tea.mathoverflow.net - Discussion Feed (Close to redirect?)

François G. Dorais comments on "Close to redirect?" (4014)

François G. Dorais — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 18:03:41 -0700

@fpqc: Please call me François. Thanks for pointing that out. I hadn't paid close attention to the site, but I think it has good potential.

@grp: I think such a list would be an interesting idea.

Harry Gindi comments on "Close to redirect?" (4012)

Harry Gindi — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 16:34:00 -0700

@Prof. Dorais: Apparently they've gotten a few books reprinted, and the person who runs it is in contact with the publishers, so certainly it couldn't hurt to link it.

grp comments on "Close to redirect?" (4002)

grp — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 15:27:53 -0700

In another post to meta.mathoverflow, I suggested that MathOverflow could provide a rough cataloguing/taxonomic service for various disciplines and subdisciplines. I hope that a subcommunity of MathOverflow develops a redirect list of Useful Community Answers, and that this thread provides an example of an item on that redirect list.

I am willing to spend time creating a list outline for community approval, and am willing to spend time looking for people to populate it and maintain it. I prefer not to start such a project without blessing, encouragment, and help from four or more community members, at least one of them an MO admin. I think I can also make it more than "just another list of links"; I see the possibility of adding value to it that other solutions do not have.

Gerhard "Ask Me About System Design" Paseman, 2010.03.22

François G. Dorais comments on "Close to redirect?" (3873)

François G. Dorais — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:09:25 -0700

I don't know. The number of posts on outofprintmath looks low enough for the "conversion rate" to be non-negligible. That might also be construed as a reason for not redirecting, but it's nice to give a little help to underdogs with potential from time to time.

Scott Morrison comments on "Close to redirect?" (3866)

Scott Morrison — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:20:17 -0700

It seems very unlikely that the "conversion rate" (i.e. the fraction of people who would have answered on MO, had the question not been closed, who instead answer on outofprintmath, but otherwise wouldn't have) could be high enough for this to be a good idea.

Hopefully the people behind outofprintmath saw this discussion, and can make some use of it.

François G. Dorais comments on "Close to redirect?" (3864)

François G. Dorais — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 21:26:47 -0700

This is about question 18271 concerning out of print books, but it may apply to other (past and future) big-list questions. Steve Gubkin's answer points to a outofprintmath which is dedicated to that purpose. I feel this is much like a duplicate question. Wouldn't it be appropriate to close the question so that people post their suggestions on outofprintmath instead? Then again, the same reasoning could be applied to questions that have answers on Wikipedia, for example. What are people's thoughts on this?