I am using  from Meta.SO for reference (I could not find a Meta.SE equivalent post).  I believe an auto-flag should be raised when duplicate comments are posted.  I mean, how constructive can something like this be?
We've had a number of instances over on Stack Overflow involving users who get to the reputation level where they can comment, then spam comments across the site. Due to the lack of community review around comments, these spammed comments can remain on the site for months before someone notices and flags one. Moderators then have to go and manually remove each of these comments. In the last few months, I've personally had to deal with two users who spammed their website across 200+ questions each.  This isn't just limited to people spamming comments with a URL in them. We've had a number of users spray the same nonsense comment or insult across tons of posts and have no one seem to notice for months.  What I'd like is some kind of system-generated notification when a user has posted a barrage of copied-and-pasted comments. This could possibly be triggered when a user has posted a set number of identical comments in a row (4 of them, maybe) or maybe even if they've posted the same comment multiple times. We receive similar system-generated flags when users post duplicate answers, edit many of their posts in a row, or delete many of their own posts at a time.  This system-generated flag should ignore comments generated by review (which have the same text in them). I'm thinking that it shouldn't ignore comments generated by custom off-topic reasons, because someone using the exact same close reason over and over again might be something we want to look into.  The flag itself won't do anything to a user, and would only appear to moderators. I imagine there will be a number of false positives, but it should be easy for us to check these and identify the well-intentioned stock comments from the problematic ones.   We currently have no means of detecting comment spam, so even if this didn't have a great hit rate it would still be beneficial on the balance. Running sample queries for this seems to indicate that it wouldn't have that much noise.  This would allow us to catch comment spam early, and prevent it from living on the site or developing into a more serious problem.
According to , the only restriction on self-deleting an answer is that you can't delete an answer that's been accepted.  But I've also heard of users getting in trouble for deleting (non-accepted) answers, and there's the CC-SA license to consider, so -- quite aside from what is technically possible -- my question is when it's permitted to delete your own answer.  Some cases to consider:   You now believe the answer is incorrect. Your answer is correct, but another answer covers the same territory better. You aren't satisfied with the quality/rigor of your answer, e.g. it's speculative and you didn't back it up (on a site that expects that). Something in the answer embarrasses you and you'd rather just make it go away. Your answer wasn't well-received by the community (whether that's "meh" or "make the rep bleeding stop please"). (I'm sure there are others; this isn't meant to be an exhaustive list.)   Does voting matter, either in absolute terms or in comparison to other answers?  For example, maybe it's ok to delete a lower-voted one but not the top-voted answer, or one with score > N??  There is a badge, Disciplined, for deleting your own post of score 3 or higher.  This tells me that it's sometimes ok to delete upvoted answers.  But I'm not sure how much policy we can infer from badges.  Could we have some clarification please? If $xy + yz + zx = 1$, then show that      $$\dfrac{x}{1-x^2} + \dfrac{y}{1-y^2} + \dfrac{z}{1-z^2} = \dfrac{4xyz}{(1-x^2)(1-y^2)(1-z^2)}$$   I tried doing the sum algebraically, that is, by solving the LHS but, that method isn't really getting us anywhere.  Also, I found this sum in an a book on trigonometry. So how can I solve it with trigonometry? How to provide translations for a WordPress TinyMCE plugin? I know that I can get my translations into JavaScript doing:      $MyTranslations = array(         'translation1' =&gt; __("Some String 1", "MyTranslations"),         'translation2' =&gt; __("Some String 2", "MyTranslations")     );     wp_localize_script( 'jquery', 'my_translations', $MyTranslations );   But looking at some of WordPress TinyMCE plugins they use calls like this:  { title : ed.getLang('advlink.link_desc'), ... }   How is WordPress getting their translations into getLang()? Am I supposed to do it this way or do I just use my first bit of code and access the variables directly like:  { title : my_translations.translation1, ... } Why is Ubuntu 14.04 so slow on my laptop? Find the limit $$\lim_{x\to 0^{+}}\dfrac{\sin{(\tan{x})}-\tan{(\sin{x})}}{x^7}$$  My attempt: Since $$\sin{x}=x-\dfrac{1}{3!}x^3+\dfrac{1}{5!}x^5-\dfrac{1}{7!}x^7+o(x^7)$$ $$\tan{x}=x+\dfrac{1}{3}x^3+\dfrac{2}{15}x^5+\dfrac{1}{63}x^7+o(x^3)$$ So $$\sin{(\tan{x})}=\tan{x}-\dfrac{1}{3!}(\tan{x})^3+\dfrac{1}{5!}(\tan{x})^5-\dfrac{1}{7!}(\tan{x})^7+o(x^7)$$ Though this method might solve, I think this problem has nicer methods. Thanks. Will spoiled food always make you sick? How can I serialize an object to JSON without properties that are null? To communicate with a REST interface on a private system, I need to send a JSON message from a trigger. I have a message object that has some fields, lists and a child object:  public class MerchantConfig {  public class MIDConfig {     public String mid;     public String currencyCode;     public String cardTemplateName;     public String paymentPanelRestriction;     public List&lt;String&gt; restrictedCountries;      public String paymentPanelRestrictionForCountries; }  public String merchantName; public String sopgTemplateName; public Integer dispositionTimeWindowInMinutes; public List&lt;String&gt; features; public Boolean activateImmediately; public List&lt;MIDConfig&gt; midConfiguration; }   I can serialize it to JSON using the built-in serializer:  String body = JSON.serializePretty([MerchantConfig instance]);   The result:  {   "sopgTemplateName" : null,   "midConfiguration" : [ {     "restrictionCountries" : [ "DE", "AT" ],     "paymentPanelRestrictionForCountries" : "MANDATORY",     "paymentPanelRestriction" : "OPTIONAL",     "mid" : "1000000001",     "currencyCode" : "EUR",     "cardTemplateName" : null   }, {     "restrictionCountries" : [ ],     "paymentPanelRestrictionForCountries" : "",     "paymentPanelRestriction" : "OPTIONAL",     "mid" : "1000000002",     "currencyCode" : "USD",     "cardTemplateName" : null   }, {     "restrictionCountries" : [ ],     "paymentPanelRestrictionForCountries" : "",     "paymentPanelRestriction" : "PROHIBITED",     "mid" : "1000000003",     "currencyCode" : "AUD",     "cardTemplateName" : null   } ],   "merchantName" : "Test Merchant",   "features" : [ XYZ ],   "dispositionTimeWindowInMinutes" : 10,   "activateImmediately" : true }   How can I serialize this object so that all properties that are null don't show up in the JSON string?   In this example, "sopgTemplateName" and all "cardTemplateName" properties are null and should not appear in the JSON string. The empty list "restrictionCountries" should still appear as an empty list, though. This question arises when I try to describe my itinerary to ticket service in the UK. Take for example, I plan to buy a ticket from A to B. B is the terminal. How to say its counter part A? I cannot find a proper term. I have to say "I will depart from A" or "I plan to go to B from A". Or I even use "departure place" to refer to B. Any subgroup of index $p$ in a $p$-group is normal. Should there be a comma in 'a 30-day, money-back guarantee'? A question about E12 series resistors I'm trying to calculate E12 resistor series myself.  Above is an illustration of the idea where such equation can be written:  x = r3 + r3 * %tol = r4 - r4 * %tol  form that we can derive:  r4 = r3* [(1 + %tol)/(1 - %tol)]  hence in generalized form we can write (%tol = 0.1 for E12 series);   r(i+1) = ri* [(1 + %tol)/(1 - %tol)]  But when I iterate the above formula in a for loop I obtain the following results for the first resistor values:  1.0000    1.2222    1.4938    1.8258    2.2315    2.7274    3.3335    4.0743    4.9797    6.0863    7.4388  Then I take [(1 + %tol)/(1 - %tol)] = 1.2 rounded value instead of 1.222222 and write the formula as:  r(i+1) = r(i)*1.2  But again when I iterate the above formula in a for loop I obtain the following results for the first resistor values:  1.0000    1.2000    1.4400    1.7280    2.0736    2.4883    2.9860    3.5832    4.2998    5.1598    6.1917  But the real values for E12 should be as:  1.0, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8, 2.2, 2.7, 3.3, 3.9, 4.7, 5.6, 6.8  What am I doing wrong here? The disk that contains Ubuntu on my computer is 115GB in size.  When the disk was 114.7GBfull.  I started deleting some files here and there to free up around 5GB.  But I noticed the disk was 114GB filled again. I thought it was some cache or swap thingy so didn't give it much thought and went ahead and freed around 40GBby shifting some media files out of the disk.  I have a notification in an hour or so that the disk is full yet again!! 40GB!!! All gone!  So I debugged the problem down to the /var/log/syslog file which was initially definitely less than 20GB. I know this because /var folder was 17GB before I cleared the memory.  /var/log/syslog file is currently 55.9GB!  Could someone be so gracious to explain this anomaly? Is this a bug? Or am I affected with some malware or virus? Fundamental Theorem of Calculus. Fundamental Theorem of Calculus says  Let $f$ be an integrable function on $[a,b].$ For $x$ in $[a,b],$  let $F(x)=\int_{a}^{x}f(t)dt.$ Then $F$ is continuous on $[a,b].$ If $f$ is continuous at $x_{0}$ in $(a,b),$ then $F$ is differentiable at $x_{0}$ and $F^{'}(x_{0})=f(x_{0}).$  Now my question is why we are saying that this is "Fundamental Theorem of whole Calculus".  It is clear that it connects intergal and differential calculus. But i am not getting the exact concept, why this is so important as its name is fundamental theorem of calculus. Why we says that it is fundamental theorem of calculus?  Please suggest me. Thanks in advance. How old is SpongeBob? I don't mean how old is the series, I mean what is SpongeBob's age if he were a real person. I ask because his age seems to be ambiguous in the show.   He has a full-time job He has his own house He is always referred to as a kid (especially in the movie) He acts childish and immature In one episode, he was pretending to be an adult/grown-up If a black body is a perfect absorber, why does it emit anything? I'm trying to start understanding quantum mechanics, and the first thing I've come across that needs to be understood are black bodies. But I've hit a roadblock at the very first paragraphs. :( According to :     A black body (also, blackbody) is an idealized physical body that absorbs all incident electromagnetic radiation, regardless of frequency or angle of incidence.   OK, that's nice. It's an object that absorbs (takes in itself and stores/annihilates forever) any electromagnetic radiation that happens to hit it. An object that always looks totally black, no matter under what light you view it. Good. But then it follows with:     A black body in thermal equilibrium (that is, at a constant temperature) emits electromagnetic radiation called black-body radiation.   Say what? Which part of "absorbs" does this go with? How can it absorb anything if it just spits it right back out, even if modified? That's not a black body, that's a pretty white body if you ask me. Or a colored one, depending on how it transforms the incoming waves.  What am I missing here? CSS Selector that applies to elements with two classes Can't find Corruption Fold a plane. then fold again Imagine a piece of paper and you fold it in half and then fold it again. that's what I am trying to do and cant. If I use bones the influence of the bones won't allow me to because I need 2 bones to control the same area. If I try shape keys it just deforms the mesh if I try to make it in multiple steps or does the wrong animation because it draws the shortest path instead of rotating from a point like a piece of paper would. Does one need to adjust for multiple comparisons when using MANOVA? There are 10 dependent variables and 2 groups. When I wanted to compare 10 dependent variables between two groups, I performed MANOVA.  I wonder if there is a multiple comparison problem in that case. Should I have performed Bonferroni correction because of 10 dependent variables? Or is Bonferroni useless because MANOVA just does analysis once? How to set a random value for multiple shape keys? My question is related to my previous asked one:   I have about 300 shapekeys and want to set the random value for all of them . How to do it using scripting?