tea.mathoverflow.net - Discussion Feed (Questions outside the usual scope of MO that we might want to make exceptions for.)

Yemon Choi comments on "Questions outside the usual scope of MO that we might want to make exceptions for." (8133)

2010-08-06T00:50:48-07:00

@Ryan: snap, as it happens!

Ryan Budney comments on "Questions outside the usual scope of MO that we might want to make exceptions for." (8132)

2010-08-06T00:31:45-07:00

Before I became a mathematician my English skills were quite strong. Hard to believe, but it's true!

Yemon Choi comments on "Questions outside the usual scope of MO that we might want to make exceptions for." (8131)

2010-08-06T00:04:04-07:00

Can I be annoying and ask Ryan to delete the (superfluous) last word of the title of this thread?

AndrewL comments on "Questions outside the usual scope of MO that we might want to make exceptions for." (8123)

2010-08-05T22:01:41-07:00

Here's a suggestion for the title of the proposed thread : "Outside The Box".

sean tilson comments on "Questions outside the usual scope of MO that we might want to make exceptions for." (8104)

2010-08-05T19:07:19-07:00

I think it might be good to have a place for such things outside MO as Andrew suggests. They are looking at doing one for CS, see http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/3352/not-programming-related. Perhaps we could have a place for discussiony things. That way when we close a question that is not right fo MO we can suggest that they ask it at Discussiony.SE or Math.SE. I am curious as to how others feel about this idea. Ideally, a lot of the drama could be taken out of MO if people had a venue to have the discussions they have been having here. I don't know who would want to moderate it though.

As Andrew has pointed out in a "unrelated thread" (unrelated to this question but not to where I am going), when a lot of people use MO they are just looking for math, not hearsay. However, some things are of interest to mathematicians despite being soft. This might help clarify the scope of MO a bit.

I am curious to hear your reactions,
Sean

Andrew Stacey comments on "Questions outside the usual scope of MO that we might want to make exceptions for." (7881)

2010-08-02T00:21:44-07:00

I'm not convinced. Whilst I value MO, I disagree with the tendency to regard it as a "one stop shop" where there has to be room for everything. I would like a place to kick back and relax a bit, not enough to actually build one myself but enough to note that if we do go down the StackExchange 2.0 route then we might get one as part of the deal (see this blog post about the idea and this one on the follow-up) and to regard that as a Good Thing.

The tagging system is too fluid for this to be useful. As Ryan says, posts that ought to have this tag are extremely unlikely to get it at first so will show up in the usual places even if people have set to ignore that tag.

On the more specific issue of "outreach": who, exactly, are you thinking of reaching out to? MO is for research mathematicians (professional and amateur) so those are the people that MO should be reaching out to. Mathematicians should, of course, reach out to the wider community and I can conceive of questions that could help with that (they'd have to be asked very carefully to avoid turning in to "Math puzzles for dinner" - yuk!) but those questions and their answers would still be intended for mathematicians, not for those that the mathematicians are reaching out to.

I can't think of any way to kill someone's curiosity in mathematics faster than by sending them to this site!

With the rise of math.SE, I would argue that the question and its answer that the interested outsider is meant to read should be there. There are enough research mathematicians lurking there that it would get a decent response, and maybe the prevalence of such questions would encourage more of us to go there and help out (and then answer a few more mundane questions whilst there).

Ryan Budney comments on "Questions outside the usual scope of MO that we might want to make exceptions for." (7868)

2010-08-01T14:05:32-07:00

I imagine if questions are going to get this tag, it will be via an edit, as a "rescue" tag to indicate people think it's worthly of saving (from deletion) if only for an outreach purpose. So the precise name of the tag isn't terribly important provided regular users understand what it means, and provided newcomers aren't tempted to use it for other reasons.

Steve Huntsman comments on "Questions outside the usual scope of MO that we might want to make exceptions for." (7866)

2010-08-01T13:55:42-07:00

I'd suggest "department tea" except it's waaaay too obscure.

Ryan Budney comments on "Questions outside the usual scope of MO that we might want to make exceptions for." (7860)

2010-08-01T12:35:32-07:00

The recent thread on Fermat's Last Theorem:

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/33972/how-many-people-fully-understand-the-proof-of-fermats-last-theorem

together with the recent Meta thread:

http://tea.mathoverflow.net/discussion/567/rapid-closing-of-questions/#Item_0

lead me to wonder if we would be better off creating a tag for certain types of exceptional questions -- questions that are of perhaps little value in the traditional MO way of discerning the utility of a question, but questions that perhaps play a larger role in an outreach sense -- of interest to curious amateurs, undergraduates, etc. These would not be questions of the homework variety, nor a Martin Gardner puzzle. These would be the kind of questions a curious outsider really wants to have a sense for, has a good answer, and can only get a good answer from a research mathematician. I'm not sure what the appropriate tag would be, but I would suggest something of the form "MO_outreach".

Does this sound at all reasonable? I'm looking for a position that takes into account everyone's well-considered views in the above meta thread.