39
Complementary arguments to Joseph's answer:
Couple of things maybe you might take into account about this community: It is indeed a community. This doesn't make us immune to regular moderation and implementations of the rest of the network but in terms of behavior, at least I, can't care less what other networks impose. We have discussed these items lots ...
29
I like your proposed text block and intend to use it in the future.
("Answering" questions on Meta feels weird)
28
It might seem better to ask in the high time but actually it doesn't matter. Because:
You ask in the high time, more people are online (mostly CET day time). More people can look at it. You have high chance of getting an answer.
You ask in the other hours, but because there are not many people online for the same reason, there not many questions either. ...
28
I think an important pedagogical angle also needs to be emphasised. A significant point of the OP providing an attempt at coding is that it is an indication of their level of expertise. It's not just about helping with problems but knowing at what level you need to start your discussion from. Neither of the code blocks as presented emphasise this enough I ...
26
Typical procedures include the following sequence of elevated proposals:
Comment on the answer, requesting some feedback on your updated request/criteria.
Visit the chat room and see if one of the local experts have time on hand to look into modifying the existing (or creating an altogether new and awesome) solution.
Spend some of that well-earned ...
25
Remember that most of the 'value' of the site is meant to come not from dealing with the original poster but rather the wider user base. As such, a good answer should gain upvotes from several (or even many) people: that is the key to determining which answers are best. Answers being accepted by the original poster is certainly welcome, but it's far from the ...
23
For an unanswered question with few upvotes, I think that self-deletion is absolutely fine. That might be different it there were answers, even if not upvoted, or if the question had a lot of upvotes. So there will always be an element of judgement.
23
Of course, it would be a lovely idea to pop by the chat room first and it's always a good idea to look to see if your question has been answered before, in order to avoid the site getting cluttered by lots of duplicate questions we've seen before.
However, although it's easy to see having your question closed as a punishment (and I too obviously don't want ...
22
If you actually find questions that are related to your package content, then you can fire an answering frenzy by mentioning you can also do this with <insert package name> and so on. Then I don't see why it should be a problem since we have loads of package authors answering questions with their own poison of choice. And it is a very very good thing ...
22
Every so often this sort of question comes up, and although it gets posed usually as 'etiquette' it's often more about 'policing' or 'teaching people a lesson'. Personally I think such 'policing' behaviour is never productive for the site.
As others have noted in the comments, most things can be figured out by reading the documentation or Googling. But ...
21
I'll take the two factors separately and give what I understand here (I've neither voted for the question nor answered it).
Voting for questions is essentially a positive action: downvotes on TeX-sx are in general sparse and usually used for cases where a real issue arises. For most of the 'regulars', simply not voting at all is a good indication of an ...
19
To be honest, I think we'd be better without boiler plate text blocks for this kind of thing, If a situation isn't worth writing a custom comment, it's probably not worth making a comment at all.
19
Strange, mostly I use the site for the opposite use:
Don't use longtable
Longtable vs. supertabular: Which is right for which job?
Don't use xspace
https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/86620/1090
Don't use tabularx
Alignment in tabularx environment
Column width table in tabularx environment
https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/145918/1090
https://tex....
19
Technically, a bounty may be reversed or cancelled, if it can be justified...
However, the bounty systems acts like an advertisement in the real world. You pay for something to entice visitors/viewers, but there is no guarantee that such an investment will result in people buying more of your product. In a similar vein - the non-real SE world - there is no ...
19
The StackExchange model works as answers (and thus questions) have value beyond the original asker. To make that work, we have conventions such as answers always being separate from questions, and allow editing of questions to make them clearer. In the same vein, a question which has good answers should not be edited to a completely different one. Instead, a ...
18
Well, regarding point 1, if you post the bounty on your own question, then, if it is upvoted a lot, you will get a good chunk of rep from that which might well pay back some of the bounty. For example, if you post a 50 points bounty and the question then shoots straight to the top of the homepage and spends a weak on the featured tab, it could easily get 5 ...
18
I suggest, to not delete the question, and to not let it remain open, since it's hardly answerable, but to close it.
So people, who might encounter the same problem, could find your question via google or another search engine and could comment or edit and extend your question. Also if they would know a solution, they can vote to reopen the question or at ...
18
Based on votes on the question and comments here it seems the answer is 'yes'. Before posting a question on the main site and starting to populate it with answers, it would be a good idea to draft out the question and guideline-comments here: see below.
Biblatex with Biber: Configuring my editor to avoid undefined citations [Proposed question title]
...
17
I think that such a question should be mandatory.*
Given that TeX aims to be as bug-free as possible, fixes are nowadays rather on the esoteric side, mostly about obscure corner cases, but who knows?
And surely, having a place where to look for “official” information, beside the usual TUGboat channel, would be handy.
* I don't think I'll ask it, though. 😉
16
Here's my take on the options you give.
A. Downvoting: No, as has been commented in the comments to the question, more downvoting doesn't really help. A downvote to -1 (with comments) should be enough to spur the OP to edit their question. If it doesn't the extra downvotes won't spur them on more.
B. Close as unclear: No. Or certainly not immediately. It's ...
15
This happens occasionally, and the results have also been varied. In some cases, users provide multiple solutions in a single answer (example). In other instances, users may provide multiple answers, each of which provide a distinct solution approach (example query). The former scenario is more the norm in my opinion.
The original question may request each ...
15
Since other text blocks that we paste in sometimes have alternatives, perhaps both this one and the original one can be preserved, and people can use whichever one suits their degree of formality/hypocrisy.
15
You should ask only one question per question.
This helps everyone involved.
You are more likely to receive an answer if you ask one thing, because you don't discourage people who know the answer to only one of several questions you have from answering.
Those answering your question don't get tangled up in the details of several tangentially related ...
15
If you see a question that has been asked before, vote to close it as a duplicate. So it gets a link to the earlier question (choose a good one if there are several candidates).
Naturally, frequently asked questions (and frequently referred questions) are those that get the most links to them. So the FAQ list grows and gets sorted over time, automatically.
...
15
Is it okay for me to keep asking questions, while making minimal contributions to the answers here?
Absolutely!
A high quality contribution is a high quality contribution.
Other people may have the same problem that you are having and if you've already asked a good question they can find the answer and that's great. You can also get the information you ...
15
In the situation you described I should say "absolutely not".
In my opinion, the correct way to act, to not waste the answer, is that the answerer should ask a new question where to put his/her answer and delete the original answer.
In this way the original question remains unanswered (someone else will answer, seeing its status) and the original answer is ...
15
The Q&A format of the Stack network doesn't lend itself well to a standalone post (SO tried this with the documentation experiment; it didn't go well). In that sense, no, you should not post your example.
But there is an alternative. You can transform your post into a true Q&A. What is the trickiest part of the table? You can create the rest of ...
14
By-design, the network treats each site as a separate entity, so there is no possibility of marking as a duplicate between different sites. As such, the only ways to answer such questions are to post an answer or to close and migrate.
The stated aim of the network is to develop repositories of knowledge on the range of topics covered. So if someone chooses ...
14
They should be asked on the Main site, that's why the fun tag is for.
If you're worried because of some reputation gain which someone may deem undeserved, you could ask the mods to trasform the question in Community Wiki (but, for example, how could you say that this reputation: https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/338377/101651 is undeserved?).
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible