tea.mathoverflow.net - Discussion Feed (Math SE site now in beta!)

Harry Gindi comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7709)

2010-07-28T05:42:18-07:00

I think it's the axiom of comprehension of Frege. However, how can one seriously expect people today to remember the numbering of the axioms of a specific exposition of naive set theory from over a hundred years ago?

Kevin Lin comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7705)

2010-07-28T02:34:22-07:00

I can't vote because I don't have enough reputation. I don't like MathUnderflow for precisely the reason that Michael Lugo gives ('This name gives too much of an impression that this site is for people who "aren't good enough" for MathOverflow').

I agree that DivideByZero is rather terrible.

I also don't know what AxiomFive could possibly be referring to. The parallel postulate?

Harry Gindi comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7704)

2010-07-28T02:08:52-07:00

Could everyone here please vote for the name "mathunderflow"? It is much better than the trite and boring "mathexchange" or the odious "dividebyzero.com", which has, in a stunning display of lack of imagination reached the top of the list.

Qiaochu Yuan comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7703)

2010-07-28T00:03:35-07:00

I think MU is looking pretty good; I would definitely encourage users here to answer questions there and maybe seed some more elementary questions while they're at it.

Also, shameless plug: vote up my suggestion for the domain name! I think it's catchy, anyway.

Kevin Lin comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7695)

2010-07-27T16:25:38-07:00

Just took a look at the public beta. I think things are looking really good over there!

Scott Morrison comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7688)

2010-07-27T13:11:20-07:00

The public beta has just begun!

Harry Gindi comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7569)

2010-07-24T17:41:02-07:00

Yes, but Justin L is among the top-ranked users on MU, so the sword cuts both ways, Akhil.

Akhil Mathew comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7566)

2010-07-24T17:22:32-07:00

I don't know about that. MO got so much publicity because of links from most of the major math blogs out there (e.g. SBS early on). Math.SE, by contrast, doesn't have an obviously comparable method of publicity (a question currently discussed on meta there).

The other good news is that it's *much* easier to amass rep on Math.SE (even now that it's in beta) than on MO, since the questions are at a different level and generally don't require a great deal of specialized knowledge. Nevertheless, the threshold for closing questions will still be 3000 (it's now 1, but that'll change when the site goes public). So it should not take long at all until a critical mass of high rep users develops and closes irrelevant questions.

Qiaochu Yuan comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7554)

2010-07-24T16:23:59-07:00

In particular, it got a lot easier around here once there was a core of 3000+ rep users to close questions. Fortunately, the era in MO's history before that happened was also the era where we didn't have enough publicity to really attract a lot of problem users; most people got here, I imagine, through a combination of blogs and word of mouth. MU will likely have bigger problems in this regard, since my guess is its userbase will grow much faster than ours did.

Harry Gindi comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7553)

2010-07-24T16:18:25-07:00

The software makes aggressive moderation pretty easy once a core of high-rep users develops.

Yes, this is the most important point I've heard made.

Will Jagy comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7545)

2010-07-24T16:01:39-07:00

Katie, this may be of no importance, but I contacted Robin Chapman (by email) about a problem user and it turned out Robin knew about the guy, had tangled with him before on sci.math, and so on. As I don't see Robin on this particular thread you might write to him individually. Indeed, I would say that the most politically explosive decisions must involve some email, otherwise you have public speculation about identity of users (I got called out for doing that), nasty discussion of just how destructive a certain user is, etc. If you see any need, you are welcome to write to me, Robin is not quick to answer email. I rarely get deeply involved in Meta discussions, but I do write to people and sometimes forward email between users who want to keep their email addresses secret...there is nothing special about me except that I make my identity and email address easy to find.

Qiaochu Yuan comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7542)

2010-07-24T15:51:12-07:00

As far as I remember, MO has never had a "flood" of crackpots. We've sporadically had some trolls. To the extent that we had any problem users, most of the work was done by high-rep users using their high-rep privileges: downvote posts, flag posts, close questions. The software makes aggressive moderation pretty easy once a core of high-rep users develops.

Katie Banks comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7541)

2010-07-24T15:38:45-07:00

Harry's mentioned and I believe that MO had a flood of "crackpots" etc. at the beginning and stayed afloat because of aggressive moderation of those users. Would anyone who was around at the very beginning give an idea of what this problem was like, how bad, and how it was dealt with? Any similar problem we have on math.SE is likely to be much, much worse, but it'd be useful to me to have more data, even anecdotal.

Akhil Mathew comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7540)

2010-07-24T14:59:24-07:00

@Bill Dubuque: +1. This is why we do need to walk the line between tolerance and quality.

Harry Gindi comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7539)

2010-07-24T14:06:16-07:00

@Kaestur: It's not a matter of how effective the moderation tools are. It has to do with how effective the moderators are in establishing a certain level of quality. You can't "trust the community" when the majority of people in that community are lazy highschoolers and crackpots (i.e. the "wider mathematical community").

Kaestur Hakarl comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7538)

2010-07-24T13:59:19-07:00

@Bill: Thanks for the advice. I think it's fair to say the new stackexchange site will have roughly the same moderation toolset as mathoverflow.net, since they are based on the same software. Are there any deficiencies you've noticed in the StackOverflow engine you think would be a problem?
I am skeptical of your claim that usenet has better filtering capabilities. Could you clarify? I think that killfiles, at least, would have little effect in protecting against a large number of unique problem users.

Of course, input from people other than BIll is welcome too.

Edit: A revised version of Harry's link for those of you without access to the private beta: http://stackmobile.com/view_question.php?site=meta.math.stackexchange&id=231

Harry Gindi comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7537)

2010-07-24T13:50:28-07:00

I created the thread you suggested (with the passage above quoted):

Click!

Bill Dubuque comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7535)

2010-07-24T13:45:03-07:00

@Harry: Please feel welcome to do so.

Harry Gindi comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7534)

2010-07-24T13:42:33-07:00

@Bill: I am about to post this on MU and attribute it to you.

Bill Dubuque comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7533)

2010-07-24T13:10:38-07:00

Remark that there are plenty of MO users that could provide very useful advice from their prior experiences in forums at this level, e.g. sci.math. Surely MU will encounter analogous problems. For example, moderation is much trickier at this lower level since it attracts questions from all sorts of fringes of the mathematical community, e.g all sorts of crackpot theories, numerology, and other pseudo-mathematical topics. One has to be very careful to design a policy that makes precisely clear what is on-topic in order to avoid attracting such cancerous discussions. Such factors played a large role in the demise of sci.math after it got much wider exposure due to various factors (endless September; usenet web interfaces: mathforum, Google Groups, etc). Sci.math still manages to limp along only because many usenet newsreaders provide strong filtering capabilities that allow one to easily ignore most of the garbage. But MU will have no such feature, right?

That said, I think it would be wise to create a widely-advertised meta MU thread to solicit advice from users of such similar forums.

Andrew Stacey comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7503)

2010-07-23T08:36:33-07:00

(I should remark that you can also get to the MU meta site via stackmobile)

Andrea comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7501)

2010-07-23T06:20:08-07:00

@Andrew: very interesting. And, yes, the question about 0.99999... = 1 shows that they need to take a clear direction from the start, if they want to mantain a certain level of reliability.

Andrew Stacey comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7499)

2010-07-23T05:58:36-07:00

Following the links from Noah's link led me to http://stackmobile.com/questions.php?site=math.stackexchange where it's possible to have a look at the questions currently being asked on MU (though not to answer them).

Harry Gindi comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7498)

2010-07-23T05:46:04-07:00

For anyone on MO with an account on MU, please give your opinions in this thread:

What kind of site should MU be

There are currently two factions on MU. One aims to turn it into a lower-level MO (with a higher tolerance for soft questions), and the other aims to turn it into a general mathematics site. It seems rather clear to me that the first type of site will be more useful for us (MO users) to redirect people to a place where their questions might actually be answered.

Noah Snyder comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7482)

2010-07-22T07:53:35-07:00

If you're curious about the site, some things about it can be seen from the RSS feed which is public even during the private beta: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/58038/rss-feed-for-stackexchange-sites-in-private-beta-are-publicly-viewable

Harry Gindi comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7478)

2010-07-22T00:47:12-07:00

@VP: This new site will probably direct the homework attention away from MO.

VP comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7477)

2010-07-22T00:44:48-07:00

Actually, appearance of actual homework or homework-like problems has been an issue even at "snobbish and elitist" MO. And before such a question closes, certain people manage to slip in a solution in the comments (wags his finger).

Jon Bannon comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7472)

2010-07-21T16:17:33-07:00

I checked out AoPS. so I should modify my previous post to only include open problems of undergraduate background alone. Or perhaps this could be made a tag in MO? (Somehow, the latter option is unappealing to me...although it may be more practical.)

WillieWong comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7465)

2010-07-21T15:03:10-07:00

@Qiaochu: the SE platform, however, seems to discourage the Socratic method.

Qiaochu Yuan comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7464)

2010-07-21T14:24:00-07:00

@Jon Bannon: this is always an issue. For example, it happens a lot on artofproblemsolving.com. The policy I adopted there was to encourage people to ask conceptual questions about their homework instead of just asking for a solution, and to ask a lot of Socratic questions.

Andrew Stacey comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7463)

2010-07-21T14:04:57-07:00

Everyone full stop! Whether they're sad or happy about MU! And they should follow Ben Webster's link on the SBS blog to do so - he's clocked up 75 referrals so far; I'm curious to see how high he can get before it goes in to beta.

Scott Morrison comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7461)

2010-07-21T13:46:00-07:00

Everyone who's sad that they can't play with math.SE during its first week should consider "committing" to the TeX, LaTeX and friends site, which I think might be interesting and useful, and will likely go into private beta in the next few days.

Jon Bannon comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7460)

2010-07-21T13:37:58-07:00

I feel the need to point out that an unrestricted math SE (with no "elitist snobbery" whatsoever) may degenerate into a venue for students to cheat on homework problems. (This is probably inevitable, though.) Perhaps the focus could be narrowed to open problems with undergraduate background only and competition-type training problems.

Katie Banks comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7451)

2010-07-21T11:16:12-07:00

Joseph - thank you, noted. I, for one, would love to have you around "MU" to whatever extent you are interested.

Kaestur Hakarl comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7438)

2010-07-21T07:34:32-07:00

Hi, not a MathOverflow poster, but I am active at the new stackexchange site. FYI, public beta will begin in 6 days. For those of you unable to participate in the private beta, would you mind posting your lessons learned here, so that the math.stackexchange community can still benefit?

Joseph O'Rourke comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7435)

2010-07-21T06:14:36-07:00

I cannot participate in the private beta, even though I committed long ago. Attempts to commit again failed. This is not an MO issue,
and I've written to team@stackexchange.com, but just to inform you that there may be some problems of interested users participating during this initial phase.

Katie Banks comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7434)

2010-07-21T04:00:02-07:00

Here's the meta site: http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/

Andrea comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7433)

2010-07-21T03:52:48-07:00

Does MU have its own meta site? Is it private as well? I'd like to have a look.

Katie Banks comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7432)

2010-07-21T03:33:27-07:00

@WillieWong, I don't think the initial bad questions flood can be chalked up to the commitment users made, really. There's nothing reminding anyone what that commitment was (number of questions) that is easily found. At least, one presumes that those who are doing this because of the commitment are posting the kinds of questions they want to see on MU, that being the point of the beta.

When I saw the .999... = 1 question I was fully ready to run away screaming, but things seem to have gotten a little better. Right now I'm sticking around because I kind of enjoy answering questions about basic math stuff for people who haven't seen it before, but the only answers of any actual interest to me have been Akhil's and Noah's so far. I'm going to try to seed with more undergraduate-level (disincluding Qiaochu, Harry, Harrison, Akhil et al.) questions and see what happens.

There seems to be some push to make MU more like other SE sites, and a corresponding backlash against the, ahem, "elitism and snobbery" of MO. Personally, I'd welcome ideas from MO veterans, as my concept of MU was initally as a sort of little sibling to MO. (And I appreciate MO more the more I see of MU, at the moment...) It makes sense to me for most MOers to avoid getting heavily involved in the site's direction, but I'd definitely appreciate thoughts here, at least.

WillieWong comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7431)

2010-07-21T03:22:22-07:00

@No one in particular: I also wonder how much of the initial bad questions flood is due to the fact that a committed user has "promised" to seed the website with a certain number of questions during the closed beta?

Harry Gindi comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7426)

2010-07-20T23:53:33-07:00

I hope that the people from MO who have committed will go to the MU meta to help shape the site. Right now, it's up in the air what kind of site it's going to be. I hope we here at MO can help mold it into a site that "fits snugly under MO". The way we can do this is by choosing good moderators and helping the people there clarify the goals of the site.

Edit: I'm about to give up. There are a few good souls over there, who I hope will eventually come to MO, but as it stands now, it seems like a dead-end...

Tom Stephens comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7425)

2010-07-20T23:38:52-07:00

MathExchange.com has a whopping two votes right now - and is in a dead tie with MathUnderflow. It's been neck and neck for an hour! (The MU name will probably not make it based on the comments pointing out that it as too much of an inside joke.) I vote +1 that it remains the unofficial name when being referred to on this site.

Kevin Lin comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7423)

2010-07-20T23:31:55-07:00

Are people really calling it MathUnderflow? I don't like that name.

Pete L. Clark comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7422)

2010-07-20T23:15:53-07:00

I can't even get into the beta site yet (apparently I registered but did not commit, or some such thing) so I can't see yet exactly what's going on. I am certainly curious about the "MU" site, but as a research mathematician I am hesitant to have substantial interactions with MU. MO is close to my platonic ideal of a math website, and it is virtually optimally tailored for me. The MU site is clearly intended for different purposes, and I don't want to splash around in their pool. I think that probably a lot of MO users will feel the same way (especially those who are near or past their PhD), and I agree that there is a danger in generating a backlash against MO by having MO people contribute too stridently to MU.

On the other hand, I really do want to see what is going on with MU! Especially, its intended purpose and clientele is not yet clear to me. As an MO user, what I am hoping for is that it will fit in snugly underneath MO: that is, I hope that a math question that we feel is of too low a level for MO will not be regarded as too advanced for MU (and moreover, will get a competent answer). What I would most like to see, I suppose, is a site where beginning graduate students and undergraduate math majors who are serious -- but not prodigiously precocious like Qiaochu Yuan and a few other distinguished members of MO -- can go to ask and answer questions. At the moment, the meager evidence I have seen indicates that most of the questions so far are not at that level, and I think I probably would not have been attracted to this site as an undergraduate (which, although not so long ago, was a quite different era vis a vis the internet -- but sci.math existed then and I tried it out for a little while but decided it was not for me).

I suppose if MU finds a niche which is useful to people but too far below MO, there's always room for "Math Flow".

Harry Gindi comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7421)

2010-07-20T22:43:18-07:00

I have no intention of trying to steer the ship =)! I just want someone who agrees with my values but is more diplomatic (this is how I feel about all of the current MO moderators (including Anton, even though he's technically the administrator)).

Tom said:

I presume the site will begin to take shape after the academic year gets underway.

If the site does not take shape before the academic year begins, you will be inundated by homework questions. You should have a rough idea of how the site should work by the end of the week.

Andy Putman comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7420)

2010-07-20T22:17:15-07:00

@Harry : I'm going to be a little blunt, and I hope you won't be offended. You're one of the more polarizing figures on MO (though your behavior has improved a lot, and I have been very impressed by this). Moreover, the qualities about you that rub people the wrong way are precisely the qualities that will drive away beginners. If I were you, I would not try to be the one to "steer the ship", at least not if you want it to succeed.

Tom Stephens comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7419)

2010-07-20T22:13:56-07:00

I am on this closed beta site (not that "I" have any cred around here...) - but there appear to be some noteworthy and active undergrads/beginning grads over there and I think they are doing a good job in this first few hours of MU. As has been pointed out, these first 200 are not likely a good representation of who will be over there, and I think that the less-serious people will lose interest very quickly.

As I recall, when MO was weeding out questions there were strong opinions flying around in the comments and probably over here in meta - but not too much of that has happened yet over at MU. IMHO there is room for anything that could come up in an undergraduate class or even at the master's level - anything non-research - BUT it has to be serious math that a serious student has already tried hard to figure out, and the answers have to be enlightening to MU, not to MO!

Harry, I think your points are valid. I think it is important for us to develop firm criteria for what is and what is not appropriate. I hope I can speak for the rest of the MU users that we would appreciate (and already are benefiting from) advice delivered by any of the regulars of MO. Your setup works very well and we (at MU) would be losing out on a great opportunity if we don't get ourselves organized.

I presume the site will begin to take shape after the academic year gets underway.

Harry Gindi comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7418)

2010-07-20T22:12:16-07:00

I agree. I think that the problem at the moment is that there is nobody steering the ship.

Noah Snyder comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7417)

2010-07-20T22:10:01-07:00

There are already some people doing solid work there who would make better leaders for that site than any of us would, for example I think Katie Banks is a great contributor so far.

Harry Gindi comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7416)

2010-07-20T21:51:42-07:00

Since MU doesn't have a strong centralized leadership to guide it, I think it's very important that we from MO help shape it. All I'm saying is that it could easily become something pointless and stupid that nobody visits.

Mgccl comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7415)

2010-07-20T21:09:24-07:00

+1 to Akhil's comment

Consider the site is for general public and not for research. Problems like 0.99999... =1 will always come up. The quality of a post will be decided by the community later on. I don't know what MOers expect of this site, a undergraduate version of MO populated by math majors? When I committed on MU, I was voting for the definition "Q&A site for people studying math at any level & professionals in related fields". Please don't vote down a problem because it doesn't match MO's standard.

Harry, you have down voted 10% of all the Q&As. I do understand some problem have poor quality, but your comments have shown your quality standard is still too high for the normal MU participants. Let's not scary away potential contributors.

Half of the problems are asked by people who clearly know the answer to them. I think they are either trying to get reputations or trying to activate the community. Likely the latter. Not everyone have a math problem at hand, and they are less than 200 people(some don't have math backgrounds). It might become better by public beta.

Scott Morrison comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7413)

2010-07-20T20:15:08-07:00

Yeah, I'd actually suggest the same as Akhil proposes.

I snarkily interfered with the 0.999... = 1 question, but have since realised that this site is probably better off without all of us.

Will Jagy comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7412)

2010-07-20T20:08:33-07:00

http://consumerist.com/2010/01/you-break-it-you-bought-it-rule-does-not-apply-to-museums.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pottery_Barn_rule

Akhil Mathew comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7411)

2010-07-20T20:05:02-07:00

Can I make a suggestion to people here? Namely, that we (=MOwers) don't try to take over this new site. The level is very different from we're used to on MathOverflow, and most of us can easily answer a substantial proportion of the questions there, certainly much higher than on MO.

But this site has just started. There's no need to impose our preferences and views on it (and yes, I feel the temptation myself). We do have a reputation of being somewhat unfriendly on this site, and I don't see why we need to spread it elsewhere. This new site is intended largely as an outlet for the kinds of things we'd close.

In particular, I'm echoing the request made by the anonymous poster here to Harry: voicing your views on meta(.math.stackexchange.com!) would be, I think, more productive now than editing everything. The culture at this new site is likely to be very different than here; it probably makes sense to wait for that to crystallize somewhat.

Recall also that the current community consensus about running MO took quite a while to build. There's every reason to think that math.stackexchange.com will take a while to find its niche and purpose. The people in it now are likely to be an unrepresentative sample of the eventual participants.

Incidentally, if you look at (for instance) Noah Snyder's responses, they're very friendly and helpful, without being threatening at all.

Harry Gindi comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7410)

2010-07-20T19:44:23-07:00

VP, I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean, but it seems like sage-like advice, so I will try to take it to heart (once I figure out what you mean).

VP comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7409)

2010-07-20T19:41:06-07:00

Harry, remember: if you break it, you own it.

Harry Gindi comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7408)

2010-07-20T19:27:57-07:00

As it is now, the site will fail. I'm trying to nip some problems in the bud before they grow out of control. See Akhil's post here for more details.

Anon comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7407)

2010-07-20T19:17:07-07:00

@Harry: Could you please slow down a bit? The site is not even a day old and you are stomping all over the site. Thanks

Harry Gindi comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7406)

2010-07-20T18:58:23-07:00

I'm currently trying to edit all of the tags to bring them in line with the way we do things here on MO.

Akhil Mathew comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7404)

2010-07-20T17:48:35-07:00

I actually kind of enjoy explaining why the reals are uncountable or something like that to someone who's never seen any mathematics, but it seems like the more serious questions (e.g. the one on differential Galois theory) are getting overrun by the less serious ones. This is actually doing a very effective job of convincing me of the appropriateness of MO's strict closing policy.

Harry Gindi comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7403)

2010-07-20T17:28:50-07:00

Yes, I am exercising my abilities to vote to close over there.

Andrea comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7400)

2010-07-20T17:17:13-07:00

I imagined this would be like MathOverflow, only at a lower level, say for maths, physics or engineering undergraduates. I did not commit, so I cannot see the answers now, but I can see some samples from the StackExchange front page for this site, and it seems it is definitely not so. :-(

Akhil Mathew comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7381)

2010-07-20T14:34:43-07:00

I agree that it's not off to a great start, since many of the questions seem rather general (e.g. "What's calculus all about?"). In addition, there are far too many community wiki questions. Perhaps this will at least provide some warnings for MathOverflow...

Scott Morrison comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7371)

2010-07-20T13:28:14-07:00

It's a private beta, by the way, for the first week, so unless you "committed" at Area51 you won't be able to see it until next week.

First impressions, however, are very poor. The question "Why is 0.999... = 1" has 14 answers so far, 10 of them variations of: "1/3 = 0.333..., 1/3 * 3 = 1, therefore 0.999... = 1".

WillieWong comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7369)

2010-07-20T13:27:39-07:00

I believe it is in private beta now? That public beta will start in a week?

François G. Dorais comments on "Math SE site now in beta!" (7367)

2010-07-20T13:21:28-07:00

The proposed general mathematics SE site (a.k.a. MathUnderflow) is now in beta.