Timeline for What is needed to succeed in keeping up the level of the site and retaining the good contributors?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
29 events
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| Apr 13, 2017 at 12:58 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://mathoverflow.net/ with https://mathoverflow.net/
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| Nov 5, 2013 at 21:23 | comment | added | Kaveh | @Todd, this comment thread has become quite long, I guess by the time I reached the bottom I forgot that you first made these points. :) | |
| Nov 5, 2013 at 21:16 | comment | added | Todd Trimble Mod | @Kaveh Actually, I made all of those points. | |
| Nov 5, 2013 at 8:41 | comment | added | Kaveh | I would like to reiterate and emphasis the point made by quid: there is already a site (Mathematics) that does not close question based on their level! MO being more selective is a good thing because it helps attract mathematicians (and there are quite a few of them) who do not want to go through hundreds of undergraduate textbook exercise level questions to find an interesting question. If you feel some particular question is interesting and should be reopned the way to go is to suggest reopening on meta. | |
| Nov 4, 2013 at 22:20 | comment | added | Kim Morrison Mod | +1 for expressing an interesting dissenting opinion, even if I disagree! | |
| Nov 4, 2013 at 5:38 | comment | added | Daniel Moskovich | That said, the examples Paul Taylor brings are good- I agree that none of these questions should have been closed. But I don't think they were bad questions to begin with! However, these are the exception and not the rule- the vast majority of questions that are closed really are poorly thought out, or are homework, or are just people posting in the wrong place. | |
| Nov 4, 2013 at 2:12 | history | edited | Todd TrimbleMod | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
removed offensive phrases
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| Nov 4, 2013 at 1:58 | comment | added | Todd Trimble Mod | @AndresCaicedo Yes, you're right. I know Paul a little and I think I understand a little of where he is coming from and his sense of justice. While censoring posts might seem like an act of "political suppression", it's really not; it's just that we have a policy of removing offensive posts. I trust Paul will understand and will in the future exercise his skills as a writer to get his points across without name-calling. | |
| Nov 3, 2013 at 22:45 | comment | added | Andrés E. Caicedo | " If you really feel you must name-call, do it on meta " What? No, absolutely not! Neither here, nor there. If one is not to act professionally, better not to participate at all. | |
| Nov 3, 2013 at 0:09 | comment | added | user9072 | But definitely tagging is important. You could contribute to this a bit, by the way. | |
| Nov 3, 2013 at 0:03 | comment | added | user9072 | re scope and 'one site': if you search for a Q&A site about mathematics that is more permissive you can got to math.stackexchange.com It is quite a good site I am sometimes there as are many other MO users. It is now even trivial to use both in parallel. If you should not like that site, or should like it less, why? re " Nobody could possibly read all of the traffic on MathOverflow anyway:" I did not read each and every answer (though a fair share) but I read the overwhelming majority of all questions during continued periods of time (though not now), it is really not even that much. | |
| Nov 2, 2013 at 23:51 | comment | added | user9072 | re removong the noise: the "noise" a question creates is not only (or even mainly) the question getting asked, each answer puts it again on top of the 'active' list; a closed/migrated question cannot get an answer thus c/m it reduces noise even locally. In addition closing is a precondition to (community or auto) deletion, which happens, again reducing noise even locally. In addition to the main point being to set the standard for questions, avoiding the asking of some question in the first place, which also works to some extent (as said by some at least indirectly). | |
| Nov 2, 2013 at 23:42 | comment | added | Joel David Hamkins | The data on closed questions (see data.stackexchange.com/mathoverflow/query/78395/…) shows 134 closed questions in number theory, 59 in set theory and 57 in logic, but given that number theory has about three times as many questions, it seems the rate of closure is basically on a par between these subjects, but indeed a bit higher in set theory and logic than in number theory. The closure rate in category-theory, in contrast, is much lower (only 42, even though there are more questions in this tag than in logic or in set theory). | |
| Nov 2, 2013 at 23:37 | comment | added | user9072 | re Rhett Butler: the question of on-topicness of historical questions really has extremely little not to say nothing to do with them 'leaving' the site; you could start at tea.mathoverflow.net/discussion/1592/trollery but really this is just the tip of an iceberg and various things got deleted and not everything is even documented. But don't worry they or maybe their 'colleagues' already returned to the site in the iterim. Again, if you did not know this you know not really enough about the site, if you did but choose not to mention it this is a strange way of discussing. | |
| Nov 2, 2013 at 23:24 | comment | added | user9072 | re reopening and inviting outsiders: that you did not know this one dedicated thread is one thing, but if it escaped your attention that it is common that questions also get reopened after discussion on meta (this one or the old one now called 'tea') then I must say you did not pay much attention, IMO too little for discussing policy. (If you knew it is not clear what you complain about.) So, if you want something reopened start a disc on meta. If it gets reopened and not quickly reclosed you can be quite confident it stays and you then can invite people. This is a bit of work, but feasible. | |
| Nov 2, 2013 at 23:20 | comment | added | user9072 | While I do appreciate people with clear opinions not shy to voice them, I appreciate it even more if they are somewhat well-informed on the things they are talking about or at least acknowledge that this might not be the case. Some of the things you say seem factually and/or a bit strange, in detail (sorry for the strain of comments but since you seem to want to stay here and not go to "tea" this is hard to avoid): | |
| Nov 2, 2013 at 22:57 | comment | added | Paul Taylor | At the moment the score for my posting is zero, but this is not through lack of votes: there are 6 positive and 6 negative ones. | |
| Nov 2, 2013 at 22:53 | comment | added | Paul Taylor | Joel, whilst we may have different points of view about logic, in this context I was merely observing the policy inconsistency that (to me) quite difficult questions in number theory etc are closed as being undergraduate ones, very easy questions in logic are left open and you (quite reasonably) answer them (and collect the points). | |
| Nov 2, 2013 at 18:13 | comment | added | Joel David Hamkins | Paul, although I am sympathetic with your main point, I am put off by your remarks about logic. I understand that your philosophical disposition is often against logic, as traditionally understood, but how does it support your point here to insult the MO logic community? My perspective is that logic on MO is robust, including substantive questions from every part of the subject and its interaction with the rest of mathematics. We close the "completely trivial" questions, just as elsewhere in MO, and I answer questions only that I personally find interesting. | |
| Nov 2, 2013 at 15:25 | comment | added | Todd Trimble Mod | Paul: you are completely mistaken about tea, I assure you. (Edited in many hours later: 'tea' is the new name for the old (MO.1) meta. There were discussions of all sorts of issues of interest to the community.) This thread would be totally appropriate there (and btw, this type of discussion has taken place there, more than once). Do you mind if I repost? You don't actually have to answer there yourself, of course. | |
| Nov 2, 2013 at 15:22 | comment | added | Paul Taylor | "Tea" looks like a boring list of admin quibbles, whereas the points that I have made above are relevant to the whole community. I have wanted to say this for a long time and this thread appeared to be the appropriate place to do so. | |
| Nov 2, 2013 at 15:11 | comment | added | Todd Trimble Mod | Hey Paul, do you mind if I repost your 'answer' here to tea.mathoverflow.net ? Comments can also be moved. (Yes, it is another site to log into, unfortunately -- and one does need to register and sign in -- but I think it's more or less instantaneous, and it's a damned sight (or 'damned site') better than these comment boxes; I think it would be easier to have a civilized discussion there. | |
| Nov 2, 2013 at 13:44 | comment | added | Paul Taylor | Closing questions does not even remove the noise, because they are still there with [closed] or [migrated] appended to them. Nobody could possibly read all of the traffic on MathOverflow anyway: we rely on the headlines and tags to filter things. Questions that are considered to be undergraduate or heretical ones could simply be assigned additional tags to say so. | |
| Nov 2, 2013 at 13:43 | comment | added | Paul Taylor | I, and more particularly the people whom I want to see on the site with me, do not want to have to log in to numerous other websites (stack exchange, sci.math etc). That defeats exactly the thing that I see as the value of this one. If there is a historical or philosophical question about mathematics then I want to hear answers from mathematicians, not historians or philosophers. | |
| Nov 2, 2013 at 13:29 | comment | added | Paul Taylor | I hate the little comment boxes too, especially as they are the only way of answering questions that have been closed. | |
| Nov 2, 2013 at 12:56 | comment | added | Todd Trimble Mod | still very much an ongoing experiment (and we welcome dissenting voices), I think "we" definitely don't want to go the unmoderated route of math.sci. So some careful oversight and moderation seems to be a good idea. Granted, it's a tricky balancing act, because we also want to attract good people from outside the old "core areas" as well, and we don't want to turn off the graduate students who are our future colleagues. Still, I disagree with Paul's suggestion that all but the outright obnoxious questions stay open (and recommend visiting MSE if that's what you think you want). | |
| Nov 2, 2013 at 12:51 | comment | added | Todd Trimble Mod | trafficked, and it's fast: as soon as a question appears, a swarm of mathematicians comes in (often with essentially identical answers). It's actually a very nice site, but I think we're trying to establish a different sort of functionality here. Many mathematicians like it here for the stimulation of the relatively high level, and don't want to wade through a bunch of relatively elementary questions to pan for the nuggets of the good stuff. Indeed, attrition of the high-level mathematicians we seek to attract is a recurrent worry (especially since the merger with SE). While MO is (cont.) | |
| Nov 2, 2013 at 12:45 | comment | added | Todd Trimble Mod | Paul has asked me to reply. I hate these little comment boxes, and may request porting the discussion over to tea.mathoverflow.net which in my view carries some advantages over this set-up. Anyway, I think Mathematics StackExchange might better fit the bill for Paul's desiderata: there too mathematicians from a wide variety of areas congregate, and accept questions from basically all levels. (They close in case of spam or offensive posts, or duplicate posts, and there are some others.) The atmosphere there is markedly different from the one here: it's much more heavily (cont.) | |
| Nov 2, 2013 at 12:04 | history | answered | Paul Taylor | CC BY-SA 3.0 |