tea.mathoverflow.net - Discussion Feed (Possibly distressing message over at meta.math.stackexchange.com) Sun, 04 Nov 2018 23:24:47 -0800 http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/ Lussumo Vanilla 1.1.9 & Feed Publisher Andrea comments on "Possibly distressing message over at meta.math.stackexchange.com" (8164) http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/discussion/582/possibly-distressing-message-over-at-metamathstackexchangecom/?Focus=8164#Comment_8164 http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/discussion/582/possibly-distressing-message-over-at-metamathstackexchangecom/?Focus=8164#Comment_8164 Sat, 07 Aug 2010 11:02:17 -0700 Andrea Dear Kaestur, the point it that I was trying to find some kind of agreement with the community of math.stackexchange.

I felt that my website may be useful, and I wanted to know whether they were interested enough in it to give it some visibility. I don't expect that the community will do that with every mathematical website, and I was asking for an ad-hoc arrangement. For that question to make sense, I have to describe what my site is about (which admittedly I did in terms which looked like advertising).

In other words the question was: "Do you think MathOnline is useful enough to promote it math.stackexchange?" and not "How to promote any site on math.stackexchange?".

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Kaestur Hakarl comments on "Possibly distressing message over at meta.math.stackexchange.com" (8154) http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/discussion/582/possibly-distressing-message-over-at-metamathstackexchangecom/?Focus=8154#Comment_8154 http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/discussion/582/possibly-distressing-message-over-at-metamathstackexchangecom/?Focus=8154#Comment_8154 Fri, 06 Aug 2010 14:45:41 -0700 Kaestur Hakarl @Andrea: An unfortunate side effect of your original question's deletion was the removal of the perfectly valid meta-question "how can I promote my math website on math.stackexchange?" If you were willing to repost it in its more general form, I think you could see some useful suggestions. Placing it on a community-built list of useful math websites is one such method, and many more certainly exist. I recommend a more general question not because of any specific features of your website (which does indeed look like a resource lots of math.stackexchange users would find helpful), but because the answers collected will be more useful to other people in the future; there will be no need to create a new question when the next person comes asking, because there will already be a definitive list.

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Andrea comments on "Possibly distressing message over at meta.math.stackexchange.com" (8151) http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/discussion/582/possibly-distressing-message-over-at-metamathstackexchangecom/?Focus=8151#Comment_8151 http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/discussion/582/possibly-distressing-message-over-at-metamathstackexchangecom/?Focus=8151#Comment_8151 Fri, 06 Aug 2010 08:11:37 -0700 Andrea @Harry: thank you for doing that. I'm not willing to put a description for now, just to avoid any other issues. But I see it is ranked high in the proposal, so hopefully it could end in the FAQ. :-)

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Pete L. Clark comments on "Possibly distressing message over at meta.math.stackexchange.com" (8085) http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/discussion/582/possibly-distressing-message-over-at-metamathstackexchangecom/?Focus=8085#Comment_8085 http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/discussion/582/possibly-distressing-message-over-at-metamathstackexchangecom/?Focus=8085#Comment_8085 Thu, 05 Aug 2010 14:35:05 -0700 Pete L. Clark @Andrew: yes, that reading list was probably the way my name first found its way onto the internet. A blind date that I had about ten years ago told me that she googled for me and read through that list with interest, even though she was not a mathematician. (She probably found some excellent Scottish fiddle-playing as well.)

Since we're talking about it, I should say that the driving force behind the list was Chris Jeris, who shared the Cohen Prize (for outstanding undergraduate math majors) in my (1998) graduating class at the University of Chicago with Ben Blander and me. He was a truly brilliant young man, usually at least a step or two ahead of the other students populating the honors classes at UofC. He was an on and off grad student at MIT circa 1998-2000, but I lost touch with him about 10 years ago. I wish him all the best.

Concerning the posting to Andrea's website: yes, I visited it recently and saw that those links had been added. I appreciate both your adding them and your telling me about doing so: I do like to know when others are reading or linking to my notes, mostly for the positive reinforcement that such knowledge brings. Cheers.

P.S.: A couple of months ago, I purchased my first copy of Stillwell's book on topology and combinatorial group theory. It still looks like a fantastic book to me. Perhaps it is more appropriate for enrichment than an official course text, but I've never taught such a course so don't have particularly strong opinions there.

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Harry Gindi comments on "Possibly distressing message over at meta.math.stackexchange.com" (8081) http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/discussion/582/possibly-distressing-message-over-at-metamathstackexchangecom/?Focus=8081#Comment_8081 http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/discussion/582/possibly-distressing-message-over-at-metamathstackexchangecom/?Focus=8081#Comment_8081 Thu, 05 Aug 2010 14:22:40 -0700 Harry Gindi @Andrea: For the record, I made that thread specifically because your thread got killed. I was hoping we'd be able to get around the rules if you reposted your post as the description for MathOnline. I also downvoted Cardaino's answer, since I think his perspective is uninformed and shortsighted. As I said before, I don't like the way the SO community works, and I especially don't like how they think that their SO experience is applicable to all communities regardless of focus.

@Everyone: For what it's worth, I ask people here to vote up Andrew and Scott's posts (linked in Andrew Stacey's post here) over at the LaTeX meta in a show of solidarity. If you're feeling particularly bellicose, vote down all of the other answers as well.

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AndrewL comments on "Possibly distressing message over at meta.math.stackexchange.com" (8080) http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/discussion/582/possibly-distressing-message-over-at-metamathstackexchangecom/?Focus=8080#Comment_8080 http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/discussion/582/possibly-distressing-message-over-at-metamathstackexchangecom/?Focus=8080#Comment_8080 Thu, 05 Aug 2010 14:21:29 -0700 AndrewL But I know your site VERY well and I'd be thrilled to help you promote it. I've added a few links there myself over the last few months. It's a great project for mathematics students (undergraduare or early graduate) to have access to for free and worthy of all our support. There is a wealth of free quality material available and with the cost of textbooks today,this is a necessary resource for all students.
I'll be writing at my blog soon and hope to post a link to it there. I'll also advertise it wherever I deem it'll do the most good. Thanks again for your efforts in setting it up and promoting it.

@Pete The first place I became familiar with your name and writing was at your long-defunct "Chicago Undergraduate Mathematics Reading List";set up by yourself,Ben Blander and several others when you were all students at U of C over 10 years ago. I can't imagine you'd ever be interested in updating and revising it now with the hindsight of a seasoned mathematican and teacher,but it would sure make interesting reading. (I wonder if you're still such a big fan of John Stillwell's topology book. I know I am and have no idea why American mathematicans hesitate to use it as a text for a first course. But that's another Question......)
I'm bringing this up because Andrea's site may in fact help you get even more famous since I've posted links to your
wonderful notes on commutative algebra and graduate number theory there. They deserve a much wider audience then they've so far recieved. Hope you're ok with that?

To get back to the topic at hand,bottom line: VERY worthy project for Andrea,but this isn't the place to promote it. ]]>
Andrea comments on "Possibly distressing message over at meta.math.stackexchange.com" (8078) http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/discussion/582/possibly-distressing-message-over-at-metamathstackexchangecom/?Focus=8078#Comment_8078 http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/discussion/582/possibly-distressing-message-over-at-metamathstackexchangecom/?Focus=8078#Comment_8078 Thu, 05 Aug 2010 13:59:59 -0700 Andrea I think I should say a word on this. First, it is true that the message is in itself a promotion. This is because I more or less copied an analogous message that I had posted at the beginning on this meta. I did not realize that this meta has a different flavour, and especially had a different flavour at the beginning, when messages unrelated to the mantaining of MO were more frequent.

Second, I don't have any problems with Roberto Cardaino's answer. I mailed me to explain about the deletion, and I can see his point of view. I still think that MathOnline would be useful to a community with many undergraduates (and viceversa), but I understand that they do not want to promote anything for now. In any case MathOnline is listed in another thread among the possible available resources.

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Pete L. Clark comments on "Possibly distressing message over at meta.math.stackexchange.com" (8066) http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/discussion/582/possibly-distressing-message-over-at-metamathstackexchangecom/?Focus=8066#Comment_8066 http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/discussion/582/possibly-distressing-message-over-at-metamathstackexchangecom/?Focus=8066#Comment_8066 Thu, 05 Aug 2010 10:52:26 -0700 Pete L. Clark For those who are not following on meta.math.SE: I was persuaded by the comments here that the deletion of the post was a reasonable thing to do, and I made a comment to that effect on the other thread. Meanwhile, there is now another thread on that site listing online math resources eventually to be put in an FAQ and Andrea's site is listed there. Seems good to me.

Thanks to everyone who responded (and to those who may still respond).

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Kaestur Hakarl comments on "Possibly distressing message over at meta.math.stackexchange.com" (8065) http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/discussion/582/possibly-distressing-message-over-at-metamathstackexchangecom/?Focus=8065#Comment_8065 http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/discussion/582/possibly-distressing-message-over-at-metamathstackexchangecom/?Focus=8065#Comment_8065 Thu, 05 Aug 2010 10:48:53 -0700 Kaestur Hakarl FYI, this is the text of the deleted post:

I have launched a few months ago a mathematical site called MathOnline. Here one can collect lecture notes, survey articles, books and so on. All the material can be organized and searched by author, topic, language, level and so on.

Registered users can add new books, add tags, write reviews, vote, keep a list of the favorite books and see other people's profiles. The level is usually from university mathematics on, even if it is possible to add elementary resources.

Every contribution is appreciated. You can simply use it to to find material, or better you can register and contribute, or advertise it with your colleagues and interested people. Every advice for more features is welcome!

My question here is the following: is there an opportunity to advertise it (if you like the idea and the realization) in some way on math.stackexchange or here in meta? Of course, as with every site with user-generated content, the more public exposure it gets, the more opportunity it has to become a repository of useful material.

So far I have been able to promote it to the MathOverflow community, but I think the level there is too advanced. Undergraduate students follow much more courses and hence are exposed to a lot of books and lecture notes. So I'd like to be able to promote it here on math.stackexchange. Ideally it would be very nice if one could have a link somewhere.

I am not trying to spam this site, but I think that it could be useful to have a place where to redirect when people ask for online material. By the nature of the site, the more people use it, the more interesting it becomes. I have been not working very much lately on MathOnline, but if the traffic there improved, I'd be happy to start developing it again.

Although I don't think the post is unsalvageable (putting the first 3 paragraphs as a quote at the bottom would make it fine in my eyes), I can certainly understand why Robert thought it looked enough like an advertisement to delete it.

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Harry Gindi comments on "Possibly distressing message over at meta.math.stackexchange.com" (8025) http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/discussion/582/possibly-distressing-message-over-at-metamathstackexchangecom/?Focus=8025#Comment_8025 http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/discussion/582/possibly-distressing-message-over-at-metamathstackexchangecom/?Focus=8025#Comment_8025 Thu, 05 Aug 2010 06:12:18 -0700 Harry Gindi Has anybody else here found the people coming from SO to be completely unreasonable in any discussion about how best to use the SE software and how best to organize a community?

The two forums that I follow are meta.MO and the nForum, which is essentially meta.nLab (plus some technical discussion about entries on the nLab or a little bit of category theory in general).

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Andrew Stacey comments on "Possibly distressing message over at meta.math.stackexchange.com" (8024) http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/discussion/582/possibly-distressing-message-over-at-metamathstackexchangecom/?Focus=8024#Comment_8024 http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/discussion/582/possibly-distressing-message-over-at-metamathstackexchangecom/?Focus=8024#Comment_8024 Thu, 05 Aug 2010 06:03:16 -0700 Andrew Stacey Harry, you might well think that I couldn't possibly comment.

(For non Brits, who may not get the reference, look up the second man to enter parliament with honest intentions)

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Harry Gindi comments on "Possibly distressing message over at meta.math.stackexchange.com" (8023) http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/discussion/582/possibly-distressing-message-over-at-metamathstackexchangecom/?Focus=8023#Comment_8023 http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/discussion/582/possibly-distressing-message-over-at-metamathstackexchangecom/?Focus=8023#Comment_8023 Thu, 05 Aug 2010 05:54:47 -0700 Harry Gindi Anybody else think that this vanilla forum is much better than the stackexchange forum over at meta.math.SE, at least for meta discussion?

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Akhil Mathew comments on "Possibly distressing message over at meta.math.stackexchange.com" (8019) http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/discussion/582/possibly-distressing-message-over-at-metamathstackexchangecom/?Focus=8019#Comment_8019 http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/discussion/582/possibly-distressing-message-over-at-metamathstackexchangecom/?Focus=8019#Comment_8019 Thu, 05 Aug 2010 05:41:26 -0700 Akhil Mathew
Note, however, that meta.math.SE is designed with SE software, so it's much less of a discussion forum than meta.MO (and seems to have a correspondingly different culture). ]]>
Pete L. Clark comments on "Possibly distressing message over at meta.math.stackexchange.com" (8017) http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/discussion/582/possibly-distressing-message-over-at-metamathstackexchangecom/?Focus=8017#Comment_8017 http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/discussion/582/possibly-distressing-message-over-at-metamathstackexchangecom/?Focus=8017#Comment_8017 Thu, 05 Aug 2010 03:33:57 -0700 Pete L. Clark @Andrew: yes, you have the right Pete Clark. I inserted another link for confirmation. (Really, click through to the youtube video; it's worth it.)

And to those who think that I like to googlebait people on this meta site, I say: nice job getting all that cocaine, Andrew Stacey.

P.S.: For all those who wonder why I often insist on "Pete L. Clark", this is the reason: it's a weapon in a losing battle for disambiguation. It's a hardship that the Donu Arapura's and Georges Elencwajg's of the world will never know...

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Andrew Stacey comments on "Possibly distressing message over at meta.math.stackexchange.com" (8015) http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/discussion/582/possibly-distressing-message-over-at-metamathstackexchangecom/?Focus=8015#Comment_8015 http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/discussion/582/possibly-distressing-message-over-at-metamathstackexchangecom/?Focus=8015#Comment_8015 Thu, 05 Aug 2010 03:24:30 -0700 Andrew Stacey Is that the Scottish fiddler (I never click through on youtube links just in case I get someone playing the Bagpipes)? If so, I'm afraid that your conjecture is correct. Google tells me a lot about him, but I have to wait until the middle of the second page to get anything about you (and then the page is the one I was referring to: your expositions). Makes me worried now about the fact that Google gives me top billing when I search.

All I can say is that I'm glad that I was on the right side of the law in this story.

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Pete L. Clark comments on "Possibly distressing message over at meta.math.stackexchange.com" (8013) http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/discussion/582/possibly-distressing-message-over-at-metamathstackexchangecom/?Focus=8013#Comment_8013 http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/discussion/582/possibly-distressing-message-over-at-metamathstackexchangecom/?Focus=8013#Comment_8013 Thu, 05 Aug 2010 03:09:10 -0700 Pete L. Clark "I wondered where I'd come across the name 'Pete Clark' before MO..."

Here, perhaps?

http://www.musicinscotland.com/PeteClark/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-VM9QAOMic&NR=1

For many years, google told me that this guy was the most famous "Pete Clark". Now it tells me differently, but I worry that it has just become smart enough to flatter me. Anyway, he's really good...

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Andrew Stacey comments on "Possibly distressing message over at meta.math.stackexchange.com" (8012) http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/discussion/582/possibly-distressing-message-over-at-metamathstackexchangecom/?Focus=8012#Comment_8012 http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/discussion/582/possibly-distressing-message-over-at-metamathstackexchangecom/?Focus=8012#Comment_8012 Thu, 05 Aug 2010 02:01:28 -0700 Andrew Stacey I'm not distressed at Robert's response. I get the impression that the SE/SO team are watching these new sites very closely in part because they don't know how to make them successful. They've got a good thing in SO and want to see if it can succeed elsewhere, but the key to the success of SO is not so much the software but the community, and that's much harder to construct, so they're naturally a little cautious. I don't read Robert's response as a "Go away and never darken our doors again" but rather a "Hang on! We need a chance to think about this.". Note that Andrea's message was in effect an advertisement for his site.

It's also worth bearing in mind that the SE team want people to be active both on the main sites and their respective metas. They want people who use the site to get involved with its meta site. Here, I feel that we have a little more of an attitude that meta is there if you really want it, but it's not expected that Joe Mathematician will come here regularly. In part, I think that that is because MO already has a clearly defined community that it wants to server (professional mathematicians) and so the key questions are more "How do we attract and maintain people from that community?" whereas on the SE sites, there isn't such a ready-made community so the key questions are more "How should we build our community?".

So given that meta.math.SE ought to have a higher level of exposure than meta.MO, Andrea's question really ought to have been more along the lines of: "Should we have a list of 'approved' external resources somewhere on math.SE? If so, what's the best way to display it and how do we go about deciding what should be on it? Disclaimer: if there were such a list, I would be interested in getting [my site](link to site) on it.".[1]

Personally, I prefer the MO style of meta. But I'm not in charge so I have to play the game that's in town, or leave. Of course, I can state my opinion and argue for it, but then I have to accept the decisions of those that actually do run the show.

[1] I'd argue that Pete's website should be there. I wondered where I'd come across the name "Pete Clark" before MO, and then I remembered that I'd come across your notes when looking for easy proofs of some result or other.

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Qiaochu Yuan comments on "Possibly distressing message over at meta.math.stackexchange.com" (8010) http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/discussion/582/possibly-distressing-message-over-at-metamathstackexchangecom/?Focus=8010#Comment_8010 http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/discussion/582/possibly-distressing-message-over-at-metamathstackexchangecom/?Focus=8010#Comment_8010 Thu, 05 Aug 2010 01:09:46 -0700 Qiaochu Yuan Robert Cartaino's response to this situation seems analogous to our response to homework questions: we know where that road leads, and it's not pretty. Considering he is an SE guy and not a math guy I think it makes sense coming from him.

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Pete L. Clark comments on "Possibly distressing message over at meta.math.stackexchange.com" (8009) http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/discussion/582/possibly-distressing-message-over-at-metamathstackexchangecom/?Focus=8009#Comment_8009 http://mathoverflow.tqft.net/discussion/582/possibly-distressing-message-over-at-metamathstackexchangecom/?Focus=8009#Comment_8009 Thu, 05 Aug 2010 00:43:15 -0700 Pete L. Clark Dear Folks,

I just read the following question by our own Andrea Ferretti on meta.math.stackexchange.com

http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/395/why-was-my-question-promoting-another-math-website-deleted

The gist of it seems to be that he posted a question on the same site (to emphasize, the meta site, not the main math-SE site) inquiring about how to promote his site, which collects links to online lecture notes and books in mathematics.

I am rather disappointed by Robert Cartaino's response. To me it does not seem in the spirit of a free online community devoted to promoting mathematics.

What do others think? Please discuss.

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