Question

Is anyone else uneasy about someone posting questions and then answering them in an apparent attempt to publicize his own research e.g. http://socratic.org/questions/what-is-the-new-transforming-method-to-solve-quadratic-equations-1 ?

Answer 1

Yes.

Explanation:

I think uneasy is the right word to use in this case.

One could argue that as long as the students can benefit from whatever material the contributor posts, this could have an overall positive value.

However, Socratic answers should not be advertising space for anything and anybody, that's for sure.

In this particular case, I know that Nghi N. has his articles listed in his profile bio, so I'm not sure that posting questions and answers with his material is appropriate.

I'm a little surprised because he's been around for a while and I have never seen him do this before - scratch this.

So yes, for what it's worth, I am uneasy with this method of self-promotion.

Addendum

As it turns out, I was wrong, this is not the first time this happened. Other instances include - props to Jim for doing the research :P

http://socratic.org/questions/what-is-the-new-ac-method-to-factor-trinomials

http://socratic.org/questions/what-is-the-new-non-factoring-ac-method-to-solve-quadratic-equations

http://socratic.org/questions/what-is-the-new-transforming-method-to-solve-quadratic-equations-1?source=search

http://socratic.org/questions/what-is-the-new-transforming-method-to-solve-quadratic-equations?source=search

http://socratic.org/questions/what-is-the-new-transformation-method-to-solve-quadratic-equations?source=search