tea.mathoverflow.net - Discussion Feed (Is there an API for mathoverflow?)

Harry Gindi comments on "Is there an API for mathoverflow?" (8613)

2010-08-25T15:19:22-07:00

The pool of potential moderators should be restricted only to mathematicians (including people like Qiaochu or Akhil, for instance). I also think that you should have the full administrator privileges that you currently enjoy, and further, I think that you should be able to appoint a successor. More than that, the administrator (a position you said you plan to relinquish at some distant point in the future) should have final say in moderator elections (like the previous election).

More than that, there should be more support for software tweaks, like changing the reasons for closure votes, changing the time limit for editing comments, changing the time limit for changing votes, changing the number of required votes to close, changing the character limit or the minimum number of characters to post in a comment, skipping the CAPTCHA screens for users with high rep, and automatically escaping text inside of $ delimiters. These things are all possible with OSQA (or another OSS solution). Right now, the only feature MO stands to really gain from SE2.0 is comment editing, but there are a lot of other changes that are annoying, many of which are [status-bydesign].

SE inc has a "one size fits all" mindset with regards to the software, which I find extremely annoying, especially when people from SO proclaim things about the software as though they were divine revelations from up on high, when they're just opinions from the latest blog post by Jeff Atwood. I'm also afraid that certain SO policies will overrule MO policies, for example, the policy on posting links to copyrighted material. I think that MO should maintain itself as a separate entity from SO, that is not as a part of the SE2.0 network. Right now, MO is a site by mathematicians for mathematicians (albeit running third-party software), but if it joins the SE2.0 network, SE inc will have the final say over how things work. SE inc's role changes from providing a service to administration.

It's not worth giving up our "national identity" for the ability to edit comments.

Anton Geraschenko comments on "Is there an API for mathoverflow?" (8612)

2010-08-25T14:53:37-07:00

@Harry: There will be some process of negotiation about migration. If you explain more specifically what negative experiences you've had, we can try to make sure we avoid those things if/when we migrate.

Harry Gindi comments on "Is there an API for mathoverflow?" (8609)

2010-08-25T11:30:31-07:00

For the record, I very much hope that MO stays exactly the way it is (until something like OSQA reaches a relatively un-buggy stage). My experience on SE2.0 sites (and meta.SO) and they way they are administered by SE inc has been overwhelmingly negative.

Scott Morrison comments on "Is there an API for mathoverflow?" (8608)

2010-08-25T01:51:34-07:00

The API is for Stack Exchange 2.0 sites. The process of upgrading is complicated: it's a political, not technical, problem, and it remains to be seen whether and how it will happen.

In the meantime the software isn't going to change, but you do have access to the database dumps at http://dumps.mathoverflow.net/, which should suffice for anything that doesn't need up-to-the-minute data.

nabeelmukhtar comments on "Is there an API for mathoverflow?" (8607)

2010-08-24T23:40:30-07:00

Hi all
I was wondering if there is an API for accessing mathoverflow site. StackExchange has recently released an API so I think it shouldn't be too difficult to upgrade the mathoverflow site so that we have an API for accessing its questions.

Regards
Nabeel Mukhtar