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Let's calm down a bit... We're still in the process of figuring things out!
@Korepanov -- To be frank, I think we here at MO have been quite patient with you, and you have been rather critical of us, for instance suggesting that MO is a seriously not-serious site that will squelch creativity in young mathematicians. That's insulting to a lot of people.
The bottom line is that several people here tried to figure out what you meant, and you have insisted on a lack of clarification, that "any connection" would be exactly what you were looking for. Finally you got one response drawing a certain kind of connection, to which you promptly replied "well, anything except THAT".
If you want people to understand you and communicate with you, you need to meet us a little closer to halfway.
There is one important difference between stackoverflow and mathoverflow. Over there, "no question is stupid as long as it is about programming". Not so here. There are strong objections to primary-school-level questions and "creative"(in the sense of Harry) questions.
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.
Closing vague unanswerable questions is partially to deter people from asking such questions and encourage them to ask focused questions that have answers, which is what I believe the SE framework is best for. But it's also to protect the target user base. If a mathematician spends a lot of energy answering a vague question (and they will because so many of them are far too nice or are OCD), I think it's a waste of time (or at least does more harm than good). I generally think that vague questions should be closed but not deleted. That way, if somebody really has something to say about it, they can do it in the comments, where they can't waste too much time because they are restricted to 600 character chunks, but they can easily provide a link to a blog post they made on the topic. The extra energy barrier keeps MO from becoming scatterbrained.
Discourse? Is that anything like discussion?
Expression as a 1-way street, then, exclusive of interaction?
Re: "The whole purpose of being strict with the question policy is to maintain a certain level of discourse."
It is a frequently a matter of collective interest to decide whether a given means M (for example, being strict with question policy) helps to achieve a given objective O (for example, to maintain a certain level of discourse).
In the example at hand, we need to ask what is meant by "discourse", especially since its most common meaning, discussion, is expressly deprecated in the main arena.
Inconsistent values are problems in practice and theory both.
You mentioned a sense of "discourse" that splits a hair between it and "discussion", but whether you are using that sense is another question.
Dear all,
I think I must follow Harry Gindi's kind advice and leave this site. It will be better, however, if we part with some warmer sort of mutual feelings. So here are my wishes:
1) I wish this site success. Life is paradoxical. The natural evolution may well bring this site from such ideas as "not fostering creativity" to something more balanced.
2) Respect each other. Please note also that posting my question about fractal matrices - and hoping that I will be understood - implied my respect of the smartness of my readers.
3) By happy in your personal lives.
@Korepanov. Are you this person? If so, please don't leave. Your subject has value and you are an experienced researcher. Please do not take to heart what the enfants terribles say. I am a graduate student and I value the presence of experienced people like you in this forum. It would make my own experience here more worthwhile. Please hang around, even if it is only in the background watching for questions of your interest.
@Anton. I suggest that the matter of how to create hyperlinks be added to the "how to ask a good question" page. I see many new people not knowing about how to do this. It may be helpful.
@Anweshi: I'm a bit worried about trying to cram too much into one page. The how to ask page already links to the editing help page, the formatting reference box (in the sidebar when you ask a question) shows you how to link, and the editor has a button for creating links. How about if I add a tip about using the editor to the tip box in the sidebar?
@Tom (re tagging): There is already a list of all the arXiv tags next to the tag box when you ask a question. Unfortunately, people have become very good at ignoring everything on the page that doesn't immediately relate to what they're doing (I'm guilty of it too), which makes it very hard to educate users before they've actually engaged the community. But after somebody asks a question and starts participating, they're usually very quick to learn how they should behave. Tagging is one thing that takes people a while to get the hang of. Choosing a good title is another one.
@Anton. I understand your concern. The tipbox is a good idea. It may be helpful to also mention the matter of hyperlinks right on the top of the editing help page. As of now one has to look a bit to find it.