Timeline for More precisely defining the scope of mathoverflow's subject matter
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
23 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jul 19, 2022 at 9:53 | comment | added | Martin Sleziak | Since the link in this post is not working at the moment, I will at least include a Wayback Machine snapshot of that discussion on tea. | |
| Nov 2, 2018 at 16:52 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://tea.mathoverflow.net/ with http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/
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| Jul 14, 2013 at 0:20 | comment | added | Todd Trimble | "Professional mathematicians" is not a bad shorthand; it's pithier than what might be more accurate, "mathematicians of professional caliber" (the difference being that some people answering to that description are not actually paid as mathematicians). | |
| Jul 13, 2013 at 22:26 | comment | added | François G. Dorais Mod | @quid: I do prefer the term professional, mostly for i18n reasons. Personally, I don't think any of the suggestions are perfectly adequate but I suspect there simply isn't a perfect word to put there. | |
| Jul 13, 2013 at 20:49 | comment | added | user9072 | @FrançoisG.Dorais: thank you for this additional information. Since you seem not to like the Ph.D.-mention either, from what you said in the other thread, perhaps we could just add the 'professional' (which was an option I also just mentioned), so 'professional mathematicians' instead of 'mathematicians.' The faqs ask to be professional, so this must be a good word to add :-) | |
| Jul 13, 2013 at 20:27 | comment | added | François G. Dorais Mod | @quid: I have no problem changing the tagline; I even suggested a different one myself. I'm strongly against any reference to any other site in the tagline, though. The visit counts I mentioned above were specifically from stackexchange.com (where you see all the sites with their taglines); most of our in-network traffic comes from math.se and stackoverflow. Even if you add all these up, they don't even account for 20% of our traffic. By far the largest source of traffic is google.com. | |
| Jul 13, 2013 at 19:53 | comment | added | user9072 | @FrançoisG.Dorais: Finally, noone wanted to discourage people from reading as the descrption talks about what questions are accepted. But if you press me, personally, I would even want to discourage random people from reading the site. What good does it do that people not knowing the first thing about math-research read the site? (I can see some good, like general publicity for the field, but this is massively outweight by the potential of getting ever more off-topic content uninformed voters and all kind of other inconvenience.) | |
| Jul 13, 2013 at 19:50 | comment | added | user9072 | @FrançoisG.Dorais: But also, I observed more than one instance already of somebody asking a completely off-topic question here that, as I checked, had an stackoverflow account. It seems not unlikely they arrived somehow inter-network. And would have had no problem to ask at math.SE had they known. So I continue to think changing the descrption could avoid some (obviouly not all) off-topic questions. Also, even if it would not avoid them only having the descrption handy can help to point to on closing to avoid comments like 'Hey, but this is a math site! How can this be off-topic?' | |
| Jul 13, 2013 at 19:44 | comment | added | user9072 | @FrançoisG.Dorais: the point is that, since you mentioned reddit traffic, some might arrive here to read some interesting post linked somewhere. Then they know the site. Then at some point the might have a math question and perhaps will remmeber the site and think 'Oh, surely I could ask this there.' And might not pay any further attention. Or, even if they do the might be set on the idea to ask here and thus not redecide. Now, this are a lot of mights. However, since you seem to think it is not so important anyway why not change it (and fine, as I said, drop mention of math.SE if you like). | |
| Jul 13, 2013 at 19:11 | comment | added | François G. Dorais Mod | @quid: Sure, but it doesn't show up on the ask page. Are you trying to encourage people not to look at MO? What good would that do? How many sites do you go to immediately suggest another site at the top of each page? | |
| Jul 13, 2013 at 18:37 | comment | added | user9072 | @FrançoisG.Dorais: please have a look at the site while not being logged in. This description is in the banner that is shown then on the front page. This description is how 'about' starts. And, this banner (in non expanded form, but still displaying this descrption) is shown one each individual posts page for users not logged in. It is quite unclear to me how somebody should arrive to use the site and not see it. From inside or outside the network it does not matter. | |
| Jul 13, 2013 at 18:18 | comment | added | François G. Dorais Mod | Only a very small fraction of that is from stackexchange.com. We get twice as much traffic from reddit, for example. The fact is, at least 90% of our traffic never sees the site definition. It's just not as preeminent as people think. The best place to say these things is on the ask page: 100% of people who ask questions here see that page. | |
| Jul 13, 2013 at 18:16 | comment | added | Yemon Choi | These days I'm inclined to think that "professional mathematicians", while not exactly what we mean, would be far better for practical purposes than "research mathematicians." We can always make exceptions for those doing maths as a hobby at a sufficiently high level, no? | |
| Jul 13, 2013 at 18:03 | comment | added | user9072 | But to add to what Noah Snyder said: because the description is the only thing people inside the network will see in a list of sites and insider the network math.SE is the main alternative. If somebody is searching for a math site in the SE network I think they will go by this description mainly. Here is a link to the list of all sites and their descriptions: stackexchange.com/sites?view=list#traffic I think it is fair to say at the moment we have one of the least informative descriptions of all the sites. | |
| Jul 13, 2013 at 17:48 | comment | added | user9072 | @FrançoisG.Dorais: if you do not think the mention of math.SE is a good idea (I can see reasons for or against it), I would also think this would avoid some off-topic questions if the last sentence were removed. Even if only 'professional' was added to mathematicians I think this would already have some positive effect. The plain 'mathematicians' is really misleading, IMO, in the context of the other sites' descriptions that often-times make and amateur/professional/both distinction. And if nothing is said I think the most reasoable assumption would be 'both', yet it's wrong in our case. | |
| Jul 13, 2013 at 17:37 | comment | added | Noah Snyder | The same reason you should only ever put one question in an email: because people don't like to read more than one thing. | |
| Jul 13, 2013 at 17:33 | comment | added | François G. Dorais Mod | But why put that in the definition? There's other places to tell people what the alternatives are, and there is more than just one alternative. | |
| Jul 13, 2013 at 17:30 | comment | added | Noah Snyder | @FrançoisG.Dorais: In order to give people an alternative so that they won't just ask inappropriate questions here anyway. | |
| Jul 13, 2013 at 17:28 | comment | added | François G. Dorais Mod | Why should our definition be relative to math.se? | |
| Jul 13, 2013 at 17:26 | comment | added | user9072 | I think it could really help to avoid some off-topic questions if this description were used instead of just 'for mathematicians' what we have now as the official description. I agree professional is better given the context. The word 'professional' is also used in the description of other sites (when applicable). | |
| Jul 13, 2013 at 17:13 | history | edited | Noah Snyder | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Link added
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| Jul 13, 2013 at 16:51 | comment | added | Andy Putman | This is good, though I also agree that "professional mathematicians" is better than research mathematicians. | |
| Jul 13, 2013 at 16:47 | history | answered | Noah Snyder | CC BY-SA 3.0 |