If you are on the same continent as a platypus, there are very many much more venomous (and much more common) animals to be concerned about.

Best wishes,

Matthew

I think one's view on platypuses (the name and the animal itself) differs depending on where you grew up. I've always found the name euphonious, and the animal itself quite beautiful.

Best wishes,

Matthew

It is a little strange to realize how MO which is essentially an altruistic system, a platform for mathematicians to help each others by answering questions have become quite competative. And the competition can be at times a bit unpleasant.

but I have to admit I have not seen evidence of this. Do you have examples in mind?

[Grrr, I got ninja'd again in this thread.]

In my opinion, a similar thing has happened on MO with the word "reputation". And I don't see the conflict with the "provision of an important public good". What's wrong with wanting to improve delivery?

@Storkle: I guess mathematical papers also do not have the power to redefine words, and yet it gets done all the time. When a mathematician says "a hedgehog is a topological space with property X" nobody interprets his theorems as saying anything about actual biological hedgehogs. It is of course debatable whether any given mathematical term is a good name or not, but do the names have anything to do with how interesting the paper is, for example? Again, I really cannot understand this fixation on names compared to the provision of an important public good.

Here is a bad analogy, but I hope it gets across the spirit of my frustration: this response feels to me like a firefighter refusing to put out a fire because somebody put Hello Kitty stickers on his firehose and he can't get them off.

Todd points out that some undergraduates have more points than some Fields medalists, as if this were surprising

No, not at all. I am merely pointing out that the word "reputation" is, therefore, pretty inapt. Far from surprising, there are obvious explanations which have already been given.

One could speculate for hours about why mathematicians are particularly disposed to ignore this sentence in the FAQ.

It doesn't take much speculation. Hardly anyone reads the FAQ, and even fewer read it thoroughly.

Reputation is a (very) rough measurement of how much the MathOverflow community trusts you.

It is completely internal to the community and was never intended to reflect anything about a user outside the community. One could speculate for hours about why mathematicians are particularly disposed to ignore this sentence in the FAQ. I think mathematicians generally have a tendency to take things too literally, and that this is a simple, and ignorable, case of culture clash between the people who wrote the software and the people who use it.

If nothing else will convince you that reputation is actually useful, consider that it is an efficient way to quickly evaluate anonymous users who are causing trouble. If an anonymous user who is causing trouble has reputation 50, they are probably trolls and should be dealt with accordingly even if they've gotten upvotes on a few answers (they can still be smart trolls!). If an anonymous user who is causing trouble has reputation 5000, they are clearly invested in the community and worth dealing with more carefully (there is no reason for such a user to suddenly become a troll).

Although I don't really like this point system either, it's a little hard to take "reputation" too seriously when some Fields Medalists have markedly less reputation than some young undergraduate and graduate students.

What? You mean I'm not the second best mathematician in the entire world?? Now you tell me...

I like "moolah". :-)

Yet, for me this reasoning hardly applies to the reputation system. To me it is above all a measure how long and/or how intensely somebody has participated (in a reqsonable way), and thus how much experience with the site/the community somebody has. Not more, and not less.

Would there be as many discussions about how inappropriate the reputation system is if the name was not "reputation," but something with less significance such as "points"?

I am aware of (and appreciate) the practical purpose served by "reputation". I agree that it is not that hard to ignore. But names matter: experienced users often feel the need to reinterpret it as something else, point out the possibility of ignoring it, and insist that it is not significant and that others are taking it too seriously (I will give them the benfit of the doubt by assuming that they would be just as happy if reputation were capped at 10,000). I also believe that many of these problems would disappear if the statistic were named "Participation" and not displayed so prominently.

As I thought I had made clear, I do participate on the main site anonymously. But I continue to hope that a better site will come along.

For example, I am incredibly grateful that Thurston has chosen to take the time to contribute answers to MO. His answers are unusually detailed and offer highly enlightening perspectives on various subjects. In fact, they are changing the way I approach mathematics.

The reputation system, beyond the "practical part" of presenting a barrier to entry so that the site can be self-moderating and not easily taken over and veering off into oblivion, really is only as a big deal as one wants to make it. I suspect that to have a strong opinion on the reputation/badge systems, one must be taking the system "seriously" on some level.

In my mind, the main function of reputation is (as Mark Meckes said) to make MO effectively self-moderating. The main function of badges is to lure people into making use of the full functionality of the software. A large chunk of the badges are (completely nominal) rewards for actually exercising the responsibilities that come with reputation, like voting, editing, retagging, and commenting.

Of course, badges and reputation are also kinda fun. For all their silliness, I think they do a good job of making MO slightly more engaging for lots of good mathematicians. It is a shame that there are excellent mathematicians who feel that the silliness badges and reputation effectively prevent them from using MO. There are also excellent mathematicians who feel that trying to do mathematics over the internet is silly and they wouldn't be caught dead doing it. It will never be the case that every mathematician wants to use MO. Instead of shooting for that impossible goal, I think we should just try to make it as awesome as possible for those that do choose to participate.

I confess though that I find "I find the badge system pretty silly" to be a pretty silly reason not to participate in a site that you admit that you otherwise enjoy, value and follow. If there were some other site almost exactly like MO except without badges and with a more genteel approach to reputation -- sure, use that site instead. But there isn't. MO is the best site of its kind that we have right now, and is much better than any previous site of its kind. Get over the badges. They don't interfere with the asking, answering and commenting on math questions in any way.

When the child was a child

played it with enthusiasm

and now, has just as much excitement as then, but only,

when it concerns its work.

Als das Kind Kind war,

spielte es mit Begeisterung

und jetzt, so ganz bei der Sache wie damals, nur noch,

wenn diese Sache seine Arbeit ist.

If you find the perfect maths website, don't spoil it by posting there.

Personally, I find all these "strategies" to avoid some piece of the software that someone doesn't like at best rather silly and at worst highly irritating (as the strategy employed can mean that it's harder for me to use the site in some way).

Kowalski says:

But for me, mathematics is a serious matter — like games are to a child.

To coin another phrase:

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a mathematician I realised what "childish" really meant.

Of course, I'm being childish myself here and I hope I haven't offended anyone! However, given that there is absolutely nothing we can do about the badges or the publicly visible reputation, why not simply accept the site as it is - warts and all - and get on with the mathematics instead of continually saying, "Wouldn't it be great if ..." or "Why do we have this feature?". I think I've said this before but I'll say it again: I actually like the fact that the software is frozen! It means that we can concentrate on more important things than continually tweaking it to try to make it "perfect".

http://blogs.ethz.ch/kowalski/2011/02/01/contra-mathoverflow/