Q:

Why was my off-topic flag disputed on a math question?

I recently ran into this question: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/30400432/the-change-making-algorithm-proof
The question is clearly not a programming question, but proof questions may not be totally on-topic for Math.SX.  How should proof request questions be handled?  Should they be migrated?  Flagged?  My off-topic flag was disputed, and I want to learn how to better handle this kind of situation.

A:

The users in triage marked the question as Should Be Improved, rather than Unsalvageable, which they shouldn't have (it's not salvageable, there's no possible way for us to fix this question as it's just entirely off topic) and that disputed your flag (which it also shouldn't happen, as marking as post as Should Be Improved doesn't mean it doesn't merit closure).  The later is being revisited by SE, and will hopefully be changed eventually.  The former is something we'll probably have to live with, as getting people to actually mark unsalvageable content as unsalvageable is super hard.
I've cast a close vote, so now it's at least in the CV queue.  You didn't actually do anything wrong here.  You did exactly the right thing in response to this issue.

