[isabelle] Contributing some Q&A to StackOverflow; please help me to gain reputation

[Christoph LANGE]

Dear Isabelle users,

a while back Makarius and I collaborated on an Isabelle formalisation of
some things about auctions (cf. http://arxiv.org/abs/1303.4193, will put
latest version there ASAP). To be precise, I had written a
formalisation (my first one ever) that worked but looked quite clumsy,
and he completely revised it, teaching me a lot of idiomatic
Isabelle/Isar, by working directly on the formalisation, and by
answering lots of questions on our internal project mailing list.

I have now started to share his lessons with the rest of the world on
StackOverflow. For each lesson learned I intend to ask a question and
then to instantly answer it myself with what Makarius had taught me (or
with how I understood his explanations).

StackOverflow is giving me, a first-time user, a hard time with this, as
I first need to gain some reputation in order to do such uncommon things
as making many posts in succession, answering my own questions, etc.
Could I therefore ask _you_ to give me some reputation? My first
"question" is here:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16629417/what-is-an-idiomatic-style-to-do-an-isabelle-proof-by-cases.
Others will follow soon; please see my account at
http://stackoverflow.com/users/2397768/christoph-lange.

Cheers, and thanks in advance,

Christoph

--
Christoph Lange, School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham
http://cs.bham.ac.uk/~langec/, Skype duke4701

→ Intelligent Computer Mathematics, 8–12 July, Bath, UK.
Work-in-progress deadline 7 June; http://cicm-conference.org/2013/
→ OpenMath Workshop, 10 July, Bath, UK.
Submission deadline 7 June; http://cicm-conference.org/2013/openmath/

[Joachim Breitner]

Dear Christoph,

Am Samstag, den 18.05.2013, 23:29 +0100 schrieb Christoph LANGE:
> StackOverflow is giving me, a first-time user, a hard time with this, as
> I first need to gain some reputation in order to do such uncommon things
> as making many posts in succession, answering my own questions, etc.
> Could I therefore ask _you_ to give me some reputation?

I’m not sure that this is a good idea. The reputation system in
StackOverflow is designed to reward questions and answers that are
useful to others; if one has to explicitly ask for reputation then maybe
StackOverflow is not the right medium for that.

Maybe your surly interesting advice would better be suited for a
Isabelle style guide like document?


But generally you are right that StackExchange is becoming a good forum
to get Isabelle advise, and it would be good if more Isabelle users
would follow it and more liberally distribute upvotes to genuine
questions and useful answers.

Greetings,
Joachim

--
Dipl.-Math. Dipl.-Inform. Joachim Breitner
Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter
http://pp.ipd.kit.edu/~breitner

[Christian Sternagel]

On 05/19/2013 06:43 PM, Joachim Breitner wrote:
> Dear Christoph,
>
> Am Samstag, den 18.05.2013, 23:29 +0100 schrieb Christoph LANGE:
>> StackOverflow is giving me, a first-time user, a hard time with this, as
>> I first need to gain some reputation in order to do such uncommon things
>> as making many posts in succession, answering my own questions, etc.
>> Could I therefore ask _you_ to give me some reputation?
>
> I’m not sure that this is a good idea. The reputation system in
> StackOverflow is designed to reward questions and answers that are
> useful to others; if one has to explicitly ask for reputation then maybe
> StackOverflow is not the right medium for that.

I agree with the above comment. However, I do not draw the same conclusion:

> Maybe your surly interesting advice would better be suited for a
> Isabelle style guide like document?

- In my opinion it is completely okay to ask and answer questions
yourself (and indeed this is even encouraged in the faq of
stackoverflow). (And no need to justify this as part of the question.)

- If your questions and answers are good, you will get reputation.

> But generally you are right that StackExchange is becoming a good forum
> to get Isabelle advise, and it would be good if more Isabelle users
> would follow it and more liberally distribute upvotes to genuine
> questions and useful answers.

Indeed, stackoverflow is better suited for certain kinds of questions
than the mailing list, and I hope that it attracts more users over time.
I don't see a need to be more liberal with upvotes ;) (those will come
with more users).

cheers

chris

[Christoph LANGE]

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Dear Joachim, dear John,

thanks for your feedback and for your votes. You have helped me to
get started.

2013-05-19 10:43 Joachim Breitner:

> I’m not sure that this is a good idea. The reputation system in
> StackOverflow is designed to reward questions and answers that are
> useful to others; if one has to explicitly ask for reputation then
> maybe StackOverflow is not the right medium for that.

I agree – but I hope that, from looking at my questions and answers,
you won't say that they are not useful at all and thus don't deserve
any votes. All I was asking for was a small "start-up loan" to be
able to do certain things on StackOverflow as a new user, such as
posting answers to my own questions. Today I can start paying it back ;-)

> Maybe your surly interesting advice would better be suited for a
> Isabelle style guide like document?

Originally (around February) I had been thinking of contributing this
stuff to the wiki, but the discussion on this list then encouraged me
to give StackOverflow a try instead. And StackOverflow actually
encourages answering your own questions:
http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/07/its-ok-to-ask-and-answer-your-own-questions/.

> But generally you are right that StackExchange is becoming a good
> forum to get Isabelle advise, and it would be good if more Isabelle
> users would follow it and more liberally distribute upvotes to
> genuine questions and useful answers.

Your (and others') posts in response to mine seem to prove, in a way,
that at least I managed to disguise my contributions as "genuine
questions" ;-)

Cheers,

Christoph

- --

Christoph Lange, School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham
http://cs.bham.ac.uk/~langec/, Skype duke4701

→ Intelligent Computer Mathematics, 8–12 July, Bath, UK.
Work-in-progress deadline 7 June; http://cicm-conference.org/2013/
→ OpenMath Workshop, 10 July, Bath, UK.
Submission deadline 7 June; http://cicm-conference.org/2013/openmath/

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[Joachim Breitner]

Hi,

Am Sonntag, den 19.05.2013, 12:11 +0100 schrieb Christoph LANGE:
> 2013-05-19 10:43 Joachim Breitner:
> > I’m not sure that this is a good idea. The reputation system in
> > StackOverflow is designed to reward questions and answers that are
> > useful to others; if one has to explicitly ask for reputation then
> > maybe StackOverflow is not the right medium for that.
>
> I agree – but I hope that, from looking at my questions and answers,
> you won't say that they are not useful at all and thus don't deserve
> any votes. All I was asking for was a small "start-up loan" to be
> able to do certain things on StackOverflow as a new user, such as
> posting answers to my own questions. Today I can start paying it back ;-)

when I wrote the mail I only looked at
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16629417 which I did not find very
great (though I do not agree with the closing of it).
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16629591 is much better, especially
as it is concrete enough that someone might find it when he is searching
for the relevant keywords.

[Christoph LANGE]

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2013-05-19 12:38 Joachim Breitner:

> when I wrote the mail I only looked at
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16629417 which I did not find
> very great

OK, I see.

> (though I do not agree with the closing of it).

Another StackOverflow feature I need to learn about – let me try to
understand how that happened.

The FAQ (http://stackoverflow.com/faq#close) says questions can be
closed when they are "no real questions", which probably was the
reason here, and that they can be closed by "experienced community
members".

Are those "experienced community members" who close questions about
Isabelle likely to be experienced members of the _Isabelle_ community
(who understand why my question was "not very great", as you said), or
are these usually experienced members of StackOverflow in general, who
look at the general pattern of the question?

Cheers,

Christoph

- --
Christoph Lange, School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham
http://cs.bham.ac.uk/~langec/, Skype duke4701

→ Intelligent Computer Mathematics, 8–12 July, Bath, UK.
Work-in-progress deadline 7 June; http://cicm-conference.org/2013/
→ OpenMath Workshop, 10 July, Bath, UK.
Submission deadline 7 June; http://cicm-conference.org/2013/openmath/
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[Christian Sternagel]

On 05/19/2013 08:50 PM, Christoph LANGE wrote:
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> Hash: SHA1
>
> 2013-05-19 12:38 Joachim Breitner:
>> when I wrote the mail I only looked at
>> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16629417 which I did not find
>> very great
>
> OK, I see.
>
>> (though I do not agree with the closing of it).
>
> Another StackOverflow feature I need to learn about – let me try to
> understand how that happened.
>
> The FAQ (http://stackoverflow.com/faq#close) says questions can be
> closed when they are "no real questions", which probably was the
> reason here, and that they can be closed by "experienced community
> members".
>
> Are those "experienced community members" who close questions about
> Isabelle likely to be experienced members of the _Isabelle_ community
> (who understand why my question was "not very great", as you said), or
> are these usually experienced members of StackOverflow in general, who
> look at the general pattern of the question?

The latter. Thus questions are often closed for the wrong reasons.

cheers

chris