It's "peerless leader". Although I agree with the sentiment =)!

@VP: I've read all those threads before, but it takes some time to look over them again and scan for the dismissiveness you're claiming is there. Of the couple that I've looked at so far, I just don't see it. As far as I can tell, when somebody expresses a dissenting opinion, it's usually discussed very thoroughly to figure out what the actual disagreement is, or somebody links to a previous discussion where the same issue came up. Moreover, it's not always the same people expressing dissenting opinions. I simply don't agree with your caricature of the meta community as "insiders" and "outsiders", "us" and "them". Aside from not being accurate in this case, I think it's counterproductive to ever divide the world that way. If you regard meta as polarized, is there anything that isn't? It's not possible to get everyone to always agree about everything, but I think that everybody gets a fair shake.

@Emerton: Thanks for your post. I think I understand VP a bit better now. Regarding the first problem (issues are decided on meta, rather than per the FAQ), there are basically two reasons for it:

1. The FAQ should be short. Almost nobody reads it as is. Expanding it to include every possible contingency would only insure that it never gets read.
2. There's no way to predict every possible contingency. Even if it were possible, doing so would be a mistake: making up a completely rigid set of rules and sticking to them no matter what is a recipe for trouble. When something unexpected happens, its much better for people to try to understand the situation and to understand each other than to quote some holy document.

So meta is a kind of "second order FAQ". I think that meta itself if fairly consistent. The same issues tend to come up over and over, and they are usually handled in the same manner each time. Sometimes we're better at handling problems the second or third time around.

Regarding the second issue:

His most extreme example is "I am annoyed by seeing this question on the front page, hence I am going to prevent anyone else from contributing to the answers", and this doesn't seem to have been refuted

I agree that this is not a good reason for closing, and it stirs up trouble whenever anybody says it. It hasn't been refuted, and I don't think it will be. However, when a question is frequently bumped and people get annoyed with it, there's usually some other reason that they want it closed. I outlined the reasons that I thought the question should be closed earlier in this thread. "I'm annoyed by it being bumped" was certainly not one of the reasons.

I think the correct statement is that high reputation users were not reading the new answers. Naturally, if you don't earn reputation from a certain type of question, then the people interested in that type of question have less reputation.

I think the key point here is that MO's intended audience is not people who only read and answer dicussion-y, big-list, or CW questions.

His most extreme example is "I am annoyed by seeing this question on the front page, hence I am going to prevent anyone else from contributing to the answers", and this doesn't seem to have been refuted: after making this complaint, Harry responded with the comment "When pointless big-list threads keep getting bumped to the top like this one did, it's annoying for those of us who don't want to see it again, and it keeps legitimate mathematical questions off of the front page, where they're most likely to be answered", which is precisely a rephrasing of what VP wrote, and is unhappy with.

Note further that, as VP remarked, the reason that this question is bumped to front page is that someone else was interested in it at the moment it was bumped, so this particular rationale for closing explicitly weights the interest of long-time/high-rep/meta-participating users over other users. Perhaps those who support the vote to close think that that's okay, but it would be good if they could at least address the issue, and explain why they think it's okay.

I would like to add that I very much like Pete's suggestion of "vote trading", and suggest that he begin a new thread explicitly devoted to this topic. This would make votes to close more of a vote. Even if it is not uniformly adhered to, I see no reason that those who support it can't at least agree to abide by it; already that will create some improvements in the system.

I speak as someone who thinks that the MO question considered at the start of this thread was somewhat unfocused and didn't have much use for it, but who didn't vote to close it; who found the the "dinner party puzzles" question intensely annoying, and not what MO should be used for in my opinion; who was strongly in favour of reopening Michael Hardy's question on the MVT in mathematics eduaction; who steadily votes to close questions deemed too basic or ill-thought; who has voted to reopen a technical question on Banach spaces which was over-hastily shut; and who can hardly be thought of as part of the same mathematical or geographical clique as this cabal which you seem to postulate.

(Your last sentence also seems to infer a lot from an absence, but your feel for the unvoiced disquiet of others could well be better than mine, I guess.)

Example: "I am annoyed by seeing this question on the front page, hence I am going to prevent anyone else from contributing to the answers"

I can assure you that's not how we (those of us who closed the question) came to our decisions. Unfortunately, there's no way on MO to completely remove a question from your view without blocking the whole tag. When pointless big-list threads keep getting bumped to the top like this one did, it's annoying for those of us who don't want to see it again, and it keeps legitimate mathematical questions off of the front page, where they're most likely to be answered.

I am going to say this again: there is a huge disconnect in how MO presents itself publicly, e.g. in the article of Anton, Scott and Ravi Vakil in the Notices or in FAQ policies ("A “bad question” is one which is either irrelevant to mathematicians or one where it is unclear what constitutes an answer"), and how it functions in reality, i.e. subject to the whims of 5 high "reputation" users with often unreasonable attitudes (Example: "I am annoyed by seeing this question on the front page, hence I am going to prevent anyone else from contributing to the answers") or based on idealistic perceptions of what MO should be according to a few well-connected insiders. As I mentioned before (2nd comment in this thread), it is one thing when certain things are done as a matter of policy (say, closing every old question) and completely another when they are perceived as interfering with the normal functioning of the system (ab)using the tools (closing the question for the precise reason that it is of interest to other people at this very moment).

I appreciate Anton stating his vision for MO, but I cannot reconcile it either with stated policies or with public actions (Example: "Math puzzles for dinner" - although it's a good question, in my opinion - got a special treatment). This is not helped by continuous pronouncements justifying many an action by the concern for the welfare of research mathematicians on MO: they come across as naive and idealistic (i.e. not grounded in reality) or self-serving and sanctimonious, I know that I am not alone in feeling this way (indeed, a view was expressed to me that "discussions on meta have as much to do with affirming a group identity as they do with making decisions"; see also the comments in the links). It is perhaps little wonder that, as Anton mentioned, many valuable MO contributors are nowhere to be seen on meta: who enjoys carrying water in a sieve?

I gather though that we are stuck with our current platform for the forseeable future, so however tempting it may be, it doesn' t seem to be productive to propose "rule changes" that cannot yet be implemented. Brainstorming on what we could do with the current system, I came up with the following idea: vote-trading. That is, if I see a question that I like but for whatever reason feel is in danger of being closed, I leave as a comment: "I cast a vote against closure." Then, the next person who would have voted to close, instead of doing so, leaves a comment saying "I vote to close, cancelling Pete's vote" or something to that effect.

Among other things, a certain amount of "honor" is necessary to pull this kind of thing off, and it brings some people's votes out into the open. But it might be worth a try...

For now, besides voting to reopen I think the ideal course of action is to keep starting meta threads for borderline questions and abstain from voting until a consensus has been reached on meta. At least, that's what I've been trying to do.

But in all seriousness, I think (but I'm not sure) that VP posted a bunch of posts where he thinks that "outsiders' " opinions were ignored (because Anton asked to see some examples).

@VP: I would like to note that the user "ironical observer" was a troll.

Stephen Griffeth, VP, Ilya Grigoriev

gilkalai, VP, John Stillwell, Emerton

obryant, VP

Ironic Observer, Mariano, Douglas Zare

Mariano

Pete L. Clark, Tom Leinster

gilkalai

gilkalai

Shevek, Emerton, Douglas Zare

Noah Snyder, Andy Putman

Several people I respect also left comments on MO itself, but declined to follow through on meta.

I don't see the problem in redirecting people to other sites when MO isn't meant to serve their purpose, or when those other sites contain useful information. I don't understand the difference between people linking to sbseminar/nLab and wikipedia. Can you provide an example of such links somehow interfering with constructive interaction? As far as I know, people simply link to whatever resources they like. There are also a handful of links in the FAQ; if you have some other site that MO users are likely to find useful, I'll happily add it.

I, along with a few other "outsiders", have made similar observations on meta before (they were politely ignored, for the most part); if anyone is interested, I'll post the links.

Yes, I'd like to see the links if it's not too much trouble. For what it's worth, I've never met most of the people I think of as extremely valuable contributors here on meta.

To that end, I think it's important to close questions which are out of line with that goal, especially if they are very active. A popular fluffy question not only annoys the "regulars" or the "insiders" who have been around for a while, it also gives newcomers an inaccurate picture of what MO is supposed to be. Hopefully this addresses VP's point 4: "why kick away from MO a question that many people provably care about, especially since it is not clear that there is a better (or another) medium for it?" Because it actually interferes with people using MO for its intended purpose.

Generalities aside--I think it's always best to look at the specific question rather than try to apply some cookie-cutter explanation--I don't think this question is worthwhile to have on MO, and I think it is well-addressed by other mediums. Aside from annoying regulars and sending the wrong message to newcomers, it just isn't a useful resource to have on MO. Some evidence:

• A couple of the answers on the first page aren't books at all, but links to similar (better organized) lists of books elsewhere on the internet.
• Better information is more easily accessible elsewhere. Googling around for undergraduate math books produces lots of these lists if you ever want to look at them. Amazon will gladly show you lots of undergraduate math books, along with much more detailed reviews. It will also provide these data to you in a reasonably easy-to-browse format. Despite people arguing that the answers are useful, I just can't imagine a situation where I'd want to sort undergrad textbooks primarily by some strange popularity metric rather than by subject.
• In my very cursory look at the answers, I found at least one duplicate, suggesting that even people who are interested in the question are not patient enough to read through the answers.

But if, and I hope I am right here, the goal is to provide high quality interaction environment for mathematicians

What kind of interaction, and what level (or "profession-type") of mathematicians? Most of the high-quality interacting I do with mathematicians involves conferences and beer. It's not clear, though, that this high-quality interaction helps me fix technical lemmas or fill in worrisome gaps - which is my own preferred use for MO as a "client" of the site. That's not to say that "my way is the only way" or any such nonsense, but I thought I should pipe up as a non-moderator, non-ex-Berkeley, non-high-flying-research-whizz, etc.

I don't get the impression that most of these new users answering these big-list questions are experts. Most of them don't use their real names, and they often only answer one or two community-wiki questions.

As far as the "old boy network" phenomenon, I think that the difference here is that anyone can come here on meta and discuss it with us (including you, and anyone else who is active on meta). The people active on meta may have a lot of sway over the policies of the site, but that's because they're the only ones who participate in the decision making.

New users arrive to MO all the time. They were not around back in October or December of 2009, or whenever you, guys, first saw some question and perhaps got sick of seeing it in on the front page. They may be genuinely interested in learning about, and sometimes, making a valuable contribution to older questions (after all, great initial questions may be in the large measure responsible for the success of MO). It would be one thing to have a clearly enunciated policy that a question is closer after a certain time (say, 3 months), or after a certain number of views, or once it gets a certain number of answers. But from reading the official policy stated in FAQ, I got a distinct impression that such contributions are considered a part of the system and, in fact, encouraged: cf "badges" for answering a question more than 60 days old with 5 up votes, or question with at least (Large Number) answers, or so many views. Thus the efforts to suppress what seems to be the normal functioning of the system by a few old-timers with the tools to do so can certainly be perceived as self-serving, capricious, and even dictatorial (that may not be how you view it yourself, but then, the community perception is worth something, too). I personally find many such efforts in poor taste (not pointing fingers at anyone...) and distinctly unwelcoming to new or less active users, especially when accompanied by self-aggrandization. If the purpose of MO had been to serve a few well-connected people and never mind how everyone else feels, then godspeed to you! But if, and I hope I am right here, the goal is to provide high quality interaction environment for mathematicians, it is very short-sighted. There are some true experts on MO who have only answered a handful of questions: are we to believe that they should be treated with contempt because they don't have enough "rep"? Likewise, I am a bit put off by not-so-subtle efforts to redirect traffic to n-Lab or sbseminar, or to pitch one's contributions there. I understand that initially, active MO participants were a small group with shared background and all this seems perfectly natural to them because that's how they operate anyway (I exclude Wikipedia because it de facto became the canonical source of definitions and statements of theorems). But once again, when many more people join, this "old boy network" phenomenon sometimes gets in the way of constructive interaction.

I, along with a few other "outsiders", have made similar observations on meta before (they were politely ignored, for the most part); if anyone is interested, I'll post the links.

That makes it sound like "popping back to front page" is a bad thing, but isn't that the desirable feature of MO that the question that generates a lot of responses is featured on the front page? Like in so many situations before, I feel that there is a dogged willingness on a part of a small group of active users to arbitrarily impose their preferences upon the larger community. That view is further supported by responses on this thread:

1. Harry didn't like the question in the first place.

2. Robin commented that the question is "not easily surveyable": that applies to many popular questions, so isn't that something that should be decided upon as a policy (say, should we automatically close questions with more than 2 pages of answers) rather than given as an excuse?

3. Qiaochu wrote: "As I recall, the consensus the last time we discussed a question like this is that there's no reason to have resources from all these different subjects in one thread; if people want to know about good books for subject X, they should post a separate question about subject X. Right?" Regardless of how many people are even aware of that discussion, isn't it a bit disingenuous to apply it retroactively? So now the people who wanted to answer this particular question or to know the answers (and clearly, there are enough of them) are prevented from doing so. Moreover, if someone starts a similar question in the future, it could justifiably be closed on the grounds of being a duplicate.

4. Further comments from Qiaochu and Pete about blogs leave me wondering: why kick away from MO a question that many people provably care about, especially since it is not clear that there is a better (or another) medium for it? In this connection, I am reminded of Andrew Stacey's unsuccessful* attempt to relocate "Counterexamples in algebra" to n-Lab page

*He himself and many other people, including myself, complained about the associated annoyances.

As I recall, the consensus the last time we discussed a question like this is that there's no reason to have resources from all these different subjects in one thread; if people want to know about good books for subject X, they should post a separate question about subject X. Right?

Yup, that was precisely what I had in mind when I posted this.

Agreed with Harry; at nearly 100 posts, it is no longer easily surveyable.

And this was the other thing I had in mind.

High fives all around =D!