problem with possibly "not an answer" and downvoting

Question

(Question 1 below is about "pure" LaTeX if you are not familar with LyX...)

The TeX.SX question (my interpretation)

Two years ago this question was asked. The title is "Use a quality glossary and acronym list in LyX". First the OP refers to Q&A on how to write a glossary and acronym list in LaTeX. In the second sentence the OP states the wish to use that glossary and acronym list in LyX.

The reason to ask such a question is that in LyX one cannot directly edit the LaTeX code. LyX automatically generates the LaTeX code but this process can be tweaked and it is possible to inject TeX code/ERT.

After showing a picture of the wanted result the OP mentions that the problem might be too big. The OP allows to solve the question in steps and suggest an approach ("I have broken [up the question into] a possible first step, [...] I am trying to use two packages [...]. My attempt is shown below").

The TeX.SX answers

There are two answers on this:

• Answer A: one by another member
• Answer B: one by myself.

Previously, I had commented on Answer A stating without details that I think it is "not an answer" and not downvoting. I deleted that. Because of a recent duplicate I check Answer A again. The recently featured post "Correct flagging (or: bad answers are answers, too)" is mainly about flagging but also states:

If the answer is really wrong, feel free to down-vote it (down to -1) and please add a comment to it if there isn't already a suitable one there.

I did that with leaving comments about the two major issues 1 and 2 but the author is objecting to them. (If the issues with Answer A are addressed I will change my mind...) Hence, I want to ask the following questions:

1. Compiling the LaTeX MWE of Answer A, I fail to get the glossary and acronym list in my PDF output as shown in Answer A. The author recently states

   \makeglossaries is not needed.

   Does the MWE produce glossary and acronym list in your PDF?

2. Where in Answer A do I find how to create the necessary auxiliary files .gls, .glg ... manually (even knowing that makeglossaries will create them for LaTeX is not enought since LyX does not place auxiliary files into your normal working directory) or how to configure LyX to automate the process?

3. Has my action been okay?

Furthermore, one could ask whether a simple copy and paste into LyX (where to copy which part?) will work. The author of Answer A assumes that more or less ("I don't know what this has to do with Lyx, so I ignore that.") I have also a different understanding of the OP question as I stated above. Is the recent comment on Answer A correct: "The OP asked how to render the glossary and acronym list with nomenclature." Did the OP really asked for that?

BTW, I noticed that my answer got downvoted today without stating any reason! Is there any coincidence?

Answer 1

So I think the user is mafp so no need to anonymize since you have the link to the question. Just come to the chat room or invite the user to a custom chat room if you are really curious about the issue and willing to attack the problem to its full extent... I had also similar problems with a user a year ago or so but everytime we made a chat session the issue was resolved. Alternatively, ask another question and show that it's indeed not working then someone else can verify the solution.

If that's not a big deal for you;

In general, to avoid conflicts like this leave a comment and carry on. It's not an encyclopedia anyway. So wrong answers (not knowing if it's really wrong though because I have no idea about the issue) are not forbidden. Downvoting stuff is just not a good system instead one should simply forget it and leave it to the OP to decide.

But in my very very subjective opinion, taking it out to public like this won't solve any issues, instead would trigger the defense mechanism of everyone. Unless it's really a big problem (insulting etc. involved) just nevermind.

EDIT (Just forgot): similarly others might have downvoted your answer too. So it's always good to ignore cross-downvoting possibility. Not only it's pointless, it's also noise. There is a famous joke about two bankers ..... :) I won't paste it here

DISCLAIMER : This doesn't mean that you are right and mafp is not or vice versa. I repeat I don't even understand the problem but the behavior pattern is very familiar.

Answer 2

I won't really answer this meta question, rather I'll add couple observations, I hope they'll be helpful:

• Answering old questions is sometimes an adventure, the OP is in most cases completely uninterested in the problem, and often is not disponsible. Still, it is an important way of contributing so +1 to both of you.

• There is nothing wrong with providing an answer that is applicable in a slightly different context than what OP wanted (in this case, LyX or not), maybe the notice about this can be written nicer, but that brings us to English instead of typesetting.

• Being nice is a basic rule here. Posting a comment saying "There is no ... . Please update." to someone who obviously spent a good lot of time on the answer, this cannot bring anything good.

• IMHO, none of the answers is worth down-voting since they are both quite top-level.

Answer 3

As I am involved in this, I think I should answer, too.

The real culprit of all this is that the question Use a quality glossary and acronym list in Lyx is a form of an XY problem. The OP probably wanted to make the answer of How to combine Acronym and Glossary work within LyX. He actually asked something different: instead of making the glossaries approach work in LyX, he tried to use nomencl, and get the first-use/subsequent-use scheme that glossaries provides into that. Now, there are two approaches: answer what the OP should have asked, or answer what the OP actually asked. I usually chose the second, and so I did here, suggesting in the first paragraph of my answer that this might be the wrong way to address the problem at hand. You seem to chose the first approach, making a pure glossaries solution work within LyX. And I think here started our misunderstanding:

You commented several times suggesting that my answer does not use the full glossaries machinery. This is true, but fails to see the point of using the nomencl machinery (\makenomenclature ... \nomenclature{...} ... \printnomenclature). So to answer your first question: no, in my approach \makeglossaries is not needed, as we don't write a glo file, and won't read a gls file. Similarly, the answer to your second question is that my answer did not mention how to create the nls file, but a gls file is not needed.

Your third question is the hardest one. I think we worked out in chat that my solution can work. I fully agree that it might be hard to use, in particular for new users that might prefer a more LyXy way. Does it make my answer "not useful"? That is up to the individual user, I guess.