Timeline for Migrating a question which is already posted on the other site
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
40 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 6, 2013 at 14:07 | comment | added | Michael Hardy | The principal form of cheating in math courses is treating the learning of material as a price paid to get a grade, rather than as the thing they're there for. The obvious solution is to make grades in courses at most an off-the-record private communication from the teacher to the student. | |
| Aug 6, 2013 at 11:51 | comment | added | user9072 | Comment: It is true that here the author also must agree in the end, but according to the description the respective Editors in Chief decide before the author is consulted about the idea. (And, of course here author's agreement is a lot more relevant as typicallly one can only ever publish a paper once, unlike asking some question somewhere.) But that the paper is sent by one editorail board to another without the author being asked can happen. (Sorry for coming back to this, but not having said this makes me nervous.) | |
| Aug 6, 2013 at 11:44 | comment | added | user9072 | re the journal-analogy I'd like to add more details to what I said before it even came up, namely that things not unlike this actually happen: "3. Transfer. Papers that are of high quality but are inappropriate for SIAP can be transferred to another SIAM journal for consideration. Both EICs involved and the author(s) must approve the transfer. The EICs must agree before the author(s) is consulted. If the author agrees to the transfer, the original paper is marked rejected (RJ) and a new file is opened with a different manuscript number." source: siam.org/journals/siap/review.php | |
| Aug 6, 2013 at 8:09 | comment | added | user9072 | With this modification in place, we agree. | |
| Aug 6, 2013 at 8:06 | comment | added | user6976 | @quid: Yes, I should have written "Asking help ... without teacher's approval ...". If the teacher approves asking for help on m.s.e. or MO or elsewhere (which can of course happen), that should be included in the question. | |
| Aug 6, 2013 at 8:01 | comment | added | user9072 | @MarkSapir my students can get the solutions to their homework in whathever way they like. They only then need to understand it. So it is false. | |
| Aug 6, 2013 at 7:59 | comment | added | user6976 | @quid: It is true. I was talking about help with homework and tests. | |
| Aug 6, 2013 at 7:55 | comment | added | user9072 | @MarkSapir: you say "Asking MO, m.s.e., etc. for help, is cheating for obvious reasons" this is obviously false in this generality. | |
| Aug 6, 2013 at 7:06 | comment | added | user6976 | @MichaelHardy: Asking questions and getting answers is a part of a teaching process. Students should try to use the stuff in their heads (assuming that it is not just fluff) and work on the homework problems on their own. Asking your teacher for help is usually allowed (except for the tests). Asking MO, m.s.e., etc. for help, is cheating for obvious reasons. It should result in automatic "F", and a letter to the University Honors committee which, in turn, brings a lot of trouble. Justifying somebody's cheating by somebody else's cheating is useless. | |
| Aug 6, 2013 at 3:55 | comment | added | Michael Hardy | ....and anyone concerned about cheating should be concerned about institutionalized cheating of kinds that is FAR worse than all those teachers in Atlanta getting arrested for falsifying answers to standardized tests. | |
| Aug 6, 2013 at 3:54 | comment | added | Michael Hardy | @MarkSapir : I don't think 20% homework means 20% cheating. Students ought to ask more questions than they do about homework. | |
| Aug 6, 2013 at 0:10 | comment | added | JRN | The separate question mentioned in the comment above is at meta.mathoverflow.net/q/583/12357 | |
| Aug 5, 2013 at 15:25 | comment | added | user6976 | I have made a separate question about it. There is an answer there but I am not sure it it correct. Also "legally possible" does not mean "morally possible", and I think that regardless of legal issues, migrating a question without OP's consent is not ethically correct (unlike closing and deleting). | |
| Aug 5, 2013 at 14:14 | comment | added | user6976 | @StefanKohl: Where in that agreement is it written, that migrating a question is legally allowed? | |
| Aug 5, 2013 at 13:15 | comment | added | user6976 | @TobiasKildetoft: And where is it in the agreement? The word "migrate" is not there. Also that agreement existed before this Summer also? | |
| Aug 5, 2013 at 13:09 | comment | added | Tobias Kildetoft | Found it on stackexchange.com/legal | |
| Aug 5, 2013 at 13:03 | comment | added | user6976 | @TobiasKildetoft: I cannot find it either. Does it exist and what exactly does it say? | |
| Aug 5, 2013 at 13:01 | comment | added | Tobias Kildetoft | That is part of the licence you have agreed to publish under when posting things on MO. Though I cannot seem to find a good reference for it for some reason. | |
| Aug 5, 2013 at 12:52 | comment | added | user6976 | @TobiasKildetoft: Where exactly do I give this permission? | |
| Aug 5, 2013 at 12:37 | comment | added | Daniel Moskovich | Mark Sapir has made a non-trivial point which I had not considered before. I will be more careful about voting to migrate questions in the future. | |
| Aug 5, 2013 at 11:54 | comment | added | Tobias Kildetoft | The edited in analogy is not very apt unless you change it to "submit to Annals and allow them to send it on wherever they please as long as they make it clear who wrote it" since this is the permission you give when you write something on MO (and MSE). | |
| Aug 5, 2013 at 10:59 | history | edited | user6976 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 250 characters in body
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| Aug 4, 2013 at 23:23 | comment | added | user9072 | Various discussions are happening there how to handle homework problems properly; with varying opinions but I think it is fair to say that the mainstream-view is not at all oblivious regarding problems related to this. (In addition just that 20% of the questions are HW does not mean the all get an answer, roughly, the guidleine is for HW hints only.) And, it is not that different than here. It is not like nobody ever got a solution to a HW problem on MO. (Besides personally I do not even consider it as that relevant, but this is besides the point.) | |
| Aug 4, 2013 at 23:15 | comment | added | user6976 | @NoahSnyder: Which one is an overstatement? 20% of questions homework, which is tolerated (or even encouraged?) by the community is very bad. | |
| Aug 4, 2013 at 23:11 | comment | added | Noah Snyder | Most is certainly an overstatement. I'd guesstimate around 20% of the questions on the site are homework questions. | |
| Aug 4, 2013 at 20:02 | comment | added | user6976 | @MichaelHardy: As I said, indeed, I do not know anything about m.s.e. My opinion is formed by what was said on the meta before. This does not make migrating a question there without OP's approval any more appropriate. | |
| Aug 4, 2013 at 19:55 | comment | added | Michael Hardy | ....and if you want to see mathematicians complicit in academic cheating, look at those who design a system and a curriculum that predictably has the effect of encouraging millions of students to take calculus without knowing the prerequisite material. It brings in tuition money and it helps sell textbooks to a captive audience for $200 apiece, which drives up the price of all math books. | |
| Aug 4, 2013 at 19:52 | comment | added | Michael Hardy | ...or this one or this one or this one? | |
| Aug 4, 2013 at 19:49 | comment | added | Michael Hardy | @MarkSapir : Your statement that "it is populated by undergraduate students trying to cheat by posting their homework questions, and by mathematicians helping the cheating." shows you are not exprerienced with m.s.e. That probably happens, but that is not most of what is posted. Some questions are obviously from graduate students or from mathematicians. How about this question or..... | |
| Aug 4, 2013 at 17:21 | comment | added | user9072 | Okay, we can stop the discussion, but I will allow myself to reiterate this point: The OP in fact always has given permission (in advance) to the content being reproduced elsewhere (via publishing their content under a CC license, CC-BY-SA 3.0, I think, to be precise; see the bottom of the page for details). | |
| Aug 4, 2013 at 17:09 | comment | added | user6976 | @quid: You still do not understand the difference between closing (the community thinks that the question is not appropriate in that community) and migrating (the community think that the question should belong to some other community). The former can be done without OP's approval because the OP submitted the question to that community, and the latter cannot be done without OP's approval (because the OP did not submit the question to the other site). I do not think it is worth continuing the discussion until you realize the difference. | |
| Aug 4, 2013 at 17:05 | comment | added | user9072 | And then only mods (possibly after consultation with the other sites mods) can migrate. But so far the rate of error is low, more than 95% of questions were not rejected on math.SE (which they could via closing them) then we'd get it back. In addition, 'migration' means closing it here (technically it is locked but this is not so very different) and posting a copy there. Why should somebody not be allowed to decide to post a copy of somebodies question elsewhere, when they in fact got explicit permission to do so from OP (they agreed in advance via posting here). | |
| Aug 4, 2013 at 17:02 | comment | added | user9072 | One cannot know if the people making decisions are competent. But neither can one really know this for any other decision; I can vote to close on each question on MO but not for all am I competent to do so; this does not mean that every vote I cast is ethically problematic (while I would consider it as problematic if I would vote on certain questions were I am incompetent). if I do/did not feel competent for a given question than I did not vote; same for migration. But if there should be many problems with "wrong" migrations then the migration path could and likely will be closed. [cont.] | |
| Aug 4, 2013 at 16:36 | comment | added | user6976 | @quid: How do I (or the OP) know that these people know the other Web site? How does the system know that a person who voted to migrate is an expert in math SE? With 25K of reps, I can vote to migrate too. And even if these people are experts, they have no right to take a question that does not belong to them and move it to another Web site. I think that the MO community can close a question, delete a question, suspend the OP (say, for spam), even call the OP "imbecile", but cannot "migrate" OP's question. | |
| Aug 4, 2013 at 16:28 | comment | added | user9072 | But if you'd want to create a "copy" of my wallet, I might agree to this. [Except you'd engage in ethically problematic activity in the process like 'copying' money :-)] Furthermore, there are even some journals that ask the referees in addition to accept/reject to possibly suggest a more appropriate journal (by the same publisher). So it is not that unusual that competent people voice their opinion regarding more appropriate venues for dissemination. Sure in this case the authors then needs to agree, but again here auth. would loose possibility to publish elsewhere, not the case here. | |
| Aug 4, 2013 at 16:22 | comment | added | user9072 | re 1: why can't "we be sure" I can see why some feel uncomfortable to decide something is good for math.SE when they do not know that site, but others know that site very well so I do not see why those cannot decide this. re 2: via posting here everybody licenses the content under CC; this even constitutes agreeing to the content being reproduced wherever and without the need for consent provided the source is mentioned. By contrast I never agreed to anything like this regarding my wallet (in addition to my wallet not being reproduced here, but I would loose it, which is not true here). | |
| Aug 4, 2013 at 16:11 | comment | added | user6976 | 2. Sending a copy of a question to anywhere without asking OP's approval is obviously ethically wrong. The question does not belong to the people who migrate it, it belongs to the OP. Is that clear? To be more clear, suppose you have a wallet and I (and 4 others) decide that it is more appropriate that X has it. Would you agree that your wallet was "migrated" to X? | |
| Aug 4, 2013 at 16:08 | comment | added | user6976 | @quid: 1. I explained (twice) that it is ethically wrong because we cannot be sure that the question is good for any other site than MO. It would be ethically correct to first ask the OP whether he/she/it wants to migrate the question or suggest to migrate it (as it was on the previous version of MO). | |
| Aug 4, 2013 at 15:16 | comment | added | user9072 | First, perhaps you could elaborate on why, in your opinion, it is not ethically correct instead of just repeating it. Second, perhaps you could have a look yourself to form an opinion instead of just going by hearsay. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, since in this particular, and the abstract situation to be discussed here, the question was/is already on math.SE it is completely unclear to me how there could be any ethical problem in sending a second copy there; whether or not this is reasonable seems like a purely practical/adminsitrative question. | |
| Aug 4, 2013 at 14:59 | history | answered | user6976 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |