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Feature requests: A suggestion: a few threads to help people keep up with very recent research

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    Here's a suggestion I thought might be helpful (and appropriate for mathoverflow).
    For each "major" topic in mathematics (e.g. in Algebra, perhaps representation theory, algebraic geometry, algebraic number theory, commutative algebra & ring theory, etc ..), I thought perhaps we could have one thread discussing "very recent", and "very major" developments (mainly published research papers) in the field that are an "absolute must-read" for researchers in that field (and to a slightly lesser extent, for beginner students like me). So whenever a paper is published that is "huge" in the sense that it resolves an important conjecture, has significant work on an original topic that is likely to inspire a new branch of research, etc, someone should post a link to this paper in this thread (for the purpose of making people aware of this huge development and spreading the word). As an example of a paper that came out recently that I would definitely place in this class, is this (of course I'm sure there will be dozens of other equally important papers published this year, this is just one that I think is very interesting, and from one of my favourite mathematicians):
    http://www.math.harvard.edu/~rtaylor/cy2.pdf
    I think it would be good to separate the papers based on topic to make someone more easily find what they are looking for, but that is not necessary I guess.
    What do people think about this?
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    I think it's a great idea to do this somewhere on the internet, but not necessarily here on MO.
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    Oh ok, fair enough. any particular reason why it's not quite appropriate for MO?
    One potentially annoying about having a list / set of lists like this might be that it clogs up too much space on the "Recent questions" page - if this is the only problem, perhaps we can circumvent it either by dumping the questions in the Meta section here (presumably that wouldn't be too annoying for people), or to tag these few lists with a specific tag and make sure somehow they do not appear on the "Recent questions" page at all (and appear only to people via say, the Search function, for people who are specifically looking for the thread).
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    someone should post a link to this paper in this thread (for the purpose of making people aware of this huge development and spreading the word).

    This thing might not work the way you want it to on MO because people usually start reading answers list from the top so if there are many answers the recent one will be buried away, which seems to be opposite of what you want.

    However, I do not have a specific feeling whether you idea in general is good or not. I think it's better that you think about it and post a question. The usual prerequisites for posting would apply:

    • it has to be a real topic of interest to you which you thought about
    • it has to be phrased as a well-defined question
    • if there are many equally good answers possible, the question should be a community wiki

    Once there is actual post, the community will express its opinion by up/downvoting.

    • CommentAuthorCSiegel
    • CommentTimeDec 31st 2009
     
    It seems to me that this might work better as a blog comment thread (or rather, many) where people will get updates in their RSS readers whenever something new is added. This would avoid having new things buried, though it would also have the disadvantage of decentralizing things.

    Anyway, I'd be happy to give space for at least a few arxiv classifications on Rigorous Trivialities, if people are willing to contribute to the threads.
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    Here's why it's not appropriate for MO: it's not a question that has an answer. I think there's a lot to be said for keeping the site focused on that, even if it has the technical capacity to do other stuff.

    I also have to say I'm not optimistic about the workability of your suggestion. The topics you've listed are pretty broad ones, not to mention that there will not be much consensus on what the important papers in a given topic are.

    • CommentAuthordavidk01
    • CommentTimeDec 31st 2009 edited
     
    I think this is a good idea but I share the sentiments of the people that disagree about implementing it on MO. What you describe is a perfect fit for a wiki format so a possibility would be to set up a wiki and then set up a community wiki post on MO that redirects to your wiki. It would certainly solve the problem of mobilizing a lot of mathematicians to contribute but this would effectively turn MO into a kind of bulletin board so I'm not sure how the administrators would respond to such a use case. They might like it or they might not and I wouldn't have good reasons for defending either position.
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    "I think this is a good idea, but I also think this is a bad idea."
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    Ah ok, so I take it the general consensus is No.

    I'll definitely try the Community Wiki approach at some point (that at least should be fine regardless of whether or not it's posted on MO).

    If I was to try phrasing as a question here, I might say "What are some of the most important, influential and groundbreaking research papers/work done in the area of representation theory (or ...) in 2009?" (in a somewhat similar fashion to some questions which seem to ask to compile a "list" of some sort), and I could try making that a community wiki question. I'm not too worried about the lack of consensus - anything that someone considers outstanding would be a good addition to the list, and it's better to have slightly too many as opposed to skimping out on good papers.

    Do you think a question like this might be alright? For the moment, I take it such a thread is still unappropriate and won't start in Mathoverflow for now, unless someone explicitly tells me that it should be alright & appropriate to do so.

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