Can current moderators be awarded diamonds on dev so we can check out the new moderation tools?

@François G. Dorais: the front page is visible. Follow the link, do not login, instead click the MO logo. I just was in the process of deciding if complaining about it (again) was on-topic here. But, for something positive, I like the "Tour"! (It will have to be decided what to write in the ask about and do not ask about, as from math.SE it seems this is costumizable, but this is not for this thread I think.)

@markvs: something like this came up on the last test. Here, if somebody gave more then one answer two the same question they count as one answer in this count (but the presence of them is signaled by a number in parenthesis at the entry of the individual question). There, this is not done, but each answer counts as one. I consider it as very likely this is the cause for the discrepancy.

Added: looking through your answers, it seems you have three such "double" answers. So using the count as there, here you would have 322, further taking into account that two were given after june 18th, so are not yet there, this gives 320.

@janjitse: Yes, an upvote on a question on SE2.0 awards only 5 points (not 10). This is also applied to existing question (and this was also handled like this for other sites when this was changed for them). So, this is expected. I think there are also other sources for loss of points (I lost some too while never having asked a single question), namely due to the fact that points awarded for things that later were delted typically did not get subtracted here after the deletion (only if one asked for a points-recalculation). On the one hand, such a recalc now happened (I assume), and on the other hand I think on SE2.0 such a recalc happens more regularly and/or can be triggered by the user (as opposed to having to ask a moderator). I do not know if there are still other sources. But for questions a considerable loss (about half as you say) is expected, and there can be additional losses (though typically on a smaller scale).

quid,

In SE2.0 recalcs are done automatically whenever posts are removed/unremoved, and also one can activate it by going to the /reputation page (xxx.stackexchange.com/reputation), then scrolling to the bottom and clicking the obvious button.

+1 KConrad

Some remarks on the front-page: I do not know precisely the criterion for questions to show up on this front page list but here is an educted guess and some commentary:

According to a thread on meta.SO, which I beleive from other threads to be still current, the "hotness" of a question is computed as

4 (log Qviews) + (Qscore x Qanswers)/5 + Sum (Ascores)

divided by something sort of 'continous' depending on the time asked and last active. And I infer from other threads that the months and week tabs are computed about like this with the time-dependency not being continous but a hard cut-off.

Now, if this is like this the main problem to me are not the views, but that the number of given answers has a considerable influence, once directly via Qanswers then via Sum (Ascores) and also via views.

This will all the time give us the almost exclusisevly opinion based questions that allow too many possible answers and both is discouraged even in the standard (not specific to MO) description question on top, creating ever more answers to them.

Also, if ever for the list as it is now, and basically it will be like this most of the time, this should be a guide for new users what the site is about and what questions can be asked here (which is as I infer from a thread over at the meta.SEs a motivation for this), this is in my opinion a user-guide for potential desaster, the ones will actually ask things like this and in the majority of cases face an unfriendly welcome, and the others leave because they find it not interesting to discuss why mathematicians do not improve wikipedia or the pros and cons of using a smartboard or what research topics are limited to students at top universities, and not to be overly pessimistic, yes, some will still find there way over this self-inflicted obstacle.

In my opinion, for a page like MO, that has very specific audience and really essentially nothing positive to expect form users that just happen to find the site somehow (inside the network or via a general search) and find it somehow fun and interesting this frontpage is completely unsuitable.

A question that would interest me to get an answer to from SE is why StackOverflow does in fact not have this type of frontpage. (Of course, the volume on SO is a lot higher, but it can not only be the volume, in fact it is not so clear how high volume should play a role in a descision here.) I could imagine some reasons they have for this might apply for MO.

However, Andy Putman's suggestion would raise the importance level of the "shouldn't this be community wiki" discussions.

On top of Andy's suggestion, we could also forbid closed questions from the front page.

Right now there are no users with the mortarboard badge. http://dev.mathoverflow.stackexchange.com/help/badges/25/mortarboard

Having the entire site in Latin would help keep out the homework questions.

Not a bug, but the number of votes for a "tag badge" is lower, 100 upvotes.

So delete votes on closed questions are recorded before two days pass from the closing time?

jtunnell,

I'm afraid all I can say at the present time is that the homepage sort is very unlikely to remain as it is, but also very unlikely to return as it was.

Could you confirm that the views of the Mathoverflow community (as expressed on meta, say) will at least be taken into account? As you are probably aware, many users of meta were very worried about MO handing over its autonomy to Stackexchange. Your comment, which explains your motivations but doesn't acknowledge any of the concerns raised in this thread, isn't very reassuring.

jtunnell writes:

The old sort was "newest", which I would argue does not reflect a representative sample of questions from the site. Further, most of these newest questions are unanswered and thus not as interesting as some with answers.

This seems to me to be waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay off base for MO. My interest is piqued precisely by specific questions which don't have answers, rather than the massively upvoted musings of very clever mathematicians. Who are Stackexchange to judge what the MO community deem to be "a representative sample of questions from the site"? (Outliers can be very noticeable, it doesn't mean they should be catered to.)

Yemon wrote:

<blockquote>

My interest is piqued precisely by specific questions which don't have answers, rather than the massively upvoted musings of very clever mathematicians.

</blockquote>

I second both this sentiment and its implications for the design of the front page.