44
votes
Accepted
What is the best way to give back to the community when I don't have the math skills?
Firstly, thank you for contributing to our site already. I've noticed you several times and have already been glad of your positive presence.
there are a good number of more or less easy questions ...
- 275k
32
votes
Rich get richer phenomenon on CV
Let's look at the data. First up is a plot of acceptance rates versus the number of answers, with a weighted GAM smooth superimposed (courtesy ggplot2). It shows $...
whuberMod
- 313k
24
votes
Are plain "Welcome to our site" comments too chatty?
Welcome messages are not noise.
Early on in the life of this site, the SE Team actively encouraged posting comments to help people feel welcome. I therefore always decline flags that suggest those ...
whuberMod
- 313k
22
votes
Accepted
Downvoting a new member
Reputation never drops below 1 and previous downvotes are not accumulated to be applied afterwards.
Please note:
Downvotes help the system automatically block people who make a habit of posting bad ...
whuberMod
- 313k
11
votes
Rich get richer phenomenon on CV
The question is asking about rich-get-richer at the level of users (high rep users getting undeserved attention as they get higher rep). I'll address that first, but I'll then discuss a slightly ...
- 275k
10
votes
Accepted
Is there any way to detect / prevent user repeatedly performing minor edits to bring the post into top pages?
(To make sure this gets an answer)
As whuber mentions, there's an automatic mechanism to detect large numbers of edits and flag the moderators (the community bot is a source of a variety of flags of ...
- 275k
10
votes
Rich get richer phenomenon on CV
One example where rich definitely do get richer causally (i.e. after controlling for quality), is questions, in particular newly posted questions.
The more upvotes a newly posted question gets, the ...
- 101k
10
votes
Converting comment to answer in simple questions. Good practice?
As long as the question is on-topic, not duplicate and well posed, answering with comments is a bad practice, because it can leave the post officially unanswered, which is bad for our site statistics. ...
- 3,080
10
votes
Accepted
Is there a reputation threshold for including pictures in questions (and answers)?
As a test, I just included an image in an answer with a new account:
As you see, you only need 1 reputation -- which everyone gets -- to do that. (Since it's a useless answer, I also deleted it.)
I ...
- 275k
9
votes
Are CV participants too harsh on naive questioners?
Interesting and important question. I don't want to add specifically to what I and more crucially many others have said on voting here. There are many such threads. We're not long out of Ganging up ...
- 53.2k
9
votes
Does this question violate any of the community rules?
I'm not sure that your question deserves two downvotes. Your question is from a course or textbook, so it qualifies as 'homework' for our purposes. You should add the ...
8
votes
Does this question violate any of the community rules?
Abdu, I was one of the original downvoters, because I believed that your question was posed poorly (and as I commented, the title not reflecting the question bothered me). I undid the downvote after ...
- 17.2k
8
votes
Is it OK to downvote newbies?
Ok to vote down newbies?
Yes: when they don't show any research effort, are unclear, or not useful. Evidencing confusion about concepts† or making incorrect assertions shouldn't in themselves ...
- 28.7k
7
votes
Are plain "Welcome to our site" comments too chatty?
I'd say flag them for deletion on those threads that have a lot of comments & answers—where clutter might be doing some harm—else leave them be.
So the policy would be this:
...
- 28.7k
7
votes
Accepted
How can a new user with not enough rep comment on a question that the same user has previously asked while unregistered?
As @whuber notes, you need to register and merge your accounts. Here is my boilerplate text that provides the relevant information:
Please register &/or merge your accounts (you can find ...
6
votes
Accepted
What to do with a question which asks about R packages and how to fit RBF networks
From Tim's comment:
If it's a duplicate, then mark it as a duplicate. That is far more helpful than closing as off-topic.
If it's not a duplicate and the non-software part can be answered, then you ...
6
votes
Drive-by Questions - Should Answers Be Accepted by Proxy?
As I stated in my comment above:
It has been addressed and declined here ;)
The top answer in that post nails it down pretty well:
The number of up-votes shows the level of acceptance by the ...
- 101
5
votes
Suggestions on modeling or forecast techniques - too many possible solutions
One option is to provide a list of potential approaches and a corresponding set of general resources in meta - much as we do for questions about software (one package with links per answer); in this ...
- 275k
5
votes
Downvoting a new member
I would search for more meaningful posts at Meta. But a quick experimentation showed this:
$\bullet$ Downvote:
$\bullet$ Result:
Waiting for $15$ minutes...
$\bullet$ Subsequent upvote at another ...
- 6,347
4
votes
What happens with questions of unregistered users?
Turning my comment as a brief answer: as has also been noted by gung - Reinstate Monica, the status of registering of a user doesn't have any bearing on the questions posted by the said user. Unless ...
- 6,347
4
votes
'Cultural differences' between statsSE and mathSE
The OP's post does sound like an invitation to admire our CV-selves in the mirror -but it is totally boring to admire your self, it is preferable, say, to let others admire you. So I downvoted it, and ...
- 56.5k
4
votes
When does a newbie become an expert?
I'm interpreting your question to mean "statistical newbie" rather than "Stack Exchange newbie" or "Cross Validated newbie". (If you're asking about the latter two, you advance pretty quickly. Just ...
- 20.7k
3
votes
Are plain "Welcome to our site" comments too chatty?
It seems relatively clear to me that such comments are too chatty / mildly incongruent with SE policy. That said, it seems nice to welcome people to SE, especially in light of the fact that I have ...
2
votes
Rich get richer phenomenon on CV
Supposedly rich get richer in economy (and life). Those who claim this to be a fact, usually, state that the reason is because the income from labor (wages) grows slower than return on capital. So ...
- 59.3k
1
vote
Rich get richer phenomenon on CV
The OP raises an interesting question. However, I feel "Can we do something to diversify our voting and encourage the new users?" may be an example of an XY Problem.
Personally, I'm not sure the "...
- 5,462
1
vote
Are plain "Welcome to our site" comments too chatty?
Deciding on whether to explicitly indulge on a "Welcome to the site" message for new posters is irrelevant if there is no agreement on what defines being welcoming.
The participants on our site are ...
- 25.6k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible