tea.mathoverflow.net - Discussion Feed (Name change for MO)

Harry Gindi comments on "Name change for MO" (9967)

Harry Gindi — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 08:09:44 -0700

All of the other names were really bad even back then. For some reason, people always want to name things after really esoteric technical points in set theory (cf. the naming discussion for math.se as well)...

Scott Morrison comments on "Name change for MO" (9965)

Scott Morrison — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 03:54:35 -0700

Yeah, I agree with @Yemon: this seems like a waste of time. It's long long past the time when we could plausibly think of alternative names, and even so, these suggestions are not useful ones.

Yemon Choi comments on "Name change for MO" (9958)

Yemon Choi — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 00:40:44 -0700

It is not clear to me that there is a latent problem here, as you seem to suggest. Given that you profess to be concerned about unfortunate impressions caused by the name "mathematics overflow", to suggest "house for the feeble-minded" seems either inconsistent, or overly tickled by your own wit and wisdom, and in either case sounds disingenuous.

Mike Jones comments on "Name change for MO" (9951)

Mike Jones — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:22:03 -0700

I remember reading somewhere herein in meta some misgivings about the name “Mathematics Overflow”, the concern being that people surfing the web who happen to come upon this site may misundertand it (not reading the FAQ, of course) for being the kind of thing that se.math is for. There is another concern that I would like to point out: semantically “mathematics overflow” is close to “superfluous mathematics”. It may be only a question of time before this becomes genuinely embarrassing for the site.

Not to worry. Very apt alternative names exist. Here are two:

The Rabbit’s Burrow – the allusion being to the well-known joke about the wolf-eating rabbit, of course.

House for the Feeble-Minded – the allusion being to the joke/subterfuge used in Isaac Asimov’s story “Profession”, of course.

I’m not saying that there is any hurry about it. But then, there “wasn’t any hurry” about preparing for Y2K, either.