[QUOTE=Prime95;413724]So, by your own admission, your methods are not working. By now you should have LEARNed to try a different approach.
[/QUOTE]

When some newbie presents an idea that is misguided or outright nonsense do you really think that anything that
[i]anyone[/i] might say will entice him/her to put in the time and effort to learn enough so that he understands
why his effort is misguided?

I have seen over 30 years on the Internet of MANY different people trying to get newbies/cranks/wannabees to learn.

I have never seen an instance where they did so.

[QUOTE]
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." -- Albert Einstein[/QUOTE]

I have no expectation that my effort (or anyone else's for that matter) will have a positive result.

I have been somewhat effective in chasing cranks away. I see that as a good thing.

Call me the "anti-crank". I am a disciple of Dunning and Kruger.

I can not learn the material for them. I can only tell them what they should study and then respond
favorably toward any subsequent questions that might arise. But (you and others keep missing this:)
THEY NEVER DO ARISE.

The only thing to do with someone who refuses to learn is to shun him and/or humiliate him sufficiently
that he goes way.

[QUOTE=R.D. Silverman;413739]I have been somewhat effective in chasing cranks away. I see that as a good thing.[/QUOTE]

Alas, the rest of the forum community does not see that as a good thing. I'll ask as nicely as I can: Please, please, please stop responding in any thread where in your opinion the poster has not put in the necessary groundwork. The rest of the forum members will gently try to enlighten the user -- even if only just a little and even if only with occasional success.

Once upon a time, I was a crank. I was in 6th grade or so and wanted badly to test 2^131071-1, confident it would be prime. Fortunately, there was no one around to chase me away.

[QUOTE=Prime95;413743]Alas, the rest of the forum community does not see that as a good thing. I'll ask as nicely as I can: Please, please, please stop responding in any thread where in your opinion the poster has not put in the necessary groundwork. The rest of the forum members will gently try to enlighten the user

[/QUOTE]

Do you imagine that the posters are children?

[QUOTE=R.D. Silverman;413737]I HAVE "put up". I have tried to tutor some people in the past. (Does anyone recall the Israeli
teenager we tried to tutor some years ago?) A lot of people here tried to teach SM88 the simple
concept of equivalence relation. We failed miserably.

[/QUOTE]

did it ever occur to such a smart person that "thinks like" is not an equivalence relation:


[TEX]\forall A,B,C\in P \text {} A thinks like B and B thinks like C DOES NOT imply A thinks like C[/TEX] this is of course because the degree that they think alike has not been said and that even if it were it does not guarantee that the amount they think alike will stay the same throughout. edit: it also is shown that this binary relation does not pass the test of transitivity.

[QUOTE=R.D. Silverman;413762]Do you imagine that the posters are children?[/QUOTE]
Why does that matter?

[QUOTE=blip;413765]Why does that matter?[/QUOTE]

It implies that people think cranks should be molly-coddled as if they were children.

This is a public forum. If you can't take criticism then learn to grow a pair. If the heat
is too much then "get out of the kitchen". If you can't stand up to public ridicule, then learn
what you need before speaking up.

[QUOTE=R.D. Silverman;413735]For what purpose? Why should I take the time to REWRITE what is readily available
via Google/Wiki/Academic websites? It would be reinventing the wheel.
[/QUOTE]
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, it does not fit completely what is needed here and it also has policies that would be against what we need..

You will notice (by using the history tab) that I wrote many of the articles in the Mersennewiki. Maybe you could fix the errors that are present there (you already know that English is my second language and that my profession is not maths).

So we could point the people to the relevant article of Mersennewiki.