged into CS. But we are at the whims of what Stack Exchange Inc wants." CreationDate="2022-08-25T04:27:41.697" UserId="140662" />
  <row Id="21461" PostId="6368" Score="0" Text="The only problem I see with this is that it is now cross-posted on two SE sites, which is discouraged and usually leads to one of the posts being closed. From the help: &quot;*Please note, however, that cross-posting is not encouraged on SE sites. Choose one best location to post your question. Later, if it proves better suited on another site, it can be migrated.*&quot;" CreationDate="2022-08-27T21:26:01.723" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="21438" PostId="6369" Score="3" Text="[Question asked](https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/585954/365786)." CreationDate="2022-08-19T03:45:55.160" UserDisplayName="user365786" />
  <row Id="21443" PostId="6370" Score="1" Text="Done, thanks. You can now merge+delete the mapping as gung suggested, if you feel that's appropriate. It sounds worthwhile to me, to avoid having to revisit this every so often." CreationDate="2022-08-21T15:44:38.353" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="21444" PostId="6372" Score="1" Text="(+1) I recently created `pre-post-comparison` because, as you note, there are several closely related topics (with quite a few threads) that are not covered by the much more specific `change-scores`." CreationDate="2022-08-21T17:51:37.890" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="21445" PostId="6372" Score="0" Text="I've come across questions under the `mixed-model` tag that might be appropriately tagged with `pre-post-comparison` too. But the terms &quot;pre-post&quot; (and variants) don't appear in the body of the question because the OP didn't think about it: [1](https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/585780/237901). And here is a simply `regression` example: [2](https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/572725/237901). It maybe challenging to apply the `pre-post-comparison` consistently? Or perhaps I misunderstand its application?" CreationDate="2022-08-21T18:40:05.787" UserId="237901" />
  <row Id="21446" PostId="6372" Score="4" Text="@dipetkov I frequently add relevant tags that the OP missed or is unaware of (often because they're unaware of the terminology). I also leave a comment suggesting that they look at the top questions in the tag if it's a question that is likely to have been addressed previously." CreationDate="2022-08-21T19:42:55.857" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="21447" PostId="6372" Score="2" Text="To my mind, *change scores* &amp; *pre-post comparisons* are (at least subtly) different things." CreationDate="2022-08-21T20:17:42.347" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="21448" PostId="6372" Score="1" Text="@gung: They are certainly subtly different, I see that change-scores is a subset of pre-post-, and for a long time that tag has been used that way. See its tag wiki" CreationDate="2022-08-21T21:21:25.240" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="21605" PostId="6372" Score="1" Text="@gung: I still thinks that for the purpose of organizing posts here, it is better to synonimize. What do you think?" CreationDate="2022-10-31T01:17:33.153" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="21607" PostId="6372" Score="0" Text="@kjetilbhalvorsen, to me they are at least subtly different.  However, I didn't downvote this suggestion or give a firm thumbs-down.  So if others are going for it, I'm not stopping it." CreationDate="2022-10-31T13:46:29.573" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="21449" PostId="6373" Score="0" Text="I'm not sure this topic belongs as an *answer* to this thread.  I would delete this and ask a new question about the issue.  Let people discuss what is / should be the canonical thread for the topic." CreationDate="2022-08-24T11:27:23.053" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="21450" PostId="6373" Score="0" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica I agree it's somewhat different from the rest. I posted this at whuber's suggestion: https://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/61847310#61847310 . I could remove the dupe target suggestion if that's out of line." CreationDate="2022-08-24T11:29:16.340" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="21451" PostId="6373" Score="0" Text="Hmm, I hadn't noticed that it was a suggestion to answer here. I thought it was a suggestion to post the issue to [meta.stats.SE], like @Sycorax did [here](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5519/do-we-need-a-canonical-thread-about-stock-trading-what-would-it-address?r=SearchResults&amp;s=1%7C18.4474)." CreationDate="2022-08-24T14:04:59.480" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="22130" PostId="6373" Score="0" Text="Cultures differ. In dealing with some kinds of economic data, it seems routine to Winsorize heavily before the main analysis. Then there are follow-up questions (seen by me in other places) e.g. Should I Winsorize before transformation or after? Do I need to Winsorize all my variables or just those with outliers? I often challenge people to cite a textbook or authoritative review explaining why such Winsorizing is  a good idea, and have yet to receive any reference by way of  reply.  Winsorizing to get a Winsorized mean or variance I get, but not this as a good route to a robust model.." CreationDate="2023-05-19T08:04:38.300" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21458" PostId="6374" Score="1" Text="I edited to make the tags clickable!" CreationDate="2022-08-27T04:22:26.527" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="21463" PostId="6375" Score="8" Text="&quot;Relevant journals have decent impact factors, and I assume that this field has resolved any issues that we perceive as problematic.&quot; Judging from my limited experience in two unrelated fields (psychology and forecasting), I would say this is a *heroic* assumption." CreationDate="2022-08-29T09:10:03.900" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="21479" PostId="6375" Score="2" Text="@E.Moore did you ask the question now? I am curious." CreationDate="2022-09-07T14:34:22.527" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21462" PostId="6377" Score="3" Text="Done! I've retagged all the questions that were labeled [tag:statistical-confidence]. Also learned that there are some uncategorizable questions on CV." CreationDate="2022-08-29T06:46:28.567" UserId="237901" />
  <row Id="21466" PostId="6379" Score="12" Text="There are sites that scrub the internet &amp; repost SE content.  Given that everything is posted under CC policy, it may be legal if properly attributed." CreationDate="2022-08-31T11:19:52.713" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="21467" PostId="6379" Score="6" Text="See https://law.stackexchange.com/q/82763" CreationDate="2022-08-31T11:46:21.053" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21468" PostId="6379" Score="10" Text="An excellent rule is never to visit &quot;forums&quot; or other sites that only repost material, especially when it's unattributed.  That is *prima facie* evidence that they are dishonest, so why waste your time on them?" CreationDate="2022-08-31T15:51:04.500" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21469" PostId="6379" Score="2" Text="There was a mechanism to report sites to stackexchange that fail to abide by the license conditions; in the past I even used it at some point. I presume it still exists." CreationDate="2022-09-01T01:57:28.840" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="21480" PostId="6379" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b The mechanism is [the contact form](/contact). ?topic=10, though the extra boxes don't appear when I put that in the URL." CreationDate="2022-09-08T22:56:25.720" UserId="222773" />
  <row Id="21481" PostId="6379" Score="1" Text="Thanks, yes, that's it. When I manually choose the topic from the list, at least, I get these relevant boxes come up: &#xA;**Link to the site reproducing Stack Exchange content** [...]   &#xA;**Link to the corresponding content on our site** [...]   &#xA;**Search terms** [...]   &#xA;**Please include anything else you find relevant (optional)**  [...]" CreationDate="2022-09-08T23:44:36.873" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="21471" PostId="6381" Score="4" Text="It’s hard to know for sure without sharing the question. One possibility is that you’ve previously bountied the 100-point question. See: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/16067/320588" CreationDate="2022-09-03T22:55:40.367" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21472" PostId="6383" Score="8" Text="I suspect any change might need to be system-wide in which case you need to ask on Meta Stack Exchange. You might want to do a search there first." CreationDate="2022-09-05T14:52:04.027" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="21473" PostId="6383" Score="10" Text="There are some disadvantages.  One is that a post with no upvotes and no acceptance is a suspect post.  Possibly it's even accompanied by comments pointing out its errors.  The system has no way to read, understand, and react to such comments.  Awarding a bounty would send a misleading signal to future readers." CreationDate="2022-09-05T16:10:18.610" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21474" PostId="6383" Score="0" Text="Thanks for the suggestion @mdewey , I did a search and will add related questions to the post.  There are no similar proposals I could find.  It would be good to hear from the moderators if this rule is set at the top level, or if the various communities have the ability to set community specific rules." CreationDate="2022-09-05T16:13:38.347" UserId="212798" />
  <row Id="21475" PostId="6383" Score="0" Text="@whuber I agree with that disadvantage.  That might call for a different proposal which would be to start a new review queue for &quot;Unawarded bounties where a post was correctly submitted during the bounty period&quot;.  We could have users decide if a bounty should have reasonably been awarded." CreationDate="2022-09-05T16:30:15.263" UserId="212798" />
  <row Id="21476" PostId="6383" Score="4" Text="That's an interesting idea.  This unfortunately is one of the system-wide settings that we have no control over, so you have to bring it up on Meta SE as mdewey suggests." CreationDate="2022-09-05T16:43:12.220" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21477" PostId="6383" Score="4" Text="I’m voting to close this question because I would like to re-post it on the top level stack exchange meta where the proposal could be acted upon." CreationDate="2022-09-05T17:44:01.627" UserId="212798" />
  <row Id="21478" PostId="6383" Score="0" Text="Side note: apparently the 3-vote closure threshold does not apply to Meta. Interesting!" CreationDate="2022-09-06T12:02:14.793" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="21485" PostId="6383" Score="0" Text="&quot;Sometimes people ask very specific questions where most viewers don't feel like they have the knowledge to upvote an answer&quot; - important then to make sure the question's appropriately tagged, to increase the odds that the right people see it, &amp; any answers. (Your example doesn't seem to have much to do with reinforcement learning or Bayesian optimization, for instance.)" CreationDate="2022-09-12T08:02:11.750" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21487" PostId="6383" Score="2" Text="The particular example that you are referring to is interesting. I do not understand the question very well and also another person has been asking for more explanation and detail in the comments. It is actually a question that should be closed because it is unclear. Or at least to some people it is unclear. When someone attempts to answer such a problematic unclear question, then it is also important to be be very clear in the answer. Otherwise you get a low number of up-votes..." CreationDate="2022-09-14T10:43:37.017" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21488" PostId="6383" Score="1" Text="...You state that *&quot;Sometimes people ask very specific questions where most viewers don't feel like they have the knowledge to upvote an answer&quot;*. These cases might occur, but in the given example I believe that it is not the case. Or at least, it is not so much a lack of 'knowledge' and more a lack of 'clarity'. This is a problem throughout the entire technical/scientific community and spreading your 'ideas' is difficult when they are not presented clearly. Possibly the answer might have some good content, but it is difficult to see it." CreationDate="2022-09-14T10:46:27.343" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21482" PostId="6384" Score="0" Text="Thanks for your thoughts on this.  How can I access the Database?  I thought maybe you were suggesting that I do a filtered search, but the search capabilities do not include finding questions that have ever had a bounty:  https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/searching" CreationDate="2022-09-09T16:48:44.727" UserId="212798" />
  <row Id="21483" PostId="6384" Score="1" Text="@RCarnell https://data.stackexchange.com/" CreationDate="2022-09-09T17:06:47.730" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21484" PostId="6384" Score="1" Text="Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.  This data will really improve my overall point.  In 2021, there were 570 bountied questions.  287 of them closed with no points awarded.  155 of those had answers.  27% of bountied questions are not awarding bounties, even when there are answers.  The only thing left to do is to make sure the answers weren't posted after the bounty closed." CreationDate="2022-09-11T17:27:56.433" UserId="212798" />
  <row Id="21489" PostId="6386" Score="0" Text="Thanks for your answer. So, just to confirm : the question as written in my post would be fine on the main site ?" CreationDate="2022-09-15T18:12:44.113" UserId="305654" />
  <row Id="21490" PostId="6386" Score="1" Text="@StratosFair yes, but probably best as community wiki." CreationDate="2022-09-15T18:13:57.287" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="21491" PostId="6386" Score="0" Text="Perfect, thank you !" CreationDate="2022-09-15T18:44:23.850" UserId="305654" />
  <row Id="21493" PostId="6387" Score="1" Text="Does the user-script not work on all sites? If not I'd imagine it'd be easy to modify it." CreationDate="2022-09-18T16:38:41.283" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21494" PostId="6387" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi-ReinstateMonica If I'm understanding the process for installing it, it was installed in Chrome (as opposed to installing it specifically for Mathematica SE).  I found it showed up for Math SE but not CrossValidated SE and Data Science SE.  So maybe that means I should ask the creator of the button rather than asking here." CreationDate="2022-09-18T17:04:04.363" UserId="79698" />
  <row Id="21495" PostId="6387" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi-ReinstateMonica I just asked halirutan in the Mathematica Chat and I'll report back when he answers.." CreationDate="2022-09-18T17:10:26.397" UserId="79698" />
  <row Id="21496" PostId="6387" Score="4" Text="If you you look at the meta-data block in the code, there are lines such as `// @include       https://mathematica.stackexchange.com/*` that specify on what sites the script is run. Try adding Cross Validated - odds are the S.E. sites are similar enough for the script to run on any of them." CreationDate="2022-09-18T17:10:48.923" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21497" PostId="6387" Score="0" Text="Thanks @Scortchi-ReinstateMonica ! That tells me how to solve the problem and therefore is not an issue for this forum so I should delete this question." CreationDate="2022-09-18T18:19:07.920" UserId="79698" />
  <row Id="21498" PostId="6387" Score="5" Text="@JimB I think it would be more helpful to future readers if you posted an Answer sharing how you solved this problem, instead of deleting the question altogether." CreationDate="2022-09-18T19:16:49.013" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21499" PostId="6387" Score="0" Text="@Sycorax  Good suggestion.  I will do so after the author of the script responds.  Someone else from the Mathematica SE chat suggested using TamperMonkey to modify the script with the change suggested by Scortchi-ReinstateMonica.  That worked but such manipulations are probably more extreme than what most would want to do (at least it seems a bit extreme to me)." CreationDate="2022-09-18T21:20:20.653" UserId="79698" />
  <row Id="21500" PostId="6387" Score="2" Text="You could ask the maintainer of the code on GitHub to make the change, or fork the code yourself." CreationDate="2022-09-19T08:22:28.487" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21501" PostId="6387" Score="1" Text="Am I old fashioned when I believe that editors should not replace '\\[alpha]' by 'α'? If it is a useful feature to be able to just type 'α' when you want '\\[alpha]', then have the compiler change instead of the editor." CreationDate="2022-09-19T11:25:15.987" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21503" PostId="6387" Score="0" Text="@SextusEmpiricus My concern with this issue is to make the *Mathematica* code more readable for when questions deal with symbolic statistical manipulations (which I believe belong in this forum rather than the Math SE forum - but that's another issue).  The available button converts all such *Mathematica* notation in a selected set of text in one fell swoop so it's not an onerous process." CreationDate="2022-09-19T23:08:21.007" UserId="79698" />
  <row Id="21504" PostId="6387" Score="0" Text="@SextusEmpiricus  And *Mathematica* is much more available now that one can download the &quot;Wolfram Engine&quot; with a limited license at no cost (but a more liberal license than SAS On Demand - which replaced the SAS University Edition.  I have used Mathematica since version 1 (somewhere around 1989 to 1990 on a MacPlus) so I admit being partial/biased towards that software." CreationDate="2022-09-19T23:13:05.870" UserId="79698" />
  <row Id="21505" PostId="6387" Score="0" Text="@JimB Mathematica is for free now, that's very nice. I had some times that I wanted to use it but the institute where I worked had only one or two licences for the mathematicians. (or maybe it was maple and I am mixing them up)" CreationDate="2022-09-20T05:38:40.350" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21506" PostId="6387" Score="0" Text="@SextusEmpiricus It is the Wolfram Engine that is &quot;free&quot; which can be run in a command-line mode or in a &quot;notebook&quot; using Jupyter:  https://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/195620/where-to-find-the-jupyter-connector.  One should read the license carefully and a simplistic/approximate interpretation of the license is that you can use it if making money is not involved (similar to the SAS On Demand license)." CreationDate="2022-09-20T16:25:19.673" UserId="79698" />
  <row Id="21507" PostId="6387" Score="0" Text="Not sure it's a good idea anyway: on my 'phone your purported *alpha* comes out as an allograph of the Latin *a*. You'd be putting readers at the mercy of whatever fonts happen to be installed on the device they happen to be using. (By the way, I've enabled syntax highlighting for Mathematica code on C.V. - hadn't noticed it wasn't enabled.)" CreationDate="2022-09-21T09:39:10.683" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21510" PostId="6387" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi-ReinstateMonica I would hope that whatever symbol is displayed is consistent so it would still make things more readable.  But what is &quot;syntax highlighting for Mathematica code&quot;?  I just looked at my answer (https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/589055/covariance-matrix-of-multivariate-normal-when-negative-values-are-made-zero/589071#589071) which uses several standard *Mathematica* keywords and I don't notice any difference." CreationDate="2022-09-22T16:50:02.197" UserId="79698" />
  <row Id="21511" PostId="6387" Score="1" Text="It's not necessarily the case that whatever symbol is displayed is consistent. Your answer linked in the above comment looks fine to me, on both my 'phone &amp; laptop; but with [this one](https://mathematica.stackexchange.com/q/273648) the *phi*s aren't rendered on my 'phone. (For more fun with *phi* see https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/349370/225179.) MathJax - just by way of comparison, as I'm not of course suggesting you use it in code - uses web-fonts if the correct font isn't available on a reader's system (or even images in the last resort), to make sure that everyone sees the same thing." CreationDate="2022-09-22T18:59:04.150" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21513" PostId="6387" Score="1" Text="Syntax highlighting will only be activated if the question has the appropriate tag - 'mathematica' in this case." CreationDate="2022-09-22T19:01:25.823" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21515" PostId="6387" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi-ReinstateMonica Thanks.  If I understand it correctly, it appears that the tags are only on questions and I would think it presumptuous of me to add a tag onto a question just because my answer had *Mathematica* code." CreationDate="2022-09-22T20:22:11.643" UserId="79698" />
  <row Id="21519" PostId="6387" Score="0" Text="Yes, this system probably makes more sense on a programming Q&amp;A site; where a language tag indicates that the question's *about* a particular language, it's a safe bet that any code in the question or answers is *in* that same language. When the language of code in an answer is incidental to the question, better to add a 'language hint' to the answer than muck about with the question-writer's tags - see https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/184108/225179. (I had forgotten about this.)" CreationDate="2022-09-22T22:41:55.630" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21502" PostId="6388" Score="0" Text="Thank you for your valuable input. I agree that the time-dependency of the question does not make it a very good fit for the SE network in general for all the reasons you mentioned. I can see how the thread will either have to be regularly updated by newer contributions (skewing the upvote metric, as you mention) or will eventually &quot;die&quot; and have to be closed after some point. I am not sure what is the best way to deal with it for now, I guess we will see depending on how much attention the question gets." CreationDate="2022-09-19T11:41:09.873" UserId="305654" />
  <row Id="21508" PostId="6388" Score="1" Text="It is this kind of post that would benefit from the Trending sort option, recently released at SO, being released more widely to SE." CreationDate="2022-09-21T12:28:17.387" UserId="232706" />
  <row Id="21548" PostId="6390" Score="2" Text="Has the close-as-duplicate system been shown to have value? In my experience, it's bewilderingly and unevenly applied." CreationDate="2022-09-29T10:44:55.077" UserId="237901" />
  <row Id="21550" PostId="6390" Score="0" Text="@dipetkov That could be worth posting as its own thread! I'm not sure exactly how one would show it has value, to be honest. One goal for the site is to maintain a corpus of high-quality Q&amp;As, and I personally find it *tidier* to point more and more traffic towards canonical threads rather than have the information diffused across a bunch. That said, one could reasonably argue for the opposite." CreationDate="2022-09-29T13:18:41.673" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="21551" PostId="6390" Score="0" Text="@dipetkov Unevenness is I think unavoidable. A tiny set of people have the rep &amp; time to vote on these, many questions are never seen by them, and there's not universal consensus on what the standards for closing as duplicates are. But overall I think it's better than not having the duplicate system at all. That said, each time I get new 'privileges', I find there's a bunch of obscure and unwritten rules about their use, part of which is because the SE platform has to have some commonality across sites but different communities have different needs. It can be rather opaque as a newcomer." CreationDate="2022-09-29T13:24:54.503" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="21552" PostId="6390" Score="0" Text="If the finding duplicates can work as advertised, it would be a great thing to have. It doesn't seem to be so in practice (personal opinion here). I would prefer, however, that duplicates are not closed but only link to the related posts. And I think it would be helpful for some of older posts to link back to a few of the newer related posts. This could work more as an exchange of ideas, rather than as promotion of the one best (which usually means most highly voted) answer." CreationDate="2022-09-29T13:33:48.380" UserId="237901" />
  <row Id="21553" PostId="6390" Score="0" Text="@dipetkov It's definitely suboptimal, and part of that is site design stuff that's beyond our control. But if you have ideas, you could consider raising them at https://meta.stackexchange.com/. But if you think we can use them better here given the constraints, open a thread here on CV meta." CreationDate="2022-09-29T13:36:51.603" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="21509" PostId="6393" Score="2" Text="I have now discovered my request has nothing to do with this site and will be posting an answer for the minority who might want to convert *Mathematica* characters." CreationDate="2022-09-22T16:37:51.227" UserId="79698" />
  <row Id="21518" PostId="6393" Score="2" Text="It's not an issue of &quot;users who know Mathematic but don't know $\TeX$&quot;.  It is simply making *Mathematica* code look like it does in *Mathematica*.  Of course, any supporting equations should be posted in $\TeX$.  And *Mathematica* can produce $\TeX$ from any *Mathematica* code - it then just won't work in *Mathematica* if pasted back in." CreationDate="2022-09-22T21:14:08.880" UserId="79698" />
  <row Id="21516" PostId="6394" Score="0" Text="I found a previous discussion on this site about this link as well: [Misleading link about MathJax help](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5700/148698) – however, the original post there suggests multiple alternatives, and there are no answers favoring one particular link over the others, so it doesn't provide a single clear solution." CreationDate="2022-09-22T20:57:37.477" UserId="148698" />
  <row Id="21517" PostId="6394" Score="0" Text="Another related discussion: [Instructions on how to use LaTeX on CrossValidated](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1604/148698) – That isn't really a comprehensive guide, but the answer does link to a few different resources where users can learn more. So this might be an option, if that's what the community wants this link to point to. (Alternatively, one of the other links in that answer could be used for this &quot;MathJax help&quot; link instead.)" CreationDate="2022-09-22T21:00:06.793" UserId="148698" />
  <row Id="21521" PostId="6394" Score="3" Text="What should a new post on this bring to the table? The Meta post at Maths has been compiled more comprehensively, imo, than the default site. In fact, I direct new users to that post: it is lucid, provides a quick tour and more or less covers what is needed for composing any typical post here. So, I would vouch for the default to be changed to the Maths Meta post. Re a new post, if any extra specifics, especially catering to CV, is needed, (which I am not seeing) then it is welcome (but again I feel it redundant)." CreationDate="2022-09-23T03:54:01.003" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21526" PostId="6395" Score="1" Text="(+1) Note that installing the script without modifying it will still &quot;require installing things like Tampermonkey&quot; with browsers other than Chrome (with which you still need to install a dedicated app.)." CreationDate="2022-09-23T11:03:52.010" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21527" PostId="6395" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi-ReinstateMonica  You might be correct.  However, I have it working on Microsoft Edge for Mathematica SE and Math SE and didn't use anything special to install it." CreationDate="2022-09-23T15:57:44.440" UserId="79698" />
  <row Id="21523" PostId="6396" Score="4" Text="Shorter but more focused: that's a solid point for making a case of having our own post. (+1). But then we can rejig the already existing post here: [Instructions on how to use LaTeX on CrossValidated](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1604/instructions-on-how-to-use-latex-on-crossvalidated)." CreationDate="2022-09-23T07:26:44.500" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21524" PostId="6396" Score="0" Text="@User1865345 sure, my comment is more on *what* than *how*." CreationDate="2022-09-23T07:29:51.380" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="21525" PostId="6396" Score="1" Text="Hm. You articulated well. For many new users are either indifferent or the Maths post might be too heavy for them to go through. In any case, a shorter consolidated post with more focus on the frequent usage here would be actually fruitful. Finally posts with two options for voting could be used for comprehending the mood of the community, albeit I am in favor of yours." CreationDate="2022-09-23T07:37:53.717" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21918" PostId="6396" Score="2" Text="@User1865345 and Tim: Has the community made any progress on cleaning up that linked post to make any desired improvements, or creating a new one if desired? (Once the community agrees that the post is ready to be linked to from the &quot;MathJax help&quot; link (or agrees that it should be updated to point to some other post/URL instead), the mods can [escalate the request for staff attention by adding the \[status-review\] tag to the question](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/348642/335251).)" CreationDate="2023-03-25T04:14:11.117" UserId="148698" />
  <row Id="21919" PostId="6396" Score="0" Text="While reviewing, day in &amp; day out, I have left the stated thread for new users; for one I feel the present post is sufficient in that it contains many credible links as well as the much more detailed MathsMeta page link. Any other relevant thing can be added later by the community, but I deem, it is time to vouch for directly adding that thread to our help link. @V2Blast" CreationDate="2023-03-25T04:25:05.047" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21923" PostId="6396" Score="0" Text="I had no idea you could right-click the math equations, and I've been using this site for over 8 years already" CreationDate="2023-03-28T12:00:13.433" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="21935" PostId="6396" Score="1" Text="Better late than never @Firebug!" CreationDate="2023-04-03T03:44:47.047" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22160" PostId="6396" Score="2" Text="The &quot;MathJax help&quot; link on Cross Validated (and this Meta site) has been changed to point to [this FAQ](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1604/instructions-on-how-to-use-latex-on-crossvalidated), per your suggestion. Let us know if you encounter any problems!" CreationDate="2023-06-07T02:49:24.227" UserId="148698" />
  <row Id="22161" PostId="6396" Score="2" Text="Thanks @V2Blast for the incorporation of the post to the FAQ link." CreationDate="2023-06-07T03:55:58.810" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21528" PostId="6397" Score="0" Text="&quot;neither fish nor fowl&quot;:  I don't see a major difference in the speciation of `sigma1^2` and `σ^2`." CreationDate="2022-09-23T16:02:07.693" UserId="79698" />
  <row Id="21529" PostId="6397" Score="1" Text="There's no reason in principle why Greek letters oughtn't to be used freely in code: it's just that to me, after decades of reading either mathematical expressions or ASCII code, `σ1^2` seems a barbarism. I may be alone." CreationDate="2022-09-23T18:10:43.793" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21530" PostId="6397" Score="1" Text="Despite my obvious sarcasm at times, I appreciate your viewpoint.  I've used *Mathematica* since version 1 so I'm used to such barbarisms." CreationDate="2022-09-23T21:28:45.050" UserId="79698" />
  <row Id="21531" PostId="6398" Score="1" Text="*&quot;Cross Validated closed the question&quot;* It is difficult to respond to this question without a reference to the closed question that it is about." CreationDate="2022-09-25T20:43:09.480" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21532" PostId="6398" Score="0" Text="AFAIR, @SextusEmpiricus, that account had no question. So, it could be perceived this account was solely made to air the user's rant on the alleged experience." CreationDate="2022-09-26T03:10:53.577" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21533" PostId="6398" Score="5" Text="Whether deliberately or accidentally, the OP made it impossible to discuss their case carefully, so this is, unfortunately. a fairly futile question. It's all too easy for one site to conclude that a question is too statistical and for us to decide that it is too code-based.  In fact on the little evidence here it seems just as likely that Stack Overflow [not Stack Exchange] rejected a question that should be theirs, so the complaint should be directed there (or there too). No disagreement that where to post a borderline question is a tricky issue, but the issue isn't best posed like this." CreationDate="2022-09-27T08:56:18.373" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21536" PostId="6398" Score="1" Text="(+1); @NickCox Albeit being unfortunate and we never want any to get deprived of any constructive help, OP perhaps didn't have the intention (or might have lost their nerves due to back &amp; forth movement without getting any answer) to have a healthy discussion. That's where Meta CV plays a powerful role: clear any impending confusion. We perhaps can never know what actually happened without checking the post in question. I believe we need to emphasize the importance of Meta to the new users in mitigating any such situation in the future. SO might have erred. But ranting is not the answer." CreationDate="2022-09-27T10:26:23.413" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21537" PostId="6398" Score="0" Text="That’s my stance too. My comment starts with mentioning that omitting what we want to know might have been accidental.  That said, the OP comes across as smart enough to look at each site and get a good idea of how it works.  The cited request “to see the code more fully” is diagnostic of a problematic question on SO and in such cases (I am active there too) a question may be closed on various grounds; there is some caprice over which ground is most visible." CreationDate="2022-09-27T14:47:42.207" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21534" PostId="6400" Score="0" Text="This seems reasonable to me, so why the downvote?" CreationDate="2022-09-27T10:06:45.350" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21538" PostId="6401" Score="0" Text="I think I solved one of the problems. There are five 'yearling' badges. But I still wonder one missing bronze badge." CreationDate="2022-09-29T01:15:50.140" UserId="15997" />
  <row Id="21539" PostId="6401" Score="0" Text="Meta and main badge counts are separate. Does that help resolve the difference?" CreationDate="2022-09-29T05:18:08.347" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="21540" PostId="6401" Score="0" Text="@mkt No. I know that." CreationDate="2022-09-29T05:20:34.743" UserId="15997" />
  <row Id="21541" PostId="6401" Score="3" Text="Can you add screenshots? Your flair underneath your question shows 1/6/7 badges, and this corresponds to what I see on your Meta profile page (Fanatic; 5x Yearling, Enthusiastic; Vox Populi, Suffrage, Critic, Supporter, Autobiographer, Nice Question, Student). So no problem I can see. Are you sure you don't have Nice Question? It should have been awarded on May 11, 2014 for [this](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2051/can-i-cite-a-question-response-to-an-academic-paper)." CreationDate="2022-09-29T06:42:22.383" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="21557" PostId="6401" Score="0" Text="@StephanKolassa The problem has been solved now. I think it took some time that the new badge I got is shown to the upper bar." CreationDate="2022-09-29T23:56:06.127" UserId="15997" />
  <row Id="21545" PostId="6402" Score="5" Text="Rule of thumb: Unless it is offensive, rude, racist, a post can be entertained based on its merit. I had no problem with the way you framed initially keeping the points in mind, you stated here. At the end of the day, it's a good question and you edited to a more generic frame, which is good too." CreationDate="2022-09-29T09:41:08.570" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21549" PostId="6402" Score="2" Text="I admire the fact that now this question (which actually had little to do with sexual topics even in its original incarnation) will be displayed on every single CV page as long as it's a Hot Meta Post. That's actually a quite effective advertising for it. Well done." CreationDate="2022-09-29T10:58:35.127" UserId="237901" />
  <row Id="21555" PostId="6402" Score="2" Text="@User1865345: in principle, I would agree with your rule of thumb. However, all of &quot;offensive, rude or racist&quot; are highly subjective. What one user deems offensive is fine for another one. Note that we have users (and minors, per my answer) from many different cultures here, with norms that may differ strongly from the typical [WEIRD](https://doi.org/10.1038/466029a) user." CreationDate="2022-09-29T15:39:47.357" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="21556" PostId="6402" Score="0" Text="Again @StephanKolassa, I won't disagree with you. But some of the things have been unanimously agreed to be good, bad, derogatory etc. irrespective of the culture and traditions. However, you are right there are things which can be subjective. In that case, our model of the site works aptly for it is run by the community, not an individual user. A post is antagonistic, in those cases, only if the community deems so." CreationDate="2022-09-29T16:00:11.627" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21570" PostId="6403" Score="0" Text="There can be different types of issues with respect to log transforms of predictors versus outcomes. For predictors, there are things like dealing with 0 values and interpreting coefficients of transformed predictors. For outcomes, the OP has often jumped onto a log transformation without considering options like other variance-stabilizing transformations, Box-Cox, Gaussian GLM with log link, proportional-odds models, or nonparametric tests. Unfortunately, many threads cover both predictors and outcomes, making it harder for a new questioner to find just what's needed in a particular context." CreationDate="2022-10-08T16:23:54.463" UserId="28500" />
  <row Id="21542" PostId="6404" Score="1" Text="Thank you for the earnest feedback. I have removed any mention of porn or sexual content from that post to mitigate the risk." CreationDate="2022-09-29T07:13:52.507" UserId="368930" />
  <row Id="21543" PostId="6404" Score="1" Text="Thank you for that edit!" CreationDate="2022-09-29T07:15:36.490" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="21546" PostId="6404" Score="1" Text="Since the specific question didn't loss the point of query by resorting to a more general framework, mentioning of the specific topic isn't necessary. And yes, the point about having minors - that's a valid point of concern." CreationDate="2022-09-29T09:45:12.687" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21554" PostId="6404" Score="4" Text="Diamond moderators have the power to remove posts from HNQ. So if anybody see a post which should be removed, just flag! I have removed from HNQ twice" CreationDate="2022-09-29T15:35:46.027" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="21544" PostId="6405" Score="1" Text="Thanks @Tim for the last para: it should not be considered a taboo. There should be healthy discussion among scientific peers regarding the aspect of the topic in hand. Properly articulated. +1." CreationDate="2022-09-29T09:37:38.653" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21547" PostId="6405" Score="2" Text="To be honest, I don't expect the the &quot;voices&quot; of sexual education experts, sexologist, and even feminist academics are well represented on Cross Validated, if at all. Otherwise, they would probably have chimed in already." CreationDate="2022-09-29T10:29:34.290" UserId="237901" />
  <row Id="21558" PostId="6408" Score="0" Text="This one: https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/590626/weird-definition-of-negative-binomial-distribution/590630 ?" CreationDate="2022-09-30T15:30:11.343" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21559" PostId="6408" Score="1" Text="Yes, exactly. I would understand if it took a while for a deleted question to show up under &quot;recently deleted questions&quot; - but that section in my tools shows a question that was deleted 3 hours ago, and then a couple others that were deleted 14 hours ago, but this particular one was deleted 4 hours ago and does not show up there. From my POV, it has simply disappeared." CreationDate="2022-09-30T15:32:59.743" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="21560" PostId="6408" Score="0" Text="Can you see it at https://stats.stackexchange.com/users/1352/stephan-kolassa?tab=answers ?" CreationDate="2022-09-30T15:37:17.300" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21562" PostId="6408" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi-ReinstateMonica: no, neither my answer, nor my comment under &quot;all actions&quot;." CreationDate="2022-09-30T15:48:43.807" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="21561" PostId="6409" Score="1" Text="Hm. Thanks. I'm still confused. (1) I posted my answer six hours ago, the OP self-deleted four hours ago, and it was still open when I posted, so your second paragraph does not apply here. (2) I also see only one comment, mine, not the two you note. (3) I'd still like for a case like this to show up in my &quot;recently deleted&quot; list. Is there a way to submit a bug report to SE? As I write, this is not the first time this has happened to me." CreationDate="2022-09-30T15:48:10.593" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="21563" PostId="6409" Score="1" Text="Since you see only one comment, that suggests I might have identified a different thread than the one you were interacting with.  I can see your answer in the thread @Scortchi found.  I am surprised the system permitted the OP to delete the thread.  I'll undelete it, but what you might want to do is investigate this on Meta.SO and, if you find no explanation, submit a bug report.  (Strangely, the system permitted me to undelete your post *without* undeleting the question!  I have never encountered an orphan answer like that.)" CreationDate="2022-09-30T15:52:57.147" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21564" PostId="6409" Score="1" Text="Thanks, will do. Can you migrate this thread to Meta.SO? Or should I just open a new thread there? I just searched and did not find this particular behavior discussed there." CreationDate="2022-09-30T16:54:32.467" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="21566" PostId="6411" Score="9" Text="Thank you. I have updated his profile with links to both obituaries." CreationDate="2022-10-04T12:03:07.260" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21567" PostId="6411" Score="7" Text="Thanks @Scortchi-ReinstateMonica. I knew mods would work promptly. Thanks to Nick Cox, we have been able to inform about his sad demise to the community." CreationDate="2022-10-04T12:04:38.400" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21568" PostId="6411" Score="7" Text="Oh no, what a great loss. My condolences to the family." CreationDate="2022-10-04T12:26:01.890" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="21569" PostId="6411" Score="7" Text="Note the *AmStat News* obituary references the Bruce E. Trumbo Scholarship Endowment Fund at California State University, East Bay." CreationDate="2022-10-04T13:02:43.343" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21571" PostId="6411" Score="2" Text="This post has resulting in me wanting to go back and read more of Bruce's posts to learn from him.  People who knew him, I'm sure, have fond personal memories of him.  For those of use who didn't know him, we will eternally have his knowledge which he so generously shared.  Thank you Bruce." CreationDate="2022-10-09T05:04:47.177" UserId="93740" />
  <row Id="21572" PostId="6411" Score="5" Text="In reading a few of his posts, I came across this kind and encouraging comment Bruce left for another community member who was a bit discouraged.  I think it speaks volumes about Bruce's wonderful kindness and his enthusiasm to share his expertise: https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/476795/understanding-medical-testing/476875#comment880718_476875" CreationDate="2022-10-09T05:07:42.943" UserId="93740" />
  <row Id="21573" PostId="6411" Score="1" Text="@RockPaperLz-MaskitorCasket that's a trait of a visionary teacher." CreationDate="2022-10-09T05:15:19.897" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21574" PostId="6412" Score="6" Text="The answer isn't wrong. You may have misunderstood what was said in your course. Notice further that the question is a duplicate, so click on the &quot;**&#xA;This question already has answers here:** [Can a probability distribution value exceeding 1 be OK?](https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/4220/)&quot; to get more information." CreationDate="2022-10-09T12:06:14.623" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="21578" PostId="6412" Score="0" Text="Got it. Thank you." CreationDate="2022-10-09T21:00:25.447" UserId="284610" />
  <row Id="21580" PostId="6412" Score="0" Text="@Kirsten you might consider removing the downvote that you placed on the answer that you thought was wrong but isn't wrong." CreationDate="2022-10-09T23:42:37.367" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21582" PostId="6412" Score="1" Text="I didn't notice there was downvote from OP to the answer in question. While I won't dictate any how they would vote a post, it's a good practice, if there is a minuscule of ambivalence, first seek clarification and if that doesn't satisfy and is not rationale, then a downvote could be given." CreationDate="2022-10-10T03:43:02.043" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21584" PostId="6412" Score="0" Text="When I try to upvote I get a message &quot;You last voted on this answer yesterday. Your vote is now locked in unless this answer is edited.&quot;" CreationDate="2022-10-10T05:10:49.277" UserId="284610" />
  <row Id="21585" PostId="6412" Score="0" Text="@Kirsten I have requested Glen_b to make an edit to the post so that the downvote could be removed. If it is edited, you can remove the downvote (and may upvote)." CreationDate="2022-10-10T05:59:31.463" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21586" PostId="6412" Score="1" Text="I'm not concerned that the downvote be removed (as I had already let Kirsten know in chat); my concern with the downvote was identifying and explaining the issue that led to it (which between the comments and the chat I think has been resolved). However, I'll do as requested." CreationDate="2022-10-10T15:33:28.307" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="21587" PostId="6412" Score="1" Text="Thanks @Glen_b. I hope Kirsten has all the confusions resolved. And since the answer isn't wrong and the confusion has been vaporised (I hope), the downvote can be removed." CreationDate="2022-10-10T16:30:07.327" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21588" PostId="6412" Score="2" Text="Downvote successfully removed and upvote added." CreationDate="2022-10-10T18:02:03.050" UserId="284610" />
  <row Id="21575" PostId="6414" Score="4" Text="The shortest URL that I'm aware of is the FQDN plus `/q/ID`. So the shortest URL that retrieves this question is `https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6414`." CreationDate="2022-10-09T20:41:44.403" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21576" PostId="6414" Score="0" Text="Nice! It's not as short as I hoped but it's something..." CreationDate="2022-10-09T20:51:55.050" UserId="56940" />
  <row Id="21577" PostId="6414" Score="3" Text="The &quot;share&quot; button below a post is *almost* the shortest URL for a specific question or answer, but it has your user ID number appended to it, so it's longer than strictly necessary." CreationDate="2022-10-09T20:58:30.780" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21579" PostId="6414" Score="0" Text="So if I want to cite, say, this post within another post X, will it work by using only the key '/q/6414' in the &quot;link&quot; field of post X?" CreationDate="2022-10-09T21:06:08.520" UserId="56940" />
  <row Id="21589" PostId="6417" Score="4" Text="https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/313635/23242" CreationDate="2022-10-21T17:24:55.277" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21590" PostId="6417" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi-ReinstateMonica interesting and creative examples. Maybe I misunderstand they look like they span a whole row, or at least from a particular column until the end. I need two text displays to hover over two columns specifically. I gave my &quot;want&quot; example as would be rendered as desired in my standard tex compiler." CreationDate="2022-10-21T18:20:47.123" UserId="8013" />
  <row Id="21591" PostId="6417" Score="4" Text="Sorry, I didn't bother to compile &amp; see how it's supposed to look. But you'll need *some* workaround, as `\multicolumn` isn't supported by MathJax: https://docs.mathjax.org/en/latest/input/tex/macros/index.html. (MathJax is an external service which converts a subset of LaTeX into MathML, so S.E. can't add functionality without writing &amp; hosting its own extensions.)" CreationDate="2022-10-22T09:14:23.100" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21592" PostId="6417" Score="3" Text="Unrelatedly, I don't think you need the `$$`'s when you start &amp; end the mathjax w/ `\begin{} ... \end{}`." CreationDate="2022-10-22T12:16:19.713" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="21593" PostId="6417" Score="0" Text="In light of @Scortchi-ReinstateMonica's comment, it might be worth trying to figure out if it can be done purely via MathML." CreationDate="2022-10-22T12:16:45.180" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="21594" PostId="6417" Score="2" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica: Even if it can, you'll still have to persuade S.E. to enable MathML markup in posts." CreationDate="2022-10-22T20:20:10.717" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21595" PostId="6418" Score="3" Text="As a  meta-comment, attitudes vary on whether it is good practice to declare oneself as a downvoter and/or the precise reason for downvoting. Naturally the advice is to downvote for the reason given by a mouse-over, but otherwise people are human. Some downvotes I get for answers can only be decoded as someone not liking me or how I wrote, but as Tolkien wrote in another context, I probably would have similar opinions about the downvoter. Other way round, I will willingly downvote spam or very rude questions or answers, regardless of whether anyone has explained a post to be unacceptable." CreationDate="2022-10-25T12:46:43.303" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21596" PostId="6418" Score="1" Text="Downvoting without an explanation is a lot like gaslighting, with a similar likelihood to lead to a positive improvement." CreationDate="2022-10-26T10:46:36.850" UserId="237901" />
  <row Id="21597" PostId="6418" Score="3" Text="@dipetkov As said, attitudes vary. It's a good ideal to explain to people the errors of their ways, but that is not always appreciated.  I don't expect positive improvement from spammers. I just want them to disappear. You've perhaps not had the personal experience of being hounded on- and even off-site by people bearing a grudge against evident and explained downvoting. (Sure, I make myself fairly identifiable, but that is my version of openness too.)" CreationDate="2022-10-26T16:24:48.127" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21608" PostId="6418" Score="2" Text="@dipetkov [Gaslighting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting) is deceit committed with intention to fuck with someone's trust in their own mental faculties. Downvoting simply reflects a discredit of a Q or A by the community. Describing anonymous downvoting as gaslighting is absurd, and demonstrates poor understanding of downvoting, gaslighting, or both on your part." CreationDate="2022-10-31T19:02:01.233" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="21610" PostId="6418" Score="2" Text="@Alexis Thank you for your feedback; I admit I should have written &quot;feels like&quot;, not &quot;is like&quot;, it's a big difference. Your comment made me think whether there have been studies on this/similar topic and I came across [Emotional consequences and attention rewards: the social effects of ratings on Reddit](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369118X.2021.1874476). Okay, it's about Reddit but the conclusion feels right to me: &quot;... defection from normative community values (as indicated by downvotes) harbors emotional consequences...&quot;" CreationDate="2022-10-31T21:08:51.743" UserId="237901" />
  <row Id="21611" PostId="6418" Score="3" Text="Research shows that downvotes are discouraging and upvotes are encouraging. Who would have guessed?  CV is one of the kinder and gentler parts of the internet: a decent question stands a good chance of getting volunteer time and effort from people with expertise who are likely strangers to you. It's in practice quite hard to remove very poor questions here. I am mindful of the likelihood that some people asking may be struggling with poor mental health and I really don't want to make anyone feel really bad about themselves. But a poor question (as decided by the community) is a poor question." CreationDate="2022-11-01T09:11:40.627" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21598" PostId="6419" Score="0" Text="I guess in isolation this explanation makes sense. But I really have difficulty understanding why the question by @Kirsten shows lacks of research effort while this question: [var() is not equal to sd()^2 in R](https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/590123/237901) got 3k views, 13 upvotes and 4 answers. The categorization of questions is very inconsistent, noisy &amp; sometimes unfair, in my opinion. It basically depends on the user that first spots a question." CreationDate="2022-10-27T10:35:00.947" UserId="237901" />
  <row Id="21599" PostId="6419" Score="0" Text="@dipetkov I agree that the question you link is poorly researched, and it's disappointing when poor questions get so much more attention that high-quality ones. Part of the reason that it got so many views and votes is that it became a Hot Network Question. Since you correctly identified the issue as floating point precision in the first comment, one thing that you could have done to to forestall it becoming a HNQ is to identify a suitable duplicate about floating point precision and vote to close as a duplicate. This is the neat thing about Stack Exchange: most users can moderate somewhat." CreationDate="2022-10-27T12:55:35.313" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21600" PostId="6419" Score="0" Text="@dipetkov As a purely general observation, the questions that get the most views and upvotes aren't always the best questions. In some cases, they are the questions that have a &quot;clickbait&quot; title (&quot;Is `xgboost` Taylor Swift's favorite machine learning algorithm?&quot;) and an easy answer that is obvious to someone with a journeyman's knowledge. This is a problem with how people interact with Stack Exchange sites overall, but especially HNQs." CreationDate="2022-10-27T12:58:52.750" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21601" PostId="6419" Score="0" Text="Thanks for the advice, I'll keep it in mind and try to use the moderation tools more. I admit I struggled with that question (mostly because the questions I find most rewarding never get that much involvement). Then decided it's best to be chill about it. Since I'm writing these comments, obviously haven't achieved zen yet." CreationDate="2022-10-27T13:50:02.503" UserId="237901" />
  <row Id="21602" PostId="6419" Score="0" Text="@dipetkov Yeah, I definitely know that feeling well. I've seen a number of poor questions get undue attention. We're all here to learn and have fun. Whenever I feel like I'm not learning or not having fun, I step away to do something more rewarding." CreationDate="2022-10-27T14:01:53.747" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21603" PostId="6419" Score="0" Text="By the way, I've noticed that a question tends to become a HNQ once it gets two answers. And then it becomes a self-reinforcing loop: more views, more answers ... until the weekend is over. Something's not quite right with the SE ranking algorithm." CreationDate="2022-10-27T14:01:55.273" UserId="237901" />
  <row Id="21604" PostId="6419" Score="0" Text="@dipetkov Yeah, it's definitely a source of some consternation. There have been a number of threads about this over the years: https://meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=hot+network" CreationDate="2022-10-27T14:11:09.430" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21606" PostId="6419" Score="2" Text="PS: I did an experiment this weekend &amp; did lots of voting to close bad or duplicate questions. I wanted to see if I can be helpful (to others but also to myself, to help me learn &amp; improve). I discovered that many OPs didn't appreciate my feedback and, all in all, I didn't enjoy doing it. So I'll leave it to those that are good at writing useful comments. And my respect for you, the mods, has really grown; it's a tough job." CreationDate="2022-10-31T10:46:32.563" UserId="237901" />
  <row Id="21615" PostId="6420" Score="5" Text="It looks like that any time a Q is migrated to a site where the OP doesn't have an account." CreationDate="2022-11-25T12:51:48.047" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="21612" PostId="6421" Score="0" Text="thanks. But what if the OP never visits CV?" CreationDate="2022-11-24T20:56:32.910" UserId="56940" />
  <row Id="21613" PostId="6421" Score="4" Text="There is no way to know! As this user is new to the SE family as of today, how could we possibly know if he is one-time, drive-by user, or a new useful contributor? You might help to increase somewhat the probability of the second option, by writing a useful answer NOW. New users need some incitement and help to understand the rules!" CreationDate="2022-11-24T20:59:41.507" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="21614" PostId="6421" Score="4" Text="The answer should be taken in general (+1). But specifically for the question in hand, it seems the account holder is now a member of this community since today." CreationDate="2022-11-25T05:44:45.677" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21617" PostId="6422" Score="4" Text="By the way, let's not discuss tells or how to fight fire with fire: S.O. have top men working on it right now. Top men." CreationDate="2022-12-07T14:20:13.153" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21618" PostId="6422" Score="3" Text="Being naive here, how could one discern a really bad answer written by a user and one generated by that of OpenAI? I get that it would be based on suspicion. But do they have any conspicuous features that seperate them from _bad_ answers?" CreationDate="2022-12-07T16:24:38.550" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21619" PostId="6422" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi-ReinstateMonica, my English is not good enough to really catch what your comment means. Could you perhaps rephrase it?" CreationDate="2022-12-07T17:25:27.980" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="21620" PostId="6422" Score="0" Text="@User1865345: I'll think about what I can share &amp; put it in an answer - probably an illustration would help more than just a description" CreationDate="2022-12-07T17:52:52.907" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21621" PostId="6422" Score="6" Text="Someone has to ask the stupid questions here, and I think I'm qualified for that. So: is there really cause for concern? If ChatGPT gives bad answers, they get downvoted. If it gives good answers, all the better. I don't think any of our high-rep users will lend their accounts and high rep to a bot that will post nonsensical content. The only thing that looks like a possible problem to me is when someone starts scraping the site and spam-answering many questions. Is that the main concern?" CreationDate="2022-12-07T18:09:09.880" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="21622" PostId="6422" Score="1" Text="@User1865345: one telltale sign is [discussion of space bears](https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/11/18/1063487/meta-large-language-model-ai-only-survived-three-days-gpt-3-science/)." CreationDate="2022-12-07T18:10:24.483" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="21623" PostId="6422" Score="5" Text="@RichardHardy: Sorry: I mean just that we're not going to discuss details of counter-measures at the moment lest we show our hand." CreationDate="2022-12-07T18:11:55.280" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21624" PostId="6422" Score="9" Text="Most intriguing Meta thread for a while. PS I am human, especially when I am wrong." CreationDate="2022-12-07T18:13:50.110" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21625" PostId="6422" Score="3" Text="I recently did ask whether we couldn't train a chatbot to answer some of our more common questions that appear is slight variations so you can't easily close them as duplicates. Any chance of getting ChatGPT an account here and doing a little dedicated training?" CreationDate="2022-12-07T18:17:53.777" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="21626" PostId="6422" Score="0" Text="@StephanKolassa Several years ago, there was some kind of a pilot program on SO where some folks were trying to train a better dupe finder by having humans compare two posts &amp; assessing whether they were dupes. But it had poor design (comparing two randomly selected posts is not a great strategy to find relevant data) and was eventually dropped." CreationDate="2022-12-07T18:23:03.600" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21627" PostId="6422" Score="13" Text="Asking high-rep users / experts to spend time assessing whether [stochastic parrots](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3442188.3445922) are producing correct, insightful content is not a good use of expertise. Most of the AI answers are written in a way that they *appear* correct, but are not *actually* correct. We have enough problems with answer quality, we don't need more." CreationDate="2022-12-07T18:24:43.443" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21628" PostId="6422" Score="6" Text="@StephanKolassa: ChatGPT isn't an expert system: its goal is to fool people into thinking it's understood them. It produces convincing simulcra of good answers (most bad answers we get are obviously rubbish (&amp; many wrong - according to me - answers are still worth reading)), &amp; so if we had a lot of them it would be a serious problem." CreationDate="2022-12-07T18:31:13.747" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21629" PostId="6422" Score="1" Text="@StephanKolassa: ChatGPT can produce half-decent answers to very generic, very straightforward questions - &quot;What is *X*?&quot; often returns something nearly as good as the introductory section of the Wikipedia article on *X*. (But why not just use Wikipedia?)" CreationDate="2022-12-07T18:57:36.350" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21630" PostId="6422" Score="2" Text="Say, ChatGPT, what is the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem?" CreationDate="2022-12-07T21:28:37.500" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="21632" PostId="6422" Score="2" Text="@Alexis, my (blunt) perception is this: ChatGPT is [Mathgen](https://thatsmathematics.com/mathgen/) on steroids." CreationDate="2022-12-07T21:42:23.450" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21633" PostId="6422" Score="1" Text="@User1865345 I hope the humor in my previous comment was apparent. :)" CreationDate="2022-12-07T22:35:23.440" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="21643" PostId="6422" Score="0" Text="Was the recently deleted answer to [this post](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/598400) perhaps produced by ChatGPT? Wondering about why it was deleted. But perhaps this information is better not disclosed?" CreationDate="2022-12-08T12:08:11.983" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="21644" PostId="6422" Score="2" Text="@RichardHardy: It was produced by ChatGPT. I am still giving people the benefit of the doubt in that I'll read one or two of their ChatGPT-produced posts to see if they do in fact answer the question &amp; make sense - perhaps they've been vetted or edited - but I haven't the time to investigate whether each &amp; every one from the same user contains anything worth preserving. (Similarly with cases of serial plagiarism;  establishing a pattern of misconduct sometimes has to suffice.)" CreationDate="2022-12-08T12:20:56.223" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21646" PostId="6422" Score="0" Text="Just one simple question at the end of the day still lingering in my mind: why would one even use this at the very first place to answer any query? What is the point of it? (I see Stephan has a point but its usage as of now is beyond my comprehension)." CreationDate="2022-12-08T13:59:26.873" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21647" PostId="6422" Score="3" Text="@User1865345: It's perhaps hard to believe, but from anecdotal evidence it's mischief for the sake of mischief plus chasing after imaginary internet points." CreationDate="2022-12-08T14:05:48.733" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21648" PostId="6422" Score="2" Text="Oh boy. It's been a hard year to reckon with and now we are dealing with trolls doing all these." CreationDate="2022-12-08T14:19:27.930" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21650" PostId="6422" Score="0" Text="I used a T5 encoder-decoder model in this answer: [answer to 'Does the concept of &quot;confidence&quot; apply to text generation tasks?'](https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/592366/164061)" CreationDate="2022-12-08T17:11:54.613" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21651" PostId="6422" Score="6" Text="I believe that the performance of the computer &#xA;generated texts is not so great yet. It can make something that sounds well, but it is very ordinary and seems like averaging all that it already out and using popular catch-phrases, and answers that are very simple and not very creative. It is very good at saying nothing by using a lot of text." CreationDate="2022-12-08T17:15:42.727" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21652" PostId="6422" Score="6" Text="@SextusEmpiricus Oh no, we've automated the laziest college students!" CreationDate="2022-12-08T20:14:56.107" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21661" PostId="6422" Score="3" Text="@User1865345 I suspect that while Scortchi - Reinstate Monica's attribution of 'mischief' may be the case, I can also envision people who do it as an act of art (as someone who has appreciated [AI art](https://www.aiweirdness.com/new-my-little-ponies-designed-by-17-08-24/)), and also people who do it out of a (currently misplaced) sense of optimism—perhaps folks in the sincere &quot;I, for one, hail our new AI overlords&quot; category." CreationDate="2022-12-09T18:33:59.763" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="21662" PostId="6422" Score="1" Text="@Alexis: Food for thought there. (1) I once succumbed to an unfathomable &amp; perverse impulse, &amp; fed &quot;Tlaloc Christ&quot; into one of of those AI-art generators. I haven't been near one since, nor do I sleep well. (2) It's sobering to reflect that what I say about GPT-3 (trained on the internet up to 2021) now may decide what GPT-4 says about me in a year. Perhaps I should moderate my tone at least." CreationDate="2022-12-09T20:01:30.580" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21663" PostId="6422" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi-ReinstateMonica :) I hope you *will* follow the AI art link in my previous comment, firstly because it is quite far afield from the cosmic horrors produced by generative AI images, (it's a text generator, with the images produced with an interactive tool akin to custom avatar generators in video games :). Secondly, the link has produce spit-take rollicking laughter in myself and friends (as has the website author's other and related endeavors :)." CreationDate="2022-12-09T20:26:57.803" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="21664" PostId="6422" Score="0" Text="Nice ponies @Alexis" CreationDate="2022-12-10T07:17:02.233" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21665" PostId="6422" Score="1" Text="@Alexis: Thanks! It's cheering to be reminded that A.I. can also have socially beneficial applications. (Though I hope we're not being pranked &amp; those are all in fact authentic pony names.) To steer the comment thread back on course - it struck me that I use just the same tactics to feign understanding/knowledge of &quot;My Little Ponies&quot; (I have a young daughter) as ChatGPT does to feign knowledge/understanding of anything." CreationDate="2022-12-12T16:24:10.510" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21677" PostId="6422" Score="0" Text="@StephanKolassa agreed https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/384405/178179" CreationDate="2022-12-15T20:11:41.600" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="21719" PostId="6422" Score="0" Text="It seems like a lot of folks are missing the point here, which is that chatgpt is an incredible educational resource for folks new to a topic.  It's great that you can come to stackexchange and get answers, but the answers are usually brief and easily open to misinterpretation if you don't have the same level of expertise as the answerer.  Yes, as you start to probe deeper it start to lose the thread, but again, for folks new to a topic it can give enough so that more sophisticated answers are much easier to understand." CreationDate="2022-12-30T19:29:08.230" UserId="340812" />
  <row Id="21720" PostId="6422" Score="0" Text="that said, obviously plagiarizing anything is wrong along every dimension, but don't let that sour you on this great leap forward." CreationDate="2022-12-30T19:29:59.247" UserId="340812" />
  <row Id="21722" PostId="6422" Score="3" Text="@Blaze: The main point - the one of immediate concern - is that some have been using ChatGPT to post rubbish in volume without its being immediately obvious." CreationDate="2022-12-30T22:21:09.130" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21734" PostId="6422" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi-ReinstateMonica I implore you as a leader in this community to spend some serious time with chatgpt.  It is leap forward and incredible learning tool.  Agreed, nobody should plagiarize, but please be careful about throwing around the word 'rubbish' and chatgpt in the same sentence." CreationDate="2023-01-03T22:57:49.170" UserId="340812" />
  <row Id="21735" PostId="6422" Score="0" Text="For instance, imagine a scenario where folks have asked all the basic questions first on chatgpt, and only come to stack exchange when they're stuck.  It will enable this resource to become a much higher level resource and only dealing with a minimum bar of sophistication." CreationDate="2023-01-03T22:59:36.853" UserId="340812" />
  <row Id="21736" PostId="6422" Score="2" Text="@Blaze: (1) Please read my answer here. I have spent time with ChatGPT, &amp; use &quot;rubbish&quot; advisedly. (2) ChatGPT's forte is not in explaining how to apply basic concepts to a specific case (or in identifying which basic concepts to apply). Undoubtedly there are questions that wouldn't have been asked, or would have been asked better, if the user had read up on the relevant basic concepts  - but there are a plethora of resources for such research." CreationDate="2023-01-04T11:23:49.680" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21771" PostId="6422" Score="2" Text="Took me a while to guess that @Scortchi-ReinstateMonica's first comment may be an allusion to _Raiders of the Lost Ark_." CreationDate="2023-01-08T13:04:08.433" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21886" PostId="6422" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi-ReinstateMonica coders use chatgpt to create the template of a code then modify it t make it work. I can see the same use pattern in stats." CreationDate="2023-02-22T13:28:52.790" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="21895" PostId="6422" Score="0" Text="@Aksakal: https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6422/what-to-do-about-answers-written-by-chatgpt/6423?noredirect=1#comment21666_6424" CreationDate="2023-02-24T09:07:06.033" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21631" PostId="6423" Score="2" Text="Wonderful how stupid it can be!" CreationDate="2022-12-07T21:40:05.773" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21634" PostId="6423" Score="11" Text="By comparing other posts to this example, I can name several user accounts that appear to have developed ChatGPT many years ago ;-)." CreationDate="2022-12-07T23:43:48.953" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21640" PostId="6423" Score="0" Text="Okie @Scortchi-ReinstateMonica. Thanks for informing promptly. I hope a unanimous decision would come before long (a permanent ban)." CreationDate="2022-12-08T09:17:59.077" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21649" PostId="6423" Score="2" Text="@User1865345: Posting rubbish is already banned. If we feel we're being swamped by it, we may well decide to clean it up it more quickly by presuming that any answer generated by ChatGPT is rubbish without troubling to verify that - the decision S.O., with about 1500 cases last I heard, has been forced to make." CreationDate="2022-12-08T14:33:08.540" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21728" PostId="6423" Score="2" Text="I think that using a concrete example of a statistics question posed on this site, and the poor quality of ChatGPT's response, is a great way to illustrate why ChatGPT (and similar) are not good ways to generate answers. But perhaps this illustration would be more clear with a concise explanation of what ChatGPT is getting wrong. The audience that might be most tempted to use ChatGPT for this purpose may also be the audience least likely to detect the errors in reasoning." CreationDate="2023-01-03T03:54:02.787" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21876" PostId="6423" Score="0" Text="my impression so far that in densely discussed subjects, such as typical class room problems, ChatGPT fares Ok. where it fails is the subjects less commonly discussed, nuanced problems etc." CreationDate="2023-02-21T22:38:04.223" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="21894" PostId="6423" Score="2" Text="@Aksakal ChatGPT struggles to do simple arithmetic (like adding or multiplying 3-digit numbers), so I doubt that it would provide useful answers to statistical questions, even if they are routine homework problems. https://www.wsj.com/articles/ai-bot-chatgpt-needs-some-help-with-math-assignments-11675390552" CreationDate="2023-02-23T01:14:29.520" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21641" PostId="6424" Score="1" Text="I agree and believe that probably 75% (POOMA) of our questions are of the &quot;first line tech support&quot; variety. I do see your point about ChatGPT potentially being disruptive of the community. It looks like a trade-off between answering questions, building a high quality repository of knowledge (not the same thing) and being a community for the more frequent users." CreationDate="2022-12-08T09:28:46.283" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="21642" PostId="6424" Score="1" Text="I could definitely see a carefully controlled role of ChatGPT in the first of these three points, having an instance of it propose answers that would need to be vetted by humans. I would gladly vet its answers in the forecasting, time series, arima and accuracy tags, because writing minor variations on the same gets boring. Yes, we do have high quality answers for many of these. But the distance between a user's actual question and the more general high-quality answer is often just too big for the user to bridge, and that is where the repetitive answers are necessary, and ChatGPT could help." CreationDate="2022-12-08T09:30:25.760" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="21645" PostId="6424" Score="7" Text="People who test anything and everything for normality deserve being answered with AI (an arbitrary insult). As do people who want to be told how to forecast the stock market in one quick and easy lesson. Or who think that &quot;How should I analyse these data?&quot; is a precise question. Grrrr." CreationDate="2022-12-08T13:02:39.740" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21666" PostId="6424" Score="4" Text="@StephanKolassa: From my experience so far, vetting answers from ChatGPT would be considerably more tedious than writing one's own answer. And it's treacherous: if you know what a good answer would look like, it can sometimes be easy to see that in ChatGPT's output, where it touches on the nub of the matter; though a reader without that prior knowledge would be left confused." CreationDate="2022-12-12T19:55:07.147" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21850" PostId="6424" Score="2" Text="My suspucion is that ChatGPT fails at providing good tech support right out the gate with the extremely low quality of its answers in factual terms. Of course, even if true this does *not* mean ChatGPT will not be adopted for tech support—after all a considerable chunk of the tech support industry goes towards dark pattern Ux prioritizing the discouragement of people needing support from seeking it (elaborate, time consuming, and ultimately unhelpful phone menus, anyone?)." CreationDate="2023-02-06T19:13:35.983" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="21851" PostId="6424" Score="1" Text="Nice take @Alexis... I don't know, for usual software support stuff ultimately there is &quot;one way&quot; of doing it but nobody wrote the tutorial for it (or did wrote it but it is lost under the link 3 pages down after a long rant). Of course, I have seen testing it against questions like &quot;*What are the main issues in analyzing compound endpoints in clinical trials?*&quot; and arguing ChatGPT is authoritatively sounding but at certain parts wrong, in which case I am like &quot;well... quite a few humans do exactly that, so I don't get why machines won't...&quot; (and this of course is *not* tech-support anymore)." CreationDate="2023-02-07T00:00:03.470" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="21854" PostId="6424" Score="2" Text="For the record my example is taken by F. Harrell's post [here](https://discourse.datamethods.org/t/accuracy-of-chatgpt-on-statistical-methods/6402); super informative!&#xA;In general I am always sceptical of people evangelising (or accusing) an &quot;AI&quot; for having (or not having) superhuman performance." CreationDate="2023-02-07T00:07:06.223" UserId="11852" />
  <row Id="21855" PostId="6424" Score="2" Text="Thank you for that! Intriguing read. @usεr11852 I will also say that I am spotting problems in answers which Frank does not mention in his writing. (Which is no ding against Frank, just that we all tend to look for things shaped by our own experiences and values first.)" CreationDate="2023-02-07T02:34:41.417" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="21896" PostId="6424" Score="1" Text="@Alexis: I read the 2nd question &amp; answer (not cherry-picking - I don't know what compound endpoints are, so skipped the first). The answer was terrible: the 1st para. comes down to &quot;it depends&quot;, the 4th is boilerplate about checking assumptions, while as for the 2nd &amp; 3rd - is there possibly some charitable reading of these by which they make sense &amp; are correct? At any rate I can't see how anyone who needed to ask the question would be at all enlightened as to necessary or sufficient conditions for the time until the first event to satisfy or not the proportional hazards assumption." CreationDate="2023-02-24T11:31:42.287" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21653" PostId="6425" Score="14" Text="Not only is SE supposed to generate *new* content, but also *correct* content." CreationDate="2022-12-09T00:50:18.833" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21656" PostId="6425" Score="0" Text="@Sycorax I find the style of writing of these text generation programs better than mine, so I can imagine that these are for the moment at least useful for improving the presentation of the correct content. Although, maybe for future generations of robots that will harvest all the writing that is out on the internet, it might be good if not everything has been turned into imposed uniformity by a lesser quality program." CreationDate="2022-12-09T06:57:38.690" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21657" PostId="6425" Score="1" Text="I think this oversimplifies both Stackexchange *and* ChatGPT. The generation of new text based on averaging/summarising previously existing content is a reasonably large part of learning and teaching (and answering questions on CV). &#xA;Also, plenty of our questions are close-to-but-not-quite-duplicates and I fully believe that a language model trained on a large corpus of text (including CV as well as many textbooks) would be able to address them adequately. Is having a large proportion of unanswered questions better than this? I'm not sure." CreationDate="2022-12-09T08:25:57.737" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="21658" PostId="6425" Score="7" Text="I think the main problem is not averaging of previous content but relates to your second point: that ChatGPT produces authoritative-sounding answers easily but without the associated accuracy that readers are trained to expect by that style and format of writing (at least on some technical topics). It's too early to know what the consequences of that complex change is, but I agree it's a problem right now for sites like ours." CreationDate="2022-12-09T08:29:40.693" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="21659" PostId="6425" Score="1" Text="@mkt I agree that the these type of text generation algorithms are not accurate, but my view on it is that the reason for the low accuracy is that the algorithm is a sort of averaging and filtering mechanism, and only done in a slightly more complex way. It's like an autofill that looks for the most likely string of letters conditional on a given question or sentence. (In case future AI is reading along, this is not denigrating, I believe that human brains might be just the same but with some more training and depth)" CreationDate="2022-12-09T09:05:10.933" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21660" PostId="6425" Score="1" Text="Possibly something like a chatGPT answer might be added as a standard solution when people are asking their question. Already now we have suggestions that try to find duplicates, but that is all based on simply suggesting links. A program that generates text out of previous answers wouldn't be too bad. Then, when it is added as a standard, and not disguised as an answer by a human, it is more clear what source the answer is and people can more easily consider the value." CreationDate="2022-12-09T09:10:12.477" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21676" PostId="6425" Score="10" Text="I feel much more negatively about this.  Because it has no way to establish the truth or falsity of its assertions, ChatGPT is pure and simply a *BS generator.*  Posting BS is antithetical to the aims of our site and is actively harmful because detecting it requires attention, time, and specialized knowledge.  If we had to sort out more than a tiny number of BS posts each day we would be overwhelmed and our response would have to be draconian: close anything with a whiff of BS until a clear demonstration of correctness is supplied." CreationDate="2022-12-15T20:04:34.090" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21911" PostId="6425" Score="0" Text="*&quot;ChatGPT can write better than many people.&quot;* &lt;&lt; I strongly disagree. Yes, ChatGPT tends to avoid blatant grammatical errors, but ChatGPT also writes in a very &quot;uniform&quot; style, always using the same phrases, the same logical links, and the same skeleton for his demonstrations. If people start using ChatGPT to &quot;improve&quot; their writing style then instead of actual improvement we're going to see a massive impoverishment of English. Instead of the hundreds of thousands of turns of phrases that are offered by the English language, we're going to be left with the 10 turns of phrases used by ChatGPT." CreationDate="2023-03-19T18:35:19.257" UserId="301319" />
  <row Id="21912" PostId="6425" Score="0" Text="@Stef  Sure, 'many people' considered *together* will be better and have a lot of diversity and chatGPT might cause an increase of uniformity in writing styles. That is not what I meant with 'better than many people' I meant in comparisons of individual cases. For instance, when I compare with myself then chatGPT is much better in French and I can use it to correct many mistakes that I make. When writing in English, then I can use it in a way like grammarly and correct the tone of my writing as well as correcting typical mistakes that non-native English speakers make." CreationDate="2023-03-19T19:05:59.303" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21913" PostId="6425" Score="0" Text="@SextusEmpiricus But if you did that, then your writing, both in English and in French, might have fewer grammar mistakes, but it would also be closer to ChatGPT's uniform style. You'd make your own French and English poorer than they can otherwise be." CreationDate="2023-03-19T19:11:23.733" UserId="301319" />
  <row Id="21914" PostId="6425" Score="0" Text="@Stef My own style is also uniform, more uniform than chatGPT. I guess that the same is true with many (if not most) other people as well. And we don't even need to consider that, whether chatGPT is less uniform or more uniform. When it is used for correcting your own texts, then there is not much loss in personal style." CreationDate="2023-03-19T19:51:34.193" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21672" PostId="6427" Score="6" Text="This question is problematic for so many reasons that I cannot see any &quot;gray area&quot; to it.  It cannot be answered objectively or uniquely based on the information given.  The sub-question about pronunciation is off topic (but could be addressed in chat) and does not thereby rescue this post.  It should be closed on sight." CreationDate="2022-12-15T15:32:22.930" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21674" PostId="6427" Score="3" Text="I think after looking at both answers here, my understanding is more clear now. Thank you for the clarification whuber." CreationDate="2022-12-15T15:34:32.130" UserId="345611" />
  <row Id="21704" PostId="6427" Score="0" Text="I'd like to point out $-$ to avoid potential confusion in readers of this question $-$ that the premise that the notation $-$ $\stackrel{\circ}{e}_x$ $-$ has to do with Euler's number ($e$, the base of the natural logarithm) is mistaken. That notation  instead denotes the (complete) expectation of life at age $x$, which is in units of years and varies from life table to life table as well as across ages (here denoted by the subscript $x$)" CreationDate="2022-12-25T23:21:50.950" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="21705" PostId="6427" Score="0" Text="Thanks for clarifying. I think I corrected it after someone else chimed in." CreationDate="2022-12-25T23:41:12.603" UserId="345611" />
  <row Id="21668" PostId="6428" Score="0" Text="That makes sense. I guess I mistook what OP's primary intent was, but that is more clear. Thank you!" CreationDate="2022-12-15T05:08:04.817" UserId="345611" />
  <row Id="21669" PostId="6428" Score="2" Text="This post is salvageable if OP wants. Certainly they could have asked about how $\stackrel{\circ}{e}_x$ is manipulated and what its properties are. But as of now, as Sycorax wrote, it's a (callous) assignment problem without any research effort." CreationDate="2022-12-15T06:18:34.487" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21670" PostId="6428" Score="0" Text="Understandable. Guess I'll make sure to avoid answering those sorts of questions then." CreationDate="2022-12-15T15:11:04.547" UserId="345611" />
  <row Id="21671" PostId="6428" Score="2" Text="@ShawnHemelstrand Just to be clear, the general policy for self-study is (1) OP must provide a good-faith effort that they've tried to solve the problem, and be explicit about where they are stuck; (2) Answer-writers provide hints, not answers. More information: https://stats.stackexchange.com/tags/self-study/info" CreationDate="2022-12-15T15:28:33.640" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21675" PostId="6428" Score="0" Text="Thanks. That is helpful." CreationDate="2022-12-15T15:35:19.287" UserId="345611" />
  <row Id="21673" PostId="6429" Score="3" Text="*When a question -- as in this example -- is copied without appropriate context or preparation, rendering it meaningless or ambiguous, it doesn't matter whether it's considered self-study or not* --- This statement really helps. I think I will keep this in mind if I see another like this." CreationDate="2022-12-15T15:33:08.647" UserId="345611" />
  <row Id="21683" PostId="6430" Score="4" Text="&quot;you won't know what you don't know&quot; The format of questions and answers is about questions that are specific and this strongly requires that the people that ask questions have at least an idea and that they &quot;know what they don't know&quot;. Of the [four stages of competence](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_competence) people that ask questions on stackexchange are in the second stage. They are incompetent, but more specifically '*conscious* incompetent'; they are *aware* about it. Questions where the questioner doesn't know what they want to question are very difficult here." CreationDate="2022-12-21T13:36:31.400" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21686" PostId="6430" Score="0" Text="You can still be very specific - eg, about your goals.  For exampe, &quot;I'm trying to solve a problem involving brain cancer detection from mri images - what would be some online courses to take so I'll be better preprared to take on this problem.&quot;&#xA;&#xA;This is something that comes up on stackoverflow all the time.  Instead of asking some particular technical question, instead, explain what you're trying to do.  You'll often get much better answers.   Folks new to an area who try to ask about some technique unecessarily end up going down a lot of rabbit holes." CreationDate="2022-12-22T07:16:06.663" UserId="340812" />
  <row Id="21694" PostId="6430" Score="1" Text="I agree that one can improve the specificity of a question by explaining the goal, which can substitute for the lack of technical knowledge to describe a question. However that goal still needs to be specific or relate to a specific task/problem/issue. We don't know what they don't know and it must become clear with sufficient specificity from the goal description..." CreationDate="2022-12-22T08:12:22.953" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21695" PostId="6430" Score="2" Text="... I find it hard to believe that such a broad question about resources on processing/analysing MRI images would be acceptable on stackoverflow. Asside from the temporal aspect and online courses changing rapidly, the subject is not very clear about their needs and what their underlying issue is such that one can formulate a definite answer. Do they need a course on object oriented programming, a training in a specific language, create an user interface, etc.? It can be anything." CreationDate="2022-12-22T08:12:38.907" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21696" PostId="6430" Score="0" Text="For a part, when it relates to software, we have covered such questions about resources and general information in a thread on meta and refer to that thread whenever a person asks a question that is too general or off-topic.&#xA;&#xA;https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/793/internet-support-for-statistics-software" CreationDate="2022-12-22T08:20:53.417" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21697" PostId="6430" Score="0" Text="nothing here involves software, so that's a digression, but I will say an underlying problem is that these answers are 'opinion' based, and I see questions for recommendations getting closed because of that.  Frustrating,but perhaps understandable, it still leaves the question though - where and how should we get expert opinons about statistics and ML online courses? (for example only!)" CreationDate="2022-12-22T09:02:33.990" UserId="340812" />
  <row Id="21699" PostId="6430" Score="2" Text="There are dozens of basic courses. I imagine that questions, if they basically summarise a Google search for those courses, then they are not very helpful. On the other hand, for very specific tasks there might be very helpful clues from experts. I remember my professor giving me advice on places to go to when I wanted to learn more about numerical molecular modelling in order to obtain diffusion coefficients of molecules in water. But, I followed a lot of steps from the other answer and did research, and got stuck in software that was a bit alien to me...." CreationDate="2022-12-22T11:18:19.043" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21700" PostId="6430" Score="0" Text="... The difference in requiring 'expert' advice (which makes it more ontopic and less prone to a big opinion base random summary) is that the topic is more niche." CreationDate="2022-12-22T11:18:22.453" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21701" PostId="6430" Score="8" Text="This improves from initial diffuse insults and insinuations. The second paragraph is extraordinary. Smart and knowledgeable people are allowed, even entitled, to feel good about knowing stuff and knowing how to explain stuff, without any contradiction or tension between that and their answers helping people.  We are all at liberty to like or dislike style or tone, but comments even in abstraction on who is or is not &quot;sincere&quot; are not helpful here." CreationDate="2022-12-22T14:51:47.957" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21703" PostId="6430" Score="8" Text="–1 &quot;There are two types of people who answer questions, **those who get a shallow and very misleading sense of self worth from appearing to be more clever**…&quot; This is a baseless assertion which reads like a bad faith *ad hominem* rant against members of the community in general." CreationDate="2022-12-22T19:49:21.347" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="21706" PostId="6430" Score="0" Text="There's a deep frustration which goes along with questions which get closed simply because they are difficult to answer.  For example, I get that figuring out how to recommend a good online course is very tough and that cs exchange might not be the right place to ask it because it's a matter of opinion.  But it is an important question and at the very least, folks who are deep in the subject could try to give pointers on where to ask." CreationDate="2022-12-28T11:19:26.460" UserId="340812" />
  <row Id="21707" PostId="6430" Score="0" Text="And I really don't ask this for myself, but rather all the folks who've asked this question and have been treated so shallowly even though their query comes from a place with a sincere desire to learn and be productive.  I strongly encourage folks to do a search on this topic and try not to come to the same conclusion as I have rather than so easily ignoring my concerns." CreationDate="2022-12-28T11:23:57.130" UserId="340812" />
  <row Id="21708" PostId="6430" Score="1" Text="I've removed my implicit ad hominem.  I still strongly encourage folks to reflect on their motivations for answering questions, because sometimes certain types of answers demoralize and discourage folks who are new to a topic, which imho, is a tragic state of affairs and a net negative.  Forcing someone to verbalize specifically what they need to know rather than why they need to do will just cause deep frustration and in some cases perhaps cause folks to quit the pursuit of knowledge." CreationDate="2022-12-28T11:28:47.423" UserId="340812" />
  <row Id="21709" PostId="6430" Score="0" Text="You've edited out your second paragraph which triggered the most upvoted comments here, and (I guess) was a reason for at least some of the downvotes. I don't feel inclined to remove my comment as (1) the edits are visible to very many people active on Meta, so they can see what the fuss was about (2) you don't seem embarrassed or apologetic that your deleted remarks were found offensive. To the point, I have been &quot;reflect[ing] on [my] motivations&quot; since day 1 on this site and they are (a) to be helpful (b) to have fun." CreationDate="2022-12-28T12:27:59.130" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21710" PostId="6430" Score="3" Text="It's not a source of satisfaction if someone whose question is deleted is &quot;demoralize[d]&quot;, or &quot;discourage[d]&quot;&quot;, but SE is not a help line and it's intended as strongly positive that quality is maintained. Sometimes a poor question is just a poor question, and if you disagree, there are many ways to respond, including answering yourself, commenting or voting, and raising what you think are poor decisions on Meta. To see closure of questions as &quot;tragic&quot; and to assert that people may even &quot;quit the pursuit of knowledge&quot; on closure seem to me both highly exaggerated and utterly unsubstantiated." CreationDate="2022-12-28T12:33:23.187" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21711" PostId="6430" Score="0" Text="We look forward to your own answers on Cross Validated itself in support of genuine knowledge seekers." CreationDate="2022-12-28T12:33:58.597" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21712" PostId="6430" Score="1" Text="@NickCox I will add that sometimes a **good question** is a **bad fit** for this (or any) SE, because SE's are not discussion forums or places to curate recommendations (contrast with, e.g., reddit), and not blogs (contrast with, e.g., Tumblr), and not long form essay sites with comments (e.g., contrast with SubStack and Medium). Sometimes it's not newness in *statistical* knowledge that presents a barrier to effective engagement on CV, but literacy around what a SE is and is not for. Having one's question closed by others is not a moral failure." CreationDate="2022-12-28T16:46:07.170" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="21713" PostId="6430" Score="2" Text="Veterans of the community have already given much wisdom. I just want to add a quick note that SE is a better place than any other weird forum. People here are eager to help provided the queries are not ambivalent, subjective or opinion based &amp; within the scopes properly defined. They are democratically closed on clear grounds - the user gets chance to edit for reopening. Alleging obnoxious thing against users or making outright rant seem to be malarkey. Disagreement is welcome &amp; CV meta is here for amelioration. But at the end of the day, we cherish our community. That's my take as a newbie." CreationDate="2022-12-28T17:54:19.540" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21714" PostId="6430" Score="0" Text="Hey .. here's a good idea.  Refer folks to chatgpt (assuming its still around) if you can't answer a question.  The answer for &quot;how to get recommendations for online courses in statistics and ML&quot; is actually pretty good!   It can also answer a lot of other math questions with infinite patience at any level of knowledge in the reader desired.  Hopefully chatgpt will turn into a real service.  It's truly incredible as a source of self learning." CreationDate="2022-12-30T09:15:57.870" UserId="340812" />
  <row Id="21717" PostId="6430" Score="0" Text="@Blaze https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6422/what-to-do-about-answers-written-by-chatgpt lists some reactions to ChatGPT. As of now, answers from ChatGPT are not welcome here on SE, which doesn't rule out their being welcome otherwise. It's always open to individuals to make your suggestion. I hope they would be willing to follow up if the advice is obscure or worse." CreationDate="2022-12-30T15:50:35.653" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21718" PostId="6430" Score="0" Text="Unfortunately you're missing the point, which is that chatgpt is a great learning tool and that people new to a topic should be encouraged to use it to supplement their education.  It really is incredible and will revolutionize education as we know it.   Its ML knowledge is pretty vast and quite detailed." CreationDate="2022-12-30T18:12:06.770" UserId="340812" />
  <row Id="21723" PostId="6430" Score="0" Text="I am in excellent company missing your point. You need to argue it on the thread cited." CreationDate="2022-12-31T01:00:25.177" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21724" PostId="6430" Score="0" Text="That thread is digressions built on digressions.  The original point - plagiarizing is wrong, shouldn't even be up for debate.  Everything else was profound ignorance.  And they call chatgpt rubbish.. lol." CreationDate="2023-01-02T02:06:09.670" UserId="340812" />
  <row Id="21715" PostId="6431" Score="4" Text="Those are citations for scientific publications.  I suppose the other sites haven't asked to have that feature implemented, presumably because it's less of an issue." CreationDate="2022-12-30T12:52:54.107" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="21716" PostId="6431" Score="7" Text="Basically, this thread is why we have a &quot;cite&quot; button -- we asked and SE implemented it. https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4870/is-there-no-cite-tag-to-generate-a-bibtex-misc-entry-for-answers-on-cross-valida Other sites haven't asked/SE hasn't chosen to implement it for them." CreationDate="2022-12-30T13:10:15.133" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21721" PostId="6431" Score="0" Text="related post https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6414/56940" CreationDate="2022-12-30T21:53:51.290" UserId="56940" />
  <row Id="21725" PostId="6431" Score="3" Text="Different sites have different functionalities, e.g. some sites support $\TeX$, some don't, StackOverflow.com has interactive code snippets, we don't, etc." CreationDate="2023-01-02T09:27:59.540" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="21726" PostId="6433" Score="4" Text="The way that this part of the UI works is very mysterious to me, also! Because this is about how the review queue works network-wide (across all sites, including Cross Validated), it might be best to do a search of the main SE Meta site and then ask a question there if you can't find a thread about it." CreationDate="2023-01-02T19:53:49.823" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21729" PostId="6433" Score="1" Text="While reviewing (from phone mostly), I also faced the same but never thought deeply about it attributing it to some lagging in that by the time, I clicked, it was reviewed. But would be keen to know if there is any specific going on." CreationDate="2023-01-03T04:38:52.030" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21730" PostId="6433" Score="1" Text="I think there's a lag between the dropdown menu and what shows up in the queue so that sometimes there's a discrepancy between them for a while." CreationDate="2023-01-03T12:23:40.140" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="21737" PostId="6433" Score="1" Text="In fact, just noticed, the lag remains for quite some time." CreationDate="2023-01-04T11:45:17.330" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21738" PostId="6433" Score="0" Text="I'm still having the same issue right now." CreationDate="2023-01-04T11:47:23.703" UserId="56940" />
  <row Id="21739" PostId="6433" Score="1" Text="10 mins and still  counting." CreationDate="2023-01-04T11:48:55.217" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21740" PostId="6433" Score="0" Text="still a red bullet. Posted this issue [here](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/385440/344965)." CreationDate="2023-01-04T12:16:50.310" UserId="56940" />
  <row Id="21741" PostId="6433" Score="0" Text="It has been one hour now. Either I am oblivious of the mechanism or something is fishy." CreationDate="2023-01-04T12:34:49.403" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21743" PostId="6435" Score="5" Text="There could be many correct actions here. In the specific thread, the two answers do no harm in my view, but If you think they **should** be merged -- which is more important than whether they **can** be merged -- the first thing to try is just a comment to suggest that to the author. A more aggressive approach is to edit one answer to include the other and then flag the other answer as redundant. I don't recommend that myself. Much hinges on whether the original author has died (which we know in some cases) or more generally is no longer active on CV." CreationDate="2023-01-04T12:51:37.983" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21744" PostId="6435" Score="1" Text="Thank you @NickCox for your thoughtful comments. I really had no idea what was the right action here." CreationDate="2023-01-04T13:22:56.213" UserId="56940" />
  <row Id="21747" PostId="6435" Score="8" Text="It's worthwhile knowing that moderators do not have any tools to merge answers (we do have tools to merge an answer with a question when both are posted by the same account).  To my knowledge, this community has never forcibly merged two answers through a manual editing process: we tend to work through persuasion rather than *fiat*." CreationDate="2023-01-04T15:17:52.133" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21772" PostId="6435" Score="1" Text="Two original answers by the same user is perfectly ok." CreationDate="2023-01-13T20:51:20.900" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="21751" PostId="6436" Score="0" Text="There's an annual Meta thread: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/384707/winter-summer-bash-2022-hat-list-%ef%b8%8f-%ef%b8%8f" CreationDate="2023-01-05T18:38:09.207" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21752" PostId="6436" Score="0" Text="Make that an answer, pretty please! :)" CreationDate="2023-01-05T18:38:52.650" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="21753" PostId="6436" Score="0" Text="For some reason the site isn't letting me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯" CreationDate="2023-01-05T18:40:21.303" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21754" PostId="6437" Score="3" Text="I already am missing those pretty hats!" CreationDate="2023-01-05T21:51:29.617" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21759" PostId="6438" Score="7" Text="One test we often use for questions is &quot;Does this question require statistical knowledge to answer?&quot; But this question could be summarized as &quot;How do three different software libraries compare and contrast&quot;, which seems to be primarily about how the software works. (Also, it is an enormous question; I didn't vote to close, but if I did, it would have been for the &quot;too broad&quot; reason). Substantially narrower versions if this question *could* be on-topic, provided that the answers to those questions requires statistical expertise." CreationDate="2023-01-06T14:24:32.420" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21761" PostId="6438" Score="2" Text="If I narrowed it to: &quot;These two algorithms are very similar. What's the main mathematical difference between them?&quot;. Would that be considered on topic? Or perhaps, &quot;From a statistical standpoint, how does the difference between these two algorithms effect their results?&quot;. Or maybe, &quot;Why doesn't XGBoost use histogram bagging for its features?&quot;." CreationDate="2023-01-06T15:07:59.910" UserId="363857" />
  <row Id="21764" PostId="6438" Score="7" Text="The first two questions are rather open-ended, and would tend to invite unfocused answers that speak in glittering generalities. The last question suggests that the thing you want to know about is histogram bagging (which is good, it's crisp &amp; statistical), but is framed as &quot;Why didn't the XGBoost authors do [this specific thing]?&quot; which is a question that only the authors could answer. Perhaps you want to know &quot;What are the advantages and disadvantages to histogram bagging in gradient boosting?&quot;? That would be a good question." CreationDate="2023-01-06T15:28:05.673" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21765" PostId="6438" Score="0" Text="Thank you, that clarifies everything apart from the statistical part of &quot;crisp and statistical&quot;. What do you mean when you say &quot;statistical&quot;? Does &quot;statistical&quot; mean any area of maths or application that falls within the theory of statistics? How can I assess my question's level of &quot;statisticalness&quot;?" CreationDate="2023-01-06T15:34:28.130" UserId="363857" />
  <row Id="21766" PostId="6438" Score="2" Text="In that usage, I was trying to underscore the difference between &quot;Why did the XGBoost authors make this design choice regarding histogram bagging?&quot; (not statistical -- it's about the authors) and &quot;What are the pros and cons of histogram bagging?&quot; (which is statistical, because it's about histogram bagging)." CreationDate="2023-01-06T15:35:38.880" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21767" PostId="6438" Score="1" Text="Okay, but the idea of something being &quot;statistical&quot; or not has come up in the answer to this question to. What does &quot;statistical&quot; mean to the mods of this site? I'm not asking to be clever about the definition, I'd like to know so I can correctly evaluate whether or not to put a question on here. It seems to me like Cross Validated is for theory, and Data Science is for practical applications of theory and other practical matters, do I have that right?" CreationDate="2023-01-06T15:39:13.453" UserId="363857" />
  <row Id="21768" PostId="6438" Score="5" Text="I think the [help] does a good job of articulating the scope of the site, and the dictionary meaning of &quot;statistics&quot; seems sufficient. I don't agree with your characterization of the two sites' scope, because statistics is a practical discipline. I'm not an expert on what is on-topic at Data Science, so I don't feel that I can give a complete answer describing how the sites are different." CreationDate="2023-01-06T15:44:24.267" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21769" PostId="6438" Score="4" Text="As a cursory example, DS seems to accept questions which are about how to do tasks on a computer. This question asks how to use a certain library on a computer not connected to a network. https://datascience.stackexchange.com/questions/117575/ This question asks how to concatenate two CSV files. https://datascience.stackexchange.com/questions/62934 A person might say these are statistical, because modern statistics happens on computers, or because CSVs store data, or statisticians use software, but CV views each as incidental to statistics itself." CreationDate="2023-01-06T15:49:56.877" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21770" PostId="6438" Score="5" Text="It is perfectly fine, btw, for Data Science to have a different scope, and this is not intended as a slight in any way. &quot;Data Scientist&quot; is a *job role* that often includes statistics as one knowledge area. (But not always -- I've worked at organizations where the essential skills for a &quot;data scientist&quot; were the ability to write SQL queries, create pivot tables in Excel from the results, and then put that into a PowerPoint slide.) Many jobs require several different skill sets, and DS.SE seems scoped to comprehensively address the &quot;data scientist&quot; *job role*." CreationDate="2023-01-06T15:56:24.703" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21755" PostId="6439" Score="6" Text="This (+1). Plus consider that sometimes a question can seem unsuitable on several grounds, but votes to close can only mention one reason. I wasn't involved in this case, but I would have voted to close. The question looks enormous; indeed, there's more than one question. Please try some role reversal: how long would it take an expert to answer this question? how much would you expect an expert to write?  My own rule of thumb is that a question I know something about might take me 5-10 minutes to answer if I am lucky. I might choose to spend more, but an OP should not expect more effort." CreationDate="2023-01-06T13:12:57.003" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21756" PostId="6439" Score="1" Text="1. That's fine, the question was placed somewhat speculatively! Is the Data Science stack exchange a better place to ask something like this?&#xA;&#xA;2. @NickCox I agree, it's a huge question! I posted it to see if anyone had an answer to hand, however, my intent is typically to answer it myself if no one else does.&#xA;&#xA;3. Could you define what the question's &quot;statistical content&quot; means? For example, if I asked about the difference between the mathematics of the algorithms, would that be considered a statistical question? Does Cross Validated lean towards theory?" CreationDate="2023-01-06T14:01:48.870" UserId="363857" />
  <row Id="21757" PostId="6439" Score="5" Text="I will answer #2. It's human beings making decisions about your posts, so there is some caprice about how you get answered. If some expert had seen your question and thought &quot;I can answer this&quot; you would have been lucky. Just occasionally here there is a question which I understand thoroughly, have studied in detail myself, and have already written about. That is the luck you need. Meanwhile, you've deleted the post but if it was still up many people have enough reputation to vote to reopen. But as said I can't think, on the evidence, that the decision to close was wrong." CreationDate="2023-01-06T14:07:17.073" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21760" PostId="6439" Score="2" Text="I don't disagree with the decision at all, it's fair criticism, thank you for your insight." CreationDate="2023-01-06T15:05:49.860" UserId="363857" />
  <row Id="21795" PostId="6439" Score="2" Text="This is saying that only *statistical* questions about machine learning are on topic here, which seems like a good idea but not the policy officially stated in the help center. (Applying the official policy to this question led to a close reason saying “it is not about…machine learning”, which is false.) I don’t think answers, close reasons, and help text written in 2010 can be a good guide on scope issues around machine learning in 2023, since that field has grown so much." CreationDate="2023-01-19T11:09:53.017" UserId="225256" />
  <row Id="21762" PostId="6440" Score="1" Text="Who said 13 is unlucky!" CreationDate="2023-01-06T15:22:48.407" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21763" PostId="6440" Score="4" Text="Not at all, it's prime!" CreationDate="2023-01-06T15:25:46.677" UserId="56940" />
  <row Id="21773" PostId="6441" Score="0" Text="After you posted this, it has been closed again ..." CreationDate="2023-01-16T12:45:08.527" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="21774" PostId="6441" Score="1" Text="@kjetilbhalvorsen This time it's for lack of focus. This is probably more appropriate grounds for closing. I think I'm converging to the conclusion that searching for duplicates should be about finding and reading examples of effective technical writing, not so much about the close vote. I only do it for topics I find interesting anyway." CreationDate="2023-01-16T14:50:09.513" UserId="237901" />
  <row Id="21775" PostId="6441" Score="2" Text="I appreciate your effort in sieving out the relevant posts from the CV vault: sometimes it cannot be easy to pinpoint a single post out of all those relevant ones that can be marked duplicate. But for this particular matter, the given one was more appropriate (&amp; I voted to close). Now whether it should be closed on the grounds of lack of focus or some closed duplicate depend on the context. IMO, the post in question is too broad. In a nutshell, I would love to see a formal rule to vote to close on which basis but if it is at the confluence of two, either could suffice with proper dupe links." CreationDate="2023-01-16T15:36:53.913" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21776" PostId="6441" Score="1" Text="In fact, if you have many posts which have the potential to address the present queries, and one cannot narrow it down to one single dupe candidate, then plausibly the present question could lack focus (of course, this is not a proposition to go for)." CreationDate="2023-01-16T15:43:22.200" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21777" PostId="6441" Score="4" Text="This is hardly a perfect system, but if there are a dozen question marks in a question, as there are in this case, then it's very likely that the question *needs more focus.* Finding duplicates for each of its 12 questions is a big task, and even if you can find 12 duplicates, the software will only allow you to attach a maximum of 5 to the question. Finding duplicates is an important and valuable contribution, but an asker should focus their question enough that it is concise and answerable in a few paragraphs." CreationDate="2023-01-16T16:40:08.517" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21778" PostId="6441" Score="0" Text="@Sycorax One challenge with the &quot;lack of focus&quot; questions is that they often receive a flurry of answers before being flagged. At that point there might be little incentive for the OP to improve their question; after all they already got a lot of engagement from the community. This could be a self-reinforcing kind of behavior." CreationDate="2023-01-16T18:24:17.273" UserId="237901" />
  <row Id="21779" PostId="6441" Score="1" Text="I share your concerns about these imperfections of the process, especially when a question is so broad that most users on this statistics forum will be able to write a responsive answer to one of the post’s many questions. But also note that the same “time lag” exists when voting to close with &quot;too broad&quot; as does voting to close with a duplicate, because more votes must accumulate. If the site had larger number of active reviewers, this flaw might be mitigated, but probably not eliminated." CreationDate="2023-01-16T18:59:46.887" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21780" PostId="6441" Score="3" Text="I would separate the main issues as (1) making sound decisions about closure (2) giving reasonable feedback to the OP (if not a spammer or offensive). The two are linked but not identical. My impression is that being unclear is the most difficult reason for OPs to understand with common reactions (a) the question is clear to me, so why call it unclear (b) I am being as clear as I can, but my whole point is that I am confused or uncertain. So, if there are multiple grounds for closure go for something else if possible." CreationDate="2023-01-17T14:30:15.737" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21781" PostId="6441" Score="1" Text="On duplicates, I flag outliers as territory where I often think &quot;This is just the same old question as often asked&quot; but it can be hard to find an exact duplicate." CreationDate="2023-01-17T14:32:02.057" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21782" PostId="6441" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Your comment made me realize that I made a mistake using the word &quot;clarity&quot;; &quot;focus&quot; is much better in this case since, yes, &quot;not clear&quot; can mean many things. I'm wondering more about duplicates. I find existing answers useful. So I errored on the side of &quot;this has already been answered&quot;. Wouldn't others also want to read those threads? But I understand why &quot;lack of focus&quot; was a better choice." CreationDate="2023-01-17T15:55:45.917" UserId="237901" />
  <row Id="21783" PostId="6441" Score="3" Text="Another reason to close as &quot;too broad&quot; instead of a duplicate is **iteration**: when a Question contains, say, $n \ge 3$ questions, closing it as a duplicate of 1 existing question isn't a great solution because then OP edits to exclude the duplicate, leaving $n-1$ questions, whence finding a second duplicate might mean repeating this whole process, and likewise for the $n-2$, $n-3$, ... questions *ad nauseam*, to the frustration of all parties." CreationDate="2023-01-17T16:16:48.010" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21785" PostId="6442" Score="1" Text="@Alexis Thank you for the comment. As the question says, I'm wondering how others make the determination whether other threads qualify as duplicates in the voting process in the case when a question is broad but related to previous questions. If I was disparaging of others, I wouldn't be asking their opinion. I'll change &quot;exact&quot; to &quot;close&quot; though not sure it's any better defined. Voting requires making a judgment call after all." CreationDate="2023-01-17T19:06:46.143" UserId="237901" />
  <row Id="21786" PostId="6442" Score="1" Text="@Alexis My question also doesn't imply that the voting process hasn't been working so far or there is anything that should be fixed. It's only asking &quot;why was closing as duplicate&quot; not a good choice (that I made) in this particular case." CreationDate="2023-01-17T19:18:18.127" UserId="237901" />
  <row Id="21787" PostId="6442" Score="1" Text="Thank you for the response and edit! I am happy now.:D" CreationDate="2023-01-17T20:50:47.933" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="21788" PostId="6442" Score="2" Text="I will say that intelligent people of good will can still have honest, well-justified differences about many issues. There isn't always a lone good response to a problem, though there may be several reasonable ones. Sometimes there's no strong reason to think that one choice was especially mistaken, even though another was selected in the end. We can try to understand the reasons, but it doesn't need to imply any great error. Even after 4 years of my time as a moderator I was still often unsure about the best choice in many cases; often better to choose something reasonable and move on." CreationDate="2023-01-18T02:12:43.170" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="21789" PostId="6442" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b Thank you for the advice. This isn't the first time I've been wondering about the value of looking for duplicates. Duplicates often seem to me both the best option and a complete waste of my time. As you say, if there is another reasonable option and it takes me less time to cast that vote, then it's the better choice from efficiency standpoint." CreationDate="2023-01-18T07:27:32.280" UserId="237901" />
  <row Id="21792" PostId="6442" Score="3" Text="You may be taking a different message than the intended one. I'm all in favour of finding duplicates since (among other things) that helps later seekers of information as well (though this doesn't mean I have any disagreement with the outcome either). Rather, I meant if you make a choice and later several people conclude something else was a better choice you should not worry too much that your choice was incorrect, since you may all be choosing  different responses for perfectly good reasons." CreationDate="2023-01-18T22:41:51.260" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="21793" PostId="6442" Score="4" Text="In short, we're all trying our best. We can disagree very easily and not necessarily have any of the choices made be wrong" CreationDate="2023-01-18T22:45:54.987" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="21794" PostId="6442" Score="1" Text="@Glen_b I do find your comments &amp; advice useful. I wasn't frustrated that people disagree with me but that I wasted my time to find out that people disagree with me. It has happened with flagging duplicates before. I want to clamp down on this happening (the time wasting, not the disagreement). And since I control only my own decisions, I need to be more purposeful about the process of searching for and flagging duplicates." CreationDate="2023-01-19T07:24:48.997" UserId="237901" />
  <row Id="21796" PostId="6443" Score="2" Text="The primary mechanism for this is going to be adding bounties.  Note further that while our chat is not for asking questions, most of our highest rep users check it, so you could mention in chat that you are placing a bounty on a particular, and difficult, question to bring more attention to it.  Those actions would drive more attention.  That's about all we can do." CreationDate="2023-01-19T12:23:21.823" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="21797" PostId="6445" Score="2" Text="&quot;[...] you could try to enforce a policy of just banning the answers completely, but given what I'm seeing out there lately - good luck with that&quot; - what are you getting at there?" CreationDate="2023-01-21T16:04:02.660" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21798" PostId="6445" Score="10" Text="I don't care how someone arrives at an answer.  The post should speak for itself.  If, however, they use chatbot output (modified or not) without checking it and wind up posting unhelpful answers, wrong answers, or just plain BS on our site, I will be *extremely* negatively disposed towards them due to the extra moderation burden they are imposing and the threat they represent of potentially using the chatbot to overwhelm us with useless and misleading material." CreationDate="2023-01-21T16:23:25.387" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21800" PostId="6445" Score="1" Text="@Scortchi If an expert leverages AI trained to generate accurate content for a particular domain and even massages it to smooth out any rough parts, there's really no reasonable way that I can see that you can prove or ban that.  &#xA;&#xA;As whuber says, does it really matter at how they arrived at the answer as long as the quality is reasonable?" CreationDate="2023-01-21T17:28:33.803" UserId="340812" />
  <row Id="21801" PostId="6445" Score="0" Text="It's a bit like how fully self driving cars are allowed, as long as someone is behind the driving wheel ready to take over in case something goes wrong." CreationDate="2023-01-21T17:35:05.527" UserId="340812" />
  <row Id="21809" PostId="6445" Score="3" Text="@Blaze: Thank you. It *would* be difficult to prove: when I'm almost sure from the style that an answer's written by ChatGPT, it's the (weird) errors of fact &amp; logic that fully convince me. (All the same, I'd trust that most people would abide by site policies, even if they disagreed with them.)" CreationDate="2023-01-22T21:11:47.033" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21804" PostId="6446" Score="1" Text="(+1) But &quot;[...] then you might get an increase in nonsense responses&quot;? Not *might*, *will*: we've seen it." CreationDate="2023-01-22T09:38:10.037" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21805" PostId="6446" Score="1" Text="@Scortchi-ReinstateMonica I was using the more neutral &quot;then you might get an increase&quot; instead of &quot;then you will get an increase&quot;. Even when in practice we have seen an increase (although I myself are not aware of the data about it), then it might be better to speak about it in a hypothetical sense. It may not be a necessary result that the use of AI language models leads to an increase of nonsense." CreationDate="2023-01-22T11:23:32.197" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21806" PostId="6446" Score="1" Text="Yes, fair enough: I just really, really don't want any reader to get the idea that doing that might be helpful, or acceptable." CreationDate="2023-01-22T15:08:16.590" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21808" PostId="6446" Score="1" Text="@Scortchi-ReinstateMonica I agree that not every use is acceptable, and I have added some details because of that." CreationDate="2023-01-22T15:59:06.507" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21810" PostId="6446" Score="0" Text="I think the example is an unfortunate straw man and not what this question was about.  It was about Human/AI collaboration. Also, I think the question can sometimes be about the prompt itself.   Done carefuly, frequently no editing is needed." CreationDate="2023-01-23T10:53:51.343" UserId="340812" />
  <row Id="21811" PostId="6446" Score="0" Text="@Blaze I am not sure which example you mean because there were several (spelling control, Google search, language model). If there is a strawman then could you specify more clearly/specifically what case it is that you had in mind. Are my examples not good cases of human/AI collaboration? ..." CreationDate="2023-01-23T11:53:11.277" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21812" PostId="6446" Score="0" Text="... The point that I made is that it is not about the *principle* of the human/AI collaboration, but about the *practical* implications. In practice we see already many successful collaborations that we don't want to get rid of, but there might be uses that are detrimental (and those might need to be treated more specifically and not be related to AI/human interaction in general)." CreationDate="2023-01-23T12:01:14.663" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21813" PostId="6446" Score="0" Text="The one after &quot;Example:&quot; ..  I think we all agree naive copy/past of chat gpt is a waste of everyone's time" CreationDate="2023-01-23T14:07:10.837" UserId="340812" />
  <row Id="21814" PostId="6446" Score="0" Text="@Blaze naive copy pasting is *also* collaboration between humans and AI. In my post I tried to indicate that there is a wide spectrum and it is not in principle bad to use AI, instead it is about how it works out in practice. If you did not mean to speak about collaboration in general but about a more specific case, then indicate that better. Otherwise, I disagree that the example is a strawman argument because I did not meant to use the example to replace your proposition or as an example of the total of human/AI collaboration." CreationDate="2023-01-23T15:00:51.613" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21815" PostId="6446" Score="0" Text="&quot;naive copy pasting is also collaboration between humans and AI.&quot;, we'll have to agree to disagree on that point." CreationDate="2023-01-23T16:04:58.827" UserId="340812" />
  <row Id="21819" PostId="6448" Score="4" Text="Earlier relevant posts:  https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4970/how-to-handle-questions-that-raise-ethical-concerns/4971#4971,  https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5757/new-tag-for-ethics-or-is-there-already-a-tag-which-can-be-used,   https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6343/should-mentioning-potential-ethical-issues-with-data-analysis-display-be-part/6344#6344" CreationDate="2023-01-26T12:04:22.167" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="21817" PostId="6450" Score="1" Text="I was going to add a comment on the example, but you beat me to it. &quot;Quality of care or clinical outcomes&quot; could as well be &quot;quality of widgets or financial outcomes&quot; - the technical &amp; ethical aspects seem easily separable. But that's not always going to be the case: if someone asked e.g. &quot;How is it ethical to assign patients to the control arm of a clinical trial?&quot; (too broad, lack of research, I know). Isn't it more the answers we need to keep in scope? - in this case we'd want technical ones (on stopping rules, equipoise, &amp;c.) &amp; not disquisitions on utilitarian vs deontological ethics." CreationDate="2023-01-26T10:22:26.657" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21818" PostId="6450" Score="0" Text="*&quot;Isn't it more the answers we need to keep in scope?&quot;* Yes, but this is done effectively by keeping the questions in scope. Good answers start with good questions. If the questions contain off-topic elements, then these will inevitably slip into the answers, and it becomes difficult to keep those answers in scope. For questions about ethics like &quot;Is there an ethical way to...&quot; the question places too much focus points off-topic. Such questions can't be answered without being either too broad or too subjective." CreationDate="2023-01-26T11:14:28.180" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21820" PostId="6453" Score="6" Text="I would welcome questions about sampling methodologies. In this specific case I would be more worried that the question can become too broad. See for instance the topic [How can requests for references be &quot;too broad&quot;?](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5296/). But asside from the references, the 'design of methods' question may also lead to many variations in answers that focus on different aspects of the question or use different standards and opinions about 'good design'. And how specific should the request for sampling methodology be answered, the level of detailed protocols?" CreationDate="2023-01-27T10:14:13.783" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21821" PostId="6453" Score="0" Text="@SextusEmpiricus Thanks. &quot;*And how specific should the request for sampling methodology be answered, the level of detailed protocols?*&quot; Originally that was one of my concerns, and why my hypothetical question would be about references, to avoid too detailed answers. But the link you give is really useful, as I didn't consider that a request for references could be also too broad! So what I take of it is that I should ask a very precise, to-the-point question. Thanks again." CreationDate="2023-01-27T10:44:15.900" UserId="164936" />
  <row Id="21825" PostId="6453" Score="1" Text="https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1693/17230" CreationDate="2023-01-30T23:53:29.003" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21830" PostId="6453" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi-ReinstateMonica Thanks. I didn't find it when I searched for this specific question. I don't mind if someone finds it better to close my question as a duplicate." CreationDate="2023-01-31T11:03:37.013" UserId="164936" />
  <row Id="22220" PostId="6454" Score="1" Text="Great examples! The restrictions that ethical concerns pose (privacy regulations such as GDPR) even fuel new &quot;research industries&quot; like differential privacy, and synthetic data." CreationDate="2023-06-22T08:00:14.913" UserId="237561" />
  <row Id="21822" PostId="6455" Score="1" Text="Ah, early stopping is an interesting example. I first heard about early stopping in medical research in [*Algorithms to Live By*](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25666050-algorithms-to-live-by). Excellent book for anyone wanting a gentle introduction to computer science." CreationDate="2023-01-27T17:23:28.027" UserId="69508" />
  <row Id="21845" PostId="6455" Score="1" Text="And for a gentle introduction to the ethical questions involved in using algorithms to make policy decisions, I like this book: Voices in the Code, A Story about People, Their Values, and the Algorithm They Made BY David Robinson." CreationDate="2023-02-03T10:16:37.487" UserId="237901" />
  <row Id="21823" PostId="6456" Score="3" Text="By hovering the cursor over the &quot;3k views&quot; you can see the exact number.  Currently they are 37 apart.  One is led to suspect the interfaces are hitting different versions of the database.  This is a question for the main meta site because it almost surely applies to every SE site.  Have you searched there for an answer?" CreationDate="2023-01-28T14:30:31.730" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21826" PostId="6457" Score="0" Text="It is exaggerated to prohibit *all* forms of using LLM and require acknowledgements for the use of computational tools or writing aids (should we also acknowledge the computer software and hardware for doing our computations?). Control of spelling and other language mistakes, which can be done and is being done with LLMs, is not the same as creative contribution. Even this message, being typed on an android phone, is using a rudimentary form of a language model (the keyboard has word suggestions). LLMs in writing are like editors/reviewers that correct but don't create the thoughts." CreationDate="2023-01-31T06:56:53.707" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21827" PostId="6457" Score="0" Text="Obviously one should not use a LLM to create a fake research, like asking chatGPT the question &quot;write me an interesting article for Science&quot;. But that's not fraud because of the use of chatGPT, it is fraud because of making up the content of a research article." CreationDate="2023-01-31T07:01:29.407" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21828" PostId="6457" Score="1" Text="I don''t see why the policies of any journal are to be taken as guiding. First off, any decent journal has peer review and so some (serious) level of scrutiny to weed out unacceptable content. Here on SE just anyone can post an answer, and it's then a community problem to watch for poor content. Second, authors of journal articles (should) have their credibility to worry about and anonymity is very rare. Here anyone can  hide their identity if desired. That's fine for most purposes, but not this one." CreationDate="2023-01-31T09:54:18.123" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21829" PostId="6457" Score="0" Text="In short, the situation of journals here bears some similarity with ours, but saying that their policies should be ours ignores vital differences. The motives of people using AI seem to vary from feeling mischievous through game playing to regarding it as a positive tool. People's motives are for them, but poor content is our problem." CreationDate="2023-01-31T09:54:23.297" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21831" PostId="6457" Score="0" Text="It's terribly silly and unproductive straw man to compare 'writing aids' to chat gpt.    These types of digressions really don't help the dialogue at all, imho.   ChatGPT is something entirely different and any reading of the drama unfolding in various communities should be an obvious signal for that." CreationDate="2023-01-31T21:41:06.113" UserId="340812" />
  <row Id="21832" PostId="6457" Score="0" Text="The policy should be, fundamentally, if you use ideas from chatgpt (or any similar competent AI) you should acknowledge it.  On stack exchange, or anywhere.  Anything else is the moral equivalent of plagiarizing a human being.  I'm not saying AI deserves some kind of right to life or anything silly (yet), but it does deserve that much." CreationDate="2023-01-31T21:42:50.357" UserId="340812" />
  <row Id="21833" PostId="6457" Score="0" Text="'spell checkers and grammar checkers', that is also AI. So you have to be clear what you exactly mean. Especially since recently there has been a hype about a particular program using GPT-3 and is an excellent spelling and grammar checker, a translator and helps with improving the tone of messages as well. That creates the idea that you are talking about the programs that currently originate from GPT-3." CreationDate="2023-02-01T10:05:31.520" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21834" PostId="6457" Score="0" Text="I am not sure what *ideas* you attribute to chatGPT, but regarding the questions that occur here, chatGPT can't &quot;[put a dent in a stick of butter](https://translate.google.com/?sl=nl&amp;tl=en&amp;text=deuk%20in%20een%20pak%20boter%20slaan%20&amp;op=translate)&quot; (but you can ask chatGPT what that means). Example: ..." CreationDate="2023-02-01T10:15:39.310" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21835" PostId="6457" Score="0" Text="... Recently with this question [Given that X and Y are normally distributed as N(0,3) and N(0,5) respectively, what is the expected value of (XY)^2?](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/602962) I was thinking of the idea that we should ban questions that can be answered by chatGPT (similar too https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/67) rather than banning the use of chatGPT. So I tried it out and asked chatGPT the question, but it couldn't properly answer it." CreationDate="2023-02-01T10:16:05.290" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21836" PostId="6457" Score="0" Text="It's a ludicrously sophomoric fallacy to point to errors in chatgpt as a reason to ignore its results.  There's 100 of thousands of answers on stack exchange which are wrong, so should we ignore any answers by humans?  From that, I could easily argue that some of the arguments here are trivially erroneous and therefore further results should be ignored.  Of course, that would be also be a mistake." CreationDate="2023-02-02T00:51:28.000" UserId="340812" />
  <row Id="21837" PostId="6457" Score="0" Text="The debate and discussion in various content and professional communities is a very credible signal that the information density on ChatGPT is sufficiently high to place it in a separate class of artificial intelligence.  Anything else is just purposely putting blinders on." CreationDate="2023-02-02T00:56:42.830" UserId="340812" />
  <row Id="21838" PostId="6457" Score="0" Text="Let's think local not global. What is &quot;wrong&quot; that you can count over a (0, 1) variable, what is your estimate of the fraction of wrong answers on CV, and how do you get there? The colourful invective here (&quot;terribly silly&quot;, &quot;ludicrously sophomoric&quot;) is entertaining but not winning you friends." CreationDate="2023-02-02T02:00:56.283" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21839" PostId="6457" Score="0" Text="It's a fair point that many existing answers from people are wrong. This naturally leads to a question about whether ChatGPT will be better or worse and does anyone have an idea of numbers, and No or Not yet would be fine answers to me, as I have no idea either." CreationDate="2023-02-02T08:47:27.157" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21840" PostId="6457" Score="1" Text="@NickCox: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/384681/225179. Much worse." CreationDate="2023-02-03T00:35:47.270" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21841" PostId="6457" Score="1" Text="@Scortchi-ReinstateMonica It's always gratifying when statistical people themselves provide data. I still don't know how many people prefer talk of $y$ versus $x$ to talk of $x$ versus $y$: each faction seems confident that their own usage is standard." CreationDate="2023-02-03T00:44:46.240" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21842" PostId="6457" Score="0" Text="It's these types of 'off the cuff' responses you find on stack exchange which leads one increasingly away from it as a resource.  If you want any type of credible analysis you'll need to do a deep dive I'm afraid, anything else is anecdotal.  There have been a number of papers written about ChatGPT results.  I found some of the recent papers talking about how it can perform surprisingly well on professional exams fairly interesting." CreationDate="2023-02-03T04:25:43.707" UserId="340812" />
  <row Id="21843" PostId="6457" Score="1" Text="@Blaze I imagine that Scortchi would agree that _naturally_ a deeper analysis of a fuller dataset would be greatly preferable to a report on a small dataset (which can always be dismissed as anecdotal). The rules of debate here that you follow seem curiously lopsided. You have yet to address  my very simple point that your assertion of &quot;100 of thousands of answers on stack exchange which are wrong&quot; is utterly unsubstantiated. I do appreciate that there are ways of getting order of magnitude estimates, and anything else would be hard to get, but you've yet to say what yours are." CreationDate="2023-02-03T09:52:46.427" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21846" PostId="6457" Score="1" Text="@NickCox: Of course, &amp; the sample was non-random as well as small - I was just sharing my observations. All the same, anecdotal evidence of 19 out 20 patients killed by a purported treatment would seem to militate for some modification of the protocol before kicking off large randomized controlled trials, &amp; *a fortiori* before approving it for general use." CreationDate="2023-02-03T14:56:01.617" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21859" PostId="6460" Score="1" Text="How do you type those unicode symbols?" CreationDate="2023-02-18T16:57:57.930" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="21860" PostId="6460" Score="3" Text="Related posts at Maths Meta: [Why do some users citing compatibility issues when deprecating the use of Unicode characters?](https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/29988/why-do-some-users-citing-compatibility-issues-when-deprecating-the-use-of-unicod), [Would HTML/Unicode formatting cause troubles?](https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/17496/would-html-unicode-formatting-cause-troubles)." CreationDate="2023-02-18T17:34:28.110" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21861" PostId="6460" Score="3" Text="Because the symbols you used are not mathematical symbols, nor do they represent such, I think this might be a non-issue.  The real issue, addressed on the math site, is whether to *supplant* $\TeX$ rendering with unicode symbols.  There a (strong IMHO) case is made that $\TeX$ markup has *meaning* which would be lost by using extended symbols, so that it's better for some users now and potentially for everyone in posterity to use markup.  That is why we tend to ask newbies who use images or extended symbols to utilize MathJax instead." CreationDate="2023-02-18T17:51:55.337" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21862" PostId="6460" Score="2" Text="I will add that I have been collecting some of my posts for possible publication and find that I can render the original MathJax in Word by means of a simple macro (or directly in R Markdown or Quarto).  That's a real benefit!  Another benefit, albeit difficult to realize due to inadequate search software on this site, is that the MathJax text is searchable." CreationDate="2023-02-18T17:54:49.363" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21867" PostId="6460" Score="0" Text="@whuber Yes, I wouldn't suggest using Unicode in mathematical expressions in general - I suppose there might be some obscure cases where MathJax doesn't have quite the symbol you want, but I think that's an issue more likely to be encountered by users on Math SE than Stats SE! (And at any rate, users can define their own notation if needs be, which would usually allow them to sidestep such problems.)" CreationDate="2023-02-19T00:11:01.543" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="21869" PostId="6460" Score="2" Text="@kjetil There are ways to enter Unicode via your keyboard but to be honest I find it easier simply to copy and paste (not least because sites you can look up the codepoints online invariably just give you the option to copy the character instead!). [Wiki has a long but not exhaustive list](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unicode_characters) but there are also lookup sites [like this one](https://unicodelookup.com): it helps to know a little terminology, e.g. Unicode descriptions uses &quot;black&quot; and &quot;white&quot; to indicate &quot;filled in&quot; and &quot;empty&quot; respectively (try &quot;black square&quot;, &quot;white circle&quot;)" CreationDate="2023-02-19T00:20:35.493" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="21870" PostId="6460" Score="4" Text="I'm sure many users here have used [Detexify](https://detexify.kirelabs.org/classify.html) to draw a character freehand to look up the $\LaTeX$ command: there are similar tools like [Shapecatcher](https://shapecatcher.com) you can use to draw a character and find similar-looking Unicode characters!" CreationDate="2023-02-19T00:25:45.967" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="21863" PostId="6461" Score="10" Text="*Prior elicitation* is what it's called, it has an extensive literature, &amp; I can't see any reason why questions on it oughtn't to be within the scope of our site." CreationDate="2023-02-18T19:28:59.367" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21864" PostId="6461" Score="3" Text="Thank you for challenging the premise of the question, and correcting the terminology. I had the right idea, but the wrong wording came to mind. I see that [Hosack *et al* 2017](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0951832016301387), [Mikkola *et al* 2021](https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.01380), [Stefan *et al* 2022](https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13423-022-02074-4), and [Azzolina *et al* 2021](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7917693/) appear to be relevant papers." CreationDate="2023-02-18T19:33:37.063" UserId="69508" />
  <row Id="21865" PostId="6461" Score="1" Text="The works of J.B. Kadane too." CreationDate="2023-02-18T19:51:29.927" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21866" PostId="6461" Score="3" Text="Thank you for the recommendation. It looks like [*Experiences in Elicitation*](https://www.jstor.org/stable/2988424) is among Kadane's popular works." CreationDate="2023-02-18T19:56:33.303" UserId="69508" />
  <row Id="21874" PostId="6461" Score="4" Text="If you [edit] this to be in the form of a question about prior elicitation, then it would be suitable for migration to the main site. No need for the preamble, etc. Just write it like a normal question." CreationDate="2023-02-19T14:03:59.637" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21875" PostId="6463" Score="2" Text="Largely agree, but we have reason to discriminate between posting bad answers in good faith &amp; negligently or deliberately posting bad answers. The sanctions for the latter ought to, &amp; do, amount to more than down-voting or deletion of the answers." CreationDate="2023-02-21T19:05:14.723" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21877" PostId="6464" Score="7" Text="I would like to think this is a joke. but. I can't see it as practical or helpful or amusing." CreationDate="2023-02-22T01:40:01.787" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21878" PostId="6465" Score="0" Text="Can we not search going to the concerned profile using the relevant tags?" CreationDate="2023-02-22T08:54:26.750" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21879" PostId="6465" Score="0" Text="@User1865345, what about including the condition that the question must be closed?" CreationDate="2023-02-22T09:09:25.593" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="21880" PostId="6465" Score="0" Text="I have searched your [profile](https://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=user%3A53690+closed%3A1) for closed posts. Is this the solution? Perhaps not. But I am experimenting a bit." CreationDate="2023-02-22T09:14:09.523" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21881" PostId="6465" Score="0" Text="@User1865345, this only finds my questions that have been closed. It does not find my answers to questions that have been closed. I am looking for the latter." CreationDate="2023-02-22T09:15:33.453" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="21882" PostId="6465" Score="0" Text="Hm. What I found is this Maths [post](https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/20029/provide-a-way-to-search-for-a-users-answers-to-closed-questions#comment76008_20029) where they wrote a query for the same. You can check it. But as of whether a particular user's answer can be found out, I couldn't find any useful stuff so far. There is `closed:yes answers:1...` but this of course doesn't do the job." CreationDate="2023-02-22T09:34:50.823" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21884" PostId="6465" Score="0" Text="Yes, that [query](https://data.stackexchange.com/stats/query/edit/1712825) plausibly works." CreationDate="2023-02-22T09:45:15.393" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21889" PostId="6465" Score="0" Text="One wrinkle is that *deleted* questions are only visible for users with at least 10,000 reputation. Under certain criteria, closed questions are automatically deleted, so this might be relevant." CreationDate="2023-02-22T14:49:14.240" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21883" PostId="6466" Score="0" Text="This seems to work! Would it be possible to use the search window on Cross Validated to achieve that?" CreationDate="2023-02-22T09:43:40.920" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="21885" PostId="6466" Score="2" Text="The search uses an inner join of two selections from the posts table. I don't believe that the search window is able to do that. It seems to only perform a single query of the type 'select ... from ... where ...'." CreationDate="2023-02-22T09:57:46.003" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21887" PostId="6467" Score="1" Text="Whuber, does it return the answers to the questions closed? It only returns the questions that were closed. After all, there are no &quot;closed&quot; answers." CreationDate="2023-02-22T13:57:06.417" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21888" PostId="6467" Score="0" Text="@User1865345 As always, it links to them all.  If you want more flexibility, then use the [Data Explorer](https://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/new)." CreationDate="2023-02-22T13:58:48.727" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21890" PostId="6467" Score="0" Text="This only seems to return questions by user X that were closed. I am looking for answers by user X of questions that were closed." CreationDate="2023-02-22T15:07:34.580" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="21891" PostId="6467" Score="1" Text="Relevant Meta SO post: [Cannot search for answers on closed questions](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/405697/cannot-search-for-answers-on-closed-questions)." CreationDate="2023-02-22T15:22:20.210" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21893" PostId="6467" Score="2" Text="That is indeed confusing.  Thank you for the clarification. The Meta post found by @User1865345 offers an explanation." CreationDate="2023-02-22T16:42:01.587" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21892" PostId="6468" Score="1" Text="Thanks! That seems to work." CreationDate="2023-02-22T16:12:15.517" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="21897" PostId="6471" Score="0" Text="I have done this for questions. I hope the result won't be different in case of answer with the addition that my rep would decrease." CreationDate="2023-03-02T05:49:19.610" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21898" PostId="6471" Score="8" Text="Tip: By appending an &quot;m&quot; to the root names of the image links, I shrank them to a more manageable size.  Appending &quot;s&quot; would shrink them even more." CreationDate="2023-03-02T13:58:47.100" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21899" PostId="6471" Score="2" Text="Thanks @whuber. I wasn't aware of that." CreationDate="2023-03-02T14:01:01.750" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21900" PostId="6471" Score="5" Text="It's an obscure thing to know.  I forget where it's documented.  I use it about once a year, but given your high level of activity I thought you might find it handy." CreationDate="2023-03-02T14:01:58.717" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21904" PostId="6473" Score="10" Text="Perhaps rather create tags &quot;llms&quot; or &quot;large-language-models&quot; and &quot;llms-advice&quot; as above, and synonymize the ChatGPT tags to these - because the next incarnation of LLMs will yield the same challenge, but not be called &quot;ChatGPT&quot; any more." CreationDate="2023-03-14T14:20:02.923" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="21905" PostId="6473" Score="1" Text="I concur with this proposal. Without explicit demarcation, genuine questions asking about LLMs would be interspersed with those questions under the advice of ChatGPT; the latter should be dealt differently." CreationDate="2023-03-14T14:23:30.733" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21906" PostId="6474" Score="2" Text="I agree that ChatGPT is hype, but I'd say let's create a tag, at least so that the questions are easier to find and we are able to better track how many are there, easier find duplicates, etc." CreationDate="2023-03-14T15:34:14.997" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="21907" PostId="6474" Score="3" Text="@Tim I agree with creating the tag, but we need to keep in mind that the tag will eventually need to disappear and merge with other tags or just function as an alias for a more general tag. I imagine that it is useful to keep this in mind now already; to prevent a potential divergence from the greater picture." CreationDate="2023-03-14T15:37:45.643" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21908" PostId="6474" Score="3" Text="Yep, it'll disappear, hopefully with ChatGPT itself." CreationDate="2023-03-14T15:41:16.983" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="21916" PostId="6475" Score="1" Text="I agree that ChatGPT is &quot;hype&quot; as mentioned in a comment to another answer and won't often be &quot;worthy of critique.&quot; The nightmare scenario = it will probably be perceived as a superior authority because of the hype &amp; the label of &quot;artificial intelligence&quot;, particularly by those seeking easy answers to tough questions in many fields, not just stats. The whole StackExchange network, academia &amp; beyond ought to brace itself for a fresh flood of misinformation, poorly written code &amp; challenges to expert credentials from this toy. At some point, experts may be forced to label it as just that: a toy." CreationDate="2023-03-22T15:50:12.903" UserId="54091" />
  <row Id="21917" PostId="6475" Score="1" Text="I think this makes the most sense. I edited the [tag:chatgpt] tag to include a warning against using it for questions about *advice* given by ChatGPT (as well as against such advice in general): https://stats.stackexchange.com/tags/chatgpt/info I also created an LLM tag (https://stats.stackexchange.com/tags/llm/info). I can't propose [tag:chatgpt] and [tag:gpt] as synonyms of it, because I don't have the rep yet. I don't know whether anyone has, and whether [tag:chatgpt] and [tag:gpt] *should* by synonymized... perhaps you as a mod want to do this manually?" CreationDate="2023-03-24T06:41:09.523" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="21920" PostId="6475" Score="0" Text="@StephanKolassa: Thanks! I can do that - was wondering though what the distinction is between the 'llm' &amp; 'language-models' tags. Should one of those perhaps be a synonym of the other, or should we edit the tag wikis to clarify?" CreationDate="2023-03-27T06:17:28.087" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21921" PostId="6475" Score="1" Text="It looks to me like we should synonymize &quot;llm&quot; and &quot;language-models&quot;. Sorry, I didn't even think to check whether there already was something like that out there... But then, I'm absolutely not an expert on either kind of language model, so perhaps an actual expert could chime in?" CreationDate="2023-03-27T06:45:25.040" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="21922" PostId="6475" Score="0" Text="I don't know if there's value in maintaining the more general (?) 'language-models' tag &amp; the more specific (?) 'llm' tag. I'm no expert either, but imagine there might be little &amp; middle-sized language models too." CreationDate="2023-03-27T06:48:49.907" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="21909" PostId="6476" Score="3" Text="Both biostats and medicine tags are replacements" CreationDate="2023-03-16T13:29:13.987" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="21915" PostId="6476" Score="1" Text="The tag is now gone, so the consensus seems clear" CreationDate="2023-03-22T15:42:42.343" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="21910" PostId="6478" Score="1" Text="We could create a `[pharmacokinetics]` tag in the future, if we need it." CreationDate="2023-03-18T12:06:38.487" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="21931" PostId="6479" Score="3" Text="I think it is more akin to a blog rather than a mega big list, imo. Interestingly, people at SciFi.SE have a blog." CreationDate="2023-04-02T15:04:57.113" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21932" PostId="6479" Score="0" Text="Yeah my thinking was based off what I saw on the Chinese SE before where they had some long thread that included many resources for learning Chinese. I figure something similar could be produced for yearly updates regarding interesting/useful techniques." CreationDate="2023-04-02T15:14:24.753" UserId="345611" />
  <row Id="21933" PostId="6479" Score="0" Text="Apart from what Tim articulated (+1), the main con is the dearth of readability. Think about it: every now and then a result is extended, an algorithm is modified, a new class of theorem is proposed and so on. If we were supposed to report them coherently in good spirit also, the post cannot be organized in a state subsequently defeating the original intent." CreationDate="2023-04-02T15:23:07.997" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21936" PostId="6479" Score="0" Text="I suppose that makes sense." CreationDate="2023-04-03T12:10:18.940" UserId="345611" />
  <row Id="21939" PostId="6479" Score="0" Text="At sister site MathOverflow there is a thread [News of potential interest to the MO community](https://meta.mathoverflow.net/questions/3144/news-of-potential-interest-to-the-mo-community), which seems to be mostly used for obituaries ..." CreationDate="2023-04-04T22:59:35.413" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="21940" PostId="6479" Score="0" Text="Jesus haha well thats something I suppose." CreationDate="2023-04-05T00:47:58.253" UserId="345611" />
  <row Id="21959" PostId="6479" Score="1" Text="A big list might not work so well. The format of q&amp;a can become cluttered easily. Possibly an indirect pointer to other resources that discuss new developments might work easier." CreationDate="2023-04-07T09:04:09.600" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21960" PostId="6479" Score="1" Text="Possibly a tag that combines questions about new developments could bring new developments more easily to attention. You can search that tag to get questions about this topic. A problem might be to manage that tag. Questions about new developments might not become tagged with it, and the other way around questions that are not about new developments might become tagged with it. It is a bit subjective." CreationDate="2023-04-07T09:09:08.987" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21963" PostId="6479" Score="1" Text="We used to have a blog.  I don't know if it could be revived.  You can also post such things in chat.  That does happen from time to time ('neat paper on X just came out in Journal')." CreationDate="2023-04-08T12:04:57.530" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="21967" PostId="6479" Score="0" Text="I wonder if a tag like &quot;new-methods-developments&quot; might be a more viable alternative. Then a separate Q&amp;A for each new such development, linked by the tag." CreationDate="2023-04-09T09:02:00.083" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="21937" PostId="6480" Score="0" Text="I think those are generally reasonable points. Thanks for providing your insight." CreationDate="2023-04-03T12:10:34.363" UserId="345611" />
  <row Id="21938" PostId="6480" Score="1" Text="My reaction to this interesting but I fear impractical idea was &quot;blog&quot;. Your impressions may differ but mine are that blogs rose and peaked quickly before fading away from that peak. Few people have time, inclination, and enough width and depth to sustain them, even when working as a small group, not one individual.  Besides, many of us would find that the latest developments were (a) not relevant to what we do (b) too hard to follow (c) superseded quickly by something else. Most people who apply statistics should not even to keep up-to-date, as it gets in the way of doing your own work!" CreationDate="2023-04-03T17:30:04.953" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21941" PostId="6480" Score="0" Text="That is true. I suppose there are other more fruitful ways for people to spend their time." CreationDate="2023-04-05T00:49:41.287" UserId="345611" />
  <row Id="21944" PostId="6481" Score="4" Text="IIRC, I voted it first to close on the grounds of self-study as it basically threw a formula and asked how to use (without any attempts to comprehend the same). I didn't vote to migrate it. But now reading again, imo, it was implicitly asking to show a running example which the answer did, so the migration could be defended. I am not able to decipher any statistical content apart from the fact that the relations are relevant statistically. However that is my opinion only." CreationDate="2023-04-06T02:25:53.357" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21945" PostId="6481" Score="4" Text="Thanks for the response! Migrating it based on the fact that the answer had code (if that were the basis, but I am not sure of that) would be blaming the question for the form of the answer it got. I really don't see the question as asking for code (not that code of itself would necessarily disqualify a question in any case)." CreationDate="2023-04-06T04:38:01.880" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="21947" PostId="6481" Score="0" Text="Sure, Glen_b. I deem the migration as a borderline case, if not wrong. At any rate, the poster was asking to input some numbers, calculate the formula. There was _no_ statistical issue with it (again, imo) . But your query is why it was migrated to SO. I would wait for whuber to articulate the reason (of course if whuber wants to)." CreationDate="2023-04-06T04:54:55.490" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21948" PostId="6481" Score="1" Text="Sure, agreed; there's no necessary requirement on a mod to explain each decision (I didn't notice or mind who did what when I posted this question). I was simply hoping to understand better for my own choices (making ordinary-user moderation decisions like voting to close or migrate etc) because if anything I'd have expected the migration to go in the opposite direction and I wondered if there was something important I should take account of that I was missing. I hope our choices were more or less consistently aligned most of the time and I couldn't see a good way to get to this one." CreationDate="2023-04-06T05:01:14.290" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="21949" PostId="6481" Score="0" Text="I do see that the OP's response to the question from the person that posted the answer mentions R, but again that doesn't of itself imply that the question was asking for code or was about code. Perceptions of the intent of the question could certainly differ from mine. I am not in any sense trying to suggest that the choice was wrong, just not something I presently understand." CreationDate="2023-04-06T05:11:02.547" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="21950" PostId="6481" Score="4" Text="My speculation: The question already shows the formula for the variance of the truncated normal distribution. And in the comments it is added &quot;but am looking for the numerical calculation&quot;. That comment turn it into a programming oriented question. One might still consider it ontopic when the question is about deciphering the symbols used in the formula and not about how to compute it in some software, but I find it not weird to see it being migrated given that it can be interpreted as a question about coding." CreationDate="2023-04-06T09:43:28.770" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21951" PostId="6481" Score="2" Text="IMO it should have been kept here. Asking to explain a formula is a valid question here, and answering with a code is valid, too, many questions and answers include code. &quot;Self-study&quot; is not against the rules either, and every study is self-study anyway. Maybe instead of voting to close, migrating, meta discussing the question and border cases, you could just answer it, and everybody would be better off" CreationDate="2023-04-06T12:34:45.703" UserId="53084" />
  <row Id="21957" PostId="6481" Score="1" Text="@rep_ho No; every study is not self-study. As a teacher too, I consider that there is a big difference in principle between an assignment students are expected to tackle on their own and any other project. There is a grey area, naturally, but the distinction is there for a purpose." CreationDate="2023-04-07T08:05:21.670" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21958" PostId="6481" Score="0" Text="@NickCox i know the purpose, i just don't agree with it, but that's for an another discussion." CreationDate="2023-04-07T08:18:26.747" UserId="53084" />
  <row Id="21969" PostId="6481" Score="1" Text="Curious but unimportant point to be aware of rather than act on: my comment on the accepted answer was on CV (with LaTeX, which is not used at SO) and the answer was edited on CV before migration; the original answer and the fact it was edited is not visible." CreationDate="2023-04-09T14:30:39.220" UserId="2958" />
  <row Id="21973" PostId="6481" Score="1" Text="@Henry I apologize for that and will try to review comments before migrating questions." CreationDate="2023-04-10T16:19:36.040" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21953" PostId="6482" Score="0" Text="I completely agree with this. +1." CreationDate="2023-04-06T13:48:20.013" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21954" PostId="6482" Score="1" Text="But also I agree with Glen that in general posts shouldn't be handled on the basis of the type of answers it received." CreationDate="2023-04-06T13:49:50.760" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21955" PostId="6482" Score="2" Text="@User1865345 I have not intended to imply the type of answer was the cause of closure, because it was not the basis of my decision: with one glance at the post I knew it needed to be closed.  But the answer was the icing on the cake, because it gave me hope that the existence of a good code-oriented answer would help the post survive on SO." CreationDate="2023-04-06T13:53:59.980" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="21956" PostId="6482" Score="3" Text="No whuber. I didn't say so either. I just said it in a generic sense. I agree with your point." CreationDate="2023-04-06T13:54:48.030" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21990" PostId="6482" Score="1" Text="Thanks for migrating instead of closing." CreationDate="2023-04-14T02:37:02.747" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="22002" PostId="6482" Score="1" Text="If a question is &quot;a very clear case for closure for multiple reasons&quot; (many of which may apply on the target site as well), I'd think this is specifically a reason *not* to migrate. Migrating a bad question just creates moderation work on the target site, whereas closing/deleting it should be the end of moderation (if the problems aren't fixed). [Don't](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/82941) [migrate](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1305) [bad](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/416232) [questions](https://meta.superuser.com/questions/14896)." CreationDate="2023-04-17T16:04:11.970" UserId="171828" />
  <row Id="21961" PostId="6483" Score="0" Text="I really like this idea" CreationDate="2023-04-07T13:39:58.560" UserId="345611" />
  <row Id="21962" PostId="6483" Score="1" Text="Those questions would be the way to go, but they would probably be closed as *opinion based*.  I don't see an option within the CV system to make this work." CreationDate="2023-04-08T12:02:51.153" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="21964" PostId="6483" Score="1" Text="@gung One option (and why I suggested doing this in retrospect, which is still useful for someone who wants to &quot;catch up&quot; with modern-ish developments rather than wanting to be at the very cutting edge) is to ask for *most highly cited* papers." CreationDate="2023-04-08T20:09:16.663" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="21965" PostId="6483" Score="1" Text="@gung Wikipedia also has rules against opinion-based content; they don't have an article on &quot;the best films ever&quot; but do have [List of films considered the best](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_considered_the_best). Another option here would be ask &quot;what developments in `topic X` in `time period Y` have been considered most important?&quot; Sometimes particular developments get praised as breakthroughs, win awards, or get cited in articles like [&quot;Ten Most Important Accomplishments in Risk Analysis, 1980–2010&quot;](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7169135/)" CreationDate="2023-04-08T21:39:30.150" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="21966" PostId="6483" Score="0" Text="Those are decent suggetions, @Silverfish.  I think, eg, asking for the most highly cited papers on a given topic within a given time period *might* work, but it still strikes me as a little dicey.  I can still easily imagine such a question being shot down.  If the blog could be brought back, that would probably be the best venue for this sort of thing.  Otherwise, posting a link to a new paper you like, w/ a promotional blurb, is likely the way to go." CreationDate="2023-04-09T00:27:12.053" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="21968" PostId="6483" Score="2" Text="I am struggling with this idea. I don't think it is wrong in principle but if so, why don't we have examples of such questions already? One reason seems to be that this is backwards: it is about threads people want to _read_, but as we all know, someone has to write them. In my own field, one review journal had a class of miniature reviews supposedly focusing on &quot;What has happened very recently in subfield X?&quot; but that only worked well when people subverted it.  All too often papers seemed like silly articles on fashion, about what is trending up this season, usually the reviewer's own work!" CreationDate="2023-04-09T10:46:54.160" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21970" PostId="6483" Score="0" Text="@NickCox (+1) Yes I remain rather sceptical of what the quality of the answers might be and I do think it would benefit from a bit of time seeing how well-used the current &quot;in thing&quot; ends up. Nevertheless, I'm sympathetic to someone wanting to find a way to ask, in an on-topic and productive way, &quot;it's been 20 years since I did my stats degree and I've not really been following the academic literature, has much changed that I need to know about?&quot;" CreationDate="2023-04-09T17:12:37.653" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="21971" PostId="6483" Score="0" Text="As an example: it would be interesting to survey recent editions of the stalwart university textbooks and see what new material has come in that was only developed in the last X years. And conversely, what older material has been chopped in recent editions, particularly whether any methods are no longer given because they're now seen to be flawed or superseded. I wonder whether that's something which could be asked in an on-topic way, but I think it would be." CreationDate="2023-04-09T17:16:26.737" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="21972" PostId="6483" Score="1" Text="For other reasons I am excessively (in a Jane Austen sense) interested in the evolution of introductory texts. On present trends (mine and theirs) there is some predictable risk that I soon won't even be able to lift the 1000-page or so productions without risk of injury. Now it seems everything needs to be explained many times over and authors must include hundreds of exercises. Will no one go back to say a 300 page book that students are just expected to read, period?" CreationDate="2023-04-10T11:25:00.697" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21974" PostId="6484" Score="2" Text="Please vote to keep open on such questions!" CreationDate="2023-04-12T13:08:59.467" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="21975" PostId="6484" Score="5" Text="I agree with you as I have also seen an increasing number of these recently. I have a feeling I voted to close your example as needing details or clarity. In general if a programmer with minimal knowledge of statistics could answer it then close it but if there is a statistical issue then leave it open. You can always add a comment if you think it is in danger of being closed erroneously." CreationDate="2023-04-12T13:37:32.240" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="21976" PostId="6484" Score="9" Text="One useful test that is often used on this site is &quot;Does *answering* the question require statistical knowledge?&quot; If it does, then the question is on-topic. (This test isn't perfect, but gets to the core of the on-topic/off-topic distinction.)" CreationDate="2023-04-12T13:42:40.247" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="21977" PostId="6484" Score="2" Text="That heuristic is pretty close to the mental operation I go through to decide on keeping this open or not @Sycorax. There will always be borderline cases, but I find examples like these are more clear in my opinion." CreationDate="2023-04-12T14:06:22.957" UserId="345611" />
  <row Id="21978" PostId="6484" Score="0" Text="@mdewey I agree with that decision for the most part. It could use some more info. I just wanted to make sure it wasn't closed for the wrong reason." CreationDate="2023-04-12T14:06:59.783" UserId="345611" />
  <row Id="21979" PostId="6484" Score="0" Text="@kjetilbhalvorsen will do" CreationDate="2023-04-12T14:07:13.010" UserId="345611" />
  <row Id="21980" PostId="6484" Score="2" Text="I vet properly on questions like these which are based on programs and even then I err quite sometimes but AFAIR I voted to close it on grounds of clarity and not due to the question being program oriented." CreationDate="2023-04-12T14:20:15.893" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21981" PostId="6484" Score="0" Text="That's fair. I probably should have picked a more clear example, but this was the most recent one that to me didn't require closing due to programming reasons." CreationDate="2023-04-12T14:33:11.530" UserId="345611" />
  <row Id="21982" PostId="6484" Score="1" Text="How would a (new) user know what kind of details they would need to add to improve clarity?" CreationDate="2023-04-12T15:18:21.363" UserId="237901" />
  <row Id="21983" PostId="6484" Score="4" Text="I agree that we seem to be a little too trigger-happy about questions like this one, and posted a similar question a while back, which I now link to in a boilerplate comment aimed at close-voters: &quot;Close-voters: I believe this question is primarily about *statistics*, not *programming*, and that it should therefore stay open/be reopened. See [Closing &quot;software questions&quot;.](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5985/1352)&quot;" CreationDate="2023-04-12T15:27:04.017" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="21984" PostId="6484" Score="8" Text="The principle is clear -- is statistical knowledge needed? -- but the fact that experienced members here can disagree in good faith shows that there are always cases in which different  people jump different ways. Perhaps unfairly I sense that questions phrased in terms of  R or Python fare better than some others.  True or not, a question to the voters to keep might be: Would you vote to keep even if the language or more generally software concerned is not at all one you use yourself, and even one you personally deprecate?" CreationDate="2023-04-12T23:11:33.723" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21985" PostId="6484" Score="2" Text="That Q seems like a little bit of a gray zone to me.  I would not have voted to close as a programming question, but I can imagine someone might based on the way it's phrased.  The way I decide if a Q is off topic is I ask myself, 'what needs to be explained here'.  I imagine the answer, &amp; if it's 'in lavaan use `function( , argument=TRUE)`, then it's off topic.  In this case, the explicit question is whether the data have 3 levels and what analysis can address mediation in that case.  Those are statistical questions." CreationDate="2023-04-13T11:48:18.663" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="21986" PostId="6484" Score="0" Text="Yeah this one is a bit murkier I admit. The slew I've seen in recent times have been more clear I think. Like some person happens to use R in like one very miniscule part of the question but the rest is centered around statistical inference. It just seems like the closes I've seen lately have been very reflexive without thinking about the question posed." CreationDate="2023-04-13T11:54:47.667" UserId="345611" />
  <row Id="21989" PostId="6484" Score="0" Text="@ShawnHemelstrand, closing on program and open data request has been under scanner of late and has been pointed out here and the chat too. If you have time, I deem you can make a list of those recent reviews which at least you feel deserved not be closed on that specific reason. Then a clearer insight can be sought about any discernible pattern of the reviews. I still believe the reviewers do a good job but day in day out one or two get closed in a not so correct vein." CreationDate="2023-04-13T12:11:20.207" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21991" PostId="6484" Score="0" Text="I'll continually edit my question here to include bad ones." CreationDate="2023-04-15T01:41:09.810" UserId="345611" />
  <row Id="21992" PostId="6484" Score="0" Text="That would be better @ShawnHemelstrand." CreationDate="2023-04-15T01:48:20.013" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="21993" PostId="6484" Score="1" Text="I voted to close it because it asks too many things." CreationDate="2023-04-15T05:18:59.850" UserId="56940" />
  <row Id="21994" PostId="6484" Score="2" Text="I think the tone of some exchanges is a little sharp. Please remember: 1. No one can vote to close without experience and especially enough reputation. 2. When three non-moderators agree on voting to close, that's explicitly not an isolated opinion. 3. If a moderator is voting to close that is #1 powered up. Let's phrase disagreements as &quot;I respectfully disagree with this decision because...&quot; not &quot;This decision is quite wrong. Don't vote this way&quot;. (These aren't intended as quotations, just stylised examples of different tones.)" CreationDate="2023-04-15T08:40:01.703" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21995" PostId="6484" Score="2" Text="(Also, please remember that there can be different grounds for closure, and being a programming question might be one of several: cf. @utobi's last point.)" CreationDate="2023-04-15T08:40:42.783" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="21996" PostId="6484" Score="0" Text="Yes of course. I will be more careful with my wording so it doesnt sound harsh." CreationDate="2023-04-15T13:21:46.530" UserId="345611" />
  <row Id="21997" PostId="6484" Score="1" Text="@utobi yes this is why i explicitly say &quot;for programming&quot;, but the other reasons are still valid. I think your close vote makes more sense given how much is being asked." CreationDate="2023-04-15T13:22:37.893" UserId="345611" />
  <row Id="21998" PostId="6484" Score="0" Text="@kjetilbhalvorsen is there an effect of a 'vote to keep open'? Does this change the threshold for the amount of people that need to vote to close the question?" CreationDate="2023-04-15T15:08:11.813" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="21999" PostId="6484" Score="0" Text="@NickCox &quot;Would you vote to keep even if the language or more generally software concerned is not at all one you use yourself, and even one you personally deprecate?&quot; the language concerned is often not important. If someone asks a question using python, then I may answer it with an example using R. Sometimes a question relates to detailed inner workings of a function in a specific language, I might skip that question if I am not comfortable in that language, but I wouldn't close it for that reason. A related question that comes to my mind is: https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/337132/" CreationDate="2023-04-15T15:15:38.687" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22000" PostId="6484" Score="0" Text="That’s my point. The language is, or should be, immaterial. My worry is that some members are happier with questions in languages they use themselves." CreationDate="2023-04-15T16:37:05.663" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22001" PostId="6484" Score="0" Text="I've added a couple more examples, one that I think is more about statistical inference, and one that is borderline but I would be okay with being closed." CreationDate="2023-04-16T03:36:43.873" UserId="345611" />
  <row Id="22014" PostId="6484" Score="2" Text="@Nick reminds me of an excellent criterion I use when making VTC decisions related to programming: &quot;if I were to change the reference in this question from software platform `X` to platform `Y`, would that change my opinion?&quot;  If not, this is a statistical question.  If yes, *I have to investigate further,* because there (IMHO) is the true gray area.  It covers questions concerning discrepancies between platforms, about the uses and meanings of arguments to statistical functions, and related issues. I think this community tends to close such questions more often than we should." CreationDate="2023-04-19T13:32:13.280" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="22116" PostId="6484" Score="1" Text="As for the &quot;data request&quot; aspect, there are probably less grey area situations compared to programming. The obvious response is generally to redirect the question to https://opendata.stackexchange.com. However, my experience has been that compared to CV, opendata.SE suffers from a lack of active users. So just an aside to say that if you have some domain knowledge relative to datasets and whatnot, having a look once in a while at opendata.SE would probably be helpful, and might encourage people to ask their data request questions there rather than on CV." CreationDate="2023-05-06T11:49:05.750" UserId="164936" />
  <row Id="22117" PostId="6484" Score="1" Text="That makes sense. Ive never been there before so I should probably make a point to check." CreationDate="2023-05-06T12:13:51.127" UserId="345611" />
  <row Id="22003" PostId="6485" Score="2" Text="Hi Connor. I appreciate your concern for the betterment of the site. However, the post could be more robust if you could provide some examples of _general_ queries, queries which didn't receive good answers owing to being asked for further details etc. Even before articulating any view, I would actually want to understand what your grievances are considering the fact that those phrases are vague, imo." CreationDate="2023-04-19T05:42:26.277" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22004" PostId="6485" Score="3" Text="With that being said, my preliminary take is this: when do we ask for more details or want the query to be more specific: exactly when we feel the present query is unanswerable due to dearth of information (data, methods applied, reproducible example, approach and where OP is stuck) or it is so broad that it cannot be answered without writing a chapter or so (there is no problem with a long answer - there are plenty, but certainly there is a line). There are many questions which I feel are quite _general_ (I would still want to know what that means to you) that received precise answers..." CreationDate="2023-04-19T05:54:31.377" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22005" PostId="6485" Score="3" Text="But if the community deems adding specific information and narrowing down could help it receive better usable as well as concise answers, then there is no con in asking for the same. I am unable to see the necessity of a new tag henceforth. Nevertheless, I feel I still need to comprehend your concern in full length once you provide with few examples." CreationDate="2023-04-19T05:56:59.453" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22006" PostId="6485" Score="0" Text="I understand your point, but I believe that in the cases I've provided, the query isn't unanswerable. My hunch is that becuase the answer is simple, it's assumed it must be XY, there must be more to the question, and therefore refuse to answer without specifics. A sensible practice, but unhelpful in the cases I've given." CreationDate="2023-04-19T07:05:38.330" UserId="363857" />
  <row Id="22011" PostId="6485" Score="1" Text="This is an interesting post, but ultimately I am not convinced that anything different is needed or would be helpful. Broad general questions are already allowed so long as they satisfy the community, but most that are closed (or ignored) suffer that fate because they are too general, or at least lacking in focus. A tag with the purpose of flagging a naive question or questioner would serve no good purpose, as there are not different standards for different levels of user. This comes back to basics: CV is not intended as a help line, but as a repository of good questions and answers." CreationDate="2023-04-19T13:03:31.683" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22012" PostId="6485" Score="3" Text="(ctd) More positively put, if you have a good  question, it can stand on its own two feet, It shouldn't need propping up or protecting with a special tag." CreationDate="2023-04-19T13:04:26.390" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22013" PostId="6485" Score="2" Text="As is I think standard on Meta, my downvote implies disagreement with the proposal, not that the question is of poor quality or lacking in interest." CreationDate="2023-04-19T13:09:29.707" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22015" PostId="6485" Score="0" Text="@NickCox What do you think is the solution then? I'm sure I'm not the only person who's experienced this, and it would be good to have best-practices for this case. A pre-amble could work, but what should it be, what should it include? I get the general stack exchange mantra of, &quot;this is not a helpline&quot;, but on this site, especially, it does tend to become that. Asking for a lot of detail about the specific problem you're working on makes the site like a helpline. I think a general question, even if it's naive, is less like a helpline than what currently happens." CreationDate="2023-04-19T19:19:01.073" UserId="363857" />
  <row Id="22016" PostId="6485" Score="1" Text="An asymmetry is built into SE by design and moderators and people with high reputation or long experience work with it just like newcomers. Anyone who asks a question has some rights, notably which answer to accept if there are several. Otherwise what happens to a question depends on the rest of the community. The best strategy you or anyone in a similar position has is to ask the best question you can. How a question is tagged won't, I think, make any detectable difference to its prospects of surviving or flourishing. That's a personal take, and its own survival depends on others agreeing." CreationDate="2023-04-19T20:13:10.090" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22017" PostId="6485" Score="0" Text="In other words, tags are largely pointless for the success of a question? I absolutely see your point there, however, I think there are isolated times where a tag does make a difference. For example, the `soft-question` tag on mathematics stack exchange, which does make a material difference to the success of a question. https://math.stackexchange.com/tags/soft-question/info" CreationDate="2023-04-19T20:33:15.993" UserId="363857" />
  <row Id="22018" PostId="6485" Score="1" Text="Each community sets and follows its own norms. Here on CV tags mostly indicate content, not intent or level. Speaking for myself I don't ever answer or not answer a question becaise of tags. I sometimes edit out useless tags.  I respond much more to question titles.  Some people I imagine do follow particular tags and some people put a lot of work into editing and maintaining tags. I respond much more to editing text, so people differ.  A community can change its habits, but so far your proposal is meeting some scepticism and even more lack of interest. disappointing though that will be." CreationDate="2023-04-19T23:53:23.060" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22021" PostId="6485" Score="2" Text="Not the question, but people can and do add personal comments on being new to statistics, or very confused, or whatever.  Such comments often get edited out, even ruthlessly, on the grounds that only your question matters. not who you are or what you are. But while they remain visible they can serve a helpful psychological purpose of signalling quite what level of answer is expected or requested." CreationDate="2023-04-20T10:11:42.187" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22007" PostId="6486" Score="0" Text="Thank you for such a complete response. I agree that comments are helpful, I also agree that my notation was (and still is) sloppy, and that I haven't been perfectly clear in the questions I've asked. However, I still think the idea of a &quot;general&quot;, &quot;non-specific&quot; or &quot;basic&quot; tag has merit. The most recent question that you voted to re-open is a perfect example of this. In that post, all I want to know is if this could **ever** be a problem. But the tendency on this site is to ask for specifics, which might not even exist!" CreationDate="2023-04-19T08:55:30.453" UserId="363857" />
  <row Id="22008" PostId="6486" Score="1" Text="Of course my knowledge is also limited. We learn new things day by day. I appreciate you interacted rationally. Just take those as learning materials." CreationDate="2023-04-19T09:00:44.517" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22009" PostId="6486" Score="0" Text="I appreciate that a pre-amble could solve this, and I'm happy with that as a workaround. But I think a tag that makes it clear that the question is non-specific could be really helpful to avoid &quot;why are you doing this&quot; comments, when you've not done it at all yet! I think Cross Validated has great people on it, erudite statisticians with a lot to share! I think adding such a tag could help get to that knowledge faster in the instances I'm talking about." CreationDate="2023-04-19T09:01:11.083" UserId="363857" />
  <row Id="22010" PostId="6486" Score="1" Text="Re specifics, it still applies that the premise might be warranting some additional info that OP is not familiar with. But it is only my opinion that a tag would be an overkill. But this is my take only. Wait for others to add their cents to the proposal." CreationDate="2023-04-19T09:04:00.677" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22019" PostId="6486" Score="2" Text="@Connor *&quot;why are you doing this&quot;* I ask that question a lot. And it is mainly because I try to understand the problem. Statistics starts with understanding as much of the process that is underlying the problem. It is about the numerical and data gathering issues surrounding some practical problem. Statistics is never general and always has an application in mind. --- A stereotypical question would be &quot;I have this data &lt;insert table or graph&gt;, how do I analyse it?&quot; Without any background given." CreationDate="2023-04-20T10:03:57.407" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22020" PostId="6486" Score="1" Text="When a question has a mathematical orientation then can I find myself answering it, without understanding the motivation, and asking afterwards why is this useful. (For instance recently here: [*&quot;I am curious about the original problem where you are using this inequality.&quot;*](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/613343/using-chebyshevs-inequality-on-x-to-inform-distribution-on-x2/613421#comment1139601_613343))" CreationDate="2023-04-20T10:06:25.917" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22022" PostId="6486" Score="0" Text="@SextusEmpiricus What do you think of the most recent question: https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/613150/do-you-lose-information-when-you-encode-numerical-columns-with-two-values . Is that general or specific? It feels general to me." CreationDate="2023-04-20T17:30:05.763" UserId="363857" />
  <row Id="22023" PostId="6487" Score="0" Text="Thank you for the answer! That does help me understand why the questions go unanswered. After some back-and-forth in the comments, I ended up partially answering my question, so I understand there's no one way of doing things. My question to you is, what is it that makes you think a question will take too long to answer?" CreationDate="2023-04-20T17:32:47.597" UserId="363857" />
  <row Id="22024" PostId="6488" Score="10" Text="The Community user will choose 1 question per hour to bump to the front page. There are certain criteria for choosing those questions. https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/217884/community-user-does-not-bump-questions-that-never-had-an-answer" CreationDate="2023-04-20T18:13:08.110" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="22025" PostId="6490" Score="1" Text="Hi Thomas. I can understand your concerns. To be frank, the community is not really that much delighted either with the recent plague of half baked ChatGPT advised posts. But I don't know how to answer your query and for that matter how it is related to the site, if not irrelevant. We have a detailed meta thread though: [Temporary policy: ChatGPT is banned](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/421831/temporary-policy-chatgpt-is-banned) and  [What to do about answers written by ChatGPT](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6422/what-to-do-about-answers-written-by-chatgpt)." CreationDate="2023-04-22T05:32:10.727" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22027" PostId="6490" Score="1" Text="These others posts are quite intriguing. I was promoted primarily by the irony of educators to turn students to ChatGPT." CreationDate="2023-04-22T05:51:06.943" UserId="246835" />
  <row Id="22028" PostId="6490" Score="4" Text="Never used it, never tried. That’s manifestly not a refutation of “most of us” but how do you know?" CreationDate="2023-04-22T08:54:27.127" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22029" PostId="6490" Score="0" Text="I don’t. But I do predict OpenAI’s ChatGPT will have more monthly visitors than Amazon by the end of the year. I’m trying not to catastrophize, but I am more worried than hopeful." CreationDate="2023-04-22T09:10:28.270" UserId="246835" />
  <row Id="22030" PostId="6490" Score="4" Text="@User1865345, this Q does seem to me to be about the site, its users, &amp; their behavior, broadly construed.  [meta.stats.SE] (or really any meta SE site) has a pretty loose standard for what is 'about' the site &amp; thus on topic.  This Q seems fine to me." CreationDate="2023-04-22T12:13:46.050" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="22032" PostId="6490" Score="0" Text="I interpreted the post as an open discussion of the present fate of the practice. Indeed it affects the site. But somehow I couldn't see any possible robust answer to it, for that matter. Again, to reiterate, serious discussions have already been done in those posts. This is my humble opinion only. At the end of the day, we all want to get rid of this impending menace." CreationDate="2023-04-22T12:23:40.127" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22033" PostId="6490" Score="0" Text="A related discussion: what could CV do in its relevant scopes to persuade to avert from such practices and tread with caution? For that matter, whenever posts of such category appear, the community leaves no stone unturned to warn about the impending consequences. Could we do more? Well, that indeed can be discussed. For this would be instrumental in maintaining the quality of the contents CV would entertain and this is to some extent been already done in the said threads." CreationDate="2023-04-22T12:34:01.217" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22035" PostId="6490" Score="1" Text="The other posts are helpful, but they don’t quite address my concerns. I’m not asking what the community (moderators) should do about ChatGPT-derived answers or whether ChatGPT should be banned (although it’s not). My question is, should we encourage participation in a process that may displace us?" CreationDate="2023-04-23T08:11:22.983" UserId="246835" />
  <row Id="22036" PostId="6490" Score="0" Text="As I said, what CV could do in its purview to limit or outright avert the practice among a certain section if the community to resort to ChatGPT can be (and should be) discussed." CreationDate="2023-04-23T11:40:41.933" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22037" PostId="6490" Score="3" Text="Didn't everyone that has produced text (well, text that has been digitized in some form) end up doing free labor for OpenAI? That's a lot of good company (and also some bad company)." CreationDate="2023-04-23T20:25:32.140" UserId="237901" />
  <row Id="22038" PostId="6490" Score="0" Text="@dipetkov Very good point indeed. I suppose then we should continue to refer OPs to our (your) own self-contained, original content instead of having them review some diluted average of previously generated content. I am not saying &quot;you&quot; do this. I am commenting on those that do, or have, done this." CreationDate="2023-04-23T21:28:04.157" UserId="246835" />
  <row Id="22039" PostId="6490" Score="0" Text="My attempts to refer OPs to previous answers that I've found to be well written and helpful have usually met with, let's say, lack of appreciation. Many people have lots of excitement about referring to ChatGPT without anyone prompting them. (Without any evidence I would guess that it's easy to get the feeling ChatGP is giving an answer that's customized just for you, and that's a nice feeling.)" CreationDate="2023-04-23T21:48:53.190" UserId="237901" />
  <row Id="22040" PostId="6490" Score="1" Text="This does not seem like a duplicate of the previous ChatGPT question, but I don't really understand the level of concern here. If LLMs were that much of a worry, we'd have to stop contributing any content on the internet - not just text. Killing the internet because of plagiarism worries seems like an overreaction. If you think this contributes to our obsolescence, surely you'd want to avoid even writing an answer here?" CreationDate="2023-04-24T07:45:18.197" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="22041" PostId="6490" Score="1" Text="Also, I would absolutely welcome a future in which most basic questions get addressed by LLMs instead of getting posted here. It would be easier and more fun to participate. Though unfortunately given the amount of bad statistical information online, I expect that LLMs will be regurgitating some lousy advice for a while." CreationDate="2023-04-24T07:46:34.120" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="22042" PostId="6490" Score="0" Text="@mkt In that case is it too late? Do we need to learn to integrate it?" CreationDate="2023-04-24T08:13:11.123" UserId="246835" />
  <row Id="22043" PostId="6490" Score="1" Text="@ThomasBilach Too late for what? I think it's worth integrating in our own workflows - I am, especially for coding - but the role it should play in CV is a separate question. At present LLMs are unsound in that they (perhaps unavoidably) produce highly convincing nonsense *in addition to* helpful text. It can be easy to filter out the bad stuff if you understand the topic reasonably well but very misleading if you don't. Which is why it's presently banned here, as the linked thread discusses." CreationDate="2023-04-24T09:11:16.333" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="22045" PostId="6490" Score="0" Text="Maybe a specific example is warranted. Say a student wants to learn more about how to model firm survival/exit in the South American economy. Experienced contributors recommend the OP ask LLMs for some help. It spits out boilerplate R code for a Cox proportional-hazards regression model. The contributor tells the OP to “try that” but I doubt the OP understands the nuance of the code or how the model works. Is this acceptable practice here? That example is only partly true, but I have seen examples of it. Is this something I should be doing? I’m really curious about this." CreationDate="2023-04-24T17:13:08.280" UserId="246835" />
  <row Id="22046" PostId="6490" Score="3" Text="@ThomasBilach: I'd expect the question would be closed if it provided no issue more specific than wanting to learn more about something. And what people may suggest in comments isn't strictly policed, but &quot;try that&quot; wouldn't constitute a valid answer (regardless of where the code came from.)" CreationDate="2023-04-24T17:40:12.680" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="22048" PostId="6490" Score="0" Text="@mkt Would you use ChatGPT if it wasn’t free? How much would you pay to consult with it? When we ask it to generate more and more content, are we not providing the free training data necessary to automate ourselves away?" CreationDate="2023-04-25T05:53:08.083" UserId="246835" />
  <row Id="22049" PostId="6490" Score="4" Text="I do pay to use it; about $20 per month to get access to GPT-4, the latest version of their model. I'm not worried about automating myself away. Contributing to LLMs doesn't seem that different to me than contributing to Wikipedia or CrossValidated or StackOverflow - nobody gets paid for that either. I think raising the general standard of human knowledge &amp; skill (setting aside weaknesses of LLMs) is valuable enough to me to do for free, at least part time. And it's not obvious that it will automate us away. Raising general standards might create more demand for expertise." CreationDate="2023-04-25T07:40:26.513" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="22050" PostId="6490" Score="2" Text="So it might even expand our professional opportunities!  https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/nobody-knows-how-many-jobs-will-be" CreationDate="2023-04-25T07:41:02.353" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="22051" PostId="6490" Score="3" Text="I have three concerns, one highly relevant here. 1. Do I want to use it? 2. What does this imply for me and my University and other universities? Important questions personally but consider 3. Is use of Open AI messing up ,Stack Exchange with lousy questions and answers? I am already seeing postings of bizarre code that &quot;doesn't work&quot; and that goes beyond what learners would guess for themselves. So, while I can ignore what I don't want to use, the pollution problem is serious." CreationDate="2023-04-25T10:09:38.613" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22054" PostId="6490" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Do you feel you have to (will have to) contend with it as an educator? How might you integrate it, if at all?" CreationDate="2023-04-26T18:27:06.213" UserId="246835" />
  <row Id="22056" PostId="6490" Score="0" Text="Too early for me to guess, and much more depends on what everyone else does. I  don’t plan to teach with it at all." CreationDate="2023-04-26T20:43:44.547" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22053" PostId="6491" Score="0" Text="Thank you for your response. So you agree GPT produces economic value but it’s only refined through mining? I’m sure we can agree the pre-trained language model was *not* perfect. To improve, it requires some reward system to fine-tune the process. In general, it only works well if it’s tailored to the human preference. So “we” are needed in the feedback process. How do you get a billion visitors to voluntarily input prompts? Make it free." CreationDate="2023-04-26T17:43:08.403" UserId="246835" />
  <row Id="22055" PostId="6491" Score="0" Text="Sure, OpenAI uses people in all sorts of ways to train and fine tune the models. I am sure that OpenAI also lets models crawl stackexchange, including your question and comments here. Models can learn from all sorts of interactions. So do humans, they learn from interactions between other humans and they can be many times for free." CreationDate="2023-04-26T18:55:34.943" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22057" PostId="6491" Score="0" Text="Good point. ChatGPT already takes advantage of 60–70% of the common crawl data, mostly from webpages. Isn't that enough? Doesn't it need *additional* training data such as what we feed it and even our conversation history?" CreationDate="2023-04-26T22:49:51.977" UserId="246835" />
  <row Id="22058" PostId="6491" Score="1" Text="@ThomasBilach What exactly are you proposing as an alternative? That we abandon all online public activity? Because that's the only individual action I can see that would affect this." CreationDate="2023-04-27T05:05:09.177" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="22059" PostId="6491" Score="0" Text="@ThomasBilach I am not sure how to respond to &quot;isn't that enough?&quot;. Your question can be interpreted in different ways. You have the purely factual question in the title. But there also seem to be suggestions to a question/discussion about whether or not this situation is good or not. So is the &quot;isn't that enough?&quot; about that discussion or about the technical point that GPT is not trained enough and needs fine tuning with user interactions to make it more practical in a wider setting? In both cases it is not clear to me why this is meta about the website here. You might explain that as well" CreationDate="2023-04-27T05:56:34.943" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22061" PostId="6491" Score="0" Text="@mkt The alternative is to stop using it. I found it interesting that the new “GPT Business” plan will allow users to opt out of the “model training” process. By default it appears the user is the product." CreationDate="2023-04-27T06:17:51.763" UserId="246835" />
  <row Id="22062" PostId="6491" Score="0" Text="@SextusEmpiricus I think the question is clear enough. It was reopened after some consideration. I think this is a conversation worth having, or maybe not." CreationDate="2023-04-27T06:19:55.013" UserId="246835" />
  <row Id="22063" PostId="6491" Score="1" Text="@ThomasBilach my answer was purely about the title question *&quot;Are we free labor for OpenAI?&quot;* which I interpret as a question about a fact. Regarding the additional discussion I am unsure what it is actually about and how it connects to cross validated. If there is any additional statement that you want to discuss, then I guess that it might be better to spell it out more precisely." CreationDate="2023-04-27T07:11:09.270" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22064" PostId="6491" Score="0" Text="@SextusEmpiricus I would argue it’s spelled out quite precisely. And I believe my comments offer enough explication on the apparent dangers. Regardless, I still learned something. I appreciate your feedback." CreationDate="2023-04-27T08:50:53.233" UserId="246835" />
  <row Id="22065" PostId="6491" Score="2" Text="@ThomasBilach You are only repeating yourself saying that you argue that the question is spelled out precisely, but you do not present those arguments. I would appreciate it if you spell out the exact question mere explicitly. Having a fuzzy discussion about different topics at the same time only benefits people who want to keep a status quo of disagreement, and have no discussion in order to resolve or clarify issues. A few minutes ago, I have edited my answer incorporating some of your comments. But I still feel like I am aiming at a moving target and hope that you can make it stop moving." CreationDate="2023-04-27T08:58:03.533" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22242" PostId="6491" Score="1" Text="I’d be careful about the legal claims here. An amateur soccer player in the US generally has a right of publicity allowing them to prevent the unauthorized commercial use of their likeness. (And if the R Studio company had an ad saying “Sextus Empiricus says R is the best language for StackExchange”, you would have a right of publicity to prevent unauthorized commercial use of your name.) The EU has similar rights from GDPR, and maybe elsewhere. But I agree that our work here is more like fun and less like labor." CreationDate="2023-06-26T14:33:42.490" UserId="225256" />
  <row Id="22066" PostId="6492" Score="1" Text="(+1) I like &quot;down our pens&quot; as a metaphor for &quot;keep our fingers away from the keyboard&quot;. Nicely put." CreationDate="2023-04-27T13:09:04.493" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22101" PostId="6492" Score="0" Text="@mkt Thank you for your comprehensive answer, in particular addressing the other points in the comments section. When I cautioned about not using it, I was referring to ChatGPT. Do you suggest LLMs could reach their full potential using just the available crawl data? Why not put ChatGPT behind a hefty paywall?" CreationDate="2023-05-01T08:36:56.367" UserId="246835" />
  <row Id="22102" PostId="6492" Score="1" Text="@ThomasBilach Nobody knows their full potential, but I imagine more data would be better, especially high-quality data. And more data will continue to be available whether a few individuals decide to stop writing or not. As for putting ChatGPT behind a paywall, I don't really get your point. (1) It is already partly paywalled (access to GPT-4 requires a monthly subscription), and (2) we have zero ability to effect such a change, and there's no reasonable way to make that happen through laws or regulation - it's a decision by a private company about how to offer its services." CreationDate="2023-05-01T08:54:51.653" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="22105" PostId="6492" Score="0" Text="The point is someone like yourself will pay for it and integrate it well into your workflows. But while it was “free” (and still is) it attracted 10 million dim-witted questions. I don’t suspect more “high quality” data is on the horizon, but that’s just my prediction. I’m also well aware that most predictions are wrong. Let’s see where this goes :)" CreationDate="2023-05-01T09:30:23.567" UserId="246835" />
  <row Id="22106" PostId="6492" Score="0" Text="@ThomasBilach Again, assuming LLMs get better at accuracy, attracting many 'dim-witted questions' is a feature, not a bug. The public gets basic questions addressed, improving their knowledge and skills, and experts don't have to spend their time answering them. To me, the main open question on this narrow topic is: how accurate will they become? And we don't know the answer to that yet." CreationDate="2023-05-01T09:55:55.420" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="22067" PostId="6493" Score="3" Text="Unless the post is community wiki, I would feel particularly uneasy in adding anything substantial, albeit it could have provided much insight to the existing post. This deserves a separate answer altogether, imo. If the post is useful, the community would definitely get sight of it." CreationDate="2023-04-28T08:04:52.217" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22068" PostId="6493" Score="0" Text="@User1865345 I doubt your final sentence. Would the community get sight of it? And would it be useful for the community if an idea that builds upon a previous answer is posted as a seperate answer? The post might be useful but is in a thread that has already 3 other highly upvoted answers. Is it user-friendly if a person that lands on that question has to dig through several questions to gather multiple ideas? It seems a bit weird to add a completely new answer when one only has an idea to change/improve an already existing answer." CreationDate="2023-04-28T08:17:17.333" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22069" PostId="6493" Score="0" Text="I often have these considerations when I come across an old question and I get the idea that an image might help to explain the idea more clearly. We do often edit other questions here for spelling or improving language, but that seems to be the limit." CreationDate="2023-04-28T08:21:22.130" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22070" PostId="6493" Score="0" Text="If this helps further address the issue of the question that somehow didn't get articulated in the already positively received posts, you should compose another post with clear disclaimer that this is in relation to another post, but since it has not been highlighted, this warrants an additional post that provides the relevant discussion." CreationDate="2023-04-28T08:22:20.797" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22071" PostId="6493" Score="0" Text="An example of a major edit that I once made is here: https://stats.stackexchange.com/revisions/354698/4" CreationDate="2023-04-28T08:25:26.370" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22072" PostId="6493" Score="0" Text="If the user were active, I could have thought about asking them about the addition provided the addition is a graph, a snippet, an extract or info along the same line. However, if the addition is longer than that, this should be a seperate post along the explicit statement of why it is connected to the original answer in concern." CreationDate="2023-04-28T08:25:31.843" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22073" PostId="6493" Score="0" Text="For your example, you clearly stated your edit in a comment to AdamO, who is a regular user in the community. However, we are dealing here with a user who, for all practical purposes, won't return here. If you feel the addition would be small but important in addressing and highlighting the solution in a better way, please edit it. But if it is larger, I opine that this should be in a seperate post." CreationDate="2023-04-28T08:28:34.420" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22074" PostId="6493" Score="0" Text="@User1865345 my worries about adding a new post is that in the long term reading cross validated becomes like reading a history page of Wikipedia or a list of revisions. Instead of a single concise answer that gathers multiple contributions into one post, the users of cross validated have to dig through several posts. A post that explains something and another post that explains the other post, that's monstrous." CreationDate="2023-04-28T08:34:26.347" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22075" PostId="6493" Score="1" Text="I believe that the addition will be big but important. What I worry about with adding a new post every time in that case, is the unnecessary growth of posts. At what time will a post turn into compost? Or is it everlasting plastic?" CreationDate="2023-04-28T08:35:40.423" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22076" PostId="6493" Score="0" Text="I can sense your worry which is somewhat legit. But if I were to embrace it fully, then all queries should have to have at best one or two answers. I can personally tell, I love when a question gets quite a few answers: I take time to read them, try to comprehend the different approaches and even if two posts resemble same, chances are I would still learn a varied take." CreationDate="2023-04-28T08:42:50.060" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22077" PostId="6493" Score="1" Text="I have edited the title to articulate your main concern. Please feel free to edit or undo that, if you wish." CreationDate="2023-04-28T08:53:18.887" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22078" PostId="6493" Score="0" Text="This does seem like a small (but probably growing) structural problem with SE - new developments will mean that highly-upvoted answers are no longer accurate. If your planned addition is based on such a new development, it might justify a carefully-worded new thread (and perhaps even closure of the existing thread as a dupe, to point people towards the accurate new answer). If it's something that could have been written when the question was posted, I would probably add a new answer to the existing thread and just accept that it will get less attention." CreationDate="2023-04-28T08:57:34.057" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="22079" PostId="6493" Score="0" Text="I would definitely not edit an existing answer to make substantive changes." CreationDate="2023-04-28T08:58:23.060" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="22080" PostId="6493" Score="0" Text="@mkt *&quot;and just accept that it will get less attention.&quot;* If I don't care about it getting attention, then why post it at all? Isn't the goal to improve the repository of questions and answers?" CreationDate="2023-04-28T09:18:44.780" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22081" PostId="6493" Score="0" Text="@mkt it is not an addition based on new developments. It is something that could have been written or edited when the question was posted, but I can't do that now so easily as an edit since the original poster is inactive." CreationDate="2023-04-28T09:21:58.970" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22082" PostId="6493" Score="0" Text="&quot;*Isn't the goal to improve the repository of questions and answers?*&quot; Yes, of course. But the site design &amp; rules and community norms do impose some constraints that mean we cannot fully optimise for that. If a new discovery comes out that renders a top answer wrong, we don't present delete it or remove its status as top answer. As I said in my first sentence, I agree that this is a problem and think it will probably get worse with time. So I'm all for proposing changes that address those constraints - my suggestions for this immediate situation were based on working within those constraints." CreationDate="2023-04-28T09:56:17.087" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="22083" PostId="6493" Score="0" Text="You should not make substantive changes to someone else's answer without their permission.  If you want to add something &amp; the answerer is no longer around to say OK, you should post a new answer." CreationDate="2023-04-28T11:38:53.487" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="22084" PostId="6493" Score="0" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica could you elaborate why we should not make these changes? I thought that the design of the system was with these changes in mind but the culture of the users has moved towards each person having their individual answer instead of making answers in collaboration. Is it a principal objection to change answers, or is it just a practical objection, or possibly for no clear reason but just what is the current etiquette?" CreationDate="2023-04-28T12:03:10.377" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22085" PostId="6493" Score="1" Text="This comes down to what makes sense in individual threads. In practice, the person who answered has long since stopped contributing, so to me that encourages editing their answer so long as edits are clear to all. I recommend something like EDIT 28 April 2023 in the answer. But if that person expressed themselves uncomfortable with the edit, then I would back off and create a new answer with a cross-reference. It's a clash between high-level principles (a) the site being ideally a repository of high-quality answered questions (b) a courteous need to respect others' styles and wishes." CreationDate="2023-04-28T12:33:41.357" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22086" PostId="6493" Score="0" Text="@NickCox, while excavating old posts, I occasionally do edit in the manner you asserted, but only for explicitly making it clear the link cited is dead; the package has been updated and no longer in CRAN etc. While your point has certain merit, I still think in case of old posts, unless there arises a serious flaw due to new discovery or so, if the user no longer visits the site, it is better not to disturb the post. And there are plenty of examples not only in CV but also other SE where there are answers that address an issue already been mentioned in other answer for a different take." CreationDate="2023-04-28T13:21:42.683" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22087" PostId="6493" Score="2" Text="So, experuenced users can disagree on this. I too am a little divided on the point. I find myself a little irritated if people edit my posts, but almost always the intent is benign and the change makes sense, so I tell myself to get over it, and there is no sense in which other people need my permission. And I edit others' posts mightily, usually as a matter of language or presentation, so a taste of my own medicine should be acceptable!" CreationDate="2023-04-28T13:26:39.870" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22089" PostId="6494" Score="1" Text="(+1). This is absolutely what I was saying and advocate. I do understand the concern that Sextus is trying to articulate. However, at the very least, I am not bothered at the sheer number of answers a query receives over the years: if the post is useful, it deserves to be added as an answer even if it is in reference to other one (in light of the fact of the scenario discussed here)." CreationDate="2023-04-29T13:09:32.670" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22090" PostId="6494" Score="1" Text="*&quot;You are free to add your own answer&quot;* In my question I noted that this is demotivating for old questions where answers already have gathered several tens of votes. *&quot;If you think an answer is incorrect, or incomplete, you can vote down and/or leave a comment.&quot;* votes have little effect on old questions and comments don't work if the original poster is not active. The activity in old question and answer threads has died out. What do we do with that?" CreationDate="2023-04-29T14:37:23.473" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22091" PostId="6494" Score="1" Text="*&quot;But you should not make a substantive change without their permission.&quot;* This seems to be the current etiquette. I like to challenge that this is a strict rule. People add their answers with an open license. They do not own the answers. It is just a custom that we don't do this, but it can be changed." CreationDate="2023-04-29T14:39:54.197" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22092" PostId="6494" Score="1" Text="@SextusEmpiricus, the design of the SE system is that information accumulates over time by people answering and those answers being evaluated by the voting mechanism. Eventually, in theory, consensus emerges from the community's votes. Taking an answer with &quot;several tens of&quot; votes and making substantive changes to it so that it says what you want it to say instead of what the author said breaks that mechanism. You might consider that some of your posts have garnered disagreements in comments. Is it your preference that those people change what you put?  After all, you &quot;do not own the answers&quot;." CreationDate="2023-04-29T16:51:34.393" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="22093" PostId="6494" Score="3" Text="More to the point, let's say I like Jan S's answer better without the figure you add.  Should I just edit it back out?  What happens then?  Do we get into an edit war until the mods lock the thread?  How is this supposed to be adjudicated?  I suppose it is more realistic that no one much cares enough to bother with it and the figure just stays by default.  But that just sidesteps the issue--it doesn't resolve it." CreationDate="2023-04-29T16:55:46.203" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="22094" PostId="6494" Score="1" Text="I get your ideas edit-wars. I am not sure how to solve it but possibly a Wikipedia alike system might work (I have no personal experience with it, but I do know that it is much more collaborative and evolving/changing)." CreationDate="2023-04-29T17:32:14.417" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22095" PostId="6494" Score="1" Text="The points system, I agree that this doesn't work well if a post with a lot of votes gets changed by a lot. But the same is true that the system doesn't work well for new answers, which did not get the same exposure. In this sense my question can be seen as part of a larger issue about how to improve the q&amp;a database and what to do with old parts that had a different voting history. (An example if that sometimes duplicates can replace older posts when they are better, but there is no standard path to improvement of old parts of the website)." CreationDate="2023-04-29T17:34:50.437" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22096" PostId="6494" Score="2" Text="@SextusEmpiricus I appreciate your concern with incorrect answers that have lots of upvotes. Unfortunately, there's little we can do about that within the SE framework. I've been trying to get the author of this answer on SO https://stackoverflow.com/a/49444783/2482661 to either correct or remove it for a year. It's the top result for a number of common Google queries but it the code do what it says it does... and the question isn't even about code! The only thing to be done is leave a comment or offer a better answer (or even downvote if you feel the answer warrants it)." CreationDate="2023-04-29T18:06:15.393" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="22097" PostId="6494" Score="1" Text="@Sycorax that's another good example case. But for the record, I am not saying that the answer of the case that I described here is incorrect. I actually found it the best answer and I already upvoted it. It is just that I was thinking that the question could be improved by adding an extra example and/or an image. I am thinking about old questions that can be interesting candidates for a facelift rather than adding a new question that's basically the same idea but formatted differently (the situation where I think I have something to add that's a lot for an edit but too little for a new post)." CreationDate="2023-04-29T19:35:28.280" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22099" PostId="6494" Score="0" Text="It is a difficult situation. A similar situation is here: https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/592453/ where I added a new answer rather than editing the existing answer. In that case the original author was still around and actually suggested edits to their own post but I argued that the minor edits were sufficient and *&quot;A heavier edit might break down the storyline that you had before.&quot;*. But, being 10 years younger, the answer that I added is sitting a bit lonely at the bottom of list of answers. In this case, no problems, as it is referenced in the other answer, but that is not standard." CreationDate="2023-04-29T19:53:12.113" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22100" PostId="6494" Score="2" Text="@SextusEmpiricus, your points are well-motivated.  The SE system is imperfect.  But in the end, I think Sycorax is right that &quot;there's little we can do about that within the SE framework&quot;.   In some sense Wikipedia has similar goals, but it is ultimately a different project.  It has a different design, with different pros and cons.  The designers of SE [did not aspire to be Wikipedia](https://web.archive.org/web/20120124191055/http://stats.stackexchange.com/about).  This system has its pros and cons; I'm much more active here than on W, but others may choose a different balance." CreationDate="2023-04-29T21:20:08.540" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="22107" PostId="6495" Score="4" Text="We may be able to use the [Wayback Machine](https://web.archive.org/) to find archived versions.  We could then update the links to WM, or copy the images to `stack.imgur`." CreationDate="2023-05-04T11:41:21.513" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="22108" PostId="6495" Score="0" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica: Yes - in fact Glorfindel's script, when it comes across a broken link, tries to find an archived version; &amp; if it succeeds, uploads the image to `stack.imgur`. I shouldn't like to have to do that manually for many, though." CreationDate="2023-05-04T12:54:13.463" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="22109" PostId="6495" Score="0" Text="It seems that we do not need to get into action quickly do we? The images are allready copied for the i.imgur.com url's (and will also be soon for imgur.com url's?). The two remaining issues seem to be 1) how to change all the hyperlinks (but the copying has already been done), and 2) how to fix the images that could not be copies (but they are not on imgur anymore anyway)." CreationDate="2023-05-04T13:56:33.687" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22110" PostId="6495" Score="8" Text="+1 I have wondered from the inception of this site whether reliance in Imgur would eventually break it.  How evanescent *all* our work is... .  For years now I have been routinely scraping CV of my own posts and archiving them because eventually CV will disappear, too.  I was very active on other technical sites in the 90's and 00's, including some I hosted personally, *and none of them are still around.*" CreationDate="2023-05-04T14:04:12.953" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="22112" PostId="6495" Score="0" Text="@SextusEmpiricus: That's right, except that we have no guarantee that Glorfindel will find time to run his script for `imgur.com` URLs. (He's not an S.E. employee, just extraordinarily helpful.)" CreationDate="2023-05-04T14:29:13.393" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="22114" PostId="6495" Score="0" Text="@whuber: Even the back-ups don't include images, only the links to them: https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/4799/17230" CreationDate="2023-05-04T15:54:32.460" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="22115" PostId="6495" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi-ReinstateMonica I don't use backups: I scrape the entire thing." CreationDate="2023-05-04T19:28:31.527" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="22575" PostId="6495" Score="0" Text="Maybe related: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/394833/updates-to-the-acceptable-use-policy, in particular the last paragraph about scraping." CreationDate="2023-11-21T10:50:40.217" UserId="164936" />
  <row Id="22111" PostId="6496" Score="2" Text="I fixed one of these broken images (it was available on wayback internet database but not easily found) and failed on another https://i.imgur.com/RDR9I.png (the database image from 2013 is alread the removed.png image). I am afraid that this is gonna be a manual job for the other cases as well." CreationDate="2023-05-04T14:09:05.743" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22113" PostId="6496" Score="0" Text="Thanks, this is v. useful. I note there are a couple that need shrinking. The [`magick` package](https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/magick/vignettes/intro.html) might be useful." CreationDate="2023-05-04T14:46:08.873" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="22119" PostId="6496" Score="0" Text="For the two png's that were over 2 MiB, I was able to reduce their size slightly using the `image_scale` function (with no apparent degradation of quality). Dealing with gifs looks to be more complicated in `magick`; [Gifsicle](https://www.lcdf.org/gifsicle) is another option." CreationDate="2023-05-09T13:45:30.197" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="22120" PostId="6496" Score="0" Text="The large gif image from https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/583472/ could be changed by scaling down to 4 colours. (ping to @Scortchi-ReinstateMonica)" CreationDate="2023-05-09T15:23:14.453" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22121" PostId="6496" Score="0" Text="Smashing! (How did you do that, by the way?)" CreationDate="2023-05-09T15:42:53.803" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="22122" PostId="6496" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi-ReinstateMonica I used gifsicle with some command that I found on stack overflow or elsewhere." CreationDate="2023-05-09T16:07:29.773" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22123" PostId="6499" Score="2" Text="It's likely too late. This would mean that someone would need to go through all 465 questions and remove the tag from each, while each of them would bump to the main page because of being &quot;edited&quot;. Unless someone is willing to delete it in 10 Q/day rate every day for the next 46 days..." CreationDate="2023-05-15T07:48:39.720" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="22248" PostId="6499" Score="0" Text="@Tim Is it okay if I do this?" CreationDate="2023-07-10T06:13:50.590" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="22249" PostId="6499" Score="1" Text="feel free, just keep in mind that recommended way is to do this just a few Q at a time so the Qs with edited tags do not flood the main page." CreationDate="2023-07-10T07:01:51.297" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="22338" PostId="6499" Score="0" Text="@Tim Done. Anything else to be done? Like perhaps editing the tag info to warn against using it?" CreationDate="2023-08-02T08:12:59.217" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="22339" PostId="6499" Score="0" Text="That's great, thanks!" CreationDate="2023-08-02T08:14:22.573" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="22125" PostId="6501" Score="4" Text="&quot;Good way of modeling this problem&quot; is already so broad and vague as to render the question unlikely to be a good fit for this site.  It can be difficult to formulate a clear, precise question when you're in a confusing or inherently ambiguous situation, but it's still worth the effort. Sycorax provides fundamental advice: *ask the question you actually confront.* Efforts to abstract questions mathematically or to describe the situation through analogies usually backfire because often essential information is obscured, lost, or even corrupted." CreationDate="2023-05-16T17:05:08.413" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="22129" PostId="6504" Score="1" Text="Since I don't specialize in the field the question is based on, I have refrained myself from commenting particularly on the statistical relevance of the questions. The whole commentary is a general take." CreationDate="2023-05-19T04:26:07.913" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22140" PostId="6504" Score="0" Text="Thank you, I really appreciate the feedback.  In general I talk too much :-)  I will take these suggestions to heart and try to come up with better questions.  Much appreciated for your honesty." CreationDate="2023-06-04T17:20:22.493" UserId="388205" />
  <row Id="22141" PostId="6505" Score="0" Text="Same as below, thank you for your honest feedback and I will try to listen and write better questions." CreationDate="2023-06-04T17:20:57.290" UserId="388205" />
  <row Id="22136" PostId="6509" Score="1" Text="(+1 to Sycorax' advice) if the user is a troll, you can raise a flag for mods' attention of the same: I particularly leave a message of the said user's account at the chat along with a flag as mentioned earlier. And yes don't waste your energy in engaging with them as emphasized in the answer." CreationDate="2023-06-02T23:19:49.463" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22137" PostId="6509" Score="2" Text="Do all three: downvote, VTC, &amp; flag.  For spam, or such, you can also edit &amp; replace the content with &quot;*(Spam content removed, see revision history for original.)*&quot;" CreationDate="2023-06-03T11:54:28.477" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="22138" PostId="6509" Score="0" Text="@User1865345 Also, don't answer questions in the comment section." CreationDate="2023-06-03T12:14:19.953" UserId="123963" />
  <row Id="22139" PostId="6509" Score="5" Text="I know @pipe. Assuming you are pointing to my comment as an answer, I respectfully disagree. This was my personal take in light of any trolls. A robust answer has already been provided by Sycorax and I have nothing more to add (if you intended to mean anything different, then sorry for that :-))." CreationDate="2023-06-03T12:22:53.247" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22142" PostId="6511" Score="1" Text="I am not aware of the other mods, so apologize for not mentioning them." CreationDate="2023-06-06T03:37:15.730" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22143" PostId="6511" Score="8" Text="Thanks. I do hope &quot;What side are you on?&quot; isn't meant too seriously though - people with the best interests of our site at heart will still come to different decisions." CreationDate="2023-06-06T09:19:34.390" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="22144" PostId="6511" Score="8" Text="And some good news at last: company analysts have been allowed to start talking to moderators about their findings &amp; concerns." CreationDate="2023-06-06T09:27:14.283" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="22145" PostId="6511" Score="1" Text="Thanks @Scortchi-ReinstateMonica for the update. Yes, in the long run, we are not making anyone antagonist(s). Disagreement may occur but what I loathe is the dearth of proper interaction and in the pretext of listening to feedbacks, ultimate imposition of the same." CreationDate="2023-06-06T09:30:16.560" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22192" PostId="6511" Score="2" Text="Update: [Moderation Strike update: Data dumps, choosing representatives, GPT data, and where we’re holding](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/390106/moderation-strike-update-data-dumps-choosing-representatives-gpt-data-and-wh)" CreationDate="2023-06-13T18:18:58.663" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22146" PostId="6512" Score="1" Text="Have you read [this entire post](https://stackoverflowteams.com/c/moderators/q/5236/3) on the Stack Moderators Team? That may account for the discrepency in the AI-generated policy being referred to." CreationDate="2023-06-06T17:08:55.383" UserId="150026" />
  <row Id="22151" PostId="6512" Score="4" Text="@Mithical I saw that when it first appeared. I upvoted it because I agreed with, and still agree with, it: namely, I have for the past half year advocated not relying on chatbot detectors to moderate our site and not suspending users *solely* for using chatbots.  It summarizes my perspective at the end pretty well: &quot;You may still naturally deal with content abuse in ways we always have: if someone is posting a flood of poor quality content, suspend them for low quality content. Just don’t make it about GPT or AI generated content - make it about the quality being poor on a repeated basis.&quot;" CreationDate="2023-06-06T17:47:10.467" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="22152" PostId="6512" Score="3" Text="(Continued) This is misrepresented by the initial thesis of the strike letter, which asserts &quot;Stack Overflow, Inc. has decreed a near-total prohibition on moderating AI-generated content.&quot;  That reads like a gross misrepresentation of the post you reference." CreationDate="2023-06-06T17:48:54.433" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="22157" PostId="6512" Score="3" Text="I'm not a mod but I think part of the discrepancy between here and elsewhere is that many mods from SO say that they're no subject matter experts and cannot or do not judge posts by their quality, only by formal criteria. If they cannot apply the formal &quot;suspected of being produced by an algorithm&quot; reason, they don't know how else to moderate the content. They apply their judgement by having seen many AI generated texts and try to find similarities between these and new, suspect posts. They fear that otherwise high volume of such content is created. All this might be different for CV though." CreationDate="2023-06-06T20:09:25.037" UserId="31853" />
  <row Id="22158" PostId="6512" Score="8" Text="@Trilarion Thank you for those comments. We (the mods on CV) do appreciate differences between sites. None of us maintain that what works for us ought to work for them or *vice versa.* It clearly is a challenge to distinguish chatbot BS from legitimate answers. Fortunately, the nature of questions and answers here on CV is such that many, if not most, of our mods and most active users can usually spot the difference quickly.  But as bad (or at least naive) chatbot users grow more sophisticated, the potential to be flooded with good-looking but wrong posts could become a more serious problem." CreationDate="2023-06-06T20:48:29.600" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="22162" PostId="6512" Score="5" Text="Thank you. (1) S.E. users aren't unionized, &amp; the organizers of this strike aren't shop stewards - or even a clearly defined group of people. I think they've done a good job, considering. I'm most to blame for your being taken unawares - I posted in the mod. chat about it before I'd decided to join, but neglected to ping anyone - sorry. (2) You make a very fair point about the letter - it's written from S.O. moderators' stand-point, as @Trilarion explains." CreationDate="2023-06-07T07:55:23.977" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="22163" PostId="6512" Score="4" Text="(3) On C.V, we certainly have reached the consensus &quot;that we should continue moderating posts on their intrinsic merits&quot;. (I personally agree with it too)." CreationDate="2023-06-07T07:56:42.463" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="22166" PostId="6512" Score="2" Text="My knowledge of this episode is limited to reading a few of the publicly available posts. I did have some sense from reading various posts that some phrasing seemed a little hyperbolic &amp; that in some cases people may be overreacting. Without knowledge of things that are out of my sight, I can't fully judge that. It's an impression based on the style. Nonetheless, the thrust of what is said unfortunately matches my priors about SE based on previous events. As a result, I basically believe it. I signed the letter. At present, I don't regret doing so &amp; don't intent to try to retract my signature." CreationDate="2023-06-07T12:04:27.563" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="22167" PostId="6512" Score="7" Text="The other thing I would say is that I found the episode around Monica's mistreatment to be exhausting.  Resigning and walking away was the best thing for me.  I don't intend to be heavily involved in this episode or try to follow all the ins and outs.  My estimation of SE will drop further, as will my activity here probably, but as I said [before](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5779/7290), I have no illusions that SE will notice or care." CreationDate="2023-06-07T13:15:52.070" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="22170" PostId="6512" Score="1" Text="I was not familiar with the Monica episode that you mentioned in the chat @gung-ReinstateMonica; thanks for mentioning that (I have looked into few news articles and other SE posts). Now that I have seen, I can comprehend where you are coming from. To be fair, the trait of abruptly imposing a diktat without proper consultation seems to be utter baloney irrespective of what reason it was apparently done for and then what follows is a slow mode of indifference." CreationDate="2023-06-07T13:22:43.577" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22172" PostId="6512" Score="4" Text="It might be worth mentioning that I have a long history on Q&amp;A sites.  I founded several discussion groups in the late 90's (using listserver platforms), initially as a direct response to the patronizing, draconian approach taken by a major software vendor to moderating their official groups.  I have seen what &quot;despotism&quot; in this arena looks like.  SE is mild by comparison.  Until they start actively interfering with our moderation here on CV, I see little to get upset about." CreationDate="2023-06-07T13:29:21.193" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="22155" PostId="6513" Score="0" Text="the part you wrote on tools reminds me of [Mithical's spoon analogy](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/331513/997587)" CreationDate="2023-06-06T18:09:09.183" UserId="373726" />
  <row Id="22156" PostId="6513" Score="1" Text="@starball Since the only development effort seems to be Twitter-driven, maybe the solution is to write a viral Twitter post. We'd only need to do it once, apparently." CreationDate="2023-06-06T18:13:04.700" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="22159" PostId="6514" Score="8" Text="This must be a network-wide issue, so question should be asked at the main meta: https://meta.stackexchange.com/" CreationDate="2023-06-07T01:02:04.223" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="22164" PostId="6515" Score="4" Text="As a non-moderator too, and a fairly active longer-term member, I want to echo this strongly and add a few further comments.  To me there is almost complete dissociation in practice between the fact that a company is behind SE and what I do here. I read and post here out of a mix of wanting to be helpful (which does include reacting to confusion or error as I see it),  of wanting to learn from the site (which does include what I learn in writing answers), and of having fun.  That all depends on SE being maintained, but the existence of the company is something I can usually ignore." CreationDate="2023-06-07T10:08:41.757" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22165" PostId="6515" Score="4" Text="(ctd) That said, it is enough that at least some moderators feel that the company is treating them badly to make me express sadness and sympathy about that. . But I don't think that withdrawing my labour would be noticed by anyone in power. I respect different positions on that detail." CreationDate="2023-06-07T10:11:11.053" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22168" PostId="6515" Score="0" Text="It is appreciable to have a post from a non-mod active user (Ben) from the community. Whatever maybe the mode, be it joining the strike or not, what it shows is we cherish the tiring and vital job the mods do and we unilaterally agree on the case of treatment of ai generated materials here. And shout out to @NickCox too with whom I agree." CreationDate="2023-06-07T13:18:23.920" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22171" PostId="6515" Score="1" Text="@NickCox &quot;We're going to ignore it and see what happens&quot; is the position the Physics mods have taken. It has some appeal, as a strategy. My assessment is that concerted effort is the better path forward. One regret I have is that, because the spark to this fire was a poorly-presented policy change, that's where a lot of focus has been. People are debating the finer points of the announcement itself. That's not where the real problems are -- as I see it, the larger problems are that SE hasn't built any good tools for mods to find &amp; remove low-quality content, from any source." CreationDate="2023-06-07T13:27:41.653" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="22173" PostId="6515" Score="1" Text="I work in a University. Some years ago a senior colleague remarked sarcastically &quot;It seems  that some of my colleagues think that the University is a democratic institution. I don't know where they got that impression.&quot; He was right and it's the same here. There is a company and they sometimes pay no more than lip-service to users despite those users creating most of the content. Your options are limited to protest or exit." CreationDate="2023-06-07T13:32:48.453" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22174" PostId="6515" Score="0" Text="Thanks @Ben. With regards to the 2nd point the advice is certainly sound, but I hope we have no false positives at all on this site. A practical advantage of only taking action on low quality posts is that the kinds of factual or logical errors ChatGPT can introduce are very distinctive, and leave no room for doubt that human thought was not involved in the writing of the post. (Sometime I can even reproduce the very same errors by feeding ChatGPT the relevant question.)" CreationDate="2023-06-07T13:39:11.453" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="22175" PostId="6515" Score="1" Text="Speaking of exit, Math Overflow mods are mulling over whether to secede completely from SO (though they have concluded it would be a bad spectre to do this right now). But this recent happening have again ignited the debate there." CreationDate="2023-06-07T13:41:22.800" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22176" PostId="6515" Score="0" Text="Goodness know how any group _could_ take their content with them if they secede.  Who would want to start all over again?" CreationDate="2023-06-07T13:55:09.013" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22177" PostId="6515" Score="1" Text="@NickCox, see this post [At what point should MO recognise it needs to leave Stack Exchange Inc?](https://meta.mathoverflow.net/questions/5669/at-what-point-should-mo-recognise-it-needs-to-leave-stack-exchange-inc)." CreationDate="2023-06-07T13:58:45.980" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22178" PostId="6515" Score="0" Text="Thanks; enough to note that MO is in a rather special situation." CreationDate="2023-06-07T14:39:44.330" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22179" PostId="6515" Score="1" Text="+1 As an interested non-mod myself, even thinking that for the moment such postings can be well managed based on intrinsic merits, regarding current events I can see a striking difference between the information available to me posted by mods supporting the strike and posted by the company, and this doesn't reflect positively on the company to say the least." CreationDate="2023-06-07T14:40:50.110" UserId="247165" />
  <row Id="22180" PostId="6515" Score="0" Text="@ChristianHennig, please also have a look at this: [Dear SE, please stop disparaging the moderators in the press](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/389824/dear-se-please-stop-disparaging-the-moderators-in-the-press) (if you haven't already) to see how the incident was presented to the outside world." CreationDate="2023-06-07T14:52:46.340" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22181" PostId="6516" Score="3" Text="I think it's a fine question, but had I encountered it I would have closed it as a duplicate of [many other posts](https://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=cauchy+schwarz).  That's not meant in a deprecating way: if you aren't familiar with the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality, you don't know how to search for it." CreationDate="2023-06-09T11:51:53.973" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="22182" PostId="6518" Score="1" Text="Are we talking about the content of answers and questions? Isn't this open source anyway and can it not be scraped without any costs or obtained from database dumps? How can SO charge any money for it? Or is this also about non-public meta-data?" CreationDate="2023-06-09T19:56:47.083" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22183" PostId="6518" Score="0" Text="I only know what I read in the news. " CreationDate="2023-06-09T21:05:29.273" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="22184" PostId="6518" Score="1" Text="I am considering to sent an application letter to openAI. Scraping this website is super easy and I believe that this amateur SE can be much cheaper than whatever the company SE will be asking." CreationDate="2023-06-09T21:09:11.220" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22185" PostId="6518" Score="1" Text="As I understand it, there is an intention to make the data inaccessible for LLM training outside of SE's framework. https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/390040/320588 In other words, SE appears to be attempting to find a way to obstruct the methods that you would undertake in pursuit of that task." CreationDate="2023-06-10T18:14:02.707" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="22186" PostId="6518" Score="0" Text="Good luck with that to the company. It is practically impossible to block a site when you want it to be open at the same time. Or are they gonna block google's and bing's searchbots destructing their search engine optimization?" CreationDate="2023-06-10T18:40:57.990" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22187" PostId="6518" Score="0" Text="I have no idea what SE's plans are, aside from what they've announced publicly." CreationDate="2023-06-10T18:45:20.713" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="22189" PostId="6519" Score="7" Text="Since my name appears in the image, I suppose some explanation might help.  My moderation philosophy has evolved.  Whereas I used to immediately close posts that are not on topic or don't answer the question (almost always with a comment, of course), but are otherwise harmless, I now leave them open and check in after 24 hours to see whether the comment has been addressed.  If not, I then close the post.  This seems to provoke fewer negative reactions from newcomers and often results in constructive changes, even though it takes more work to do that daily review." CreationDate="2023-06-11T15:29:09.210" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="22190" PostId="6519" Score="1" Text="Interesting method. Thanks for making that clear." CreationDate="2023-06-12T00:12:39.097" UserId="345611" />
  <row Id="22191" PostId="6519" Score="2" Text="FWIW, during my daily review I have determined that the OP has had an opportunity to read my comment asking for clarification and has had time to respond, but did not do so.  Because this is an answer, my options were to move it into a comment or delete it.  Because it's not a useful comment in this thread, it is now deleted." CreationDate="2023-06-12T14:07:51.397" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="22229" PostId="6519" Score="0" Text="This seems close to the question about whether to provide quick-and-dirty answers, and the community was resoundingly in favour of that: https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5402/is-a-quick-and-dirty-answer-better-than-no-answer" CreationDate="2023-06-26T09:02:17.660" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="22188" PostId="6520" Score="1" Text="I think this logic makes sense. I will go forward and recommend deletion then. They have already been told what to do and maybe it will push this person to do better next time." CreationDate="2023-06-11T11:28:40.773" UserId="345611" />
  <row Id="22194" PostId="6521" Score="3" Text="I used to remove those greetings and other related phrases that simply added nothing to the query while reviewing/editing anything __substantial__. Seldom did I edit simply to remove them. But this is totally valid. As whuber stated, this is the norm. Check this Meta [post](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2950/should-hi-thanks-taglines-and-salutations-be-removed-from-posts) too." CreationDate="2023-06-15T18:11:45.033" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22195" PostId="6521" Score="3" Text="Also check Nick Cox's comprehensive post [here](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2814/362671), in which one of the stated points was: &quot;Edits should remove greetings (at the beginning of a post) or signatures (at the end) and any material that looks irrelevant to the question. ... &quot;" CreationDate="2023-06-15T18:19:06.453" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22196" PostId="6521" Score="0" Text="I believe the point of my post was missed. Please see the edit." CreationDate="2023-06-16T00:30:30.220" UserId="345611" />
  <row Id="22198" PostId="6521" Score="3" Text="Why is that a concern??" CreationDate="2023-06-16T00:48:52.683" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="22199" PostId="6521" Score="0" Text="Maybe I'm overthinking it. Just seems to be weird this person found this exact grammar error several times. My concern was that they edited in a typo and then edited it out so they could reputation farm, but now that I'm thinking about it, that makes little sense." CreationDate="2023-06-16T01:06:16.163" UserId="345611" />
  <row Id="22200" PostId="6521" Score="3" Text="@ShawnHemelstrand, I just random searched https://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=Thank+you+in+advance and found so many posts for potential edit. Maybe they found the posts via some query. Who knows? As long as the suggested edits aren't harmful, even if it's for rep points, I won't get bothered. A bit bizarre that this is happening but I won't get vexed at those suggestions." CreationDate="2023-06-16T03:02:01.043" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22201" PostId="6521" Score="0" Text="Fair enough. Thanks for the input. Suppose I'll just accept them as is." CreationDate="2023-06-16T03:05:10.787" UserId="345611" />
  <row Id="22202" PostId="6521" Score="3" Text="For some reason, “thank you in advanced” is a common malapropism. I don’t know why, but it’s a common occurrence in stack exchange questions." CreationDate="2023-06-16T04:28:09.093" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="22203" PostId="6521" Score="3" Text="Even &quot;Thank you in advance&quot; is often considered slightly impolite as well as redundant. Often it  is  intended only as a variant on &quot;I will be grateful for any attention&quot; but it can be misread as implying not feeling obliged to thank people after receiving a gift (here of advice or information, etc.). The field is strewn with scope for minor linguistic and/or cultural misunderstandings. I bridle inwardly at requests for assistance (I am not your assistant!) rather than help (I am often happy to try to help you), but at the same time I doubt anyone so asking is expressing entitlement." CreationDate="2023-06-16T09:04:35.427" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22205" PostId="6521" Score="2" Text="[Should I search for posts to make trivial edits to?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/390291/476162) Leaving this here for future readers. One answer suggests not having these edits require reviewer time." CreationDate="2023-06-16T12:29:05.273" UserId="177387" />
  <row Id="22206" PostId="6521" Score="3" Text="&quot;TIA&quot; was part of the original netiquette and Emily Postnews standard practice, so that new users wouldn't think something was wrong when they didn't receive a &quot;thank you&quot; followup post. Everything of course fell apart when [Eternal September](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September) arrived." CreationDate="2023-06-16T12:36:34.827" UserId="390133" />
  <row Id="22207" PostId="6521" Score="1" Text="Yes @RayButterworth, that September changed everything." CreationDate="2023-06-16T12:39:15.743" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22204" PostId="6522" Score="6" Text="Although ultra-pedantic by most people's standards, if I am editing out &quot;TIA&quot; and similar I always try to look out for _everything_ small that can be fixed at the same time." CreationDate="2023-06-16T09:06:32.350" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22208" PostId="6522" Score="2" Text="I disagree, I think incremental are fine. BTW im prob the user" CreationDate="2023-06-16T13:19:04.633" UserId="390392" />
  <row Id="22221" PostId="6522" Score="3" Text="The issue with incremental improvements is that the same post keeps popping back up to the top of the queues and people quickly tire of that.  Following @NickCox's advice -- which is the policy of *all* SE sites -- spares us this tedium." CreationDate="2023-06-22T13:21:56.070" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="22209" PostId="6524" Score="3" Text="You are fighting an established policy: although you might disagree, there is no point in trying personally to change it. Please pay attention to the recommendations and links here and follow what they suggest." CreationDate="2023-06-16T13:25:57.693" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="22210" PostId="6524" Score="1" Text="Almost everyone, including myself, agrees that such things should be edited out.  Some of the concerns on this topic expressed by various users and posts across SE sites include (1) whether these edits should take reviewer time (i.e., wait till one is 2K rep for very minor edits) and/or (2) too many minor edits at one time due to excessive homepage bumping (i.e., limit the number per day to 3–4). Related discussions: [Should I search for posts to make trivial edits to?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/390291/476162)" CreationDate="2023-06-16T13:26:28.907" UserId="177387" />
  <row Id="22211" PostId="6524" Score="0" Text="FYI, I didn't downvote." CreationDate="2023-06-16T13:28:53.793" UserId="177387" />
  <row Id="22212" PostId="6524" Score="1" Text="Thank you for expressing your thoughts. I also didn't downvote you. It just seemed like something I've seen before so I had to ask." CreationDate="2023-06-16T13:38:54.990" UserId="345611" />
  <row Id="22213" PostId="6524" Score="1" Text="On any Meta sites, downvotes don't mean the answer might be incorrect or badly written: it signals *disagreement.*  SecretAgent: Did you notice that the answer to the related discussion begins &quot;**No. Please don't do this**&quot;?" CreationDate="2023-06-16T13:46:56.260" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="22214" PostId="6524" Score="10" Text="The trouble with minor edits is what is minor. It is all too easy to imagine small edits that are highly objectionable and so there is good reason for 2K as a threshold." CreationDate="2023-06-16T14:02:20.653" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22215" PostId="6524" Score="5" Text="I couldn't urge anyone more to please read @NickCox's post given in the link." CreationDate="2023-06-16T14:05:13.203" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22217" PostId="6524" Score="0" Text="@whuber I did. I shared it to help stimulate the discussion.  Hope that's ok." CreationDate="2023-06-16T20:05:15.673" UserId="177387" />
  <row Id="22218" PostId="6526" Score="4" Text="I agree with all the main points here. The bogey is trivial minor edits that irritate those who think they're trivial or those reviewing suggested edits who are handling them.  If you're the kind of person who edits, or who edits edits, so to speak, congratulations, you've qualified for the Pedants Society already. Let's back up and say that for many of us the major irritant is sloppy or rambling posts in the first place, which is why we edit at all. And poor presentations can exist for defensible reasons, including being new to technical forums or to CV or writing in a foreign language." CreationDate="2023-06-22T06:58:38.497" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22219" PostId="6526" Score="4" Text="Or if you wondering if it should be Pedants Society or Pedants' Society,  step right inside." CreationDate="2023-06-22T07:03:10.007" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22228" PostId="6526" Score="0" Text="Thanks @NickCox. There's a netiquette to technical forums, and CV in particular, that's alien to many users. &quot;It's politer not to say thanks&quot; is unintuitive, for example. This is one reason I support apparently &quot;trivial&quot; edits to older questions if they get high traffic: such pages, often reached via search engine results, are really our &quot;front page&quot; where we display our wares. In contrast, few new users have their first experience of CV via the active question list or our FAQ/tour. Modelling (in the pedagogical sense) our netiquette expectations on high-traffic Qs is particularly valuable" CreationDate="2023-06-22T17:25:25.257" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="22223" PostId="6527" Score="0" Text="I cannot disagree (+1): `Instead, they should be treated just as any other answer. If their application to the question is unclear, one should request clarification, possibly downvote, and if the answerer indeed does not clarify, vote to delete.` - In addition, I would appreciate at least a single line for contextual purpose even if the quote answers the query; quote only answers aren't discouraged the way linked only answers are treated but often they lack context as in the case pointed by OP." CreationDate="2023-06-22T14:39:44.057" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22225" PostId="6527" Score="1" Text="@User1865345-solidarityMods: no, they can't. They can be flagged for mod attention, and you can recommend deletion." CreationDate="2023-06-22T14:43:15.813" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="22227" PostId="6527" Score="1" Text="@User1865345-solidarityMods: thank you, then that was a typo on my part, I will edit." CreationDate="2023-06-22T15:00:55.980" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="22230" PostId="6528" Score="1" Text="I suggest to turn this question into a community wiki. The question is incredibly broad (and also a bit vague), and has no definite answer." CreationDate="2023-06-26T11:34:07.790" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22231" PostId="6528" Score="1" Text="When I call the question 'vague' then this is because the question asks for resource recommendations with the goal of *&quot;(self?-)studying mathematical or theoretical statistics or probability&quot;*. It is not clear what that means. 1) Are we looking for an introduction text (shouldn't any university have several options), or are we looking for some interesting classical landmark articles? 2) What language is this question about?" CreationDate="2023-06-26T11:39:26.663" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22232" PostId="6528" Score="1" Text="I like digging through old texts and in a question like this [Reference: who introduced the tilde &quot;~&quot; notation to mean &quot;has probability distribution...&quot;?](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/531826) I encountered French and Russian resources. Are those the type of 'gems' that you are looking for? (Or [here](https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/596865/164061) when looking for the origin of the Neyman Pearson Lemma)." CreationDate="2023-06-26T11:45:46.007" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22234" PostId="6528" Score="1" Text="Many of the Russian texts/monologues have been translated in English with dedication, right from Kolmogorov's days to Shiryaev, Pfanzagl." CreationDate="2023-06-26T11:54:26.593" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22235" PostId="6528" Score="0" Text="@SextusEmpiricus Thanks for the migration. I was also unsure where would this question best be located (but since all book recommendations questions were in the standard site, assumed this was no different). Regarding which type of gems I am looking for, I am looking for texts one would use to learn or study, rather than texts that have primarily a historical value." CreationDate="2023-06-26T12:04:30.973" UserId="180158" />
  <row Id="22236" PostId="6528" Score="0" Text="@Kuku It wasn't me that did the migration. But one of the moderators, so cheers to them. ... Sidenote: we get regularly questions that don't fit in but are still interesting. So your question may still be interesting. But SE is not a forum or a chatbox that relates to *all* interesting questions, instead it is a question and answer website." CreationDate="2023-06-26T12:53:56.367" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22237" PostId="6528" Score="0" Text="*&quot;I am looking for texts one would use to learn or study, rather than texts that have primarily a historical value&quot;* This is not so clear to me. Are you asking a question like &quot;what are standard statistics textbooks in non-english?&quot;. I imagined that you were looking for something more complex because you were referring to French and Russian as sources of traditional literature. But, you are not looking for scientific literature?" CreationDate="2023-06-26T13:02:11.137" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22238" PostId="6528" Score="2" Text="I am very sorry, but this is not a question for our Meta site -- and it is too broad and tangential for the main site (where it was originally posted)." CreationDate="2023-06-26T14:09:08.723" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="22239" PostId="6528" Score="0" Text="@whuber Given that there are multiple questions asking for recommendations of books for self-study on mathematical statistics or probability in the main site, what makes this question 'too broad and tangential'? Would it be sufficient to limit it to a single language, say, French? If not, why?" CreationDate="2023-06-26T14:12:46.650" UserId="180158" />
  <row Id="22245" PostId="6528" Score="4" Text="&quot;Tangential&quot; because SE sites not devoted to a foreign language are specifically English only and &quot;too broad&quot; because it has no focus whatsoever: it essentially asks for a list of any non-English material anybody might have found useful or interesting about anything related to statistics." CreationDate="2023-06-26T15:29:00.070" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="22241" PostId="6529" Score="0" Text="Equivalent questions that are restricted (implicitly or explicitly) to English are abundant in the main site though, despite not having a clear-cut defined answer. What is precisely the rationale for the difference in treatment?" CreationDate="2023-06-26T14:14:34.510" UserId="180158" />
  <row Id="22244" PostId="6529" Score="4" Text="@Kuku there are several literature request questions, but they are the borderline of on-topic here. They should not be regarded as the standard. In that direction of type of questions (demand for resources) one needs to be very specific in order to make the question slip through the cracks. A similar thing is going on when people ask for code specific solution." CreationDate="2023-06-26T15:27:07.377" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22247" PostId="6530" Score="5" Text="It strikes me that there may be more than one implementation of this, &amp; they may address this issue in different ways (I don't know that, it's just possible).  As a result, this question has a potential ambiguity that people might say requires clarification.  Other than that, I don't see any reason this Q would be objectionable." CreationDate="2023-06-28T00:18:13.483" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="22250" PostId="6533" Score="0" Text="Are we talking about unregistered users or questions migrated from other SE sites with OP not signed in here?" CreationDate="2023-07-16T06:15:45.893" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22251" PostId="6533" Score="0" Text="WLOG, I can tell that unless the post is really lacking any quality based query which elicits downvotes and subsequent closing (and thereby plausible deletion later), the question would be there assuming the user is not logged in to delete their own post. Handle it the way you would have with another regular post, sans OP's interaction (s)." CreationDate="2023-07-16T06:18:29.893" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22252" PostId="6533" Score="0" Text="A user who is unregistered. I wrote &quot;has not registered yet&quot; because the question is fairly new, and the only question the usee has posted" CreationDate="2023-07-16T06:19:01.463" UserId="237561" />
  <row Id="22253" PostId="6533" Score="0" Text="@User1865345-solidarityMods, you will post your second comment as an answer, won't you? What do you mean by wlog - without loss of generality? Thanks for the quick comment!" CreationDate="2023-07-16T06:22:59.910" UserId="237561" />
  <row Id="22254" PostId="6533" Score="1" Text="Ute, this is the way, in general, the questions work. Specific cases may differ (that's why _wlog_). But in all respect, you can interact (comment, answer, suggest an edit) in usual way. As for OP being unregistered, it won't lead to the question being closed or deleted altogether." CreationDate="2023-07-16T06:30:30.233" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22255" PostId="6533" Score="0" Text="In fact, day in and day out, we would get a post from an unregistered user. It doesn't matter much for the longevity of the question." CreationDate="2023-07-16T06:31:39.170" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22256" PostId="6533" Score="0" Text="Thank you for clarification about wlog @User1865345-solidarityMods :-) (I understood it as &quot;a special case represents generality&quot;, like in math proofs) and for reassuring it is safe to answer. The particular question already has 3 upvotes." CreationDate="2023-07-16T06:36:13.160" UserId="237561" />
  <row Id="22257" PostId="6533" Score="0" Text="Such users are generally less committed to the site, its policies, &amp; their own question.  They are less likely to respond to comments &amp; less likely to accept an answer, etc.  Occasionally, they will drop a Q &amp; never show up again.  That said, there is otherwise no effect of the asker's registration status on anything." CreationDate="2023-07-16T12:20:43.337" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="22258" PostId="6533" Score="0" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica, good to know that the questions don't disappear. I admit to be one of these users ;-) - had to create a new user to drop a couple of answers (because the original on cv seemed defunct - planned to merge with my SE account later), and found everything gone after a week, when I detected the confirm-your-email mail in spam." CreationDate="2023-07-16T13:29:37.190" UserId="237561" />
  <row Id="22348" PostId="6533" Score="0" Text="related https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6420/56940" CreationDate="2023-08-03T15:17:08.477" UserId="56940" />
  <row Id="22259" PostId="6534" Score="0" Text="In short: registration status of the user has no influence whatsoever on questions - good to know!" CreationDate="2023-07-16T15:24:14.687" UserId="237561" />
  <row Id="22260" PostId="6534" Score="0" Text="Yes, Ute. Specific cases may need more attention or discussion. But in general, this is what it is :-)" CreationDate="2023-07-16T15:25:28.667" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22267" PostId="6535" Score="0" Text="Adam, concerning your update: great you found the solution, bingo! Before door three was opened, all doors had odds 1:2. Now, that only two doors are left, door 1 has odds 1:2 which means door 2 has odds 2:1 :-). I calculated the odds for door 2 directly with that odds form Bayes formula, which was more complicated." CreationDate="2023-07-19T09:10:54.427" UserId="237561" />
  <row Id="22268" PostId="6535" Score="0" Text="Thanks, I appreciate it @Ute!" CreationDate="2023-07-19T17:39:35.610" UserId="136074" />
  <row Id="22261" PostId="6536" Score="0" Text="It sounds like the crux is about how simple it is to, given an explanation of the Monty Hall problem using the traditional form of Bayes' theorem, deduce the explanation of the Monty Hall problem using the odds form of Bayes' theorem. You propose that it is analogous to converting between Fahrenheit and Celsius. I question whether that is true. To me it seems like it is actually somewhat difficult. Personally, I understand that `1:3` odds corresponds to a probability of 25% probability and `1:4` corresponds to a probability of 20%. However, I am having trouble applying that knowledge." CreationDate="2023-07-17T23:44:41.960" UserId="136074" />
  <row Id="22262" PostId="6536" Score="0" Text="In looking at [this explanation](https://brilliant.org/wiki/monty-hall-problem/), they took the traditional formula, rearranged it, and then explained what the terms are for that new formula. I find myself confused about whether you would do the same thing if you took an odds centric approach. Maybe you would figure out the likelihood ratio using a different thought process? Something more similar to [this from Arbital](https://arbital.com/p/bayes_waterfall_diagram/?l=1x1&amp;pathId=97076)? I find that explanation from Arital much easier to think about than ones using the traditional formula." CreationDate="2023-07-17T23:49:37.927" UserId="136074" />
  <row Id="22263" PostId="6536" Score="0" Text="_In fact, wouldn't your argument, if it were accepted, imply anyone could re-ask all of the 100K+ questions related to probabilities that have already appeared here and request that they be re-explained with all probabilities expressed as odds?_ I don't think so. Given how popular the Monty Hall problem is, it seems more worthwhile to answer it from different angles than it would be to answer other questions from different angles." CreationDate="2023-07-17T23:54:21.667" UserId="136074" />
  <row Id="22264" PostId="6536" Score="0" Text="_BTW, it bears repeating that two illegitimate reasons for not closing a question are (a) &quot;it was allowed before&quot; and (b) &quot;another site allows it.&quot; Sometimes off-topic questions remain for historical purposes (the site's policies and norms have changed a little over the years) or because they were never detected by moderators in the first place. And what other sites allow is their own business. If you think Math would accept your question, by all means post it there._ I agree that they aren't sufficient reasons, but they do seem like arguments that should carry some amount of weight." CreationDate="2023-07-18T00:00:05.810" UserId="136074" />
  <row Id="22265" PostId="6536" Score="0" Text="I appreciate your thoughtful consideration of the issues, Adam." CreationDate="2023-07-18T16:45:49.737" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="22266" PostId="6536" Score="0" Text="Thank you. Same to you." CreationDate="2023-07-18T17:39:48.303" UserId="136074" />
  <row Id="22280" PostId="6539" Score="6" Text="What does, &quot;Is it OK&quot; mean, ultimately?  People usually try to leave comments, but it's extra work, especially when you are doing a lot of stuff maintaining the site and there is a world outside of the site to attend to.  I wouldn't want someone to skip voting to close because they don't have time to formulate good comments and engage in a conversation right now.  I don't see how there is a meaningful, workable rule to be made here." CreationDate="2023-07-22T12:05:21.243" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="22281" PostId="6539" Score="3" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica, I deeply appreciate and admire your and all mods work and don't want to put extra load on you. It is clear that you would not want to provoke an extended comment discussion by leaving a name for complaining. What about a slightly longer version for questions that did not get any reaction before, like &quot;three users read your question and voted to close because...&quot;. I am concerned that it just may come over as an automatic reply from an anonymous machine." CreationDate="2023-07-22T12:29:16.960" UserId="237561" />
  <row Id="22283" PostId="6539" Score="0" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica I became aware that I phrased my question a bit too opinionated. I was just concerned about new users feeling unwelcome and their questions (or answers) treated by an AI rather than by humans, and abandonning their question." CreationDate="2023-07-22T13:10:08.530" UserId="237561" />
  <row Id="22295" PostId="6539" Score="5" Text="No problem, @Ute.  I'm certainly not offended.  (BTW, I haven't been a mod for several years now.)  Your idea of a slightly expanded close notice seems like a good one to me.  That would be a system-wide change that would need to be implemented by SE's developers.  You could ask on [meta.SE]." CreationDate="2023-07-22T16:47:11.273" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="22296" PostId="6539" Score="0" Text="Yes, i used mod as a generic term for users engaging in moderating activities. I'll check out Meta Stack Exchange and look if this is a concern that applies elsewhere, too. One might want to keep a short &quot;harsh&quot; version too, to deter apparent spam." CreationDate="2023-07-22T17:05:08.180" UserId="237561" />
  <row Id="22297" PostId="6539" Score="4" Text="&quot;*Would it be an option to have automatic replies for new users that indicate that it was not a machine that closed their question?*&quot; +1. A few days ago I came across a question flagged as needing clarification; in the comment section, the OP asked if the moderation message was a false positive from a bot, because they genuinely didn't see what wasn't clear. I can't find the question again, so it's possible that they have deleted it since. If it is not complicated to change the moderation messages, I think it might be valuable to show that they originate from human beings." CreationDate="2023-07-22T17:57:34.380" UserId="164936" />
  <row Id="22298" PostId="6539" Score="5" Text="I applaud the intent and wouldn't mind your suggested additional language. But as to personalised suggestions for each question, the problem is there are too few of us experienced users relative to the number of newbie questions. And given that we are volunteering our time and expertise, asking that new users read the help and follow it doesn't seem like an unreasonable ask." CreationDate="2023-07-22T20:22:57.457" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="22299" PostId="6539" Score="1" Text="@J-J-J Good point. This was the (now deleted) question: https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/621635/how-to-compare-ratings-of-different-aspects-of-movies-to-check-how-useful-the-ra" CreationDate="2023-07-22T20:24:51.110" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="22316" PostId="6539" Score="0" Text="When the first paragraph of a question takes up more than one phone screen, I conclude that the person asking is ignoring how others will respond, and that the post does not call for being extra-nice. Let’s focus our attention on questions that are easy for answerers to read!" CreationDate="2023-07-26T01:52:15.270" UserId="225256" />
  <row Id="22282" PostId="6540" Score="0" Text="You are right, there is a more comprehensive reply to it - is it possible to taylor it such that it includes some kind of welcome message for newbies?" CreationDate="2023-07-22T12:31:11.023" UserId="237561" />
  <row Id="22284" PostId="6540" Score="1" Text="Please see the edit." CreationDate="2023-07-22T13:45:41.417" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22287" PostId="6540" Score="0" Text="Thank you, it is right that there is more information behind the link. I am just wondering if posters just go away once they see their post has been closed, or if they actually do click on the link. In that case, it would be a waste of time for other users to try to understand / focus the question by comments. I sometimes have that impression - they would not go back and see that they got comments." CreationDate="2023-07-22T13:58:22.140" UserId="237561" />
  <row Id="22288" PostId="6540" Score="2" Text="It would be frustrating if this happens. But again as I said, we can expect a miniscule of patience from the new users, can't we? We appreciate this place as it is not a forum like any other places. To maintain quality, we need to resort to maintain the bare minimum quality. If the automated message is an easy alternative to the more tedious customized comment, then we should sustain this." CreationDate="2023-07-22T13:58:34.363" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22289" PostId="6540" Score="1" Text="It seems to me that some users don't appreciate that patience (and editing their post) would help them to get their question answered - they post, come back and are shocked by &quot; Closed. ...&quot;. Then they give up. So maybe sugar coating would help, some of them (the more serious but intimidable ones)." CreationDate="2023-07-22T14:03:43.110" UserId="237561" />
  <row Id="22294" PostId="6540" Score="1" Text="Unfortunately I have nothing to add anything further in this conversation. I can remember when I first posted here a year ago, the first comment was from community to which I elaborated and expanded my question (albeit with no response, perhaps due to my too localized query). I was alien to the specifics of the site and yet I cherished this place. And I am still here spending some time to clear the queues, edit few old posts and occasionally consolidating my rational thoughts to answer some simple questions. I appreciate from any other fellow new user the same magnitude of patience." CreationDate="2023-07-22T14:19:07.000" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22286" PostId="6541" Score="2" Text="`There is a very steep learning curve on Stack Exchange sites, and I'm sure many new users are turned off by this attitude and give up.` Yes, exactly - they may give up without even clicking on the link that comes with the close message, or even when did click the link, they may not understand what exactly is wrong with their post." CreationDate="2023-07-22T13:55:41.027" UserId="237561" />
  <row Id="22304" PostId="6541" Score="2" Text="The word _focused_ is often used beyond its literal meaning.  As a native English speaker it's hard for me to evaluate how widely understood that is among people without English as their first language, but it is a sign of the entry level here. Rightly or wrongly people without the fluency in English to post their own coherent, comprehensible question won't benefit here except by reading existing answers. I don't feel embarrassed or apologetic about that: people stronger in other languages can set up their own sites." CreationDate="2023-07-24T14:52:27.110" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22318" PostId="6541" Score="3" Text="This is very helpful and I think it's great when people take this approach. But frankly, there's too few of us and we have better things to do with our time than handholding each new poster *so that we can ultimately help them*, especially when there are many more questions asked than can be answered with the number of regular participants here. Surely the opportunity to avail yourself of scarce expertise for free ought to motivate one to put in some basic effort, especially when the site keeps pointing you towards resources to help improve your question." CreationDate="2023-07-26T08:56:52.043" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="22319" PostId="6541" Score="2" Text="To be clear, I would support design changes that improve things, such as the softer language in the automated close messages that OP suggests. But I draw the line at requiring people to comment when voting to close or downvoting - I'd just participate less if that were a requirement." CreationDate="2023-07-26T09:00:51.383" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="22300" PostId="6542" Score="1" Text="The problem with 1. is that the OP might not have known that this site has those requirements. It's not that &quot;*the person asking doesn't care*&quot;, but that they didn't know. A simple rejection, without a detailed explanation, will simply chase away someone that might have become a valuable member of the community. Yes, they *should* have spent time researching the site and how it works, but they didn't (and I suspect most people don't), and rejecting them doesn't affect them as much as it affects the site." CreationDate="2023-07-24T12:31:17.673" UserId="390133" />
  <row Id="22301" PostId="6542" Score="1" Text="@RayButterworth *which* requirements? In the first point, I mentioned things like writing a question that is impossible to understand, illogical, bluntly off-topic, etc." CreationDate="2023-07-24T12:39:29.193" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="22302" PostId="6542" Score="0" Text="There were also things like &quot;*properly formatting it*&quot; and &quot;*bluntly off-topic*&quot;. A new contributor doesn't necessarily know what &quot;proper&quot; formatting is, and anyone that understands English won't interpret &quot;off-topic&quot; the way you mean it." CreationDate="2023-07-24T12:46:59.887" UserId="390133" />
  <row Id="22303" PostId="6542" Score="0" Text="@RayButterworth Yes, those were vague statements, but it is not an official policy, but the approach I take. By &quot;proper formatting&quot; I mean using basic rules of interpunction and things like this. By bluntly off-topic I mean asking about things that are completely unrelated to statistics and data analysis." CreationDate="2023-07-24T12:51:34.350" UserId="35989" />
  <row Id="22317" PostId="6542" Score="1" Text="Agreed, but I think your category #1 also merits a downvote: &quot;*This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful*&quot;" CreationDate="2023-07-26T08:48:15.017" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="22306" PostId="6543" Score="1" Text="`I consider that new users who are disappointed are partly to blame for their disappointment if they don't read around to discover expectations or limitations which imply why their question hasn't been accepted. It's not really a good use of anyone's time to write out specific messages explaining why`- +1 singly for that. One can advocate for a _nicer_ closure statement, by any proposed standard, but at the end of the day it all boils down to how proactive the new user is to acclimatize with the established norms here, the first thing of which is to enlighten themselves about the same. ..." CreationDate="2023-07-24T15:21:09.427" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22307" PostId="6543" Score="0" Text="Certainly, this is not a helpline where you throw a question in any shape for it to be solved. You need to respect the community from which you are seeking help and more importantly need to know what this place is about, that is building a high quality repository of question and answers. This post speaks volumes of that." CreationDate="2023-07-24T15:21:12.510" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22308" PostId="6543" Score="1" Text="(Oh, what have I done...) - I was not worried about comments - have not seen any rude comments here, either. My point was that closing posts without comment leaves the impression that this site is managed by an anonymous machine, and I only care about users who also care. It could be that they posted an interesting and relevant question that would be salvageable, but they won't return and improve. I am still too new here, but I've meanwhile come across a number of posts adressing the cv specific requirements for a good question - I should collect those and add to the sugar-coat close message" CreationDate="2023-07-24T16:03:42.120" UserId="237561" />
  <row Id="22312" PostId="6543" Score="0" Text="You are lucky not to have seen _any_ rude comments. Everyone wants potentially good questions to survive, but the trouble is that we are dealing with a 2 x 2 table familiar to all statistical people: questions that are look good, but aren't, and questions that look bad, but aren't, are possible as well as the other kinds." CreationDate="2023-07-25T08:35:22.800" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22309" PostId="6544" Score="3" Text="Please have a look at this related meta Math.SE post: [What is the efficient way to search post with pictures/images?](https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/9402/what-is-the-efficient-way-to-search-post-with-pictures-images)" CreationDate="2023-07-25T01:27:41.320" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22310" PostId="6545" Score="1" Text="(+1) Good point about many of the questions needing a fundamental rethink. At present the main solution seems to be to downvote in addition to voting to close, but I like your &quot;seems salvageable&quot; checkbox idea." CreationDate="2023-07-25T05:54:31.473" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="22311" PostId="6545" Score="3" Text="This is thoughtful as always and grows out of a lot of experience. But one of many ideas here --- to give a shorter message -- seems to be the opposite of what others are suggesting, which is to give more feedback." CreationDate="2023-07-25T08:32:06.210" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22313" PostId="6545" Score="1" Text="@NickCox Yes that's a good point. My feeling is that sometimes we provide so much information e.g. in a close notice, that not everything gets read. This may be why a short comment encouraging the OP to re-edit sometimes seems to get more cut-through than the close notice alone. But the reverse may also be true and perhaps the close notice that's visible to the OP should have more detailed instructions rather than fobbing them off with a link to click on. This would make a good A/B test!" CreationDate="2023-07-25T15:30:44.067" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="22314" PostId="6545" Score="0" Text="(I don't know if it's technically possible for the close notice that's visible to the OP to be more informative than the one that's visible to most readers, but I suspect it is since e.g. the list of close voters is only visible to readers with a certain reputation level.)" CreationDate="2023-07-25T15:31:42.603" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="22315" PostId="6545" Score="5" Text="My experience both here and elsewhere is that whatever you do is wrong for some group of disappointed or even angry users.  Elsewhere I maintain the FAQ for Statalist and even posting that FAQ (intended to be helpful) or drawing attention to its advice is variously ignored, resented or mocked by many, typically people who don't ever visibly help anyone else anywhere." CreationDate="2023-07-25T15:53:27.740" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22323" PostId="6546" Score="8" Text="Through the [SE database explorer](https://data.stackexchange.com/stats/queries) you can answer this question in detail.  It will indeed document a steady decline in rates of Q's and A's, *but that began far before the last year and a half.*  Traffic (however measured) at *all* SE sites, as far as I am aware, began declining across the board c. 2017.  *Page views* here on CV, however, stayed almost constant until early 2022 but since have declined more than 50%.  Total voting still exceeds 50% of its 2017-2018 peak. Much more can be said, but I haven't the time to reply in full." CreationDate="2023-07-26T15:45:34.763" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="22324" PostId="6546" Score="4" Text="Mike, I have edited your post and its title to better reflect what you were trying to ask; if you feel the edit is not doing so, please feel free to alter that." CreationDate="2023-07-26T17:17:04.457" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22327" PostId="6546" Score="1" Text="Related: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/379047/why-has-there-been-such-a-huge-drop-in-new-visits-since-may-9th-2022-across" CreationDate="2023-07-27T13:45:37.937" UserId="164936" />
  <row Id="22328" PostId="6546" Score="1" Text="Tangentially related, is my question, [Have we lost most of our best contributors? - Skeptics Meta](https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4969/have-we-lost-most-of-our-best-contributors)." CreationDate="2023-07-28T00:51:14.343" UserId="390133" />
  <row Id="22331" PostId="6546" Score="7" Text="@RayButterworth, Oddthinking's [answer](https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/a/4970) shows a gradual decline that sharply accelerates in 2019, when the Monica fiasco occurred. SE's disastrous handling of that &amp; ongoing bullheadedness strikes me as almost certainly the time &amp; cause of the acceleration. I for one lost an enormous amount of esteem for SE at that point and have been much less active ever since. I won't speak for others, but I strongly doubt I'm the only one who meets that description. Note that SE gets little of its revenue from these forums now, &amp; so may not be very concerned." CreationDate="2023-07-31T12:21:09.040" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="22334" PostId="6546" Score="0" Text="Where does it make money then?" CreationDate="2023-08-01T14:33:41.493" UserId="345611" />
  <row Id="22340" PostId="6546" Score="1" Text="@ShawnHemelstrand, it never made enough money on ads.  Internet ads just don't make much money anywhere.  Eg, newspapers have been going under because internet ads don't make anywhere near the money print ads do.  Their money comes from teams &amp; enterprise.  Prior to that SE was always in the red, living on venture capital." CreationDate="2023-08-02T11:54:25.677" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="22342" PostId="6546" Score="0" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica thanks for clarifying" CreationDate="2023-08-02T14:33:09.033" UserId="345611" />
  <row Id="22335" PostId="6548" Score="0" Text="See this related Meta Math.SE post: [Bounty on a &quot;Community wiki&quot; question - what will happen?](https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/19282/bounty-on-a-community-wiki-question-what-will-happen)" CreationDate="2023-08-01T14:38:20.240" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22336" PostId="6548" Score="0" Text="And for the general discussion, see this Meta.SE post: [How does the bounty system work?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/16065/how-does-the-bounty-system-work)." CreationDate="2023-08-01T14:39:34.237" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22344" PostId="6550" Score="0" Text="Nice graphics! Thank you. They raise the questions: what is causing the spikes in traffic?" CreationDate="2023-08-03T10:35:19.473" UserId="78229" />
  <row Id="22345" PostId="6550" Score="1" Text="@MikeHunter idk, my guess would be special days (e.g., holidays), hot network questions or some popular post outside CV linking to CV." CreationDate="2023-08-03T10:38:33.387" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="22346" PostId="6550" Score="1" Text="@MikeHunter oh wait, that's Meta stats. let me update the graphs." CreationDate="2023-08-03T10:42:58.710" UserId="12359" />
  <row Id="22349" PostId="6551" Score="6" Text="This is a perfectly valid question to ask, but the best place to get an answer is on the network wide main Meta site. As elected moderators or high-rep users, we don't have any insight into the site's software or infrastructure." CreationDate="2023-08-03T15:31:07.587" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="22350" PostId="6551" Score="0" Text="Thank you @Sycorax-OnStrike. I want to make sure this is happening to others as well." CreationDate="2023-08-03T15:36:01.720" UserId="56940" />
  <row Id="22351" PostId="6551" Score="5" Text="Temporary glitches like this happen all the time.  (I experienced this one about an hour ago, too.)  Unless *nothing* works (check one of the status sites for that, such as https://www.stackstatus.net/), then just move on to something else and return to your activity in an hour or two.  BTW, the queue appears to be working again." CreationDate="2023-08-03T15:39:47.400" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="22352" PostId="6551" Score="0" Text="Yeah, I see the reviews now. Thank you both!" CreationDate="2023-08-03T15:43:03.663" UserId="56940" />
  <row Id="22354" PostId="6551" Score="1" Text="Two issues I have encountered yesterday: the   along side the reopen votes to which checking showed there was only one post to be reviewed (and it still happened now) and even after clearing the queue, the  is still there and secondly there was this single review which I tried few times only to be receiving an error message (finally I skipped that). Re the former, it happened few months ago in low quality queue, iirc" CreationDate="2023-08-04T01:57:11.347" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22355" PostId="6551" Score="1" Text="And it's still [there](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0oReA.jpg)." CreationDate="2023-08-04T07:14:32.523" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22356" PostId="6551" Score="1" Text="Hi @User1865345-solidarityMods. Yep, I'm having the same issue, again..." CreationDate="2023-08-04T07:19:58.410" UserId="56940" />
  <row Id="22357" PostId="6551" Score="1" Text="I guess it's over now." CreationDate="2023-08-04T11:01:38.503" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22358" PostId="6551" Score="1" Text="@User1865345, Yep it's working again." CreationDate="2023-08-04T12:01:08.207" UserId="56940" />
  <row Id="22360" PostId="6551" Score="0" Text="It never ceases to amuse me. It's back." CreationDate="2023-08-07T09:52:08.053" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22364" PostId="6551" Score="0" Text="@User1865345 didn't have time to review this morning but it's working now." CreationDate="2023-08-07T13:04:23.910" UserId="56940" />
  <row Id="22365" PostId="6551" Score="1" Text="Ah yes! It is normal again. I would stop reporting this self-repairing issue. :-)" CreationDate="2023-08-07T13:28:47.840" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22359" PostId="6552" Score="1" Text="I have once upon a time done some cleanup of misuse of tag [tag:sequential-analysis], maybe we need better names which cannot so easy be misunderstood?" CreationDate="2023-08-06T22:34:14.880" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="22439" PostId="6552" Score="0" Text="I think these terms are well-defined and are interesting, vibrant, and challenging areas of statistics. Questions and searches on this topic will be less visible if named differently." CreationDate="2023-08-24T22:17:12.407" UserId="8013" />
  <row Id="22690" PostId="6553" Score="0" Text="Is Chat GPT to blame for the more recent dips?" CreationDate="2024-01-19T16:19:08.890" UserId="76484" />
  <row Id="22691" PostId="6553" Score="0" Text="@AdrianKeister You mean dips in the graphs that I plotted in this answer or in some other new graphs?" CreationDate="2024-01-19T16:41:24.297" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22692" PostId="6553" Score="0" Text="Well, there's clearly a decline since 2018. I'm more talking about since Chat GPT came out: has CV.SE's traffic declined noticeably since then?" CreationDate="2024-01-19T16:52:33.593" UserId="76484" />
  <row Id="22361" PostId="6554" Score="6" Text="Would `[omics]` work?  I'm not actually sure of the scope of that term, but I think it covers the analysis of DNA &amp; RNA sequences, among other things." CreationDate="2023-08-07T11:29:40.097" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="22362" PostId="6554" Score="0" Text="I can concur with this @gung-ReinstateMonica. Point is the tag needs a revamp in the name and all those analysis ending tags need to be re-checked. What would be the apt name, that is to be decided by the community." CreationDate="2023-08-07T11:33:38.557" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22363" PostId="6554" Score="3" Text="I second `[omics]` because this would cover proteins as well." CreationDate="2023-08-07T12:32:27.377" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="22366" PostId="6554" Score="1" Text="Thanks for suggesting the tag wiki @mkt." CreationDate="2023-08-08T09:00:25.173" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22367" PostId="6554" Score="2" Text="I propose we make [tag:sequence-analysis] as synonym of [tag:omics] or outright dump the former." CreationDate="2023-08-08T09:03:08.073" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22368" PostId="6554" Score="2" Text="I would just like to add that `[omics]` today cover fields that are absolutely not related (in principle) to sequences (i.e., radiomics, metabolomics, microbiomics)" CreationDate="2023-08-10T11:36:45.007" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="22382" PostId="6554" Score="1" Text="One reason of the misusage of the `[sequence-analysis]` tag is that sequence analysis has become popular in social sciences, although the scope of sequence analysis is quite different in social sciences. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequence_analysis_in_social_sciences ." CreationDate="2023-08-15T13:12:34.090" UserId="11805" />
  <row Id="22386" PostId="6554" Score="1" Text="That type of sequence is covered by both `[time-series]` and `[panel-data]`" CreationDate="2023-08-19T06:54:56.787" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="22387" PostId="6554" Score="2" Text="@Firebug, I suppose you are replying to Gilbert's comment. In any case, as I reiterated (deleted the redundant comment) if additional tags are deemed to be needed by community, they can create one and if existing ones are suffice (as you indicated), then it's better. In any case, the tag in question has been misused and should be dropped from all those posts and proposed tags should be used." CreationDate="2023-08-19T07:09:25.660" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22388" PostId="6554" Score="0" Text="Yeah, missed tagging them" CreationDate="2023-08-19T07:14:54.720" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="22389" PostId="6554" Score="0" Text="From the thread on the tag creation @Firebug is referring to, it appears that the `sequence-analysis` tag was originally created for questions on SA as considered in social sciences, not for bioinformatics. I do not understand why we could not share the tag across disciplines. In my view, we could only benefit from such bridges across disciplines." CreationDate="2023-08-22T11:27:40.740" UserId="11805" />
  <row Id="22390" PostId="6554" Score="0" Text="@Firebug time series and panel data are essentially concerned with quantitative variables while in sequence analysis sequences are categorical." CreationDate="2023-08-22T11:32:32.600" UserId="11805" />
  <row Id="22392" PostId="6554" Score="0" Text="@Gilbert Sharing the tag doesn't make sense unless the two different sets of questions share something in common beyond a name, such as methods. It would make more sense to get rid of `sequence-analysis` entirely and replace it with more specific terms like perhaps `social-sequence-analysis` and `omics`." CreationDate="2023-08-23T06:04:00.207" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="22440" PostId="6554" Score="0" Text="I'll repeat again, `[omics]` is a bad idea because many of it's &quot;branches&quot; do not deal with sequences (radiomics, connectomics, etc)" CreationDate="2023-08-25T07:29:19.913" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="22441" PostId="6554" Score="0" Text="@Firebug (1) You're right that some omics branches don't use sequences, though I think it's fair to say that the biggest branches do. (2) I don't think we need all omics branches to have sequences for `sequence-analysis` to be made a duplicate of `omics`. We just need `omics` to be a superset of `sequence-analysis`. Questions about radiomics and connectomics could also be tagged with `omics`, because the tag wouldn't imply a sequence. All that said, I think `genetic-sequence-analysis` is a reasonable option too (along with the complementary `social-sequence-analysis` for the remainder)." CreationDate="2023-08-25T07:45:31.397" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="22370" PostId="6555" Score="9" Text="I am kind of baffled at the premise of the question or more specifically I am confused: are you asking if you can provide snippet of codes in your answer? Surely why not? Go ahead. As long as the code helps to answer the query and is relevant, you can plausibly add that. There are thousands of answers involving codes. If you are asking anything different, then please elaborate." CreationDate="2023-08-14T01:08:31.467" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22371" PostId="6556" Score="8" Text="Without naming names, note that &quot;everyone uses Y&quot; will be wrong empirically for any software Y and &quot;everyone should use, or would be well advised to use,  Y&quot; may be a personal opinion but it is not CV policy for any Y either.  (I first used X but then realised that it's the new name of Twitter.)" CreationDate="2023-08-14T09:50:55.497" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22372" PostId="6556" Score="3" Text="There are definitely some borderline cases at times for when it is just code and when it is an actual answer. My litmus test for that is simply checking what the answer is saying when all the code is deleted." CreationDate="2023-08-14T16:38:05.503" UserId="345611" />
  <row Id="22373" PostId="6556" Score="1" Text="@NickCox +1. Even if one considers &quot;*everyone should use, or would be well advised to use, Y*&quot; not as an opinion but as a somehow objective statement based on various criteria, it would be only correct at a specific point in time. If CV had been already around in the 1980s or 1990s, today we would have some (hopefully still correct) answers with examples based on statistical tools no longer in use today. So an answer based on nothing but a specific software or language is problematic, at least regarding its usefulness in the medium- or long-term future." CreationDate="2023-08-14T17:28:39.080" UserId="164936" />
  <row Id="22374" PostId="6556" Score="0" Text="@ShawnHemelstrand That's a simple and neat way of checking an answer for this kind of issue!" CreationDate="2023-08-14T17:41:18.300" UserId="164936" />
  <row Id="22375" PostId="6556" Score="4" Text="Most of what worked in my favourite software in 1985 still works now!" CreationDate="2023-08-14T17:45:56.293" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22376" PostId="6556" Score="1" Text="@NickCox On the other hand, some very specialized statistical software developed at my current place of work in the 1990s can no longer run on a modern computer :) But that was very niche." CreationDate="2023-08-14T17:49:43.550" UserId="164936" />
  <row Id="22377" PostId="6556" Score="1" Text="I will believe you if you believe me." CreationDate="2023-08-14T17:58:15.743" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22378" PostId="6556" Score="0" Text="@NickCox We have a deal." CreationDate="2023-08-14T18:16:57.160" UserId="164936" />
  <row Id="22380" PostId="6557" Score="0" Text="actually, the second question seems to be about programming, in someways more than my closed question (to solve the problem i went to another related community. [My question here](https://quant.stackexchange.com/questions/76126/how-to-implement-newey-west-covariance-matrix-properly-for-mde-estimation). This makes me more confused about the community's/admin's aproach to it. But I get what you mean thank you." CreationDate="2023-08-14T19:03:42.103" UserId="331205" />
  <row Id="22381" PostId="6557" Score="0" Text="Perhaps sharing your CV question would make it clear why." CreationDate="2023-08-14T23:00:09.647" UserId="345611" />
  <row Id="22384" PostId="6557" Score="3" Text="@ErdemŞen Fundamentally that second question is about a statistical procedure (multiple imputation) not about the syntax of a particular programming language. The point of the question was why the procedure produces different results depending on how the data is formatted - if the question had simply wanted to know how to code it in R, that would have been off-topic. If the question had asked how R, in particular, performs imputation, I think that would likely be closed as off-topic as well. But in this case the statistical part of the question was entirely language-agnostic." CreationDate="2023-08-16T22:41:30.893" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="22385" PostId="6557" Score="5" Text="@ErdemŞen The fact that question title referred to a particular R package is a red herring: but it is often helpful when people explain exactly what software they use and what commands they ran, because sometimes procedures are implemented subtly differently. And note that Shawn's answer uses a *different* R package instead - It would have worked equally well if Shawn had given an answer using Stata or Minitab or SPSS instead of R , or a codeless answer with just a manual calculation. But as the original asker was an R user, they doubtless found R code helpful for understanding." CreationDate="2023-08-16T22:46:59.483" UserId="22228" />
  <row Id="22391" PostId="6558" Score="1" Text="Firebug, I think it could be more insightful to someone coming first time here making a mind of this by providing at least a single line as to how `sequencing` is (not) related to `sequence-analysis`. That would better reflect the decision process of the community, imo." CreationDate="2023-08-22T12:41:14.710" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22442" PostId="6558" Score="1" Text="Thanks Firebug for the edit." CreationDate="2023-08-25T08:10:07.337" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22405" PostId="6559" Score="4" Text="-1 For the misrepresentations in this post." CreationDate="2023-08-23T15:19:14.410" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="22408" PostId="6559" Score="0" Text="@whuber please quote where I misrepresent it. For the record - so that the whole community sees it." CreationDate="2023-08-23T15:21:44.523" UserId="110833" />
  <row Id="22413" PostId="6559" Score="7" Text="It's not the job of moderators (or anyone else) to clarify an unclear question. How can anyone do that?  Trying to guess what an unclear question means would be a long slippery slope through &quot;the question you might be asking&quot;  &quot;the question you should have asked&quot; to (I don't know) &quot;a possibly relevant but different question&quot;.  Unclear means what it says; if the OP can revise to make a question clear to the community, good; otherwise, not good.  This all follows from the over-arching principle that CV is not a help line.  It's a site where people offer questions that may be accepted." CreationDate="2023-08-23T16:16:25.777" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22414" PostId="6559" Score="3" Text="Here you can read about the role and privileges of diamond mods:  https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/75189/who-are-the-diamond-moderators-and-what-is-their-role" CreationDate="2023-08-23T16:44:44.410" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="22415" PostId="6559" Score="7" Text="Voting to close is no &quot;nuclear&quot; option: it's routine. The *current* mods (which excludes people who have resigned their mod status) have voted to close over 68,000 questions, averaging over 15 per day. *We have no choice* about what happens next: our VTCs immediately take effect. I can't speak for how other mods work, but when a question does not seem at risk of collecting conflicting or misleading answers, *I leave it open for a day and check back later.* The post discussed here was, as I explained, unanswerable. The constructive solution is to fix the post--which only you can do." CreationDate="2023-08-23T19:42:47.427" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="22417" PostId="6559" Score="7" Text="(-1) You could have simply asked '*What is unclear about my question?*' or '*How can I improve my question to make it acceptable here?*'. The path you chose - filled with mudslinging and childish histrionics (nuclear option, really?) - would make me unsympathetic even if you had a reasonable grievance. Which to be clear, you absolutely do not." CreationDate="2023-08-24T05:19:12.303" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="22418" PostId="6559" Score="0" Text="@whuber 1) You likely abused your moderator privilege by closing the question without giving me the opportunity to clarify it; 2) You made in this thread false statements, claiming that you gave me such an opportunity; 3) moderation team here is unable to formulate clear policy for closing questions outright. As the moderation team cannot deal with these issues, they have to be addressed at a higher level." CreationDate="2023-08-24T07:17:17.473" UserId="110833" />
  <row Id="22419" PostId="6559" Score="0" Text="@mkt I think we disagree about who engages here in *&quot;childish histrionics&quot;*. But I flagged your comment for using such a language." CreationDate="2023-08-24T07:17:58.313" UserId="110833" />
  <row Id="22421" PostId="6559" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Questions have a *comments* section, explicitly intended for posing a questions aiming at clarification (obviously, it is usually the OP who clarifies their question in response, not the moderator or other users.) This is the SE policy. In fact, the moderator did pose such a question, and I replied to it (and, upon the suggestion of another moderator, even included this reply in the body of the question.) But such a constructive discussion does not require immediate closure - so the question is about the criteria used by the moderation team for applying such a closure." CreationDate="2023-08-24T07:30:15.073" UserId="110833" />
  <row Id="22423" PostId="6559" Score="2" Text="I was not addressing the specific circumstances of your post, but for the record I consider that you were fairly treated there." CreationDate="2023-08-24T07:48:51.110" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22424" PostId="6559" Score="0" Text="@NickCox For the record: I am not complaining about unfairness. The question is about the transparent criteria used by moderators for such decisions. This thread could be a good opportunity to formulate them once and for all, so that people do not complain about arbitrary actions. **I do think that the way the moderation team handled this matter raises the question about their ability to perform their duties.**" CreationDate="2023-08-24T08:23:29.420" UserId="110833" />
  <row Id="22426" PostId="6559" Score="8" Text="I don't share your concern about the present moderators.: they're an excellent team. But I fear that the goal of explicit, objective criteria is abstractly admirable but impractical. Take an example beyond your original question. What is and what is not rude or offensive is a judgment call: quite a few threads on CV and CV Meta have hinged on what some people see as rude or offensive, and others see as fair comment, colo[u]rful language, frank opinion, defending oneself vigorously against unfair accusations, and so forth. In fact, we are there now.  Objective criteria for rude?" CreationDate="2023-08-24T09:01:56.433" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22427" PostId="6559" Score="0" Text="@NickCox Again, this is not about *unfair, rude or offensive* - it is about clearly explaining the moderation policies and applying them uniformly. Instead I have been accused here of *&quot;misrepresentations&quot;* (by whuber), of *&quot;misquoting&quot;* (by Sycorax), and of *&quot;childish histrionics&quot;* (by mkt), whereas you are the only one who tried (even if half-heartedly) to actually address the matter. This doesn't strike me as professional moderation (whatever are their qualifications in statistics.) Whuber also made a false statement - claiming he gave me an opportunity to respond before closing the Q." CreationDate="2023-08-24T09:52:32.430" UserId="110833" />
  <row Id="22428" PostId="6559" Score="0" Text="@NickCox the comments that the team posted under the actual Q are also in violation of SE policies - they express personal opinions, rather than try to clarify the question. And my honest attempts at clarifying it remained unanswered. For the record: from previous encounters with whuber, there seems to be a pattern in them going superficially through the motions of &quot;moderating&quot;, while actually unwilling to contribute any relevant elements. I invite you to contribute your opinion to how you would address the example proposed in the Q - this could be a constructive step." CreationDate="2023-08-24T09:56:26.940" UserId="110833" />
  <row Id="22429" PostId="6559" Score="8" Text="I am not happy that you are not happy, but we're going round and round the same circles and I don't think we're making progress. It's good that Meta exists as a place to air concerns, but why are you getting no support? I sense a consensus of opinion. that goes beyond current moderators and includes some active, experienced people. Call this answer half-hearted by all means, but it was not and will not be anything but some general points in addition to those already made when I posted." CreationDate="2023-08-24T10:02:09.647" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22430" PostId="6559" Score="7" Text="I know @whuber personally to some degree and more importantly greatly respect his utterly outstanding contributions as a member and as a moderator. You will get no extra support from me by including negative personal comments. By all means focus on issues of policy and principle as you see them." CreationDate="2023-08-24T10:05:44.940" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22431" PostId="6559" Score="0" Text="&quot;this answer&quot; two up means &quot;my answer&quot;." CreationDate="2023-08-24T10:08:35.697" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22432" PostId="6559" Score="0" Text="@NickCox I am stating the facts - they are easy to verify. Are you suggesting to ignore any negative facts out of respect to authority/friendship? To quote: *There are many **misrepresentations and scurrilous** insinuations in this thread, such as &quot;I provided a rather obvious example in the comment to the question itself.&quot; **The record shows that no such comment was posted before I closed the question.*** (emphasis is mine) If we forget the insults, how could I comment before closing on an already closed question?" CreationDate="2023-08-24T10:22:51.707" UserId="110833" />
  <row Id="22433" PostId="6559" Score="0" Text="@NickCox I reiterate my invitation to contribute your expertise on the actual question." CreationDate="2023-08-24T10:24:15.100" UserId="110833" />
  <row Id="22434" PostId="6559" Score="2" Text="I am declaring a personal dimension in having interacted with @whuber personally as well as through the forum, and my personal knowledge merges into what I know of his contributions on CV. What happened or didn't happen in the original thread is not territory where I want to try to add to what's already been said, but as I said no moderator is above query or challenge." CreationDate="2023-08-24T10:31:07.310" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22435" PostId="6559" Score="0" Text="@NickCox This is why I am against using the real names on SE - I have seen world-known people saying silly thinks on SE or reacting in a rash manner, and it always makes for an uncomfortable situation when they have to be corrected. Besides, I am against bringing the real-world attitudes, based on positions, age, past achievements, etc. to SE - everyone is equal here, everyone should be treated with respect. And having the moderation policies clearly stated on the meta, so that they can be referenced when needed, helps a lot to assure this equality." CreationDate="2023-08-24T11:17:05.243" UserId="110833" />
  <row Id="22436" PostId="6559" Score="5" Text="My CV name is real and my affiliation is easy to find. That's my choice and others can make theirs.  Now that _is_ SE policy.  I vote for mutual respect too, but its distribution in this thread seems uneven." CreationDate="2023-08-24T11:25:12.447" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22420" PostId="6560" Score="0" Text="As pointed in the edit, what is needed here is a clear statement of (preferably objective) criteria, which moderators use to close a question, without giving a prior opportunity to clarify it. Instead this answer seems like an attempt to engage in polemics about this particular case of closure." CreationDate="2023-08-24T07:26:38.307" UserId="110833" />
  <row Id="22437" PostId="6560" Score="9" Text="It’s awfully rich for you to complain that this answer engages in *polemics* (what part of it is polemical?) when the title to this question compares having a question closed to a “*nuclear* option.” Please, by all means, escalate this issue to the &quot;higher power&quot; you keep alluding to, because I'm tired of it. Whoever that &quot;higher power&quot; is, I'm sure they'll be outraged that an unclear, ambiguous question was closed and they'll immediately understand that question closure is exactly like dropping a nuclear bomb. Hopefully they’ll alert NORAD about SE’s dangerous arsenal of closed questions!" CreationDate="2023-08-24T11:55:34.480" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="22394" PostId="6561" Score="0" Text="The problem here is that the post was closed unilaterally, but (according to your answer) it will have to wait for a required number of reopen votes to get reopened, which may mean that it never gets reopened (unless the question is popular.) In this sense, it might have never been closed, if one waited for the required number of votes (as it often happens to many poor questions.)" CreationDate="2023-08-23T14:55:58.077" UserId="110833" />
  <row Id="22395" PostId="6561" Score="7" Text="@RogerVadim On the other hand, if the question were improved to be suitable, a moderator could unilaterally re-open it." CreationDate="2023-08-23T14:56:49.300" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="22396" PostId="6561" Score="4" Text="See, Roger, the mod has raised a valid question. You would definitely respond to them. If they feel the response is okay, they can reopen themselves too. And more importantly, you have to be patient here." CreationDate="2023-08-23T14:57:37.843" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22397" PostId="6561" Score="0" Text="Yes, that's what I wanted to say as @Sycorax wrote." CreationDate="2023-08-23T14:58:28.283" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22398" PostId="6561" Score="0" Text="@Sycorax the problem is that moderator might simply misunderstand the question: I provided a rather obvious example in the comment to the question itself (which would not be a problem, if it was reviewed in due order by several community members.)" CreationDate="2023-08-23T15:02:22.443" UserId="110833" />
  <row Id="22399" PostId="6561" Score="6" Text="@RogerVadim I think the moderator completely understands the question, and the moderator's comment raises a valid objection. I don't think your reply does anything to address the moderator's comment or make your question clearer. There's no reason to wait for community feedback -- the question is unclear on its face." CreationDate="2023-08-23T15:04:42.937" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="22400" PostId="6561" Score="4" Text="Re `which may mean that it never gets reopened (unless the question is popular.)`, I have to disagree with that. Airing such view is tantamount to frowning on the capabilities of the reviewers. I have been reviewing for quite a while and I can assure you that if a post even has a minuscule portion that can be answerable, it gets reopened. Remember it needs three votes. Yes, there are cases where all the three reviewers voted for not reopening the post but then a mod reopened it. I hope you are getting my point. Have faith in the community." CreationDate="2023-08-23T15:05:56.400" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22401" PostId="6561" Score="0" Text="@Sycorax *the moderator completely understands the question* is an unprovable statement." CreationDate="2023-08-23T15:07:11.383" UserId="110833" />
  <row Id="22402" PostId="6561" Score="0" Text="@User1865345 The situation with closing and reopening is clearly asymmetric here." CreationDate="2023-08-23T15:08:28.980" UserId="110833" />
  <row Id="22403" PostId="6561" Score="5" Text="@RogerVadim Misquoting me is not going to raise my esteem of you. I said *I think the moderator completely understands the question.* I'm going to disengage at this time." CreationDate="2023-08-23T15:11:41.583" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="22404" PostId="6561" Score="6" Text="There are many misrepresentations and scurrilous insinuations in this thread, such as &quot;I provided a rather obvious example in the comment to the question itself.&quot; The record shows that no such comment was posted before I closed the question.  As far as the &quot;completely understands the question,&quot; that itself has multiple interpretations.  Although I haven't any clue what you're *trying* to ask, I can understand what *was* asked and I have no qualms about closing it immediately, since it was likely (if answered at all) to have collected multiple differing answers.  I did my job." CreationDate="2023-08-23T15:18:06.000" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="22406" PostId="6561" Score="0" Text="@whuber *The record shows that no such comment was posted before I closed the question.* - this is completely dishonest, as the question was closed before I could post anything." CreationDate="2023-08-23T15:20:03.483" UserId="110833" />
  <row Id="22407" PostId="6561" Score="0" Text="@Sycorax it is not your esteem of me that is in question here, but the integrity of the moderators of this community." CreationDate="2023-08-23T15:20:49.660" UserId="110833" />
  <row Id="22409" PostId="6561" Score="6" Text="It's time for you to read our [code of conduct](https://stats.stackexchange.com/conduct), Roger.  As far as &quot;dishonest&quot; goes, be aware that the site maintains a full record of all changes made to your original thread, including the comment history.  I was accurately reporting it." CreationDate="2023-08-23T15:23:12.520" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="22410" PostId="6561" Score="7" Text="Instances like these alleviate my reverence all the more for the unsung works performed daily by our mods and feel sorry for the impending allegations they need to face for the same. Dishonest? Sorry, I really have to disagree here." CreationDate="2023-08-23T15:26:02.187" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22411" PostId="6561" Score="4" Text="`The situation with closing and reopening is clearly asymmetric here.` - Roger, I cannot coerce you to (not) believe in your stated hypothesis. But unsubstantiated claims like these without evidences aren't healthy in the long run in a constructive discussion." CreationDate="2023-08-23T15:28:24.230" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22416" PostId="6561" Score="9" Text="&quot;*moderator might simply misunderstand the question*&quot;, If a moderator misunderstands the question, it's very likely that many other people will misunderstand it too. And that by itself is a good indication that there is something significantly wrong with the question. ¶ Yes, it *is* possible that a moderator is having a bad day and misunderstands through no fault of the question, but in such cases other people would likely point this out and vote to reopen, assuming the moderator hasn't already realized the mistake and done so already." CreationDate="2023-08-24T03:03:49.503" UserId="390133" />
  <row Id="22412" PostId="6562" Score="1" Text="Thank you for taking this matter seriously." CreationDate="2023-08-23T15:31:40.697" UserId="110833" />
  <row Id="22425" PostId="6562" Score="0" Text="I think this answer goes furtherst in formulating clear and transparent criteria for immediate post closure (vs. closure after demanding a clarification and/or the required number of close votes.) However, it could be expanded. And, of course, it does not represent the opinion/policies of the actual moderation team." CreationDate="2023-08-24T08:28:23.343" UserId="110833" />
  <row Id="22438" PostId="6563" Score="7" Text="This is an accurate and clear account of the reason why immediate closure is important in some cases, +1.  What often happens with unclear questions is that somebody jumps in with an answer according to one interpretation and then either somebody else gives a contradictory answer according to another interpretation and/or the OP *then* clarifies or even completely alters the question.  Confusion and sometimes acrimony result (who wants to work to answer a question only to have it changed after the fact?) *It is best for everyone that such questions be closed as quickly as possible.*" CreationDate="2023-08-24T12:27:44.453" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="22446" PostId="6565" Score="7" Text="We can’t comment on individuals’ reasons for suspension. For any suspended user, the suspension announcement on the user profile page reports the reason. As a purely general matter, suspensions are *usually* graduated: 7 days for the first serious issue, 30 days for the second, 365 for the third." CreationDate="2023-08-27T21:50:37.933" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="22447" PostId="6565" Score="0" Text="Thanks for explaining - I thought it was some automatic process going on. For the particular user's last questions, I did not have the impression that they were cleverly pastet together, though. I stumbled over another user who was suspended for 30 days only, system wide, without stating a reason." CreationDate="2023-08-27T22:15:10.817" UserId="237561" />
  <row Id="22448" PostId="6565" Score="3" Text="Ah, right, I forgot that there are a few narrow cases when no reason is reported. But to attain a system-wide suspension, the user would be engaged in contemporaneous bad behavior across multiple sites or doing things that harmed the network as a whole." CreationDate="2023-08-27T22:19:30.227" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="22449" PostId="6565" Score="0" Text="Sounds scary when this is a formerly 5k+ user" CreationDate="2023-08-27T22:22:48.510" UserId="237561" />
  <row Id="22450" PostId="6565" Score="0" Text="@SextusEmpiricus, one could also ruthlessly tolerate the activity of patching together and embellishing old posts when they attract fantastic answers, for the sake of the resulting compendium. Dunno. It could be seen as a kind of community service even if it is fueled by gaming. SE manipulates us users with it's rep and badge system" CreationDate="2023-08-27T22:56:46.347" UserId="237561" />
  <row Id="22468" PostId="6565" Score="3" Text="Another *general* idea to keep in mind is that the visible questions and comments are only a *curated* representation of a user's contributions. (If I recall correctly, only users with 10,000 rep or more can see deleted content.) Content can be deleted by robots, by the author, or by an elected moderator. Rarely, the CM team might step in for some reason, or a number of users with sufficient privileges vote to delete a question or answer with negative score. So what remains visible on the site might be a user's *best* contributions." CreationDate="2023-08-28T12:45:26.047" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="22469" PostId="6565" Score="2" Text="Re &quot;formerly 5k+ user:&quot; As a *general proposition,* insinuating nothing about the present case, one way to accumulate points here on CV is to ask a very large number of poorly researched questions ;-).  The occasional random upvote (and there are many, because every few months a new user comes along who really, really, wants [a badge for lots of upvotes](https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/badges/44/electorate)) will accumulate over time and the downvotes won't compensate.  (Some people have very successfully used this strategy with answers, too.)" CreationDate="2023-08-28T12:57:54.273" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="22451" PostId="6566" Score="0" Text="Thank you for your effort, User1865345, I really appreciate that! I have read all these suspension blogs also on SE meta and was wondering if it was possible to just cut down on the number of posts per week or month. In the particular case that triggered my question, I became aware of a high number of questions coming from that user and already there I started to wonder if there was no daily limit on questions given there is less capacity to answer. All of a sudden, the flood stopped, so I looked them up... I wondered if others also would think this could be a good instrument to have" CreationDate="2023-08-28T04:34:50.723" UserId="237561" />
  <row Id="22452" PostId="6566" Score="0" Text="We really won't be doing of much worth if we delve in speculating what triggered the suspension of the said user, but looking at their posts, I agree with Sextus. If you ask me personally, I have no qualms with how many questions a user can ask in a certain period provided those maintain the quality." CreationDate="2023-08-28T04:40:00.317" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22453" PostId="6566" Score="0" Text="Secondly, I am not sure how exactly the number of _such_ posts would trigger a possible suspension. More importantly, I am not knowledgeable about this matter so any more experienced user/mod could shine light on this. In any case, if changes are needed, they have to be raised at Meta. SE." CreationDate="2023-08-28T04:41:42.383" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22454" PostId="6566" Score="0" Text="Yes, clear that changes need to be raised there. But if cv community does not care about that, I would for the time being not care about suggesting that on the whole network, that is why I am trying to take the temperature ;-)" CreationDate="2023-08-28T04:47:44.200" UserId="237561" />
  <row Id="22456" PostId="6566" Score="1" Text="As I am not aware of the specifics, I would leave a general comment: the community cares about the quality of the posts that are apt for a good repository. If someone consistently deviates from that coveted aspect, then the mods acting for the community have to take some actions. Suspensions are not dealt with iron fist. But they are not casual either. The said user needs to take a step back and ponder about the actions. I appreciate your concern though." CreationDate="2023-08-28T04:51:47.237" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22457" PostId="6566" Score="0" Text="Ps to my last comment: SE has other more leisurely, casual or opinion based sites that do in no way compare to cv with inversly proportional ratio of answers to questions. That is why this questions in the first place belongs here, not on meta SE." CreationDate="2023-08-28T04:53:25.307" UserId="237561" />
  <row Id="22458" PostId="6566" Score="0" Text="To your last comment: 365 days to ponder is long, but I admit I don't know the history, having only been active for three months now. This site can be addictive, maybe it is actually a good deed for the user to set them on cold turkey. Need to impose this on myself..." CreationDate="2023-08-28T04:56:44.717" UserId="237561" />
  <row Id="22459" PostId="6566" Score="0" Text="I am not active in other SE sites, so won't be able to comment on that. As for the one year suspension, again since we won't be knowing exactly what happened, and having justified faith on the mods, I would say the magnitude of the action was tantamount to suspension of that number of days. Now whether _that amount_ of action needed _that_ number of days of suspension, this is a debate that is better left for a Meta.SE post if others are also of the same opinion. Personally, I don't have too much of an inclination to argue either for or against it." CreationDate="2023-08-28T05:04:29.017" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22460" PostId="6566" Score="0" Text="To your last statement, check [Am I the only one getting addicted to this site? How do you manage time doing other things?](https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3850/am-i-the-only-one-getting-addicted-to-this-site-how-do-you-manage-time-doing-ot)." CreationDate="2023-08-28T05:06:41.770" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22461" PostId="6566" Score="0" Text="Let us [continue this discussion in chat](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/148125/discussion-between-ute-and-user1865345)." CreationDate="2023-08-28T05:09:15.977" UserId="237561" />
  <row Id="22462" PostId="6567" Score="0" Text="Oh you're right, Nick. I've tried to remove traces in the question and will see what I can do about the comments :)" CreationDate="2023-08-28T09:19:58.553" UserId="237561" />
  <row Id="22463" PostId="6567" Score="0" Text="I don't think your posts say too much. I am just underlining that no-one should say more specifically." CreationDate="2023-08-28T09:21:26.973" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22464" PostId="6567" Score="0" Text="Fine. I leave it in the more generic version - other newbies could have the same concerns later and I think it is very enlightening so far what has been said. Still I think just slowing a user down could be helpful in some cases, too." CreationDate="2023-08-28T09:25:28.797" UserId="237561" />
  <row Id="22470" PostId="6567" Score="2" Text="+1.  But I want to make it clear that readers should draw *no* inferences about the reasons for any specific suspension from the list given here.  Not all suspensions are for overt or willful misbehavior, for instance; and often we are reluctant to issue suspensions at all." CreationDate="2023-08-28T13:05:38.337" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="22474" PostId="6570" Score="1" Text="I was also puzzled about that same question." CreationDate="2023-09-01T21:40:30.933" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22472" PostId="6571" Score="2" Text="That makes more sense. Thanks!" CreationDate="2023-08-31T05:54:03.197" UserId="345611" />
  <row Id="22473" PostId="6571" Score="4" Text="It would, of course, be enormously helpful if people voting to reopen left a comment saying why they disagree with the original decision. Some do but many do not." CreationDate="2023-09-01T16:08:53.277" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="22475" PostId="6572" Score="0" Text="*&quot;If not, what should a canonical Question address?&quot;* I personally like mathematical statistics oriented questions and a derivation of the divergence sounds interesting to me. What I am wondering about is the context. If this could be integrated into the question and answers, then this would be nice. ...." CreationDate="2023-09-06T13:53:56.040" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22476" PostId="6572" Score="0" Text="...  The question &quot;Deriving the KL divergence loss for VAEs&quot; seems already canonical to me. Are there arguments to make a new slightly duplicate question?" CreationDate="2023-09-06T13:54:45.603" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22477" PostId="6572" Score="0" Text="Reading further, the other questions are also good as well. So the problem is that there are many vague duplicates. Potentially a question could be formulated, about the use of divergence loss, that creates a question that links to all these type of posts." CreationDate="2023-09-06T13:57:57.957" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22478" PostId="6572" Score="0" Text="@SextusEmpiricus &quot;Deriving the KL divergence loss for VAEs&quot; posts an expression for $\mathfrak{D}_\text{KL}[p_1 \| p_2]$ and then simplifies it, but doesn't show why it is true that $$\mathfrak{D}_\text{KL}[p_1 \| p_2] =&#xA;\frac{1}{2}\left[\log\frac{|\Sigma_2|}{|\Sigma_1|} - n + \text{tr} \{ \Sigma_2^{-1}\Sigma_1 \} + (\mu_2 - \mu_1)^T \Sigma_2^{-1}(\mu_2 - \mu_1)\right]$$ Regarding the &quot;vague duplicates&quot; -- I agree, we need a canonical thread." CreationDate="2023-09-06T13:59:18.800" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="22479" PostId="6572" Score="0" Text="A canonical thread, but that can be generated with a canonical answer to one of the pre-existing questions." CreationDate="2023-09-06T14:02:31.093" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22480" PostId="6572" Score="0" Text="Which answer is canonical? What question does it address? Is the question that it addresses the best choice for a canonical thread?" CreationDate="2023-09-06T14:14:05.867" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="22549" PostId="6575" Score="0" Text="+1 I am pointing out—in line with Sextus Empiricus' beautiful answer—that in your lack of focus example, *A*, *B*, *C*, *D*, and *E* may all be quite detailed and have good clarity." CreationDate="2023-10-24T18:33:35.453" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="22493" PostId="6578" Score="2" Text="Now that it has received these many downvotes, the system has automatically removed it from the main page, I guess (not sure though). Does this deprive any user visiting meta to see this post and cast their opinion (as vote)?" CreationDate="2023-09-21T16:55:01.227" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22497" PostId="6578" Score="3" Text="This question has disappeared from the overview of recent questions. Possibly because some filter removing it from view due to it's low score?" CreationDate="2023-09-22T05:29:38.123" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22498" PostId="6578" Score="3" Text="@SextusEmpiricus: thanks for pointing that out! I just flagged the question and asked whether the mods wanted to feature it for added attention. Then again, I would assume that the picture won't change much..." CreationDate="2023-09-22T08:21:08.447" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="22501" PostId="6578" Score="2" Text="@StephanKolassa, as I noted, this has been out of view since last evening. I read somewhere the system automatically removes heavily downvoted posts from main page. But it needs to be featured, I deem." CreationDate="2023-09-22T09:35:00.693" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22502" PostId="6578" Score="4" Text="Good point - I've featured it." CreationDate="2023-09-22T11:03:48.320" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="22503" PostId="6578" Score="1" Text="@User1865345 your assumption is correct. I am not sure where the cut-off is (6 to 8?) but you need to click on the Questions link in the top left of your screen to see everything. This is fine except for on Meta sites where downvoting has a different meaning." CreationDate="2023-09-22T13:42:22.127" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="22546" PostId="6578" Score="0" Text="This has been open and featured for visibility for three weeks now. I will flag it again and suggest it be de-featured. I don't think there will be much more new input." CreationDate="2023-10-10T07:19:32.577" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="22486" PostId="6579" Score="2" Text="I am morbidly curious to know what site is more obnoxious than twitter.  The thought sends shivers down my spine." CreationDate="2023-09-20T11:44:17.027" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="22487" PostId="6579" Score="5" Text="Economic Job Market Rumors and its sibling sites" CreationDate="2023-09-20T13:09:47.167" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22488" PostId="6579" Score="0" Text="_you need not try to fix what isn't broken._ - Enough said." CreationDate="2023-09-21T08:05:56.403" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22485" PostId="6580" Score="4" Text="Tldr: I voted -1." CreationDate="2023-09-20T09:58:34.850" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22511" PostId="6581" Score="1" Text="I guess everyone with any experience would underline that reputation is measured with error (both bias and caprice), but that doesn't make it meaningless.  Congratulations to anyone who can be utterly indifferent to changes in reputation, but I doubt I am the only person who gets small pleasure out of iipvotes (and small irritation out of downvotes). Looking around I do find that sustained contribution of high quality is matched by high reputation. I don't agree at all with removing reputation.  Reputation can be ignored if you don't care about or respect it." CreationDate="2023-09-25T12:37:15.377" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22512" PostId="6581" Score="0" Text="@NickCox I definitely get pleasure out of upvotes too, but I find it a bad system to create a ranking. Sure, a system may have error, but when it is large then it becomes less meaningful. One source of error are the popular votes when many people visit only a single or a few posts on the website. Those votes indicate appreciation for those posts, but they don't mean a higher rating for the posts when the voters do not see at the same time other posts on the website. This source of error will increase when more occasional visitors are allowed to vote." CreationDate="2023-09-25T14:15:14.030" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22513" PostId="6581" Score="0" Text="A good example for bias in voting is this question: [Do the 2.5th and 97.5th percentile of the theoretical sampling distribution of a statistic always contain the true population parameter?](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/622628/). In that question I removed my answer and I find Ute's answer the best answer. Still we both have 7 votes. The reason is that my answer was placed earlier and got more votes during a period of high activity for that question. Other questions that did not got removed have even more votes. I see this type of situation regularly." CreationDate="2023-09-25T14:20:35.360" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22514" PostId="6581" Score="1" Text="Sure  but this is noise. If you come late to a thread, you may get less than you deserve too." CreationDate="2023-09-25T14:42:55.173" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22515" PostId="6581" Score="0" Text="@NickCox it is more like bias than noise. The number of votes relate to the number of views, and posts get a different number of views for all sorts of reasons, some of which are artificial (like time or activity and position in lists). Because the vote system is purely based on popularity like/unlike and has no nuance, the view count is incredibly important." CreationDate="2023-09-25T14:48:53.860" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22516" PostId="6581" Score="1" Text="My instinct is to play down your adverbs, _purely_ and _incredibly_." CreationDate="2023-09-25T15:46:15.900" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22489" PostId="6583" Score="3" Text="I think that is probably the best solution. I'll go ahead and do that. Thanks." CreationDate="2023-09-21T14:39:32.873" UserId="345611" />
  <row Id="22499" PostId="6583" Score="3" Text="I also like this best. Documenting a wrong approach as such is valuable, especially if the answerer points out where they misunderstood or went astray. This may well save other people the time and trouble of making the same mistake." CreationDate="2023-09-22T08:23:58.150" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="22490" PostId="6584" Score="1" Text="This is the answer for reference. Not sure what the recommended action is here, but I followed the advice of Kjetil's answer: https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/626791/345611" CreationDate="2023-09-21T15:10:45.127" UserId="345611" />
  <row Id="22491" PostId="6584" Score="4" Text="A short summary, unfortunately, is &quot;It depends&quot;!" CreationDate="2023-09-21T15:15:51.610" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22492" PostId="6584" Score="3" Text="Sometimes it is valuable to preserve comments ---sometimes an answer is wrong, but supported by popular (and seemingly reasonable ...) arguments, then pointing out why they are wrong is valuable" CreationDate="2023-09-21T15:23:01.593" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="22500" PostId="6585" Score="1" Text="Ironically this answer got deleted here because I answered it in the question (I had multiple tabs open in the browser): https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/627054/164061" CreationDate="2023-09-22T08:29:02.393" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22504" PostId="6586" Score="2" Text="+1 for doing some research &amp; coming here to seek more information.  That's refreshing from someone whose Q was closed." CreationDate="2023-09-24T12:28:59.373" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="22505" PostId="6586" Score="3" Text="I just read your Q.  Others will be able to answer better, since they were involved, but I would say you will need to provide more information.  There are lots of ways, potentially, to try to find out what you want to know.  Which is right / best is impossible to know without more information.  It looked like there are some comments on the Q asking for more information.  I would advise that you engage with them to provide what they need." CreationDate="2023-09-24T12:32:01.757" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="22509" PostId="6586" Score="0" Text="Also related are these answers https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5315/ and https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/4467/  to &quot;Top k List of Reasons to Close a Question Immediately&quot;" CreationDate="2023-09-25T06:56:52.517" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22506" PostId="6587" Score="2" Text="+1, this is a helpful and respectful answer." CreationDate="2023-09-24T12:32:32.320" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="22507" PostId="6587" Score="1" Text="Thank you. In an attempt to make the question short, I made it unclear. I've rewritten the question now, clarifying the points you and @dimitriy mention" CreationDate="2023-09-24T12:43:53.320" UserId="269947" />
  <row Id="22508" PostId="6587" Score="2" Text="Looking in a way better format @Draex_. Have voted to reopen and it is reopened now." CreationDate="2023-09-24T12:51:32.777" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22510" PostId="6588" Score="3" Text="That would be noble. In addition, the OP might think of offering a bounty if they had enough reputation." CreationDate="2023-09-25T12:30:45.967" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22519" PostId="6590" Score="1" Text="Thank you for your answer, but you fail to address the &quot;*I'll try to restrain myself ;-)*&quot; comment (for which I raised a follow-up custom flag); is it also still relevant, useful, and not chatty, and if yes, to whom? A decision to decline the 3 other flags but accepting this one *may* make some sense in tne lines you describe (still debatable though), but unfortunately this is not at all what happened." CreationDate="2023-10-06T03:49:03.777" UserId="93018" />
  <row Id="22520" PostId="6590" Score="0" Text="And given that, with the last comment (and edit), all the ones above it are now *literally* obsolete (what they refer to is not there anymore), should one now raise a custom flag on it, suggesting to delete all of them?" CreationDate="2023-10-06T03:54:13.363" UserId="93018" />
  <row Id="22522" PostId="6590" Score="0" Text="&quot;*If you aren't interested in the first answer*&quot; - this was not the case, I *was* interested in it (I even upvoted it) and I was already at the end of it (so what you suggest was not actually applicable), I was just trying to see what more there is, but I found myself drowned in irrelevant clutter..." CreationDate="2023-10-06T04:03:30.927" UserId="93018" />
  <row Id="22523" PostId="6590" Score="0" Text="See my edit. But to paraphrase: the particular comment by gung seems to be borderline, if I am not missing anything. However, more importantly, I would restrain my using of flags only for dire and absolute places. I won't be raising them whenever I see one or two here and there that is not vehemently hampering the readability, clarity or other attributes necessary for my proper comprehension of the post on question. This is my personal preference and must not deter you to raise flags if you deem it is needed somewhere." CreationDate="2023-10-06T04:14:09.263" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22524" PostId="6590" Score="0" Text="Thank you for your update; the very fact that literally no one can say today what was meant with the &quot;*I'll try to restrain myself ;-)*&quot; comment makes it obsolete and not useful to anyone else, hence clutter. Restraining flags is another discussion altogether - the issue now is, since they were raised, why they were declined? Following your &quot;dire only&quot; advice  to the core, we should not even have a &quot;no longer needed&quot; flag in the first place (dire conditions are adequately handled by the other flags)." CreationDate="2023-10-06T04:17:23.643" UserId="93018" />
  <row Id="22525" PostId="6590" Score="0" Text="I have tried to articulate my view here. But please wait for any possible clarification by a mod here." CreationDate="2023-10-06T04:19:59.640" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22526" PostId="6590" Score="1" Text="I appreciate your thoughts and time spent to answer my question." CreationDate="2023-10-06T04:23:16.190" UserId="93018" />
  <row Id="22527" PostId="6590" Score="0" Text="Also, just ICYMI, I may be a low-rep user here, but I have some substantial experience in SO, where, FWIW, I have raised 4,332 *helpful* comment flags (vs. 42 declined) in ~9 years..." CreationDate="2023-10-06T04:39:43.007" UserId="93018" />
  <row Id="22528" PostId="6590" Score="1" Text="I do my research while writing anything (I checked your profile). That's why I didn't begin my post like _Welcome to the Meta CV. Thanks for rasing flags and posting the issue here_ which I typically do for newbies.  But now that I said, I appreciate you raising it here. :-)" CreationDate="2023-10-06T04:46:24.043" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22531" PostId="6590" Score="0" Text="FWIW, all comments under discussion have now been deleted; Glen_b self-deleted their own ones, after I kindly [suggested so](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2055/obsolete-comments-to-flag-or-not-to-flag?rq=1#comment22529_2056) (not sure about the other ones)." CreationDate="2023-10-07T03:28:23.213" UserId="93018" />
  <row Id="22532" PostId="6590" Score="3" Text="I was unaware of this discussion; what had happened with me was I recently noticed that answer again myself and decided to fix it as gung had originally suggested; age has softened my thoughts on that formatting issue. I deleted some of the comments that were no longer relevant after the fix but missed that there were more to take care of. None of it was in relation to this post, which I simply hadn't seen. I appreciate the request to fix the comments I didn't address before." CreationDate="2023-10-07T03:52:52.757" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="22533" PostId="6590" Score="2" Text="Incidentally, in response to what gung meant by &quot;I'll try to restrain myself&quot; -- I took it to imply &quot;... from editing your answer to look as I think it should look&quot;. Gung was probably right to want to change it and to ask about it but probably also right to leave me to my curmudgeonly choice to format in a manner inconsistent with the stackexchange default and leave me to come to my senses on my own." CreationDate="2023-10-07T03:55:44.320" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="22534" PostId="6590" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b so, not even *you* are sure what exactly gung meant back then! :D Nevertheless, some mod handled not one, but *two* flags suggesting deletion of that comment (10 years after it was posted), and they preferred to decline them both... :(" CreationDate="2023-10-07T04:02:02.683" UserId="93018" />
  <row Id="22535" PostId="6590" Score="0" Text="To clarify: I am highly confident that my expressed belief being approximately the intent, but it's rarely possible to be 100% certain in any communication, so I express a degree of doubt. I'm aware of context of other conversations and actions on other questions around the same time that made the intent relatively clear when originally posted. The first thing to do when you think a comment should be removed is probably to notify the poster of it, if they're still around. Gung is a very thoughtful person, I imagine it would be a productive line to pursue." CreationDate="2023-10-07T04:05:22.313" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="22536" PostId="6590" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b I hear you, loud and clear; but the issue in this discussion here is - do you believe that that comment really deserved to survive *two* flags, 10 years after it was posted?" CreationDate="2023-10-07T04:07:28.423" UserId="93018" />
  <row Id="22537" PostId="6590" Score="0" Text="&quot;*The first thing to do when you think a comment should be removed is probably to notify the poster of it*&quot; - well, we are supposed to have procedures, and this is not one of them; we do have &quot;no longer needed&quot; flags exactly for this reason." CreationDate="2023-10-07T04:09:31.263" UserId="93018" />
  <row Id="22538" PostId="6590" Score="1" Text="I won't second guess the moderators. It's a very difficult task, sometimes and it's not always clear what the best option is at the time.  I might have made the same choice in a similar context. On your subsequent comment: when things can be reasonably handled between users without involving the mods, they should be; a mod may be less sure of the right thing to do than the person who posted it, who has more context of why the comment was there in the first place. Moderator time should be kept for essential activities; SE is designed so that users can deal with many things on their own" CreationDate="2023-10-07T04:09:35.737" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="22539" PostId="6590" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b you may have chosen to leave there a comment saying &quot;*I'll try to restrain myself ;-)*&quot;, 10 years later? Why? Under what circumstances (and assumptions) it is not obsolete clutter, 10 years later? What exactly is the very difficult task here (mind you, we are talking about a *very specific* case, not in general)?" CreationDate="2023-10-07T04:13:00.910" UserId="93018" />
  <row Id="22540" PostId="6590" Score="2" Text="@Glen_b with all due respect, I am an SO user for 9 years with &gt;4K *helpful* comment flags there (vs. 42 declined), and it is the very first time I hear such a proposal to contact the commenter first... This is *not* the way (and why the comment was there in the first place is arguably irrelevant *today*)." CreationDate="2023-10-07T04:14:41.273" UserId="93018" />
  <row Id="22541" PostId="6590" Score="1" Text="https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/site-moderators -- &quot;*At Stack Exchange, we believe moderation starts with the community itself, so in addition to all users gaining privileges through reputation earned...*&quot;  (i.e. users get privileges in order for communities to - first and foremost - self-moderate). It then goes on to discuss elected moderators as a supplement to that process. Further, later at the same link: &quot;*Moderators are human exception handlers, there to deal with those exceptional conditions that could otherwise disrupt the community.*&quot; ... I believe I'm being consistent with that" CreationDate="2023-10-07T04:23:02.603" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="22542" PostId="6590" Score="2" Text="I'd also add this: https://stackoverflow.blog/2009/05/18/a-theory-of-moderation ... which I have held to be a foundational document for moderation on the network. In particular &quot;*But what do community moderators do? The short answer is, as little as possible!*&quot; and &quot;*We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating*&quot;... etc. That *theory of moderation* post is the basis for the above help link." CreationDate="2023-10-07T04:38:44.123" UserId="805" />
  <row Id="22543" PostId="6590" Score="0" Text="@Glen_b at a very general, abstract level, you may very well be consistent with that. But this is too abstract &amp; general, and can be read in many different ways and be a matter of interpretation; on a very *specific* level, I believe I am totally consistent with the very existence of the &quot;no longer needed&quot; flag. Comments are not there to serve the commenter (FWIW, gung might ignore me, or tell me politely to go screw myself), they are there to serve the community, and they should be removed when they are no longer serving this purpose, regardless of the feelings &amp; intentions of the commenter." CreationDate="2023-10-07T04:39:48.550" UserId="93018" />
  <row Id="22545" PostId="6591" Score="2" Text="Good point. Missed that. +1." CreationDate="2023-10-09T12:35:25.003" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22547" PostId="6593" Score="4" Text="Ah! You used the book of Sextus Empiricus :-)" CreationDate="2023-10-13T17:01:21.770" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22552" PostId="6595" Score="3" Text="Damn. I would say I vote mostly on answers than question! In any case you can check the Data Explorer to play with the tools available and there is also some privilege for 25k users (not aware of the specifics)." CreationDate="2023-11-03T01:28:42.157" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22553" PostId="6595" Score="0" Text="Mine has shifted since originally coming here. I used to vote on well-thought questions with no obvious close/formatting issues. Now I vote a lot more on answers as my knowledge of these topics has increased. But I also had a very poor understanding of statistics when I first came here, and I am only marginally better now." CreationDate="2023-11-03T02:08:40.257" UserId="345611" />
  <row Id="22554" PostId="6595" Score="1" Text="The Data Explorer is the place to look.  But since c. 2015, there have routinely been about 60 to 80% more questions than answers but only about 30% more votes on questions than on answers." CreationDate="2023-11-03T02:33:39.940" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="22557" PostId="6595" Score="2" Text="We should upvote decent questions more! https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6304/my-upvoting-policy . +1 to yours." CreationDate="2023-11-03T17:49:35.557" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="22555" PostId="6596" Score="0" Text="Very cool. On a side note, any idea why there is that gap in the question scores on the left of the plot?" CreationDate="2023-11-03T10:33:13.353" UserId="345611" />
  <row Id="22556" PostId="6596" Score="2" Text="@ShawnHemelstrand that gap is about one year in size. After one year the questions with a low score and no answers get removed. That increases the average score." CreationDate="2023-11-03T11:27:23.373" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22558" PostId="6596" Score="2" Text="@ShawnHemelstrand I see now that the previous comment explained the gap on the *right* whereas the comment should have explained the gap on the *left*. That gap on the left is because [there were only 18 questions and answers in 2009](https://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=created%3A2009), and the SQL code grasps values for each month when there is at least a question *or* answer. This creates datarows with potential sparsity which appear as gaps in the scatter/graph-plot." CreationDate="2023-11-07T13:42:56.397" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22559" PostId="6596" Score="0" Text="Ah thanks for adding that. Makes sense." CreationDate="2023-11-07T14:07:02.587" UserId="345611" />
  <row Id="22561" PostId="6597" Score="5" Text="The latter point is very important.  I think it's fine to upvote the latter.  What's in question is whether upvoting a single, partial answer might make it less likely that others come along to provide a fuller answer." CreationDate="2023-11-10T12:18:33.833" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="22562" PostId="6597" Score="6" Text="Just some thoughts: (1) A &quot;partial answer&quot; suggests the question is not a good one for the site because it raises multiple issues.  Maybe the best route is to encourage the OP to narrow the question. (2) Sometimes you can encourage the respondent to flesh out a partial answer into a full one.  By withholding an upvote at that time, you retain the power to reward a later improvement to the answer.  (You can also award a bounty later, too.)" CreationDate="2023-11-10T15:15:12.560" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="22564" PostId="6600" Score="2" Text="*CV is the site on Stack Exchange I know and like best; on Stack Overflow I often see very limited tolerance for comments or discussion, even when relevant to the question and likely to be helpful to readers.*---Couldn't agree more with both sentiments. I think what often prevents me from posting an answer is the diffidence part, but perhaps if I am cognizant that it is conditional upon the entire discussion then it isn't so bad, so long as it is done in good faith." CreationDate="2023-11-11T12:31:10.490" UserId="345611" />
  <row Id="22573" PostId="6600" Score="3" Text="@Shawn Hemelstrand Raw experience: I often comment on Stack Overflow about the importance of giving a reproducible example and other habits that are similarly good practice. Sometimes that is an extra comment in my answer. I have just had that edited out of several answers as unnecessary information by another user, supported by a moderator. Hmph! (Biter bit, some might think.)  Moderators here are _always_ sensible and open to discussion." CreationDate="2023-11-13T16:35:12.413" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22571" PostId="6601" Score="3" Text="Re your last sentence: I disagree here. We do get questions that are so unclear that it is easy to determine that they are unclear, but hard and time-consuming to write an explanation of *what exactly* is unclear. So people do vote to close as unclear, without leaving an explanation. ..." CreationDate="2023-11-12T10:01:43.797" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="22572" PostId="6601" Score="3" Text="... Yes, this is frustrating to the OP. Please look at things from our perspective: we spend a lot of time here to help people, with no remuneration. And often when we close a question as unclear, the OP never comes back to make the requested clarifications - whether or not we explain what is unclear. Or conversely, *especially* for &quot;unclear-unclear&quot; questions, a long discussion ensues in the comments, which often enough leads nowhere. Again, I understand that you are frustrated, I am just trying to help you understand the other side. (I have not seen your question.)" CreationDate="2023-11-12T10:03:59.447" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="22574" PostId="6601" Score="0" Text="You didn't receive a message in your inbox stating that your question was closed (along with the reason like: 'needs details or clarity')?" CreationDate="2023-11-13T22:08:39.137" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22567" PostId="6602" Score="0" Text="Thank you! Since the feedback is characterized as &quot;private&quot; in the link, I expected something for detailed in my inbox or sth like this. Also, I do have response to your objections to my question but since this is supposed to be meta, I am not going to write them here. Clearly you misunderstood the question which does in fact show I wasn't able to communicate it well. But  even if all your points hold, that would still not translate to a question with lack of detail. There's a misunderstood but clear question there that can be answered. Also, the main question in this post is still unanswered." CreationDate="2023-11-11T18:32:00.300" UserId="312367" />
  <row Id="22568" PostId="6602" Score="0" Text="Some parts of that message are only visible to you. I don't have a way to test which ones. I'm sure some Q&amp;A in the main SE meta explains how the closure message works." CreationDate="2023-11-11T18:34:50.250" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="22569" PostId="6602" Score="0" Text="I see what you described. Nothing more." CreationDate="2023-11-11T18:37:08.717" UserId="312367" />
  <row Id="22570" PostId="6602" Score="7" Text="The closure message says &quot;This question needs details **or clarity**... Add details **and clarify** the problem being solved.&quot; It's disingenuous to suggest that the question was closed solely for a lack of detail when the closure message directly states it was closed for a &quot;lack of detail **or clarity.**&quot; As I said, I wasn't involved in closing the question. Three other users, none of them moderators, voted to close it. So the problem is not that *I* specifically don't understand the question, but that at least 4 site users, myself included, don't understand the question." CreationDate="2023-11-11T19:41:28.273" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="22578" PostId="6604" Score="1" Text="+1 for raising the issue. On the other hand, maybe this is something that doesn't need clarification for the moment. But if clarification is needed, adding a couple of examples of off-topic questions may be useful for people who ask questions." CreationDate="2023-11-22T10:03:51.160" UserId="164936" />
  <row Id="22589" PostId="6606" Score="1" Text="+1 &quot;That amplifies your chance of getting a constructive, helpful answer.&quot; Also amplifies one's chances of learning more deeply through the process of asking, than simply obtaining information." CreationDate="2023-12-02T20:56:03.840" UserId="44269" />
  <row Id="22582" PostId="6608" Score="1" Text="What kinds of updates are you expecting?  If you just want to know how CV compares to other sites, then -- like any of us -- you would have to query the other sites through the SE app.  Your ultimate questions about &quot;reflects badly&quot; and &quot;do about it&quot; have IMHO been discussed to death in the past." CreationDate="2023-11-30T15:36:31.057" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="22583" PostId="6608" Score="4" Text="What to do? Answer, vtc, vote, what else? If you want to do more, choose a tag of your liking, go through unanswered questions in it, answer if you can, find dups, and else: Aggressive vote to close ..." CreationDate="2023-11-30T15:55:25.943" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="22584" PostId="6608" Score="4" Text="@kjetilbhalvorsen Starting a bounty on a good, but old and unanswered question can be another option." CreationDate="2023-11-30T18:46:46.393" UserId="164936" />
  <row Id="22598" PostId="6609" Score="3" Text="*We need greater participation from the community not only in the review queue but also to **search for old questions** that can be closed as dupe/low quality/programming based*---Not sure why I hadn't been paying attention to old questions for closing, but I may start dedicating more time to that given the review queues usually don't have a lot of action anyway (compared to other places like SO)." CreationDate="2023-12-05T07:56:39.987" UserId="345611" />
  <row Id="22599" PostId="6609" Score="4" Text="That would be great, Shawn. I used to dig and &quot;excavate&quot; many old posts, removed the dead links, edited out unnecessary info. Of late, though, my schedule has trimmed my activities here a lot but still if any other members rise up, that would be great." CreationDate="2023-12-05T08:37:36.943" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22585" PostId="6610" Score="2" Text="I’m not sure how the logic works for that feature but the Main Meta folks probably do." CreationDate="2023-12-02T14:58:14.553" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="22586" PostId="6610" Score="3" Text="@Sycorax, what does &quot;post merge&quot; in that concerned question mean? There is apparently an issue pertinent to this that has already been discussed at Meta: [Merged questions still show up in the Unanswered list](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/66068/merged-questions-still-show-up-in-the-unanswered-list)." CreationDate="2023-12-02T15:03:45.077" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22587" PostId="6610" Score="3" Text="Also the status was never completed: [Answered question with positive scored answer appearing in unanswered question list](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/284580/answered-question-with-positive-scored-answer-appearing-in-unanswered-question-l)." CreationDate="2023-12-02T15:18:39.687" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22588" PostId="6610" Score="4" Text="Questions that are exactly identical can be combined so that all the answers are in one place. We use it very rarely because it’s irreversible." CreationDate="2023-12-02T17:00:06.777" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="22590" PostId="6610" Score="1" Text="Which 'unanswered' list are we talking about? In the search function, I don't find it. Compare https://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=What+def+means with https://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=What+def+means+answers%3A0 is there maybe a screenshot of this?" CreationDate="2023-12-04T11:50:00.363" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22591" PostId="6610" Score="1" Text="Also in this list I do not find it: https://stats.stackexchange.com/unanswered has the status of the question been changed after recent activity?" CreationDate="2023-12-04T11:57:09.717" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22592" PostId="6610" Score="1" Text="@SextusEmpiricus I was just using the list generated by clicking on &quot;Unanswered&quot; on the left side of the CrossValidated page.  I just did that again, and it's still there.  I took a screen shot  but it won't paste here for some reason. But if you click the button to sort by score, it's easy to find. I will try putting the screen shot in my question." CreationDate="2023-12-04T12:13:01.113" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="22593" PostId="6610" Score="0" Text="@PeterFlom it is weird that I do not get this to show up when I check it on my phone. Both in mobile mode and desktop mode." CreationDate="2023-12-04T16:13:45.843" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22594" PostId="6610" Score="1" Text="I got it now. It depends indeed on the tab. The 'no answers' tab shows it correctly (and also seems to order by score) whereas the 'score' tab shows the mistake." CreationDate="2023-12-04T16:17:00.230" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22600" PostId="6611" Score="3" Text="+1 for the suggestions, for they seem prospective. However any such substantial changes require a major overhaul and that warrant a network request at Meta. In any case, close to what you envisage in point one is done by &quot;bumping&quot; of posts by community wiki, albeit arbitrarily. I'm not sure about how the second pointer would work - I reserve reputation points only for the quality of posts one contributes and not on other activities but this can be modified (as your third pointer suggested) to achieving more badges (presently, afair, there is an _excavator_ badge or so)." CreationDate="2023-12-05T08:46:26.247" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22601" PostId="6611" Score="1" Text="I figured some of these may not be achievable in an easy way given the rigidity of SE. Perhaps I will consider some other ideas if I come up with any." CreationDate="2023-12-05T08:49:35.360" UserId="345611" />
  <row Id="22603" PostId="6611" Score="4" Text="One relatively easy idea (I think!) would be to make it easier to navigate the huge number of pages of unanswered questions, either by having a button that goes to a specific page, or by being able to mark questions as &quot;read&quot; and not shown or something." CreationDate="2023-12-05T11:06:00.660" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="22604" PostId="6611" Score="4" Text="These are good suggestions, but note that they already exist in some form.  The 'community user' will automatically bump 1 Q &gt;1 month old w/o any upvoted answers to the top of the main page.  When you see them, you can investigate &amp; see if there is anything you can do.  I used to do that when I was more active.  Also there are badges for answering a Q &gt;1 month old &amp; having the 1st A to +2, &amp; answering a Q &gt;2 months old &amp; getting your A to +5 (revival &amp; necromancer)." CreationDate="2023-12-05T12:53:42.970" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="22605" PostId="6612" Score="3" Text="If the person who wrote the comment is still active here, I sometimes ask them if they want to turn their comment into an answer.  But if they have stopped participating, I think it's fine to do what you do." CreationDate="2023-12-06T16:54:49.837" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="22606" PostId="6612" Score="0" Text="Good point Peter ! I have also done that before but probably should make it a rule." CreationDate="2023-12-06T16:56:54.943" UserId="7486" />
  <row Id="22607" PostId="6612" Score="3" Text="I've been pinged by fellow members with a comment that my previous comment will do as an answer and this is good all round -- for pinger,  pingee, and we hope the site. I think I've done the same and certainly should." CreationDate="2023-12-06T17:30:03.520" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22608" PostId="6612" Score="3" Text="As I wrote in my post, if you are quoting the comments verbatim, then make the answer as community wiki. Otherwise if there is even a minuscule modification during the compilation, community wiki shouldn't be a matter of concern and yes, there should be reference to the said comments." CreationDate="2023-12-06T18:59:10.307" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22612" PostId="6612" Score="2" Text="This is a good idea, but beware the consequences. When you do post an answer, you are taking ownership of it and will need to justify and explain it: that becomes *your* work.  Don't be afraid to take credit!  But if you merely copy and paste a comment that turns out to be wrong or misleading, you could be embarrassed.  Remember, whoever posted that comment made a choice not to answer: often that choice was made because the comment is incomplete, inadequately explained or supported, or the poster was unsure of its correctness, appropriateness, or usefulness." CreationDate="2023-12-10T17:16:34.050" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="22609" PostId="6613" Score="3" Text="I'm not aware of a specific `[data-dredging]` tag.  Those tags seem decent.  You could also just search on &quot;dredging&quot; &amp; some synonyms, when looking for relevant threads." CreationDate="2023-12-08T12:30:09.060" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="22610" PostId="6613" Score="0" Text="Another phrase I found useful after posting the q was &quot;post-selection inference&quot;. Often that brings up methods to avoid data dredging, but the discussion of dredging in those is useful." CreationDate="2023-12-08T19:44:39.147" UserId="261208" />
  <row Id="22611" PostId="6613" Score="1" Text="Depending on the question, [multiple-comparisons] might be OK, possibly [ethics] too (though this one has not a lot of questions yet)." CreationDate="2023-12-09T13:05:02.167" UserId="164936" />
  <row Id="22731" PostId="6614" Score="1" Text="Another possibility is to flag the post. Good questions should not be closed just because they are old, but bad or borderline questions I think should (and I close many such ...), especially if the poster have disappeared. There are too many old bad questions here that in reality never will be answered! Closing some of the worst ones will also make the automatic bumping more useful." CreationDate="2024-02-14T13:45:32.940" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="22733" PostId="6614" Score="0" Text="@kjetilbhalvorsen Re-reading my answer, I probably overestimated the &quot;review queue congestion&quot; problem. Now, I don't look actively for old off-topic questions, but I occasionally launch a VTC if they appear in my feed in a way or another (I do the same with old questions lacking enough details to be answered). I don't mind if other people are more active than me in this regard, these questions are meant to be closed at some point anyway." CreationDate="2024-02-14T14:21:30.317" UserId="164936" />
  <row Id="22617" PostId="6615" Score="5" Text="I suspect the post had been deleted to spare you any more downvotes.  I have undeleted it so that all readers of this thread will have access to it.  As far as this actual (meta) question goes, I do favor general answers for their potential to expose deeper concepts.  In this case, though, I have been unable to see why the additional complications associated with logistic regression might shed any light on the original question." CreationDate="2023-12-13T15:46:03.177" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="22623" PostId="6615" Score="0" Text="I had difficulties understanding your generalisation and in particular in the case of the link with &quot;Why is logistic regression particularly prone to overfitting in high dimensions?&quot;. Logistic regression is already able to overfit in the case of a single dimension, and the problem with logistic regression there is a different issue. Linear regression can also do this, but then the observations need to be in a lower dimensional subspace of the model, which has a low probability." CreationDate="2023-12-15T15:02:27.767" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22626" PostId="6615" Score="0" Text="@SextusEmpiricus That question is about an overfit in high dimensions, not just the one in the first that you can get since it is asymptotic. I remember having read the underlying paper of that question - at least until I found this chapter on rare feature crosses. I think that the accepted answer there has not understood the main problem of rare crossings of rare features with rare events. Or I have not understood it." CreationDate="2023-12-15T22:09:45.157" UserId="287262" />
  <row Id="22627" PostId="6615" Score="0" Text="Check [What are the consequences of rare events in logistic regression?](https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/307642/287262) with &quot;The standard rule of thumb for linear (OLS) regression is that you need at least 10 data per variable or you will be 'approaching' saturation. However, for logistic regression, the corresponding rule of thumb is that you want 15 data of the less commonly occurring category for every variable.&quot; Both deal with too little sample size, but in two ways, the latter will overfit rare features at rare events." CreationDate="2023-12-15T22:10:33.887" UserId="287262" />
  <row Id="22628" PostId="6615" Score="0" Text="@questionto42 while the dimensionality is a problem in practical cases, the accepted answer does correctly explain the principle behind the problem with logistic regression, and that is that it is easily prone to overfitting because of it's function... even with a single parameters it can happen. That is a different situation/problem requirement n &gt;= p in OLS which relates to the rank of the design matrix." CreationDate="2023-12-15T22:38:18.197" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22629" PostId="6615" Score="0" Text="@SextusEmpiricus The question links to a Google guide that tells about the problem in high dimensions = with (too) many features at hand. Of course the asymptotic function itself builds the ground for this to happen, but the question is about why it is such a problem in higher dimensions. And that is where the rare feature crosses come in. You add so many paramters that you can tell the story of a few rare events to a large degree with a few rare features. And since unconstrained MLEs can go up to infinity, the overfitting needs to be fought with regularization or feature reduction." CreationDate="2023-12-15T22:55:58.503" UserId="287262" />
  <row Id="22630" PostId="6615" Score="0" Text="See the Google guide [Regularization in Logistic Regression](https://developers.google.com/machine-learning/crash-course/logistic-regression/model-training?hl=en#regularization-in-logistic-regression) &quot;Imagine that you assign a unique id to each example, and map each id to its own feature. If you don't specify a regularization function, the model will become completely overfit.&quot; ... and more, I quoted this also in my answer at [Why is logistic regression particularly prone to overfitting in high dimensions?](https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/475536/287262)." CreationDate="2023-12-15T22:59:40.273" UserId="287262" />
  <row Id="22631" PostId="6615" Score="4" Text="@questionto42 both deal with problems of high dimensionality but the underlying idea is different. That logistic regression is being particularly prone to overfitting has a different motivation than the $n \geq p$ requirement for OLS to work. Peter Flom mentions the two in his answer *“First, you need k+1 observations for the regression to work at all, but you need a lot more than that to avoid overfitting. ”*. The issues 'to work at all' and 'to avoid overfitting' or two different things. The question is about the former, the $k+1$ requirement." CreationDate="2023-12-15T23:04:07.660" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22632" PostId="6615" Score="0" Text="@SextusEmpiricus Good stuff. I am glad you point this out so clearly, this wording is what I wanted to find out all the time and did not know how to say it. I was seeking for something, this could be it :). I still dare to disagree &quot;a bit&quot; since the two things seem to be in the end the same: to work at all or the path to become good work afterwards are on the same path, even though &quot;to work at all&quot; is just the first step. Fine-tuning fights the same problem, just in a lower intensity, it is still linked to this &quot;work at all&quot; as the first step." CreationDate="2023-12-16T13:57:44.287" UserId="287262" />
  <row Id="22618" PostId="6616" Score="0" Text="I spent some time on it. I am out on a limb here, but I somehow see that this could help getting from linear to something else, then back, to see that this is a broad challenge in many guises. I also see that it was undeleted in the meantime. As I am not a professional, I see this also from a third viewpoint, not just from my own. I am not sure whether I am right with the answer, but for my own understanding of the right balance between parameters against observations, intuition grew while I wrote :)))." CreationDate="2023-12-13T16:01:30.683" UserId="287262" />
  <row Id="22621" PostId="6616" Score="0" Text="Thanks for undeleting it, I was already wondering why it was undeleted again when I had finished changing the answer. I see your other remark above only now. In the meantime, I had already changed the answer a lot. With some luck, it can survive. The downvotes are OK (I even understand them, I still do not know whether I am right with the rare feature crosses - which I only took from the paper underlying the other question about the overfitting - and their link to unconstrained MLE that is my own guess), I seek for something here, that weighs more." CreationDate="2023-12-13T16:14:08.537" UserId="287262" />
  <row Id="22622" PostId="6616" Score="1" Text="(+1) Skimming through the upvoted answers to the original question I feel that other people obviously do not mean the same by intuition as I do so I am not surprised that the OP gave an answer rather at a tangent." CreationDate="2023-12-14T16:47:57.720" UserId="101426" />
  <row Id="22636" PostId="6619" Score="1" Text="So I should have started with something like `$$\begin{array}{lcl} \mathbb P ...`.  Fixed now.  Many thanks." CreationDate="2023-12-19T02:36:18.810" UserId="2958" />
  <row Id="22637" PostId="6619" Score="1" Text="You can also leave the input empty like `$$\begin{array}{} \mathbb P` as long as you have the extra brackets" CreationDate="2023-12-20T08:58:09.373" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22638" PostId="6620" Score="8" Text="I usually close such questions with a comment explaining that providing problematic or unworking code is not an effective way to ask a question.  I request that the question be framed in English and mathematical notation (if necessary).  I'm unsure what you mean by &quot;reporting option,&quot; but if it's a boilerplate reason for closure, please remember we have no more slots for that: something else would have to be removed from the list of close options first." CreationDate="2023-12-24T17:07:46.700" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="22639" PostId="6620" Score="2" Text="I was not aware that the number of slots are fixed and a new reason could be added only by removing an existing one. I wonder what would happen in future if we need another one apart from the existing ones, although to be fair, I do think the current ones encompass every situation @whuber." CreationDate="2023-12-24T17:12:19.603" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22640" PostId="6620" Score="5" Text="@User1865345 Not only is the number limited, but so is the length of each closure reason.  (I recall we have 500 characters.)  That's why the messages are so terse!  This is a limitation throughout SE, I believe -- it's not something we can change." CreationDate="2023-12-24T17:21:27.050" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="22641" PostId="6620" Score="0" Text="Wow! Thanks for the clarification, @whuber." CreationDate="2023-12-24T17:22:29.867" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22643" PostId="6620" Score="0" Text="I didn't know that either.  In that case, I agree this problem doesn't merit another slot." CreationDate="2023-12-24T17:38:00.760" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="22646" PostId="6620" Score="2" Text="Code as illustration can be helpful, but as no language is used by all people here, code that is difficult or impossible for others to follow can only make many posts very unclear." CreationDate="2023-12-26T14:25:02.127" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22648" PostId="6620" Score="0" Text="@NickCox That's true. And I know questions *about* code are off topic, but sometimes, especially with more esoteric statistical procedures, it may be very helpful to have the code. While it's true that there is no language that all of us use, I think quite a lot of the &quot;usual answerers&quot; do know at least some R." CreationDate="2023-12-26T15:38:46.910" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="22652" PostId="6620" Score="1" Text="The point is that any status R has as a _lingua franca_ is limited in practice and not a matter of principle." CreationDate="2023-12-27T11:20:20.890" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22642" PostId="6621" Score="4" Text="If the code is both essential to understanding the q. &amp; bad or incomplete enough to preclude understanding it, then the q. should be closed *right away*. Contrariwise, if the q. Is still answerable despite the bad or incomplete code, there's no reason to close it" CreationDate="2023-12-24T17:35:46.633" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="22644" PostId="6621" Score="1" Text="Exactly @Scortchi-ReinstateMonica. Closure should depend on case by case basis. The context  and severity do matter." CreationDate="2023-12-24T17:44:42.170" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22649" PostId="6623" Score="1" Text="I can't find better examples of the use of code in an explanation. But I do remember that sometimes I add some piece of code that explains something (like an algorithm) and a voice in my head tells me that I have to write it very clearly and simple such that anybody that does not know R can still understand it." CreationDate="2023-12-27T07:51:50.400" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22650" PostId="6623" Score="1" Text="So for me, code is also sometimes used to write out an algorithm or a function, and potentially might not actually work or execute." CreationDate="2023-12-27T07:56:40.490" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22651" PostId="6623" Score="0" Text="`ideally a code shouldn't be necessary to understand a question. It should be like an appendix to explain an idea further.` ... `I ensure that it can be read as pseudo-code.` +1." CreationDate="2023-12-27T08:12:20.817" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22653" PostId="6623" Score="1" Text="+1. About &quot;ideally a code shouldn't be necessary to understand a question&quot;, an exception might be when the question is about why different software/packages/languages give different outputs when (apparently) using the same statistical method. In this case, even when the underlying issue is really about statistics, being able to replicate the different outputs with the original code could be essential to answer the question." CreationDate="2023-12-27T21:47:46.507" UserId="164936" />
  <row Id="22655" PostId="6625" Score="10" Text="This has been comprehensively debated throughout last year at Meta. Please check [Is SE legally allowed to sell user content for AI model training despite the fact that some of this content is not allowed to be used to train AIs?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/388646/), [Is SE going to be selling our content for AI model training? And what exactly does &quot;reinvest back into our communities&quot; mean?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/388551)." CreationDate="2024-01-08T07:16:03.683" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22657" PostId="6625" Score="2" Text="Your concern was tangentially addressed [here](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6490/are-we-free-labor-for-openai)." CreationDate="2024-01-08T18:09:57.220" UserId="246835" />
  <row Id="22658" PostId="6625" Score="1" Text="thanks, these links are interesting. I don't see enough discussion of the idea that AI training is different kind of use that could not have been foreseen before, and that's why it has to be licenses explicitly, and can not be covered by fair use concept." CreationDate="2024-01-08T19:15:38.413" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="22659" PostId="6625" Score="1" Text="1) Training sounds fine. There are a lot of humans as well that use StackExchange for their training. 2) A problem would be the case when entire posts or large parts of it are literally quoted without reference, or when original/recent/non-trivial ideas can not be traced back to their original source. Q) Which of these situations are you talking about in this question? If it is the first case, why do you think it is bad? If it is the second case, are there examples of language models actually doing this?" CreationDate="2024-01-08T21:08:14.637" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22660" PostId="6625" Score="7" Text="It is not that I think the case #1 is bad, but I contend that human learning is fundamentally different from machine learning. Suppose, you share your family album with me and I learned something about your relatives. Now, imagine an ML algorithm is trained on the same album, now it can crawl the internet and find all your relatives everywhere in the world in every picture ever taken." CreationDate="2024-01-08T22:11:18.720" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="22687" PostId="6625" Score="0" Text="\**[ChatGPT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChatGPT)*" CreationDate="2024-01-18T22:24:05.433" UserId="509" />
  <row Id="22688" PostId="6625" Score="0" Text="@Aksakal it is not the algorithm that crawls the internet though" CreationDate="2024-01-19T12:39:02.427" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="22689" PostId="6625" Score="0" Text="Another thing is, did we have to consent? Is a model trained on data considered to be a derivative according to CC?" CreationDate="2024-01-19T12:39:46.227" UserId="60613" />
  <row Id="22693" PostId="6625" Score="0" Text="@Firebug many people think we did not have to consent, but I think we did." CreationDate="2024-01-20T00:19:39.137" UserId="36041" />
  <row Id="22662" PostId="6626" Score="2" Text="I don't see a need for a new policy. We have numerous ways of reacting to questions and answers that are wrong or poor in any sense, and whether the blame should be attributed to (say) ignorance, incompetence, a small error, a large error or AI hallucinating is secondary." CreationDate="2024-01-10T16:02:51.890" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22663" PostId="6626" Score="2" Text="@NickCox, perhaps you misunderstood (sorry, if I did). This is about implementing a new feature (that will be graduated in SO) but this is not a new policy. It is rather an explicit warning about the prospect of using AI-generated material in answers. Whether we need to follow suit is the question and I think its approval (or otherwise) doesn't involve approving any new or altering any existent policies." CreationDate="2024-01-10T16:17:51.703" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22664" PostId="6626" Score="1" Text="Sorry to explain myself badly. I don't vote for a new banner because I don't really agree that we need a new policy. SE is already too complicated without adding all sorts of stuff by way of extra warnings." CreationDate="2024-01-10T17:40:04.627" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22670" PostId="6627" Score="5" Text="I've noticed the flurry of BO questions, too. And also a sudden interest in questions related to sports gambling, probably because that's becoming more popular in the US. I think the best thing to do is identify and/or create a canonical Q&amp;A that addresses the core concern. The trick is to think through what the canonical *question* should be, so that we can close the new arrivals as a duplicate." CreationDate="2024-01-10T18:03:58.127" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="22672" PostId="6629" Score="1" Text="Chatgpt based materials aren't uncommon here (yesterday I came across one, albeit a question and not an answer) but I agree with you that there is not a &quot;deluge&quot;. What is hard for me to believe is it would be too much of an intricacy and would increase the clutter; in fact, &quot;once dismissed, logged-in users will not see this banner again.&quot;" CreationDate="2024-01-11T03:57:46.977" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22673" PostId="6629" Score="4" Text="This serves very well as essentially the answer I would have given." CreationDate="2024-01-11T10:32:47.567" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22685" PostId="6629" Score="0" Text="It might be too early to call, but I guess, as far as the latest votes, we might conclude that at least now, the community is not too much inclined in the banner. As for our &quot;science&quot;  cousins, Maths and Physics have indicated to opt for the banner. Others have not so far either delved into the topic or the voting hasn't gone far yet." CreationDate="2024-01-17T13:57:11.743" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22714" PostId="6629" Score="0" Text="https://stats.stackexchange.com/search?q=chatgpt has 62 mentions of ChatGPT in questions and answers, a few of which are about how it works, for example those using the [gpt tag](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/gpt), though most seem to hope it will give them answers to questions" CreationDate="2024-01-24T16:02:34.437" UserId="2958" />
  <row Id="22715" PostId="6629" Score="0" Text="@Henry, absolutely. That seems to tie into the discussion here, right? https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/q/6473/1352" CreationDate="2024-01-24T16:12:59.070" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="22676" PostId="6630" Score="2" Text="You see a  case, and at worst tags that are not used much don't seem any kind of problem, so I say &quot;Go for it!&quot;." CreationDate="2024-01-15T11:33:37.903" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22677" PostId="6630" Score="7" Text="At a minimum, if you create one, be sure to make a good wiki excerpt for it to guide its usage." CreationDate="2024-01-15T12:32:01.657" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="22678" PostId="6630" Score="0" Text="Peter, could you at least show how many questions on this topic have appeared over the past month or so? Albeit I am not acquainted well with the topic, I agree with you but would have a better insight if we get the numbers (not that it is directly related to the aptness of the tag, but still)." CreationDate="2024-01-15T12:34:32.780" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22679" PostId="6630" Score="5" Text="The fact that a tag might be rarely used shouldn't itself be a deterrent.  In fact tags that are very often used can be problematic too, because there is so much stuff to look at, although scanning by votes can help." CreationDate="2024-01-15T12:58:27.337" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22680" PostId="6630" Score="3" Text="If the new tag stays at 1 for half a year, it will be removed, so at least try to find a few other posts to retag" CreationDate="2024-01-15T13:00:33.317" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="22681" PostId="6630" Score="0" Text="Agreed with every word @NickCox. As I said,  this should not be the core factor for assessing the creation of the tag. I only wanted to know the frequency which can be partly relevant." CreationDate="2024-01-15T13:04:00.403" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22682" PostId="6630" Score="0" Text="I added the tag and a brief Wiki.  I'll try to find some more examples." CreationDate="2024-01-15T14:46:10.460" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="22683" PostId="6630" Score="1" Text="@PeterFlom, I have added the link to the tag, you created in the post." CreationDate="2024-01-15T15:54:26.487" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22697" PostId="6630" Score="1" Text="The tag description says *the dependent variable is not continuous*, but the tag's name does not reflect that. What tag should be used for nonlinear multilevel analysis where the dependent variable is continuous? Perhaps it would be good to include guidance on this in the tag description?" CreationDate="2024-01-22T10:30:19.370" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="22700" PostId="6630" Score="0" Text="@RichardHardy Can you add that? Thanks!" CreationDate="2024-01-22T11:55:48.813" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="22701" PostId="6630" Score="0" Text="@PeterFlom, I could add that, but first I need an answer to my question. Otherwise I do not know what to add." CreationDate="2024-01-22T12:10:57.590" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="22702" PostId="6630" Score="0" Text="@RichardHardy I am not sure of the answer.  Maybe we need to revise the &quot;not continuous&quot;?  What case of nonlinear MLM with a continuous DV are you thinking of?" CreationDate="2024-01-22T12:15:39.363" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="22704" PostId="6630" Score="0" Text="I don't know. I was just guessing that they exist. What type of models with discrete dependent variable do you have in mind under the new tag (if *discrete* is what you mean by *not continuous*)?" CreationDate="2024-01-22T12:36:59.430" UserId="53690" />
  <row Id="22706" PostId="6630" Score="0" Text="Logistic (either regular, or multinomial, or ordinal) or a count model.  Maybe others as well." CreationDate="2024-01-22T16:14:47.617" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="22695" PostId="6631" Score="11" Text="That doesn't sound on topic to me (for many reasons: lack of focus, no definite answer, opinionated, *etc.*), but you certainly could discuss it in chat.  We could even create a dedicated chat room for the discussion if that would help." CreationDate="2024-01-21T18:07:36.577" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="22698" PostId="6631" Score="1" Text="@whuber Thank you and understood. I thought that might be the case, hence why I asked here first, and now I'm especially pleased that I did since I didn't know about there were chat rooms here - that sounds like a great idea ! Thanks again. JK." CreationDate="2024-01-22T10:36:14.843" UserId="11405" />
  <row Id="22705" PostId="6631" Score="3" Text="Community wiki?" CreationDate="2024-01-22T15:16:36.923" UserId="247274" />
  <row Id="22707" PostId="6631" Score="6" Text="I'm wondering if I entirely agree with other comments. For instance, we do have a popular question about &quot;statistical wins and horror stories&quot;, which hasn't been considered as off-topic so far, and feels similar to what you're talking about: https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/434128/famous-statistical-wins-and-horror-stories-for-teaching-purposes . I say &quot;I'm wondering&quot;, because I don't have a final opinion on the subject. In particular, a problem I see with asking about personal experiences is that they could be unverifiable, contrary to other types of questions." CreationDate="2024-01-23T08:08:06.270" UserId="164936" />
  <row Id="22708" PostId="6631" Score="4" Text="(cont'd) On the other hand, StackExchange seems to incite people to share things that &quot;that happened to [them] personally&quot; https://stackoverflow.blog/2010/09/29/good-subjective-bad-subjective . It may be relevant on other SE websites, but I wonder if it's the case on CrossValidated. Relating an experience may illustrate an explanation about statistical issues, but making it the gist of an answer can be problematic due to unverifiability (e.g. if we get some obscure anecdote by an anonymous person on how a statistical mistake supposedly bankrupted a company, we only have one side of the story)." CreationDate="2024-01-23T09:24:15.013" UserId="164936" />
  <row Id="22710" PostId="6631" Score="1" Text="@J-J-J, that's a good remainder to read that old blog yet accurate stance towards opinionated subjective queries. Thanks for the link." CreationDate="2024-01-23T11:37:04.873" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22699" PostId="6632" Score="0" Text="Thank you ! I've taken a look at [Ten Fold](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/18/ten-fold). @whuber mentioned [setting up a dedicated room there for it](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6631/is-it-off-topic-to-ask-for-examples-of-situations-where-a-lack-of-statistical-un/6632#comment22695_6631) which sounds great but  I don't want to jump the gun or run before I can walk, so, since it's my first time using chat rooms here, should I just post my question in the &quot;main room&quot; (if that's the right term) ?" CreationDate="2024-01-22T11:46:58.910" UserId="11405" />
  <row Id="22703" PostId="6632" Score="4" Text="@JoeKing, there isn't really a &quot;main room&quot; exactly.  *Ten fold&quot; is the name of the generic chat room for CV.  Rooms can be set up fairly easily.  Other rooms are usually created for specific conversations, most often comments on a Q or an A that go on too long or wander off topic.  A room could be set up for you, or you could just ask in [Ten fold](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/18/ten-fold).  There isn't too much of a protocol.  You can just jump in." CreationDate="2024-01-22T12:31:33.480" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="22709" PostId="6633" Score="2" Text="I seem to somewhat agree with you (J-J-J and Dave). Problem, I feel, is this specific question might have the balance tilted more towards opinion than experience. I am seeing it more as a Quora/Reddit query rather than a proper SE community wiki post. But that's my take only." CreationDate="2024-01-23T11:35:54.633" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22711" PostId="6633" Score="1" Text="@User1865345 It's certainly a grey area, but I think asking for specific *examples* (as the post does) puts it squarely in the realm of experience. It can still be off-topic for other reasons, of course." CreationDate="2024-01-23T11:58:55.873" UserId="121522" />
  <row Id="22712" PostId="6633" Score="1" Text="Thanks for your input :) I have started a conversation at Ten Fold, but I would very much rather see the discussion on the main site, for posterity etc. I don't know what the procedure is to change a post into a community wiki, but now I'm leaning towards posting a question on the main site and hoping that someone (mods?) can turn it into a wiki rather than closing it ?" CreationDate="2024-01-23T19:48:49.387" UserId="11405" />
  <row Id="22713" PostId="6633" Score="1" Text="@JoeKing Per my other comments under your question (https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6631/is-it-off-topic-to-ask-for-examples-of-situations-where-a-lack-of-statistical-un#comment22707_6631), if you were to ask such a question, I'd recommend you to restrict its scope to famous (or at least well-documented) examples. This may reduce (but not eliminate) the risk of having your question closed. About converting a question to a community wiki, my understanding is that this is a technical operation that only moderators can perform, so probably nothing to worry about too much." CreationDate="2024-01-23T23:02:19.790" UserId="164936" />
  <row Id="22717" PostId="6635" Score="1" Text="**if** this is on-topic, it is on the main site, and not here. Maybe better on chat?" CreationDate="2024-01-30T17:08:31.703" UserId="11887" />
  <row Id="22718" PostId="6635" Score="1" Text="Some relevant factors probably are:&#xA;&#xA;- statistical papers are usually more technical and more difficult to review than substantive papers (it therefore takes longer to get through the review process)&#xA;- it is more difficult to find qualified reviewers (the people who are qualified are already overwhelmed with reviews and other obligations)&#xA;- many applied researchers, especially in the social sciences, do not read technical articles and therefore also do not cite them&#xA;- more applied statistics journals tend to be more widely read and also tend to have higher IFs" CreationDate="2024-01-30T17:29:43.250" UserId="388334" />
  <row Id="22719" PostId="6635" Score="0" Text="This was taken to https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/206329/why-do-statistics-journals-generally-have-low-impact-factors-long-publication-t  I didn't get further with this myself than wondering whether it was true before trying to explain it. The only detail here is on two journals.  What is the full reference for van Nierop (2009)? Detail: it's Royal Statistical Society." CreationDate="2024-02-02T10:05:57.180" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22720" PostId="6635" Score="0" Text="@NickCox It's actually in Statistics Neerlandica. I have put the full citation in my post." CreationDate="2024-02-02T16:50:50.803" UserId="175663" />
  <row Id="22721" PostId="6635" Score="0" Text="Thanks. Naturally what was true 15 or more years ago may no longer hold." CreationDate="2024-02-02T17:21:29.193" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22722" PostId="6635" Score="0" Text="I imagine that this question might work as a community wiki on the main site. In addition, with a little rephrasing this question could be a meta question about itself (where and how to best ask a question about the work environment of statisticians like the example below *copy paste current question*?)." CreationDate="2024-02-03T11:51:17.480" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22723" PostId="6635" Score="0" Text="https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/206329/why-do-statistics-journals-generally-have-low-impact-factors-long-publication-t" CreationDate="2024-02-03T11:56:38.583" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22724" PostId="6635" Score="1" Text="It's hard for most people to answer this with more than anecdotes or speculation. The anecodotes could be dominated by grievances and grumbling and the speculation is likely to be entertaining but futile. (And I am a journal editor.) Sorry, but although the underlying questions are interesting and of real importance, I think closure here was the right decision." CreationDate="2024-02-04T10:16:24.660" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22725" PostId="6635" Score="0" Text="@NickCox At least it's on Academia SE, so should still be findable." CreationDate="2024-02-05T18:01:50.053" UserId="175663" />
  <row Id="22726" PostId="6635" Score="0" Text="Indeed. Thanks for posting there. Anyone with an opinion or even some evidence can join in there." CreationDate="2024-02-05T18:05:10.167" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22728" PostId="6636" Score="0" Text="I am accepting it for it is the present community position. (Although I was reading the post, you seemed to delete it earlier)." CreationDate="2024-02-09T02:17:48.523" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22729" PostId="6637" Score="12" Text="We moderators lack the specialized knowledge to adjudicate  legal claims. Rights-holders can engage with Scihub/etc. to sort out their copyright claims. The important thing to keep in mind is that **a link to an article is not enough** -- links die. We need the full citation information to replace the article if the link goes dead. And ideally, the question or answer should explain what part of the article is being asked about, or summarize the content that answers the question. Otherwise, the question/answer may have little, if any, utility in the absence of the link." CreationDate="2024-02-14T03:22:09.123" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="22730" PostId="6638" Score="1" Text="+1 for the insightful answer. However the second question still remains somewhat unclear...is it okay for us to host the document online somewhere if we have correctly sourced it? I lean towards not doing that for keeping myself outta trouble (by just citing the document like I normally do), but I'm wondering if its totally wrong to share the doc online in the first place." CreationDate="2024-02-14T11:36:27.923" UserId="345611" />
  <row Id="22732" PostId="6638" Score="2" Text="Please check this Law.SE thread: [Is it legal to share digital copies of copyrighted material by allowing access to my cloud drive?](https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/95834/is-it-legal-to-share-digital-copies-of-copyrighted-material-by-allowing-access-t)." CreationDate="2024-02-14T13:49:21.133" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22736" PostId="6641" Score="3" Text="I assume the software can remove a synonym as a technical matter.  However, the description in this question for a proposed “books” tag doesn’t seem to be *statistical* in nature." CreationDate="2024-02-18T18:58:36.720" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="22737" PostId="6641" Score="1" Text="I'm not entirely convinced by Sycorax's argument above (I guess we could use the same argument against some existing tags). However, a problem is that it could be too specific and possibly already covered by other tags (e.g. [tag:communication] ), or by other websites (https://academia.stackexchange.com or https://writing.stackexchange.com), depending on the question." CreationDate="2024-02-19T07:13:31.313" UserId="164936" />
  <row Id="22738" PostId="6641" Score="3" Text="Airing the same sentiment as that of @J-J-J, I would be interested to know from Peter, what aspect of writing a book/paper/chapter is being talked about, especially knowing that these are broadly covered in Academia.SE." CreationDate="2024-02-19T07:40:52.207" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22739" PostId="6641" Score="2" Text="@User1865345 Question such as &quot;why do statistics books do XXX?&quot;  and so on." CreationDate="2024-02-19T10:14:46.383" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="22740" PostId="6641" Score="2" Text="Thanks @PeterFlom. This provides better insight. So, suppose you are talking about a generic issue common to stats book. Wouldn't it suffice to tag that question based on that topic? In any case, though, I can see potential usage of such &quot;textbook&quot;  tag." CreationDate="2024-02-19T10:23:58.483" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22741" PostId="6641" Score="0" Text="@User1865345 Thanks.  I just think there are really two tags here, but all are subsumed under one." CreationDate="2024-02-19T10:26:33.200" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="22742" PostId="6641" Score="1" Text="It just crossed my mind, but does upvoting this question count as &quot;I agree that we should have this tag&quot;? I upvoted this question because it is an interesting one, but I don't have a firm opinion about the subject for the moment, one way or the other." CreationDate="2024-02-19T15:53:01.067" UserId="164936" />
  <row Id="22743" PostId="6641" Score="1" Text="Yes @J-J-J: &quot;Like normal Stack Exchange sites, Meta allows members to vote on questions and answers. For most posts, votes reflect the perceived usefulness: well-written, well-reasoned, well-researched posts tend to get more attention and more upvotes. Highly-voted and frequently-linked posts may become part of the community-curated FAQ or codified as part of the site’s Help Center.&quot; [Source](https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/whats-meta)" CreationDate="2024-02-19T16:59:21.130" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22744" PostId="6641" Score="3" Text="&quot;why do statistics books do XXX?&quot; - wouldn't the same question be relevant for statistics MOOCs, or &quot;classic&quot; statistics classes, or papers on statistics pedagogy? And wouldn't the same answers usually be relevant to them, even if they are not about books per se? I picture someone coming along later with a similar question to yours, but about MOOCs, and not finding your earlier thread because they don't search for &quot;books&quot;, although that thread would have been useful." CreationDate="2024-02-20T10:40:22.987" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="22745" PostId="6641" Score="4" Text="To be honest, I believe the &quot;references&quot; tag is exactly what is needed in this case, and that &quot;books&quot; would be needlessly specific, and dilute the tag." CreationDate="2024-02-20T10:40:28.307" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="22762" PostId="6641" Score="2" Text="I know one question that is of the type &quot;why do statistics books do ...&quot; which is [Where does the misconception that Y must be normally distributed come from?](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/342759/). For such a case having a special 'textbooks' tag seems a bit redundant." CreationDate="2024-02-23T20:32:19.980" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22763" PostId="6641" Score="1" Text="I can imagine something like an 'explanation' tag. Something similar to self-study but not neccesarily as home-work or exercise. An example question is https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/324422/deriving-inverse-gaussian-as-first-passage-time-of-wiener-process" CreationDate="2024-02-23T20:35:38.107" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22764" PostId="6641" Score="2" Text="Other questions but about Wikipedia instead of books **(1)** [MSE decomposition to Variance and Bias Squared](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/123320/) **(2)** [Wikipedia's text about the Clopper-Pearson interval for binomial proportions](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/428672/) **(3)** [Why does degrees of freedom = $\frac{\operatorname{Tr}(H'H)^2}{\operatorname{Tr}(H'HH'H)}$?](https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/590288/)" CreationDate="2024-02-23T20:48:45.880" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22746" PostId="6644" Score="0" Text="I'm not sure that this question is really off-topic. From https://stats.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic &quot;*if it needs statistical expertise to understand or answer, ask it here*&quot;. Does this question need statistical expertise? I'm inclined to think so. A possible risk is to get recommendations of software violating good practices relative to data visualization. I may be wrong (in particular when I don't know SR.SE very well), but to me this risk seems to be lower on CV.SE." CreationDate="2024-02-21T10:15:50.063" UserId="164936" />
  <row Id="22747" PostId="6644" Score="0" Text="On the other hand, reading the answers, perhaps the question could be closed on other grounds (&quot;needs more focus&quot;, etc.)." CreationDate="2024-02-21T10:30:15.600" UserId="164936" />
  <row Id="22748" PostId="6644" Score="2" Text="Exactly @J-J-J. The question, at the outset, has a dearth of focus, which is reflected in those big-list answers. And finally while it could be answered with a statistical perspective in mind, the question, in itself, doesn't explicitly specify anything." CreationDate="2024-02-21T10:33:46.927" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22749" PostId="6644" Score="2" Text="As for whether to close/migrate legacy threads, check the related discussion: [When dealing with old off-topic questions, should we close or lock them, and why?](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4827/when-dealing-with-old-off-topic-questions-should-we-close-or-lock-them-and-why)" CreationDate="2024-02-21T10:46:04.310" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22751" PostId="6644" Score="2" Text="I'm launching a vote to close this specific question, as even of SR.SE it would still have this lack of focus, which is probably against their rules https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/help/closed-questions" CreationDate="2024-02-21T12:23:17.960" UserId="164936" />
  <row Id="22753" PostId="6644" Score="1" Text="@J-J-J, I vtc the post too." CreationDate="2024-02-21T12:30:24.093" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22752" PostId="6645" Score="0" Text="I agree with this stance, gung (+1). I would say as per the norms, let the  mods lock it for good." CreationDate="2024-02-21T12:29:57.017" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22754" PostId="6645" Score="1" Text="Thank you all, the question is now closed." CreationDate="2024-02-21T21:11:33.623" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="22755" PostId="6646" Score="6" Text="For once, my upvote means &quot;Good idea&quot; not &quot;Good question&quot;." CreationDate="2024-02-23T13:39:51.097" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22757" PostId="6646" Score="4" Text="The above should be interpreted this way: On Meta, upvoting a question is generally to be interpreted as &quot;This is a good question to ask&quot; and not necessarily as agreeing with any proposal or viewpoint contained therein." CreationDate="2024-02-23T15:02:27.753" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22756" PostId="6647" Score="2" Text="I upvoted this too." CreationDate="2024-02-23T15:00:56.887" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22758" PostId="6647" Score="1" Text="+1. Perhaps we want to include links to the relevant Meta threads on the Help Center page. I personally would advocate including a *very* conspicuous notification along the lines of **&quot;If you post GenAI-generated crap, it WILL be downvoted and deleted, and you WILL be banned.&quot;**" CreationDate="2024-02-23T17:27:27.630" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="22759" PostId="6647" Score="1" Text="Sure @StephanKolassa. I might be bit of pessimistic when I say I can't find any potential answer to be useful where someone used generative AI. Once we have a collective consent on the proposal, we can come to agreement the final statement (I second yours) that would appear in the page." CreationDate="2024-02-23T17:34:47.733" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22760" PostId="6647" Score="1" Text="I think or rather hope that @StephanKolassa is joking a little. We shouldn't need or seek new criteria for downvoting, deleting or banning.  Trouble is that none of us would recognise a really good AI-produced answer as it would be indistinguishable from any other kind. But garbage is always garbage, whether generated by the utterly clueless, the  utterly confused, or some unutterable code." CreationDate="2024-02-23T18:47:34.770" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="22761" PostId="6647" Score="0" Text="Perhaps we could tone down the insolent style of the statement Stephan has stated without disagreeing with the implicit sentiment. Sure, it would be too much to warrant a straight banning, but certainly the statement could indicate _resorting to the practice of adopting generative AI content without proper vetting is discouraged and continued usage of such might lead to ----_ @NickCox." CreationDate="2024-02-23T19:09:40.333" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22765" PostId="6647" Score="0" Text="@User1865345 Inam not sure you find it a useful answer but in [this answer](https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/638721/164061) I used the help of AI to generate the image. I am not such a code monkey that I know the ins and outs of igraph so I asked the computer to make an initial sketch of the graph and it also helped me answering questions about how to modify colours text locations etc." CreationDate="2024-02-23T21:07:58.510" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22766" PostId="6647" Score="0" Text="@User1865345: I took the liberty of submitting both &quot;f you post GenAI-generated crap, it WILL be downvoted and deleted, and you WILL be banned&quot; and &quot;resorting to the practice of adopting generative AI content without proper vetting is discouraged and continued usage of such might lead to&quot; to https://textinspector.com. The first statement got a Flesch-Kincaide Grade of 8.39, the second 13.91. I personally would rather err on the side of understandability. Of course, we can tune it down. Also, please note that I do not advocate banning for GenAI content, but for GenAI-generated *crap*." CreationDate="2024-02-23T21:50:05.513" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="22767" PostId="6647" Score="0" Text="Sure @StephanKolassa, I am all in what you stated and agree with that we are not against the whole exclusion of GenAI content but rather the practice of dumping anything based on those without proper checking." CreationDate="2024-02-24T01:41:46.213" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22768" PostId="6647" Score="0" Text="@SextusEmpiricus, that's actually an interesting use and the output of the Markov chain turned out nice indeed." CreationDate="2024-02-24T01:43:01.927" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="22769" PostId="6647" Score="0" Text="@SextusEmpiricus: [your comment](https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6646/shall-we-edit-the-help-centre-page-on-generative-a-i/6647?noredirect=1#comment22765_6647) sounds like &quot;any content crafted, in part or in whole, using a tool that writes a response automatically based on a prompt it is provided&quot;, so it looks like you should have credited AI?" CreationDate="2024-02-24T07:42:32.233" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="22770" PostId="6647" Score="0" Text="@StephanKolassa I see now that my answer may not have been such a great example of the use of AI that is intended in this meta-question. Isn't crediting only for creative original content? If I make a post with the help of spelling control and grammar improvements and I made calculations with the help of Wolfram alpha and I used Google to search for information, do I need to credit all three programs?" CreationDate="2024-02-24T08:58:11.903" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="22771" PostId="6647" Score="0" Text="@SextusEmpiricus: that is an excellent question. For that specific question, I honestly don't think you need to credit anything, since your use of GenAI rather obviously did not go much beyond googling for an example of how to create this graphic. But by the text of our help page, you indeed seem to have to credit it (&quot;crafted in part&quot;). It's hard to find the golden mean here." CreationDate="2024-02-24T12:36:01.080" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="23778" PostId="6649" Score="4" Text="The first paragraph answers the question: _if one can increasingly better answer arbitrary questions, then one has increased the ability to use statistics in one's work_ Otherwise this is a bit of a grumble recycling comments that will be familiar to long-term members here. Speaking for myself naturally, but possibly for many others too, I have never downvoted or even dissented from any post of yours because it was creative, unconventional or from a seeming outsider. That would indeed be puerile. I have sometimes disagreed with you or (I fear) failed to follow your point, different issues." CreationDate="2024-03-01T14:42:16.323" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="23779" PostId="6649" Score="3" Text="I am a bit of an outsider here as a geographer with precisely zero formal qualifications in statistics but don't recollect any flak or snide or snarky remarks on that score from anyone who knew about it. (Some flak I have received for more usual reasons.) I've found that ideas here almost always get whatever respect they do (or don't) deserve.  I will say here that I think CV is a much friendlier community than Stack Overflow, for example." CreationDate="2024-03-01T14:46:56.997" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="23781" PostId="6649" Score="0" Text="@NickCox My overall experience here has been positive. There is insular thinking within any specialty. This is not flak, snide, or snarky, and is only typically pertinent to statistics. It has to do with a lack of multidisciplinarity, and has consequences. Trivial example, I did a quantitative biology submission on arXiv that took minutes using LaTeX. The medical journal took three months of backbreaking typesetting work to correct the proofs and they had never seen a LaTeX file, ever. Fortunately, one reviewer was a knowledgeable medical physicist, and contributed wisely to the text." CreationDate="2024-03-01T21:15:43.683" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="23782" PostId="6649" Score="0" Text="@NickCox My spell checker for the above didn't recognize the words &quot;multidisciplinarity,&quot; &quot;LaTeX,&quot; and &quot;@NickCox.&quot; It was not flak, snide, or snarky, just uninformed, so I added them to my dictionary." CreationDate="2024-03-01T21:25:30.387" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="23784" PostId="6649" Score="0" Text="@NickCox See my answer to the so-called [urn paradox](https://stats.stackexchange.com/a/579177/99274) in which I identify that as [conditional convergence](https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/315502/99274). Notice that there is no paradox beyond the bogus expectation that a conditional convergence is unique when the sequence of summation is altered. Notice that I got zero votes for that actual answer. I had a very hard time explaining that there is no paradox, some of the comments I got were quite negative. So what? I'm a big boy, I can take it." CreationDate="2024-03-01T23:58:03.717" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="23785" PostId="6649" Score="0" Text="Hard to know what you're intending that example to convey.  Your post came &gt;4 years after the thread started. There were no downvotes and whatever comments may have been made on your post have disappeared.  Sorry, but that is not the kind of question that interests me and (not the same thing) not one on which I have particular expertise, so I have no scope to evaluate the merits of your answer and assess how far it deserves more credit than it got." CreationDate="2024-03-02T15:55:30.707" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="23786" PostId="6649" Score="0" Text="@NickCox You would have to look at the deleted answers to see just how contentious this question was. This isn't about me, particularly, but there was a lot of authoritarianism on display, a lot like peacocks showing their feathers. My post came &gt;4 years later because I never forgot the nonsense that went on, had to think about it, and when I came to a definitive answer, went back and added it." CreationDate="2024-03-02T23:30:04.590" UserId="99274" />
  <row Id="23790" PostId="6650" Score="0" Text="It is interesting how this question became a hot network question. It is always these type of questions that are not interesting but are still watched and answered by many. It is like this sketch about sexy dancers on TikTok by [VivaLaDirtLeague](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VUHFXnOn7mI&amp;t=0s)." CreationDate="2024-03-08T08:26:51.713" UserId="164061" />
  <row Id="23791" PostId="6650" Score="0" Text="It won't be too much of a hard thing for a long time user to guess which would go to HNQ, as we conversed few days ago at [Ten Fold](https://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/65254466#65254466), mainly that the question received two answers over a short span of time and those received quick upvotes @SextusEmpiricus (and yes, I agree with your assertion)." CreationDate="2024-03-08T08:39:42.797" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="23787" PostId="6651" Score="4" Text="On the contrary, I made it Wiki right after it was posted, anticipating that *at best* there would be many different legitimate answers offered. I feel the alternative is to close it as too unfocused.  The answers it is already collecting have me leaning even more towards closure, but it is definitely on topic, so I have reverted it to wiki status.  PS: If you're unsure how to check the timeline of a thread, let's discuss that in the mod chat." CreationDate="2024-03-06T20:57:45.860" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="23788" PostId="6651" Score="3" Text="@whuber, why not convert that into an answer?  After all, it does seem to be *the* answer to this Q." CreationDate="2024-03-07T12:46:57.793" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="23789" PostId="6651" Score="2" Text="I'd have closed it, pending clarification of whether it's asking for a justification of the definition of probability as limiting frequency, or for an *a priori*  argument why the probability of rolling a 6 should be 1 in 6." CreationDate="2024-03-07T17:43:04.290" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="23794" PostId="6653" Score="0" Text="This definitely seems odd.; But what to do about it?  Also, while the two questions are eerily similar, they also differ in some key aspects - the old question had the same people taking both tests, the new one has different people." CreationDate="2024-03-13T10:02:25.200" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="23795" PostId="6653" Score="4" Text="When you ask a q., the system suggests similar ones - or you might search for them before starting. Especially if you're new to the site, you might decide to use a previous q. as a template for yours." CreationDate="2024-03-13T10:50:37.343" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="23796" PostId="6653" Score="1" Text="Also, is it really plausible that someone is doing their dissertation, which is composed of a single comparison of a likert rating between two groups and doesn't know how to do it?  What kind of shoddy Ph.D. program is that?" CreationDate="2024-03-13T11:41:14.443" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="23797" PostId="6653" Score="0" Text="@gung I don't see any indication this is for a Ph.D." CreationDate="2024-03-13T11:56:22.623" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="23798" PostId="6653" Score="1" Text="@whuber The first sentence of the newer question says &quot;for my dissertation&quot; which, to me, strongly implies PhD although some people use it for the paper you submit for a Master's." CreationDate="2024-03-13T12:23:30.543" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="23799" PostId="6653" Score="2" Text="@gung-ReinstateMonica Yeah, I touched on that in my answer to the new question.  I suppose it's possible that this is one minor part of their dissertation. Or it could be U. of Phoenix (an online place).  I've had some clients from there whose PhDs were a joke." CreationDate="2024-03-13T12:25:56.333" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="23800" PostId="6653" Score="0" Text="In fact, it doesn't seem to even qualify for a masters dissertation, imo. But that is another thing. The main issue to me is not whether the user is crossing a similar path by a past user (due to reason(s), we aren't aware of) but rather is if the past one is a duplicate or not. If it is related, then allure the attention of the new user to the old post and if it is a possible duplicate, vtc it." CreationDate="2024-03-13T13:00:19.860" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="23801" PostId="6653" Score="1" Text="@PeterFlom, if it is so, then this would add to the perennial growing folklore of U. of Phoenix." CreationDate="2024-03-13T13:01:32.523" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="23802" PostId="6653" Score="3" Text="@Peter Many institutions require dissertations even for a Bachelors' degree (sometimes as an honors requirement)." CreationDate="2024-03-13T13:24:43.320" UserId="919" />
  <row Id="23803" PostId="6653" Score="2" Text="In British universities it's very common, even usual, for a Dissertation to be a final year commitment for a BA or BSc degree. (And the topics and standards are often similar to those for Master's degrees in some other countries, but that's a different story.)  Sometimes it's called a Project formally, and a dissertation informally." CreationDate="2024-03-13T13:28:41.113" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="23804" PostId="6653" Score="2" Text="There has to be a good joke about a Phoenix emerging from the ashes, but I can't quite make it, yet a meta-comment might do as well as a comment on Meta." CreationDate="2024-03-13T13:30:05.057" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="23805" PostId="6653" Score="0" Text="OK, I guess a dissertation could be undergraduate.  I've usually seen those papers called &quot;thesis&quot; but I remember a discussion somewhere that showed that terminology varies." CreationDate="2024-03-13T14:32:49.037" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="23806" PostId="6653" Score="1" Text="@PeterFlom: https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4471/academia-varies-more-than-you-think-it-does-the-movie" CreationDate="2024-03-13T14:38:22.860" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="23807" PostId="6653" Score="2" Text="It's a new one on me.  I've definitely heard of undergraduate theses, and likewise for masters, but I've only ever heard of a dissertation for a doctorate degree (not all of which are Ph.D.'s, of course)." CreationDate="2024-03-13T15:20:52.113" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="23810" PostId="6653" Score="1" Text="I needed to complete a dissertation (theoretical) &amp; a project (experimental) for my BA; just a dissertation for my MSc; &amp;, had I carried on, it I'm pretty sure it would've been a thesis for my PhD. (Also it's not stated that the survey design &amp; analysis constitute the *entirety* of the dissertation work.)" CreationDate="2024-03-13T16:53:51.470" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="23811" PostId="6653" Score="0" Text="@Scortchi-ReinstateMonica What country are you in?" CreationDate="2024-03-13T17:11:09.153" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="23812" PostId="6653" Score="1" Text="@PeterFlom: England. A source whose credibility I haven't the slightest idea of states that U.K. &amp; U.S. usage are quite opposite: https://www.scribbr.co.uk/faqs/dissertation-vs-thesis" CreationDate="2024-03-13T17:16:53.260" UserId="17230" />
  <row Id="23818" PostId="6653" Score="1" Text="That's been my experience too.  (Two people separated by a common  language)" CreationDate="2024-03-13T18:08:11.390" UserId="686" />
  <row Id="23808" PostId="6654" Score="4" Text="Thank you for clarifying! No harm done, I was just a little surprised at the similiarities. There is no problem whatsoever in basing a question off an earlier one; it's just helpful if you could next time point to the &quot;original&quot; and explain how your question differs from the earlier one, otherwise your question could be closed as a duplicate of the earlier one." CreationDate="2024-03-13T16:28:34.080" UserId="1352" />
  <row Id="23809" PostId="6654" Score="3" Text="This clears things up and provides insight at what happened there. As for your query, it seems Peter has given a correct assessment of your situation; you may ask Peter for further clarifications if needed. Best wishes." CreationDate="2024-03-13T16:39:49.407" UserId="362671" />
  <row Id="23813" PostId="6655" Score="0" Text="FYI, I notified the opendata community about this question, here: https://opendata.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/503/advertisement-of-the-open-data-website-on-crossvalidated-off-topic-messages" CreationDate="2024-03-13T17:22:44.410" UserId="164936" />
  <row Id="23814" PostId="6655" Score="3" Text="https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/6092/should-we-replace-the-data-set-request-with-distinct-this-is-an-off-topic-sof Stack Exchange won't give us an additional slot for &quot;this is off topic because it's about getting a dataset&quot; so we had to shoehorn it into this closure reason. If you think you have a better &quot;off-topic&quot; message, you can share it. But we only have so many slots, and it's hard to fit all of the reasons into them." CreationDate="2024-03-13T17:32:55.013" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="23815" PostId="6655" Score="2" Text="Ah, thanks for the context. Then my suggestion, if possible, would be to remove direct mentions of any specific website, and just keep the link &quot;support links we maintain&quot;." CreationDate="2024-03-13T17:36:18.837" UserId="164936" />
  <row Id="23816" PostId="6655" Score="5" Text="It's a valid concern to raise. Previously, the opposite suggestion got a positive reaction in this post, which lead us to today. https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2184/for-obtaining-specific-datasets-questions-lets-recommend-opendata-stackexcha?rq=1" CreationDate="2024-03-13T17:39:55.123" UserId="22311" />
  <row Id="23817" PostId="6655" Score="0" Text="@Sycorax Didn't see this discussion, thanks again. I suspect this past discussion is the reflection of open data enthusiasm back then, which probably isn't the same today." CreationDate="2024-03-13T17:44:42.357" UserId="164936" />
  <row Id="23819" PostId="6655" Score="0" Text="Well, the question doesn't seem to raise a lot of interest for the moment. That's definitely not a hill I'll die on, so if no one is interested about the issue, I don't mind leaving things as they are. Anyway there's no reason why we can't discuss the problem again later, if at some point it becomes more consequential." CreationDate="2024-03-14T07:05:59.377" UserId="164936" />
  <row Id="23822" PostId="6655" Score="2" Text="We have a strictly limited number of closure reason slots available; we also have a strictly limited number of alternative sites where we could directly migrate a Q within the closure dialog (mods can migrate a Q to any SE site).  Lastly, the description we can put for these options is very limited to a small number of characters.  It is from balancing these constraints that we have a fixed migration path to [SO] &amp; post a link to [opendata.SE] in the description.  It is admittedly an out &amp; out kludge." CreationDate="2024-03-15T11:45:34.723" UserId="7290" />
  <row Id="23821" PostId="6656" Score="7" Text="I like this idea. Just to underline what active Meta users already know -- whatever you do can be wrong. Many of the posts we don't want here would also be poor posts somewhere else and encouraging people to go elsewhere is like exporting one country's rubbish (garbage) to another. I am currently seeing a rash of posts on Stack Overflow with broad, multiple point enquiries about how to analyse my data PLUS what is the code for doing that. Naturally, such posts wouldn't fit well here either." CreationDate="2024-03-15T09:53:35.960" UserId="22047" />
  <row Id="23823" PostId="6656" Score="2" Text="Agreed. For some reason, under &quot;obtaining particular datasets&quot; that help page lists only GIS.SE, not OpenData.SE... I think the vast majority of requests for data are *not* geographic. So the first step would likely be to edit a link to OpenData.SE into that page. And ideally tighten it up a bit - it currently contains three bullet points and a lot of text that is logically equivalent, so it looks to me like it should either be *all* bullets or *no* bullets. Happy the non-mod who can't be told &quot;if you are so smart, go ahead and edit!&quot;" CreationDate="2024-03-15T13:22:12.627" UserId="1352" />
</comments>