tea.mathoverflow.net - Discussion Feed (Questions about the profession)

Storkle comments on "Questions about the profession" (9933)

Storkle — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 08:13:58 -0700

@GeraldEdgar, Voloch: The question about tenure, at least, is not a new question; it was bumped by a new answer. Is there a flood of too-soft questions? I don't see it.

geraldedgar comments on "Questions about the profession" (9932)

geraldedgar — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 08:00:10 -0700

And. before long, someone will post another question. And then argue that his new question should not be closed by citing these questions.

Grétar Amazeen comments on "Questions about the profession" (9907)

Grétar Amazeen — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 02:42:01 -0700

Some of them are really helpful for mathematicians, especially those who are in the early stages of their career. But we don't want the front page to be flooded by these questions and duplicates should be closed fast. So I agree with Andy, and am weakly supportive.

Andy Putman comments on "Questions about the profession" (9900)

Andy Putman — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 14:57:34 -0700

I'm weakly supportive of questions about the profession as long as we don't get too many of them (and we close duplicates).

Noah Snyder comments on "Questions about the profession" (9899)

Noah Snyder — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 14:49:43 -0700

I think that in general occasional questions about the profession on MO is a good thing. Haven't looked at these particular questions though. I agree that as we get more questions about the profession at some point we should be closing them as duplicates more often.

Ryan Budney comments on "Questions about the profession" (9896)

Ryan Budney — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 07:59:16 -0700

I also think they're quite borderline. We have plenty of questions that these new questions are almost duplicates of. Moreover, answers to these questions don't appear to be much more than reassurances of what pretty much everyone seems to think.

Spiro Karigiannis comments on "Questions about the profession" (9895)

Spiro Karigiannis — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 07:38:38 -0700

I think it depends on the individual question. The three you mention that are around today are all good questions which should be of interest at least to graduate students and postdocs. Other questions about the profession might not be so relevant.

voloch comments on "Questions about the profession" (9894)

voloch — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 07:14:34 -0700

The front page has several questions about the profession (tenure, collaboration, even "what's a mathematician to do?"). I am torn about those. They shouldn't really be on MO but it seems there is no other good outlet for them and clearly, people are interested. Ideas?