If we do decide to keep using this meta for some discussions then we can always go and say "It's tea time!" or "We'll talk about this over tea later today."
]]>@Asaf Well, since the /discussion point isn't taken, it probably would be easy to set up a redirect for that.
IIRC when SO got its own meta, the older meta (a uservoice forum) was discarded without much issue. You may want to decide if there's anything on this meta worth keeping. (MO has been there for a long time now, so I bet there's tons of stuff, though)
]]>List of self-deletions is only visible to Mods. Best I can tell we can see two months or so of activity. (I am not sure if the limiting factor is age or if the limiting factor is that the list only populates the first 20 pages.)
This is a discussion about searching for deleted posts.
Mods can still search with no restrictions. So at worst our esteemed moderators will start getting a lot more e-mails from Will Jagy.
]]>Let me assure you that when SE 2 changed the reputation pages, there was a lot of people going on about how it's a bad change, then they changed them again some more. It's quite easy to get used to the SE 2 user pages, and for the most part I find them more informative than the ones on MO, in particular historical activity of the user.
]]>for 1, yes, definitely this is planned like this (in any case I believe one should think of this more like a software-upgrade from SE1 to SE2 rather than transferring something, as also now the main site is "at stackexchange" already).
for 2, the main url will stay as is, mathoverflow.net. And it seems the directory-structure below the main url is analogous for math.stackexchange.com (at least for major things like the question) as is for mathoverflow.net so this should work automatically. And if not, at least now that you raise the issue it should be taken into account (as this would affect quite a number of things).
]]>yes, those terms of service will apply (but have not applied up to this point). While part 3 there talks specifically about licensing user content to Stack Exchange, it mostly doesn't matter to whom one licenses content under a CC license. The important exception is that content is licensed under a CC-BY license, with particular requirements about attribution. Those requirements outlined in part 3 are indeed slightly more onerous than the 'guidelines' we've offered in the past, but I think in fairly harmless ways.
We have so far had very few requests to remove copyrighted material (described in part 15 of http://stackexchange.com/legal), and are happy with giving up the rights and responsibilities of dealing with these requests.
But these are excellent questions, about which we should all talk more!
]]>Is MO going to be incorporated into the SE network, like MSE or other sites? Or is it going to remain somewhat isolated, as people suggested and requested in this thread?
mathoverflow.net will be part of the network, just like the other sites. However, MathOverflow is now a corporation and all the ownership rights to mathoverflow.net will remain with MathOverflow unless otherwise specified by the contract with SE.
Association bonus to users from outside MO;
That's part of being on the SE network. We don't know exactly how this may be a problem, so we settled on looking at this again after sufficient experience.
MO appearing in the listed sites of the SE network;
I don't remember this being an issue, but clause 5 prevents the network from placing ads on MO without running the idea through us.
Migration paths will be open only under consent of the MO moderators;
That's standard procedure, as far as I understand.
Meta site;
There will be a SE style meta site and this meta will be kept for historical reasons.
Someone said something about somebody buying beer.
Cheers!
And finally, there was a clause about a test site, is that the test site from September or so that was tested by a couple of folks, or is there going to be another version?
We expect it to be updated so we can spot transition problems before they happen. Much of that was done then but it's been a while...
]]>@quid: Yes, definitely. The documents were filed last Friday to create a Delaware LLC, so we should get confirmation soon. At that point I can sign the agreement with Stack Exchange, we can migrate to SE 2.0, and we can start working on becoming a 501c3 (which is part of what the money from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is for). I don't have any of the documents dictating how the new entity operates, so I can't share them yet, but the abbreviated version is that I'm transferring ownership of the MO domains to the new entity, which will be run by a board of managers (which will consist of moderators + Ravi Vakil to start with, and modified as the board sees fit).
]]>No one should be submitted to «legal stuff», ¡poor soul!
]]>I suppose the old bounties simply would not be transferred (I've seen sandbox and had experience with TP)
The bounties don't show up next to the questions for some reason, but they do appear in the revision history: http://dev.mathoverflow.stackexchange.com/posts/4998/revisions
And you can confirm that José is awarded these reputation points by looking at the graph here: http://dev.mathoverflow.stackexchange.com/users/394/jose-figueroa-ofarrill?tab=reputation
Just out of curiosity, does down-voting a question get the software to be quiet? Or does it have to be an upvote?
Just tried this on the sandbox, and yes, downvoting works.
]]>the software badgers you to vote on some questions
Great, just great. I am so looking forward to being badgered by software.
]]>However I think that it's not that big of a deal, and that we probably can't do anything about that.
]]>Speaking for myself, I can think of at least one bounty that is larger than I would have offered with the rep recalculation, and is likely to take my new rep below the 2k threshold. I don't regret it, since I received a superb answer after offering the bounty, but it does lead me to think about this issue.
I'm not sure there is a good way to deal with this, but I thought it should at least be brought up. One thing that I would be absolutely against is any "solution" that deprives the bounty recipients of the rep they earned by receiving the bounty.
]]>@thei: Do you feel the problem is not solved by softlinking the two, as suggested above?
@Tom: I don't really see why being able to vote to migrate is necessary for those benefits. It seems they would be equally well-served by an official board of advisors which doesn't serve the function of voting to migrate. I could also see the argument that being supported by somebody with no official connection to MO is a stronger form of support. I don't have any (even anecdotal) data to support either case. The main hesitation that I have is that it's easy to go from an all-moderator migration board (as opposed to advisory board) to a more diverse migration board than the other way around.
One other thing that's worth thinking about is how outgoing MO should be in the future. At one extreme is the position that we shouldn't mess with a good thing, so MO should stay just as it is. More in the middle is the position that doing nothing leads to rotting away, so we should actively look for little ways to improve things, but avoid radical changes. At the other extreme is the position that MO should try to anticipate and support the future of mathematical research as much as possible. The smaller the official decision-making body, the easier it is to do new stuff. I'm not sure how to incorporate this factor, or whether it should be tied to the migration board at all.
]]>isn't the problem of the set of moderators being compromised addressed by my proposal that "is a moderator" and "is on the board" be functionally but not actually synonymous
Indeed that does solve the problem, which is why I also suggested it. As I said, if I were doing it, I'd do a mix, but I just don't see any huge advantages either way.
]]>A similar argument can be made for having one or two high-profile mathematicians on the board.
I think there is already universal agreement that Ravi Vakil should be on the board, and he certainly fits that bill.
]]>I've made an argument (in my previous post) that having non-moderators on the managing board of MO is not a good idea. I'm open to the possibility, but I want to understand clearly what the payoff is. What problem does it solve?
There's a possible advantage to having people on the board with experience in using the law in academic contexts, or experience in negotiating with commercial organizations. (When I say "using the law" I don't necessarily mean in an adversarial way; I include things like drawing up contracts.) Yes, you could bring such people onto the board at a later stage, as and when trouble arises. But if you want this kind of advice, isn't it better to have it from people who've been there all along and already have intimate knowledge of the workings of MO?
(It may be that the moderators themselves already do have this kind of experience — I don't know.)
A similar argument can be made for having one or two high-profile mathematicians on the board. They may eventually be needed to help make representations to other parts of the mathematical community, for example. This will look less convincing if they've only just been appointed to the board, expressly for that purpose.
]]>I think that a board of the "obvious candidates" achieves this much more successfully than the current setup.
]]>I disagree with Anton's identification of the two sets 1) and 4) in his post.
What exactly do you disagree with? If you're saying there is something wrong with my classification of different functions people can perform, you haven't specified what is wrong. For now, I will assume you are simply saying that you feel it is more useful (for some reason) to think of people as short or long term contributors rather than serving one of the roles I outlined. I disagree with this assertion.
Just about every discussion we have about whether a particular (short term) question should be closed takes place in the context of what would be best in the long term. I would not say that my contribution has been primarily short or long term, and I doubt other moderators would either. As far as I can tell, moderators seems to be equally active in email/meta threads about the future of MO as they are in email/meta threads about some particular troublesome user or situation (other moderators: please corroborate or contradict). Please try to explain why it is natural to insist that people focus primarily on short or long term goals. Are you suggesting that there is a situation where we're seriously considering migrating off of SE, and the moderators shouldn't be thinking much about it? (As an exageration to help you understand my confusion, I feel what you're proposing is similar to saying that each mathematician should focus primarily on proving lemmas or theorems, but not both.)
situations where we need to break the glass seem to me to mostly consist of situations where the moderator board is compromised.
I actually find those situations to be less likely reasons to break the glass. The more likely being that SE is bought by some company which threatens the community norms of all Stack Exchange sites. It seems that the set of moderators would only be compromised if the moderator elections were tampered with by the SE staff. Even if MO does get a flood of new users from the SE network (which I don't think is likely), they'd still have to earn 50 more rep on MO before they can influence an election. This is not easy!
In any case, isn't the problem of the set of moderators being compromised addressed by my proposal that "is a moderator" and "is on the board" be functionally but not actually synonymous? The only way that could be a problem is if it were possible to get several "trojan horse" moderators elected, have our community think those moderators are legitimate (and so grant them a seat on the board), and then turn out to be a problem. This could in principle happen regardless of who the board consists of.
If I were making the decision, I'd probably have a board that was half-and-half. The moderators for knowledge and the senior friends of MO for judgement.
It seems implicit that senior mathematicians have better judgement about internet mathematics, or that judgement about something is independent of knowledge about it. I think there is huge value in consulting people with a variety of levels of connection to MO, but I don't think they should all have a vote in whether MO migrates off of SE.
I've made an argument (in my previous post) that having non-moderators on the managing board of MO is not a good idea. I'm open to the possibility, but I want to understand clearly what the payoff is. What problem does it solve?
Over email, Ravi suggested some situations where it would solve a problem. For example, if MO needed money and a wealthy donor offered to bankroll it in exchange for a seat on the board, that would make sense. There are other situations where granting a spot on the board to some very high-profile person could be of great benefit. But let's not solve a problem that doesn't exist yet. If we establish an all-moderator board, it doesn't lock us out of the possibility of having non-moderators members in the future.
]]>I have no strong opinions about whether it's better to have a board which is roughly the same as the board of moderators or a board which is roughly "senior mathematicians who understand MO and who we trust." The worst-case scenarios that I can imagine don't seem to lead to much divergence between the decisions made by those sets. If I were making the decision, I'd probably have a board that was half-and-half. The moderators for knowledge and the senior friends of MO for judgement.
]]>