Timeline for Most important results of the year - appropriate or not?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
25 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Mar 29 at 0:51 | comment | added | David White | Here's another example: mathoverflow.net/a/137572/11540 | |
| Mar 13 at 12:22 | comment | added | David White | Here's another example: mathoverflow.net/a/133301/11540 | |
| Mar 13 at 2:13 | comment | added | David White | Here's another example: mathoverflow.net/a/83211/11540 | |
| Feb 23 at 3:47 | comment | added | David Roberts Mod | @DavidWhite we have different tools to deal with that. A question can be "locked for historical significance" instead, and this was done recently to such a question. If you want to flag a question for mod attention that you think should be locked, let us know and use such a phrase. Closing a question instead of locking it doesn't send the correct message, which is "things have changed, please don't ask such questions any more", rather than "this highly active and upvoted question is closed for being off-topic", which is really mixing messages. | |
| Feb 23 at 3:38 | comment | added | David White | @DavidRoberts Yes, I think that old questions that would be closed if asked today, should be closed. That will prevent people from getting the wrong idea that such questions are on topic today. Also, I maintain that this "annual holiday tradition" is a blatant violation of the FAQ, should be closed, and should not be encouraged for next year. Mark my words: in future years, this "holiday tradition" will happen earlier and earlier in an arms race for people who want to ask a highly upvoted but totally opinion-based and non-research question, in a unique period where it's magically acceptable. | |
| Feb 23 at 3:33 | comment | added | David Roberts Mod | In particular, you can see Todd Trimble in the comments, with his prominent moderator diamond ..... but he wasn't a moderator until about a year after those comments! As far as I can tell, the answer wasn't flagged for moderator attention, so no doubt the community was more accepting in those days of such answers. In general telling people their question is a bad one needs to be done with care, and usually with enough shared context to make it clear that the feedback is meant to be constructive. Telling an undergrad their question is bad is something I would personally never do, in contrast. | |
| Feb 23 at 3:29 | comment | added | David Roberts Mod | In response to your last comment linking the non-deleted answer, it was in 2012, when we had a pretty different slate of moderators, and site norms were somewhat different. Complaining of inconsistency assumes that the way that moderators approach should be totally static, and not adapt to how the community shifts over time. Questions that were on-topic in December 2009 (when the user base was very narrow and most people actually knew each other anway) would be closed as off-topic today. Does that sound your "but muh consistency!" (sorry) alarm? | |
| Feb 23 at 0:17 | history | edited | David White | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jan 10 at 3:22 | comment | added | Timothy Chow | I'd characterize your five examples as follows: 1: "This should be CW." 2: "Part 1 is inappropriate; I'll answer Part 2." 3: "There's a better SE site for this question." 4: "This genre of question is perhaps usually inappropriate, but I think this particular question is okay." 5: "I'm uncertain whether this question is appropriate, but I'll answer it because people seem interested." Again, none of these has the form, "This question is definitely inappropriate and I strongly disagree with those who claim it's appropriate, but here's an answer anyway." | |
| Jan 10 at 3:20 | comment | added | Timothy Chow | FWIW, I am also not too happy with the moderators' decision to delete your question and re-post just the part about the Telescope Conjecture. IMO, it would have been better just to delete your answer without re-posting any of it. That said, I don't think your five purported analogues are really analogous. None of them say, "This question is definitely inappropriate" and then go ahead and answer it. | |
| Jan 9 at 19:21 | history | edited | David White | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jan 5 at 14:50 | history | edited | David White | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jan 3 at 3:41 | comment | added | Elizabeth Henning | Wow. I don't find the "mixed messages" or "research help" arguments convincing, and I think the big-lists (opinion-based or not) are fun and often useful, but if this particular tradition attracts people who don't know how to behave themselves, then forget it. There's too much toxicity online as it is. | |
| Jan 1 at 16:50 | history | edited | David White | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jan 1 at 16:30 | history | edited | David White | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Dec 29, 2023 at 23:13 | comment | added | Kimball | I feel like the question in question would be more appropriate at a tea.mathoverflow site, if we had such a thing. | |
| Dec 29, 2023 at 13:21 | comment | added | Jochen Glueck | @StevenLandsburg: Same for me. | |
| Dec 29, 2023 at 12:30 | comment | added | Steven Landsburg | I was mildly in favor of keeping the question open. Having read this post I have voted to close. | |
| Dec 28, 2023 at 17:15 | comment | added | Sam Hopkins | Well, the fact that the question was closed via votes, and then re-opened via votes, at least shows a fair amount of disagreement about its appropriateness among users. | |
| Dec 28, 2023 at 16:34 | comment | added | Timothy Chow | @DavidWhite Given how contentious this issue has become, I like the suggestion in your final paragraph, of having the moderators come to some decision, and marking it clearly as a "holiday exception" if they decide to allow it. But I also want to say that I don't think that the 21 upvotes and 19 downvotes prove what you claim they prove. It doesn't prove that the question is bad. It proves only that if an answer is posted which mixes an actual answer to the question with a polemic about how terrible the question is, then such an answer will likely elicit a mixed reaction. | |
| Dec 28, 2023 at 16:34 | comment | added | JoshuaZ | You write that " As of this writing, my answer has 21 upvotes and 19 downvotes, and serves as an example of why "primarily opinion based" questions are not appropriate for mathoverflow." This does not seem to follow. The high upvote and downvotes may be (likely is) due to the fact that it calls for closure and that it mixes an answer with an opinion about it. If the answer had just been an answer to the question, I strongly suspect it would have been upvoted a lot with few downvotes. | |
| Dec 28, 2023 at 16:28 | comment | added | Timothy Chow | @SamHopkins I don't view the policies as Laying Down The Law Which Must Be Obeyed, so much as trying to give some guidelines about using the site for its intended purpose. The "intended purpose" is necessarily somewhat fuzzy, but it's an invaluable conceit for making MathOverflow (or StackOverflow) work. Put simply, the philosophy (as I understand it) has been that the rules exist to serve the community; the community does not exist to serve the rules. If the community wants something that doesn't comply with the rules as stated, then changing the rules should always be a serious possibility. | |
| Dec 28, 2023 at 16:05 | comment | added | Sam Hopkins | I agree with a lot of this, but especially the bit about how subverting the rules because it's popular to do so in this case goes against the whole point of having explicit policies, moderation, etc. in the first place. | |
| Dec 28, 2023 at 15:35 | history | edited | David White | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Dec 28, 2023 at 15:03 | history | answered | David White | CC BY-SA 4.0 |