How to deal with users that just won't use MathJax?

Question

This is essentially a duplicate of 27153, from math.SE.

I have noticed that there is a bunch of users that consistently refuse to use MathJax in their answers. One of these users, in particular, has been a member for more than six years and has posted several thousands of answers.

On math.SE the user Simply Beautiful Art asks what to do with these users, and essentially everyone agrees that the best course of action is to downvote and move on. I really don't want to do this, in part because I appreciate the effort these users put into this site, and in part because physics is not math: here words are often more important than formulas.

So, my question: what do we want to do here?

Is badly typed math (in the form of, say, F=ma^2 or a poorly cropped/pixelated image) acceptable at all? Or should we discourage this kind of behaviour? Do we agree that downvoting is the way to go? Or is there perhaps a better solution?

Answer 1

I see two relevant classes of users here:

• The user in question is a relative newcomer, and they've come to rely on other people fixing posts with substantial amounts of mistyped math for them as if by magic. After a first few occurrences, a sharp indication that they need to do the formatting themselves is in order, followed by downvotes if the poster refuses to do that formatting.
• The user in question has a long-running record of high-quality contributions, which for the most part don't involve math, and only use simple constructs when they do, and which are easy enough to edit in those cases. Here, while it would be nice if the user did that formatting themselves, I'm more inclined to let it slide, particularly when I gauge the user's likelihood of learning MathJax to be low.

I'm only aware of one user in that second class with over a thousand answers, and for that person I have yet to find an answer where the lack of MathJax annoys me.

Answer 2

The hat fits me, and also it would fit older users . Everybody ages, and with age memory is not the same, particularly short term memory. I do try to use dollar signs around simple formulae, (since I found out that two $*$ in the paragraph turn everything into italics and destroy the simple formula ! ). The same care I take in spelling and syntax. (syntax sometimes is atrocious in some questions).

I use simple math and / and x and ^ . When more complicated formats are needed I use screen shots. I am grateful to edits for replacing screen shot formulas, even the simple small ones, (I guess people gain points by doing that).

The effort for remembering a new format grows with age.One of the reasons I participate here is to keep my physics memories alive, and I enjoy the effort. I do not think format is all that important , these answers are not going to a publisher to become a permanent book. If physics.SE wants to stick to format as the mathematics.SE does, it should be clearly stated.

Edit after comments:

I made the last sentence in bold.

In a comment blind and people with difficulties in vision were mentioned ( also older ones) where using mathjax would enable them to magnify the formulae in a tablet or screen sensitive device.

It would be interesting to see how many users of physics.SE consider themselves in this group. In my case, resistance to mathjax is accompanied with resistance to newfangled screens where not so steady fingers have to manipulate tiny areas.

It is the same as resistance to new cars, with oodles of electronics, give me a gear shift one any time. All of these new things need a lot of memorizing, motor memory too.

So I can just promise to use the dollar signs for simple expressions, and give links for any screenshot formulae I use. If mathjax becomes a rule, too bad. I will have to look elsewhere for my physics fun.

Edit

I thought this coincidence interesting:

Just saw on TV a young blind boy on the fourth year of a physics course in Thessaloniki university who won a summer student place in Oxford for astrophysics! the link is in greek. Last year he had won a place at MIT ! He plans to go for a PhD in the states. His professors talk of an exceptional mind. It seems there are computer based tools which can transcribe books to Braille.

Answer 3

If a user's posts are still a net positive to the community, there's no need to "deal with" them. Edit in the MathJax if you have the inclination, and, if not, someone else will probably do it eventually. Looking through the history of the Suggested Edits queue, it seems like we have a decent number of people willing to typeset a few equations here and there.

If their posts are so poorly formatted as to be a net negative to the community (i.e. if they require so much fixing that no one wants to do it, if they're unreadable, or if they have issues besides formatting), treat them as you would any other low quality post.

Answer 4

Tell them it's easier than it looks. They can copy most of what they want from Wikipedia (in a lot of questions), and they can use the left key to read as Mathjax when they hover over the correctly formatted text.

A bonus point might work, for long sessions of slogging through it, but it will never get into the current system, I acknowledge that.

But most of what they want to say is already available, they just don't realise it.

Answer 5

Is it possible for moderators or admins to deduct or withhold reputation points to users who repeatedly offend ?

Perhaps a "penalty" system should be considered if it's not possible now, so that mods could take action to make it and other repeat offenses clear ?

If not reputation could privileges be removed ?

I appreciate Mathjax and Latex may be a bit of an overhead to learn if you're not a regular user, but it's a pretty straightforward system and there is an entire Latex forum on SE as well as a help page on Mathjax. Once you get into it it's pretty easy to use and I see no excuse for regular users skipping it.