tea.mathoverflow.net - Discussion Feed (Publicity)

Emerton comments on "Publicity" (10752)

Emerton — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 17:19:16 -0800

Dear Maxime,

Thank you for this wonderful comment!

Best wishes,

Matthew

Maxime Bourrigan comments on "Publicity" (10748)

Maxime Bourrigan — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 16:21:51 -0800

Although I agree it's convenient that mathematicians share a common language, I can't help contemplating with envy some aspects of mathematical life, for example at the end of XIXth century. Among others, the correspondence between Klein and Poincaré where each one writes in one's own language but quotes large parts of the other's letters, even using some of the concepts without translation, is very chic: « Avez-vous déterminé les Fundamentalpolygone de tous les Untergruppen que vous appelez Kongruenzgruppen... » or « ... so wird die Vervielfältigung durch Symmetrie ebenfalls zu einer groupe discontinu führen. »

But I think nothing beats Poincaré's « Complément à l'Analysis Situs » where he answers some critics raised by P. Heegaard. For example:
La seconde objection est, au contraire, fondée. « Naar omvendt, dit M. Heegaard, Homologien ∑Vi ~ 0 ikke finder Sted, saa i U' kan legges en lukket Kurve V', saa at ∑N(V',Vi)≠0 men det er ikke sikker, at denne Kurve kan udskœres af nogen Mangfoldighed V » C'est là, en effet, le véritable point faible de la démonstration.

OK, with some command of German and a Danish/French dictionary, it seems very easy to understand mathematical Danish. But I love Poincaré's attitude.

Mike Jones comments on "Publicity" (9956)

Mike Jones — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 00:35:53 -0700

There are only three (3) viable options on the language issue:

1. continue to enforce the English-only policy, in which case you come off as insensitive

2. allow any language, in which case you look silly, like a polygot boarding house

3. make the site fully bilingual, Esperanto being the other language

Will Jagy comments on "Publicity" (9760)

Will Jagy — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 18:35:48 -0700

Shevek, I'm not sure you were including me, but anyway I'm in favor of all things in English, wider mathematical world or MO, and I am fine with all MO software decisions reflecting that. On MO itself, and Meta, I wanted some effective way to tell Anixx to put up or shut up, meaning prove that his example worked or stop complaining, and English seemed to make matters worse. I note that Gerald has posted a proof that I almost understand on sight.

HJRW comments on "Publicity" (9758)

HJRW — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 17:14:22 -0700

+1 to Willie.

Shevek, I think D is considerably more controversial than A, B or C. (Perhaps there are economic theories in which A is controversial too, though?)

I'll leave it at that, for fear of further disrupting grp's useful suggestion. I've probably done too much damage already.

José Figueroa comments on "Publicity" (9756)

José Figueroa — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 16:53:32 -0700

A paper is written once and read many times after all.

If you're lucky! Wasn't there a joke around about some journals being "write-only"?

Shevek comments on "Publicity" (9755)

Shevek — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 16:36:57 -0700

I'm getting the vibe that some people here are unimpressed with my comments about the English language.

@Willie: Just to be clear: I _would_ like it if everyone learned (in addition to their native tongue) a single common language (so that we can all communicate well together, with fewer misunderstandings, etc. etc.); but wanting people or society to do something is completely different from wanting to _force_ people to do something: questions of choice, freedom, and self-determination trump (in my value system) the previous desire. I also do not see anything particularly distasteful in the former desire; to be honest it seems pretty clear to me that ideally there would be a common language that everyone could speak with an adequate level of facility.

Out of curiosity I've been attempting to hypothesize about some alternative viewpoints about this "shared language" issue to see if I should change my opinion, but I haven't had much success. I'm just thinking about what would be the "best" situation for mathematics. For example, this idea of publishing in non-English language journals. I mean, being able to publish in a journal in your native tongue definitely is great in that one can write with more fluidity and express your ideas with more precision and less difficulty, and so forth. This is all very good for people not fluent in English. But in the end isn't the purpose of writing a paper to communicate knowledge and ideas to other people? I fail to see how writing mathematics in more than one language is advantageous for our profession. (A paper is written once and read many times after all.) Of course people should have the choice to do what they want, I just can't see how making such choices is good for everyone. If anyone thinks I'm being blind or an idiot feel free to let me know (or not!).

In summary, Shevek thinks the world would be a better place if everyone had an adequate grasp of the English language and wrote up scientific work intended to be disseminated in English. I'm not sure what's controversial in thinking that the world would be a better place if A, B, or C about it were different (if banker's were less greedy, if people didn't litter, if everyone treated each other with compassion, if everyone could communicate academically via a single common language, ...).

grp comments on "Publicity" (9753)

grp — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 16:05:24 -0700

To add to the evidence Harry offered, I had a similar experience, except the roles of French and German were reversed. In reading a paper of Leray, I kept looking for a mathematician named Chaleur who had a notable output on a certain differential equation. It took me longer than I will admit to find out that it was the heat equation that was being talked about. (Chaleur is close to calorie, but i missed this clue.)

I offer the evidence to note that such experiences are quite individual, and may not in general indicate suitability of one language over another.

Gerhard "I speak English and American" Paseman, 2010.10.20

Harry Gindi comments on "Publicity" (9752)

Harry Gindi — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 14:59:06 -0700

Dear Emerton,

Regarding posting in German, I offer the following (anecdotal) evidence that this would be significantly different than allowing French posting:

I am not fluent in French, and I have not taken a class in French since elementary school. However, I am able to read mathematical books and papers written in French with relative ease. Conversely, I have tried to read a number of papers in German. However, every time I have tried, it has resulted in abject failure (the worst kind of failure!)

Emerton comments on "Publicity" (9746)

Emerton — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 12:27:55 -0700

Dear Shevek and Willie,

Willie's response captures my sentiments well, and his moral stance seems very similar to mine.

Dear Harry,

Just to pick one of the languages that you mentioned, there are many non-native German-speaking mathematicians can read German well enough to understand mathematics in their area. And of course, there are many native German-speaking mathematicians as well, for whom this is particularly easy (!) .

Best wishes,

Matt

Will Jagy comments on "Publicity" (9736)

Will Jagy — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 11:04:52 -0700

Gerhard, sorry, I know the thread was for publicity concerns...

To repea myself on the one topic, about individual thoughtfulness rather than MO policy or software, Pete came up with a clever and gracious one-time approach that involved no MO features at all, but can be used from time to time by anybody who sees a need:

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/41097/how-to-ask-meta-question-in-math-overflow-closed
@JJC: You might try writing future questions in French as well as English. Some of us would probably understand you better, and this understanding can be communicated to the rest. – Pete L. Clark Oct 5

From what I can see, Jerome Jean-Charles held the initial 1980 French record (the age he gives is about right) for speed-solving Rubik's cube, see pages 12, 13, 14 in
http://www.jaapsch.net/puzzles/cubic1.htm

I like the bilingual approach, again from time to time, and under the assumption that an OP is willing to reveal original language and admit the possibility of language difficulties. There will often be someone, maybe not in a convenient time zone, who can either make a part translation into English, or, sometimes far more important, translate misunderstood comments by us into another language.

jbl, two days ago: "is rooted in low-level misunderstandings" http://tea.mathoverflow.net/discussion/714/

WillieWong comments on "Publicity" (9733)

WillieWong — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 10:38:07 -0700

@Harry: I agree with you in principle (in that I would not consider asking/answering in any of those languages). But I think that if the person who asks the question understands that most people on MO cannot read/write the language, that he cannot count on a fluent speaker to translate the question for him, and still chooses to do so anyway, he should have every right to disavail himself of possible help. In anycase, this is my moral stance: that I do not categorically expect everyone to know and use and love the English language.

That said, there is one worry about opening the flood-gate in general: right now the MO Thought Police is doing quite a nice job keeping things on topic. If we do allow multiple foreign languages, this can get slightly difficult. So for practicality and adminstrative issues, I am willing to compromise my morality. But I would not consider justifying the fact that English is the Lingua Franca of MO beyond that it is the status quo and it is convenient for most people.

grp comments on "Publicity" (9732)

grp — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 09:49:12 -0700

I should have read the label on this can of worms before opening. While discussion of what implicitly is
"the official language of MathOverflow" and whether "one language is better than many" have import, I
remind people of the title of this thread.

I apologize for not taking earlier pains to be clear. I want to know if MathOverflow should be prepared for
international publicity. It seems to me that, even if it is decided that questions should be submitted
in English using only an approved LaTeX style file, it still is appropriate to put an international face
on the website to "welcome", as I think Andrew Stacey might put it, visitors who are still learning English.
Since the demand for such is low, it seems it is not time yet to move on the issue. I think it is not to
early to discuss this issue of enhancing MathOverflow for the purpose of being more inviting to the world.

(Yes, I know. Too many homework problems. OK, I'll come up with another proposal to limit those. I
still hope Anton et.al. add this to the list of potential "big plans" for MathOverflow. How about a sign
saying "Need Homework Help? Let MathOverflow Guide You. Click Here", and then dumping them on
some other site.)

Gerhard "Babel Towers: Apartments to Let" Paseman, 2010.10.20

Harry Gindi comments on "Publicity" (9731)

Harry Gindi — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 09:36:22 -0700

@Willie: I think that asking questions in Chinese, Japanese, Russian, or even German would be taking it a bit far, since unlike French or English, most mathematicians cannot read them well enough to make anything of them. Math French is nearly English.

WillieWong comments on "Publicity" (9730)

WillieWong — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 09:26:29 -0700

Those Chinese speakers in France will have to learn English as well.

I think that was the point Matt was trying to make. For a Chinese student studying mathematics in France, it is possible for him to get by without learning English at all. If he further does not intend to publish in journals other than those in France and those in China, he does not have to learn English. While it may be a good idea for said student to indeed learn English, your (apparent) stance seems to remove the decision from the individual and prescribe that everyone must learn English, which is a stance I am rather uncomfortable with.

In other words, you, Shevek, may choose not to interact with anyone who doesn't speak English if you so please, but if I see a Chinese student whose English is practically non-existent, I can choose to interact with him in Chinese; ditto if I see a Vietnamese student who speak French, and whose English skills are unfortunately poorer than my limited French skills.

I know you wrote earlier that you don't want to force other people to conform. But some of your follow-up posts have the connotation, if not the denotation, that is quite the opposite.

I agree in general that we should encourage the use of English as a common language on MO. But I think that's the degree it should be: an encouragement. Users should be made to understand that if they do post questions/answers in other languages, it may not reach as wide an audience. But they should not be barred from asking/answering in foreign languages.

Shevek comments on "Publicity" (9728)

Shevek — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 09:07:56 -0700

@Emerton: Sure. but I'm not sure what point you are trying to make. Those Chinese speakers in France will have to learn English as well. What does the fact that they are learning 3 languages have to do with the Chinese speakers not studying in France? Like it or not, English is the global language that everyone involved in an international endeavour like mathematics has to learn. Noah's point is a perfect one.

Emerton comments on "Publicity" (9727)

Emerton — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 08:35:27 -0700

Dear Noah,

Of course there are also native speakers of other languages (say Chinese) studying in France who learn French but not English (or at least for whom English is yet another language to have to learn, having already learnt French).

Best wishes,

Matt

Noah Snyder comments on "Publicity" (9726)

Noah Snyder — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 08:11:09 -0700

An interesting point from that discussion which I hadn't thought of before, is that the main reason to not want untranslated questions in French, isn't that *English* speakers can't read French (we all either can or should) but rather that native speakers of other languages (say Chinese) learn English and it's not fair to them to expect them to also learn other languages.

Emerton comments on "Publicity" (9725)

Emerton — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 08:01:21 -0700

Dear Ben,

Your recollection agrees with mine. Also, one might note that already there are several comment exchanges in Russian (and this is the only language in which I'm aware of there being multiple such exchanges).

Best wishes,

Matt

Ben Webster comments on "Publicity" (9719)

Ben Webster — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 00:15:12 -0700

My recollection is that the rough consensus was that people are free to post it whatever language they like, but that they shouldn't be offended if someone adds a translation to their answer (I suppose there's no reason this shouldn't apply to adding non-English translations to English answers, though I don't think it's too likely to come up). Certainly that's my preferred policy.

Scott Morrison comments on "Publicity" (9713)

Scott Morrison — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 21:13:23 -0700

@grp,

Unfortunately, there are no such plans. For one, the lack of control over our software would prevent us from even getting started. If at some point we switch to some entirely new software, and this becomes possible, I'd be happy to help make it happen if others did the heavy lifting of translation work.

In the meantime, I don't particularly mind if people ask questions in other languages, as long as they are aware that this may reduce their readership. As we're in absolutely no danger of having "too much" foreign language use, it behooves us to be welcoming.

Will Jagy comments on "Publicity" (9707)

Will Jagy — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 14:21:56 -0700

Found it, Pete L. Clark made an interesting group offer in this:
http://mathoverflow.net/questions/41097/how-to-ask-meta-question-in-math-overflow-closed
@JJC: You might try writing future questions in French as well as English. Some of us would probably understand you better, and this understanding can be communicated to the rest. – Pete L. Clark Oct 5

In related news, I had considerable trouble with two users recently. In the earlier case I am sure (he wrote to me), but I think in both cases if there had been some earlier attempt to move the discussion to their native language things would have been less tense. This probably mostly concerns new users who do not realize how far they are from understanding what people are writing here. I suggested that the second guy write to me but he was not interested. I also have no idea how to politely say "could you please get a translator who is native-fluent in English? You really are not."

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/41826/the-importance-of-polyhedral-theory
http://mathoverflow.net/questions/42550/find-a-closed-form-for-sum-k1x-1-a1-k-closed

Anyway, extremely unhappy episodes for me, the fact that these happenings in no way damaged MO does not change the sour taste.

Shevek comments on "Publicity" (9706)

Shevek — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 11:58:56 -0700

Of course it is their choice, but keep in mind that the question is not just for them---there are many others who could potentially profit from their question. By asking or answering a question in their own personal language they limit its usefulness to those who speak their language, thus shutting out the rest of the community of mathematicians. I definitely hope that people are free to use their own language if they want, but I wouldn't particularly want to encourage it. In my view, mathematics wins when our community has a shared language, so that everyone involved can participate and communicate together, but that doesn't mean I would want to force other people into conformity.

Ryan makes a good point too.

Ryan Budney comments on "Publicity" (9705)

Ryan Budney — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 11:39:38 -0700

Well, one very good reason to not have all these other language fronts is it leads to administrative overheads. It's nice to have only one FAQ since there's only one thing that needs updating whenever we want to change the FAQ. It's not clear we'd be addressing a pressing issue by taking these kinds of actions. Am I missing something? Every administrative task you want MO to take on is something that is going to be done (most likely) by a grad student or a postdoc. IMO it's not a good idea to put people into these kinds of secretarial positions at this point in their life.

HJRW comments on "Publicity" (9704)

HJRW — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 11:29:57 -0700

English is the de facto language of mathematics for good reason---because mathematics is an international endeavour.

... and we English-speaking mathematicians can't be expected to manage other languages?

Personally, I don't see why people shouldn't ask questions in other languages. Of course, by doing so they will knowingly be limiting the pool of possible answerers, but surely that's their choice?

Shevek comments on "Publicity" (9703)

Shevek — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 10:48:32 -0700

On the other hand, having internationalized fronts for the website might encourage posting in non-English languages.

English is the de facto language of mathematics for good reason---because mathematics is an international endeavour.

Emerton comments on "Publicity" (9702)

Emerton — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 10:21:30 -0700

Dear Andrew,

Very nicely put!

Best wishes,

Matt

Andrew Stacey comments on "Publicity" (9699)

Andrew Stacey — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 08:28:34 -0700

I don't want to put words into Gerhard's keyboard here, but I don't see anything in his explanation that says that MO should fragment into language-specific sites. Just that it should have language-specific fronts. Why not have "mathoverflow.no" which is an overlay of mathoverflow but with the surrounding text translated into Norwegian (apart from the question as to which Norwegian language ...)? Of course, the main content would still be in English, but it would say something about being welcoming to other countries if, for example, the FAQ was available in Norwegian, French, German, Chinese, ...

Just because English (sorry, Broken English) is the de facto language of mathematics doesn't mean that we have to ignore the other languages.

Ryan Budney comments on "Publicity" (9698)

Ryan Budney — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 06:44:43 -0700

@grp: Ah, okay now I see what you mean. As a "crowdsourcing" site I suspect MO would only diminish itself if it fragmented into language specializations.

Harry Gindi comments on "Publicity" (9697)

Harry Gindi — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 01:51:31 -0700

> Do people still type full URLs nowadays?

You don't?

Scott Carnahan comments on "Publicity" (9696)

Scott Carnahan — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 00:40:20 -0700

grp, I believe the answer to your first question is, "basically none". There was some discussion about language policy when Laurent Fargues wrote an answer in French, and I think the consensus was that we should demand questions in English and allow answers in other languages.

It is far from clear what anyone would gain from having alternative top-level domains. Do people still type full URLs nowadays?

Mariano comments on "Publicity" (9695)

Mariano — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 00:08:27 -0700

@grp, but that would mostly split things, and it is nice that there is just one site!

I don't think written English is a huge problem for research math. If we were talking about M.SE, then I could understand the motivation, though.

grp comments on "Publicity" (9694)

grp — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 23:30:36 -0700

Oops. I was thinking about multilingual websites, but not saying so. In this case, internationalize is in the "web-site" sense, which is to convey certain aspects of the site in several languages. At the very minimum, it would mean having the FAQ and how to ask pages in several languages. It might mean having mathoverflow.xyz domains, where xyz is a string standing in for .de, .in, .cn, and other international domains. There are other possibilities, but my question asks about requests to extend the site in any fashion related to (geographical forms of) language and culture.

Gerhard "Ask Me About System Design" Paseman, 2010.10.18

Harry Gindi comments on "Publicity" (9693)

Harry Gindi — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 23:13:15 -0700

@Ryan: Wouldn't it be something if we could get more French mathematicians on here? I think it's obvious who I have in mind.

Ryan Budney comments on "Publicity" (9692)

Ryan Budney — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 23:05:13 -0700

@grp: What do you mean by "internationalize"? MO has contributors from many countries.

grp comments on "Publicity" (9691)

grp — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 23:00:47 -0700

John Ball (Oxford) sent me a transcript of a panel session,"The Use of Metrics in Evaluating Research", to which I made a small contribution. I asked him if he could parenthetically include mathoverflow.net in my contribution, even though the video recording does not have me saying those words. He was kind enough to do so, and I have seen it in the proposed final draft. If the ICM Proceedings Editor lets it in, it should be another small plug for MathOverflow.

Which brings to mind the question: How much demand has there been to internationalize MathOverflow? Has there been any discussion about accomodating such a request, if and when? Of course, the time may not be ripe to ask or answer such questions. A nice acknowledgment from a moderator would satisfy me on this matter.

Gerhard "Ask Me About System Design" Paseman, 2010.10.18

Suresh Venkat comments on "Publicity" (9588)

Suresh Venkat — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 13:18:49 -0700

In fact, I tossed around the idea of doing an community wiki AMS-Notices-style article for SIGACT news/EATCS for the cstheory site. Now I'm encouraged to explore this further.

WillieWong comments on "Publicity" (9571)

WillieWong — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 07:17:25 -0700

Thanks.

Joseph O'Rourke comments on "Publicity" (9559)

Joseph O'Rourke — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 17:08:39 -0700

@Willie: June/July 2010:
http://math.stanford.edu/~vakil/files/mathoverflownotices.pdf

WillieWong comments on "Publicity" (9557)

WillieWong — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 17:03:45 -0700

There's an AMS Notices article? Do you remember which month?

Joseph O'Rourke comments on "Publicity" (9556)

Joseph O'Rourke — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 16:56:15 -0700

It may be that MO is not in need of publicity. The AMS Notices article may have sufficed.
But some here might be interested in what CS Theory, which is definitely in need of publicity, is doing: gathering "best questions."
http://meta.cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/457/nominations-for-publicity-poster-at-focs