Voting is a rough measure of quality * quantity or more specifically for questions/answers: quality * views/popularity.  This leads to poor search results if you are looking specifically for hidden gems in fields that are either too niche or the subject is relatively advanced and demands a high level of expertise to fathom.  Sometimes I come to the site with a desire to learn/teach new things (read and/or answer questions) that suit my preferences. I don't specifically have an issue I want to solve, I just wish to interact with the knowledge base that is relevant to my domain/hobbies/interests.  Currently, you can only search by tags - which are highly generic and lack some specificity. You can't discern between beginner/advanced/expert questions and can't look specifically for low popularity questions with a good score.  After you gain some reputation, the system should have enough data to predict which questions are of interest to you or alternatively, let you have the tools to search for them (so you can answer them). It should probably also take note of which users may have similar interests. This data could then be used to recommend questions/answers that are more valuable to a specific user.
I found several very-close-to-duplicate questions/answers. However, I want to restate some questions and discuss the answers from these questions.  Here the questions which I found:         I find it quite unfair that super simple questions and their answers upvote give the same amount of reputation points per upvote as complex questions. I think reputation points should be much closer linked to contribution. And I think that contribution in answering/asking a simple question (both in time, value and time saved to other developers) is way less than for some more complex questions.   Why doesn't Stack&nbsp;Overflow change this?  I saw several common answers:     if you change the game, then the only result is that people will game it differently.   I agree only partly with this. Sure, people will always game the system. However, any improvement can be rejected based on this argument. I believe if there is an obvious problem, it makes sense to fix it. And it looks like this question was asked number of times (meaning that it's not only me thinking that it should be changed).     Reputation is NOTHING more than an INCENTIVE to contribute.   Again. I agree only partly. Reputation doesn't have any real value (it can't be converted to anything). However, let's be honest. People are competitive and people like to have some measurement stick and most of software developers want to have a fair game. Based on this, reputation isn't NOTHING, reputation is very important tool which makes Stack&nbsp;Overflow popular. Calculating reputation one way or another way may lure or discourage people from participating.     Esoteric questions are only of interest to people working with that item.   I believe one of the biggest values of Stack&nbsp;Overflow that it contains a lot of information which is hard to find somewhere else.  So, sure, there are some rare questions which aren't valuable to the whole community. But, I would say that a question which saves 25 people a day of work (complex question) is more valuable than a question which saves a 1000 people 3 minutes of googling (simple question).  My summary:  I believe it makes sense to change a system a little bit. The simplest way would be the ability to mark a question as trivial. If some number of people marked the question as trivial (let's say 10), all upvotes for this question/answers become less valuable (for example, 1 or 2 points, instead of 5). This will close this gap.
If $L_i/K$ are Galois extensions of number fields, $i=1,\ldots,n$, and $L=L_1\cdots L_n$ is the compositum. Then it's true that a prime $\mathfrak{p}$ of $K$ splits in $L$ if and only if it splits in all of $L_i$. Does this also hold if the $L_i$ are not Galois extensions of $K$?  The proof that I know regarding the compositum uses the fact that the $L_i/K$ are Galois, so is this true in the more general setting and how would one prove it? Why or how did Agen Kolar and Saesee Tiin seem to die so easily without any resistance? Can virtual particle have mass? Do all virtual particle travel at light speed in a vacuum? else wouldn't that imply they should have rest mass however tiny? When they pop back out of existence do their mass disappear instantly? BTW what is the heaviest virtual particle ever found? How can I '\input' a file without getting the implicit newline? Why the $(n+1)$th prime number cannot exceed the smallest prime divisor of $p_1\dotsc p_n + 1$ Let $p_n$ be the $n$th prime number in its natural order. We want to show that  $$p_{n+1} \leq p_1\dotsc p_n + 1 \tag{1}$$  I know $p_1\dotsc p_n + 1 &gt; 1$, so it has at least one prime divisor, but the text says that $p_{n+1}$ cannot exceed the smallest of these divisors, but I cannot understand why, especially when I imagine $p_{n+1}$ being very large. Although some examples confirm that this statement is true, I cannot make a connection as to why the $n+1$ prime number cannot exceed the smallest prime divisor. Once this has been shown to be true, $(1)$ immediately follows. I'm granted a one-entry Schengen visa and now I can't go. Will having an unused visa in my travel passport have any consequences like future visas refusal? Do I need to do anything special? What is the gradient of $f(x, y, z) = \sqrt{x^2+y^2+z^2}$?  I know that $\nabla f = \left\langle\frac{\partial f}{\partial x}, \frac{\partial f}{\partial y}, \frac{\partial f}{\partial z}\right\rangle$ or equivalently $\nabla f = \frac{\partial f}{\partial x}\mathbf{i} + \frac{\partial f}{\partial y}\mathbf{j} + \frac{\partial f}{\partial z}\mathbf{k}$.  Eventually, I am going to evaluate this gradient at a point and then dot it with some given unit vector to find a directional derivative. I think maybe what is troubling me is the radical in $f$. Will I have to use the chain rule in order to find the three partial derivatives?  I tried this:  $$\frac{\partial f}{\partial x} = \frac{1}{2}(x^2 + y^2 + z^2)^{-\frac{1}{2}}2x$$ $$= \frac{x}{\sqrt{x^2 + y^2 + z^2}}$$  That result looks ugly to me. However, if I did that partial derivative correctly, then I think I know what I am doing. I've seen examples like this:   public class MaxSeconds {    public static final int MAX_SECONDS = 25; }   and supposed that I could have a Constants class to wrap constants in, declaring them static final. I know practically no Java at all and am wondering if this is the best way to create constants. mysqli or PDO - what are the pros and cons? In our place we're split between using mysqli and PDO for stuff like prepared statements and transaction support. Some projects use one, some the other. There is little realistic likelihood of us ever moving to another RDBMS.  I prefer PDO for the single reason that it allows named parameters for prepared statements, and as far as I am aware mysqli does not.  Are there any other pros and cons to choosing one over the other as a standard as we consolidate our projects to use just one approach? Which is correct: "what if there was" or "what if there were"? Possible Duplicate:          Is this correct grammar?     What if there was a Stack Overflow on…    Shouldn't it be "what if there were a Stack Overflow on…"? UISearchDisplayController - how to preload searchResultTableView Elevated command line prompt can't access shared drives I map a share from another machine using my user account. I launch an elevated command prompt (cmd.exe, right click, Run as administrator). Navigating to shared drive (Z:) results in:   The system cannot find the drive specified  Now if I open a non elevated command prompt, I can navigate to Z: just fine. Would spending one more year as an undergraduate adversely affect my chances of getting into a graduate program?   I wasn't really thinking about economics PhD until recently so my GPA is not too impressive and I lack in math courses so I've decided to spend one more year to boost my GPA taking upper level courses and get a math minor.  However, could the very fact of spending one more year to finish college be a disadvantage of getting into a graduate program? How to transit through Delhi without a visa? I have read a lot on this subject on the Lonely Planet forum and it looks like the staff on ground can transfer your bags through the Delhi airport if you have a connecting flight without you having to go out to check them in again and therefore needing a visa. I refer of course to the situation when you go with 2 different airlines, because otherwise the luggage is transfered automatically.  I posted a  and mentioned it briefly there, however I think this subject deserves a separate question and a detailed answer.  Does it depend on the type on an airline? I have read that Jet is no problem, what about AirIndia and IndiGo? And what about the incoming flight to Delhi from Europe or USA, do they all can hand over you luggage to the Indian airlines and pick it up again on the way home? Do you have to contact them before and explain your situation? Or check in your luggage directly to your desired destination? Accepting an answer should automatically upvote it as well Trying to identify a story about breaking out of a predefined path and no one notices I vaguely remember reading a short story many years ago where something happens and the protagonist gets a bit "out of step" with the rest of the world.  Everyone else keeps acting as if he's still doing what he would have been doing before the event, to the point of carrying on one-sided conversations and the like.  I can't remember much of the plot, but the premise stuck with me.  Edit: To try and explain it more clearly, based on the comment I just wrote, I think everyone else was effectively acting like they were robots with a prerecorded program.  If someone would normally wake up, drink coffee, put on pants, then walk out the door to catch a bus, then if the protagonist broke his coffee cup, stole his pants, and jammed the door, the victim would pour coffee into a broken/nonexistent cup, walk out pantsless, but when he got to the jammed door he might suddenly realize something was up (and thus being "out of step" spreads) or he might continue to go through the motions.  In either case, no one else would notice that the victim was pantsless (or that he didn't make it to work)...  How much of this actually came up in the story, I don't remember. Can a Spring form command be a Map? appears to have been question banned because of two unpopular Meta suggestions. (He says so in )  Look at the two contributions that appear to have gotten him banned. Like those of many others, they may not be of perfect quality, but they are not actively harmful to the site, either. As it stands, you can get question blocked on Meta simply for asking questions that aren't popular with the Meta crowd.  Why does the team insist on keeping the question ban active on Meta?  Why can't real problem users be dealt with through manual moderator action? Don't tell me it's a problem of scale; as far as I can see, actually toxic users are very rare on Meta.  People will frequently complain that Meta actively discourages the expression of unpopular viewpoints and suggestions. With the threat of question bans in place, I find those complaints difficult to refute. I hate that. Adding values to a C# array Remotely run script on Unix, get output locally? I need to run a (Tcl, or whatever) script on a remote Unix machine, from a (local) Windows command shell, and I want the stdout/stderr of the script to show up in the Windows CLI. The exit code would also be useful.  Is this possible using ssh (putty)? Or by any other means?  Thanks!