Timeline for Welcoming new user: on a recent question about connections
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
33 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Dec 21, 2021 at 10:13 | history | edited | Martin Sleziak |
added some tags which seemed relevant to me - feel free to edit the tags further
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| Dec 14, 2021 at 22:15 | history | edited | YCor | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
made title informative about the discussion (connections is not the point), cf possible future similar questions
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| Dec 13, 2021 at 18:17 | comment | added | Timothy Chow | @AlexM. I personally assess MO questions not according to how elementary the question seems to me (especially if I'm an expert, because then the risk is particularly high that I will rate the question as more elementary than it really is), but to ask whether I could imagine a colleague of mine who works in an entirely different area of mathematics coming to my office and asking me the question. In part, MO is an attempt to virtually replicate the latter situation. If I put it this way, do you agree that one of your colleagues might ask you such an elementary question about connections? | |
| Dec 7, 2021 at 15:13 | answer | added | YCor | timeline score: 18 | |
| Dec 7, 2021 at 10:23 | comment | added | Emil Jeřábek | @AsafKaragila There is a difference, I know. But it’s easy to see how a casual observer may form such an opinion based on available evidence, and they cannot really be blamed for this. If you want the site to have a better image, then make sure there is more good stuff and less bad stuff visible on the home page. (FWIW, I don’t know what’s in the deleted comment; I am going by the non-deleted comment where it is repeated by the OP.) | |
| Dec 7, 2021 at 10:19 | comment | added | Francesco Polizzi | @Emil: well, "devoted to" is different from "sometimes, unfortunately involved with". To make an example, in Italy we had several problems with corruption, but still it would be unjust to say "Italian people are devoted to corruption", as there are many honest people. At any rate, I do not think that "chastisement" is the term here, it was rather a clarification. | |
| Dec 7, 2021 at 10:07 | comment | added | Asaf Karagila Mod | @Emil: There is a difference between saying that MSE has a problem with cheating and what was said in that deleted comment. Nobody here pretends that there are no problems on MSE with regards to cheating, but to claim that it's the only thing that is going on that site is offensive to the many of us who are taking part on both communities. You're being very reductive in your comment. | |
| Dec 7, 2021 at 9:44 | comment | added | Emil Jeřábek | It’s hypocrisy to chastise a random user for expressing the sentiment that MSE has become a “website devoted to helping undergrads cheat”, when moderators of the site themselves acknowledge that this is a serious problem (albeit not in so blunt words): math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/33508/…. | |
| Dec 6, 2021 at 6:57 | comment | added | Francesco Polizzi | In fact, I agree that both sides had a confrontational attitude (and, in my opinion, the unnecessary remark about MSE and its reiteration were as unfortunate as the first comment). But, in cases like this, it is rather useless to split hairs, and it is better to calm things down instead of throwing gasoline on the fire. | |
| Dec 6, 2021 at 2:01 | comment | added | LSpice | For what it's worth, the questioner did not indicate that "MSE is a site for helping undergraduates cheat" was a throwaway remark; in response to @Z.M's I-thought very proper remark in defence of MSE, the questioner re-iterated and strengthened their point. (That does not indicate anything about whether my comment or anyone else's was appropriate, just that the conversation reads differently—and much better!—with that comment deleted.) | |
| Dec 5, 2021 at 21:47 | comment | added | Asaf Karagila Mod | Without commenting on the specifics here, as I am highly unqualified to talk about any type of geometry, I'd like to offer the fact that different universities have different syllabus. When I was teaching in Jerusalem, the undergraduate set theory course was teaching things that I haven't even seen mentioned in graduate level classes in the UK. So even if we are all in agreement that graduate level questions should be allowed, it still can be tricky sometimes to agree what counts as graduate level exactly. So to that end, let's give people the benefit of the doubt on both sides here. Be nice. | |
| Dec 5, 2021 at 14:17 | comment | added | Will Sawin | @AlexM But graduate students also learn math very rapidly! So even if you are certain that no one who doesn't know X and Y should be on MO, if a grad student asks a question displaying a lack of knowledge, in a few months or a year they might know X and Y very well, and contribute positively to MO. But if you shoo them away they will never get the chance. | |
| Dec 5, 2021 at 14:15 | comment | added | Will Sawin | @AlexM I want to say something about "I refuse to believe that ... is an appropriate user of MO." While the question-asker has clarified that she is faculty, just from the original question, I think by far the most likely guess is it was asked by a graduate student. Who reads orange books, spends a long time filling in the details in the arguments there, and wonders if they can be done a better way? All these are more or less famously done by graduate students. | |
| Dec 4, 2021 at 19:28 | answer | added | Ben WebsterMod | timeline score: 63 | |
| Dec 4, 2021 at 6:37 | comment | added | Francesco Polizzi | This is a typical example where a small initial misunderstanding gives rise to a somehow bitter discussion. Instead of focusing on "who offended whom", I think that the best thing in these cases is trying to keep calm when things have gotten hectic and give people the benefit of the doubt. We should also recall that new users are probably not familiar with the site, so a certain dose of tolerance is always appropriate. | |
| Dec 4, 2021 at 0:54 | comment | added | Asaf Karagila Mod | I'd like to remind everyone that a key feature for a successful discussion here is to be respectful. | |
| Dec 4, 2021 at 0:00 | comment | added | dhy | P.S. I think drawing any conclusions from someone writing $\nabla$ instead of $\Delta$ is utterly absurd - I make this mistake around half of the time, and I have written/am writing several papers on connections. | |
| Dec 3, 2021 at 23:58 | comment | added | dhy | Basically, I think the original comment was "unfortunate" (at the first post puts it) but understandable. I think it would have been best to respond and apologize for it after the OP responded saying that they were an established researcher. And I really think that the comments after the OP's initial comment should not have been made, or at least should have been not made in the format that they were. | |
| Dec 3, 2021 at 23:53 | comment | added | dhy | The deleted comment is not visible to me, but here's my reading of the comment thread: The OP seemed somewhat offended when they received a comment calling the question not research-level (they said "[that] seems a little rude.") They were significantly more annoyed when several other commenters largely ignored the intended point of their comment (that they were an established researcher, and questions by established researchers are by definition on-topic for MO) to argue with them about what they saw as a throwaway remark. | |
| Dec 3, 2021 at 23:06 | comment | added | Andy Putman | @AlexM.: I'm happy for you. I got a PhD in geometry/topology from a reasonably fancy place, and it never came up. Probably people working in differential geometry were taught it, but not everyone. | |
| Dec 3, 2021 at 23:04 | comment | added | Alex M. | @AndyPutman: Ok, maybe I was biased, but we were taught about (coordinate-free) connections in vector bundles in 1st year of MSc. Maybe this explains my point of view (for me, the whole issue was elementary - and the brevity of the given proof shows it). Also, remember that "elementary" means "entirely from first principles" - i.e. using only the basics. | |
| Dec 3, 2021 at 23:03 | comment | added | Andy Putman | @AlexM.: This is hardly elementary, and strikes me as entirely appropriate for MO. | |
| Dec 3, 2021 at 23:02 | comment | added | Alex M. | @YemonChoi: Not knowing elementary things is fine; asking about them on MO is not. | |
| Dec 3, 2021 at 23:02 | comment | added | Andy Putman | @AlexM.: This wasn't a request for a pf of an elementary fact about connections, but whether there was a conceptual description of something defined by a big mess in local coordinates. When I first learned about the ordinary d operator, the local coordinate defn was totally unenlightening, and it was only much later in my education (after reading many books, and well after getting my PhD) that I learned the coordinate-free formula. I personally have never seen the formula for the extension of a connection to higher differentials given in the answer. Should I give back my PhD and resign? | |
| Dec 3, 2021 at 22:47 | comment | added | Yemon Choi | @AlexM. "who is not able to prove an elementary fact about connections" - that would be me, then, since I never learned diff geom properly. Would you be content with my withdrawal from MO, or would you like me to ask Newcastle to annul my PhD? | |
| Dec 3, 2021 at 19:47 | comment | added | Will Sawin | @AlexM One issue with your approach is that if one person thinks a question is very poor, they can make the question-asker feel attacked and not want to come back and ask another question (likely a better one after getting more experience with the site), even if everyone else on the site thinks the question is reasonable. | |
| Dec 3, 2021 at 19:45 | answer | added | Will Sawin | timeline score: 35 | |
| Dec 3, 2021 at 16:10 | comment | added | Sam Hopkins | @AlexM.: "I would like to discuss (respectfully, without throwing blame around) whether/how a better outcome might have been achieved." - This seems like a question to me. | |
| Dec 3, 2021 at 13:25 | comment | added | Francesco Polizzi | Well, my two cents: (1) Probably the first comment "Anyway, since it is not of research level, this question is more appropriate for Mathematics" should have been phrased differently, for instance "My impression is that this question could be more suitable for Mathematics, did you already try asking it there?" or something similar. Here I am just talking about the form, not the substance. (2) That said, the OP reaction calling MSE " a website devoted to helping undergrads cheat" seems to me a exaggerated, we all know that this is not the case. I see here a 50% contribution from each part. | |
| Dec 3, 2021 at 13:13 | history | became hot meta post | |||
| Dec 3, 2021 at 12:20 | comment | added | Asaf Karagila Mod | Just to point out one minor detail here, the account is unregistered. So we don't quite know if the person sitting behind the keyboard was here before, or will be here again. Having said that, I think there is a long-term consensus that graduate level questions, if well-posed, definitely have a place on MO. They also have a place on MSE, but general dictum of SE is "do not migrate on-topic questions". I don't know if making that suggestion was necessarily a bad idea, but it definitely triggered something in this case, which is indeed unfortunate. | |
| Dec 3, 2021 at 11:39 | comment | added | Yemon Choi | +1 - I was not at all happy with the first comment on that post, but at the time was too busy to do more than upvote the question and upvote the OP's comment, even if I did feel that the "shade" being cast on MSE was unfortunate | |
| Dec 3, 2021 at 11:37 | history | asked | Neil Strickland | CC BY-SA 4.0 |