tea.mathoverflow.net - Discussion Feed (Perceived bullying)

Andrea comments on "Perceived bullying" (5630)

Andrea — Sun, 23 May 2010 06:57:46 -0700

Following Akela permission, I have edited the first lines. I have also removed the relevant comments.

Pete L. Clark comments on "Perceived bullying" (5629)

Pete L. Clark — Sun, 23 May 2010 06:20:05 -0700

In my experience, trying to hash out this kind of personal dispute on meta is -- while tempting to do, as I well know -- often not very productive. I noticed that Akela has explicitly declined to join in this thread, which makes it rather moot.

All I'll say is that -- some moderately snippy comments aside -- I don't see anything out of order here. Akela has asked a large number of questions in the past two weeks. A few of those questions have had dubious or false premises, but almost all of them have remained open and received serious attention and good answers from the MO community. A few of the questions have turned out to be especially interesting -- one of them in particular remains open awaiting the arrival of an expert in Zariski geometries.

So overall both Akela and the rest of the MO community have gained from their mutual interactions. As long as we can keep the comments focused on the mathematics and not on the people involved, I'm sure this trend will continue.

Harry Gindi comments on "Perceived bullying" (5628)

Harry Gindi — Sun, 23 May 2010 05:56:01 -0700

Well, I'm not going to comment on the situation itself, but it is really frustrating when someone makes comment "calling you out" , then having people vote it up. Every time somebody votes up the comment, it can feel like a slap in the face. I think that such comments should be deleted if the person has fixed the question. Also, I urge people to refrain from voting up confrontational comments past something like four or five votes (at that point, the point has been made, and voting it up does nothing but give the impression that people are ganging up).

@Andrea: I think that your comment was justified. The above is just my opinion on these situations in general

Andrea comments on "Perceived bullying" (5627)

Andrea — Sun, 23 May 2010 05:22:52 -0700

In the question Fundamental group of the line with doubled origin Akela started by complaining that in other questions people had tried to make his use of mathematical terminology more precise. Moreover this was expressed in a qute bitter way, and I felt it was a completely unnecessary remark, so I told him in the comments. Apparently many other people think so, since currently my comment has 17 upvotes.

It turned out that Akela perceived my behaviour as bullying and attacked me, and other users in the comments. I'm frankly disappointed at the attitude of Akela. I have even thought of removing the bitter comments at the beginning of the question myself, but it didn't feel quite right. Still, now I am sincerely upset about this situation.

EDIT: I have removed the actual dialogue, since we have clarified with Akela.