tea.mathoverflow.net - Discussion Feed (Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion)

Noah Snyder comments on "Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion" (8630)

2010-08-26T07:19:47-07:00

I don't really have a clear distinction between "work hours" and "non-work hours." If I knew I was going to work on math for x hours a day, then certainly reading MO wouldn't be part of those x hours. However, for me that x isn't fixed and as Andy says, MO is a good way to use math to substitute for breaks that would otherwise be non-math. Something else that has a similar affect for me is skimming through papers that are in my field, but not directly related to any of my research projects.

Andrew Stacey comments on "Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion" (8629)

2010-08-26T06:19:27-07:00

Willie: That is a perfect example of why meta.MO classifies as "goofing off" time!

(I should say that it did make me laugh)

WillieWong comments on "Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion" (8628)

2010-08-26T05:40:51-07:00

@Andrew: a coauthor is one who still wants to work with you on the next project. A contra-author is one that doesn't want to have anything to do with you after this one.

Andrew Stacey comments on "Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion" (8627)

2010-08-26T05:09:32-07:00

Kevin, your phrase "being worth doing during work hours" reads to me like something from a fantasy land! I'd love to be able to do mathematical research all day, but there's just two problems. Firstly, I'm not paid to do mathematical research the whole day; I'm meant to spend about 45% of my time on that. Secondly, I just mentally can't! I need breaks, my brain needs time to chew over things by itself before starting again. If I can keep those breaks in the second category (which is, of course, not meagre ...), then I increase my chances of getting back to doing Real Work when inspiration hits. So in its current state, MO is a place where I can go when I need a break but not too much of one.

(Writing papers for me is a definite "category 2" activity! I get too caught up in "what's the best way to typeset this so that when my coauthor[1] complains then I can just change one thing and it all changes accordingly?")

[1] Is a coauthor the opposite of an author?

Steve Huntsman comments on "Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion" (8626)

2010-08-26T04:30:10-07:00

Kevin: what about getting a push in the right direction on research? I think that counts as serious and worthwhile.

Kevin Buzzard comments on "Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion" (8625)

2010-08-26T04:11:42-07:00

(actually I would put "reading research papers directly related to the problem you're trying to solve" in the 1st category, and writing papers too)

Kevin Buzzard comments on "Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion" (8624)

2010-08-26T04:05:58-07:00

Andrew---I think your summary represents the situation very well. I think the only difference between Anton's view and my own is that I attach almost no worth to the bottom 2 categories, insofar as "being worth doing during work hours" is concerned, whereas he attaches some worth to the middle one.

Andrew Stacey comments on "Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion" (8623)

2010-08-26T02:30:23-07:00

I agree with Anton. I think that when I'm working, I have roughly three "heads" (to borrow an image from Worzel Gummidge): focussed, unfocussed, and goofing-off.

"Focussed" is when I'm really thinking hard about a very specific mathematical problem; hopefully my own research, but sometimes its a question of how best to explain something in my teaching.

"Unfocussed" is when I'm doing maths (or teaching), but have a bit of a broader gaze. Maybe reading articles, reading nLab pages, writing papers, writing problem sets. Stuff that needs doing, needs a "switched on" brain to do, but is not actively progressing my research.

"Goofing-off" is the rest of the time. It's the "five minute" breaks (that so easily escalate!). It's necessary time, but only when it is the little gaps between the rest.

In my vision of MO, time spent on MO comes in the second category. Time spent on MO requires a switched-on brain, it is vaguely related to my job, but does not actively progress my research (most of the time). Time spent here on meta, though, definitely fits in to the "goofing off" part! As does time spent on mathematical blogs.

The problem is, of course, that it's easy to go from focussed to unfocussed and from unfocussed to goofing off but harder to go the other way. That's why I fight hard to keep MO "clean". If it turns out that MO is really a place for "goofing off", then it won't work for me. I have plenty of other things to do in my "goofing off" time that actually I need to do to make the other times more productive (getting just the right shade of purple to distinguish "elements" from "sets" in my lectures, for example).

(On another point, I don't like the chat.SO sites. They're too messy.)

Kevin Buzzard comments on "Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion" (8622)

2010-08-26T01:55:53-07:00

@Anton---my experience is that my most productive times coincide with the times when I'm either working on my own problems or reading research papers which are closely related to the problem I'm thinking about. MO is fun, but much too general. I don't look at it when I'm at work---it's very much a "when the kids are in bed" site for me. Just my opinion, of course!

Anton Geraschenko comments on "Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion" (8616)

2010-08-25T18:07:14-07:00

@Kevin: I think of MO time as research time to about the same extent that I think of reading random articles (or bits of articles) as research time. Perhaps that's a broader definition than you prefer. I certainly wouldn't want to spend all my "research time" doing that. Given that plenty of people have used MO to shave many hours off their research time or to (often unintentionally) start new research projects or work with new collaborators, I think it's reasonable to classify MO time as research time, broadly defined. Of course, you can also bin MO time completely differently, like you do. But even if you do that, you likely still think of MO time as vaguely professional time rather than personal time. That's all I was trying to get across.

@Richard: When presented as essentially an independent site which would have the nice side effect of absorbing philosophical discussions from MO, I'm pretty skeptical for the reasons I outlined above. When presented as essentially a spillover site which could have the nice side effect of developing into something more, I'm slightly less skeptical (for some reason I can't explain). Until you phrased it that way, I didn't make the connection, but SO is currently experimenting with such a thing. See this blog post, the chat.meta.SO FAQ, and check out (for example) the stats thread. You log in to the main site (meta.SO) and you must have >= 20 rep to participate on chat.meta.SO.

Would such a version of chat.MO serve the function people are aiming for? If yes, we may simply be able to get a chat site if/when we migrate to SE 2.0. Perhaps that's too uncertain: we may not migrate, and even if we do, I don't know when. If somebody is really excited about this idea and wants to host it independently, I'm happy to give them chat/tea/pub.mathoverflow.net.

Richard Dore comments on "Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion" (8614)

2010-08-25T15:35:15-07:00

So I kind of like this idea, but there are two obvious hurdles:
- The idea needs to be carefully thought out ahead of time. If someone just throws up a poorly planned site, it will probably fail.
- Somebody needs to be willing to commit the (not insubstantial) time to set it up and run it.

I am also imagining it as more of a secondary site -- a place to chat about the kinds of things people on Moe might want to chat about, but which are just too discussiony for MO itself. To this end, I do like the idea of restrict to people with at least some small amount of reputation -- essentially bootstrapping the quality control on MO. I imagine there must be an elegant way to do this, from a technical PoV. I also would want to see some sort of moderation/voting type of system for sure.

As far as why you would want such a thing, rather than just going to Jupiters, a couple reasons spring to mind:
- Just a different and in some ways more diverse audience. (more vital if your local mathematical community that's not as big as Berkeley's.)
- The ability to focus on, or ignore, topics at one's leisure.
- A natural place to move interesting but too discussiony topics off of math overflow.

Kevin Buzzard comments on "Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion" (8611)

2010-08-25T14:43:19-07:00

@Scott---i thought it was called Jupilers! Perhaps a bit of the sign had fallen off when I was at Berkeley...

@Anton---don't kid yourself. You shouldn't think of MO as research time. The way to do research is to focus on your own projects, not to have fun solving other peoples' problems. For me MO is a nice break from research.

Scott Morrison comments on "Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion" (8596)

2010-08-23T23:49:35-07:00

Personally I wouldn't see the point (Evans tea suffices if I want to talk to mathematicians over tea, and Raleigh's and Jupiter's, neither of which are exactly a "pub", suffice if I want to talk to mathematicians over a beer.)

On the other hand, if someone puts their hand up and says "I'm in charge", I'd be happy to give them tea.mathoverflow.net or pub.mathoverflow.net (although it's Anton who actually matters here - he has the keys to the DNS box). Andrew has said he's willing to do the technical hosting side (as am I, for the matter, if all you want is a basic vanilla installation).

Requiring a mathoverflow account with some minimum rep sounds nice, but I don't think it would actually be a good idea. Too much hassle (for both hosts and users), and not that much clear benefit.

zzb comments on "Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion" (8580)

2010-08-23T17:59:02-07:00

Test edit: Not forgetting the AMS (well I did forget it), and while we're at it the EMS (new kid on the block), and SIAM, MAA, Elsevier, Walter de Gruyter, and AK Peters. And Penguin and 4th estate for popular science.

Harry Gindi comments on "Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion" (8579)

2010-08-23T17:52:46-07:00

Also, how about Asterisque (SMF), which also publishes english monographs?

VP comments on "Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion" (8578)

2010-08-23T17:45:57-07:00

I am surprised AMS isn't one of the publishers mentioned in the test question. That would be a natural first choice for mathematics authors. Beyond that, I'd think twice before participating in this sort of discussion.

Steve Huntsman comments on "Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion" (8575)

2010-08-23T16:12:49-07:00

Test answer: you don't go with Wiley, CRC or WS if you can get any of the others, for reasons that are obvious. [Append gossip and bickering in test comments.]

Anyway, there was a proposal before to use javascript to check flair to ensure minimal rep for something or other. Perhaps if Anton could be convinced that someone else would do the work of implementing this along with setting up a forum there might be some room for traction?

Finally, the issue of privacy/attribution is probably nontrivial. If I was a traditional academic I might not want my test answer to be publically viewable, for instance.

zzb comments on "Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion" (8574)

2010-08-23T15:34:15-07:00

Test tea question:

You want to publish a book. Do you go with Springer, Wiley, CUP, OUP, PUP, CRC, WS or someone else, and why ?

Akhil Mathew comments on "Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion" (8571)

2010-08-23T14:55:40-07:00

If there wasn't any filtering, I don't know how it would be essentially different from math reddit.

I don't know whether the filtering is technically feasible though. One thing that could be done is to make people register with their email addresses (or openID), then check that they match with the ones of a registered MO user.
Or, if they have a respectable .edu email address, that should also be okay, to include mathematicians who don't use MO (I recently met a very well-regarded mathematician over dinner and asked him offhand if he had seen MO--he had never heard of it, apparently).

On the other hand, the ones that have never heard of MO will probably never hear of the afternoon tea forum (if it actually ends up existing). Presumably discussion-y questions (Fields Medal gossip, arguments over the merits of Bourbaki, etc.) could be moved over there (i.e., the OP could be asked to move them), which might get a few people to read the forums. But on the other hand, I also think that it's reasonably likely the serious mathematicians would, in view of their busy schedules, all stay on MO (or meta), resulting in the new forum being over-run by enthusiastic undergraduates. (Though a serious undergraduate math forum would not be a bad thing.) I say this especially because the only people who have expressed interest in moderation are undergraduates.

Anton Geraschenko comments on "Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion" (8561)

2010-08-23T10:54:23-07:00

In internet, audience chooses you. If you have an intended audience for a site (which you should), you have to make them self-select, preferably via the function of the site. It may be that AfternoonTea is meant to be a forum for mathematicians, but once it gains traction, math reddit will link to it and people from all over the web will visit. If the function of the site is chatting about math, you'll end up with people who like to chat about math rather than mathematicians (of course there's overlap). Supposing you don't get to choose the audience (except though moderation action), how would afternoon tea be different from math reddit?

Note that MO is not a forum of all mathematicians. There are lots of mathematicians who have no interest in MO. There are also lots of non-mathematicians who are active on MO. To post on MO, you don't have to be a mathematician, you just have to be able to hold your own in an MO thread. Your qualifications are clear from the content you post. If somebody posts bad content, it's usually easy for everybody tell; that person feels uncomfortable and others push him/her to some other place on the internet. When the topics become more subjective, I think this kind of regulation would be much more difficult. What qualifications do you need to post on AfternoonTea? If somebody who lacks these qualifications starts posting, what pressure will there be to discrouage them? (For some reason, having people on a forum disagree with your opinions often has the effect of making you more active there.)

The idea of requiring >=X rep on MO is an interesting one, but I think it may present too much of a hurdle. It restricts your pool of potential posters to about 3000 people. Meta.MO has about 275 users who have ever posted anything. I suspect the pool of AfternoonTea goers would be even smaller (I could be wrong). On top of that, there's the question of how to establish identity. I guess you could ask somebody to add a key to the bottom of their MO profile, but I think that is likely to reduce participation a fair amount.

Akhil Mathew comments on "Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion" (8554)

2010-08-23T05:57:58-07:00

One could, at least in theory, restrict participation to people who actually know some math (measured, say, by having reputation >= X on MO, where X ideally is small). This would keep out cranks and spammers, and most of the people who participated would be mathematicians (or students, physicists, etc.). I don't really like this approach, but I can't see any other obvious way.

@Anton: I think the difference would be that "afternoon tea" is intended primarily as a discussion board for mathematicians. I haven't spent too much time on Math Reddit, but my impression is that most of the users there are not mathematicians (or students), and many of the threads there are just about sharing links. So the proposed forum would be a lot more like an actual afternoon tea.

Andy Putman comments on "Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion" (8551)

2010-08-22T21:04:03-07:00

I can't imagine that this would be successful. My guess is that it would quickly degenerate into poorly informed gossip or grousing.

Of course, I enjoy chatting over coffee or beer as much as anyone. However, I already have colleagues with whom I can chat in this way, and I don't see why I would want to get my gossip/complaints from random people on the internet.

Maybe this is just a sign that I'm a young fogey. I also know all my "facebook friends" in real life and have never sent a "text message", which I understand from my students makes me hopelessly out of touch...

Anton Geraschenko comments on "Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion" (8549)

2010-08-22T20:47:23-07:00

I like afternoon tea, but I'm not interested in hosting or moderating such a forum. I can imagine too many reasons it could fail:

It doesn't solve a problem. To formulate this concern as a question, how/why would a new discussion forum be different from math reddit?
It doesn't draw a dedicated audience. When Dave Brown and I first imagined MO, it was with the intention of making mathematicians better at doing mathematics. I like to think that people regard time on MO as research time. I really like collecting math factoids and I really like working with many different people to solve "little" problems. What's more, that's a large part of my job as a mathematician. It's harder to justify spending much time on a math chat forum. If mathematicians are the target audience, the subject matter should be mathematics. A math chat forum will draw people who identify themselves as "math chatters". I don't think there are a huge number of people who think of themselves that way, but I could be wrong. Professional mathematicians might not be the target audience, in which case you should clarify who the target audience is.
It could easily degenerate, or be mostly low quality.
- It's really hard to pose a good discussion question, but it's really easy to pose a bad discussion question: "how can we improve mathematics education in the US?" Blogs solve this problem by (self)selecting people who start high quality discussions. You only follow blogs you like. Having to wade through an aggregate of all blogs would be really painful.
- With precise questions, the threads are short, so there is little energy barrier to joining the conversation. With discussions, the threads can quickly become huge, at which point people either don't join because they don't want to read everything or they start making points that have already come up, annoying the people who have been following the thread and intimidating others by making the thread even longer.
- With a bad but precise question, at least everybody knows when the discussion is over: the question is answered or essentially proved to be unanswerable. With discussion questions, even good ones, there's no good way to finish them. If you engage in the discussion, it's liable to become a drain on your mental/emotional energy with no end in sight. Blogs solve this problem by putting control in the hands of a small number of people. Once those people have moved on, the thread is dead.
I like in-person afternoon tea conversations. I think it's nice to have a small group of people to talk to. I feel more comfortable making/admitting mistakes and assuming a position for the sake of argument. It's easier to avoid people who are just looking to disagree, so it's actually possible to change people's minds (including my own) and to move forward. In person, you get much faster feedback, and it's of higher quality. For example, I can usually make out emotions in person, a task which is (unfortunately) often very difficult online.

All that said, I'm happy to encourage anybody who disagrees with me. If an idea is obviously awesome, it probably won't work, otherwise somebody would have done it already. Plenty of smart people expressed serious doubts about MO before it existed. If somebody wants to host and moderate an afternoon tea forum, I'd link it in the MO FAQ. I could even be talked into redirecting tea.mathoverflow.net (or whatever) if enough MOers support the project.

Steve Huntsman comments on "Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion" (8485)

2010-08-20T18:32:21-07:00

Suppose such a forum were implemented: I think it would make sense for all MO users with 3K rep to be made moderators. This is nearly 100 people as of this moment. A small fraction of that number would suffice to provide active moderation. Have Anton (or e.g. Greg Kuperberg or someone with impeccable bona fides) as benevolent dictator. To further ensure the quality of moderation, make mod powers subject to permanent revocation if a quorum (let's say 10) other mods reach a majority vote for that action. The existence of such a mechanism would probably be more than sufficient to prevent the need for its exercise anyway.

Akhil Mathew comments on "Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion" (8479)

2010-08-20T16:26:21-07:00

As would I. But I think we need actual (i.e. PhD or grad student) mathematicians for this not to look like a joke.

Harry Gindi comments on "Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion" (8478)

2010-08-20T15:35:13-07:00

I would be willing to moderate it..........

Steve Huntsman comments on "Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion" (8477)

2010-08-20T15:05:15-07:00

Difficultly and time-consumption scale with the number of moderators.

Kevin Lin comments on "Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion" (8476)

2010-08-20T14:39:44-07:00

Yeah, such a "MO community forum" has been suggested in the past... I remember that Scott seemed amenable to the idea.

Also, I basically agree with Harry's response to David.

I think it is a good idea in principle, but my feeling is that moderation would be difficult and time-consuming...

Andrew Stacey comments on "Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion" (8469)

2010-08-20T10:11:57-07:00

This has been suggested before, I think more than once though I can't be sure and I can't be bothered to hunt back through the threads!

The main hurdle to get over for this is the question of moderators. Who wants to moderate the "tea party" or "math pub"?

Software's easy enough. I've tweaked the software the under-pins this forum so that it has decent mathematics support (by which I mean MathML for those that can and pictures for those that can't) and would be happy to help anyone who wanted to install it do so. The nForum is an example of what's possible. In fact, I can set up a forum for this in a matter of seconds alongside the nForum. The main reason that I haven't as yet is that I have no desire to moderate such a place. So if there's a group of people willing to moderate but don't want the hassle with the software, talk to me.

I would support such a site, but for slightly skewed reasons. Firstly, if it did use the same software then that would be good for the development of it. Secondly, for the same reason that I welcome math.SE: I don't go there myself, but it's useful to be able to point others there and get those questions off MO!

Harald Hanche-Olsen comments on "Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion" (8467)

2010-08-20T09:24:50-07:00

Afternoon tea? I seem to recall suggesting a bar, way back in the mist of times gone by. The difference being, of course, that in a bar one can be louder and more obnoxious.

Harry Gindi comments on "Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion" (8465)

2010-08-20T09:08:05-07:00

@David: Setting it up here makes it part of the "MO brand", which means that it's reasonable to expect that the people who participate there will be a subset of the people who participate on MO itself. That way, it's an extension of this community, instead of its own new community (just like meta!).

David Speyer comments on "Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion" (8464)

2010-08-20T08:44:26-07:00

I agree with Mariano there. It would probably be better to put up another Vanilla forum, like the one we use for meta.

Important questions: Do Anton, Scott, etc want to host this?

Who would moderate it? In my experience, forums without moderation fall apart very quickly.

I don't really see why people keep wanting to host this on MO, rather than setting up their own forum or colonizing sci.math.research. But there is clearly a strong desire for it, and I wouldn't mind if it were accommodated someplace that I could ignore it.

Mariano comments on "Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion" (8463)

2010-08-20T07:26:21-07:00

Afternoon tea discussions (at least those that I enjoy) are dialogues. SO software is pretty much by design not great for dialogue.

Charles Staats comments on "Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion" (8462)

2010-08-20T06:45:08-07:00

I really like Dylan's idea. One thing--there are at least some features of the StackOverflow software that I like for the soft questions, so I'm not convinced that the "afternoontea" should use a forum instead. Perhaps there should be a rule that all questions are community wiki?

Harry Gindi comments on "Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion" (8446)

2010-08-19T11:34:41-07:00

By the power vested in me as chairman of the naming committee (if I'm the only member of the committee, I should be chairman, right?) of the Old Boys' Network, I officially rechristen our ancient organization as the NARQ Society, or the Not A Real Question Society. Our enforcement arm is hereby known as the NARQ squad. Individual officers of this division will be known as NARQs.

And there was much rejoicing.

HJRW comments on "Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion" (8445)

2010-08-19T11:27:12-07:00

Harry, Order of the Brown Nose?

Dylan, great idea!

Tom LaGatta comments on "Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion" (8417)

2010-08-18T11:20:19-07:00

I love this idea. afternoontea.mathoverflow.net (ATMO) has a nice ring to it too.

Dylan Wilson comments on "Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion" (8416)

2010-08-18T11:02:53-07:00

Let's not turn this into a discussion of MO politics :)

Jon Awbrey comments on "Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion" (8414)

2010-08-18T09:46:26-07:00

Old Boys Network or Omni Broadcasting Network?

Jon ;)

Harry Gindi comments on "Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion" (8411)

2010-08-18T07:39:19-07:00

NARQ Squad

This is so much better than OBN!

Jon Awbrey comments on "Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion" (8410)

2010-08-18T07:06:18-07:00

I've found that I have to switch to decaff long before afternoon tea rolls around, but here's a thought or two that slipped between the cup and the cookie.

All the most pressing questions I have these days seem to get tagged as “soft-questions” here, and one of the hardest questions I know got deleted as “Not A Real Question” by the NARQ Squad. Well, maybe it's the time of year, or maybe it's the time of man, but there doesn't seem to be time for the reflective practitioner at all.

Now, I fully understand, in every population there's always a sub-population that would be kings of the hill, and the wouldbe kings of the MO-hill — sorry, Ladies, it's mostly a high-testosterone thing — have decided that “research question” means “question that can be settled before afternoon tea”.

It's that old Tragedy of the Commons again, and I don't see much chance for another cup o' tea, no matter how we partition the room.

Jon ;)

Dylan Wilson comments on "Afternoon tea, and other forums for discussion" (8406)

2010-08-18T04:36:50-07:00

MO is a place to ask research-level questions. MO also has the following tags: "soft-question" and "big-list". I think these two faces of MO sometimes get miffed at the others existence, even though we all have inquiries (posted on MO or not) that lie on both sides.

Now, we have a place to discuss research (MO), we have a place to discuss the place where we discuss research (meta), and we also have a place to discuss precisely how miffed we are when the place where we discuss research has stuff on it that isn't really research (also meta). Comments on such borderline questions often have the statement: "This is a discussion for afternoon tea."

So why don't we make Afternoon Tea? Put a link on MO, next to the link to meta, that just says "Afternoon Tea." Make it a forum precisely in the style of this meta (maybe a bit more colorful), and direct *all* discussion-y, big-list, poll-type, soft questions there. This alleviates the miffitude while still placing important discussion-y questions in a place that will receive traffic from research-level mathematicians (why? because everyone gets bored, and if nothing scandalous is happening on meta at the time then procrastinating mathematicians might click on "Afternoon Tea" instead. This is especially true if they are currently craving tea.)

So that's my thought. Maybe it's already been thunk.