up vote 9 down vote favorite

See this question about an origami paper for example. It's a very specific question about a particular theorem the poster did not follow (or in this case the answer did not match that of the paper).

Personally, I think such questions are great. They provide a nice break from all these CW questions we've been seeing. These questions actually have a correct answer, and are usually technical, and indeed it would be hard for the poster to find the solution anywhere else (other than emailing the authors of said paper).

I just wanted to know if the community finds such questions acceptable. If so, we can include it in the FAQ (if we're going to have a list of example questions in the FAQ).

share

2 Answers

up vote 12 down vote accepted

Yes, in fact one of the five example questions from the definition period of this site reads

In [ACM citation] I'm confused how the authors arrived at [assertion] from equation 2?

share
2  
yup. it's a relief actually. – Suresh Venkat♦ Sep 1 '10 at 2:36
I remembered reading that question, and didn't know where I'd seen it. Thanks. – Robin Kothari Sep 1 '10 at 2:57
fyi direct link to that question which had strong support – vzn Jan 22 '12 at 17:05
up vote 6 down vote

I don't mind seeing such questions here, but I think we should also somehow encourage people to try asking the authors directly first. In this case, for instance, I don't know that it was really necessary to subject the authors to public embarrassment for what amounts to a typo. And by not contacting the authors about this buglet, we forego the chance to have them include a correction in their online publication list or (in more serious cases) in the journal in which the paper appeared.

share
should we then require them to indicate that they've already asked the authors, and if not should we recommend closing the question till they do ? that might be one option – Suresh Venkat♦ Sep 1 '10 at 19:13
5  
I agree that the authors should be contacted for the purpose of correcting errors. But, as a grad student I often feel reluctant to email authors about small things like this, especially when it could be a mistake on my part. I'm sure a lot of students would just let the matter drop rather than email the authors if they were not confident of their own answer. – Robin Kothari Sep 1 '10 at 19:17
2  
Also, often authors will not respond (or if they do, they do so after a long time). This is understandable, since they are busy people and possibly get many queries about their papers. I would imagine that some would prefer to receive a few emails about actual errors in their papers (even after being discussed publicly) rather than receive many emails only a few of which are useful. Often there is a simple misunderstanding of notation or something similar which can be solved by people here, and don't require the original author's attention. – Robin Kothari Sep 1 '10 at 19:23
2  
@Robin: Asking for help with understanding a paper is perfectly fine here. And also questions about possible errors are fine if you add something like: "I tried to contact the authors last month but I haven't got any response". – Jukka Suomela Sep 2 '10 at 9:06

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged