28
Experience suggests that a lot of 'newer' users will add comments such as 'That solved my problem' or 'Thanks' to answers. As the voting/accepting mechanism is the 'visible' way that this can be done on the site, it's desirable that they know this.
At the same time, experience also suggests that many people visit the site only to solve their specific ...
27
I think we could get a useful addition, requiring only few work and without a security risk to our site, which is always to consider for online compilers.
What we would get:
One-click preview
Fast testing and solving problems without a local TeX installation
Actually working with site's TeX code on mobile devices, such as tablets and phones
Additionally, ...
27
Maybe a more lively tutorial can work.
Dynamic version:
Static version:
Code:
\documentclass{beamer}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\usepackage{graphics}
\usepackage{ellipsis}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage{framed}
\usepackage{tabularx}
\usetheme{Madrid}
\setbeamersize{text margin left=30pt,text margin right=30pt}
\title{How to ask \emph{good} questions on \...
26
One I think uncontroversial close reason is for things which are typos or which cannot be reproduced: these are about TeX but are unlikely to help any future readers. Thus something like
This question was caused by a problem that can no longer be reproduced or
a simple typographical error. While similar questions may be on-topic
here, this one was ...
24
Don't feel bad. You're selecting the answer "that helped you most".
There already exists a bounty system you can use to reward contributors beyond voting and acceptance. Here you can select from as low as 50 reputation up to 500 to give to someone.
23
Forget what I just said, Sean's link is way better than my pathetic implementation. :)
Is anyone else personally terrified of the new bar at the top?
If you want to keep the avatars, just comment the following part of the code:
/*
.user-gravatar32,
.gravatar,
.avatar-me {
display: none !important;
}
*/
woohoo! :)
The following text is kept ...
23
I'm rather against (too frequent) attempts to produce FAQ type documents.
There are lots of "systematic" documents available -- for instance, package documentation, books, guides and so forth. I'm all in favour of them, of course, and of encouraging people to use them.
But I think, mostly, a site like this is valuable precisely because it does something a ...
21
I think discouraging newbies is a bad idea - we were all newbies once. If I'd faced a test before being allowed my first post I'd probably have gone away (and never known enough to regret that choice).
Perhaps showing a newbie a short sample question before they proceed to their own might help. Most people would probably dismiss it with a click (do you ...
20
Not all good, on-topic questions have answers, so it's important to remember that over time it's to be expected that the number of unanswered questions will increase. That said, if there are answers hidden in comments then the correct thing to do is move them to the right place. This is one of the things that happens during 'Answer the Unanswered': there are ...
20
This is a bad idea, for a few reasons.
First, despite the fact that people like to demand MWEs, it's not really the case that every question demands one. Yes, they are important in lots of cases, but there are plenty of good questions which don't need them at all.
Second, plain TeX users or ConTeXt users would never be able to ask questions without an ...
20
The question to be asked is why you are so frustrated. Past first page you wouldn't even see new questions.
There is a tendency in the residents; a bit of "come on ask me an interesting question" urge combined with a pinch of OCD which is perfectly fine. That's why they become residents. But that should stay as such otherwise this becomes a police station....
19
I guess all of us like fun. There's a long distance between totally serious and having fun like childs, which is also great. Somewhere on the way is the "hat game".
The moderators, including me, were a bit sceptical or neutral about this. I have the feeling that this activity may be great for the gaming site, maybe for cooking, fantasy and further sites in ...
19
The simple answer is don't even try to interpret downvotes. :) You will receive so few of them that in the grand scheme of things they are even more irrelevant than votes already are.
But that aside, the voting system on the Stack Exchange sites was designed (I think) to be the great democratic way of deciding quality, and in that democratic tradition, ...
19
Although you have nothing to feel guilty about in changing who you award the tick to, there is something you might ponder on the back of this.
This, I suppose, is one of the reasons why people may sometimes be encouraged to wait a little while (some people really do wait weeks, but 24 hours seems fair) before accepting an answer. Not only does it avoid ...
17
The reputation system is a bit of fun but I think it's dangerous to think there is any correlation between quality of TeX information and points earned. Looking at my top three answers ordered by rep
234 How can I explain the meaning of LaTeX to my grandma?
75 What are penalties and which ones are defined?
68 How was TeX output visualised on ...
17
The StackExchange model is that over time the 'best' answers get upvoted whilst less good ones float downward. When an answer becomes outdated, one can therefore
Post a comment asking the original author to adjust it
Suggest an edit to the original
Post a new answer which draws attention to the reasons that it is preferable
to the older one (perhaps linking ...
16
If you feel you have identified a bug in any software, the first step is to make sure (as far as you can) it is a bug, and the second is to report it. While several (La)TeX code authors are active on the site, it's not always possible to spot every bug report for your own code. As a package author, I am always pleased if people report bugs via the 'official' ...
16
I'd be against this really.
Apart from any technical issues about setting it up, I post a lot of answers and a lot of those have images but almost never do I post a complete document.
For a multipage document I take a conscious decision which page or pages to show, and for a single page I usually crop to the area that I want to highlight in the answer. I ...
16
No. Accepting an answer is purely the decision of the person asking the question, and does not have to reflect what others feel is the 'best' answer. It simply is a way of saying that it is the answer which helped the person asking the question the most. Of course, this can mean that a question with a good answer never gets an accepted answer: that is '...
16
This would be very similar to requesting MathJax support, which has been declined here as we're more interested in the code rather than the output. That doesn't mean the output is not important, of course.
Moreover, many of the code posted by users here contain errors which they don't know how to correct. Or, it contains customizations that are found ...
15
I think the motivation behind this is to make you upvote questions more in general, just like the Electorate badge encourages upvoting of questions. Giving you a counter that tells you "I've already upvoted enough questions, so now I can upvote answers" would be beside the point here.
However, if you really wanna keep track, you could go to your profile and ...
15
This is going to be difficult, since it doesn't fall within the generic realm of StackExchange - site-specific features.
Instead I propose we create a generic question that has a please-do-this-for-me flavour and answer it in a generic way, pointing to some FAQs about usages for packages, other SE sites and even third-party applications. That way one can ...
15
Quoting from the TeXbook:
The
correct way to refer to \TeX\ in a computer file, or when using some other
medium that doesn't allow lowering of the 'E', is to type 'TeX'. Then
there will be no confusion with similar names, and people will be
primed to pronounce everything properly.
While our medium technically does allow lowering of the 'E' (and ...
13
Well my personal opinionated response to that is So What? (in a very playful tone). You can even misshoot the click while scrolling the page and it lands on the other comment which is completely wrong but still, so what? No damage is done.
It doesn't measure anything and it certainly doesn't effect anything. If it seems correct temporarily then upvote it ...
13
You could parse the output obtained by visiting the text-only reputation breakdown. The output resembles:
total votes: 18989
16 22477 (2)
-- 2011-07-06 rep +2 = 3
16 22829 (2)
2 22831 (10)
2 22915 (10)
-- 2011-07-12 rep +22 = 25
2 23026 (5)
2 23085 (10)
2 23096 (10)
2 23096 (10)
2 23096 (10)
--...
13
Going by the blog post announcing/explaining the change, it sounds like your main request of a colour revert is unlikely to be granted:
So, in the redesigned top bar, we wanted to make sure that it would look the same across all sites, and make it obvious that you’re on a Stack Exchange site. It turns out that when you try to pick a color to match 40 ...
13
The StackExchange model is not really designed to handle 'objective' polling, nor would it reasonably be expected to handle this. Indeed, some of the questions which 'we' (TeX-SX users) allow would get closed on the 'main site' (StackOverflow): they would call them 'shopping lists'. However, the feeling on TeX-SX is that some more 'open' questions are ...
13
I don't think that we are in need of restrictive spam filters. Currently, spam is handled in the following ways:
Every new post bumps the thread up, so it doesn't get overseen.
Most spams trigger the low quality bot and get an auto-flag, making them appear instantly in the 10k-tools flag queue.
After couple downvotes, post is locked and eventually deleted.
...
13
This is already partly provided when rejecting a suggested edit:
You are provided with a number of canned responses, including a custom message where you can "clearly explain why you are rejecting the edit":
Here is an example of a rejected edit I made displaying a custom message*:
The suggester of the edit can review their suggestions by clicking on the ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
