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How did this question of mine become community wiki?
If that is so, then "edited by so-and-so moderator" should show up.
Oh! Then I think I should request the concerned moderator to leave a note. I suppose I have a right to know, esp since I in comments I had expressed my reservations about making it community wiki.
I was thinking that it was rather some automatic software action, like big list --> community wiki.
I do not agree that questions that ask for lists should automatically become CW. Quite often those questions attract amazingly good answers, which take lots of work and willingness on the part of the answerer, so I think it is rather natural that they should be rewarded by those who appreciate their work, though voting.
In fact, I have yet to understand when turning a question into CW is good («I want to know this, but I will set things up so that you, if you answer, are not rewarded neither by me nor by anyone else»)---I can see, though, situations where it makes sense for an answer to be made CW.
Sorry, this was my doing, and I forgot that just marking as community wiki (via editing, in this case, not the wiki-hammer) doesn't generate a history item.'
If I made it community-wiki after you'd expressed reservations about it, I'm really sorry --- I didn't expand the comments before going ahead. I made it community-wiki on the rule of thumb that all big lists should be. I'm happy to hear what people think on this point, for the future, however.
@Scott Morrison. I had noticed that it was community wiki only after expressing my reservation. I cannot be 100% sure that I commented before the wiki hammer.
Edit: As I think on it, I think I had commented first, and then it was later made wiki. But again I do not know with complete surety. But this is not the important thing.
The important point is that the answers were good, and nontrivial to come up with, and each responder deserved the rep s/he got. This was a case different from the usual wiki cases attempting to gain reputation with soft questions and soft answers, I believe.
@fpqc. It is unfortunately a big-list question. A big list with nontrivial items, but a big list nonetheless.
There is a difference between this big list, and a big list asking for books on algebra for instance. I hope you understand my point.
@fpqc. This is a specific question on a specific subject.
@fpqc, then don't vote up those questions!
@fpqc. If you think it is that easy to answer this question, then please provide one! Please try, and then you will understand what I am speaking of. If it is a question about math jokes or books in a certain subject, a google search will give you an answer. Here it is not so easy to get one.
On the other hand, in general it might be a good idea to require that both questions and answers should be community wiki, for questions like the two examples in the above line.
@fpqc. Ahh!! That's a good point. Here I respectfully disagree with you. I had asked it with a good amount of information, some number of restrictions, etc.. But of course my view on this will be biased, and my statement would make sense only if someone else supports my view. Maybe I am hoping for too much.
@fpqc. By the same reasoning as I tagged this question "big-list", your question on "Algebraic topologies" like the Zariski topology, also could have been tagged so. But it was a nontrivial question.
I do not mind the question being community wiki. Reputation on this question is not such a big matter for me. I can get it by asking other questions or giving answers. However I feel there should be some incentive to the people who spent time for answering.
@fpqc, weren't you on a self-imposed meta moratorium?
Edit: Regarding the subject at hand, as I think I explained in the comments, the rule of thumb is that a non-CW MO question should have the property that it is possible to agree upon what constitutes a reasonably complete answer to the question, and therefore to accept it, giving the answerer his credit. Big-list questions have the property that it is not reasonable to accept any one answer, so along with other questions that have this property they've generally been community wiki.
This makes sense when the list is a list of references, for example, which do not take a lot of effort to write down. However, I see your point that in this case the answers are not trivial to write down and deserve some credit. We don't at the moment have a way to prevent the questioner from gaining reputation while the answerers do.
Edit #2: Let me mention some other reason big lists are generally community wiki. First, it lowers the entry requirement for users to edit each other's answers, so if an entry on the list is interesting but poorly written it is easier for someone to write more about it / give more background. Second, it allows the voting system to be used more effectively to rank the list without damaging the reputation of users who give bad responses.
No, I don't mean that you're being unreasonable. I was just curious; it seemed like a very decisive pronouncement at the time.
@Qiaochu. Oh, so CW is for questions that do not have a "best" answer, and so big-list should always be CW. I see.
But I still hold that this question was different. Anyway, it seems to be going pointlessly ad-infinitum; it is not that the world hinges on this question.
[Redacted in response to objections of fpqc].
@fpqc. Ok, I retract my statement(ie I delete my comment). But I am peeved by your belief that you got to criticize people, but nobody gets to criticize you. This is the last time I am dealing with you here or in real life.
I think the question of exactly when a question should be CW is a very interesting one, but I don't have time to say anything about it now. This question was flagged, asking a moderator to convert it to wiki. I had a look at it, but didn't have much time to look at it carefully, and the answers looked pretty big, so I decided not to wiki-hammer it and let another moderator decide how to handle it. One problem with CW is that there is no way to undo it. I believe it would be a much less tense question if moderators (but probably not regular users) had the ability to un-CW posts. If you agree, please vote up this meta.SE request.
I will point out that though the wiki hammer doesn't count as an edit, it does show up in the revision history. If a post has not been edited, then there is no direct link to the revision history, but you can get to it by going to the URL http://mathoverflow/revisions/XXXX/list, where XXXX is the number of the post. In this case, you can see that Scott converted the question to wiki.
Sorry to revive an old thread, I wanted to add something about why big-lists should be community-wiki. Big-lists, by their nature, receive many many answers, not all good. It is more important than usual that the list is easily sortable. Having the answers all community-wiki lowers to barrier to people upvoting and downvoting individual answers. (Notice as usual this is an argument based on the future usefulness of the page, not reputation effects.)
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