Timeline for Scope and mission of MathOverflow
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
32 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jan 16, 2021 at 8:03 | comment | added | Francesco Polizzi | @NoamD.Elkies: you are right, it is a a very rough comparison. | |
| Jan 16, 2021 at 4:19 | comment | added | Noam D. Elkies | "Score in a chess tournament" doesn't feel like a very close fit to MO reputation (and/or badges). Maybe something like bridge master points -- which unlike chess ratings are in part a measure of how much one plays in official tournaments? An extreme example: the late John Tate <mathoverflow.net/users/9848/john-tate> answered precisely one question here, which was enough to earn 1536 points ($2^9 3$ as it happens) and half of his 14 badges. There are 1000+ MO members with more reputation points, but very few are in Tate's mathematical league. | |
| Jan 12, 2021 at 15:57 | comment | added | Mark Wildon | I agree most strongly with 1 above. I think one reason why MathOverflow works so well is that many questions that arise in maths research are hard for most, but somewhat easy for at least one person. Finding this 'one person' is a problem brilliantly solved by MO. As a corollary, we should be tolerant of people that ask apparently basic questions, when they truly arise in research. (In this spirit, I have sometimes asked such questions, and had helpful replies, and I'm often been pleasantly surprised how much reputation I've got from answers that to me are quite basic.) | |
| Jan 12, 2021 at 7:16 | comment | added | Francesco Polizzi | @NoahSnyder: I would be grateful if you could delete your last comment. It is ad hominem, inflammatory and unrelated to this discussion. | |
| Jan 11, 2021 at 9:49 | answer | added | Andrea Ferretti | timeline score: 18 | |
| Jan 10, 2021 at 20:26 | comment | added | Noah Snyder | @MartinSleziak: Wow that "dissonance" link is quite a flashback to how incredibly toxic Harry was over there until he finally got a huge ban. | |
| Jan 10, 2021 at 5:37 | comment | added | Martin Sleziak | In case somebody wants to have a look at similar discussions on Mathematics Meta, there are, for example: Dissonance of purpose: What kind of site should MU be? (July 2010), What is the purpose of math.se; to learn to provide nice answers or just to get them? (January 2011) or What is the purpose of this site? (November 2015). | |
| Jan 10, 2021 at 5:37 | comment | added | Martin Sleziak | I suppose that long-time MO users might remember some older discussions with related topics either here or on tea. I was able to find this one: What MO is for and what is your aim in participation? (December 2013) | |
| Jan 9, 2021 at 20:46 | answer | added | Hailong Dao | timeline score: 16 | |
| Jan 9, 2021 at 19:00 | history | edited | Francesco Polizzi | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jan 9, 2021 at 18:58 | comment | added | Francesco Polizzi | Right, I was intending "research" in broad sense, including "studying new concepts", not only "writing a paper". I will make an edit. | |
| Jan 9, 2021 at 18:54 | comment | added | Joseph O'Rourke | What's missing in the three options for me is: learning. Posing questions to learn about some math concept (not because your research is stuck). Answering carefully to help others learn. Reading questions and answers to broaden your understanding of aspects of mathematics. | |
| Jan 9, 2021 at 18:01 | comment | added | Francesco Polizzi | I put the quote mark and the parenthetical remarks because we had many sensible discussions in the past about what meaning we should do to the terms "professional mathematician" and "research level question", see for example meta.mathoverflow.net/questions/1654/… regarding the first one and meta.mathoverflow.net/questions/1024/… regarding the second one. | |
| Jan 9, 2021 at 15:29 | comment | added | Yemon Choi | FWIW I am in favour of the parenthetical comments, because we are dealing with ill-defined concepts and some qualification is necessary | |
| Jan 9, 2021 at 15:11 | comment | added | user44143 | I am downvoting the quote marks and parenthetical comments, which make the options too vague to be meaningful. If you mean that the site is for professional mathematicians or for research-level mathematics, you can say so. | |
| Jan 9, 2021 at 14:17 | history | edited | Francesco Polizzi | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jan 9, 2021 at 14:17 | comment | added | Francesco Polizzi | Fair enough, I will replace "addictive" by "entertaining". | |
| Jan 9, 2021 at 14:10 | comment | added | YCor | I'm not sure the word "addictive" is that positive, but I'd say it should be viewed as entertaining (and I view it as entertaining, otherwise I wouldn't spend time here). | |
| Jan 9, 2021 at 13:33 | answer | added | Carlo Beenakker | timeline score: 9 | |
| Jan 9, 2021 at 13:23 | history | became hot meta post | |||
| Jan 9, 2021 at 12:37 | comment | added | Monroe Eskew | @Federico Maybe you could be more constructive and say what you think the goals are. It is typical to write some initial thoughts and hypotheses in a question. | |
| Jan 9, 2021 at 11:05 | history | edited | Francesco Polizzi | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jan 9, 2021 at 10:53 | history | edited | Francesco Polizzi | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jan 9, 2021 at 10:24 | history | edited | Francesco Polizzi | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jan 9, 2021 at 10:13 | history | edited | Francesco Polizzi | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jan 9, 2021 at 10:12 | comment | added | Francesco Polizzi | The premise is just to say that if you want to solve a (perceived?) problem, the first thing to do is to understand where you really want to go. "Narrow" is a matter of opinion, I do not think that entertainment is necessarily "narrow", after all many good mathematicians like mathematical puzzles and mathematical competitions, and IMO are considered an important event in our community. The three goals are just the ones that come to my mind, I am not really talking about "ranking them". I will delete "order of importance", leaving only "importance" to be more clear about this. | |
| Jan 9, 2021 at 10:05 | comment | added | Federico Poloni | First of all, you start off with a long premise instead of just asking the question Then, you suggest two answers that are very broad goals and one that is way more narrow, in way that suggests a contrast between them, and you suggest that ranking them in order of importance is the key to answer. Anyhow, we can see what other people think, based on which comments they upvote. | |
| Jan 9, 2021 at 9:59 | comment | added | Francesco Polizzi | How can you read this from the question? I may be wrong, but its formulation seems to me completely neutral regarding reputation. And what answer am I suggesting? | |
| Jan 9, 2021 at 9:59 | comment | added | Federico Poloni | This reads like a very loaded question "reputation sucks, am I right?". Could you please edit it so that you are not actively trying to suggest an answer, if the one in your last line really is your question? | |
| Jan 9, 2021 at 9:39 | history | edited | Francesco Polizzi | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jan 9, 2021 at 9:32 | history | edited | Francesco Polizzi | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jan 9, 2021 at 9:27 | history | asked | Francesco Polizzi | CC BY-SA 4.0 |