tea.mathoverflow.net - Discussion Feed (Appropriateness of Questions)

Harry Gindi comments on "Appropriateness of Questions" (1942)

2010-01-18T08:13:01-08:00

@Mariano: Let's just say that the image I had in my head of a benevolent dictator named Guido associated with pythons was much cooler in my head before I looked it up. =\

Mariano comments on "Appropriateness of Questions" (1939)

2010-01-18T06:47:40-08:00

No need for evil dictators... Anton can become the Benevolent Dictator for Life as did Guido of python fame :P

Anton Geraschenko comments on "Appropriateness of Questions" (1930)

2010-01-17T22:23:20-08:00

@Beren, Noah: "I agree with beren that building up too many policies and then enforcing the policies rather than the reasons behind those policies is dangerous." I totally agree. Meta is meant to be a repository of reasons as well as policies. The point of a policy is to keep you from having to revisit the full argument every time you make a decision, not to keep you from ever revisiting the argument.

@Harrison: "'Even if there weren't anybody trying to watch TV in the living room, it'd still be an awful place to play tennis.' This is a fantastic metaphor, even out of context. Anton, mind if I borrow it?" Of course I don't mind.

@Beren, Kevin: Discussions are compromised when put into the Q&A format because Q&A essentially means that threads have depth at most 1, so the information that a post is a reply to a reply is not contained anywhere (except possibly in the actual content). By changing to the chronological view of the answers, it is possible to mimick a non-threaded forum, but that's an annoying thing to have to do, and unfocused discussions are much nicer to read if they're threaded. Discussions that occur in the comments are even worse since comments are limited to 600 characters (which I think is important for focused questions to stay on topic). As an example, I had a bit of a discussion in the comments to this answer. Mike Shulman and I actually exchanged a couple of emails because the comments weren't a comfortable place for the discussion. As a rule, any time you want to complain about the character limit in comments, it's probably because you want to be using a threaded discussion forum rather than a Q&A site.

Scott Morrison comments on "Appropriateness of Questions" (1905)

2010-01-17T14:12:48-08:00

@Harry and @Beren, if it was my comment that you're interpreting as about "Anton as evil dictator", please don't! He's a good friend, and I'm almost entirely in agreement with him about how MO should work. I was just trying to point out that "MO is owned by the community" is only meaningful at some levels.

Ilya Nikokoshev comments on "Appropriateness of Questions" (1882)

2010-01-16T14:18:10-08:00

Ok, I have been caught on a physics misstatement :) Still, I was meaning to refer to typical descriptions of electric power outlets (voltage + max current, the first number being more interesting than the second). Of course, power is measured in watts, 1 W = 1 V * 1 A.

Harry Gindi comments on "Appropriateness of Questions" (1881)

2010-01-16T14:08:15-08:00

Ha! Power is measured in watts! You've been caught! ;)

Ilya Nikokoshev comments on "Appropriateness of Questions" (1880)

2010-01-16T14:01:24-08:00

@Tom, the republican system certainly sounds interesting :)

@Kevin, I'm not sure what you mean by "power" (unless it's measured in volts), but anyway, if you think something needs to be done, I think you should go forward and post on Meta!

Tom LaGatta comments on "Appropriateness of Questions" (1873)

2010-01-16T10:46:10-08:00

Toss in policy-judgement and you have the three branches of U.S. government.

Kevin Lin comments on "Appropriateness of Questions" (1871)

2010-01-16T10:16:25-08:00

@Ilya: Policy-enforcing is one thing; policy-making is another. I'd say the two are about equally important in terms of "power", no?

Shevek comments on "Appropriateness of Questions" (1860)

2010-01-15T15:15:26-08:00

I agree: Aren't conspiracy theories and hypotheticals about "evil" moderators pretty bizarre things to spend time thinking about? :)

Harry Gindi comments on "Appropriateness of Questions" (1855)

2010-01-15T14:05:24-08:00

Why is everyone talking about Anton like he's some kind of evil dictator? He seems like a pretty stand-up guy to me.

Scott Morrison comments on "Appropriateness of Questions" (1852)

2010-01-15T13:55:03-08:00

It's worth remembering when talking about "government" that Anton has his hand on the off-switch. :-) In principle at least, he could threaten to take his toys and go home, in order to get his way. Now of course this isn't going to happen --- at worst Anton would lose interest in mathoverflow and ask someone else to take over the top-level administrative duties, namely passing money from our generous funder (thanks Ravi!) to FogCreek and our domain registrar.

Ilya Nikokoshev comments on "Appropriateness of Questions" (1838)

2010-01-15T05:16:08-08:00

"MO is owned by the community" statement is a bit disingenuous

Yet, I think it's true that

most posting is done by non-moderators
most editing is done by non-moderators
most tagging is done by non-moderators

This is a big part of what you would call "ownership" of the site. Of course, Anton and other moderators always has the possibility of making the final decision on many things, but the sheer volume of questions/answers means that in most cases the only decision he can make is the one that would be most reasonable to any person who would think about it for an hour.

I do agree I would like to see more >2k people doing editing/retagging/enforcing policies. This is somehow more commonplace on StackOverflow. Perhaps we'll be getting there in a year?

Andrew Stacey comments on "Appropriateness of Questions" (1828)

2010-01-15T01:51:53-08:00

@Gretar: unfortunately, the reasons for closure come from a fixed list specified by the software; as far as I know, there's no way for MO to change these.

I usually try to leave a comment when I vote to close a question, or vote for someone else's comment. Usually, it's just "This would be more appropriate on one of the sites mentioned in the FAQ.".

As for the "who owns MO". I think that the "MO is owned by the community" statement is a bit disingenuous. It is owned by Anton (and maybe the other moderators). The moderators run it, but they delegate some of their duties to other users. The way that they choose to do that is via the reputation system. So it's not really owned or even run by the community. But that quite nicely mirrors mathematics as a whole: to be a mathematician, you have to be accepted as such by other mathematicians.

Ultimately, if Anton decides that he doesn't like the direction that MO is going in, he can just pull the plug.

Grétar Amazeen comments on "Appropriateness of Questions" (1813)

2010-01-14T09:02:43-08:00

I agree with Harry here. It's perhaps not helpful for a new user to see "closed as to localized" or some such thing. Does this mean that the question is completely off, or is it salvageable? A little more explanation could be useful.

Harry Gindi comments on "Appropriateness of Questions" (1801)

2010-01-13T19:40:26-08:00

MO belongs to the prime \mathfrak{p}, and I aim to keep it that way. Anyway, if you've noticed, many of the questions being closed are now being closed by non-moderators. It might be helpful if a vote to close is accompanied by a note why you think a question is salvageable or not. There's no point in getting someone's hopes up on a question that's just garbage. Something like "I voted to close this question because it was too vague. It has some potential, and if you're willing to work on it a little more, we can reopen it." or in the other case, "This question is not appropriate for MO because it's ... [too elementary, a homework question, too discussion-y, etc]."

Pete L. Clark comments on "Appropriateness of Questions" (1800)

2010-01-13T17:59:35-08:00

This is addressed in the FAQ:

"At the high end of this reputation spectrum there is little difference between users with high reputation and moderators. That is very much intentional. We don't run Math Overflow. The community does."

It has been pointed out that this is copied essentially verbatim from other SE sites, but the fact that it has remained constant in the many different iterations of the FAQ seems to indicate that the founders do take it seriously.

Kevin Lin comments on "Appropriateness of Questions" (1799)

2010-01-13T17:46:43-08:00

@Harrison Brown: You make some interesting statements about who MO "belongs to". But I haven't seen anything explicit from the moderators about this. I'd like to hear the moderators's thoughts on this. What kind of "government" do you guys envision for the site? (If any such thing has been envisioned at all.) How much "power" do you want to give to the "people" on the direction of the site?

Kevin Lin comments on "Appropriateness of Questions" (1798)

2010-01-13T17:36:24-08:00

@Anton: I don't think you've really explained why you think MO is not a good medium for vague questions (at least not in this thread). You just said:

Vague discussions ... just cannot be made to fit in a Q&A format without seriously compromising them.

How does it compromise them? How are you so sure? I'm not saying you're wrong, but I am not really convinced. Yes, of course, if an active discussion "question" kept getting bumped to the top of the questions list, that'd be disruptive. But if, for example, vague discussion "questions" are somehow separated from non-vague non-discussion questions, then there would be no disruption to the latter. I previously brought up these issues in this thread, and I was not very satisfied with any of the arguments made there against discussions on MO, either. Again let me emphasize that I have no problem with how things currently are (and I don't think that we should make any big changes whatsoever, at least until the site gets out of its beginning phase, which I feel it's still very much in), but I really don't buy the implicit assumption that "if it wasn't made for X, then it isn't good for X". Like beren says:

And I think that people's worries that problems will be caused by "vague questions devolving into discussions (which doesn't work with the QA format of the software)" to be very unconvincing unless such problems have actually occurred.

Also, I don't think the comparison to TV/tennis is a good one. I'd make a different metaphor: it's like playing baseball on a basketball court. The basketball court wasn't made for baseball, but you can still play baseball there if you wanted to. It might be a bit awkward, but you can still have a fun time doing it.

Harrison Brown comments on "Appropriateness of Questions" (1797)

2010-01-13T15:41:41-08:00

I sort of want to say "I agree with all of you!" But that would sound silly.

I don't think there is -- and I don't think there should be -- any sort of bright-line test for what's appropriate as a question and what isn't. Five or six years ago, I edited Wikipedia, not as a hardcore user, but I probably amassed a couple hundred edits. Eventually I moved on to some other interest, and stopped editing. Now that I am less stupid, I occasionally go back and make new edits. But if it's about something that anyone cares about, and it's more substantial than correcting a typo, odds are that it'll launch a heated exchange on the discussion page with people throwing about obscure "guidelines" or "essays" like WP:XYZZY and WP:FHTAGN.

The thing about MO is there's not a cabal of moderators whose word comes down from On High no matter what the unwashed masses decide. In a sense, I guess, we're organized in a "leftist" manner, as opposed to the Jimbo Wales, Registered Libertarian-led Wikipedia. And -- considering my personal politics are probably to the right of, oh, 75 to 80% of MO users, bare minimum, this next part is going to be hard for me to type -- that may be a Good Thing, that this site is run very much "from the bottom up." It means, to start with, that you -- yes, you! -- can help shape policy. I've done so in the past, sort of; I proposed the "big-list" tag that functions to some extent as a pressure valve in the soft question wars. It means that if you ask good questions and post good answers you can vote to close or open questions. If you ask really good questions, and stay at it long enough, you can even get shiny moderation tools. Of course this could all fall apart completely, but I don't see it happening soon. So, beren, it is your site, and we're happy to have you. (As long as you're not trolling or asking freshman calculus questions.) And I think the fact that it's your site, and Noah's site, and Harry's site, and my site, and Greg Kuperberg's site, is what's leading to the heated discussions about "appropriateness," not some slavish dedication to a prescribed ruleset.

Random thoughts:

Plus, if you don't like it, you can always leave. You can even come back later! Or just cut down on your visits! I've been a lot less active over the past couple of weeks -- not because of any sort of falling-out with MO, but because I've been investing a lot of the MO energy into Tim Gowers' new Polymath project. When that finishes (or gets to a point where I can no longer follow what's going on), I expect I'll post more again here, and I don't expect that it'll be a huge deal for anyone -- combinatorics questions might get answered slightly faster, and the average awesomeness level of the questions being posted will inch up. No biggie.

I don't think I've ever hesitated to post a question, except for one about tricks, and that wasn't out of worry that it would be downvoted (which it was, and then it was upvoted some too) so much as it was about worrying whether it would be redundant because of the (much under-used) Tricki.

I love meta for the frank but (mostly) professional exchange of views about MO's workings. Even when it's marginally on-topic. I don't love meta for the fact that half the threads seem like they might spontaneously degenerate into a shouting match. I think we all understand that the question of "where do applied math type questions fit into the MO paradigm" is a contentious one; if it really needs discussion that desperately, take it to its own thread?

"Even if there weren't anybody trying to watch TV in the living room, it'd still be an awful place to play tennis." This is a fantastic metaphor, even out of context. Anton, mind if I borrow it?

Noah Snyder comments on "Appropriateness of Questions" (1787)

2010-01-13T12:49:06-08:00

I agree with beren that building up too many policies and then enforcing the policies rather than the reasons behind those policies is dangerous. Among Mathcamp staff we have a very useful phrase that people bring up in this context: "We're not going to replace ourselves with robot versions of ourselves." If you're worried that someone will be a problem in the future you can always deal with it then rather than making too rigid of policies. I disagree about the factual question of whether we've gotten to that point yet with policies on MO, but it's a very important thing to keep in mind.

Shevek comments on "Appropriateness of Questions" (1782)

2010-01-13T11:07:30-08:00

Thanks for people's responses. Just for the record, it's not that I'm against closing questions; like many of you, I completely agree that we need to be careful lest MO become saturated with an "undesired" crowd asking basic mathematical questions (which, as has been noted, can be asked in many other more appropriate places). It's just that I agree with Benjamin Weiss that surely the most important criteria for a question should be "to be of interest to math graduate students and research mathematicians". Of course, it is not my site, etc. etc., but I think that the site will suffer when people are too scared to ask questions because of some excessively strict notion of what an appropriate question is, and in lurking and reading the discussions I've seen the beginnings of a strong bureaucracy developing. The danger is that it might become like Wikipedia where people are more concerned with whether a question "conforms to the policies" rather than whether it would be useful for the "appropriate" users of the site. And I think that people's worries that problems will be caused by "vague questions devolving into discussions (which doesn't work with the QA format of the software)" to be very unconvincing unless such problems _have_ actually occurred. Hope everyone has a great day.

Noah Snyder comments on "Appropriateness of Questions" (1779)

2010-01-13T10:35:52-08:00

I think it's also worth pointing out that none of us are opposed to someone else starting a Stack Exchange based webpage that answered easy math questions for say highschool teachers, or college students in other fields, etc. In fact, I'd even visit such a site occasionally and answer a question or two. But I wouldn't want those sorts of questions and research level questions *on the same site*.

Qiaochu Yuan comments on "Appropriateness of Questions" (1773)

2010-01-13T07:06:17-08:00

@Victor: I do see your point regarding mathy questions coming from SO, but it's not all bad; for example, http://mathoverflow.net/questions/11444/good-algorithm-for-finding-the-diameter-of-a-sparse-graph is a great question and the votes and answers reflect that. One issue with questions coming from SO is that they are often phrased very vaguely - not in the sense that someone doesn't understand a concept thoroughly, but in the sense that they leave a lot of terms undefined, which annoys mathematicians a great deal (it had to be said). http://mathoverflow.net/questions/9606/thousands-of-rays-intersections-with-triangles-in-3d-space-closed is an example of such a question; see the comments. Another poorly-phrased question is http://mathoverflow.net/questions/550/identify-the-function-closed. The clarity of a question matters much more to me than whether it is "sophisticated enough" for MO and it just happens that many questions from SO are unclear.

An issue which maybe should be discussed in a separate thread is that I don't think most newcomers realize that their questions can be reopened if they edit them properly.

Harry Gindi comments on "Appropriateness of Questions" (1763)

2010-01-13T02:04:29-08:00

@Victor Liu: I think that your characterization of mathematicians is quite misleading and offensive. Many if not most people on this site teach or have taught classes in the past, and having done so, I find it hard to believe that they're against offering any help at all. The problem here is that (to stretch a metaphor a little bit) amateurs who have never invested a serious amount of time into playing tennis don't get to play at the US open. I hope you understand what I mean, because I can't really think of anything else to write.

Pete L. Clark comments on "Appropriateness of Questions" (1761)

2010-01-13T00:32:03-08:00

@Victor Liu: Programming is far from the opposite of mathematics, and I expect that many if not most of the SO regulars are more than qualified to handle the "easy math" questions that sometimes get forwarded to us. It seems more likely to me that they don't find such questions very interesting but are trying to be polite by at least suggesting somewhere else for the questioners to go, even if their suggestion is not the best thought-out.

There are plenty of other sites which welcome questions in mathematics (at least) through the undergraduate level, including Dr. Math, NRICH, ask an algebraist/topologist/analyst and sci.math. I don't see why MO is obligated to take on this responsibility.

So you know, I have generally spoken out in favor of the "inclusionist stance" on MO: if a question is of interest to _some_ professional mathematicians -- even if it also or even primarily involves physics, computer science, history, philosophy, etc. -- and seems to admit at least one correct answer, I think we should welcome it.

The main purpose of this site is indeed for professional mathematicians -- i.e., people who spend the majority of their work time learning and researching mathematics -- to help each other out. This is a very worthy goal and is hardly one which is lacking in ambition: the fact that some student somewhere who has no one to talk to directly can ask a question which some of the top experts in the field will take a crack at within minutes or hours is really a wonderful thing. It's also a public showcase for our profession, i.e., we help each other out, as a matter of course, with no specific recompense except possibly for the gradual increase of one's reputation within the community.

This site is unusually integrated: undergraduates and Fields Medalists can and do ask questions back and forth, and each can learn from the other. This necessitates that younger people (especially) adhere to the very high standards of professionalism and courtesy which permeate the "adult" academic world, lest they acquire a negative reputation from their interactions on this site. (Here and above I am using "reputation" in the conventional sense, which is very roughly approximated by the site's system of reputation points.) I visited your user page and found some language on it that is unprofessional and discourteous. I submit to you that this is not really the impression you wish to make.

Anton Geraschenko comments on "Appropriateness of Questions" (1760)

2010-01-13T00:25:15-08:00

@Kevin Lin: I think MO does house lots of questions that aren't "strict math questions." Really the main thing I don't want to see on MO are questions that are vague. I explained a bit above why I think MO is bad for vague questions, even vague questions that are interesting and useful for mathematicians to think about. The problem is not so much that if we allow vague questions, then they'll overwhelm the site, but that MO is the wrong tool for that job, and I don't want people to waste their (and other people's) time. Even if there weren't anybody trying to watch TV in the living room, it'd still be an awful place to play tennis.

@VictorLiu: I can understand your concern about a type of question that has no home, but having no place else to go isn't enough reason to come to MO. I think there have been a few successful programming-related MO questions, and I think it's fine for a programmer to post a math question she needs to answer for a project, but it has to be the type of question that belongs on MO, independent of whether she came from SO. The questions I've seen on SO that have been referred to MO have been things like "what is the slope of a line" or "what is the meaning of this symbol?" These are not questions that I want to see on MO, but they might be fine on one of the other math forums listed in the FAQ. If you think there's a niche for which an SE site would be best, you can start one and we can refer the questions there.

Anton Geraschenko comments on "Appropriateness of Questions" (1759)

2010-01-13T00:02:42-08:00

@beren (and those that hold the same view): Part of one of my posts in another thread:

You can ask, "why close questions at all?" After all, it's not like we're trying to save space on a hard drive. It's not at first thought unreasonable to say, "let's just leave everything open and ignore what you don't like." One problem is that it's not so easy to ignore stuff (it sounds easy, but it amounts to doing the work of finding what you're interested in, which is quite hard). Another problem is that allowing questions you don't want draws the wrong people and the wrong attitude to the site. As Emerton said, "things that will appeal to one person, or scare them away, may have the opposite effect on a different person." Attempting to target both of those people with the same website is clearly a bad idea. Not everybody has to use MO, and MO users don't have to use it all the time. Having some people trying to play tennis in the same place as others are trying to watch TV is annoying for everybody.

I have to agree with Qiaochu that you don't really want to have a single site for all mathematical activity of any sort, because there are lots of different sorts of mathematical activity, and it's annoying to have them all going on in the same place. Benjamin says, "... and listen to them ramble about the subject for a while; this is often the most productive and interesting time I'll have in a day." This is an example of doing the right thing in the right setting. Vague discussions can be fantastic, but they require a lot of back-and-forth. They just cannot be made to fit in a Q&A format without seriously compromising them.

I'm open to discussion, but I really think we should reserve MO for focused questions that have answers. If thinking about such questions is (metaphorically) watching TV, then MO is the living room where people come to watch TV. If you'd like to play tennis, that's fine, but please do it elsewhere.

VictorLiu comments on "Appropriateness of Questions" (1757)

2010-01-12T22:08:57-08:00

To Harry Gindi: it is precisely that attitude that makes mathematicians look bad as snobs. Also, the FAQ does not list any sites appropriate for the content I mentioned, nor do I know of any place. In fact, that type of content is primarily "mathematical" in nature, and it seems very narrow minded not to accept those types of questions. In trying to be focused you end up ostracizing questions which this is the one community which has the expertise to answer.

Jon Awbrey comments on "Appropriateness of Questions" (1756)

2010-01-12T20:21:16-08:00

Yes, I don't think this should become a kind of Anti-Jeopardy Game Show, where you have to pose your question in the form of its own answer.

Benjamin Weiss comments on "Appropriateness of Questions" (1755)

2010-01-12T20:17:41-08:00

I must admit I too fall slightly on beren's side of the issue. The type of question I have most in mind are ones that are quite vague. It strikes me that some people might ask vague questions (or maybe are scared off from asking them) because they don't understand a topic well enough to ask pointed ones. The unfocused questions could spawn more focused answers that aim to give direction to anyone needing it (me for instance).

This question in particular almost falls into this nature. I'm sure I've seen others as well (and know that I have self-censored from submitting very unfocused "please tell me about" questions).

I appreciate that the site has tried to keep a focus, but it strikes me that the most important focus is "to be of interest to math graduate students and research mathematicians". I also know that I frequently stop other graduate students in my department to ask them "what is up with X? I don't know thing one, or even the motivating question of the field." and listen to them ramble about the subject for a while; this is often the most productive and interesting time I'll have in a day.

Kevin Lin comments on "Appropriateness of Questions" (1751)

2010-01-12T18:48:43-08:00

I stand on beren's side on these issues, though I think it is a complicated issue and I'm not sure how strongly I stand on beren's side. I think that this beren makes great points and that we should definitely discuss this further. I think this is a great community, and it can probably serve as a great venue for certain things that don't necessarily strictly fall into the "math question" category. The feeling seems to be that if we allow that here, then it can quickly run amok and overtake the rest of the site, or at least become a significant distraction --- but is this really true?

Harry Gindi comments on "Appropriateness of Questions" (1750)

2010-01-12T18:24:11-08:00

I am strongly opposed to taking questions from SO unless they have merit as math questions. To be honest, I don't care what happens to easy applied mathy programming questions as long as they're not here. There are also plenty of places to have such questions answered, like IRC or any of the sites listed in the FAQ.

VictorLiu comments on "Appropriateness of Questions" (1749)

2010-01-12T17:38:44-08:00

One major problem I have with the limited appropriateness is that frequently math questions on stackoverflow.com get referred to this site, since SO tends to have a fairly limited math background. However, those questions are usually not "mathy" enough for this site. So then programming-related math questions (typically more in the realm of applied math, or just generally easy math) have no home. I don't like this situation and would like MO to accept those questions, since it often takes a mathematician's point of view to give those questions a good answer.

Harry Gindi comments on "Appropriateness of Questions" (1745)

2010-01-12T16:47:02-08:00

@beren: Please use the edit button instead of double-posting on meta. Just for the record, I'm with Qiaochu on this issue.

Shevek comments on "Appropriateness of Questions" (1743)

2010-01-12T16:16:50-08:00

@Qiaochu: With all respect due, it is hardly a "community consensus" when members of the community (such as myself) don't agree; although it does seem that my complaints don't completely align with the vision the creators of this site had in mind. And to be honest, I'd prefer to have one website that I visit regularly for engagement with other mathematicians outside of my department rather than one website here, another there, maybe a forum over here, etc. etc.

As an example: I see all these people complaining in meta about soft-questions on MO. Isn't a sensible solution to just find a way so that those people are not disturbed by these soft-questions rather than trying to discourage soft-questions. Surely the ranking can be changed to not count the super-high votes of questions labelled "soft-question" so strongly, so they won't flood the main page, or give people the possibility of telling the software not too show questions with that tag, and then... problem solved?

I must say though that I strongly feel that undergraduate homework questions don't belong here. It is a question of audience. There exist very good resources for undergraduates to go and ask questions at that level, but not many resources (unless you want to get into blogging and what not) for actual mathematicians to communicate with each other over the web. MO has great potential for helping us share our knowledge with each other, and I just feel that much of the bureaucratic talk I've seen on MO is quite silly really. Like missing the forest for the trees.

Shevek comments on "Appropriateness of Questions" (1742)

2010-01-12T16:02:21-08:00

Perhaps I should say that the fact that he was worried about it being closed has had a detrimental effect on my psyche? :)

Pete L. Clark comments on "Appropriateness of Questions" (1738)

2010-01-12T13:55:48-08:00

@beren: Well, first things first: Kevin Buzzard is a he, not a he/she. I strongly suspect that his psyche is pretty much the same as it was before he asked the question, but I'll let him speak for himself.

Qiaochu Yuan comments on "Appropriateness of Questions" (1737)

2010-01-12T13:30:03-08:00

I disagree that it is best to develop one community of mathematicians sharing their knowledge; there are a lot of different types of knowledge and audiences for that knowledge, even among mathematicians. For example, the nLab is a community of mathematicians with very different goals from MO; I don't think anyone would seriously suggest that the two be merged (whatever that could possibly mean). MO was conceived with a fairly specific purpose in mind, and although everything is still experimental right now I agree with the community consensus that MO best uses the time of its users when the questions are specific, so that the answers can be too.

In particular, I would really like to avoid questions that fall under the "subjective and argumentative" category on MO. Such discussions are better suited for the blogosphere and would only take up space on the front page, since everyone would want to contribute to them.

Shevek comments on "Appropriateness of Questions" (1735)

2010-01-12T12:41:06-08:00

I do not understand why some people/moderators have such strict notions of "what is appropriate" for mathoverflow. It reminds me of the beaurocracy for beaurocracy's sake of Wikipedia. In my view the criteria for whether a question should be appropriate should simply be "is it likely to be of interest to people working in mathematics at the graduate level or above". Open-ended and vague questions about the "meaning" of something ARE of interest to graduate students and mathematicians, as they give a chance for people to give their diverse philosophies and intuitions about the quintessential meaning of a topic. I know that some people argue that "Mathoverflow" is just "not the right place" for things that would create discussion. Well, where else should such questions be asked? It is best to develop _one_ community of mathematicians sharing their knowledge on the web rather than a bunch of scattered ones. Mathoverflow seems to be doing well and we should make it a hub for all graduate students and mathematicians within reason.

An example of how this trigger-happiness has gone astray would be the question someone posted about getting errata for the Cassels & Frohlich book. The poster of that question was very concerned that his question was "not appropriate" and would get closed. How is asking for errata for this important book not an absolutely great question to ask this community? The fact that he/she was concerned is a sign to me that this trigger-happiness has had a detrimental effect on people's psyches.