More than often I get a lot of itch when I see an answer which contains only a link. For example .  Check this link, it will solve your query..   This answer does not explain in any way why and how it solves the OP's concrete problem without the need to click the link. Also, if the link ever goes down, then the whole answer is completely useless. I am very tempted to flag this as &quot;not an answer&quot; and hope that the moderator understands the hint and converts it into a comment. Can I flag them as such? Related:
I think we can all agree, this sucks:  If you've been around a little while, you've probably encountered hundreds of answers like this in various forums, some of them even marked as &quot;The Answer&quot; by well-meaning1 forum admins looking to close a thread. We could try to enumerate the commonly-observed problems with it...  Link is probably broken If link isn't broken, it's spam If link isn't spam, it's to some broadly-related resource that the answerer found by pressing &quot;I'm feeling lucky&quot; when googling the question's title.  ...but the real issue here is that we don't know! Even if the link was originally pointing directly to the most awesomeest answer ever for exactly the question being asked, there's nothing in the answer itself to even hint at what direction we're being pointed in. Strip the markup, and this is what you're left with:  i think you should take The tutorial HERE! This will help you a lot  Is there even one tiny speck of information there? No. Even the title of the page being linked to would have provided something to go on, but that was entirely too much work. So let me be clear: this sort of response is not an answer. If you see this, flag it. Moderators, if you see it flagged, delete it. There's really only one valid exception to this rule, and that's when the question is:  Suggest me some tutorials where i can learn quick.  Don't get me wrong, it's still a bad answer - but when the question is kinda asking for bad answers this is to be expected. Close or flag the question and move on - this is much more efficient than hanging around to babysit it by deleting every crap answer that inevitably shows up. If you're still reading, you're probably getting really bored by now. &quot;Gee, Shog - answers that contain ZERO information are terrible, horrible, very-bad things? What shocking revelations will you share next?&quot; Yeah. It's really simple... Except, . See, the problem is that once you step away from black-and-white &quot;answers / doesn't answer&quot; decision-making, things get... Interesting. And all those other answers with links in them See, this is an answer:  And so is this:  Yes, they're both very short, and yes, they contain links. But strip the markup, and you still get at least a little bit of useful information. Does that mean these answers should forever hang around the site? No, not necessarily - if it turns out they're just not that useful, they should probably still be removed - or at very least, down-voted so that they rank below other answers. Just remember: if the text of the post contains an honest attempt at answering the question, then it is an answer - so don't flag it otherwise, and if you do, don't complain if your flag gets declined. Answers &amp; Apples If you're still confused, forget about answers. Think about apples instead:  Answers are just like that, but less tasty in pies.  1 By which I mean to say, &quot;criminally lazy&quot;
I have a collection of articles written in latex, and I would like to "merge" them into a larger thesis document, in which each article will be a chapter. I have been looking at include and input, which are great if you start with the meta-document in mind. However in my articles I have sometimes a bit exotic dependencies, such as dot2texi, and using the naive approach fails rather abysmally with all kinds of broken paths.  So I was wondering, do you recommend any "best practices" for merging non-trivial documents -- which packages to look at, or to avoid at all cost, etc.  Thanks I'd like to create a Yahoo! account. The signup page won't let me proceed without entering a cell phone number, and it won't recognize my Google Voice number as a valid cell phone number. Is there a workaround to be able to create a Yahoo! account without having a cell phone that can receive SMS messages? Why is the gap between the translation and the last line of the gloss so wide in my interlinear gloss? I notice if I take away some letters, the translation line goes to where it should be, but this big block of white space is pretty untenable. Ideas?    \documentclass[11pt,a4paper]{book}  \setcounter{secnumdepth}{4} \usepackage{gb4e} \usepackage{tipa} \usepackage{setspace} \usepackage[T1]{fontenc} \begin{document} \begin{exe} \ex \glll Jichax    Qamaqix lij parki,  aynacha,    amsta,  parki, q'awanaks,   khuyt'asis  sarawjchix. \\ \{jicha-x(a)    Qamaqi-x(a) lij(u)  parki   aynacha amsta   parki q'awa-nak(a)-_{c}$\oslash$-s(a)   khuy(u)-t'a-s(i)-s(a)   sara-wj(a)-ch(i)-i-x(a)\}    \\ now-\textsc{top}    Fox-\textsc{top}    all acclivity   declivity   ascent  acclivity ravine-\textsc{pl-acc-ad} whistle-\textsc{m}-\textsc{refl}-\textsc{subr} go-\textsc{bfr-cnj-3sim-top}\\ \glt `And so, Fox must've gone whistling on all the ascents, slopes, ascents, mountainsides, and even in the ravines.' \end{exe} \end{document} Fail of markdown parser detected if '_ 's are used in a naked URL In the answer , the parser breaks my URL link.  The URL was with __word__:      http://www.open-mpi.de/projects/hwloc/doc/v1.2/group__hwlocality__membinding.php#gade5e2c28ea8475a479bf2b1df36c6ccd   After parsing, it becomes (&lt;a href is broken; no clickable link):  hwlocality_membinding.php#gade5e2c28ea8475a479bf2b1df36c6ccd"&gt;http://www.open-mpi.de/projects/hwloc/doc/v1.2/group_hwlocality_membinding.php#gade5e2c28ea8475a479bf2b1df36c6ccd   Short test:  http://example.com/_test_ -> test"&gt;http://example.com/test  Or if I put in a naked URL with _test_ just here: How to close ports in Linux? I have some question in closing port, I think I got some strange things.  When I use execute  nmap --top-ports 10 192.168.1.1   it shows that 23/TCP port is open.  But when I execute  nmap --top-ports 10 localhost   it show that 23/tcp port is closed.  Which of them is true? I want to close this port on my whole system, how can I do it? Is Kant's "noumenal self" argument on freedom flawed? If $\gcd (a,b) = 1$, what can be said about $\gcd (a+b,a-b)$? Suppose $a, b \in \mathbb{Z}$, $a &gt; b$, and $\gcd (a,b) = 1$.  What can be said about $\gcd (a+b,a-b)$?  Is it true in general that $\gcd (a+b,a-b) \leq 2$? When and why is the [featured] tag removed by the Community user? How to mass rename files with ill-formed numbering? Can Rails Routing Helpers (i.e. mymodel_path(model)) be Used in Models? Say I have a Rails Model called Thing. Thing has a url attribute that can optionally be set to a URL somewhere on the Internet. In view code, I need logic that does the following:  &lt;% if thing.url.blank? %&gt; &lt;%= link_to('Text', thing_path(thing)) %&gt; &lt;% else %&gt; &lt;%= link_to('Text', thing.url) %&gt; &lt;% end %&gt;   This conditional logic in the view is ugly. Of course, I could build a helper function, which would change the view to this:  &lt;%= thing_link('Text', thing) %&gt;   That solves the verbosity problem, but I would really prefer having the functionality in the model itself. In which case, the view code would be:  &lt;%= link_to('Text', thing.link) %&gt;   This, obviously, would require a link method on the model. Here's what it would need to contain:  def link   (self.url.blank?) ? thing_path(self) : self.url end   To the point of the question, thing_path() is an undefined method inside Model code. I'm assuming it's possible to "pull in" some helper methods into the model, but how? And is there a real reason that routing only operates at the controller and view layers of the app? I can think of lots of cases where model code may need to deal with URLs (integrating with external systems, etc). Matrix doesn't shrink when put in fraction. Stop iCloud automatic download to harddrive How do I stop iCloud from downloading files to my hard drive? I opened up a folder and it immediately started downloading all contents What is an "index out of range" exception, and how do I fix it? Updating directly from SP1 to SP3 I am considering applying the Service Pack 3 in a SQL Server 2008 with Service Pack 1; however, I was not able to find if there are any drawbacks in this process, specially regarding to Replication Services and Reporting Services.   Has someone done this kind of update? Was it smooth or did it generate many issues? $f:\mathbb R \to \mathbb R$ be a continuous such that $f(f(f(x)))=x,\forall x \in \mathbb R$ , is $f(x)=x , \forall x \in \mathbb R$? Let $f:\mathbb R \to \mathbb R$ be a continuous function such that $f(f(f(x)))=x,\forall x \in \mathbb R$ , then is it true that $f(x)=x , \forall x \in \mathbb R$ ? I can see that $f$ is bijective , hence strictly monotone . But I cannot progress further . Please help. Thanks in advance I found this problem on a well-known problem solving website. It is apparently from Ramanujan.     With   $$\LARGE{a = \frac{1}{1 + \frac{e^{-2\pi}}{1 + \frac{e^{-4\pi}}{1 + \ddots}}}},$$   what is $a$?   The basic methods I know for questions of this type were not helpful to me.  I do not require a full solution, but feel free to post one if you would like. Hints or lecture notes on how to solve problems of this nature would be appreciated.   Keep in mind that I am at an undergraduate level in mathematics. How do I debug Node.js applications? I need to use binary variables (values 0 &amp; 1) in k-means. But k-means only works with continuous variables. I know some people still use these binary variables in k-means ignoring the fact that k-means is only designed for continuous variables. This is unacceptable to me.  Questions:     So what is the statistically / mathematically correct way of using binary variables in k-means / hierarchical clustering? How to implement the solution in SAS / R? Why is expected value of random variable equal to mean If anonymity is so important, why is it not universal? A frequent argument brought up in support of voting anonymity is that it can lead to potential grudges. Certainly the review system is of the same nature.  I cannot wrap my mind around the fact that voting is anonymous and reviewing is not. Either both should be public--and this would be fine since public reviewing has been successful--or both should be anonymous--and I assume this would be the desired option since this community holds anonymity so dear.  One could say that voting rates the posts, the actual meat of the site, while reviewing is based on clarifying the purpose of the site and cleaning it up.   answer makes the point that the community can trust that votes are a good measure of quality for the very reason that they do not know who cast them; the mentality that a high-ranking member may have supported something could blur the line between "science" and "politics/religion."  Reviewing, then, can be seen as a judgment of specific members rather than quality of edit/questions, which seems to fall precisely under the "politics/religion" umbrella--the review system is much more vulnerable to grudges due to this.  So let's discuss the differences and the implications of these disjointed anonymity policies.