Shall we have tea?

Question

As was recently discussed at Should meta be Q&A?, it's rather strange to have our meta site run on a Q&A basis.

In the past our meta site was a Vanilla forum, and in fact it still exists, renamed to http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/ at the transition to Stack Exchange 2.0. (Interesting trivia --- we had a meta before any other stack exchange sites besides meta.stackoverflow.com!)

Some of us (me, in particular) have always been dissatisfied with the replacement of tea by our current meta. It seems we used to have in depth conversations discussing the community and future of mathoverflow, which are now significantly obstructed by the poor software choice at meta. (But perhaps I'm just being nostalgic; hence this post.)

The folks at Stack Exchange and Discourse have kindly offered to set up a Discourse installation for us, probably to be hosted at http://tea.mathoverflow.org/. Discourse is modern forum software, developed by Jeff Atwood and co, with close links to the Stack Exchange team. There are limits to how far we could integrate it with mathoverflow itself, but here's the rough idea:

• Discourse would support essentially the same set of login methods as mathoverflow, but we would probably not be able to directly link accounts.
• We would add a custom close reason on meta, asking that the conversation be moved to tea, and would try a lot, perhaps even nearly everything (besides bug reports, login problems, and so on, that Stack Exchange staff need to be able to monitor), over to tea.
• We can explore the possibility of using our custom javascript footer allowed by our migration agreement to add notifications on mathoverflow and meta.mathoverflow about new posts on tea. (No promises here, however --- if anyone with some javascript skills wants to help me explore this, contact me directly.)

Answer 1

Although I am not so much involved on meta, I prefer the current Q&A format over the alternatives. Let me try to convince you that our current system is a good one.

The main reason, for me, is that the Q&A format tends to lead to a relatively focused form of discussion, usually concentrated on the main relevant issues. In posting an answer, a participant is forced to articulate the best grounds for a given perspective. A user must make their best case. Thus, we tend to find essentially one or just a few well-written posts for each major position on the issue, and one can sensibly compare them. I find this more useful than the kind of back-and-forth discursive debate that one finds on a discussion board.

The feedback resulting from voting only adds to this, since not only can one see the various main positions, but also one can get a sense of the community on those issues. Thus, the voting feedback is an important secondary reason to keep the current meta.

The old discussion format, in contrast, tended to amplify the views of those who post loudly or often, rather than those who post well. I think that wasn't good for the community, and I personally didn't find it as useful as the current system.

So let's keep the current format, which I feel encourages people to find and articulate the best supporting arguments for their position, and which helps the community stay focused.

Answer 2

I am against the proposal in its current form. I am not against it in total, but I am against one specific point, namely:

We would add a custom close reason on meta, asking that the conversation be moved to tea, and would try a lot, perhaps even nearly everything (besides bug reports, login problems, and so on, that Stack Exchange staff need to be able to monitor), over to tea.

This is in my opinion a problematic idea. It is one more thing that is not complicate but not immediately obvious, and it are such small things that can alienate users and lead to friction. It is already not straight forward to keep a relevant part of the community engaged with meta; this split will make this even harder.

Indeed, I feel the tighter integration of the current meta with the main site is really helpful.
The old meta did confuse some users, and in later days of MO 1.0 it was quite idle, and if not idle, the number of active participants was really low.

I could imagine to have a second board to complement the current meta, indeed, we have one (the old one), and it was essentially said when we moved into the SE network, we will continue to use it for some things (and I argued in favor of thus), but just never did. However, this should not interfere or replace the current meta, but rather be something in addition.

If somebody wants to start a discussion on tea, they are welcome to do so. But, discussions should not be moved (with force) from here to there. To inform users of new discussions there we could simply have a meta question: "What are current discussions on tea?" and a new discussion can be announced via an answer. This is very easy to do; why not simply try it.

Whether we should change the software from Vanilla to Discourse, I do not know. Maybe let us see with the board we have if activity there regains some traction and let us optimize the technicalities if or when it works. (Also, what about the current "tea"; it seems we would still need to preserve it.)

Finally, if this is mainly for communication moderators to community, a moderators' blog could be more apt (this idea came up frequently). A mailing-list as proposed in comments could also work, though it seems a bit old-fashioned to me.

Answer 3

I also miss tea and I would like to have it back for discussions. However, tea was really bad for creating authoritative statements of policy that we could link to later, and meta is really good for this. Also, as JDH says, it was bad that it amplified the loud-mouthed (like me).

Here is a proposed compromise. Keep tea running and find a way to promote it more visibly, but only as a forum for loose conversations. Once a concrete policy has been drafted, bring it over to meta to create something specific to be voted on and linked to.

Answer 4

I want to respond to Joel's post, but I'm unclear whether I should be doing that as a comment or an answer. :-)

My main concern is that while we used to have conversations about the future of mathoverflow in public (i.e. at the old meta), they now largely happen on the private moderators' mailing list.

I would like to open these up to the community again.

Answer 5

Who else is going to be there?

I think the current meta (I call it 2.0) for short is well suited for a number of issues pertaining to day-to-day operations and to the SE interface, and 2.0 is ill-suited for the long term discussions that need to take place to keep MathOverflow the idea going. However, if there is only a small group interested in using Discourse, then I recommend using the old Vanilla forum, with someone updating 2.0 periodically with a summary of goings on.

EDIT Having seen the Discourse page, I can see where it could lead to the kind of brainstorming and collaboration needed for the future of MathOverflow. Again, I think it is important to know how many will participate. The forum publishing.mathforge.org of Andrew Stacey was and still is a good idea, but it seems to have very little traffic nowadays. MathOverflow cannot enjoy its current success without continual efforts to moderate, promote, evolve, and discuss. I know I don't want attempt such discussions on this meta.

Answer 6

Thank you @Scott for letting me (and others, I guess) know about http://www.discourse.org/ (discourse). I glanced at it, it looks attractive, seem to have new features, etc., however I am not an expert. Thus I want to propose an intermediate project MetMO_tst--based software-wise on discourse--which would be a stepping stone possibly leading toward a better Meta called ultimately MetMO. Thus MetMO_tst would be a simulation of the future MetMO:

1. A team of $2$ to $6$ people would create, own and manage MetMO_tst based on discourse, which would simulate the possible future MetMO.
2. For the sake of the software and otherwise simulation, the team members would perhaps have more than user ids, to imitate having more users. Etc.
3. There would be some other supporters who would simulate regular users to assist the test project. Call these other participants consultants. Consultants would be admitted only when invited by the managers.
4. The simulation, when the time is ripe, would allow the managers to decide about starting or not MetMO. Perhaps first a discussion can take place on the present Meta and Tea, and MetMO can be open for reading only, to present the results of the simulation, and the ideas for the near future.

DISCLAIMER   Just in case, I am not going to be a MetMO_tst manager. Possibly, I could be among consultants but I am not too much interested one way or another. However, I really would like some people, including @ScottMorrison, to create the simulation--MetMO_tst.