Timeline for Featured MO questions on the hot list: what benefits, if any, do these bring?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
22 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 23, 2017 at 12:37 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://stackoverflow.com/ with https://stackoverflow.com/
|
|
| Feb 13, 2014 at 5:49 | comment | added | Manfred Weis | @quid thanks for the pointer; I didn't see the relation between frequency and importance. | |
| Feb 12, 2014 at 16:58 | comment | added | user9072 | @ManfredWeis such a most referenced exists in a certain way, it is the frequent tab | |
| Feb 11, 2014 at 23:22 | comment | added | Andy Putman | @vzn : The operating agreement is here : docs.google.com/file/d/0B9bqmDNwzTjkLWxuR21FNHJWSXM/edit and the discussions that went into it can be found here tea.mathoverflow.net/discussion/1416/1/mathoverflow-20 | |
| Feb 11, 2014 at 23:17 | comment | added | vzn | @Andy where is your operating agreement? it would be interesting to read that. suggest that exclusive or elite or maybe just expert is maybe a better term to throw around than insular which frankly, have not heard around here until today... some wild freeform discussion/contrasting povs of some of this key topic re "insular" with quid in the current chat. as for "leaving", that strikes me as quite an improbability/unlikelihood not having heard anything on that... maybe you have more info on that somewhere... | |
| Feb 11, 2014 at 23:07 | comment | added | Andy Putman | @vzn : MathOverflow is by its nature "insular" in the sense that it is intended for professional research mathematicians, which is a fairly small and distinctive community. I suspect that an attempt on the part of stackexchange to water down this emphasis or encourage other people to post here will result in MO leaving the stackexchange network (as per our operating agreement). | |
| Feb 11, 2014 at 20:08 | comment | added | vzn | strongly agreed with the overarching goal of avoiding insularity & exploring ways to do that which still work in balance with some degree of expert elitism.... | |
| Jan 9, 2014 at 7:09 | comment | added | Dilaton | @TimPost and even questions that the MO community itself deems inappropriate for the site seem to get featured on the hot list, see the latest question who s title starts with Is this question appropriate? Featuring questions on the network hot list the local community deems not even appropriate for the site, is a blatant destortion and undermination of the scope and purpose of MO. So again: is there a way for MO to completely get rid of being featured on the hot list and how can the procedure to remove it from the list of sites the algorithm chooses be started? | |
| Jan 8, 2014 at 18:39 | comment | added | Dilaton | @TimPost does MO have the right to opt out of its questions being featured in the hot list, if the MO community really thinks the hot list does more harm than good? In my opinion, the hot list does nothing but undermine the purpose and high research-level academic quality of the site, distort what the local community considers to be the goal and scope of the site, brings in kibitzers that are not knowledgeable enough to decide what are good posts in accordance with MO standards, etc ... So I am interested in a clear answer if MO can opt out of this or not? Maybe that should be a new question.. | |
| Jan 7, 2014 at 15:29 | comment | added | Tim Post Staff | @TRiG They've got a particularly sensational tag with some somewhat .. amusing .. questions that folks tend to swarm, Twitter is to blame for half of that too. That can be safely considered to be a fluke, or at least soon will be able to be safely considered a fluke. | |
| Jan 6, 2014 at 19:33 | comment | added | TRiG | Recently, Code Golf seems to be absolutely dominating the hot list anyway. I very rarely see a question from here. | |
| Jan 6, 2014 at 18:21 | comment | added | Tim Post Staff | @PeterLeFanuLumsdaine Everyone sees the same list, it's basically collected from all of the sites (or, well, sites where there's enough movement for a question to be considered interesting to the algorithm) and then it's cached. What I'm digging into is what makes it 'hot', which has come up before, but things changed since then. I'll get back to this as soon as I can, I promise, now curiosity is really eating at me! :) | |
| Jan 6, 2014 at 16:58 | comment | added | Manfred Weis | I must admit that I only looked at the hot list, when I was new to MO, but now I only follow newest questions or links to older ones. Maybe a "most referenced" list would be a better indication of the impact of a question on mathematical research and thus on how hot it actually is. | |
| Jan 4, 2014 at 19:06 | comment | added | Andy Putman | I think that it is very important to point out that in the many meta threads about the hot list, as far as I can tell no active member of MO has expressed a positive impression of the hot list. All the comments have been overwhelming negative... | |
| Jan 4, 2014 at 17:05 | comment | added | Peter LeFanu Lumsdaine | @TimPost: while you’re asking/answering these questions, I’d also be interested to know (if it can be disclosed at all) to what extent the hot-question list is universal. Do all Stackexchange users see the hot list, or do we each see one customised according to our account/activity profile? | |
| Jan 4, 2014 at 7:25 | comment | added | Tim Post Staff | @quid (and all) I'm going to talk to the guy that actually wrote the algorithm before I edit / comment further, I want to be sure that what I think is correct is actually correct before offering more focused advice on a premise that might be erroneous. Probably not going to be able to chat with him until early next week so please, stay tuned. I still assert that the benefits outweigh the headaches and will continue to do so, but I want just a little more confidence in my understanding of how it works before I respond to these (very well thought out) comments. | |
| Jan 3, 2014 at 23:48 | comment | added | user9072 | Thanks for sharing your point of view on this. A detail about this hot list I always found strange and even more in view of you first bullet point (and also the second slightly) is: the way the 'hotness' formula is designed (if it did not change recently) it is likely (at least on MO) that a question making this list will already have several well-receuved answers. It does not even seem that relevant to find additional people that might also answer this particular question. | |
| Jan 3, 2014 at 23:35 | comment | added | Joël | "if lots of random visitors like the question, that means nothing", says Henry. Or perhaps that means that the question is probably not a research-level question :-) | |
| Jan 3, 2014 at 20:00 | comment | added | François G. Dorais Mod | My interpretation of the last paragraph is that growth will inevitably lead to some loss in the "family atmosphere" of MO as it grows into an everyday tool for a much larger mathematical community. We're already struggling with this as we witness the gradual erosion of our "family values" of which this is only one facet. That sounds sad now but it's not a bad thing in the long run. I think one of the reasons the reasons MO is struggling with network interactions right now is that MO is slightly ahead of its peers in this evolutionary step. | |
| Jan 3, 2014 at 16:10 | comment | added | Henry Cohn | I'm also skeptical regarding how many people on other sites can even recognize a good question for a research-level site like MO. That works at math.stackexchange, whose mission is to answer math questions at all levels. If lots of random people want to know the answer to a question there, then that proves it's a valuable question. On the other hand, at MO this undermines the whole meaning of voting for borderline-appropriate questions. If lots of regular users think the question is a good fit for MO, that means something, but if lots of random visitors like the question, that means nothing. | |
| Jan 3, 2014 at 15:59 | comment | added | Henry Cohn | I'm not sure I understand the last paragraph, in particular why the inevitability of growth means the hot questions list is a good idea for MO now. One interpretation is that as MO grows, it will prove impossible to keep well-meaning visitors who lack professional-level knowledge from playing a major role in the site, so we might as well accept this now. Is that what you mean? I hope this isn't true, since from my perspective it would negate the main purpose of MO, but even if it is true, I don't see why speeding up this change is an improvement. | |
| Jan 3, 2014 at 15:27 | history | answered | Tim PostStaff | CC BY-SA 3.0 |