I STILL think I was unfairly suspended. But it's not up to me. So I'll be gone for awhile and intend to keep my intent this time.

Hopefully,the animosity towards me will have dissipated by then.

Andrew L.

Ok,this has crossed into absurdity now...........

I was suspended for 9 days-according to Anton-for a)Responding to the math museam post and b) Voting to close the thread on the homework questions at http://mathoverflow.net/questions/50662/exam-failed-could-anyone-solve-those-galois-cohomology-2-tasks-closed.

I could state for the record that I wasn't aware that you needed 3000 points to close,but look instead at Andy Putnam's comment at the thread. I think that pretty much says it all. I have as much chance of a fair hearing in here as a black man in a murder trial of a white beauty queen in 1935 Mississipi.

Is this the kind of moderating you want? Just asking.

Andrew L.

I've voted to delete my post at http://mathoverflow.net/questions/50225/good-books-on-real-analyis-for-applied-math-closed . I was sent an email by one of the regulars,whom I won't name,giving me a friendly warning that I'm currently restricted from talking about anything other then research level mathematics at MO. So as a gesture of cooperation,I've voted to delete.

This poster brought it to my attention that this may have been a trap specifically for me. Pathetically childish if so. If anyone wants my opinion-seriously wants it-on anything non-research mathematics or non-mathematical-then either email me or post it at my blog.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Andrew L.

+1 Anton.

I would argue that a user who has been banned a half dozen times or more has a fundamentally wrong approach to their behavior on the site (as determined by the moderators with the help of the experienced users) and that past a certain point it is not even to their benefit to allow them to continue to post on the site and continue to alienate people. I do feel this way about Andrew L. His behavior almost never pushes my buttons and tends to generate my sympathy rather than my annoyance, but that does not stop me from thinking that he has almost never used MO for its intended purpose: to ask and answer research-level math questions. On this point he has been given essentially infinitely many chances (or, more precisely, 14,015 chances and counting), and invariably he gravitates to the subjective questions, the math education questions, and the questions about preferred textbooks.

So yes, I do think that it would be in the best interest of the site if Andrew L had received a semi-permanent ban for one of his past infractions -- not a borderline one but something that anyone would have received a ban for. This would save the rest of us from having a very similar debate over and over again, would save the moderators from the very difficult job of having to decide each time whether a certain behavior is worthy of a ban given all that has come before, and it would save Andrew L from feelings of being persecuted "simply for speaking his mind".

Perhaps this is somewhat paternalistic, but I think that being banned from MO for a year would actually be a positive experience for Andrew L. He really needs to focus on the math. Getting caught up in arguments with more senior mathematicians is not just -- or even primarily -- a bad idea because it carries the danger of burning future bridges. It is a bad idea because it is not at all what a master's student in mathematics needs to be doing in order to be successful. My worry is not just that if things continue as they are, then in say 2013 Andrew L will still be creating meta-threads about how he gets banned for his refusal to adopt the sycophantic tone of the masses. It is that he will be doing this still as a master's student who has not passed his exams and talking about the exciting number-theoretic research that lies in his near future.

Regarding name-dropping (real or perceived): it goes rather against established mathematical culture to dicsuss direct consultations with celebrated mathematicians the way you do, especially when it seems gratuitous. There are counterexamples: e.g. in various answers BCnrd has mentioned personal conversations with Serre regarding various points of history and motivation related to certain technical concepts; the main difference between this example and yours is that, for better or worse, BCnrd is also a rather well-known and celebrated mathematician, who has conversations with Serre from time to time on something like an equal basis, whereas people find it unlikely that you have regular conversations with Dennis Sullivan of the same nature. This may seem unfair, and I don't know if I can fully justify the distinction, but there is no doubt that this distinction exists (or is perceived to exist, which comes to the same thing when we are talking about the way people interpret your posts).

In any case, the standard, and universally accepted way, to appeal to authority in mathematics is by citing the work of a celebrated mathematician. The basic point is that anyone can read any mathematician's work (modulo issues of access, which are tangential to this point); there is no sense of name-dropping, or exclusive access to the celebrated and famous, in making such a citation. Rather, if anything it shows erudition and diligence in scholarship, which are generally admired qualities.

Take these remarks for what you think they are worth; I am just trying to explain why comments of the kind that you made rub many people the wrong way.

Yours sincerely,

Matthew

This is not to say, one way or the other, whether I think suspension was the right course of action here.

I don't really know what a better solution would be, especially since I'm not aware of the full history (save for the comments on MO that I have read and a few meta threads).

You know,I hope someday-when I'm old and and the end is near-that I'm laughing about how I became hated on a promienient message board in the profession simply by speaking my mind.

You are the ultimate number 1 if that's what you do. I think we all owe a little respect to people who can take it to the complete next level with regards to "doing the internet".

You know,I hope someday-when I'm old and and the end is near-that I'm laughing about how I became hated on a promienient message board in the profession simply by speaking my mind.

I got the message,bent over backwards apologizing,bit my tongue until blood came out of my nose-and it STILL wasn't good enough.

And it probably never will. And fairness be damned.

Hold thy tongue, foul knave.

@sean You're entitled your opinion and I was wrong-as I put on my blog several months ago-in that I'm a guest at MO and I had no buisness defying the rules no matter how right I felt I was. But you're dead wrong that I didn't listen to anyone here. My freedom and candor are very important principles to me and I can be very stubborn when told to shut up even when I'm wrong,as was the case here. It doesn't mean a damn what my opinion is-this isn't my personal blog. That's the bottom line.

The problem is-as Lurker more directly implies-are the moderators enjoying "putting me in my place" a lot more then they're willing to admit? The measure of the mathematical content difference between my statement and Pete's repeated above in his reply is very nearly zero. And it's highly debatable-if not spurious-it's NOT zero.

Does this mean I'll be banned at every possible opportunity for no other reason but they can-and they'll have a reason prepared every time while they chuckle wildly?

If that's the case-please tell me now so we can save everyone a lot of wasted time later.................

@Ryan,Noah,Lurker Nah,there's no personal animosity here,what was I thinking?

Several people, who have much more important, interesting, and pleasant things to do, must have spent several hours each trying to figure out how to make that one person play by the rules that seem so easy to follow for everyone else. They really don't have to do this and pulling the trigger fast in any danger of a situation that might start sucking up more of their time is - I feel - justified.

Nevertheless, if I am honest, I feel a little uncomfortable about the avowed double standard in play here, namely that Andrew L will get suspended for behavior that we seem to agree that, taken in isolation, would not cause another user to be suspended. I felt particularly bad when I remembered the comment I recently posted to an answer of Qiaochu Yuan:

"I'm no expert here, but it would seem to me that calculus and linear algebra are an excellent foundation for combinatorics, especially at the advanced undergraduate level. I took exactly one course on combinatorics, from the great Laszlo Babai, and the tools we used were indeed calculus (e.g. knowledge of asymptotics of functions and the ability to optimize certain constructions) and linear algebra (in very clever ways as in the book on the subject by Babai and Frankl). And I don't view the fact that you could probably get away with even less than this as detracting from my assertion."

This comment is (i) tangential to the discussion at hand -- the point of Qiaochu's answer was to recommend Stillwell's book, not really (I think) to endorse Stillwell's opinion that calculus plus linear algebra are not a good foundation for combinatorics -- and (ii) contains blatant name-dropping. I am unabashedly proud of the fact that while in my entire student career I took only one combinatorics course, it was a frickin' fantastic combinatorics course, from The Count himself. [At the time -- mind you, I was 21 years old -- Babai's Hungarian accent and proclivity for enumeration reminded me of a famous Sesame Street character.]

I think that Andrew L would have been suspended for this comment. I got +3 and a very polite, patient answer from Qiaochu, who by the way knows much more about combinatorics than I do.

Andrew L likes to tell tales of skullduggery of the mathematical elite. I find these stories to ring false almost to the point of paranoia, and I certainly wish he had a sunnier outlook on our profession. But in this one case I worry that maybe some powers-that-be are out to get him, just a little bit. Were I a moderator (but see above!), my policy of escalation would be one of (more rapidly) increasing punishment, not the same punishment for decreasingly severe infractions.

This is intended as a response to @gilkalai's, "If the quoted comment is the entire story then the suspension is unjustified." There is definitely more to the story here: that the moderators decided some time ago that AndrewL was going to be treated as a special case. We were apparently completely failing to communicate with him, and we needed a solution.

I would prefer to discuss the particulars of the rules governing AndrewL's use of the site via moderators@mathoverflow.net, rather than in public.

They basically suspended me for thinking out loud.I'm glad I'm not alone thinking it was unfair.

(surreptitiously placed link)

surreptitiously placed IRC quote:

( porton ) How many times in average a math research article is read? ( OxE6 ) over 9000 ( porton ) OxE6: Wow! It is a gigant number! Is it true? ( OxE6 ) sure

I've had my problems with Andrew's comments in the past, but if he was suspended for what Ryan has guessed that seems a bit too much like playing the man rather than the ball.

No senior mathematicians from top programs need apply,since all they care about is money,power,drugs,and theorems.They don't care about pedagogy or their students atall.One time when I met [a senior mathematician],I probably said something insulting or annoying and was blown off because clearly that person is just the worst teacher ever.

Jus'sayin...

I give up